"It is
interesting to inquire whether any other princes of the family of
Manco Capac have remained in the forests; and if there still exist
any of the Incas of Peru in other places." Had I discovered some
descendants of this vanished race? The Montreal Journal, commenting
on my discovery, said: "The question is of extreme interest to the
scientific enquirer, even if they are not what Mr. Ray thinks them."
The royal family consisted of the parents, a son and his wife, a
daughter and her husband, and two younger girls. I was invited to
sleep in the inner room, which the parents occupied, and the two
married couples remained in the common room. All slept in fibre
hammocks, made greasy and black by the smoke from the fire burning on
the floor in the centre of the room. No chimney, window, door, or
article of furniture graced the house.
"The court of the Incas rivalled that of Rome, Jerusalem, or any of
the old Oriental countries, in riches and show, the palaces being
decorated with a great profusion of gold, silver, fine cloth and
precious stones." [Footnote: Rev. Thomas Wood, LL.D., Lima, Peru, In
"Protestant Missions in South America."]
An ancient Spanish writer who measured some of the stones of the
Incan palace at Cuzco tells us there were stones so nicely adjusted
that it was impossible to introduce even the blade of a knife between
them, and that some of those stones were thirty-eight feet long, by
eighteen feet broad, and six feet thick.
