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Show PLATEAU OF C.AXAMARCA. 429 may still be found subterranean chambers below many of the private dwellings of Caxama.rca. We were shown steps cut in the rock, and also what is called the Inca's foot-path (el lavatorio de los pies). The washing of the monarch' feet was accompanied by some inconvenient usages of court etiquette. (13) Minor buildings, designed according to tradition for the servant , are constructed partly like the others of cut stones, and provided with sloped roofs, and partly with well-formed bricks alternating with silicious cement (muros y obra de tapia). In the latter cla s of constructions there are vaulted recesse,.<!, the antiquity of which I long doubted, but, as I now believe, without sufficient grounds. In the principal building, the room is still shown in which the unhappy Atahuallpa was kept a prisoner for nine months, (14 ) from November, 1532, and there is pointed out to the traveller the wall on which the captive signified to what height he would fill the room with gold if set free. This height is given very variously, by Xerez, in his "Conquista del Peru," which Barcia has preserved for us, by Hernando Pizarro in his letters, and by other writers of the period. The prince said, that " gold in bars, plates, and vessels, should be heaped up as high as he could reach with his hand." Xerez assigns to the room a length of 23, and a breadth of 18 English feet. Garcilasso de la Vega, who quitted Peru in his 20th year, in 1560, estimates the value of the treasure collected from the temples of the sun at Cuzco, Huaylas, Huamachuco, and Pachacamac, up to the fateful 29th of August 1553, on which day the Inca was put to death, at 3,838,000 Ducados de Oro. (1 5 ) In the chapel of the state prison, to which I have before alluded as built upon the ruins of the Inca's palace, the stone still marked by the indelible stains of blood is shown to the credulous. It is a very thin slab, 13 feet long, placed in front of the altar, and has probably been taken from the porphyry or trachyte of the vicinity. One is not permitted to make any more precise examination by striking off a part of the stone, but the three or four supposed blood spots appear to be natural collections of hornblende or pyroxide in the rock. The Licentiate Fernando Montesinos, who visited Peru scarcely a hundred years after the taking of Caxamarca, even at that |