arro was doomed to wait for them seven months on an
island. He next visited Tumbez, in Peru, and went to the ninth degree of
south latitude; but he was obliged to visit Spain to get necessary aid
before he could attempt any thing more, and it was not until the year
1531 that the conquest of Peru was actually undertaken.

In 1531 Pizarro finally entered Tumbez with his buccaneers, and marched
into the country, sending word to the Inca that he came to aid him
against his enemies. There had been a civil war in the country, which
had been divided by the great Inca, Huayna Capac, the conqueror of
Quito, between his two sons, Huascar and Atahuallpa, and Huascar had
been defeated and thrown into prison, and finally put to death. At a
city called Caxamalca, Pizarro contrived, by means of the most atrocious
treachery, to seize the Inca and massacre some ten thousand of the
principal Peruvians, who came to his camp unarmed on a friendly visit.
This threw the whole empire into confusion, and made the conquest easy.
The Inca filled a room with gold as the price of his ransom; the
Spaniards took the gold, broke their promise, and put him to death.

THE RUINS NEAR LAKE TITICACA.

It is now agreed that the Peruvian antiquities represent two distinct
periods in the ancient history of the country, one being much older than
the other. Mr. Prescott accepts and repeats the opinion that "there
existed in the country a race advanced in civilization before the time
of the Incas," and that the ruins on the shores of Lake Titicaca are
older than the reign of the first Inca. In the work of Rivero and Von
Tschudi, it is stated that a critical examination of the monuments
"indicates two very different epochs in Peruvian art, at least so far as
concerns architecture; one before and the other after the arrival of the
first Inca." Among the ruins which belong to the older civilization are
those at Lake Titicaca, old Huanuco, Tiahuanaco, and Gran-Chimu, and it
probably originated the roads and aqueducts. At Cuzco and other places
are remains of buildings which represent the later time; but Cuzco of
the Incas appears to have occupied the site of a ruined city of the
older period. Figure 51 gives a view of the ancient Peruvian masonry.
Montesinos supposes the name of Cuzco was derived from _cosca_, a
Peruvian word signifying to level, or from heaps of earth called
_coscos_, which abounded there. In his account of the previous times
there is mention