- rally prevailing Peruvian custom. There may still be found
subterranean chambers below many of the private dwellings of Caxamarca.
We were shown steps cut in the rock, and also what is called the Inca's foot-bath (el lavatorio de los pies). The washing of the monarch's feet was accompanied by some inconvenient usages of court etiquette.[13] Minor buildings, designed according to tradition for the servants, are constructed partly like the others of cut stones, and provided with sloped roofs, and partly with well formed bricks alternating with siliceous cement (muros y obra de tapia). In the latter class of constructions there are vaulted recesses, 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. Garcilaso 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
