The Birmingham age-herald., 1914-05-17

site of the ancient capital of the tEfV&J 1neas, that wonderful family of kings who ruled the most of western South America about 600 years ago. Like the ruling dynasties of Japan and China and almost every other great empire on earth. they believed themselves to be de- scended from the gods. They thought they were the offspring of the sun. and they called themselves the suns children. They had a tradition as to how they sprans into existence on one of the islands or Lake Titicaca and from there marched out. onto the .Andean pleateau and sub dred and civilized the then saVages. They came here to Cuzco, at the head of beautiful valley in the heart of he Andes, and established a capital. They gradually conquered the regions about until their empire extended far beyon Quito in E,cua- dor which is 60l OF 7O0 miles south of the Panama canal. to below where the capi- tai of Chile now stands. They had sub 3ects all along the eastern shores of the Amazon and the western limits of their rule were the shores of the mighty Pa cific. At the time that Columbus came to America. or littel later when Pizarro, the brutal Spanish butcher general, came to Peru and conquered them, they gov eIned country as long the distance between the Arctic ocean and the shores of Lake Erie, a country which was larger than all of the United States east of the Mississippi valley and which, had
 1t been dropped down in Europe, would have more than covered Germany and France Norway and Sweden Denmark and Switzerland. Austria Hungary and the Spanish peninsula
 A the time they were overthrown by the Spaniards the Incas had divided this country into provinces. They had viceroys and subordinate officials and they had tens of millions of subjects. They had not only subdued the say ages of the lncas but had civilized them.
 Tne subjects of the meas were na- ton of farmers, mechanics and arti- sans. They had religion that recoF- iiized the sun the lord of the world and their emperor as his ruler on earth They had temples 10 the sun. some Of which were plated with gold and with In which was an image of the sun of pure gold.
 The people believed in this religion and they were pious and peaceful, They gave a part of their time to the work Tor the church and a part for the sick and the widows and orphans. They worked also for the government, and. last cf alls for themselves and their families. They worked well, too. They conquered the land They irrigated the deserts. and today you may see the remains of their aqueducts of stone slabs. neatly fitted together. which car rfed the water over millions of acres. They had one aqueduct that was 800 miles long. Their irrigating canals ran rot only along the sides of the noun tains, but they cut tunnels through them and as I rode to Cuzco along the high plateau. I saw thousands of acres of terraces. now gone to ruin and all most desert. which these people had made to blossom like the rose. Such terraces are seen on the sides of the mountains above almost every Peru vian valley of the plateau and along the vest coast. They run up the slopes like so many steps. the earth being held back by stone walls.
 The subjects of the Incas were a na- ton of shepherds. They had millions of alpacas and llamas, and they also used the wool of the vicunas which they trap ped or shot in the mountains. They were a nation of potters. They made beauti- full vessels of clay and they were also skilled in the working of copper. silver and gold have seen here some of the tools which they used in erecting their buildings. They had a way of tempering an 6IioA or copper dDQ tln so that the tools made of it had edge like a razor and could work the hardest of stone Further on in this letter I will describe some of their wonderful walls, which still stand. They are more accurately cut than those of the great buildings at Washington. and blocks weighing tons are fitted together like a mosaic. have seen stones that are solid blocks twice as high a man upon horseback and 12 feet in thickness. and have examined buildings that are put together without mortar and fitted more evenly than were the tombs of the Egyptian kings found in the pyramids.
 But it would take a large book to de- scribe the wonders of the Inca rule ana the many phases of it's civilization. In this letter l can show you only some of the remains as they exist here In the [ city of Cuzco. This city today has only about 20,O00 inhabitants It runs up and down hill at the head of beautiful val ley situated more than two miles above the sea level in the heart of the Andes. It is at the head of the valley, and standing upon the hills above it you can look over a vast expanse of cultivated fields and of irrigated farms The town Is one of two and three-story houses with walls of bright coiors and roofs of red tiles. It has plazas and gardens, a great market and many comfortable homes.
 It's population is made up of Indians and whites and a mixture. the offspring or the two races. It is a Latin-A -Ameri- can city with many Catholic churches and with a civilization much like that of spain some generations ago. It is noth- Ing like the Cuzco of the past, and you VIII have to put on the thinking cap of your imagination to realize the difference between the capital of the Incas and the town Of today. In the first place, the present Cuzco does not cover one-tenth Of this area of the ancient Inca city. The latter contained several hundred thousand innaoltants and at the height of it's fame 1t may have been as large as the city of Washington
 They are still finding ruins of the an- cient buildings far out in the valley. and the remains of some of the structures in Cuzco upon which buildings now stand are of enormous extent Take the Templa of the Sun, which visited this afternoon This covered the whole square now occu- pied by the church and convent of Santo Domingo. The foundation of the church ie the old walls of that temple. In places 1t extends 20 or 90 feet from the ground. was taken through the buildings by one of the fathers and shown how the great blocks had been laid by the Incas one upon tho other fitted together SC
 3osely, and that without mortar or ce-
 -Apt. or union of any description, that could not push the point of a needle into the cracks. This temple must nave GOV. cred more than an acre. The western wall of 1t was concave. and the curves are as regular as those of a circle. A f great part of this building was plated x with gold. There was a great golden plate of oval form which represented the