150 INDIAN ANTIQUITIES. 



which Valera translates from the Quippus into Latin. It ran thus : ''Fair nymph, thy 

 brother strikes now thine urn, whose blow is thunder and lightning. But thou, nymph, pour- 

 ing forth thy water, droppest rain, and again sendeth hail or snow. The maker of the world, 

 ViRACOCUA, hath committed this ofBce unto thee." 



But there are things more durable and reliable than poems. JFells excavated in rock^ are 

 the most permanent of human impressions on the earth ; nothing but natural convulsions can 

 erase them: hence at this hour, water is drawn from the same wells at which the patriarchs 

 watered their flocks. The renowned cities of Egypt, Canaan, Judea, Arabia, Persia, Assyria, 

 Asia Minor, India, and Greece, have been swept away, but round some of their wells women 

 now cluster with their vases, as their predecessors did upwards of thirty, and probably upwards 

 of forty centuries ago. Among these are wells, the origin of which goes back into the mythic 

 ages. It has been much the same on this hemisphere. The Peruvians had traditions, during 

 the Inca rule, of giants landing on the coast and settling in the land. From the absence of 

 rain, a scarcity of water was felt, upon which "they dug extremely deep wells, through the 

 hard and living rock." These wells being extant, and yielding sweet water, Garcilasso refers 

 to them as corroborating the report of a remote civilization. " Their wells and cisterns are 

 clear testimonies of the places of their habitation ; but as to the parts from whence they came, 

 I am not able to render any account." The descrii^tion of Peruvian Anakims is very similar 

 to that of the classical Gigantes. 



It was in the vicinity of Lake Titicaca, whose surface has been estimated at between two and 

 three thousand square miles, that Manco Capac and his wife first appeared. Carried by east 

 winds, which blow every day, across the lake, according to Indian tradition he travelled thence 

 on foot to Cuzco. It is observable, that it is in the region of this inland 1 ike that the mono- 

 lithic and other supposed ante-Incan antiquities are found ; and further, that their superiority 

 over the Inca works is still observable. Lieutenant Gibbon says : " Among the scattered stone 

 remains of the ancient edifices of Tiahuanaco we observed no resemblance to the stone work of 

 Cuzco, and were surprised to find, that although the ruins were in such a dilapidated state as 

 not to enable us to make out the character of the structures, we could perceive and were con- 

 vinced of the higher order of mechanical art over that disjilayed in Cuzco. The stones, im- 

 mense in size, were hewn square ; one of them had an arched way cut in it, large enough to 

 drive a mule through, 'i he Cura of the town told us there was no stone of the same kind to be 

 found in the neighborhoo I. and that he did not know whence they had been brought. We 

 believe Manco Capac had nothing to do with the ancient works of Tiahuanaco. Both the hew- 

 ing of the stone and structure of the language of the people are different from his, though his 

 first appearance was among this people." 



Then, in the same region, silver, copper, lead, and tin, the essential ingredient of bronze, 

 abounded and abound. Tin is now carried thence over the cordilleras^ and shipped on the 

 Pacific to Euroj^e and the United States. But the ancient inhabitants also had iro7i ore, a still 

 higher element of civilization, and one which, from their works extant, we infer they con- 

 verted into tools. That such tools have not been found is no proof against their early use in 

 Peru, any more than in 1' gypt, and other lands. Lead, tin, bronze, and cojjper, silver and 

 gold, have been preserved from one to two thousand years in soils that dissolve iron in a century 

 or two. 



At the conquest, the Peruvians, like all people equally advanced and progressing, were grad- 

 ually approaching the realization of iron, and would probably have realized it by this time had 

 they not been interfered with from without. There are many indications that they were 

 awakening to its value by observing the properties of its ores. Si^eaking of silversmiths and 

 other artisans, Garcilasso tells us they had no iron anvils, for want of the knowledge of sepa- 

 rating that metal from its ores, " of which they had several mines." 



