488 



THE TROPICAL WORLD. 



nected perhaps with our visit. We ascertained, however, that this was the Eve of St. 

 John, which is celebrated in this way throughout the Sierra. On that night fires 

 blaze on the hill-tops in all the inhabited districts of Peru and Bolivia, from the desert 

 of Atacama to the Equator." Thus have the rites of Christianity superseded the old 

 worship of the Incas. 



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 

 itself 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 arm, from openings cut in the stones 

 behind. " The water comes through subterranean passages from sources now un- 

 known, and never diminishes in volume. It flows to-day as freely as when the Incas 

 resorted here and cut the steep 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 humilia- 

 tion. 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 qf the most remarkable 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 



