104 CRANIA AMERICANA. 



of the adjacent tribes at that early epoch. Nevertheless, they could not compare 

 with the primitive nation of CoUao ; and w^hen we MA the remains of the latter 

 mingled, as it were^ among those of the barbarous hordes on the sea coast, their 

 presence may be accounted for in the casualties of war or commerce, or by that 

 forced system of colonisation to which we have already alluded. 



I have followed up the researches of Baron Humboldt and Dr. M'CuUoh 

 with the more zeal, because so little notice has been taken of the subject by other 

 writers ; and especially because we are now able to take one step more in the 

 inquiry, by studying the arts of these people in connection with their cranial 

 remains.* 



* Mr. Stevenson has described some very interesting ruins near the village of Langunilla in the 

 province of Caxamarca, which he supposes to be anterior to the Inca dominion in Peru. He repre- 

 sents these remains to be those of a town, of which the houses are all built of stone, surrounding a 

 rock or hill in a valley. '' The bottom tier or range of rooms has walls of an amazing thickness, in 

 which I have measured stones twelve feet long and seven feet high, forming the whole side of a room, 

 with one or more large stones laid across, which serve as a roof Above these houses another tier 

 was built in the same manner, on the back of which are the entrances or doorways, and a second row 

 had their backs to the mountain. The roofs of the second tier in front had been covered with stone, 

 and probably formed a promenade ; a second tier of rooms thus rested on the roofs of the first tier, 

 which were on a level with the second front tier. In this manner one double tier of dwelUng rooms 

 was built above another to the height of seven tiers." The author adds that this series of buildings 

 was capable of containing five thousand families, and he gives his reasons for supposing it to be, not 

 a granary of the Incas, as some travellers have imagined, but the residence of the lord of Chicama, 

 " when he resided in the interior of his territory before it became subject to the Inca Pachacutec." 

 These ruins present no remains of delicate sculpture, although some of the stones are carved in 

 arabesques. Similar to these are the remains of the fortified palace of Paramonga. Trav. in S. 

 Jimer. II, p. 22, 170, 173. 



