Gruesome Discovery.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLIX, Issue 4, 22 January 1913, Page 8

Gruesome Discovery.

“Collier’s Weekly” recently published particulars of a gruesome discovery which throws an entirely new light upon the habits and customs of the prehistoric people of Peru, and suggests that there existed in South America a civilisation many centuries older than that which was brought to an end by the Spanish conquest. Miss Grace Wentworth, who tells the story of the discovery, states that she received it first hand .from a steamboat engineer, and in proof of the facts “Collier’s” publishes a very convincing photograph. It appears that the engineer and a companion made a journey inland while their ship was voyaging up the Uayali River in Peru. The ship had run out of fresh meat, and it was necessary to try some game. Quite near the bank of the river a clearing was noticed amongst the dense growth which

fringed the stream, and the engineer eaught sight of something resembling a stone wall. Such an object was extremely strange in the middle of a dense jungle, hundreds of miles from the nearest village, and it was decided to investigate. At the bottom of a small foothill the engineer and his friend found a wall about twenty-five feet high and two hundred feet long. It had apparently been made of red clay, but ages of tropical heat and rains liad turned it to a greenish hue. Along the top of the wall at regular intervals were large ornamental vases of the same material as the wall. A ladder Was improvised, and the explorers reached the top of the wall. They found it was part of a vast enclosure, filled to within a few feet of the top with ‘human skeletons, millions in number. A photograph was taken of the’ weird scene, and archaeologists who have inspected it assert that the vases which, decorate the wall are not of Aztec design at all, but characteristically Persian. The annals of South American archaeology throw no light on the mystery of how this huge pit of .bones came to be constructed or of the nation that constructed it.