[IStORICAL FOOTPRINTS IN AMERICA. 



315 



The sculptured tablet exhumed from the guano bed of the Chincha 

 Islands, and now deposited in the British Museum, is thus a memorial 

 of the early -appropriation by the Spanish conquerors of Peru, of what 

 we know were among the most prized possessions of the Incas long 

 before the advent of Pizaro and his unscrupulous conquistadors. The 

 chronological significance of the depth at which it was found receives 

 some illustration from other discoveries subsequently made. 



CHINCHA TABLET. 



In May, 1S60, Messrs. Trevor and Colgate, bullion dealers, New 

 York, exhibited to the American Ethnological Society four gold relics, 

 which formed part of a discovery made on' the same Chincha Islands, 

 by some Coolies engaged in digging graves. They included the rudely 

 executed figure of a man, wrought with the hammer and punches, 

 from a piece of gold weighing about twelve gold dollars ; and three 

 cups of the same metal, wrought in like manner with the hammer, and 

 weighing about five gold dollars each. But the most interesting fact 

 in relation to those curious native relics is that they were recovered 

 at a depth of upwards of thirty feet below the original surface of the 

 guano ; and they carry us back centuries before the period when the 

 sculptured memorial of the Spanish intruders, described above, was 

 abandoned to the same slowly accumulating sepulture. 



