245 
I regret very much not having read the Me- 
moirs of M. de la Condamine before my voyage 
to America ; I am very far from throwing any 
doubt on the observations of this celebrated 
traveller, whose labours obliged him to remain 
a long time in the environs of Cannar, and who 
had much more leisure than myself to inspect 
this monument. I am nevertheless surprised, 
that while examining on the spot itself the ques- 
tion, whether the roof of this building was added 
in the time of the Spaniards, neither M. Bon- 
pland nor myself was struck with the difference of 
construction, which is said to exist between the 
wall and the gable above it. I found no bricks 
( ticas or adobes) ; they seemed to me to be 
merely freestones, covered with a kind of yellow 
stucco, easy to detach, and mixed with ichu^ or 
chopped straw. The owner of a neighbouring 
farm, who accompanied us in our excursion to 
the ruins of Caniiar, boasted, that his ancestors 
had greatly contributed to the destruction of this 
edifice ; he related to us, that the sloping roof 
had been covered, not in the European manner, 
that is, with tiles, but with stones slit very thin 
and highly polished. It was this circumstance 
particularly, which made me lean then to the 
opinion, probably erroneous, that, excepting the 
four windows, the rest of the edifice was such as 
it had been built in the time of the Incas. How- 
ever this may be, we must allow, that the use of 
