INDIAN ANTIQUITIES. 149 



derful to consider is, liow or in what manner they were hronght thither by force of men who 

 had not yet attained to the knowledge of engines fit for such a work ; and from what place 

 they were brought, there being no rocks or quarries but such as are at a far distance from 

 thence. There appear also many great and lofty edifices ; and, what is more strange, there 

 are in divers places great portals of stone, and many of them whole and perfect, made of one 

 single and entire stone, which, being raised on pedestals, are found by those who have measured 

 them to be thirty feet in length and fifteen feet in breadth, which pedestals, as well as the 

 arches of the portals, were all of one single stone : and then we may consider how great those 

 stones were before they were shaped, and what tools of iron were requisite for such a labor. 



"The natives report that these buildings, and others of a like nature not mentioned here, toere 

 raised before the times of the Incas ; and that the model of the fortress at Cuzco was taken from 

 them, as we shall hereafter more particularly describe. Who they were that erected them 

 they do not know, only they have heard say by tradition from their ancestors that those pro- 

 digious works were the effects of one night's labor, which seem in reality to have been the begin- 

 nings only and foundations for some mighty structure. Thus much Pedro de Cieca, in hia 

 remarks concerning Peru and its several provinces, relates ; to which I shall further add, what 

 was told me by a certain priest, called Diego de Alcobaga, who was my school-fellow, and whom 

 I may call my brother, because we were both born in the same house, and his father educated me 

 as my tutor and master : this person, I say, amongst the many relations of things which both he 

 and others sent me concerning my own country, coming to speak of the buildings of Tiahuanaco, 

 hath these words: 'In Tiahuanaco, which is a province of Callao, amongst many other an- 

 tiquities worthy of immortal memory, there is one particularly famous adjoining to the lake, 

 which is called by the Spaniards Chucuytu, though its true name be Chuquivitu. This is a 

 pile of monstrous buildings, to which is an open court of fifteen yards square every way ; the 

 building is two stories high, and on one side of this great yard or square is a large hall, of 

 forty-five feet in length and twenty- two feet in breadth ; the covering appears to be thatch, like 

 those on the temple of the sun, in the city of Cuzco. All this court, or yard, which we men- 

 tion, with its walls, floor, hall, roof, portals and jambs of the doors, and back-gate to this build- 

 ing, is all of one entire stone, hewn out of a rock ; the walls of the court and of the hall are 

 three quarters of a yard thick ; and such also is the covering or roof, which, though it may 

 seem to be thatched with straw, is yet of stone, for the Indians have worked it so artificially, 

 and with those natural lines, that the stones appear like straw laid in the most curious manner 

 of thatch. The waters of the lake beat against the side of these walls, and both this and all 

 the other edifices hereabout were all, as the natives report, dedicated to the Maker of the Uni- 

 verse. Moreover, besides these works there are divers others, figures of men and women cut in 

 stone so naturally that they seem to be living : some of them are drinking with cups in their 

 hands, some are sitting, some standing, some are walking in the stream which glides by the 

 walls ; other statues there are of women carrying children in their arms and in the folds of 

 their garments ; others with them on their backs, and in a thousand other manners and pos- 

 tures. The Indians of those days report, that for the great sins of that people, in having 

 stoned a stranger who passed through their province, Grod, in his judgment, had converted 

 those men and women into stone.' " 



Engravings from modern sketches of Tiahuauacoan monoliths, and of other remarkable 

 ruins of Cuzco, Guanaco el Viejo, Pachacamac, on the islands of Titicaca and Coati, have been 

 recently published by Dr. Von Tschudi and others. 



There are points of striking resemblance in the mythology of the Peruvians and that of 

 Eastern nations. Manco Capac, like Osiris, and other founders of empires, taught men to cul- 

 tivate the ground ; and his wife, like Isis and Minerva, educated the women in spinning and weav- 

 ing, and domestic duties. Much of it is based on agriculture and irrigation. " The maker of 

 ■ all things placed in heaven a virgin, a daughter of a king, holding a bucket of water in her 

 hand for the refreshment of the earth." One of the early Incas embodied the story in poetry. 



