188 LOSS OF QUTCHUA LANGUAGE. Chap. XL 



past, or perhaiDS fade away entirely from the memory of living 

 generations. With it will disappear the richest form of all 

 the great American group of languages, no small loss to the 

 student of ethnology. With it will be lost all the traditions 

 which yet remain of the old glory of the Incas, all the elegies, 

 love- songs, and poems which stamp the character of a once 

 powerful, but always gentle and amiable race. 



Unlike the English in India, the half-Spanish races of 

 Peru have paid little attention to the history and languages 

 of the aborigines, within the present centuiy ; and, if left to 

 them, all traces of the language of the Incas, and of the songs 

 and traditions which remain in it, would, in the course of 

 another century, almost entirely disappear. A few honourable 

 exceptions must, however, be recorded. The late Mariano Rivero 

 paid much attention to the antiquities of his country, and the 

 results of his labours have been jiublished at Vienna.^ The 

 curas of some of the parishes in the interior, also, especially 

 Dr. Dava of Pucara, Dr. Eosas of Chinchero, and the Cura of 

 Oropesa, near Cuzco, are excellent Quichua scholars, but 

 they are very old men, and their knowledge will die with 

 them. 



Dr. Dava had a large collection of the finches, and other 

 birds of the loftier parts of the Andes, hanging in wicker 

 cages along the wall of his house. Amongst them were a little 

 dove called urpi ; the bright yellow little songster called 

 silgarito in Spanish, and cchaina in Quichua ; the tuya, another 

 larger warbler ; the chocclla-iJoccocM or nightingale of Peru ; 

 and a little finch with glossy black plumage, pink on the 

 back, and whitish-grey under the wings. He also bad some 

 small green paroquets, with long tails and bluish wings, 

 which make their nests under the eaves of roofs, at a height 

 of fourteen thousand feet above the sea. At Pucara some of 



Anliquedades reruanas. 



