AN-CIENT CIVILIZATI0:N' OE AMERICA. 59 



strewn with immense blocks of stone, elaborately wrought, equal- 

 ling, if not surpassing in size, any known to exist in Egypt or 

 India." 



At Cusco, about two degrees north of Lake Titicaca, are the 

 ruins of buildings that were occupied until the rule of the Incas 

 was overthrown. The Temple of the Sun was surrounded by a 

 great wall built of cut-stone. Near by this is the extensive ruins 

 of the palace of the Incas. The objective points to notice about 

 both these periods of ancient civilization are, the absence of in- 

 scription; little or no decoration; method of building peculiar; their 

 constructions including cities, temples, palaces, other edifices of 

 various kinds; fortresses, aqueducts, (one, four hundred and fifty 

 miles long,) great roads, (extending the whole length of the em- 

 pire,) and terraces on the sides of mountains, built of cut- 

 stone laid in mortar or cement, sometimes ornamented, but gener- 

 ally plain in style and always massive. 



The Peruvians were highly skilled in agriculture and in some 

 kinds of manufactures. They excelled in the arts of spinning, 

 weaving, and dyeing. They had great skill in working metals; 

 especially gold and silver. They excelled in the manufacture of ar- 

 ticles of pottery. They had some knowledge of engineering as evi- 

 denced by their roads and aqueducts. They had some idea of astron- 

 omy. They divided the year into twelve months; and are sup- 

 posed to have had something in the form of a telescope for study- 

 ing the heavens, as a silver figure of a man holding a tube to his 

 eye, has been discovered in one of the old tombs. 



MEXICO AND CENTRAL AMERICA. 



We now come to our second geological division, Mexico and 

 Central America. Here we trace four distinct eras of civilization, 

 which we will mark by describing a ruin belonging to each era. 

 In the order of antiquity comes Quirigua. It is situated on the 

 right bank of the River Motagna, in the State of Guatemala. It 

 covers a large area of ground. We have described a pyramidal 

 structure with flights of steps, and monoliths larger and higher 

 than those at Copan. Though the sculptures are in the same gen- 

 eral style, they are in lower relief and hardly so rich in design. 

 One of the obelisks is twenty feet high, five feet six inches wide, 

 and two feet eight inches thick. The chief figures carved on it arc 



