44 Transactions of the Canadian Institute. [Vol. VII. 



system of writing, but preserved their records and tallies by collections 

 of knotted cords of different colours, to which they gave this name. It 

 is the Welsh coffau, to record, a term that exactly expresses the object 

 of the cords. The word hualpa or atahualpa, which enters into the 

 composition of the titles of the last three Incas, often written hiialppa, 

 denotes a fowl, and is a common Celtic designation for many kinds of 

 birds, such as the Gaelic gealbhan, sparrow, gealbJian-cuillion, buliinch, 

 gealbhan-garaidh, hedge sparrow, gealbhan-lion, linnet, gealbhan-sgioboil, 

 bunting, and the Welsh golfan, sparrow, golff, swallow, and gylfinogy 

 curlew, whence the lowland Scottish " whaup," which is just huallpa. 

 While on the subject of birds, it may not be amiss to remark that 

 English dictionaries set down condor as Spanish, and some Spanish 

 lexicons at least claim it as such. It is really the Peruvian name of the 

 vulture of the Andes, and is a corruption of the Welsh gwylldyr, a 

 vulture, to which the Gaelic gairrfhiach only half corresponds. The 

 Latin vultur would thus appear to be of Celtic origin. The combin- 

 ation of the guttural and the labial in the Welsh gwi explains the rise, 

 out of the same common original, of such apparently divergent forms 

 as condor and vultur. A corruption of another kind appears in the 

 Atacamena guelechar, truth, as compared with the Welsh gwirder ; and 

 in ualcher, bad, wicked, in the same dialect, in comparison with the 

 V^ e\s\\ ysgeler. A tendency to replace dentals by sibilants is found in 

 the Aymara cachomasi, friend, and arusi, to speak, corresponding with 

 the Welsh cydyvtaith and areithio. Many other points of comparison 

 are worthy of note, but the vocabulary mu§t speak for itself This 

 much is certain, whatever syntactical modifications have supervened in 

 the original language, by virtue of Iberic or other Turanian admixture, 

 the bulk of Peruvian speech is Celtic, and that almost exclusively, yet 

 not completely, Cymric. 



The problem remains, how and when did Cymric Celts find their 

 way to the far western shore of South America ? The Peruvian annals, 

 preserved by Montesinos, Garcilasso de la Vega, and other historians, 

 give no credible account of the advent to the vicinity of Cuzco of the 

 ancestors of the present native population. But in both the histories 

 named, the year 1062 is affirmed to have been the beginning of a new 

 order of things, subsequent to a period of great corruption and decline 

 of royal authority. Then Inca-Rocca or Sinchi-Rocca founded the 

 dynasty which continued in power till the time of the Spaniards. This 

 date of 1062 is very significant, for in that year, Huemac III., the last 

 Toltec king of Tollan, in Mexico, began. to reign. Two years later, 

 according to the Mexican historians, he and his Toltecs fled before 



