"There was evidently a wall around the base of the hill; the slope of the hill was formed into terraces, and its upper part is supported by a terrace thirty-two feet high. In the centre of this upper part was the shrine of the deity, enclosed in a sanctuary which had a door of gold set with precious stones. But if the outside was beautiful, the inside was the reverse, as the Spaniards found only an idol of wood there, together with a flat stone where the priests performed their sacrifices. The old historians say that only the priests were allowed to go inside the sanctuary; when the Spaniards arrived there was no objection to their entering, as it was believed the deity would strike them dead for their sacrilege. The fact that they were not harmed, but proceeded without hesitation to plunder the place of its wealth, was a serious shock to the faith of these confiding natives. "Mr. Squier's book contains an excellent description of the place, and we sat down on the top of the hill and read his account of his visit to Pachacamac. He says that in ancient times it was the Mecca of South America, and pilgrims came here from all parts of the country to worship at the shrine of the divinity who was called 'The Creator of the World.' So great was the reverence in which it was held, that these pilgrims were allowed to pass unharmed through tribes and people with whom their own might be at war; the sacredness of their mission was an ample protection. [Illustration: PERUVIAN MUMMIES.] "The natural result of this pilgrimage was that there was a large town around the temple, and in course of time many thousands of people died here, and were buried on the consecrated spot. The whole ground, for many acres around the temple, seems to have been one vast cemetery; the soil is dry, and contains a good deal of nitre, which possesses excellent preservative qualities. There are thousands and thousands of what are generally called mummies now lying in this soil, where they have lain for centuries; they were not submitted to any mummifying process, like the bodies of the ancient Egyptians, but are preserved by the action of the salts of the earth and the aridity of the atmosphere. "Some men who came with us from a sugar plantation in the valley offered to find a grave, and reveal its contents. We assented, and they selected a spot, and began to dig. "We had a suspicion that they had dug in the same place before, and the grave they discovered had been opened many times previously for the benefit of visitors like ourselves. We remember that the same trick is practised in Egypt, especially at the temple in the neighborhood of the Great Pyramids, and saw no reason why it should not be adopted here. With this belief we had less compunction at disturbing the resting-place of the dead than we might have had otherwise. [Illustration: SEPULCHRAL TOWER.]