Note 209 — Chapter LI

The Spanish editor here has the following note. He says that the fault did not lie with the Spaniards, but in the very natural want of archæological knowledge in Cieza himself, and in his extreme credulity, believing all the stories of the Orejones and descendants of the Yncas, for whom everything that was worthy of notice in the country was the exclusive work of those sovereigns. It is now a generally received opinion that the very ancient cyclopean work at Cuzco was due to a people who lived long before Ynca Yupanqui, and even before Manco Ccapac, if it be true that the latter appeared in the beginning of the eleventh century. Moreover, the Yncas themselves destroyed some, and left others, without completing what had been begun by their predecessors. Not all the ruins in Peru were due to Spanish vandalism. On the contrary, the Viceroy Don Francisco de Toledo and others, far from contributing to the destruction of the fortress of Cuzco, took measures to preserve it, and, on more than one occasion, prevented the stones from being used for modern buildings. This was especially the case in the year 1577, when the Jesuits of Cuzco applied for leave to take stones from the fortress for their monastery and church, and were refused.