Salcamayhua records that the founder of the Peruvian Empire, Manco Capac, ordered the smiths to make a flat plate of fine gold, of oval shape, which was set up as an image of the Creator (_op. cit._ p. 76). The Inca Mayta Ccapac, “who despised all created things, including the sun and moon,” and “ordered his people to pay no honour to them,” caused the plate to be renewed which his “great grandfather had put up, fixing it afresh in the place where it had been before. He rebuilt the ‘house of gold’ and they say that he caused things to be placed round the plate, which I have shown, that it may be seen what these heathens thought.” The central figure on this plate consists of the oval image of the Creator, fig. 48, _c_. Close to its right are images designated by the text as representing the sun and morning star. To the left are the moon and the evening star. Above the oval and touching it, is a group of five stars forming a cross, with one star in the centre. Below it is a cross figure formed by lines uniting four stars. In this case, instead of being in the middle, the fifth star is attached to the lower edge of the oval, which is designated as “the image of Uiracocha Pacha-Yachachic, the teacher of the World.” Outside of the plate is what appears to be an attempt to explain more clearly the relative positions of the group of five stars to the oval plate (fig. 48, _a_). It represents the oval and one star in the centre of a cross formed by four stars. The question naturally suggests itself whether the group of five stars forming a cross may not represent the Southern Cross, popularly called the pole-star of the south and which consists of four principal stars, one of which is of the first and two of the second magnitude. This possibility opens out a new field of inquiry, and calls for the statement of the following facts, which I quote from Amedée Guillemin’s Handbook of Popular Astronomy, edited by J. Norman Lockyer and revised by Richard A. Proctor.(35) [Illustration.] Figure 48.