131 



We have already observed, that the Mexicans 

 intercalated in a much more exact and regular 

 manner, while the Peruvians rectified their lunar 

 year from time to time by observations of the 

 solstices and the equinoxes, made by means of 

 cylindrical towers erected on the mountain of 

 Carmenga near Cuzco*, which served to take 

 azimuths. 



Among the Muyscas, it is to the singular use 

 of numbers, the series of which has two terms 

 less than the rural year contains moons, that we 

 must attribute the imperfection of a calendar, in 

 which, notwithstanding the intercalation of the 

 thirty-seventh month, cuhupqua, the harvest, 

 during six years, falls every year in a month of 

 a different denomination. Thus the xeques an- 

 nounced every year by what sign the month of 

 the ears of maize should be presided, which cor- 

 responds to the Abib or Nisan of the calendar of 

 the Hebrews. As the power of a class of society 

 is often founded on the ignorance of the other 

 classes, the lamas of Iraca preferred an uncouth 

 calendar, in which the eighth month (October) 

 was sometimes called the third, sometimes the 

 fifth; and in which the differences of season, 

 sufficiently sensible as they are on the plain of 

 Bogota, notwithstanding the proximity of the 

 equator, did not coincide with the sunas of the 



* Nuremberg, p; 139 ; Cie9a, p. 230. 

 K 2 



