l windows. The roof
of this apartment has also an aperture, affording access to the third
floor, the ceiling of which forms the roof of the house, and consists
of rather thick plates of stone. The upper room is usually less lofty
than the two rooms below it, and seems to have been used as a
provision store-room. I found in one of these upper rooms the mummy of
a child very well embalmed. The family appear to have lived chiefly on
the ground-floors. The place for cooking is often plainly perceptible.
The second floor was probably the sleeping apartment. In the course of
my travels, when overtaken by storms, I often retreated for shelter
into one of these ruined dwellings.

The ancient Peruvians frequently buried their dead in their own houses,
and then removed from them. This custom appears to have been very
general about the time of the Spanish conquest, when a great number of
Indians committed suicide in despair. Household utensils were placed in
the graves, when the dead were buried in the houses, as well as when
they were interred in other places. In many houses in which I made
diggings I regularly found the following arrangement. Under a stratum of
earth two feet deep lay the body, in a state of good preservation, and
generally, but not always, in a sitting posture. On clearing away
another stratum of earth equally deep there is found a variety of
household vessels for cooking, together with water-pots of clay, gourds,
hunting and fishing implements, &c. There is frequently a third layer of
earth, beneath which the gold and silver vessels and the household
deities are deposited. The idols are of clay, stone, and copper, or of
the precious metals. Those of clay are hollow, flat, compressed, and in
most instances the faces are painted. Those of stone are of granite,
porphyry, or sand-stone. These stone images are solid, and often several
feet high. The golden idols are always hollow; but they exhibit no
distinct trace of the soldering. They are of various sizes; some of them
weigh three quarters of a pound. Those of silver are always solid. All
these images of deities have the same physiognomy, and
disproportionately large head. In most instances the head is covered by
a peculiar kind of cap.

The vessels used for holding water or other liquids are very various in
color and form. Most of them exhibit ludicrous caricatures of human
figures; others are unrecognisable representations of animals or fancy
figures. These