THE INCAS AND OTUER lUTLEES OF PERU. l3 



knots in strings, which tliey called " (|uipus." It is of course 

 possible that the removal of onr ignorance as to the meaning of 

 these mysterious signs might merely result in the loss of that 

 romance which so often clings round the unknown. To judge 

 from analogous inscriptions found in Egypt, the subject of 

 hierogly])hic records was mainly one of a very unpleasant nature, 

 and which is still in modern times extremely repellent to the 

 average man — namely, rates and taxes. True it is that some bore 

 witness to the dates of the birth and death of sundry kings, 

 many, doubtless, great warriors and statesmen in their day, but 

 the majority of whom do not appear to have soared above 

 mediocrity. I have little fear, and less desire, that the tone of 

 these remarks will dishearten any student of Egyptian history ; 

 I merely confess that my own personal attempts to gain some 

 knowledge of the subject have been discouraged, and I have 

 been thus led to indulge in the idle feeling that perhaps after all 

 we do not lose very much by our inability to interj)ret the 

 mysteries of the Pozo stone. 



With regard to the people who carved those figures, in the 

 land which is now the province of Tarapaca, little more is known 

 than about the carvings themselves. It is recorded that some 

 southern tribes existed, as far south as the present site of Iquique, 

 under the name of Chiuchas ; they were conquered by the central 

 power established at Cuzco as early as 200 B.C. However, they 

 do not appear to have occupied any prominent place in the history 

 of the nation — either at that remote period or at any subsequent 

 one. Though hieroglyphics gave way to the " Cjuipus " in all the 

 northern and more civilised districts before the Christian era, it 

 is quite possible that the simple-minded Chinchas may have 

 preserved their old-fashioned methods and continued to carve their 

 thoughts, record their taxes or objections to paying them, on 

 stones, in the j)rimitive hieroglypliic language, during many 

 centuries after they became subjects of the Inca. It is therefore 

 difficult to assign any precise date to the stone. 



Though our knowledge of the early history of Tarapaca is 

 thus vague and scanty, the general history of the country of 

 which it has formed a part during many centuries, until its 

 conquest by Chile in 1879, is extremely interesting. You may 



