ANCIENT INCA CITIES.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 14, 4 June 1914, Page 3

ANCIENT INCA CITIES.

I WONDERFUL DISCOVERIES. Captain Campbell Beslev, leader of an exploring party mvliich returned to New York a few weeks ago, thus described the discovery of extraordinary ruins in South America:—"On our arrival at Cnzco we fell in with an old Indian who said that he would show us ruins older than the oldest ruins generally known. He it? was who led ns to three cities which for centuries have lain buried in the luxuriant tropical undergrowth. The like of them, I should say, has not been seen before in any continent. Among the dense masses of the undergrowth we at first could see" nothing, but. the spade and the machete cleared ; a way for us and revealed portions of extraordinary buildings, equal in conI ception and execution to anything that j is to be seen at present in the world of I vivitisatimi. Their architecture was more j impressive than that of oiir British House of Parliament. They were Inca palaces that we saw, containing meetingrooms larger than the rooms in our biggest modern hotels. Our Indian guide said the chief city, which bore the name of Plateryoyoc, once contained a population numbering probably 50,000 souls. We found among these remains of a 'lost world' sonic wonderful specimens of 'dhampi,' which is a mixture of gold and silver, some silver chisels,' a number of semi-circular knives and vessels of all sorts and descriptions. Many of these vessels were richly ornamented. ' We were the first white men to set foot within these cities. It is clear that the Incas in their time possessed methods of their own by which enormous stones might be moved from one place to another. We found one atone, weighing about 300 tons, "which had obviously been brought from a great distance. It had been partially cut with some instrument of the saw type. The cities are guarded by huge, fortified gates of stone. The adjacent river was banked up with stone walls by theßo bold engineers for a distance of forty-five miles, in order to prevent disaster by flood or invasion."