s of Caraveli, we climbed the barren, desolate hills of coarse
gravel and lava rock and left the canyon. We were surprised to find
near the top of the rise the scattered foundations of fifty little
circular or oval huts averaging eight feet in diameter. There was
no water near here. Hardly a green thing of any sort was to be seen
in the vicinity, yet here had once been a village. It seemed to
belong to the same period as that found on the southern slopes of
the Parinacochas Basin. The road was one of the worst we encountered
anywhere, being at times merely a rough, rocky trail over and among
huge piles of lava blocks. Several of the larger boulders were covered
with pictographs. They represented a serpent and a sun, besides men
and animals.

Shortly afterwards we descended to the Rio Grande Valley at Callanga,
where we pitched our camps among the most extensive ruins that
I have seen in the coastal desert. They covered an area of one
hundred acres, the houses being crowded closely together. It gave
one a strange sensation to find such a very large metropolis in what
is now a desolate region. The general appearance of Callanga was
strikingly reminiscent of some of the large groups of ruins in our
own Southwest. Nothing about it indicated Inca origin. There were
no terraces in the vicinity. It is difficult to imagine what such a
large population could have done here, or how they lived. The walls
were of compact cobblestones, rough-laid and stuccoed with adobe and
sand. Most of the stucco had come off. Some of the houses had seats,
or small sleeping-platforms, built up at one end. Others contained
two or three small cells, possibly storerooms, with neither doors
nor windows. We found a number of burial cists--some square, others
rounded--lined with small cobblestones. In one house, at the foot of
"cellar stairs" we found a subterranean room, or tomb. The entrance
to it was covered with a single stone lintel. In examining this
tomb Mr. Tucker had a narrow escape from being bitten by a boba,
a venomous snake, nearly three feet in length, with vicious mouth,
long fangs like a rattlesnake, and a strikingly mottled skin. At one
place there was a low pyramid less than ten feet in height. To its
top led a flight of rude stone steps.

Among the ruins we found a number of broken stone dishes, rudely
carved out of soft, highly porous, scoriaceous lava. The dishes must
have been hard to keep clean! We also found a small stone morta