48 THE WORLD'S WONDERS. 



breadth. Their outline is formed by hard ferruginous veins 

 around which the softer rock has been worn away, leaving them 

 in relief. 



THE FOUNTAIN OF THE INCAS. 



THE Fountain of the Incas is situated in a sheltered nook, 

 surrounded with terraces upon which grow patches of maize with 

 ears not longer than one's finger. The bath is a pool forty feet 

 long, ten wide, and five deep, built of worked stones. Into this 

 pour four jets of water, as large as a man's aim, from openings 

 cut in the stones behind. The water comes through subterranean 

 passages from sources now unknown, and never diminishes in 

 volume. It flows to-day as freely as when the Incas resorted 

 here and cut the deep hill-sides into terraces, bringing the earth 

 all the way from the Valley of Yucay, or "Vale of Imperial 

 Delights," four hundred miles distant. Over the walls droop 

 the tendrils of vines ; and what with the odors and the tinkle 

 and patter of the water one might imagine himself in the court 

 of the Alhambra. 



Besides the sacred Island of Titicaca, there are eight smaller 

 ones in the lake. Soto was the Isle of Penitence, where the 

 Incas were wont to resort for fasting and humiliation. Coati 

 was sacred to the moon, the wife and sister of the sun, and on it 

 is the palace of the Virgins of the Sun, one of the most remark- 

 able and best preserved remains of aboriginal architecture on 

 the continent of America. 



At Tihuanico, on the border of the lake, are immense ruins 

 which clearly antedate the time of the Incas. They were ruins 

 when the Spaniards made their appearance, and the natives could 

 give no account of them. They supposed that they were built 

 by divine architects in a single night. Cieza de Leon, one of the 

 companions of Pizarro, writes of them : " What most surprised 

 me was that the enormous gateways were formed on other great 

 masses of stone, some of which were thirty feet long, fifteen 

 wide, and six thick. I cannot conceive with what tools or instru- 

 ments these stones were hewn out, for they must have been vastly 

 larger than we now see them . It is supposed that sonre of these 



