Blavatsky H.P. - A Land of Mystery: Difference between revisions

The ruins of Central America are no less imposing. Massively built, with walls of a great thickness, they are usually marked by broad stairways, leading to the principal entrance. When composed of several stories, each successive story is usually smaller than that below it, giving the structure the appearance of a pyramid of several stages. The front walls, either made of stone or stuccoed, are covered with elaborately carved, symbolical figures; and the interior divided into corridors and dark chambers, with arched ceilings, the roofs supported by overlapping courses of stones, “constituting a pointed arch, corresponding in type with the earliest monuments of the old world.” Within several chambers at Palenque, tablets, covered with sculptures and hieroglyphics of fine design and artistic execution, were discovered by Stephens. In Honduras, at Copán, a whole city—temples, houses and grand monoliths intricately carved—was unearthed in an old forest by Catherwood and Stephens. The sculpture and general style of Copán are unique, and no such style or even anything approaching it has been found anywhere else, except at Quirigua, and in the islands of Lake Nicaragua. No one can decipher the weird {{Page aside|323}} hieroglyphical inscriptions on the altars and monoliths. With the exception of a few works of uncut stone, “to Copán we may safely assign an antiquity higher than to any of the other monuments of Central America with which we are acquainted,” says the New American Cyclopaedia. At the period of the Spanish conquest, Copán was already a forgotten ruin, concerning which existed only the vaguest traditions.

No less extraordinary are the remains of the different epochs in Peru. The ruins of the temple of the Sun at Cuzco are yet imposing, notwithstanding that the deprecating hand of the Vandal Spaniard passed heavily over it. If we may believe the narratives of the conquerors themselves, they found it, on their arrival, a kind of a fairy-tale castle. With its enormous circular stone wall completely encompassing the principal temple, chapels and buildings, it is situated in the very heart of the city, and even its remains justly provoke the admiration of the traveller. “Aqueducts opened within this sacred enclosure; and within it were gardens, and walks among shrubs and flowers of gold and silver, made in imitation of the productions of nature. It was attended by 4,000 priests.” “The ground,” says La Vega, “for 200 paces around the temple, was considered holy, and no one was allowed to pass within this boundary but with naked feet.” Besides this great temple, there were 300 other inferior temples at Cuzco. Next to the latter in beauty, was the celebrated temple of Pachacamac. Still another great temple of the Sun is mentioned by Humboldt; and, “at the base of the hill of Cannar was formerly a famous shrine of the Sun, consisting of the universal symbol of that luminary, formed by nature upon the face of a great rock.” Roman tells us that “the temples of Peru were built upon high grounds or the tops of hills, and were surrounded by four circular embankments of earth, one within the other.” Other remains seen by myself—especially mounds—are surrounded by two, three, and four circles of stones. Near the town of Cayambe, on the very spot on which A. de Ulloa saw and described an ancient Peruvian temple “perfectly circular in form and open at the top,” there are several {{Page aside|324}} such cromlechs.<ref>{{HPB-CW-comment|[Quoted passages up to this point in this new section are from the article on “American Antiquities,” in the New American Cyclopaedia.—Compiler.]}}</ref> Quoting from an article in the Madras Times of 1876, Mr. J. H. Rivett-Carnac gives, in his Archaeological Notes, the following information upon some curious mounds in the neighbourhood of Bangalore:

Near the village there are at least one hundred cromlechs plainly to be seen. These cromlechs are surrounded by circles of stones, some of them with concentric circles three and four deep. One very remarkable in appearance has four circles of large stones around it, and is called by the natives, ‘Pandavara Gudi’ or the temples of the Pandas. . . . This is supposed to be the first instance, where the natives popularly imagine a structure of this kind to have been the temple of a by-gone, if not of a mythical, race. Many of these structures have a triple circle, some a double, and a few single circles of stone round them.<ref>Archaeological Notes on Ancient Sculpturings on Rocks in Kumaon, India, similar to those found on Monoliths and Rocks in Europe, with other papers. By J. H. Rivett-Carnac, Esquire, Bengal Civil Service, C.I.E., F.S.A., M.R.A.S., F.G.S., etc. [Calcutta, 1879].</ref>

By far the most interesting and full account we have read for a long time upon the Peruvian antiquities is that from the pen of Mr. Heath of Kansas, already mentioned. Condensing the general picture of these remains into the limited space of a few pages in a periodical,<ref>See Kansas City Review of Science and Industry, November, 1878.</ref> he yet manages to present a masterly and vivid picture of the wealth of these remains. More than one speculator has grown rich in a few days through his desecrations of the “huacas.” The remains of countless generations of unknown races, who had slept there undisturbed—who knows for how many ages—are now left by the sacrilegious treasure-hunter to crumble {{Page aside|325}} into dust under the tropical sun. Mr. Heath’s conclusions, more startling, perchance, than his discoveries, are worthy of being recorded. We will repeat in brief his descriptions:—

Take for instance the Jequetepeque valley. In 7° 24’ south latitude you will find on recent maps the port of Pacasmayo. Four miles north, separated from it by a barren waste, the river Jequetepeque empties into the sea. . . . Beside the southern shore as it empties into the sea, is an elevated platform one-fourth of a mile square and forty feet high, all of adobes. A wall fifty feet wide connects it with another, a few hundred yards east and south, that is 150 feet high, 200 feet across the top, and 500 at the base, nearly square. This latter was built in sections of room ten feet square at the base, six feet at the top and about eight feet high. All of this same class of mounds—temples, to worship the sun, or fortresses, as they may be—have on the north side an incline for an entrance or means of access. Treasure-seekers have cut into this one about half way, and it is said $150,000 worth of gold and silver ornaments were found. In the sand, banked up behind the wall and mound, many were buried. . . . Besides these were many ornaments of gold, silver, copper, coral and shell beads and cloths. On the north side of the river, on the top of the bluff, are the extensive ruins of a walled city, two miles wide by six long . . . .

Follow the river to the mountains. All along you pass ruin after ruin and huaca after huaca. At Tolon, a town at the base of the mountain [there is another ruined city] . . . . Five miles from Tolon, up the river, there is an isolated boulder of granite, four and six feet in its diameters, covered with hieroglyphics. Fourteen miles further, a point of mountain at the junction of two ravines is covered to a height of more than fifty feet with the same class of hieroglyphics: birds, fishes, snakes, cats, monkeys, men, sun, moon and many odd and now unintelligible forms. The rock on which these are cut is a silicated sandstone, and many of the lines are an eighth of an inch deep. In one large stone there are three holes, twenty to thirty inches deep, six inches in diameter at the orifice and two at the apex. . . . . . .

At Anchi, on the Rimac river, upon the face of a perpendicular wall two hundred feet above the river bed, there are two hieroglyphics, representing an imperfect B and a perfect D. In a crevice below them, near the river, were found buried twenty-five thousand dollars worth of gold and silver. When the Incas learned of the murder of their chief, what did they do with the gold they were bringing for his ransom? Rumour says they buried it. . . . May not these markings at Yonan tell something, since they are on the road and near to the Incal city? . . . .<ref>{{HPB-CW-comment|[Heath, op. cit., pp. 455-56.]}}</ref>

The above was published in November, 1878. When in {{Page aside|326}} October, 1877, in my work Isis Unveiled (Vol. I, pp. 595-98), I gave a legend, which, for circumstances too long to explain, I hold to be perfectly trustworthy, relating to these same buried treasures for the Inca’s ransom, a journal more satirical than polite classed it with the tales of Baron Munchausen. The secret was revealed to me by a Peruvian. At Arica, going from Lima, there stands an enormous rock, which tradition points to as the tomb of the Incas. As the last rays of the setting sun strike the face of the rock, one can see curious hieroglyphics inscribed upon it. These characters form one of the landmarks that show how to get at the immense treasures buried in subterranean corridors. The details are given in Isis, and I will not repeat them. Strong corroborative evidence is now found in more than one recent scientific work; and the statement may be less pooh-poohed now than it was then.

. . . . . Eleven miles beyond Yonan, on a ridge of mountain seven hundred feet above the river, are the walls of a city of 2,000 inhabitants. . . . Six and twelve miles further are extensive walls and terraces. . . . .

Leaving the valley at seventy-eight miles from the coast, you zigzag up the mountain side 7,000 feet, then descend 2,000, to arrive at Cajamarca, or Cojamalca of Pizarro’s time. . . . In a yard off one of the main streets, and near the center of the city, is still standing the house made famous as the prison of Atahualpa. . . . [pp. 456-57].

. . . . Three miles distant, and across the valley, are the hot springs, where the Inca was encamped when Pizarro took possession of Cajamarca. Part of the wall is of unknown make . . . . . cemented, the cement is harder than the stone itself . . . . . At Chepén . . . is a mountain with a wall in many places twenty feet high, the summit being almost entirely artificial. . . .

Fifty miles south of Pacasmayo, between the seaport of Huanchaco {{Page aside|327}} and Truxillo, nine miles distant, are the ruins of “Chan-Chan,” the capital city of the Chimu kingdom. . . . The road from the port to the city crosses these ruins, entering by a causeway about four feet from the ground, and leading from one great mass of ruins to another; beneath this is a tunnel. Be they forts, castles, palaces, or burial mounds called “huacas,” all bear the name “huaca.” Hours of wandering on horseback among these ruins give only a confused idea of them, nor can old explorers there point out what were palaces and what were not. . . .The highest enclosures. . . .must have cost an immense amount of labor. . . . .<ref>{{HPB-CW-comment|[op. cit., pp. 457-58.]}}</ref>

FIRST.—In Truxillo, Peru, on the 22nd of July, 1577, Don Garcia Gutierrez de Toledo presented himself at the royal treasury, to give into the royal chest a fifth. He brought a bar of gold nineteen carats ley and weighing two thousand four hundred Spanish dollars, of which the fifth, being seven hundred and eight dollars, together with one and a half per cent. to the chief assayer, were deposited in the royal box.

SECOND.—On the 12th of December he presented himself with five bars of gold, fifteen and nineteen carats ley, weighing eight thousand nine hundred and eighteen dollars.

THIRD.—On the 7th of January, 1578, he came with his fifth of large bars and plates of gold, one hundred and fifteen in number, fifteen to twenty carats ley, weighing one hundred and fifty-three thousand two hundred and eighty dollars.

FOURTH.—On the 8th of March he brought sixteen bars of gold, fourteen to twenty-one carats ley, weighing twenty-one thousand one hundred and eighteen dollars.

FIFTH.—On the 5th of April he brought different ornaments of gold, being little bells of gold and patterns of corn-heads and other things, of fourteen carats ley, weighing six thousand two hundred and seventy two dollars.

SIXTH.—On the 20th of April he brought three small bars of gold, twenty carats ley, weighing four thousand one hundred and seventy dollars.

SEVENTH.—On the 12th of July he came with forty-seven bars, fourteen to twenty-one carats ley, weighing seventy-seven thousand, three hundred and twelve dollars.

EIGHTH.—On the same day he came back with another portion of gold and ornaments of cornheads and pieces of effigies of animals, weighing four thousand seven hundred and four dollars.

The sum of these eight bringings amounted to 278,174 gold dollars or Spanish ounces. Multiplied by sixteen gives $4,450,784 silver dollars. Deducting the royal fifth—$985,953.75—left $3,464,830.25 as Toledo’s portion.

Even after this great haul, effigies of different animals of gold were found from time to time. Mantles also, adorned with square pieces of gold, as well as robes made with feathers of divers colors, were dug up. There is a tradition that in the huaca of Toledo there were two treasures, known as the great and little fish. The smaller only has been found.

Between Huacho and Supe, the latter being 120 miles north of Callao, near a point called Atahuanqui, there are two enormous mounds, resembling the Campana and San Miguel, of the Huatica valley, soon to be described. About five miles from Patavilca (south and near Supe) is a place called “Paramonga,” or the fortress. The ruins of a fortress of great extent are here visible; the walls are of tempered clay, about six feet thick. The principal building stood on an eminence, but the walls were continued to the foot of it, like regular circumvallations; the ascent winding round the hill like a labyrinth, having many angles, which probably served as outworks to defend the place. In this neighbourhood much treasure has been excavated, all of which must have been concealed by the pre-historic Indian, as we have no evidence of the Incas ever having occupied this part of Peru after they had subdued it.

. . . . . Just before reaching Ancón, the railroad runs through an immense burying-ground or “huaca.” Make a circuit of six to eight miles, and on every side you see skulls, legs, arms, and the whole skeleton of the human body, lying about in the sand. . . . .

At Pasamayo, 14 miles further “down north,” on the seashore, is another great burying ground. Thousands of skeletons lie about, thrown out by the treasure-seekers. It has more than a half mile of cutting through it for the Ancón & Chankay R.R. It extends up the face of the hill from the seashore to the height of about 800 feet. . . . . . . . . . . Whence came these hundreds and thousands of peoples who are buried at Ancón? . . . Time and time again the archaeologist finds himself face to face with such questions, to which he can only shrug his shoulders and say with the natives, “Quién sabe?” Who knows? . . . .

Dr. Hutchinson writes, under date of Oct. 30th, 1872, in an article to the Callao and Lima Gazette, now the South Pacific Times: “I am come to the conclusion that Chankay is a great city of the dead, or has been an immense usury of Peru; for go where you will, on mountain top or level plain, or by the sea-side, you meet at every turn, skulls and boner, of all descriptions.”<ref>{{HPB-CW-comment|[Heath, op. cit., pp. 458-60.]}}</ref>

To the east of these is the enormous mound called Huaca of Pando; and to the west, with the distance of about half a mile intervening, are the great ruins of fortresses, which natives entitle Huaca of the Bell. La Campana, the Huacas of Pando, consisting of a series of large and small mounds, and extending over a stretch of ground incalculable without being measured, form a colossal accumulation. The principal large ones are three in number; that holding the name of the “Bell” is calculated to be 108 to 110 feet in height. At the western side, looking towards Callao, there is a square plateau . . . . At the summit it is 276 to 278 yards, long, and 95 to 96 across. On the top there are eight gradations of declivity, each from one to two yards lower than its neighbor . . . making the total of about 278 yards. For these measurements of the Huatica ruins I am indebted to the notes of J. B. Steere, Professor of Natural History and Curator of the Museum at Ann Arbor, Michigan.

The square plateau first mentioned, at the base, consists of two divisions . . . each measuring a perfect square 47 to 48 yards; the two joining, form the square of 96 yards. Besides this . . . . is another square of 47 to 48 yards. On the top, returning again, we find the same symmetry of measurement in the multiples of twelve, nearly all the ruins in this valley being the same, which is a fact for the curious. Was it by accident or design? . . . The mound is a truncated pyramidal form, and is calculated to contain a mass of 14,641,820 cubic feet of material . . . The “Fortress” is a huge structure, 80 feet high, 148 to 150 yards in measurement. Great large square rooms show their outlines on the top, but are filled with earth. Who brought this earth here, and with what object was the filling-up accomplished? The work of obliterating all space in these rooms with loose earth must have been almost as great as the construction of the building itself. . . . Two miles south . . . we find another similar structure . . . more spacious and with a greater number of apartments. . . . {{Page aside|330}} It is nearly 170 yards in length, and 168 in breadth, and 98 feet high. The whole of these ruins . . . were enclosed by high walls of adobones . . . large mud-bricks, some from 1 to 2 yards in thickness, length, and breadth. The huaca of the “Bell” contains about 20,220,840 cubic feet of material, while that of “San Miguel” has 25,650,800. These two buildings were constructed in the same style—having traces of terraces, parapets, and bastions, with a large number of rooms and squares—all now filled up with earth.

About a mile beyond, in the direction of “Mira Flores,” is Ocharan—the largest burial mound in the Huatica valley . . . It has 95 feet of elevation and a width of 55 yards on the summit, and a total length of 428 yards, or 1,284 feet, another multiple of twelve. It is enclosed by a double wall 816 yards in length by 700 across, thus enclosing 117 acres. Between Ocharan and the ocean are from 15 to 20 masses of ruins, like those already described. . . .

. . . . the Inca temple of the Sun, like the temple of Cholula on the plains of Mexico . . . . is a sort of vast terraced pyramid of earth. It is from 200 to 300 feet high, and forms a semi-lunar shape that is beyond a half mile in extent. Its top measures about 10 acres square. Much of the walls are washed over with red paint, probably ochre, and are as fresh and bright as when centuries ago it was first put on . . . In the Cañete valley, opposite the Chincha Guano Islands, are extensive ruins [described by Squier]. . . . From the hill called “Hill of Gold,” copper and silver pins were taken like those used by ladies to pin their shawls; also tweezers for pulling out the hair of the eyebrows, eyelids and whiskers, as well as silver cups.<ref>{{HPB-CW-comment|[Heath, op. cit., pp. 461-63.]}}</ref>

The coast of Peru [says Mr. Heath], extends from Tumbes to the river Loa on the south, a distance of 1,235 miles. Scattered here and there over this whole extent, there are thousands of ruins beside those just mentioned . . . while nearly every hill and spur of the mountains have upon them or about them some relic of the past; and in every ravine, from the coast to the central plateau, there are ruins of walls, fortresses, cities, burial-vaults, and miles and miles of terraces and water-courses. Across the plateau and down the eastern slope of the Andes to the home of the wild Indian, and into the unknown, impenetrable forest, still you find them. . . . In the mountains, however, where storms of rain and snow with terrific thunder and lightning are nearly constant a number of months each year, the ruins are different. Of granitic, porphyritic, lime and silicated sandstone, these massive, colossal, cyclopean structures have resisted the disintegration of time, geological transformations, earthquakes, and the sacrilegious, destructive hand of the warrior and treasure-seeker. The masonry composing these walls, temples, houses, towers, {{Page aside|331}} fortresses, or sepulchres, is uncemented, held in place by the incline of the walls from the perpendicular, and adaptation of each stone to the place destined for it, the stones having from six to many sides, each dressed, and smoothed to fit another or others, with such exactness that the blade of a small penknife cannot be inserted in any of the seams thus formed, whether in the central parts entirely hidden, or on the internal or external surfaces. These stones, selected with no reference to uniformity in shape or size, vary from one-half cubic foot to 1,500 cubic feet solid contents, and if, in the many, many millions of stones you could find one that would fit in the place of another, it would be purely accidental. In “Triumph Street,” in the city of Cuzco, in a part of the wall of the ancient house of the Virgins of the Sun, is a very large stone, known as “the stone of the twelve corners,” since it joins with those that surround it, by twelve faces, each having a different angle. Beside these twelve faces it has its external one, and no one knows how many it has on its back that is hidden in the masonry. In the wall of the centre of the Cuzco fortress there are stones 13 feet high, 15 feet long, and 8 feet thick, and all having been quarried miles away. Near this city there is an oblong smooth boulder 18 feet in its longer axis, and 12 in its lesser. On one side are large niches cut out, in which a man can stand, and by swaying his body cause the stone to rock. These niches apparently were made solely for this purpose. One of the most wonderful and extensive of these works in stone, is that called Ollantaytambo, a ruin situated 30 miles north of Cuzco, in a narrow ravine on the bank of the river Urubamba. It consists of a fortress constructed on the top of a sloping, craggy eminence. Extending from it to the plain below, is a stony stairway. At the top of the stairway are six large slabs, 12 feet high, 5 feet wide, and 3 feet thick, side by side, having between them and on top narrow strips of stone about 6 inches wide, framed as it were to the slabs, and all being of dressed stone. At the bottom of the hill, part of which was made by hand, and at the foot of the stairs, a stone wall 10 feet wide and 12 feet high extends some distance into the plain. In it are many niches, all facing the south.

The ruins on the islands in Lake Titicaca, where Incal history begins, have often been described.

At Tiahuanaco, a few miles south of the lake, there are stones in the form of columns, partly dressed, placed in line at certain distances from each other, and having an elevation above the ground of from 18 to 20 feet. In this same line there is a monolithic doorway, now broken, 10 feet high by 13 wide. The space cut out for the door is 7 feet 4 inches high, by 3 feet 2 inches wide. The whole face of the stone above the door is engraved. Another, similar, but smaller, lies on the ground beside it. These stones are of hard porphyry, and differ geologically from the surrounding rock, hence, we infer they must have been brought from elsewhere.

At “Chavin de Huanta,” a town in the province of Huari, there are {{Page aside|332}} some ruins worthy of note. The entrance to them is by an alleyway 6 feet wide and 9 feet high, roofed over with sandstone partly dressed, of more than 12 feet in length. On each side there are rooms 12 feet wide, roofed by large pieces of sandstones, 1½ feet thick and from 6 to 9 feet wide. The walls of the rooms are 6 feet thick, and have some loopholes in them, probably for ventilation. In the floor of this passage there is a very narrow entrance to a subterranean passage that passes beneath the river to the other side. From this many huacas, stone drinking-vessels, instruments of copper and silver, and a skeleton of an Indian sitting, were taken. The greater part of these ruins are situated over aqueducts. The bridge to these castles is made of three stones of dressed granite, 24 feet long, 2 feet wide by 1½ thick. Some of the granite stones are covered with hieroglyphics.

At Corralones, 24 miles from Arequipa, there are hieroglyphics engraved on masses of granite, which appear as if painted with chalk. There are figures of men, llamas, circles, parallelograms, letters as an R and an O and even remains of a system of astronomy.

At Huaitará, in the province of Castrovirreina, there is an edifice with the same engravings.

At Nazca, in the province of Ica, there are some wonderful ruins of aqueducts, four to five feet high and 3 feet wide, very straight, double-walled, of unfinished stone, flagged on top.

At Quelap, not far from Chochapayas, there have lately been examined some extensive works. A wall of dressed stone 560 feet wide, 3,660 long, and 150 feet high. The lower part is solid. Another wall above this has 600 feet length, 500 width, and the same elevation of 150 feet. There are niches over both walls, three feet long, one-and-a-half wide and thick, containing the remains of those ancient inhabitants, some naked, others enveloped in shawls of cotton of distinct colours and well embroidered. . . .

Following the entrances of the second and highest wall, there are other sepulchres like small ovens, six feet high and twenty-four in circumference; in their base are flags, upon which some cadavers reposed. On the north side there is, on the perpendicular rocky side of the mountain, a brick wall, having small windows 600 feet from the bottom. No reason for this, nor means of approach, can now be found. The skillful construction of utensils of gold and silver that were found here, the ingenuity and solidity of this gigantic work of dressed stone, made it, also, probably of pre-Incal date. . . . Estimating five hundred ravines in the 1,200 miles of Peru, and ten miles of terraces of fifty tiers to each ravine, which would only be five miles of twenty-five tiers to each side, we have 250,000 miles of stone wall, averaging three to four feet high—enough to encircle this globe ten times. Surprising as these estimates may seem, I am fully convinced that an actual measurement would more than double them, for these ravines vary from 30 to 100 miles in length, and ten miles to each is a low estimate. While at San Mateo, a town in the {{Page aside|333}} valley of the river Rimac . . . where the mountains rise to a height of 1,500 or 2,000 feet above the river bed, I counted two hundred tiers, none of which were less than four and many more than six miles long . . . .

Who, then [very pertinently enquires Mr. Heath] were these people, cutting through sixty miles of granite, transporting blocks of hard porphyry, of Baalbec dimensions, miles from the place where quarried, across valleys thousands of feet deep, over mountains, along plains, leaving no trace of how or where they carried them; people [said to be] ignorant of the use of iron, with the feeble llama their only beast of burden; who, after having brought these stones together and dressed them, fitted them into walls with mosaic precision; terracing thousands of miles of mountain side; building hills of adobes and earth, and huge cities; leaving works in clay, stone, copper, silver, gold and embroidery, many of which cannot be duplicated at the present age; people apparently vying with Dives in riches, Hercules in strength and energy and the ant and bee in industry?

Callao was submerged in 1746 and entirely destroyed. Lima was ruined in 1678—in 1746 only twenty houses out of three thousand were left standing . . . . while the ancient cities in the Huatica and Lurín valleys still remain in a comparatively good state of preservation. San Miguel de Piura, founded by Pizarro in 1531, was entirely destroyed in 1855, while the old ruins near by suffered little. Arequipa was thrown down in August, 1868, but the ruins near show no change.<ref>{{HPB-CW-comment|[Heath, op. cit., pp. 463 67]}}</ref>

{{HPB-CW-comment|[The Theosophist, Vol. I, No. 11, August, 1880, pp. 277-78]}}

To refer all these cyclopean constructions then to the days of the Incas is, as we have shown before, more inconsistent yet, and seems even a greater fallacy than that too common one of attributing every rock-temple of India to Buddhist excavators. As many authorities show—Dr. Heath among the rest—Incal history only dates back to the eleventh century A.D., and the period, from that time to the Conquest, is utterly insufficient to account for such grandiose {{Page aside|334}} and innumerable works; nor do the Spanish historians know much of them. Nor again, must we forget that the temples of heathendom were odious to the narrow bigotry of the Roman Catholic fanatics of those days; and that, whenever the chance offered, they either converted them into Christian churches or razed them to the ground. Another strong objection to the idea lies in the fact that the Incas were destitute of a written language, and that these antique relics of bygone ages are covered with hieroglyphics. “It is granted that the Temple of the Sun, at Cuzco, was of Incal make, but that is the latest of the five styles of architecture visible in the Andes, each probably representing an age of human progress.”<ref>{{HPB-CW-comment|[Heath, op. cit., p. 467.]}}</ref>

The hieroglyphics of Peru and Central America have been, are, and will most probably remain for ever as dead a letter to our cryptographers as they were to the Incas. The latter, like the barbarous ancient Chinese and Mexicans, kept their records by means of a quipus (or knot in Peruvian)—a cord, several feet long, composed of different coloured threads, from which a multicoloured fringe was suspended; each colour denoting a sensible object, and knots serving as ciphers. “The mysterious science of the quipus,” says Prescott, “supplied the Peruvians with the means of communicating their ideas to one another, and of transmitting them to future generations . . . <ref>{{HPB-CW-comment|[Hist. of the Conquest of Peru, Chap. IV, p. 792.]}}</ref> Each locality, however, had its own method of interpreting these elaborate records, hence a quipus was only intelligible in the place where it was kept. “Many quipus have been taken from the graves, in excellent state of preservation in colour and texture,” writes Dr. Heath; “but the lips that alone could pronounce the verbal key, have for ever ceased their function, and the relic-seeker has failed to note the exact spot each was found, so that the records which could tell so much we want to know, will remain sealed till all is revealed at the last day,<ref>{{HPB-CW-comment|[Heath, op. cit., p. 467.]}}</ref> . . . if anything at all is revealed then. {{Page aside|335}} But what is certainly as good as a revelation now, while our brains are in function, and our mind is acutely alive to some pre-eminently suggestive facts, is the incessant discoveries of archaeology, geology, ethnology, and other sciences. It is the almost irrepressible conviction that man having existed upon earth millions of years—for all we know—the theory of cycles is the only plausible theory to solve the great problems of humanity, the rise and fall of numberless nations and races, and the ethnological differences among the latter. This difference—which, though as marked as the one between a handsome and intellectual European and a digger Indian of Australia, yet makes the ignorant shudder and raise a great outcry at the thought of destroying the imaginary “great gulf between man and brute creation”—might thus be well accounted for. The digger Indian, then in company with many other savage, though to him superior nations, which evidently are dying out to afford room to men and races of a superior kind, would have to be regarded in the same light as so many dying-out specimens of animals—and no more. Who can tell but that the forefathers of this flat-headed savage—forefathers who may have lived and prospered amidst the highest civilization before the glacial period—were in the arts and sciences far beyond those of the present civilization—though it may be in quite another direction? That man has lived in America, at least 50,000 years ago, is now proved scientifically and remains a fact beyond doubt or cavil. In a lecture delivered at Manchester, in June last, by Mr. H. A. All-butt, Honorary Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Society, the lecturer stated the following:—

Near New Orleans, in one part of the modern delta, in excavating for gas works, a series of beds, almost wholly made up of vegetable matter, were dug through. In the excavation, at a depth of 16 feet from the upper surface, and beneath four buried forests, one on the top of the other, the labourers discovered some charcoal and the skeleton of a man, the cranium of which was reported to be that of the type of the aboriginal Red Indian race. To this skeleton Dr. Dowler ascribed an antiquity of some 50,000 years.

The irrepressible cycle in the course of time brought {{Page aside|336}} down the descendants of the contemporaries of the late inhabitant of this skeleton, and intellectually as well as physically they have degenerated, as the present elephant has degenerated from his proud and monstrous forefather, the antediluvian Sivatherium whose fossil remains are still found in the Himalayas; or, as the lizard has from the plesiosaurus. Why should man be the only specimen upon earth which has never changed in form since the first day of his appearance upon this planet? The fancied superiority of every generation of mankind over the preceding one is not yet so well established as to make it impossible for us to learn some day that, as in everything else, the theory is a two-sided question—incessant progress on the one side and an as irresistible decadence on the other of the cycle. “Even as regards knowledge and power, the advance which some claim as a characteristic feature of humanity is effected by exceptional individuals who arise in certain races under favourable circumstances only, and is quite compatible with long intervals of immobility, and even of decline,” says a modern man of science.<ref>Journal of Science, Vol. I, 3rd Series, February, 1879, pp. 148-49, articles—“Progress. The Alleged distinction between Man and Brute.”</ref> This point is corroborated by what we see in the modern degenerate descendants of the great and powerful races of ancient America—the Peruvians and the Mexicans.

How changed! How fallen from their greatness must have been the Incas when a little band of one hundred and sixty men could penetrate uninjured to their mountain homes, murder their worshipped Icings and thousands of their warriors, and carry away their riches, and that, too, in a country where a few men with stones could resist successfully an army! Who could recognize in the present Inichua and Aymara Indians their noble ancestry?<ref>{{HPB-CW-comment|[Heath, op. cit., p. 468]}}</ref>

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Thirteen thousand years ago [he writes] Vega or <big>α</big> Lyrae was the north polar star. Since then how many changes has she seen in our planet? How many nations and races spring into life, rise to their zenith splendour and then decay; and when we shall have been gone thirteen thousand years, and once more she resumes her post at the north, completing a “Platonic or Great Year,” think you that those who shall fill our places on the earth at that time will be more conversant with our history than we are of those that have passed? Verily might we exclaim in terms almost Psalmistic, “Great God, Creator and Director of the Universe, what is man that Thou art mindful of him!”