Moe esi ee 
ON THE COAST OF PERU. E. 78 
season by no means conspicuous for its 
beauty or variety. Its most striking fea- 
ture was a Cucurbitaceous climber, which 
enveloped in its foliage almost all the vege- 
tation near the river. It is probable the 
families of plants are not numerous which 
are fitted by their constitution to sustain 
the extremes of drought and moisture. 
The pleasantest day I spent in Tumbez 
was that of an excursion in company with 
Don Jose Antonio Carvallo, an exile like 
myself, to visit the remains of the Inca's 
temple. 
The river empties itself into the sea by 
two branches, separated by a level alluvion 
of about two miles; the ruins are situated 
near the southern branch, upon a tongue 
of land rising nearly perpendicular above 
the plain, forming part of the low ridge 
which appears to separate the alluvial soil 
from the more ancient formation of clay- 
slate. : 
The edifice, of which the foundations 
only are now to be traced, was so well 
adapted to the scite, that the hill seems the 
artificial basis of the building which occu- 
pied and covered it in every direction. 
The situation is commanding ; though, as 
the elevation does not exceed sixty feet, 
the surrounding country is a perfectly level 
plain, as far as the ocean, from which the 
temple must have been distinctly visible in 
all its golden —, The rampart, 
which nearly surrounded it, is ins desig- 
nated by a bank x earth, and raised roads 
extend in every direction reat the sur- 
rounding plain. No doubt a more accurate 
examination would throw light upon the 
style and purposes of the structure; but 
any labour hitherto bestowed has been di- 
rected to the sole object of discovering 
buried treasures. An antiquarian survey 
of the whole neighbourhood would be inte- 
resting. At the foot bs >- heights, near 
illa e 
are distinctly visible, which conducted a 
stream from the distance of thirteen leagues 
to irrigate what is now a barren desert. I 
observed similar traces near the heights 
the ruins, and the remains of the 
= conduit prove the interior of the building 
to have been supplied with water. Similar 
works of the Incas are traced in all the Pe- 
ruvian deserts, which then nourished a nu- 
merous population. Tradition assigns to 
the district of Tumbez eighty thousand in- 
habitants; and the Island of Puna, which 
scarcely now maintains two hundred souls, 
had then a population sufficient to war with 
Huayna Capac. Garcilaso de la Vega re- 
lates that the fortress and temple of Tum- 
bez, which he writes Tumpiz, was built by 
Huayna Capac, to contain and overawe the 
inhabitants of Puna, for which purpose he 
placed there a governor, with a considerable 
garrison, and for the service of the temple 
appointed two hundred virgins, whose em- 
ployment was to spin and weave the finest 
woollens used by the nobility. Among the 
curiosities kept there were a lion and a 
tiger, which were said to have been turned 
loose on Pedro de Candia, the first of Pi- 
zarro’s companions who landed to survey 
the coast. Garcilaso's account of this in- 
cident is as picturesque as old Froissart's 
Chronicles. It seems Peter of Candia, a 
Greek, volunteered his services on the oc- 
casion, in these words—“ I am determined 
to go alone, to see what is in this valley ; 
if they kill me, you lose but a single com- 
panion—and if I succeed, our victory will 
be the greater." So saying, he put over 
his vest a coat of mail which reached to his 
knees, an iron helmet of the bravest in their 
possession, a steel buckler, with his sword 
at his girdle, and in his right hand a wooden 
cross a yard high, in which he trusted more 
than his arms, as being the sign of our Re- 
deemer. 'The Indians, astonished at the 
lofty bearing and strange demeanour of 
this iron-clad apparition, * who mov 
says Garcilaso, “as if he were lord of the 
Peruvians,” to try of what nature he 
was, turned loose the above-mentioned 
wild beasts, which, instead of attacking 
him, came and fawned on him like dogs, 
and threw themselves at his feet. If we 
consider that the lion, or puma, of South 
America is, even in its wild state, a timid 
animal and that both of them had been 
long tamed by confinement,thereisnothing _ D 
very miraculous in the incident, admitting - 
