Note 43 — INTRODUCTION.

In my book, Cuzco and Lima, 1853, written when I was twenty-two, immediately after transcribing the Justiniani version, I assumed the antiquity of the drama. But in my later work, Travels in Peru and India (1862), I expressed a doubt, and inclined to the opinion that Dr. Valdez was the author (Note, p. 138). A subsequent detailed and critical study of the text obliged me to revert to my former belief that Ollantay was, in the main, a composition of Ynca origin, dating from before the conquest. All I have since read has confirmed me in this opinion.