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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.
It has had time enough to vary, as it is more than probable that the tamed and useful animal was inherited by the children of the sun from races and nations that came before them: and how far back Andean civilization extends may be inferred from the belief expressed by the famous American archaeologist, Squiers, that the ruined city of Tiahuanaco, in the vicinity of Lake Titicaca, is as old as Thebes and the Pyramids.
In the work of Rivero and Von Tschudi, it is stated that a critical examination of the monuments “indicates two very different epochs in Peruvian art, at least so far as concerns architecture; one before and the other after the arrival of the first Inca.” Among the ruins which belong to the older civilization are those at Lake Titicaca, old Huanuco, Tiahuanaco, and Gran-Chimu, and it probably originated the roads and aqueducts.
From this vast stage, to be occupied in the distant future by millions and myriads of beings, like us of upright form, the nations that will be born when all the existing dominant races on the globe and the civilizations they represent have perished as utterly as those who sculptured the stones of old Tiahuanaco from this theatre of palms prepared for a drama unlike any which the Immortals have yet witnessed I hurried away; and then slowly conducted her along the Atlantic coast, listening to the thunder of its great waves, and pausing at intervals to survey some maritime city.
Once I saw a ploughman and his team of oxen being ferried across the lake on a bulrush raft. To give greater security two balsas are sometimes fastened together in the fashion of a double canoe. One of the more highly speculative of the Bolivian writers, Señor Posnansky, of La Paz, believes that gigantic balsas were used in bringing ten-ton monoliths across the lake to Tiahuanaco.
At any rate, the romantic stories of a gigantic inland sea, vastly more extensive than the present lake and actually surrounding the ancient city of Tiahuanaco, must be treated with respectful skepticism. Tiahuanaco, at the southern end of Lake Titicaca, in Bolivia, is famous for the remains of a pre-Inca civilization.
The antiquities on the islands and shores of this lake need to be more completely explored and described, and probably interesting discoveries could be made at some points by means of well-directed excavations. A few miles from Lake Titicaca, at Tiahuanaco, are ruins which were very imposing when first seen by the Spaniards in the time of Pizarro.
Forced by their climate to seek comfort in the amount and thickness of their apparel, they have developed an excessive modesty in regard to bodily exposure which is in striking contrast to people who live on the warm sands of the South Seas. Inca sculptors and potters rarely employed the human body as a motif. Tiahuanaco is pre-Inca, yet even here the images are clothed.
It surprised me to see these enormous gateways made of great masses of stone, some of which were thirty feet long, fifteen high, and six thick.” Many of the stone monuments at Tiahuanaco have been removed, some for building, some for other purposes. In one case, “large masses of sculptured stone ten yards in length and six in width” were used to make grinding stones for a chocolate mill.
An immense alpine lake characterizes the basin of Tiahuanaco or Titicaca; this phenomenon is the more worthy of attention, as in South America there are scarcely any of those reservoirs of fresh water which are found at the foot of the European Alps, on the northern and southern slopes, and which are permanent during the season of drought.
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