[69] “And Indian maid.”—Many of the Indian women wear a dark drapery suspended from the left shoulder, and falling down to the mid-leg, as mourning for their Incas.
[70] Who is insensible to the sad wild note of the cuculi, the nightingale of this country?
[71] Let any one see the snow-capt mountains at the back of Lima, and that city of spires lying among the dark orange groves at their feet, at daybreak from Callao, and he will say the sight is worth a stave at least; and yet I wish I had never seen it.
[72] Buena Vista, the seat of John Thomas, Esq.
[73] The famous Temple of Pachacamac, whose mighty ruins form a beautiful object from Buena Vista. Pachacamac, like the Temple of Cholula on the plains of Mexico, is a sort of made mountain or vast terraced pyramid of earth. It would be difficult to produce any evidence more conclusive to the benignity of the climate than that which is exhibited on the interior walls of this temple, whereof the mud plaster, though exposed for centuries to the action of the atmosphere, remains to this day with its rude paintings of red and yellow ochre as inviolate and fresh as if it were the work of yesterday. By the bye, it may not be impertinent to mention, that, among these paintings, we find what is called the Grecian Scroll, which, if I am not mistaken, the Grecians borrowed from the Egyptians. This may serve to throw some light upon the origin of Pachacamac. Like that of Mexico,—nay, with still more emphatic gesture,—the gigantic architecture of Peru points to the Cyclopian family, the founders of the Temple of Babel and of the Egyptian Pyramids. I believe (see Garcilaso) that the Temple of Pachacamac was standing when that part of the coast was conquered by the Incas, so that there is no knowing its age.
[74] Old Green’s Nonpareil, where the Hearts of Oak meet.
[75] “Like stars,” &c.—The milky way, which, by the bye, is far grander in the southern than in the northern hemisphere, seems to have been formed by the mutual gravitation of myriads of stars. The dark spots which follow the course of that magnificent nebula, on each side of it, are probably the spaces which the stars have left vacant and lustreless.—See Herschel on Nebulæ.
THE END.
LONDON:
PRINTED BY SAMUEL BENTLEY,
Dorset Street, Fleet Street.