In the preparation of this work, I found that the knowledge I had previously gained through close association with the people of Latin America during more than fifteen years’ journeying in these countries was of the greatest advantage. Travelling in Peru was more like visiting among friends than studying the manners and customs of a foreign people, and the uniform kindness and hospitality everywhere shown me made my experience in this beautiful land one of constant pleasure and of enduring memory. I sincerely appreciate the great assistance rendered me in securing information from government sources, from the public libraries and from many kind friends in every part of Peru, and I take this opportunity of expressing my thanks, from my heart. It is impossible to live in Peru without learning to love the country and its people, and while I have tried to allow no partiality to influence my judgment in writing this book, I cannot do otherwise than present to the reader what I found most interesting in my own study of the Old and the New Peru. MARIE ROBINSON WRIGHT. _Philadelphia, September 20, 1908._ THE OLD AND THE NEW PERU CHAPTER I ANCIENT PERU—PRE-INCAIC MONUMENTS [Illustration: GIRDLE FOUND IN THE CEMETERY OF PACHACÁMAC.] The historian of the Conquerors who described the newly discovered Peru as “the Ophir of the Occident” gave it a name which modern research proves to have been singularly appropriate. Not only in wealth, but in antiquity, this interesting country is comparable to the fabled land of the East from which the emissaries of King Solomon brought so many luxuries to please the taste of their royal master. There are eminent writers and students of the records of ancient times who are of the opinion that the famous Ophir of the Bible was no other than ancient Peru, and that the Phœnicians—those intrepid navigators of past ages—visited its shores and were the founders of its earliest civilization.