Peruvian Pottery.
CITY OF THE INCAS.
About twenty miles south of Lima, in the valley of Lurin, and overlooking the sea, are the ruins of Pachacamac, shown in the cut. This was a city of the Incas, that is, it belonged to the later period of Peruvian civilization. All the structures were built of adobes, and are much dilapidated. The Temple of the Sun stands on a hill six hundred feet high, the upper portion of which shows traces of having been divided into terraces over thirty feet high and five to eight feet wide. The adobe wall which surrounds the temple is from eight to eleven feet thick, and is only standing to the height of four to five feet. The ruined structures are very numerous, and on one of the inner walls some traces of red and yellow paint are visible.
Ruins of Pachacamac.
In the district of Santo Tomas in the north, at Cuelap, a grand and peculiar ruin is described by Sr Nieto in an official government report. A mass—of earth, probably, although not fully examined in the interior—is faced with a solid wall of hewn stone, and is thirty-six hundred feet long, five hundred and seventy feet wide, and one hundred and fifty feet in perpendicular height. On the summit stands another similar structure six hundred by five hundred feet and also one hundred and fifty feet high. The lower wall is pierced with three entrances to an inclined plane leading in a curved line to the summit, with sentry-boxes at intervals and on the summit. These passages are six feet wide at the base but only two at the top, and those of the second story are similar. In both stories there are chambers, in the walls of which and in the outer walls there are small niches containing skeletons. Some of the upper chambers are paved with large flat stones, on each of which lies a skeleton. The report of this immense structure is probably founded on fact but greatly exaggerated.
RUINS OF GRAN-CHIMÚ.