106 Peruvian Antiquities. [January, 
the Pacific, and from Tunebez, on the north, to the desert 
of Atacama an the south. 
The second, called “ Aymaras,” dwelt in the elevated 
plains of Peru and Bolivia, on the southern shore of lake 
Titicaca, where they reside even to this day, being the only 
race that did not give up their language for the Inichua, or 
language of the Incas, when conquered by them. 
The third, called “ Huancas,” occupied the plateau be- 
tween the chains of Andes north of lake Titicaca, to the 9th 
degree of south latitude. The race were supposed to have 
caused the peculiar shape of their heads by mechanical 
means, as the Flat-head Indians with us, and the Conibos, 
a tribe that now live on the banks of the Ucayali, near Sar- 
ayacu, but the taking from a mummy of a foetus of seven or 
eight months having the same configuration of skull has 
placed a doubt as to the certainty of this fadb. 
How changed ! How fallen from their greatness must 
have been the Incas, when a little band of 160 men could 
penetrate, uninjured, to their mountain homes, murder their 
worshipped kings and thousands of their warriors, and carry 
away their riches, and that, too, in a country where a few 
men with stones could resist successfully an army ! Who 
could recognise in the present Inichua and Aymara Indians 
their noble ancestry ? 
Their songs are typical of their condition, and are called 
“ tristes,” or sad songs. Always a duet in a minor key, and 
at night, as you hear it, it seems rather the expiring wail of 
some lost spirit than a human voice. It begins with a full 
inspiration of the lungs, and at the highest pitch of the 
voice, and ends with the expiration of the breath, in a low, 
long-drawn-out “andante pianissimo.” The words are 
chanted, and often made up for the occasion. These are 
the words heard by a traveller from the lips of a young 
Indian mother, in the wild recesses of the Andes : 
“ My mother begat me amid rain and mist, 
To weep like the rain and be drifted like the clouds. 
You are born in the cradle of sorrow, 
Says my mother; and she weeps as she wraps me around. 
If I wander the wide world over, 
I could not meet my equal in misery. 
Accursed be the day of my birth, 
Accursed be the night I was born, 
From this time, for ever and ever !” 
Three times the Andes sank hundreds of feet beneath the 
ocean level, and again were slowly brought to their present 
height. A man’s life would be too short to count even the 
centuries consumed in this operation. The coast of Peru 
has risen eighty feet since it felt the tread of Pizarro. Sup- 
