ORNAMENTS OF PERUVIAN WALLS.
"It is a pleasant fiction," replied the Doctor, "invented by the Incas as an excuse for their subjugation of the neighboring provinces and kingdoms. The evidences are that some of the finest monuments of Peru are older than the Inca empire, and several of the conquered nations were well advanced in civilization, and understood many useful arts and occupations. Manco Capac began with Cuzco, and then with the country a few leagues around it; his rule and that of his descendants was gradually extended until, at the coming of the Spaniards, it embraced forty degrees of latitude and a population of ten millions of people. Since the Spanish conquest the native population has diminished, and there are now little over four millions of inhabitants in the old dominions of the Incas."
ANCIENT PALACE AT HUANCO.
Our friends passed the night at a sugar plantation about two miles from the ruins of Pachacamac, and returned the next day to Lima. There is now only a small village where once was a large city; the inhabitants are employed on the sugar plantations and in the cultivation of their gardens, which are watered by careful irrigation from the Lurin River. The village was burned by the Chilians during the late war, and the traces of their devastations will long remain. The inhabitants fled for safety, and some of them never found their way back again to their birth-places.
