258 THE BLOOD-STAINED STONE. 



In the chapel of the state prison the stone was shown 



still marked by the indelible stains of blood. It was a 

 thin slab, thirteen feet long, placed in front of the altar, 

 and had probably been taken from the porphyry or 

 trachyte of the vicinity. Humboldt was not permitted 

 to make a precise examination by striking off a part 

 of the stone, but the three or four supposed blood 

 spots appeared to him to be natural collections of horn- 

 blende, or pyroxide in the rock. The Licentiate Fer- 

 nando Montesinos, who visited Peru scarcely a hundred 

 years after the taking of Caxamarca, even at that early 

 period gave currency to the fable that Atahuallpa was 

 beheaded in prison, and that stains of blood were still 

 visible on the stone on which the execution had taken 

 place. There is no reason however to doubt the fact, 

 confirmed by many eye-witnesses, that the Inca, to avoid 

 being burnt alive, consented to be baptized under the 

 name of Juan de Atahuallpa, by his fanatic persecutor, 

 the Dominican monk Vicente de Valverde. He was put 

 to death by strangulation, publicly, and in the open air. 

 Another tradition relates that a chapel was raised over 

 the spot where Atahuallpa was garroted, and that his 

 body rests beneath the stone; in such case, the supposed 

 spots of blood would remain entirely unaccounted for. 

 In reality, however, the corpse was never placed beneath 

 the stone in question. After a mass for the dead, and 

 solemn funereal rites, at which the brothers Pizarro were 

 present in mourning habits, it was conveyed first to the 

 churchyard of the convent of San Francisco, and after-" 

 wards to Quito, Atahuallpa's birthplace. This last trans- 

 fer was in compliance with the expressed wish of the 

 djdng Inca. His personal enemy, the astute Ruminnavi, 



