SAN FRANCISCO DE MONTE. 965 
allowed in the church ; and the dancers, instead of painted bodies, and 
heads crowned with feathers, and bound with the fillet,—still thought 
holy,—are now clothed completely in women’s dresses, as fine as they 
can procure: and as the priests have much abridged the period of | 
the solemnity, they are fain to finish their dance in the area before 
the church, where they are attended with as much deference as in the 
temple itself. After having performed this duty, the dancers, and as 
many as choose to accompany them, repair to the Cacique’s house, 
where they are treated with all the food he can command, and drink 
till his stock of chicha is exhausted. I considered myself very fortunate 
in having met with these dancers, and pleased myself with the idea 
that they were the descendants of the Promaucians, who had resisted 
the Incas in their endeavours to subdue the country, and who, after 
bravely disputing its possession with the Spaniards, being once 
induced to make a league with them never deserted them. 
I was lucky too in the person to whom I applied for information. 
He is a deformed, but sprightly-looking man, who acts the double 
part of schoolmaster and gracioso of the village. While we sat at 
dinner to-day he entered to pay his compliments, and began a long 
extempore compliment to each of us in verse, in a manner at least 
as good as that of the common improvisatori of Italy. For this I 
paid him with a cup of wine; when he began to recite a collection 
of legendary and other verses, till, heated I presume by the glasses 
handed to him by our young men, his tales began to stray so far 
from decorum that we silenced the old gentleman, and sent him to 
get a good dinner with the peons. 
Mr. de Roos and I had a great wish to have gone to the Cacique 
of Chenigué, to see even at a distance the triennial feast ; but we 
found it was too far to walk, and we could not think of taking out 
the horses, who had to travel onward in the morning to Santiago ; 
we therefore were forced to content ourselves with a visit to the 
Cacique of Yupeo, whose village joins San Fancisco de Monte. We 
found that His Majesty— must I call him ?—-was absent, probably at 
the feast at Chenigué. His wife received us very kindly: she is a 
MM 
