N. but is now included in the
viceroyalty of New Granada which reaches to the Carribbean sea, with
which it is connected by the river Magdalena. - E.
[13] The substance of this description appears to refer entirely to that
province of the kingdom of Quito which is named Esmeraldas or Tacamez,
on both sides of the equator. - E.
[14] Various reasons have been assigned for the origin of the word Peru,
as the name of the empire of the Incas, unknown to themselves, at
least in that sense. The most probable derivation is from the river
_Piura_, near its northern frontier, where it was first visited by
Pizarro. - E.
[15] This circumstance is unintelligible, as the bones could not shrink,
unless by supposing these _human heads_ to have been the heads of
small apes, resembling human faces. The expression of the text,
immediately before, of human carcasses hung up _in the form of
crosses_, ought perhaps to have been rendered _instead of_ crosses. - E.
[16] A good deal more is said of these giants, both by Zarate and
Garcilasso de la Vega, p. 363, but so vague and absurd as not to be
worth insertion. The whole story seems to have arisen out of the
colossal representation of a man and woman at Puerto viejo. - E.
[17] This is merely a repetition of the _big bones_ of Mexico and the Ohio,
already referred to the Mammoth, or animal ignotum. - E.
[18] Puna is in the bay of Guayaquil, in lat.
