7 



the mouth of the volcano of Cotopaxi, for it is 

 the same with the enormous blocks, which I 

 found in great numbers on the plains of Callo 

 and Mulalo. As this monument appears to have 

 been constructed in the beginning of the 16th 

 century, the materials employed in it prove, that 

 it is a mistake to consider as the first eruption of 

 the Cotopaxi that which took place in 1533, 

 when Sebastien de Belalcazar made the conquest 

 of the kingdom of Quito. The stones of Callo 

 are cut in parallelopipedons, not all of the same 

 size, but forming courses as regular as those of 

 Roman workmanship. If the illustrious author 

 of the History of America* could have seen a sin- 

 gle Peruvian edifice, he certainly would not have 

 asserted, " that the Indians took the stones just 

 as they were raised out of the quarries ; that 

 some were triangular, some square, some con- 

 vex, some concave and that the too highly 

 vaunted art of this people consisted only in the 

 arrangement of these shapeless materials. 



During our long abode in the Cordilleras of 

 the Andes, we never found any structure re- 

 sembling that which is termed Cyclopean. In 

 every edifice that dates from the time of the 

 Incas, the front of the stones is very skilfully cut, 

 while the back part is rugged, and often angu- 

 lar. An excellent observer, Don Juan Larea, has 



* Robertson, Hist, of America, vol. 3, p. 432. 



