esh, not because
there is not, in that province of the Collao, a good quantity of sheep,
but because the people are so much the subjects of the lord to whom they
are bound to give obedience that, without his licence or that of the
chief or governor who, by his command, is in the country, they do not
kill one [llama], nor do even the lords and caciques dare to kill any
without such permission. The land is well populated because wars have
not destroyed it as they have other provinces. The villages are of
ordinary size and their houses are small, with walls of stone and adobe
mixed and covered with roofs of straw. The grass which grows in this
land is short and sparse. There are some rivers, although of small
volume. In the middle of the province there is a great lake, in length
almost one hundred leagues, and the most thickly peopled land is around
its shore; in the middle of the lake there are two islets, and on one of
them is a mosque and house of the sun which is held in great veneration,
and to it they come to make their offerings and sacrifices on a great
stone on the island which they call Tichicasa[113] which either because
the devil hides himself there and speaks to them or because of an
ancient custom, or on account of some other cause that has never been
made clear, all the people of that province hold in great esteem, and
they offer there gold, silver and other things. There are more than six
hundred Indians serving in this place, and more than a thousand women
who make chicha in order to throw it upon that stone Tichicasa.[114] The
rich mines of that province of the Collao are beyond this lake [in a
region] called Chuchiabo.[115] The mines are in the gorge [caja-chiusa]
of a river, about half-way up the sides. They are made like caves, by
whose mouths they enter to scrape the earth, and they scrape it with
the horns of deer and they carry it outside in certain hides sewn into
the form of sacks or of wine-skins of sheep-hide. The manner in which
they wash it is that they take from the river a [jet?][116] of water,
and on the bank they set up certain very smooth flag-stones on which
they throw the water, after which they draw off by a duct the water of
the [jet?] which has just fallen down [upon the gold-earth?], and the
water carries off the earth little by little so that the gold is left
upon the flag-stones themselves, and in this manner they collect it. The
mines go far into the earth, one ten brazas, another