The home of the _Mocoas_ is between 1° and 2° north lat. along the Rio de los Engaños or Yari, (whence they are sometimes called Engaños or Inganos), and other tributaries of the Caqueta.[271] They are partially civilized, and have seven or more villages near the town of Mocoa. They are the first natives encountered in descending the eastern slope of the Cordillera. Unfortunately, we have a very imperfect knowledge of their language, a few words reported by the Presbyter Albis being all I have seen. So many of them are borrowed from the Kechua, that I have no means of deciding whether the following list of the stock is correct or not: MOCOA LINGUISTIC STOCK. _Almaguereños_. _Engaños_ or _Inganos_. _Mesayas_. _Mocoas_. _Pastuzos_. _Patias_ (?) _Sebondoyes_. Of these, the Patias dwelt on the lofty and sterile plain between the two chains of the Cordilleras in Popayan. The Sebondoyes had a village on the Putumayo, five leagues south of the Lake of Mocoa (Coleti). The region around the Gulf of Guayaquil was conquered by the Inca Tupac Yupanqui about 1450.[272] The accounts say that it had previously been occupied by some five-and-twenty independent tribes, all of whom were brought under the dominion of the Kechuas and adopted their language. The most prominent of these were the _Cañaris_, whose homes were in the hot valleys near the coast. Before the arrival of the Incas they had a certain degree of cultivation, being skilled in the moulding of copper, which they worked with a different technique from the Kechuas. Many of their copper axes are ornamented with strange figures, perhaps totemic, cut into the metal. As much as five or six hundred pounds’ weight of these axes has been taken from one of their tombs.[273] Some of the most beautiful gold work from the Peruvian territory has been found in modern times in this province, but was perhaps the work of Kechua rather than of Cañari artists.[274] The original language of the Cañaris, if it was other than the Kechua, appears to have been lost. 2. THE PERUVIAN REGION. The difficulty of a linguistic classification of the tribes of the Peruvian region is presented in very formidable terms by the old writers. Cieza de Leon said of this portion of the continent: “They have such a variety of languages that there is almost a new language at every league in all parts of the country;”[275] and Garcilasso de la Vega complains of the “confusion and multitude of languages,” which gave the Incas so much trouble, and later so much impeded the labors of the missionaries.[276] An authority is quoted by Bollaert to the effect that in the vice-royalty of Quito alone there were more than forty distinct tongues, spoken in upwards of three hundred different dialects.[277]