erity songs, historical narratives, and long historical poems. It is
said, also, that tragedies and comedies were composed and preserved in
this way, and that dramatic performances were among the regular
entertainments encouraged and supported by the Incas. Whether the art of
writing ever existed in the country can not now be determined. Some of
the Peruvian tongues had names for paper; the people knew that a kind of
paper or parchment could be made of plantain leaves, and, according to
Montesinos, writing and books were common in the older times, that is to
say, in ages long previous to the Incas. He explains how the art was
lost, as I shall presently show.

It is not improbable that a kind of hieroglyphical writing existed in
some of the Peruvian communities, especially among the Aymaraes.
Humboldt mentions books of hieroglyphical writing found among the
Panoes, on the River Ucayali, which were "bundles of their paper
resembling our volumes in quarto." A Franciscan missionary found an old
man sitting at the foot of a palm-tree and reading one of these books to
several young persons. The Franciscan was told that the writing
"contained hidden things which no stranger ought to know." It was seen
that the pages of the book were "covered with figures of men, animals,
and isolated characters, deemed hieroglyphical, and arranged in lines
with order and symmetry." The Panoes said these books "were transmitted
to them by their ancestors, and had relation to wanderings and ancient
wars." There is similar writing on a prepared llama skin found among
other antiquities on a peninsula in Lake Titicaca, which is now in the
museum at La Paz, Bolivia. It appears to be a record of atrocities
perpetrated by the Spaniards at the time of the Conquest, and shows that
some of the Aymaraes could at that time write hieroglyphics.

XI.

PERUVIAN ANCIENT HISTORY.

The Peruvians, like most other important peoples in all ages, had
mythical wonder-stories instead of authentic ancient history to explain
the origin of their nation. These were told in traditions and legends
preserved and transmitted from generation to generation by the
_amautas_. If they were also recorded in secret books of hieroglyphical
writing, such as those found among the Panoes on the Ucayali, which
"contained hidden things that no stranger ought to know," satisfactory
evidence of the fact has never been brought to light. In addition to
these, they had many histori