Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume I.djvu/432

400 sides these there is an enclosure called "the hall of justice," rectangular, 420 by 370 feet, within which are the ruins of a nameless structure, "sanctum sanctorum," 131 by 23 feet, composed of massive stones beautifully cut, some of which are 25$1⁄2$ feet long by 14 broad, and 6 ft. 6 in. thick, held together by bronze clamps. A distinguishing and peculiar feature of the remains at Tiahuanaco are a number of monolithic doorways, the largest of which is 13 ft. 6 in. long by 7 ft. 2 in. high above ground, and 18 in. thick. Through its centre is cut a doorway 4 ft. 6 in. high above ground, and 2 ft. 9 in. wide, above which, on its S. E. front, are four lines of sculpture in low relief, and a central figure immediately over the doorway in high relief. On the reverse the doorway is surrounded by friezes or cornices, with ornamental niches, &c. Besides these remains there are innumerable others of massive proportions, covering fully a square mile, of which it would require many pages to give an intelligible description, even with the aid of cuts and plans. Mr. Squier is disposed to rank the great areas at Tiahuanaco, surrounded with upright stones, with those vast open temples like Stonehenge and Avebury in England, and of which examples are found in other parts of the world. Looking to the cold, barren region in which these remains occur, so ill adapted to the support of any considerable population, Mr. Squier fails to regard them as relics of an ancient capital or seat of dominion, but of a sacred spot or shrine, the position of which was determined by an augury, an incident, or a dream. Certain it is, they were ruins at the time the inca conquerors swept over the Collao. Mr. Squier was the first to make known the existence, in the great Andean plateau, of a class of rude lithic and megalithic monuments, generally regarded, throughout the world, as the earliest efforts of human art. These consist of circles, defined by uncut stones, which in Scandinavia, the British islands, France, and northern and central Asia, have been loosely designated as "sun" or "Druidical" circles; also of piles of rough stones coincident in style and character with the cromlechs, dolmens, &c., of the same regions. On the bare mountain tops of High Peru are hundreds and thousands of enclosures or fortresses, pucuras, antedating all history, which were built, according to Peruvian tradition, when the country was divided up into warlike and savage tribes, "before the sun shone," or the incas had established their beneficent rule. They strongly resemble the remains which in Europe are uncritically known as Pelasgic. They are held in great reverence, as the works of giants whose spirits still haunt them, and to whom offerings of various kinds are still made. The symbolic character of the stone circles may be inferred from the name they still bear, intihuatani, places where the sun is arrested or tied up. There is another class of monuments also antedating the incas, the chulpas or burial towers, presumably of the ancient Aymaras. Some of these are round, others square, of varying proportions, from 15 to 40 feet high; sometimes constructed of elaborately cut stones, in other cases of high stones stuccoed over, and all containing inner chambers in which the dead were deposited, generally in niches in the walls, or in cists beneath the foundations. The remains of inca art are numerous and imposing. A considerable portion of the gorgeous temple of the sun in Cuzco is still extant; the great cyclopean fortress of Sacsahuaman that dominates the city of the sun, and in storming which Juan Pizarro lost his life, is almost as perfect as it was three centuries ago; the mountain stronghold of Pisac challenges our admiration by the rare engineering skill it displays, as well as by its massiveness and extent, covering as it does miles of area; Ollantitambo, wrought in polished porphyry, is a marvel of aboriginal art; while the palace of the vestal virgins on the island of Coati in Lake Titicaca, the terraced mountains, the vast acequias, and the paved roads thousands of miles long, all attest the power and beneficence of the incas. The Peruvian empire was a concretion of families, tribes, or nationalities, reduced by conquest, and their monuments, especially on the Pacific coast, as Europeans found them, have few resemblances and no identities with those of the elevated interior whence the inca race descended. Among the most important of the coast nations were the Chimus, who held wide sway, with their capital, at what is now called Grand Chimu, or Mansiche, near the town of Truxillo, founded by Cortes, in what is known as northern Peru. They were subjugated by the incas at a period not easily definable, after a long and bloody struggle, and their capital given up to barbaric ravage and spoliation. But its remains exist to-day, the marvel in many respects of the southern continent, covering not less than 20 square miles. Tombs, temples, and palaces arise on every hand, ruined but still traceable. Immense huacas or pyramidal structures, some of them half a mile in circuit; vast areas shut in by massive walls, each containing its water tank, its shops, municipal edifices, and the dwellings of its inhabitants, and each a branch of a larger organization; prisons, furnaces for smelting metals, and almost every concomitant of civilization, existed in the ancient Chimu capital. One of the great huacas, or pyramidal edifices, called "the temple of the sun," is 812 feet long by 470 wide at the base, and about 150 feet high. Another, "El Obispo," is nearly equal in size. These vast structures have been ruined for centuries; but the work of their excavation is still going on. From one of them, called that of Toledo, a Spanish explorer of that name in 1577 took $4,450,284 in gold and silver.—As already observed, most of the monuments of antiquity in America seem to be the ruins of temples, places of worship, or edifices in some way con-