i879-] 
Peruvian Antiquities. 
107 
posing the Andes to have risen uniformly and without 
interruption, 70,000 years must have elapsed before they 
reached their present altitude. 
Who knows, then, but that Jules Verne’s fanciful idea 
regarding the lost continent Atlanta may be near the truth ? 
Who can say that, where now is the Atlantic Ocean, for- 
merly did not exist a continent, with its dense population, 
advanced in the arts and sciences, who, as they found their 
land sinking beneath the waters, retired, part east and part 
west, populating thus the two hemispheres ? This would 
explain the similarity of their archaeological structures and 
races, and their differences, modified by and adapted to the 
character of their respective climates and countries. Thus 
could the llama and camel differ, although of the same 
species ; thus the algoraba and espino trees ; thus the 
Iroquois Indians of North America and the most ancient 
Arabs call the constellation of the “ Great Bear” by the 
same name ; thus various nations, cut off from all inter- 
course or knowledge of each other, divide the Zodiac in 
twelve constellations, apply to them the same names, and 
the northern Hindoos apply the name Andes to their Hima- 
layan mountains, as did the South Americans to their prin- 
cipal chain. Must we fall in the old rut, and suppose no 
other means of populating the Western Hemisphere except 
“ by way of Behring’s strait ” ? Must we still locate a 
geographical Eden in the East, and suppose a land equally 
adapted to man and as old geologically, must wait the aim- 
less wanderings of the *• lost tribe of Israel ” to become 
populated ? 
Beside dead and speechless relics of the past, there exists 
a living antiquity. In 7°S. latitude, a couple of miles from 
the sea, there is a town of about 40C0 inhabitants called 
Eten. They speak, besides the Spanish, a language that 
some of the recently brought over Chinese labourers under- 
stand, but differ in all other respedts. They intermarry 
brothers and sisters, uncles and nieces, nephews and aunts, 
i.e ., promiscuously, with no apparent curse of consanguinity. 
They are exclusive, permitting no intermarriage into their 
number or with the outside world. They have laws and 
customs and dress of their own, and live by braiding hats, 
mats, and weaving cloths. They will give no account of 
when they came or from whence, nor does history mention 
them as existing before the Spaniards came, nor does it 
record their arrival since. Among them you will find no 
sick or deformed people, their custom being to send a com- 
mittee to each sick or old person, and if they judge the 
