Page:The Present State of Peru.djvu/35

Rh duration with eternity, not only on account of the solidity of their materials, but also of the sites on which they were erected, alike display their skill in sculpture, and their ambition for immortality. That they were extremely solicitous on this head, both with respect to the sculptures and the dead bodies, is attested by the multitude of mummies which, after a lapse of so many years, indeed, of so many ages, are to be found entire in the catacombs. The examination of them, may, perhaps, instruct us in the mode by which they contrived to secure them from putrefaction, and from the destructive hand of time.

The ruins of Pachacamac; the edifices of Cuzco and Quito; the fortresses of Herbay and Câxâhuana; and the roads cut through the middle of the Cordillera mountains, the one more especially, in the formation of which the most elevated hills were to be made level with the vallies, attest the skill of the ancient Indians in civil and military architecture.

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