Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

huallpa, and Huascar had been defeated and thrown into prison, and finally put to death. At a city called Caxamalca, Pizarro contrived, by means of the most atrocious treachery, to seize the Inca and massacre some ten thousand of the principal Peruvians, who came to his camp unarmed on a friendly visit. This threw the whole empire into confusion, and made the conquest easy. The Inca filled a room with gold as the price of his ransom; the Spaniards took the gold, broke their promise, and put him to death.

THE RUINS NEAR LAKE TITICACA.

It is now agreed that the Peruvian antiquities represent two distinct periods in the ancient history of the country, one being much older than the other. Mr. Prescott accepts and repeats the opinion that "there existed in the country a race advanced in civilization before the time of the Incas," and that the ruins on the shores of Lake Titicaca are older than the reign of the first Inca. In the work of Rivero and Von Tschudi, it is stated that a critical examination of the monuments "indicates two very different epochs in Peruvian art, at least so far as concerns architecture; one before and the other after the arrival of the first Inca." Among the ruins which belong to the older civilization are those at Lake Titicaca, old Huanuco, Tiahuanaco, and GranChimu, and it probably originated the roads and aqueducts. At Cuzco and other places are remains of buildings which represent the later time; but Cuzco of the Incas appears to have occupied the site of a ruined city

of the older period. Figure 51 gives a view of the ancient Peruvian masonry. Montesinos supposes the name of Cuzco was derived from cosca, a Peruvian word signifying to level, or from heaps of earth called coscos, which abounded there. In his account of the previous times there is mention that an old city built there was in ruins. Perhaps the first Inca found on its site nothing but coscos, or heaps of ruins.

[graphic][merged small]

At Lake Titicaca some of the more important remains are on the islands. On Titicaca Island are the ruins of a great edifice described as "a palace or temple." Remains of other structures exist, but their ruins

are old, much older than the time of the Incas. Figures 52 and 53 represent different ruins on the island of

[graphic]

Titicaca. They were all built of hewn stone, and had doors and windows, with posts, sills, and thresholds of

[graphic][merged small]
« ZurückWeiter »