"'I have had various opportunities,' says a recent traveller, 'of closely examining one of these canals, which is formed at the source of the river Sana, on the right bank, and extends along a distance of 15 leagues, without reckoning sinuosities, and which consequently supplied a large population, particularly one city, whose ruins still remain in the vicinity of a farm named Cojal.' " These aqueducts were often of great magnitude, executed with much skill, patience, and ingenuity, and were boldly carried along the most precipitous mountains, frequently, according to Ulloa, to the distance of 15 or 20 leagues. Many of them consisted of two conduits, a short distance apart the larger of these was for general use the other and ; ;

smaller to supply the inhabitants and water the fields, while the first was cleansing, a

* New Spain, vol. ii., p. 46.

PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 73

circumstance in which they bear a striking resemblance to those of Mexico. They also conveyed water to the most distant places, by subterranean conduits. Garcilasso describes five fountains that existed in the Temple of the Sun, at Cuczo, and which were used for sacred purposes, one of which he saw flowing-, the others having become dry. " It is probably one of these fountains that now supplies the Hospital de Naturales ; its pipesare buried under the earth, and cannot be traced, and, as in the time of the Peruvian historian, its sources are unknown. At Lanasca, there is also a fountain supplied through subterranean conduits, the source of which has never been traced. Many of these great works became useless after the conquest, from their very magnificence, for their pipes being made of gold, excited the cupidity of the avaricious Spaniards, and * others were destroyed from mere wantonness."