ioo Peruvian Antiquities . [January, 
increase in depth has been noted, can give you an idea of 
the antiquity of these relics. 
The coast of Peru extends from Tumbez on the north to 
the river Loa on the south, a distance of 1233 rniles. Scat- 
tered here and there over this whole extent, there are thou- 
sands of ruins besides those just mentioned, and similar, 
only not so extensive ; while nearly every hill and spur of 
the mountains have upon them or about them some relic of 
the past ; and in every ravine, from the coast to the central 
plateau, there are ruins of walls, fortresses, cities, burial 
vaults, and miles and miles of terraces and water courses. 
Across the plateau and down the eastern slope of the Andes 
to the home of the wild Indian, and into the unknown, 
impenetrable forest, still you find them. In 1861, Mendoza, 
in the Argentine Republic, a beautiful city on the plain, 
forty-five miles from the foot of the Andes, in the short space 
of five minutes was a complete ruin, and 15,000 out of her 
20,000 inhabitants, or 75 per cent, were in the arms of 
death. In 1871 it was still exactly as on the evening of her 
destruction ; the miles of skeletons lying uncovered where 
the) perished, and the streets yet obstructed with the debris 
of the fallen walls of the houses. A new city has been 
built beside the old one. Seeking a photograph of the ruins, 
I was told there were none. Persuading one of the artists 
to take some views of them, and going to see the proof, he 
told me he had been out all day and had done nothing, as 
he could find nothing to take “ but a pile of dirt.” Thus, 
also, you might, as most do, style these coast ruins, and 
those who live among them understand and appreciate 
them no better than did the Mendoza artist the ruins of that 
ill-fated city. 
In the mountains, however, where storms of rain and 
snow with terrific thunder and lightningare nearly constant 
a number of months each year, the ruins are different. Of 
granite, porphyritic, lime, and silicated sand-stone, these 
massive, colossal, cyclopean structures have resisted the 
disintegration of time, geological transformations, earth- 
quakes, and the sacrilegious, destructive hand of the warrior 
and treasure-seeker. The masonry composing these walls, 
temples, houses, towers, fortresses, or sepulchres, is unce- 
mented, held in place by the incline of the walls from the 
perpendicular, and adaptation of each stone to the place 
destined for it, the stones having from six to many sides, 
each dressed, and smoothed to fit another or others with 
such exactness that the blade of a small penknife cannot be 
inserted in any of the seams thus formed, whether in the 
