trust the accounts of Peruvian
industry, will find their doubts removed on a visit to the country.
The traveller still meets, especially in the regions of the
tableland, with memorials of the past, remains of temples, palaces,
fortresses, terraced mountains, great military roads, aqueducts, and
other public works, which, whatever degree of science they may
display in their execution, astonish him by their number, the massive
character of the materials, and the grandeur of the design. Among
them, perhaps the most remarkable are the great roads, the broken
remains of which are still in sufficient preservation to attest their
former magnificence. There were many of their roads traversing
different parts of the kingdom; but the most considerable were the
two which extended from Quito to Cuzco, and again diverging from the
capital, continued in a southern direction towards Chili.

"One of these roads passed over the grand plateau, and the other
along the lowlands on the borders of the ocean. The former was much
the more difficult achievement, from the character of the country.
It was conducted over pathless sierras buried in snow; galleries were
cut for leagues through the living rock; rivers were crossed by means
of bridges that swung suspended in the air; precipices were scaled by
stair-ways hewn out of the native bed; ravines of hideous depth were
filled up with solid masonry: in short, all the difficulties that
beset a wild and mountainous region, and which might appal the most
courageous engineer of modern times, were encountered and
successfully overcome. The length of the road, of which scattered
fragments only remain, is variously estimated at from fifteen hundred
to two thousand miles, and stone pillars, in the manner of European
milestones, were erected at stated intervals of somewhat more than a
league, all along the route.

"The other great road of the Incas lay through the level country
between the Andes and the ocean. It was constructed in a different
manner, as demanded by the nature of the ground, which was for the
most part low, and much of it sandy. The causeway was raised on a
high embankment of earth, and defended on either side by a parapet or
wall of clay; and trees and odoriferous shrubs were placed along the
margin, regaling the sense of the traveller with t