Chap. XI. PUCARA. 187 



Gibraltar, which rises abruptly from the plain, with the little 

 town of Pucara nestling at its feet. The precipice is com- 

 posed of a reddish sandstone, upwards of twelve hundred feet 

 above the plain, the crevices and summit clothed with long 

 grass and shrubby queiiuas. Birds were whirling in circles at 

 a great height above the rock, which, in the Spanish times, 

 was famous for a fine breed of falcons, which were carefully 

 guarded and regularly supplied with meat. They tell a story 

 at Pucara that one of these birds was sent to the King of 

 Spain, and that it returned of its own accord, being known 

 by the collar. 



Pucara means a fortress in Quichua ; and here Francisco 

 Hernandez Giron, the rebel who led an insurrection to op- 

 pose the abolition of personal service amongst the Indians, 

 was finally defeated in 1554. The town is a little larger 

 than Juliaca, with a handsome church in the same style, 

 and a fountain in the plaza. I dined and passed the even- 

 ing with the aged cura. Dr. Jose Faustino Dava, who is 

 famous for his knowledge of the Quichua language, iu its 

 purest and most classical form. The fame of Dr. Dava's 

 learning, in all questions connected with the antiquities of the 

 Incas and the Quichua language, had reached me in England, 

 and I was glad to obtain his valuable assistance in looking 

 over a dictionary of the rich and expressive language of the 

 Incas, on which I had been working for some time. 



Owing to the diminution of the aborigiaal population in 

 Peru, and the constantly increasing con-uption of the ancient 

 language, thi-ough the substitution of Spanish for Quichua 

 words, the introduction of Spanish modes of expression, and 

 the loss of all purity of style, that language, once so im- 

 portant, which was used by a polished court and civilized 

 people, which was spoken through the extent of a vast em- 

 pire, and the use of which was spread by careful legislation, 

 is now disappearing. Before loug it will be a tiling that is 



