"It is very old," she said. "It is the palace of my people many hundred years--ah! perhaps thousands--before the Spaniards drove them off the earth. Long ago, in those days, our kingdom was not in a cave. But here, always, was the secret palace of the zipa. Yes, we lived among the mountains then, and this was our place of refuge when other Indians from far off came to plunder us. It was here that our first zipa was brought for safety. He was only a few weeks old then. Hunters, lost on a high mountain, had found him in the nest of a condor. How he came there no one has ever known. But his skin was perfectly white, not like ours; so that he could not have been born from one of our race. Perhaps a god had left him for the condors to take care of--or perhaps it was a condor, flying far out of sight of the earth, who found him in some hidden place in the sky, and brought him down here to be the ruler of the earth. But here he was guarded, here he grew up. And when he became a man, and conquered the people who used to fight with us and destroy our cities, and rob us of our wealth, and make slaves of us, he founded this Empire of the Chibchas. And it was after that, when he was old and had not much longer to live, that he built this great palace, to be the secret home of his children whenever their enemies became too strong for them. And over the gate of the palace, where you see, he placed his birth-sign, the Sign of the Condor--the secret sign of this under-world and of all his kingdom. But all of this was hundreds--ah! thousands--of years ago. And all those years this palace has stood and given protection to the children of that first zipa, he who was carried from the skies to be reared in the nest of a condor."