Then the Priest of the Sun distributed the sancu, and afterwards the people ate the flesh of the sheep which had been sacrificed to the Creator, the Sun, and the Thunder. Each nation passed the rest of the day in performing the taqui and in singing and dancing, according to the custom of their respective countries before they were subdued by the Yncas. On this day all the deformed persons, who had previously been expelled from Cuzco, were allowed to join the feast. This part of the feast lasted for two days, and at its conclusion, in the evening, they burnt in sacrifice a sheep, and a vast quantity of clothes of many colours. Then those who had to return to their homes, sought permission from the Creator, the Sun, the Thunder, and the Ynca, which was granted, and they left at Cuzco the huacas they had brought there in that year. They returned to their homes with the huacas they had brought for the festival of the previous year, and, as a recompense for their trouble in having come from such great distances, their chiefs were given gold and silver and clothes and servants, and permission to travel in litters. Their huacas were also granted estates and attendants to wait on them, and so they returned to their homes.

The inventor of this feast was Ynca Yupanqui, at least he established the above ceremonies, for though it was celebrated from the time that there ever were Yncas, it was not performed in the order described above. The rest of the month was passed as each man found it convenient, or as suited him best. The same feast, called Situa, was celebrated at the chief places in all the provinces, by the Ynca governors, wherever they might be: and, although the ceremonies were less grand, and the sacrifices fewer, no part of the festival was omitted.

3. LAKE TITICACA AND ITS SACRED ISLAND

[1871? Ephraim George Squier, Peru; Incidents of Travel and Exploration in the Land of the Incas (1877), 329–338. Reprinted by permission of the publishers, Henry Holt and Company, New York.]

Mr. E. George Squier undertook, after the term of his office of United States Commissioner to Peru had expired, an exploring expedition into the interior of the Land of the Incas. He spent almost two years there studying the aboriginal Inca monuments and the topography of the country. The following excerpts give a fairly good description of the great Titicaca Lake and its islands.

I do not think I shall find a better place than this for saying a few words about Lake Titicaca, which was for many weeks a conspicuous feature in our landscape, and which is, in many respects, the most extraordinary and interesting body of water in the world. It is a long, irregular oval in shape, with one-fifth of its area at its southern extremity cut nearly off by the opposing peninsulas of Tiquina and Copacabana. Its greatest length is about 120 miles, and its greatest width between 50 and 60 miles. Its mean level is 12,488 feet above the sea. With a line of 100 fathoms I failed to reach bottom, at a distance of a mile to the eastward of the island of Titicaca. The eastern, or Bolivian, shore is abrupt, the mountains on that side pressing down boldly into the water. The western and southern shores, however, are comparatively low and level, the water shallow and grown up with reeds and rushes, among which myriads of water-fowls find shelter and support.

The lake is deep, and never freezes over, but ice forms near its shores and where the water is shallow. In fact, it exercises a very important influence on the climate of this high, cold, and desolate region. Its waters, at least during the winter months, are from ten to twelve degrees of Fahrenheit warmer than the atmosphere. The islands and peninsulas feel this influence most perceptibly, and I found barley, pease, and maize, the latter, however, small and not prolific, ripening on these, while they did not mature on what may be called the main-land. The prevailing winds are from the north-east, and they often blow with great force, rendering navigation on the frail balsas, always slow and difficult, exceedingly dangerous. The lake has several considerable bays, of which those of Puno, Huancané, and Achacache are the principal. It has also eight considerable habitable islands, viz. : Amantené, Taqueli, Soto, Titicaca, Coati, Campanario, Toquare, and Aputo. Of these the largest is that of Titicaca, on which we have just landed; high and bare, rugged in outline as ragged in surface, six miles long by between three and four in width.

This is the sacred island of Peru.1 To it the Incas traced their origin, and to this day it is held by their descendants in profound veneration. According to tradition, Manco Capac and his wife and

1 "It is called sacred," says Pedro Cieza de Leon, "because of a ridiculous story that there was no light for many days, when the sun rose resplendent out of the island; and hence they built here a temple to its glory, which was held in great veneration, and had virgins and priests belonging to it, with mighty treasures."

sister, Mama Ocllo, children of the Sun, and commissioned by that luminary, started hence on their errand of beneficence to reduce under government and to instruct in religion and the arts the savage tribes that occupied the country. Manco Capac bore a golden rod, and was instructed to travel northwards until he reached the spot where the rod should sink into the ground, and there fix the seat of his empire. He obeyed the behest, travelled slowly along the western shore of the lake, through the broad, level puna lands, up the valley of the Pucura, to the lake of La Raya, where the basin of Titicaca ends, and whence the waters of the river Vilcanota start on their course to swell the Amazon. He advanced down the valley of that river until he reached the spot where Cuzco now stands, when the golden rod disappeared. Here he fixed his seat, and here in time rose the City of the Sun, the capital of the Inca empire.

Upon this island, the traditional birthplace of the Incas, are still the remains of a temple of the Sun, a convent of priests, a royal palace, and other vestiges of Inca civilization. Not far distant is the island of Coati, which was sacred to the Moon, the wife and sister of the Sun, on which stands the famous palace of the Virgins of the Sun, built around two shrines dedicated to the Sun and the Moon respectively, and which is one of the best-preserved as well as one of the most remarkable remains of aboriginal architecture on this continent. The island of Soto was the Isle of Penitence, to which the Incas of the ruling race were wont to resort for fasting and humiliation, and it has also many remains of ancient architecture.

At almost the very northern end of the island, at its most repulsive and unpromising part, where there is neither inhabitant nor trace of culture, where the soil is rocky and bare, and the cliffs ragged and broken high up, where the fret of the waves of the lake is scarcely heard, and where the eye ranges over the broad blue waters from one mountain barrier to the other, from the glittering crests of the Andes to those of the Cordillera, is the spot most celebrated and most sacred of Peru. Here is the rock on which it was believed no bird would light or animal venture, on which no human being dared to place his foot; whence the sun rose to dispel the primal vapors and illume the world; which was plated all over with gold and silver, and covered, except on

occasions of the most solemn festivals, with a veil of cloth of richest color and material; which sheltered the favorite children of the Sun, and the pontiff, priest, and king who founded the Inca empire.1

Our guides stopped when it came in view, removed their hats, and bowed low and reverently in its direction, muttering a few words of mystic import. But this rock to-day — alas for the gods dethroned! — is nothing more than a frayed and weather-worn mass of red sandstone, part of a thick stratum that runs through the island, and which is here disrupted and standing, with its associated shale and limestone layers, at an angle of forty-five degrees with the horizon. The part uncovered and protruding above the ground is about 225 feet long and 25 feet high. It presents a rough and broken and slightly projecting face, but behind subsides in a slope coinciding with the declivity of the eminence of which it is part. In the face are many shelves and pockets, all apparently natural. Excepting that there are traces of walls around it of cut stone, and that the ground in front is artificially levelled, there is nothing to distinguish it from many other projections of the sandstone strata on the island and the main-land. Calancha, one of the oldest chroniclers of this region, well observes that it has no special features to arrest the eye or fix the attention.

Its position, however, is remarkable. It is on the crest of a ridge connecting with a bold promontory a high, rocky mass, with precipitous sides and dark, cavernous recesses, which forms the northern extremity of the island. On every side are bare rocks, heaped confusedly, except in front of the sacred stone itself, where, as I have said, there is a level, artificial terrace, 372 feet long and 125 feet broad, supported by a stone wall. At each outer corner of this terrace are the remains of small, square structures, probably those referred to by the chroniclers as the shrines of the Thunder and Lightning. According to tradition, the earth of this terrace was brought from the distant rich and fertile valleys of the Amazonian rivers, so that it might nourish a verdure denied by the hard, ungrateful soil of the island.

1 Calancha and Ramos report, on the authority of the oldest and best-informed Indians of their day, that "the whole concavity of the rock was covered with plates of gold and silver and that in its various hollows different offerings were placed, according to the festival or the occasion. The offerings were gold, silver, shells, feathers, and rich cloth of cumibi. The entire rock was covered with a rich mantle of this cloth the finest and most gorgeous in colors of any ever seen in the empire."

4. THE ART OF TREPANNING AMONG THE PERUVIAN INDIANS

[1871? Ephraim George Squier, Peru: Incidents of Travel and Exploration in the Land of the Incas (1877), 577-579. Reprinted by permission of the publishers, Henry Holt and Company, New York.]

The frontal bone of a skull found in an Indian cemetery in the valley of Yucay, Peru, presented an interesting case of trepanning before death. According to Squier the skull was submitted to the best surgeons of the United States and Europe for investigation. He added that it was "regarded by all as the most remarkable evidence of surgery among the aborigines yet discovered on this continent; for trepanning is one of the most difficult of surgical processes. The cutting through the bone was not performed with a saw, but evidently with a burin, or tool like that used by engravers on wood and metal. The opening is fifty-eight hundredths of an inch wide and seventy hundredths long." The following excerpts are from the description of this skull by M. Broca before the Anthropological Society of Paris.

The walls of the skull are very thick, and it presents characteristics which could only belong to an Indian of Peru. And I shall proceed to show that the trepanning was practised during life.

Upon the left side of the external plate of the frontal bone there is a large white spot, quite regular, almost round, or rather slightly elliptical, forty-two millimetres long and forty-seven broad. The outlines of this spot are not irregular or sinuous. The surface is smooth, and presents the appearance of an entirely normal bone. Around this, to the edges, the general color of the skull is notably browner, and is perforated with a great number of small holes, caused by dilatation of the canaliculi. The line of demarkation between the smooth and cribriform surface is abrupt, and it is perfectly certain that the smooth surface had been denuded of its periosteum several days before death. It is thus, in truth, that denudations of the cranium behave. In the denuded points, the superficial layer of the external table, deprived of vessels, and thus deprived of life, undergoes no change, and preserves its normal structure; while the surrounding parts, in undergoing the effects of traumatic inflammation, become the seat of the ostitis.

1 Peru: Incidents of Travel and Exploration in the Land of the Incas, 457.