We entered one of the houses in “Pueblo Viejo,” or ruins of an old town so called, by the way-side, not far from the celebrated ruins of the ancient city Leon de Huanuco, deemed by the natives as only second to Cuzco—the capital of the empire of the Incas—in the wonders of its masonry. We found the walls of this house, except where defaced by the mischievous hands of man, quite entire, and one angle of the building had yet retained the roof. The windows were small, but the outer door of good size. The walls were as perpendicular as plumb and line in our days could make them, though two stories high. These walls were built with small stones, mostly flags; and between them a thin layer of mud or clay cement. There were, within, stone partitions rising to the level of the outward walls, making the compartments of the house so confined that the roof was easily laid on by long and broad flags projecting from the sides, on which they were steadied by a top-weight, and, meeting at the centre, were so adjusted as to render the closing of the roof perfect. The same appeared to have been the manner in which the floor of the second story had been laid. At the roof, the flags were observed to shoot forwards to some extent outside the wall, doubtless with a view to preserve a perfect equilibrium,—as we have frequently seen on the smaller houses of ancient Indian architecture, which abound near the village of Ambo on the heights of Andaguaylla. The lofty and weather-worn peaks of this estate go to form the ridge of the eastern Cordillera, where the path from these summits descends towards the pueblo of Yuramarca on the verge of the Montaña, known in regal times as the asylum of the fugitive criminal. This hacienda, partaking of the climate of the torrid and frigid zones, and consisting of successive table-lands and steep hills, has frigid summits and ever-blooming dales. Its lakes of _Rumichaca_, so named because their waters escape under a natural bridge of rock; its Indian moats and fortifications on the heights of Rucrun, and the ruins of which we have just made mention; its woods of alder and perejil; its bamboo thickets, numerous dingles, and silvery waterfalls; its rapacious puma; its herds of deer; its narrow pathways and slippery pastures, from whence the grazing ox so often rolls to the fathomless ravine,—are still present to our mind in one group, with the lovely conjunction of the cultivated vales of Huacar and Huaylas, and the watery cross formed by the confluence of their respective streams, where the river of Huanuco commences its gently winding course. All these crowd into our retrospect, as they are viewed by the imagination in one splendid landscape from the commanding eminences of this fine estate, in contrast with all the boundless mountain-scenery stretching to the west.