320 ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 



CHAPTER VII. 

 FROM QUITO TO MEXICO. 



Acquisition of Manuscripts The Carib and Inca Languages Former 

 Civilisation The Road of the Incas Expedition to the Amazon, and 

 Return over the Andes Caxamarca First View of the Pacific Ocean 

 Truxillo, Lima, Guayaquil Guano as Manure Acapulco The 

 Humboldt Current Letter to the National Institute. 



As all hope of joining the expedition under Baudin was now 

 finally extinguished, Humboldt came to the determination of 

 relying, for the future, entirely on his own resources ; he at once 

 made arrangements for leaving Quito, and undertook an expe- 

 dition to the River Amazon, on his way to Lima, where he 

 hoped to observe the transit of Mercury. 



The route by which he travelled led him by the ruins of 

 Lacatunga, Hambato, and Riobamba. 



'At Riobamba,' he writes to his brother, 'we spent some 

 weeks with a brother of our travelling companion, Carlos Mon- 

 tufar, who resides there officially as corregidor a magistrate 

 by royal appointment. Here we made by chance a most re- 

 markable discovery. The condition of the province of Quito 

 prior to its conquest by the Inca Tupayupangi is still involved 

 in obscurity. We ascertained that the Indian king, Leandro 

 Zapla, who resides at Likan, and who, for an Indian, is a man of 

 considerable culture, is in possession of manuscripts written in 

 the sixteenth century, by one of his ancestors, in the Puru- 

 guayail tongue. This was, at that time, the universal language 

 of Quito, though, owing to the introduction of the Inca or 

 Quichua language, it has since been lost. It is, therefore, 

 a fortunate circumstance that Zapla is also in possession of a 

 translation of these papers in the Spanish tongue, the work of 

 another of his ancestors. 



' From this valuable source, we have gathered much interest- 



