Appendix. 147 



lop-sided appearance. This custom does not seem to have been 

 universal, as normal skulls were found in the same villages and 

 in the same graves, with the ones that had been pressed out of 

 shape. 



While making a journey over the Andes along the route of 

 the Lima and Oroga Railroad, I saw a method of cultivation 

 of the soil that is probably the one anciently used by the Incas, 

 before the introduction of horses and cattle by the Spanish. 

 They then possessed no beast of burden but the llama, and this 

 animal is too small and weak to have been used in the cultivation 

 of the ground. When we had reached a point where the valley 

 of the Rimac River is too narrow and too cold to be any longer 

 an object of desire for the Spaniards and their descendants, we 

 found several Indian villages, the inhabitants living from their 

 flocks of sheep and llamas, and from little patches of potatoes 

 and quinoa. The hill-sides were terraced up, as below, probably 

 the work of centuries past ; and one of these terraces, too narrow 

 to plough, two Indians were cultivating with implements that 

 looked like plow handles, being curved above, to take hold of, 

 and shod at the lower end with iron, and with a support for the 

 foot, tied on with thongs. They raised these narrow, spade-like 

 implements at the same moment, and stepping each a step to the 

 right with military precision, they set the spades to the ground 

 and threw their weight upon them, driving them in six or eight 

 inches, and then at the same moment pried back upon them, 

 loosening quite a sod ; and then they stepped again to the right, 

 loosening at each time about as much earth as one would with 

 an ordinary spade. An Indian woman followed, on her knees, 

 and turned the sods bottom side up with her hands ; and I 

 concluded that I was looking upon the identical method of 

 cultivation of the ancient Peruvians. 



