HEAD OF PERUVIAN STATUE.
"Pachacamac was the sacred city of the inhabitants of this part of the coast before they were conquered by the Incas; their chief divinity, whose name is preserved in the city, had his shrine here, and when the Incas conquered the place they built a Temple of the Sun, and a House of the Virgins of the Sun, quite near the shrine of Pachacamac. It was their object to destroy the worship of the old divinity by building a grander temple to the new, but they were not altogether successful. There was an enormous amount of gold and silver used in the construction and adornment of the temples; the Spaniards took away twenty-seven cargas of gold (a carga weighs sixty-two and a half pounds), and sixteen thousand ounces of silver, but they were unable to discover the place where four hundred cargas of these metals had been concealed just previous to their arrival.
"We had quite a scramble among the ruins, as the walls are considerably broken, and the footing is often very insecure. We visited the shrine of Pachacamac, or, rather, the temple which contained it, and then went to the temple near it, erected by the Incas. The first is called 'El Castillo,' or The Temple, and the other is known as Mamacuna. The temple is on a hill, or headland, five hundred feet above the ocean, and the front of it extends down to the shore. It has been considerably shaken by the earthquakes, of which there must have been many since the time of its erection, and the wonder is that it is so well preserved.
TERRACED SPACE ON A HILL-TOP.
"There was evidently a wall around the base of the hill; the slope of the hill was formed into terraces, and its upper part is supported by a terrace thirty-two feet high. In the centre of this upper part was the shrine of the deity, enclosed in a sanctuary which had a door of gold set with precious stones. But if the outside was beautiful, the inside was the reverse, as the Spaniards found only an idol of wood there, together with a flat stone where the priests performed their sacrifices. The old historians say that only the priests were allowed to go inside the sanctuary; when the Spaniards arrived there was no objection to their entering, as it was believed the deity would strike them dead for their sacrilege. The fact that they were not harmed, but proceeded without hesitation to plunder the place of its wealth, was a serious shock to the faith of these confiding natives.
"Mr. Squier's book contains an excellent description of the place, and we sat down on the top of the hill and read his account of his visit to Pachacamac. He says that in ancient times it was the Mecca of South America, and pilgrims came here from all parts of the country to worship at the shrine of the divinity who was called 'The Creator of the World.' So great was the reverence in which it was held, that these pilgrims were allowed to pass unharmed through tribes and people with whom their own might be at war; the sacredness of their mission was an ample protection.