Garcilasso, who was a Peruvian by the mother's side, and who wrote his Commentaries in 1560, records of Viracocha, the seventh Inca, that he constructed "an aqueduct, 12 feet in depth, and 120 leagues in length. The source of it was in springs on the top of a high mountain between Parca and Picuy, which were so plentiful, that at the very head of the conduit they seemed to be rivers. The current of water had its course through all the country of the Rucanac, and served to water the pasturage of those uninhabited lands, which are about 18 leagues in breadth, watering- almost the whole country

of Peru:' " There " another says the same author, is," aqueduct, which traverses the whole country of Cuntisuya, running above 150 leagues from south to north. Its head is from the top of high mountains, and the water falling into the plains of Quechuas, greatly refresh their pasturage, when the heats of the summer and autumn have dried up the moisture of the earth. There are many streams of like nature which run through divers parts of the empire, which, being conveyed by aqueducts, at the charge and expense of the Incas, are works of grandeur and ostentation, and recommend the magnificence of the Incas to all posterity ; for these aqueducts may well be compared to the miraculous

fabrics, which have been the works of mighty princes, who have left their prodigious monuments of ostentation to be admired by future ages, for indeed, we ought to consider that these waters had their sources and beginning from vast high mountains, and were carried over craggy rocks and inaccessible passages ; and to make these ways plain, they had no help of instruments forged of steel or iron, such as pickaxes or sledges, but served themselves only of one stone to break another.