AN INDIAN LEGEND. 



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feet wide, and found inside a chamber twelve feet high, 

 with corridors running the whole breadth, of which the 

 front one was seven feet three inches deep, and the 

 other three feet nine inches. The inner walls were of 

 smooth and polished square stones, and there was no 

 inner door or means of communication with any other 

 place. Outside the doorway was loaded with orna- 

 ments, and the whole exterior was the same as that of 

 the building described above. The steps leading from 

 the doorway to the foot of the structure were entirely 

 destroyed. 



The Indians regard these ruins with superstitious rev- 

 erence. They will not go near them at night, and they 

 have the old story that immense treasure is hidden 

 among them. Each of the buildings has its name given 

 to it by the Indians. This is called the Casa del Ana- 

 no, or House of the Dwarf, and it is consecrated by a 

 wild legend, which, as I sat in the doorway, I received 

 from the lips of an Indian, as follows : 



There was an old woman who lived in a hut on the 

 very spot now occupied by the structure on which this 

 building is perched, and opposite the Casa del Gober- 

 nador (which will be mentioned hereafter), who went 

 mourning that she had no children. In her distress she 

 one day took an egg, covered it with a cloth, and laid 

 it away carefully in one corner of the hut. Every day 

 she went to look at it, until one morning she found the 

 egg hatched, and a criatura, or creature, or baby, born. 

 The old woman was delighted, and called it her son, 

 provided it with a nurse, took good care of it, so that 

 in one year it walked and talked like a man ; and then 

 it stopped growing. The old woman was more delight- 

 ed than ever, and said he would be a great lord or king. 

 One day she told him to go to the house of the gober- 



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