ETHKOLOCiY A20) ARCHJEOLOGT. 391 



ETHNOLOGY AND ARCHAEOLOGY. 



PERUVIAN GOLDEN SHROUD. 



In a recent communication to the National Intelligencer, a correspondent, 

 Mr. Thomas En-bank, gives some important information in regard to the discove- 

 ries made in Peruvian tombs and tumuli derived from W. W. Evans, E~q., a gen- 

 tleman of strong antiquarian predilections, and now engineer of the Arica and 

 Tacna Railroad, in Peru. Mr. Evans states, that in making excavations for the 

 railroad at Arica, hundreds of graves are demolished in all directions, in which 

 are numerous Indian relics. The excavations are seventy feet deep, and as the 

 soil is loose sand, as the work proceeds, every thing from the top comes sliding 

 down — dead Indians, pots, kettles, arrow-heads, &c. Among other interesting 

 mortuary relics, an Indian was started out of his resting place, rolled up in a shroud 

 of gold. Before Mr. Evans had knowledge of the incident, the workmen had cut 

 up this magnificent winding-sheet and divided it among themselves. With some 

 difficulty Mr. Evans obtained a fragment and dispatched it to Mr. Ewbank. Mr. 

 Evans notices a remarkable fact, that in hundreds of Indians' skulls which he has 

 examined, not one has contained a decayed tooth. Mr. Ewbank thinks the weight 

 of the entire shroud must havo been eight or nine pounds, and, had it been pre- 

 served, it would have been the finest specimen of sheet gold that we have heard 

 of since the times of the Spanish conquest. In some remarks upon the preserva- 

 tion of souvenirs of the departed, Mr. Ewbank observes: it is the form of features, 

 and not the body, of the dead, that should be preserved. The mummies of Egypt 

 are quarried for fuel, and, whether their wives, their priests, or their slaves, they 

 are split open, and chopped up with the same indifference as so many pine 

 logs. The gums and balsams used in embalming them have made them a 

 good substitute for bituminous coal ; and thus the very means employed to pre- 

 serve them have become the active agents of their dissipation. So it is when the 

 materials of coffins have a high market value, they are then seized as concealed 

 treasure, and their contents cast out as rubbish. Like heroes in the Eastern he- 

 misphere, the descendants of Manco Capec were sometimes, if not always, en- 

 tombed in such, and with considerable treasure besides, in vessels of gold and sil- 

 ver; hence we learn how the Spanish conquerors sought for, often found, and as 

 often plundered rich Indian sepulchres. 



GREEK. SLAVE OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. 



At a recent meeting of the Society of Antiquaries of Scrtland, Mr. Joseph 

 Robertson communicated a notice of a Letter of Safe Conduct and Recommendation 

 ^ranted by James II., King of Scots, to Nicholas Georgiades, a Greek of Arcosson, 

 travelling through Scotland to collect the alms of the Faithful for the ransom of 

 his brother, taken prisoner by the Turks at the capture of Constantinople in 1453. 



This document afforded a casual illustration of the feelings which the fall of the 

 capital of the Roman Empire in the East excited even in the farthest frontiers of 

 Western Europe. Six years after that memorable event, a Greek who had lost his 

 ail in the siege, and left a brother captive in the hands of the Mahometan con- 

 querors, made his way, maimed of a limb, to the Scottish shore. He bore a letter 

 from the Cardinal of Jerusalem, ami on the faith of this, and moved by the wan- 

 derer's story as heard from his own lips, the Scottish King, James II., issued a letter 

 under the great seal, taking the goods, person, and servants of the exile under his 



