"The court of the Incas rivalled that of Rome, Jerusalem, or any of the old Oriental countries, in riches and show, the palaces being decorated with a great profusion of gold, silver, fine cloth and precious stones." [Footnote: Rev. Thomas Wood, LL.D., Lima, Peru, In "Protestant Missions in South America."] An ancient Spanish writer who measured some of the stones of the Incan palace at Cuzco tells us there were stones so nicely adjusted that it was impossible to introduce even the blade of a knife between them, and that some of those stones were thirty-eight feet long, by eighteen feet broad, and six feet thick. What a descent for the "Children of the Sun"! "How are the mighty fallen!" Thoughts of the past and the mean present passed through my mind as I lay down in the dust of the earthen floor that first night of my stay with the king. Owing to the thousands of fleas in the dust of the room it was hard for me to rest much, and that night a storm brewing made sleep almost impossible. As the thunder pealed forth all the Indians of the houses hastily got out of their hammocks and grasped gourd rattles and beautifully woven cotton banners. The rattles were shaken and the banners waved, while a droning chant was struck up by the high priest, and the louder the thunder rolled the louder their voices rose and the more lustily they shook the seeds in their calabashes. They were trying to appease the dread deity of Thunder, as did their Inca ancestors. The voice of the old priest led the worship, and for _four hours_ there was no cessation of the monotonous song, except when he performed some mystic ceremony which I understood not. Just as the old priest had awakened me the first morning to ask for his present, so the king came tapping me gently the second. In his hand he had a large sweet potato, and in my half-dreamy state I heard him saying, "Give me your coat. Eat a potato?" The change I thought was greatly to his advantage, but I was anxious to please him. I possessed two coats, while he was, as he said, a poor old man, and had no coat. The barter was concluded; I ate the potato, and he, with strange grimaces, donned a coat for the first time in his life. Think of this for an alleged descendant of the great Atahuallpa, whose robes and jewels were priceless! I offered to give the queen a feminine garment of white cotton if she would wear it, but this I could not prevail upon her to do; it was "ugly." As a loin-cloth, she would use it, but put it on--no! In the latter savage style the shaped garment was thereafter worn. Women have _fashions_ all over the globe. The few inches of clothing worn by the Caingwa women are never washed, and the only attempt at cleansing the body I saw when among them was that of a woman who filled her mouth with water and squirted it back on her hands, which she then wiped on her loin-cloth!