THE HOUSE OF THE IXCA. 239 



in Peru, are not much lower than the Panecillo of Callo. 

 It is nevertheless possible, and this opinion appeared to 

 Humboldt the most probable one, that the latter was a 

 volcanic hillock to which the natives had given a more 

 regular form. Ulloa, who visited the Panecillo, and 

 whose authority is of great weight, adopted the opinion 

 of the natives ; he even thought that the Panecillo was a 

 military monument ; and that it served as a watch tower, 

 to discover what passed in the country, and to insure the 

 prince's safety on the first alarm of an unforeseen attack. 

 The Inca's House was a little to the south-west of the 

 Panecillo, three leagues from the crater of Cotopaxi, and 

 about ten leagues to the south of the city of Quito. This 

 edifice formed a square, each side of which was one hundred 

 feet long ; four great outer doors were still distinguish- 

 able, and eight apartments, three of which were in good 

 preservation. The walls were nearly fifteen feet high 

 and three feet thick. The doors were similar to those 

 of Egyptian temples; the niches, eighteen in number 

 in each apartment, were distributed with the greatest 

 symmetry. The stone made use of in building the Inca's 

 House was a rock of volcanic origin, a burnt and spungy 

 porphyry with basaltic bases. It was probably ejected 

 by the mouth of the volcano of Cotopaxi. As this 

 monument appeared to have been constructed in the be- 

 ginning of the sixteenth century, the materials emj^loyed 

 in it proved that it was a mistake to consider as the first 

 eruption of Cotopaxi that which took place in 1533, 

 when Sebastien de Belalcazar made the conquest of the 

 kingdom of Quito. The stones of the Inca's House were 

 cut in parallelopipedons, not all of the same size, but 

 forming courses as regular as those of Roman workman- 



