d structures of Tiahuanuco the
remains of "an Indian pueblo after the ordinary form," and in the enormous
and elaborate fortifications of Cuzco and Ollantay-tambo the works of
village communities and petty tribes, is not only bent on the support of a
theory at whatever cost of truth and sense, but predetermined, one would
say, to hold it as a monopoly. Compared with absurdities of this order,
the wildest imaginings of M. Brasseur de Bourbourg are entitled to be
ranked with the conjectures of a sane philosophy.

Mr. Squier, as we have seen, gives no countenance to baseless
speculations, and the publication of his book has, it is evident, fallen
on them as a heavy blow and great discouragement. The preciseness of his
details gives a force and authority to both his statements and opinions
which cannot easily be evaded or resisted even by those most given to
substituting assumptions for evidence and facts. His descriptions of the
stone-work of the ancient Peruvians are not likely to suggest to
unsophisticated readers an identity of race and institutions with the
inhabitants of wigwams. "The joints are all of a precision unknown in our
architecture, and not rivalled in the remains of ancient art that had
fallen under my notice in Europe. The statement of the old writers, that
the accuracy with which the stones of some structures were fitted together
was such that it was impossible to introduce the thinnest knife-blade or
finest needle between them, may be taken as strictly true. The world has
nothing to show in the way of stone-cutting and fitting to surpass the
skill and accuracy displayed in the Indian structures of Cuzco. All modern
work of the kind there--and there are some fine examples of skill--looks
rude and barbarous in comparison." We may imagine the straits to which the
advocates of Lo are driven when they point to the absence of mortar or
cement of any kind in such walls as a proof of rudeness and ignorance in
the builders. But, as Mr. Squier reminds us, Humboldt found a true mortar
in the ruins of Pullal and Canuar, in Northern Peru. Humboldt found, too,
in the same region the remains of paved roads not inferior to any Roman
roads which he had seen in Italy, France or Spain; and though Mr. Squier
states that few traces of such roads now exist in the southern part of the
country, and infers that they never existed here, since "the modern
pathways must follow the ancient lines," and "there is no reason why they
sho