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Cocapac, undaunted by this failure, accompanied his grandchildren, and repeated his performance on the shores of Lake Titicaca.

"Ay," she answered, "it may so seem to you, for you have as yet seen but little of the country save the terra caliente, and very few of us are now to be found near the coast. But when you get farther up among the mountains, and especially when you get into the neighbourhood of Lake Titicaca, you will find that we have not all perished.

Then, in a sudden burst of inspiration, I described the Cordilleras to her that world-long, stupendous chain; its sea of Titicaca, and wintry, desolate Paramo, where lie the ruins of Tiahuanaco, older than Thebes. I mentioned its principal cities those small inflamed or festering pimples that attract much attention from appearing on such a body.

The Sun, the great parent of mankind, pitying their degraded condition, sent two of his children, Manco Capac and Mama Ocllo Huaco, to govern and teach them. They bore with them as they advanced from the neighbourhood of Lake Titicaca a golden wedge, and were directed to take up their abode at the spot where this sacred emblem should sink easily into the ground.

We may reasonably conclude that there existed in the country a race advanced in civilization before the time of the Incas; and, in conformity with nearly every tradition, we may derive this race from the neighborhood of Lake Titicaca; 14 a conclusion strongly confirmed by the imposing architectural remains which still endure, after the lapse of so many years, on its borders.

We've told yarns by the campfire in the prairies, and dressed one another's wounds after trying a landing at the Marquesas, and drunk healths on the shore of Titicaca. There are more yarns to be told, and other wounds to be healed, and another health to be drunk. Won't you let this be at my campfire tomorrow night?

They had now left the strictly mountainous region, and had entered upon the flat dusty tableland in the midst of which Lake Titicaca is situated; and it was for the northern end of the lake that the party was now heading. Then, one day at dawn, they beheld a magnificent sight.

The Incas were, in many respects, a warlike race that is to say, they had possessed themselves by force of arms of the country in the neighbourhood of Lake Titicaca, wresting this from whatever tribe of the Aymaras it was which, highly civilized, had held the land before them.

Probably Señor Posnansky's seahorse was brought from the ocean by some particularly enterprising trader. Although starfish are common enough in the Andes and a seahorse has actually found its resting-place in La Paz, this does not alter the fact that scientific investigators have never found any strictly marine fauna in Lake Titicaca.

Near the water-parting of La Raya I noticed the remains of an interesting wall which may have served centuries ago to divide the Incas of Cuzco from the Collas or warlike tribes of the Titicaca Basin.