Evening capital news. (Boise, Idaho) 1901-1927, 1914-06-14

w
that the sun dropped down upon earth the
first representative of civilized man, and
from there he directed this man, Nance
Capac, and Mama Cello, his wife, to take
the golden rod he gave them and go forth
and found a great city where it should sink
into the earth. The Quichua Indians still
reverence that island; and you may see
there today the ruins of the temples of the
Incas, the walls of which were bedded in
gold.
Titicaca island was especially holy. The
Indians looked upon it as garden of Eden
and thought that the grain grown upon it
was blessed by the sun. They brought soil
from the mainland to build up its terraces,
and the corn grown upon it was considered
SO precious that it sanctifed and preserved
all other grains Therefore it was carried
about over the country, and small portions
of it were put in the public warehouses. 1t
was also said that man who could have as
much as one grain of Titicaca island corn in
his storehouse would not lack for food dur
ing his lifetime. On this island is still shown
the rock where Nance Capac and his sister
wife stepped when they dropped down from
the sky. They were, you know, the Adam
and Eve of the Incas, to whom this rock
was more sacred than Plymouth Rock is to
us. 1t is said to have been plated with gold
and kept covered with veil. The temples
about it were decorated with gold, which
the Incas looked upon as the solidihed tears
Of the sun.
About six miles from Titicaca is the ISL
and of the Moon. This island is now called
Coat. In coming to Guaqui, as we wound
our way around the peninsula Of Copoca-
bana, we skrted its shores, and with our
glasses could see the ruins that still stand
on the 5hilsides, Here was the Temple of
the Moon and the palace of the wife of the
Inca, and here also was the great convent
where lived the virgins of the sun. The
ruins show the remains of many rooms, sur
rounding court. They are high upon ter
races, the walls of which are put together
without cement. The stones join as closely
as those in the Notifications of Sacsahua-
man, or in the temples of Cuzco.
It was inside that convent that were kept
the loves of the Incas, who also acted as
priestesses to the sun. According to trad-
ton, none could be admitted to this life ex-
cept maidens of royal descent who in their
earliest youth had been placed under the
care of aged matrons and trained for the
purpose As the girls reached maturity
they were obliged to take an oath of per-
petua seclusion, and were supposed to be
the spouses of the sun. Some of the records
say that not even the emperor was admitted
to see them, but others alege that they are
supposed to have been his secondary wives
and, in short, his harem.
The Lake Titicaca of today is more inter-
esting than the traditional lake of the past.
It is now the halfway station on one of the
chief high roads of traffic from the capital
to the Panama canal Right here at Guaqui
they are now unloading flour from Caifor-
MA That flour has come UP the Andes and
over the lake, and it is now being put on the
railroad train that will take it from here to
La Paz. On the wharves are stacks of Ore
gon pine, and our ship, the Yavari, is loaded
with mining machinery and other goods for
Bolivia The purser of the boat tells me
that the steamers always run full, and that
during his last trip he carried 10000
pounds of tin across to Puno on its way to
the sea- On Our steamer we had rolls of
paper from the United States for the dailies
of the Bolivian capital, and also the boiler
OF a railroad locomotive destined for an in
terror railroad
The greater part of the freight of Bolivia
is now going this way out to the ocean. The
distance from La Paz to Mollendo on the