Page:The Incas of Peru.djvu/48

28 central figure is intended to represent the deity having jurisdiction over all human beings on the one hand, and over the animal creation on the other.

Below the rows of worshippers there is a beautifully carved border consisting of double lines ending with birds' heads, surrounding human heads with borders of joints and billets, surmounted in one by five bands ending in circles, in another by four fish heads, in another by an armed human figure.

There is no sign of sculpture nor of any knowledge of proportion in designing a human figure; but at the same time there are indications of very remarkable skill and taste in the masonic art. The ornamentation is accurately designed and executed, and the style of art is well adapted for symbolical representation. The tendency is to straight lines and rectangles, not to curves.  This, then, is the mystery. A vast city containing palace, temple, judgment-hall, or whatever fancy may reconstruct among the ruins, with statues, elaborately carved stones, and many triumphs of the masonic art, was built in a region where corn will not ripen, and which could not possibly support a dense population. It is quite certain that, in the time of the Incas, the people were absolutely ignorant of the origin and history of these edifices. They were to them, as they are to us, mysterious ruins. The statues gave rise to a myth referring to a former creation by the deity, 