Chapter 26

Peruvian Copper Implements.

Golden Vase from Peru.

Huacais the Peruvian name for any venerated or holy structure, but is usually applied to the conical mounds of the country, mostly mounds of sepulture. Thousands of these have been opened and from them have been taken a great variety of relics, together with preserved mummies wrapped in native cloth. The relics include implements and ornaments of metal, stone, bone, shell, and wood. The Peruvians seem to have had a more abundant supply of metals than the civilized nations of North America, and to have been at least equally skillful in working them. The cuts show specimens of copper cutting implements, of which a great variety are found. Besides copper, they had gold and silver in much greater abundance than the northern artisans, and the arts of melting, casting, soldering, beating, inlaying, and carving these metals, were carried to a high degree of perfection. Every one has read the marvelous accounts,naturally exaggerated, but still with much foundation in truth, of the immense quantities of gold obtained by the Spaniards in Peru; of the room filled with golden utensils by the natives as a ransom for the Inca Atahuallpa. A golden vase is shown in the cut. Large quantities of gold have been taken in more modern times from the huacas, where it was doubtless placed in many cases to keep it from the hands of the conquerors. Most of the articles have of course gone to the melting-pot, but sufficient specimens have been preserved or sketched to show the degree of excellence to which the Peruvian smithshad attained. The following cut shows a silver vase. The search for treasure in the huacas still goes on, and is not always unrewarded. Tin, lead, and quicksilver are said to have been worked by the natives. Iron ore is very abundant in Peru, but the only evidence that iron was used is the difficulty of executing the native works of excavation and cutting stone without it, and the fact that the metal had a name in the native language. No traces of it have ever been found. The cut shows two copper tweezers.

Silver Vase from Peru.

Copper Implements from Peru.

ABORIGINAL ROADS.

Among the most remarkable Peruvian remains are the paved roads which crossed the country in every direction, especially from north to south. Two of the grandest highways extended from the region north of Quito southward to Cuzco, and according tosome authors still farther to Chili. One runs over the mountains, the other chiefly through the plains. Their length is at least twelve hundred miles, and the grading of the mountain road presented, as Mr Baldwin believes, far greater difficulties than the Pacific Railroad. These roads are from eighteen to twenty-six feet wide, protected at the sides by a thick wall, and paved generally with stone blocks, but sometimes with a mixture of cement and fine stone—an aboriginal infringement on the 'Macadam' process. The highways followed a straight course, and turned aside for no obstacle. Ravines and marshes were filled up with masonry, and the solid rock of the mountains was cut away for many miles. But when rivers were encountered, light suspension bridges seem to have been resorted to instead of massive stone bridges. It is true that the most glowing accounts of these roads are found in the writings of the Conquistadores, and that only ruined portions now remain; but the reports of Humboldt and others, respecting the remains, leave little doubt of their former imposing character.

Peruvian Pottery.

Articles of pottery, of which three specimens are shown in the cuts, are at least equal in material andfinish to those produced by Nahua and Maya potters. The finest specimens are vases found in sepulchral deposits, and many utensils designed for more common use are preserved by the present inhabitants, and are preferred for their solidity to the work of modern potters. Small images of human and animal forms in terra cotta, as in gold and silver, are of even more frequent occurrence than utensils. There is no evidence that the images were fashioned with a different purpose here and in the north; some were simply ornaments, a few probably portraits, others miniature deities, deposited from superstitious motives with the dead.

Peruvian Pottery.

CITY OF THE INCAS.

About twenty miles south of Lima, in the valley of Lurin, and overlooking the sea, are the ruins of Pachacamac, shown in the cut. This was a city of the Incas, that is, it belonged to the later period of Peruvian civilization. All the structures were built of adobes, and are much dilapidated. The Temple of the Sun stands on a hill six hundred feet high, the upper portion of which shows traces of having been divided into terraces over thirty feet high and five to eight feet wide. The adobe wall which surrounds the temple is from eight to eleven feet thick, and is only standing to the height of four to five feet.The ruined structures are very numerous, and on one of the inner walls some traces of red and yellow paint are visible.

Ruins of Pachacamac.

In the district of Santo Tomas in the north, at Cuelap, a grand and peculiar ruin is described by Sr Nieto in an official government report. A mass—of earth, probably, although not fully examined in the interior—is faced with a solid wall of hewn stone, and is thirty-six hundred feet long, five hundred and seventy feet wide, and one hundred and fifty feet in perpendicular height. On the summit stands another similar structure six hundred by five hundred feet and also one hundred and fifty feet high. The lower wall is pierced with three entrances to an inclined plane leading in a curved line to the summit, with sentry-boxes at intervals and on the summit. These passages are six feet wide at the base but only two at the top, and those of the second story are similar. In both stories there are chambers, in the walls of which and in the outer walls there are small niches containingskeletons. Some of the upper chambers are paved with large flat stones, on each of which lies a skeleton. The report of this immense structure is probably founded on fact but greatly exaggerated.

RUINS OF GRAN-CHIMÚ.

Adobe Walls at Gran-Chimú.

Decorations at Gran-Chimú.

The ruins of Gran-Chimú, in the vicinity of Truxillo, cover an area of three quarters of a league, and beyond these limits are seven or eight great enclosures with adobe walls, in some of which are conical mounds, or huacas, and some traces of buildings. The two principal structures, called palaces, are surrounded by walls one hundred and forty feet high, sixteen feet thick at the base, but tapering to three or four feet at the top. Round one of the palaces the wall is double, as shown by the section in the cut. The English translation of Rivero, instead of surrounding one of the palaces with a double wall like the original, represents one wall as being twice as high and thick as the other. These walls, like all the structures of Gran-Chimú, are of adobes nine by eighteen inches, resting on a foundation of rough stones laid in clay. In connection with the larger palace is a square containing apartments, the walls of which are a conglomerate of gravel and clay, smooth, and whitewashed on the interior. There are also plazas and streets regularly laid out, and a reservoir which by a subterranean aqueduct was supplied withwater from the Rio Moche two miles distant. This palace—and by palace, a group of edifices within an enclosure, rather than a single edifice, seems to be meant—has two entrances, one in the middle of each long side. The second palace is one hundred and twenty five yards further east, and is also divided by squares and narrow streets. At one end is the huaca of Misa, surrounded by a low wall, pierced by galleries and rooms in which have been found mummies, cloths, gold and silver, implements, and a wooden idol with pieces of pearl-shell. All the inner walls are built of a mass of clay and gravel or of adobes. The cut shows specimens of the ornamentation, which seem to bear outwardly a slight resemblance to the mosaic work of Mitla, although the method of their construction is not explained. "Outside of these notable edifices, there is an infinite number of squares and small houses, some round and others square, which were certainly dwellings of the lower classes, and whose great extent indicates that the population must have been very large." Among the ruins aremany truncated conical mounds, or huacas, of fine gravel, from some of which interesting relics and large quantities of gold have been taken. The so-called Temple of the Sun is three quarters of a league east of the city near Moche, in connection with which are several adobe structures, one of them, perhaps the temple itself, so far as may be determined by Rivero's vague account, made worse than vague in the English translation, is a regular pyramid of adobes. It is four hundred and fourteen by four hundred and thirty feet at the base, three hundred and forty-five feet wide on the summit, and over eighty feet high, built in terraces, pierced with a gallery through the centre, and affording a fine view of the sea and the city of Truxillo.

RUINS OF HUANUCO.

Ruin at Titicaca.

The cut represents a ruin on the Island of Titicaca in the lake of the same name. These island remains are among the oldest of Peruvian antiquities, and allthe structures are built of hewn stone. Respecting these ruins we only learn from the explorers that "though not very imposing" they are well preserved, "with windows and doors, with posts and thresholds of hewn stone also, these being wider below than above." Another ruin on the same island is shown in the cut on the following page.

At Chavin de Huanta the structures are built of hewn stone very accurately joined without any mortar in sight on the outside, and a rubble of rough stones and clay on the inside. In a building spoken of as a fortress there is a covered way with rooms at its sides, all covered with sandstone blocks about twelve feet long. The walls are six feet thick, and in the interior is the opening to a subterranean passage which is said to lead under the river to another building. In the gallery human bones and some relics were found. The modern town is built mostly over the ruins of an ancient aqueduct, and a bridge over the stream is built of three immense stones, each over twenty feet long, taken from the fort. The ancient people were especially skillful in the construction of aqueducts, some of which were reported by the early writers as several hundred miles in length, and a few of which of less extent are still in actual use.

RUINS OF HUANUCO.

El Mirador—Huanuco.

Ruins at Titicaca.

The cut represents the Mirador, or look-out, at Huanuco el Viejo. This structure measures about onehundred by one hundred and sixty feet at the base, and is about fifteen feet high, in a pyramidal form without terraces and furnished with a parapet wall enclosing the summit platform. The foundation is of rough stones, which form two steps projecting four or five feet, not clearly indicated in the cut. The walls or facings are of hewn blocks of limestone about four feet and a half long by a foot and a half thick. The blocks are very accurately cut and laid in cement. The interior is filled with gravel and clay, with a concavity in the centre popularly supposed to communicate by means of a subterranean gallery with the palace some half a mile distant. From a doorway in the parapet wall on the south an inclined plane—which seems often to have taken the place of a stairway in Peru—leads down to the ground. On the wall at each side of the entrance crouches an animal in stone, so much damaged that its kind cannot be determined.

Gateway at Huanuco.

Another noted ruin at Huanuco is that whose entrance is shown in the cut. The walls are of round stones irregularly laid in mortar, a kind of rubble called by the Peruvianspirca, but the gateway, shown in the cut, is built of hewn blocks three varas—as Rivero says, probably meaning feet—by one and a half. The lintel is one stone block eleven feet long, and the inclined posts are said to be of one piece, althoughthe cut indicates that each is composed of four. The animals sculptured over the gateway at the sides are called monkeys by Rivero. Within the structure there are five similar gateways shown in the preceding cut and in the following ground plan. In the interior are rooms of cut stone, with niches in the walls, an aqueduct, and a reservoir. The quarries that supplied the stone for the Huanuco structures are still seen about half a mile away. Many traces of buildings of round stones in clay are found in the same vicinity.

Ground Plan—Huanuco.

Near Chupan, a tower is mentioned on the verge of a precipice overhanging the Rio Marañon. In the district of Junin there is a line or system of fortifications on the precipitous cliffs of a ravine, built mostly of micaceous slate. At Cuzco are some remains of the city of the Incas, and there is said to be some evidence that this city was founded on the ruins of another of an earlier epoch; the latter including part of the fortification of Ollantaytambo, built of stones cut in irregular forms, some of them of great size, and very neatly joined.

MONUMENTS OF TIAHUANACO.

The ruins at Tiahuanaco, ten or twelve miles from Lake Titicaca, are considered among the most ancient in Peru. They include stones from fifteen to twenty feet high, some cut, others rough, standing in rows. All the structures were in a very dilapidated condition when the Spaniards came, and some very large stone statues in human form were found, with stone columns. One of the most interesting monuments is the monolithic doorway shown in the cut. The opening is seventy-six inches high and thirty-eight wide. Rivero and Tschudi represent the sculptured figures in the small squares as being profiles of the human face instead of those shown in Baldwin's cut. There were several of these doorways. Several idols and some very large blocks of cut stone were dug up in 1846, and the latter used for mill-stones. The blocks are described as thirty feet long, eighteen feet wide, and six feet thick, being shaped so as to form a channel when one was placed upon another.

Doorway at Tiahuanaco.

A building on the Island of Coati, in Lake Titicaca,is shown in the cut. Rivero gives a view and plan of another large palace, consisting for the most part of a single line of low apartments built round three sides of a rectangular court, and bearing some resemblance, as Mr Baldwin remarks, to the Central American structures, except that it does not rest on a pyramidal foundation. Rock-inscriptions of the same rude class so often mentioned in the northern continent, occur also in Peru, although somewhat less frequently, so far as may be judged by the reports of explorers.

Ruin on the Island of Coati.

CONCLUSION.

The contents of the preceding pages may be sufficient to show the reader that the resemblance between the southern and northern monuments, if any resemblance exists, is very faint. The Maya and Peruvian peoples may have been one in remote antiquity; if so, the separation took place at a period long preceding any to which we are carried by the material relics of the Votanic empire, and of the most ancient epoch of the southern civilization, or even by traditional annals and the vaguest myths. There seems to be a natural tendency even among antiquarians to attribute all American civilizations to a common origin, constantly moving back the date as investigation progresses. This tendency has muchin common with that which so persistently traces American civilization to the old world, old-world culture to one centre, the human race to one pair, and the first pair to a special creation, performed at a definite time and point in Asia. Be the results of the tendency referred to true or false, it is evident that superstition has contributed more than science to the zeal that has supported them.

END OF THE FOURTH VOLUME.

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