36 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 6 1 



After the ruins nearer to Sta. Lucia had been examined, an excur- 

 sion was undertaken, with two of the mixed-blood natives, to the 

 much higher and rougher regions about 15 miles north-northeast of 

 the village, 1 where burial caves were reported. 



The region now reached was found to consist of more or less 

 parallel granite ridges or long narrow mesas, separated by canyons — 

 in no case probably over 300 feet deep, but with slopes rather steep 

 and full of bowlders. A curious geological feature, not seen else- 

 where in the writer's travels, was that in a large proportion of the 

 greyish granite bowlders there were nicely shaped rounded or 

 oval cavities, in some instances amounting to good-sized caves, evi- 

 dently blasted out by the winds. It was in two such cavities that, wet 

 to the skin, cold, with soaked horse blankets beneath, wet poncho for 

 a cover, and nothing more for supper than a box of sardines with a 

 handful of parched corn, there was passed another night to be 

 remembered. 



In the morning it developed that my guide, besides being afraid 

 through superstition, was not any too sure of the location of the 

 burial caves, which by this time were reduced from several to " one 

 or two," and we therefore set out to find some shepherds. In this, 

 due to some native instinct of my companions, we were successful. 

 We found an old woman with three daughters, of somewhat mixed 

 blood, but speaking nothing but Ouechua ; had a royal breakfast of 

 hot goat's milk with fresh parched corn ; even found some tough 

 grass for our animals ; and then set out for the cave — only one now 

 remaining. But it so happened that one of the young women, with a 

 child, had an inflammation of the breast and in reward for the little 

 help which it was possible to give her, her old mother volunteered not 

 merely to locate exactly the cave we sought, but also to show us 

 another one, unknown to anyone except herself, though at some 

 distance. 



"We started for the first cave, while the old woman promised to 

 meet us later on. Descending from the hut down one of the 

 canyons through which Avas running a small stream, we saw on one 

 of the slopes the remnants of crude stone walls; and about 15 

 minutes later, in a second canyon, we came to the burial cave. It 

 was a good-sized rock shelter in the slope, and had been closed by a 

 stone wall. Now it lay about two-thirds open, with its floor strewn 

 with stones, skulls, and bones. Not far from 100 skulls and a 'large 



1 These directions and distances must be taken as only approximately correct. 



