Note 381 — Chapter LXXIII

The ruins of this great edifice, half fortress half palace, are still to be seen on an elevated point of land overhanging the sea, on the south side of the river of Cañete. I examined these ruins very carefully in 1853. They are divided into two parts. Those furthest from the sea consist of nine chambers. Entering from a breach in the wall, I passed along a gallery broad enough for two men to walk abreast, with a parapet five feet high on one side, and a wall sixteen feet high on the other. The parapet is on the edge of a hill partly faced with adobes. At the end of about twenty yards the gallery turns at right angles into the centre of the building. Here there is a doorway about ten feet high, three feet across at the base, and narrowing as it ascends, with a lintel of willow beams. It leads into a spacious hall, and, on the opposite side, there is a deep recess corresponding with the door. The walls are sixteen feet high, built of moderate sized adobes, formerly plastered over, and, as Cieza de Leon tells us, painted with figures. At the sides of the hall there are small chambers with recesses in the walls, communicating with each other by passages in the rear. There is a distance of two hundred yards, strewn with ruined walls, between this portion of the ruins and that overhanging the sea. The latter is entered by a doorway, which leads into a large square hall, nearly a hundred feet each way. The sides towards the north and west are smooth, but the eastern wall is pierced by fifteen small recesses. On the south side two doorways lead by passages into smaller chambers, also with recesses in the walls. In the upper part of the walls of the great hall the holes, for the beams which supported the roof, are distinctly visible. The walls throughout are three to four feet thick. The doorways, from the lintel to the ground, are eight feet high. On the whole, this is one of the best preserved ruins in the land of the Yncas. The portions of the fortress which were built of stone, were barbarously destroyed by order of the Spanish viceroy Count of Moncloa, and the materials were used for building the castles at Callao.