The Sun.
London, England, 1844-08-23 00:00:00

THE PALACE OF THE SUN AND

THE ANDES.

The subjoined interesting paper was lately read
eforo the Academy of Natural Science; of Phila-
delphia, by J. B. Quinby, Corresponding Member.
"The following paragraph is now going the rounds
of the newspapers of this city :
" It was reported in Chili that the jewels of the
Temple of the Sun, which at the time of the conquest
of Peru the natives had concealed from the Spaniards,
:have lately been recovered near the Cerro de Pasco,
in Peru; the value of them has been calculated at
180,000,000 dollars.'
" The palace of the Inca and the Temple of the... Sun
here referred to, we presume to be Hunanuco Viejo,
which is situated on the east side of the Andes,
twenty leagues north of the Cerro de Pasco, on the
right bank of the river Chucabamba, one of the head
branches of the Amazon (or Marinon), at an ele-
vation of about fourteen thousand feet above the level
of the ocean, in latitude 10 deg. south, and longitude
74 deg. west, nearly. It is known that when Pizarro,
now more than three centuries ago, took the Temple
of the Sun at Cuzeo, which is some twelve degrees
south of that at Huanuco Viejo, and despoiled the
Inca of his immense treasures of gold, and, finally,
when threats could extort no more, put him treach-
erously to death,—the Inca of Huanuco Viejo, ad-
vised of what had taken place at Cuzco, secreted the
jewels of the Temple and the gold of his palace in the
fastnesses of the Andes and the neighbouring rivers
and lakes. Avarice and ambition have made these
hidden treasures the object of continued search from
the days of Pizarro to the present time. But as yet
no clue has been found to this El Dorado, unless the
above announcement is well founded, which we are
inclined to doubt.
" The writer has been five different times at these
magnificent ruins, and always found many persons
employed in their vicinity in searching for the hid-
den treasures of the Incas. The whole of the River
Chucabamba, for a number of leagues above and
t elow the Temple of the Sun, is auriferous, and the
inhabitants of the province of Iluamelies through
which it passes, obtain by washing the sand, and by
means of sheeps skins, two or three hundred thou
sand dollars annually. The wool on the skins is
cut until it is about half an inch in length, the skins
are then anchored down with the whole side up by
means of loose stones placed on them, in and below
the various falls and rapids, in which position they
are suffered to remain from six to twenty-four hours ;
they are then carefully raised out of the water, turned
wool side down into a hatea (tub) of water, arid
thoroughly washed, the gold falling from the wool cf
the skin, and it is finally collected from the bottom
of the batea. Sheep were unknown to the Incas,
and as they had obtained an amount of gold from
this pactolean stream, it is presumed that they used
the skins of the llama (cemelas lacing of Lin.) and
those of the vicuna (camelus perunus or vicugna of
Lin.)
"When we reflect on the fact that the Indians and
Spaniards have obtained by their rude washings on
this river during two or three centuries, one, two, and
three hundred thousand dollars of gold annually, and
that they have not, probably, secured the one
hundredth part of the amount that has passed down
the current of the stream, we may form an imperfect
idea of the exhaustless source of this perennial supply.
The stupendous Andes are alone cap able of furnish-
ing such countless riches.

We shall not attempt a description of the magni-
ficent Temple of the Sun at Huai-Inca Viejo, its
powerful fortress, and the ruins of the great city
. which they overlook. When, and by whom they
were built, neither history nor tradition informs us.
The Incas had no written language, and we are left
to conjecture. But their great magnitude and mas-
sive walls, composed of huge blocks of square, ob-
long, and elegant wrought marble, greenstone,
and greenstone porphyry, weighing many t Ins, bear
minute but eloquent testimony to the untiring industry
of the Incas and their advances in the arts of civili-
sation. -The ravages and earthquakes of centuries
have left these monuments almost as perfect as they
were when Pizarro conquered Peru Even the
great earthquake which destroyel the City of Callao,
built by the Spaniards, with its thirty thousand in-
habitants, did not throw down the messive walls of
the Temple of the Sun, and the writer can testify
that they withstood, with bet slight injury, the great
earthquake of 30th of March, 1828. The Seraglio
and its various compartments with the exception of
the roof, the voluptuous baths for a numerous train
. of. wives, cut out of massive rocks, are almost as en-
tire as they were on the landing of Pizarro.
"If there is any situation on the whole range of the
Andes more sublime than all others, it is at the base
.of the peak of Raura, in sight of this Temple. The
writer has crossed the Andes, from side to side,
. twenty-four times, at seven or eight different passes—
twice from Naranjel, on the Gulf of Guayaquil,
2-e degrees S. of the equator, to the city of Cuenca,
the capital of the province of Azuay, a little south of
Chimborazo—and, having spent more than two weeks
at the foot of the peak of Raura, at least one thousand
feet above the line of perpetual snow, he has no
hesitation in saying that it is comparably the most
sublime spot he has ever visited on the Andean
range. Besides the peak of .Raura, which we be-
lieve to be at least as high as Chimborazo, there
. are innumerable smaller ones rising on the range of
the Cordilleras to the north and south, having their
bases resting in the perpetual snow, and throwing up
their snow-clad apexes thousands of feet into the pure
and attenuated air, almost out of the reach of the eye,
and above the untiring wing of the immense condor
or South American eagle. The largest and nearest
of these peaks is that of Nuevo Potosi, the base of
which approaches within a league of that of Raura,
and is little inferior in height and magnitude to
Raura itself. The intervening space between
these two peaks is occupied by the lake of Nueva,
Potosi, the surface of which is almost five hun-
dred feet above the lowest limit of perpetual snow,
and as this line, within the tropics, is known to
„be about fifteen thousand five hundred feet above
the lewd of the ocean, the surface of this lake must
be' sixteen thousand feet high. It is completely em-
bosomed by a ridge of the Andes on the west, another
on the east, the base of Raura on the north, and
:that of Nueva Potosi on the south. Its copious
waters find a subterraneous channel through a high
western limestone ridge, and break out at the western
side of the Andes, at a point where the mountain is
very nearly vertical, and from a magnificent cascade
. of many hundred feet in height, falling into a lake of
several leagues in circumference. A short distance to
the north-west of this cases le there is a large cerro
(hill) of yeah (gypsum or sulphate of lime.) The-lake
of Nueva Potosi is the head source. of the river Iluara,
which makes its way down the sides of the Andes in
very nearly a westerly direction, and falls into the
Pacific ocean at Huache, the famous salines of the
western coast, which supply the greater portion of
the southern hemisphere with salt.
" On the north-east of the base of the peak of Raura
is the lake of the same name, one league north of
the lake just described, and from which it is sepa-
rated by a high trap dyke and al-nye-111M. This lake,
which is about one hundred and fifty miles from the
Pacific, is a little higher than that of Nueva Potosi,
and has an open outlet to the east down a craggy
• precipice of several hundred feet in height. It forms
the head of the river Chucubamba, one of the prin-
cipal branches of the Amazon, and probably it is
the highest and most distant source of that great
river. The waters of this lake traverse the continent
of South America from east to west, at its widest
expanse, almost from the margin of the Pacific to the
Atlantic, a distance of nearly five thousand miles.
Both of these lakes are the receptacles of ava-
lanches from the peaks of their respective names.
No less than two were precipitated into the lake of
• Raura whilst I was encamped on the snow in the
vicinity. The first occurred at midnight, and which,
- from the great noise and the trembling of the earth,
I for a moment mistook for an earthquake. The
second took place at ten o'clock in the morning.
At the time I was in the rear of a small hill ; know-
ing what was taking place, I hastened as rapidly
as I could to its summit, which commanded a view
of the lake and its outlet, a distance of not more
than two hundre 1 yards. But such was my exhaus•
tion subsequent on the difficulty cf breathing at an
elevation where the barometer stood at but 151
inches,_ notwithstanding I stopped for respiration a
,number of times, on reaching my destination I fell
Ivan the snow, and for a few minutes was insensible
to the sublime scenes before me. When I recovered,
I found that immense masses of the ice of the gla-
ciers, some of it from fifty to a hundred feet thiel•
had been broken from its
literally,
by the pressure of the
snow that was piled u thousands of feet
to the very summit of theP peak, and snow and glaciers
were in he lake, heaped on each other in wild con-
fusion. The bosom of this
lacinlandidasseaa, whichir but a
few minutes before was as p
now heaving like the Ocean off Cape Horn, an rodr
evwase
swell threw a mighty volume of water over the
preci-
pice i -
pice to find its way through the Amazon to the
Atlantic."

•
A few days ago M. Mulct, an inn-keeper at Drn
• lerent, in the Haute Marne, who, from his great strer.gth
and hasty character, was nicknamed the " Gran Diable,"
was condemned to a year's imprisonment for insulting
the Juge de Paix of his commune, and ordered to b•.,
taken immediately from the Court to prison. He, how •
ever, escaped from those who find charge of him, and ran
-through the town pursued by the gendarmes. They
:overtook him, and were on the point of laying hand,
upon him, when he took a knifit from his pocket, and
stabbed himself thrice in the body. lie lingered in
treat pain for two hours, and then expired. Ile was the
.lather of a family, and, though violent, was industrious
and charitable.-- Galignuni.

A white swallow was taken out of a nest in Twyn-
ing Church last week by a Mr. Thomas Brown, plum- •
.bar, of Tewkesbury, and was kept alive rot. a couple of
days. It has since been stuffed.—Gloucester Chronicle, I