1879.] 
Peruvian Antiquities. 
103 
a place for an outlook from which a great portion of the 
province can be seen. Following the entrances of the 
second and highest wall, there are other sepulchres like 
small ovens, 6 feet high and 24 in circumference : in their 
base are flags, upon which some cadavers reposed. On the 
north side there is, on the perpendicular rocky side of the 
mountain, a brick wall, having small windows 600 feet from 
the bottom. No reason for this, nor means of approach, 
can now be found. The skilful construction of utensils of 
gold and silver that were found here, the ingenuity and 
solidity of this gigantic work of dressed stone, make it also 
probably of pre-Incal date. 
To support the inhabitants it became necessary to culti- 
vate every part of the land possible ; and since the greater 
portion is mountainous, they could make no use of that land 
except by such means as they adopted, i.e., by terraces. 
Along the side, at the base of a hill or mountain, a stone 
wall is laid, from 1 to 8 feet high, according to the slope, 
and earth filled in between it and the side of the mountain, 
till even with the wall. Having this level for a base, ano- 
ther wall is laid, and again earth filled in, and so on, tier 
above tier, as high as the place will permit. These are 
terraces. The summits of the mountains are saturated with 
water from the melting snow or winter rains. This, forming 
little streams, is guided over these terraces. Each terrace 
is divided into patches by making a little ridge of earth a 
few inches high all around them, enclosing places 2 feet by 6, 
or 8 feet by 10, and so on according to the size of the 
terrace. The top terrace is first flooded, the ridge of earth 
serving as a dam. When it is considered wet enough, a 
channel is made by taking out a part of the ridge (with the 
hand, or a little paddle about the size of a pancake turner), 
permitting the water to escape to the part below, flowing 
over the wall to the next terrace, which is similarly treated. 
But there are thousands of terraces where the mountains 
and hills are so low and near the rainless portion that snow 
never, and rain very seldom, moistens their summits, and 
where no one could expedt water for irrigation unless carried 
there by hand. Starvation alone would compel people to 
undertake so fatiguing and laborious a work, especially in a 
country where the evenness of the climate tends to relax 
the energy of both mind and body. Estimating five hundred 
ravines in the 1200 miles of Peru, and 10 miles of terraces 
of fifty tiers to each ravine, which would only be 5 miles of 
twenty-five tiers to each side, we have 250,000 miles of stone 
wall, averaging 3 to 4 feet high — enough to encircle this 
