THE INC A PERUVIANS. 119 



ample evidence of this fact ; and while the design is for the most part simple, the 

 execution cannot but excite our admiration. Their great object appears to have 

 been to erect cyclopean structures, vrhich should at once attest their skill in art, 

 and the povy^er of their mechanical contrivances. They separated from the quarries 

 enormous masses of stone, they shaped them into exact proportions, and they then 

 conveyed them to such distances that we are at a loss to conjecture by what means 

 the object was accomplished. Acosta, after stating that he had measured a single 

 block of stone at Tiaguanico (the city, as we have seen, of the primitive Peruvians) 

 which was thirty feet long, eighteen feet broad and six feet thick, declares that 

 there were stones in the walls of the fortress of Cuzco of far greater size^ and 

 w^hich were placed there by hand. Yet these masses, says Acosta, were not 

 shaped by rule, but of unequal proportion, the irregularities of the one being 

 exactly fitted by extreme toil and ingenuity to those of the other, without mortar 

 or cement ; and yet the place of junction was scarcely discernible.* What is 

 equally remarkable is the fact, that these gigantic fragments of rock were brought 

 from Muyna, which is five leagues distant from the city of Cuzco ; and some of 

 them from a much greater distance.f 



Thus the seemingly superhuman efforts of the Egyptians are at least equalled 

 by those of the Peruvians ; and what most excites our admiration in the one, must 

 be also conceded to the other. We see in the Peruvians a people destitute of 

 horses, oxen, or any beast of burthen except the feeble lama ; and yet they have 

 left monuments which sufficiently attest their great ingenuity and indomitable 

 perseverance. We are ignorant of the means by which they transported these 

 cyclopean fragments of rock, and the mechanical contrivances that were used in 

 excavating and adapting them to their destined situation. The arts of the present 

 day, with all the refinements of successive generations of ingenious minds, would 

 perhaps be inadequate to achieve those remarkable ends which are common in the 

 monuments of Peru. 



The Peruvians, like the primitive Egyptians, were not acquainted with the 

 use of iron.J Such of their implements as in other countries are made of that 



* Hist de las Indias, Lib. VI, Cap. XIV.— -Ulloa, Voy. II, p. 130. 

 t Garcilaso, Comment. Lib. VII, Cap. XXVII, XXVIII, XXIX. 



X Yet according to the best information we possess on this subject, "iron was known (in the old 

 world) 184 years before the Trojan war, about 1370 years before Christ;" and there is sufficient proof 

 that the Egyptians used iron instruments and utensils so early as the Pharaonic era.— Wilkinson, 

 Anc, Egypt, III, ^, 247. 



