CHAPTER III.PERU.

CONTENTS.

Historical Notice—Titicaca—Tombs—Walls of Cuzco, &c.

CHRONOLOGY.

Peruis situated geographically so near to Mexico, and the inhabitants of both countries had reached so nearly to the same grade of civilisation at the time when the Spaniards first visited them and destroyed their native institutions, that we might naturally expect a very considerable similarity in their modes of building and styles of decoration. Nothing, however, can be further from the fact; indeed it would be difficult to conceive two peoples, however remotely situated from one another, whose styles of art differ so essentially as these two.

The Mexican buildings, as we have just seen, are characterised by the most inordinate exuberance of carving, derived probably, with many of the forms of their architecture, from wooden originals. Peru, on the other hand, is one of the very few countries known where timber appears to have been used in primitive times so sparingly that its traces are hardly discernible in subsequent constructions; and either from inability to devise, or from want of taste for, such a mode of decoration, the sculptured forms are few and insignificant.

The material which the Peruvians seem to have used earliest was mud, and in that rainless climate many walls of this substance, erected certainly before the Spanish conquest, still remain in a state of very tolerable preservation. The next improvement on this seems to have been a sort of rubble masonry or concrete: the last, a Cyclopean masonry of great beauty and solidity. None of these forms, nor any of their derivatives, are found in Mexico; the climate would not permit of the use of the first—hardly of the second; and in all their buildings, even the earliest, the Mexicans seem to have known how to use stones carefully squared and set with horizontal beds.

Another distinction which Peruvian art has in common with manyof those derived from purely stone construction, is the sloping sides of the openings—a form invented on purpose to diminish the necessary size of the lintel. There are two discharging arches so constructed at Uxmal, but, so far as is known, none anywhere else; and no single opening of that class in the whole architectural province of Mexico. The roofs and upper parts of the larger openings, on the contrary, almost universally slope in that country. In Peru the roofs are always flat, or domical, and the sides of the openings always straight-lined.

These remarks ought perhaps, in strictness, to be applied to the architecture of the Incas alone—the only one with which we have hitherto been made acquainted. Recently, however, it has dawned upon us, that before the time of Manco Capac the regions of Peru about the Lake Titicaca were inhabited by a race of Aymaras, who have left traces of their art in this region. Some illustrations of the remains of Tia Huanacu, at the southern end of Lake Titicaca, have reached this country, and from them we gather that the style is essentially different from that of the Incas. The most characteristic distinction being that in the Aymara style all the jambs of the doors are perpendicular, and all the angles right angles. In the Inca style, on the contrary, the jambs are almost all universally sloping, and rectangular forms are by no means common.

1027. Ruined Gateway at Tia Huanacu. (From a Photograph.)

At Tia Huanacu there are two doorways, each cut out of a single block of hard volcanic stone. That shown in Woodcut No.1027measures 10 ft. in height and 13 ft. 3 in. across the top; or rather did before it was broken in two, apparently by an earthquake shock.In the centre of it is a mask cut with very considerable skill, and on each side a number of panels containing incised emblematical figures whose purport and meaning have not yet been explained. The other doorway (Woodcut No.1028) is erect and entire, but perfectly plain. Its only ornaments are square sinkings cut with the admirable precision and clearness characteristic of the style.[184]

There is also at Tia Huanacu a great mound, apparently about 1000 ft. long by 400 in width, but the stone revêtment that gave it form has been removed in modern times, so that its shape is undistinguishable. It was apparently surrounded by a range of monolithic pillars or obelisks, like a Ceylonese dagoba, and had a wall of Cyclopean masonry outside these. There is also a square marked out by similar pillars, each of a single stone, 18 to 20 ft. in height, but whether originally connected or not cannot now be ascertained. The wonder of the place, however, is a monument of very uncertain destination, called the “Seats of the Judges,” consisting of great slabs of stone—there are either three or four, each 36 ft. sq. and 5 ft. thick, at one end of which the seats are carved. Without detailed plans and drawings it is difficult to form any reliable opinion regarding these remains, but it does seem that the people who executed them had a wonderful power of quarrying and moving masses, and an aspiration after eternity very unlike anything else found in this continent, and the details of their ornamentation neither resemble those of Mexico nor the succeeding style of the Incas.[185]

1028. Gateway at Tia Huanacu. (From a Photograph.)

In his travels in Peru, Mr. Markham describes several towers as existing at Sillustani(Woodcut No.1029), which he ascribes to the same people. These are certainly sepulchral, and are still filled with bones, which were apparently thrown in by an opening at the top, and rested in a chamber in the centre of the building.

Mr. Markham informs us that there are several other monuments of this class in the same district, about which it would be extremely interesting to know more. As there seems little doubt that they are older than the time of the Incas they must modify to a considerable extent any opinion we may form with regard to the origin of their art, though at the same time they add another to the unsolved problems connected with American architecture.

1029. Tombs at Sillustani. (From a Drawing by Clements Markham, Esq.)

Besides the strongly-marked distinction that exists between the architecture of Mexico and Peru, we have the negative evidence of their history and traditions, which make no mention of any intercourse between the Peruvians and any people to the northward. This, however, is not of much weight, as there are no accounts at all which go farther back than three or four centuries before the Spanish conquest, and our knowledge of who the Aymaras were is still vague in the extreme.

At about that period it is fabled that a godlike man, Manco Capac, appeared, with a divine consort, on an island in the Lake of Titicaca, journeying from whence they taught the rude and uncivilised inhabitants of the country to till the ground, to build houses and towns,and to live together in communities; and made for them such laws and regulations as were requisite for these purposes.

Like the Indian Bacchus, Manco Capac was after his death reverenced as a god, and his descendants, the Incas, were considered as of divine origin, and worshipped as children of the Sun, which was the great object of Peruvian adoration. At the time of the Spanish conquest the twelfth descendant of Manco Capac was on the throne, but, his father having married as one of his wives a woman of the Indian race, the prestige of the purity of Inca blood was tarnished, and the country was torn by civil wars, which greatly facilitated the progress of the Spaniards in their conquests under the unscrupulous Pizzaro.

1030. Ruins of House of Manco Capac, in Cuzco. (From a Sketch by J. B. Pentland.)

Both from its style and the traditions attached to it, the oldest building of the Incas seems to be that called the house of Manco Capac, on an island in the Lake of Titicaca. The part shown in the woodcut (No.1030) is curvilinear in form, standing on a low terrace, and surmounted by upper chambers, hardly deserving the name of towers. All the doorways have sloping jambs, and the masonry is of rude, irregular polygonal blocks of no great size. Inside the wall are a number of small square chambers, lighted only from the doorway.

A more advanced specimen of building, though inferior in masonry, is the two-storeyed edifice called the House of the Nuns, or of the Virgins of the Sun, in the same place (Woodcut No.1031). It is nearly square in plan, though with low projecting wings on one side,and is divided into twelve small square rooms on the ground-floor, and as many similar rooms above them. Several of these chambers were surrounded by others, and those that had no doors externally had no openings like windows (except one with two slits in the upper storey); and they must have been as dark as dungeons, unless the upper ones were lighted from the roof, which is by no means improbable. The most striking architectural features they possess are the doorways, which exactly resemble the Etruscan, both in shape and mode of decoration. We are able in this case to rely upon the accuracy of the representation, so that there can be no doubt of the close similarity.

Another building on the island of Coata, in the sacred lake of Titicaca, is raised on five low terraces, and surrounds three sides of a courtyard, its principal decoration being a range of doorways, some of them false ones, constructed with upright jambs, but contracted at the top by projecting courses of masonry, like inverted stairs—in this instance, however, only imitative, as the building is of rubble.

1031. House of the Virgins of the Sun. (From a Sketch by J. B. Pentland.)

The masonry of the principal tomb represented in the Woodcut No.1032may be taken as a fair specimen of the middle style of masonry; less rude than that of the house of Manco Capac, but less perfect than that of many subsequent examples. It is square in plan—a rare form for a tomb in any part of the world—and flat-roofed. The sepulchral chamber occupies the base, and is covered by a floor, above which is the only opening. The other tomb in the background is likewise square, but differs from the first in being of better masonry,and having been originally covered, apparently, with a dome-shaped roof either of clay or stucco. Some of these tombs are circular, though the square form seems more common, in those at least which have been noticed by Europeans.

1032. Peruvian Tombs. (From a Drawing by J. B. Pentland.)

A specimen of the perfected masonry of the Peruvians is represented in the Woodcut No.1033. It is a portion of the wall of a Caravanserai, orTambos, erected by the last Incas on the great road they made from their oldest capital, Cuzco, to Sinca. The road was itself perhaps the most extraordinary work of their race, being built of large blocks of hard stone, fitted together with the greatest nicety, and so well constructed as to remain entire to the present day in remote parts where uninjured by the hand of man.

The masonry here, as will be observed, is in regular courses, and beautifully executed, the joints being perfectly fitted, and so close as hardly to be visible, except that the stones are slightly convex on their faces, something after the manner of our rustications.

1033. Elevation of Wall of Tambos. (From Humboldt’s ‘Atlas Pittoresque.’)

Intermediate between the two extremes just mentioned are the walls of Cuzco, the ancient capital of the kingdom, forming altogether the most remarkable specimen now existing of the masonry of theancient Peruvians. They are composed of immense blocks of limestone, of polygonal form, but beautifully fitted together; some of the stones are 8 and 10 ft. in length, by at least half as much in width and depth, and weigh from fifteen to twenty tons; these are piled one over the other in three successive terraces, and, as may be seen from the plan, are arranged with a degree of skill nowhere else to be met with in any work of fortification anterior to the invention of gunpowder. To use a modern term, it is a fortificationen tenaille; the re-entering angles are generally right angles, so contrived that every part is seen, and as perfectly flanked as in the best European fortifications of the present day.

1034. Sketch Plans of Walls of Cuzco. No scale.

1035. View of Walls of Cuzco. (From a Sketch by J. B. Pentland.)

It is not a little singular that this perfection should have been reached by a rude people in Southern America while it escaped the Greeks and Romans, as well as the Mediæval engineers. The truemethod of its attainment was never discovered in Europe until it was forced on the attention of military men by the discovery of gunpowder. Here it is used by a people who never had, so far as we know, an external war, but who, nevertheless, have designed the most perfectly planned fortress we know.

Between these various specimens are many more, some less perfect than the walls of Cuzco, showing great irregularity in the form, and a greater admixture of large and small stones, than are there found; others, in which all the blocks are nearly of the same size, and the angles approach nearly to a right angle. Examples occur of every intermediate gradation between the house of Manco Capac (Woodcut No.1030) and the Tambos (Woodcut No.1033), precisely corresponding with the gradual progress of art in Latium, or any European country where the Cyclopean or Pelasgic style of building has been found. So much is this the case, that a series of examples collected by Mr. Pentland from the Peruvian remains might be engraved for a description of Italy, and Dodwell’s illustrations of those of Italy would serve equally to illustrate the buildings of South America.

From what has been said above, it seems by no means improbable that at some future time we may be able to trace a connection between the styles of architecture existing in Central America and those on the eastern shores of the Old World; but, for the present at least, that of Peru must be considered as one of the isolated styles of the world. At the same time it must be confessed that no style offers more tempting baits to those who are inclined to speculate on such a subject. The sloping jambs, the window cornices, the polygonal masonry, and other forms, so closely resemble what is found in the old Pelasgic cities of Greece and Italy, that it is difficult to resist the conclusion that there may be some relation between them. Either, it may be argued, men in certain circumstances do the same things in the same manner, as instinctively as bees or beavers, or by some means or other the arts of the Old World have been transferred to the New. In the present instance, at all events, the latter view can hardly be sustained. The distance of 2000 years in time that elapsed between the erection of the European and American examples is too great to be easily bridged over, and the distance in space is a still more insuperable objection. Even, however, if it were attempted to explain these away, the introduction of the Aymara style is in itself sufficient to settle the question. If that style preceded that of the Incas, as there is every reason to believe it did, it cuts across any such speculations. Its jambs are perpendicular, its angles rigidly rectangular, its surfaces smooth, and it is altogether as unlike the style that succeeded it as can well be conceived. We seem, therefore,forced to the conclusion that the sloping jambs of Inca architecture are only a natural expedient for shortening the length of the lintel, and their polygonal masonry probably arose from the surfaces of cleavage or fracture, into which certain kinds of stones naturally split.

Although, therefore, we are unable, with our present knowledge, to trace the external relation of the Peruvians to the other races of the American continent, there can be no doubt that when her architectural remains are properly investigated, we shall understand her history, and be able to assign to her civilization its proper rank, as compared with that of other nations. Eventually, also, we need not despair of being able to determine whether the gentle subjects of the Incas belonged to the Polynesian, or to which other of the great families of mankind.

When, indeed, we look back on the progress that has been achieved in the last few years, it seems difficult to assign a limit to the extent to which architecture may be employed in investigations of this sort. It was not, of course, even possible to rise to the conception of such a scheme for tracing the affinities of mankind, till the greater part of the world had been explored, and a sufficient amount of knowledge attained to render it certain that no such exceptions existed as would invalidate the general conclusions arrived at. Now, however, that this has been done, and that we are enabled to survey and to group the whole, it may safely be asserted that the great stone book on which men of all countries and all ages have engraved their thoughts, and to which they have committed their highest aspirations, is, of all those of its class now open to us, the most attractive, and for some purposes the most instructive. No one who has followed the inquiry can well doubt that in a few years more, architectural ethnology will take its proper rank as one of the most important adjuncts to all inquiries into the affinities and development of the various families of mankind.

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