But there are many reasons, and to me satisfactory ones, for believing that the first Kechuas appeared in South America at the extreme north of the region they later occupied, and that the course of their migration was constantly from north to south. This was also the opinion of the learned Von Tschudi. He traces the early wandering of the Kechua tribes from the vicinity of Quito to the district between the Andes and the upper Marañon, thence in the direction of Huaraz, and so gradually southward, following the inter-Andean plateau, to the northern shore of Lake Titicaca. There they encountered warlike tribes who put a stop to their further progress in that direction until the rise of the Inca dynasty, who pushed their conquests toward the south and west. The grounds for this opinion are largely linguistic.[282] In his exhaustive analysis of the Kechua language, Von Tschudi found its most archaic forms in the extreme north, in the dialects of Quito and Chinchasuyu. This is also my own impression from the comparison of the northern and southern dialects. For instance, in the Chinchaya (northern), the word for water is _yacu_, while the southern dialects employ _yacu_ in the sense of “flowing water,” or river, and for water in general adopted the word _unu_, apparently from the Arawak stock. Now, as Karl von den Steinen argues in a similar instance, we can understand how a river could be called “water,” but not how drinking water could be called “river;” and therefore we must assume that the original sense of _yacu_ was simply “water,” and that the tribes who retained this meaning had the more archaic vocabulary.[283] Mr. Markham indeed says: “In my opinion there is no sufficient evidence that the people of Quito did speak Quichua previous to the Inca conquest;” and he quotes Cieza de Leon to the effect that at the time of the Spanish conquest they had a tongue of their own.[284] I have, however, shown how untrustworthy Cieza de Leon’s statements are on such subjects; and what is conclusive, there were Kechua-speaking tribes living at the north who never were subjugated by the Incas. Such for instance were the Malabas, whom Stevenson, when visiting that region in 1815, found living in a wild state on San Miguel river, a branch of the Esmeraldas.[285] This is also true, according to the observations of Stübel, of the natives of Tucas de Santiago in the province of Pasto in Ecuador.[286] This opinion is further supported by a strong consensus of ancient tradition, which, in spite of its vagueness, certainly carries some weight. Many of the southern Kechua tribes referred for their origin to the extreme northwest as known to them, to the ancient city of Lambayeque on the Pacific coast, a locality which, according to Bastian,[287] held a place in their traditions equivalent to that of Culiacan, “the Home of the Ancestors,” in the legendary lore of the Aztecs.