fourteen miles up the gorge, the other coming from springs five miles distant. There were houses in the valleys with richly painted walls raised on terraces, verandahs covered with passion-flower plants yielding refreshing fruit, gardens and cultivated land extending to the seashore, dark algaroba woods, and a background of snowy mountains. All this leaves an impression of luxury bordering on effeminacy, but it is qualified by the very numerous representations, on their pottery, of warriors armed to the teeth. It is true that some of the things that are modelled in clay give a low idea of the moral character of the people.
The language, called Mochica by Bishop Oré,[1] has been preserved in a grammar and vocabularies, though as a spoken tongue it has long been extinct. We are indebted to the priest, Fernando de la Carrera, for the grammar. He was a great-grandson of one of the Spanish conquerors, Pedro Gonzalez de la Carrera, and was brought up at Lambayeque, where he learnt the language in his childhood. It is so excessively difficult, especially the pronunciation, that no grown-up person could learn it. Fernando de la Carrera eventually became cura of Reque, near Chiclayo, and here he
- ↑ Rituale seu Manuale Peruanum juxta ordinem Sanctæ Romanæ ecclesiæ per R. P. F. Ludovicum Hieronimum Orerum (Neapoli, 1607). Bishop Oré was a native of Guamanga, in Peru, and was an indefatigable missionary. He gives the Lord's Prayer in Mochica. The word resembles Muchi, the name of the river. I am inclined to think that Mochica was the name of the people whose sovereign was the Chimu.
