[205] Tomas Vasquez, one of the first conquerors, had a house in Cuzco, and an estate in Ayaviri. (See chapter iv.) He distinguished himself in the battle of Las Salinas, fighting against Almagro. He joined Giron in his insurrection, and commanded the rebel cavalry. At Pucara he deserted Giron, went over to the royal camp, and obtained a pardon. He retired to his estates, but was afterwards put to death by order of the Viceroy Marquis of Cañete in 1557. [206] The siege of Cuzco by Manco Ynca, in 1526. [207] This name is not clear in the manuscript. It may be La Rea. The Peruvian editor has Juan de la Plaza. [208] There are several versions of the native tradition relating to this monolith, which is called _piedra cansada_, or the “tired stone”, in Quichua, _saycusca rumi_. The Spanish editor gives the least known and most curious of these versions, which he found in the manuscript history of the Yncas by Padre Morúa. He says that an Ynca of the blood royal, named Urco or Urcon, a great engineer and architect, was the official who directed the moving of the tired stone from the quarry, and that on reaching this spot where it stopped, the Indians who were dragging it, killed him. This Urcon designed and traced out the fortress of Cuzco. He also conceived and carried out the idea of transporting from Quito the best soil for potatoes, with the object of raising them in it for the sovereign’s table. With this soil he made the hill called _Allpa Suntu_, to the east of the fortress. [209] The Spanish editor here has the following note. He says that the fault did not lie with the Spaniards, but in the very natural want of archæological knowledge in Cieza himself, and in his extreme credulity, believing all the stories of the Orejones and descendants of the Yncas, for whom everything that was worthy of notice in the country was the exclusive work of those sovereigns. It is now a generally received opinion that the very ancient cyclopean work at Cuzco was due to a people who lived long before Ynca Yupanqui, and even before Manco Ccapac, if it be true that the latter appeared in the beginning of the eleventh century. Moreover, the Yncas themselves destroyed some, and left others, without completing what had been begun by their predecessors. Not all the ruins in Peru were due to Spanish vandalism. On the contrary, the Viceroy Don Francisco de Toledo and others, far from contributing to the destruction of the fortress of Cuzco, took measures to preserve it, and, on more than one occasion, prevented the stones from being used for modern buildings. This was especially the case in the year 1577, when the Jesuits of Cuzco applied for leave to take stones from the fortress for their monastery and church, and were refused.