pottery, and warlike implements, there were cotton cloths worked in various patterns, the work-baskets of ladies with their sewing and spinning articles, and even dolls and other playthings for children. In the more southern valleys the discoveries of pottery and other relics in the places of sepulture have been very numerous. In the valley of Yca I also found a stone vase with two serpents carved round it. In the Nasca valley, in the far south, a number of specimens of painted pottery have recently been discovered, which are believed to be very ancient. But all are inferior to the Chimu works of art, both in design and workmanship.
Some curious mythological fables, belonging as much to the coast valleys as to the adjacent mountainous province of Huarochiri, have been preserved by Dr. Francisco Avila, the cura of San Damian, in Huarochiri, in 1608. This province of Huarochiri, with its lofty mountain ranges, is drained by the rivers Rimac and Lurin. It appears that the tradition of the people was that in the Purun-pacha, or most remote times, the land of Huarochiri was yunca, that is to say that it had a climate similar to the coast valleys. The tradition seems to point to a period before the Andes were raised to their present elevation.
These people, who spoke a dialect of Quichua, preserved a tradition, handed down to them from the megalithic age, of the supreme god of Pirua, the 'Uira-cocha.' To his name they attached the
