PLATEAU OF CAXAMARCA. 291 



fateful 29th of August 1553, on which day the Inca was 

 put to death, at 3,838,000 Ducados de Oro ( 15 ). 



In the chapel of the state prison, to which I have before 

 alluded as built upon the ruins of the Inca's palace, the stone 

 still marked by the indelible stains of blood is shown to the 

 credulous. It is a very thin slab, 13 feet long, placed in 

 front of the altar, and has probably been taken from 

 the porphyry or trachyte of the vicinity. One is not 

 permitted to make any more precise examination by striking 

 off a part of the stone, but the three or four supposed blood 

 spots appear to be natural collections of hornblende or 

 pyroxide in the rock. The Licentiate Fernando Monte- 

 sinos, who visited Peru scarcely a hundred years after the 

 taking of Caxamarca, even at that early period gave currency 

 to the fable that Atahuallpa was beheaded in prison, and 

 that stains of blood were still visible on the stone on which 

 the execution had taken place. There is no reason to doubt 

 the fact, confirmed by many eye-witnesses, that the Inca, 

 in order to avoid being burnt alive, consented to be 

 baptised under the name of Juan de Atahuallpa by his 

 fanatic persecutor, the Dominican monk Yicente de Yalverde. 

 He was put to death by strangulation (el garrote) publicly, 

 and in the open air. Another tradition relates that a chapel 

 was raised over the spot where Atahuallpa was strangled, 

 and that his body rests beneath the stone; in such case, 

 however, the supposed spots of blood would remain unac- 

 counted for. In reality, however, the corpse was never 

 placed beneath the stone in question. After a mass for the 

 dead, and solemn funereal rites, at which the brothers Pizarro 



