ELEVATION ON THE COAST. 119 



moisture as it now is ; and as the rise has been 

 gradual, so would have been the change in climate. 

 On this notion of a change of climate since the 

 buildings were inhabited, the ruins must be of ex- 

 treme antiquity, but I do not think their preserva- 

 tion under the Chilian climate any great difficulty. 

 We must also admit, on this notion (and this, per- 

 haps, is a greater difficulty), that man has inhabited 

 South America for an immensely long period, in- 

 asmuch as any change of climate effected by the 

 elevation of the land must have been extremely 

 gradual. At Valparaiso, within the last 220 years, 

 the rise has been somewhat less than 19 feet : at 

 Lima a sea-beach has certainly been upheaved from 

 80 to 90 feet within the Indio-human period ; but 

 such small elevations could have had little power 

 in deflecting the moisture-bringing atmospheric 

 currents. Dr. Lund, however, found human skel- 

 etons in the caves of Brazil, the appearance of 

 which induced him to believe that the Indian race 

 has existed during a vast lapse of time in South 

 America. 



When at Lima, I conversed on these subjects* 

 with Mr. Gill, a civil engineer, who had seen much 

 of the interior country. He told me that a conjec- 

 ture of a change of climate had sometimes cross- 

 ed his mind, but that he thought that the greater 

 portion of land, now incapable of cultivation, but 

 covered with Indian ruins, had been reduced to this 

 state by the water-conduits, which the Indians for- 

 merly constructed on so wonderful a scale, having 



* Temple, in his travels through Upper Peru, or Bolivia, in 

 going from Potosi to Oruro, says, " I saw many Indian villages or 

 dwellings in ruins, up even to the very tops of the mountains, rit- 

 testing a former population where now all is desolate." He makes 

 similar remarks in another place ; but I cannot tell whether this 

 desolation has been caused by a want of population or by an al- 

 tered condition of the land. 



