410 THE POZO STONE. 



the vicuna, which is a small variety of the llama,, larger than the 

 alpaca and longer in the neck, a more slender animal, and held in 

 great veneration ; these animals the ancient Peruvian sused as beasts 

 of burden, paid them Divine honours and worshipped them. We 

 are told by Mr. Harvey* that many mummies were exhumed in the 

 same hill where the stone was found, holding a vicuna- wool sack 

 in their hands containing maize. There are several other special 

 characters which I shall touch upon later. 



Who were the carvers of the Pozo and similar inscribed stones ? 



In attempting to trace the antiquity of the nations who carved 

 figures on stones throughout the northern parts of South America, 

 one is led from the known to the unknown, and the result is but a 

 guess. There is no history of any value about Peru beyond one 

 hundred years before the landing of the Spaniards, and the accounts 

 the Spaniards wrote are blaze and bluster, being in many cases 

 utterly unreliable. When the Spaniards landed in South America, 

 at the beginning of the fifteenth century, the Peruvian Empire 

 comprised New Granada, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and Chile. 

 Before their time thirteen Incas had reigned. In tracing out the 

 language little light is shed on the problem we are seeking to solve. 

 " The Quichua, perhaps the most polished of all native American 

 tongues, and which was spoken everywhere in the Empire of the 

 Incas, is younger than the Ayamara, which is much more primitive, 

 and from which was grafted the Inca, the secret language of the 

 first Incas, and is the principal language of Bolivia ; whilst in 

 Ecuador is spoken the Quitefio, said by some to be a northern 

 branch of the Quichua, but looked upon by Bollaert, who studied 

 the subject on the spot, as a primitive form of the common mother 

 tongue, on which the Quichua was grafted, after the conquest of 

 this region, by the Inca Huayna-Capac."f 



We learn then that the Incas were most likely of Aymaran 

 origin, which is interesting because it takes us to a people more 

 primitive than the Incas themselves. The Chinchas or Chinchasuyo 

 and the Huancas Indians, too, are more primitive Peruvian races 

 than the Incas. 



* Page 404. 



\ Central, West Indies and South America, by H. W. Bates, 3rd edition. 



