Page:A History of Architecture in All Countries Vol 2.djvu/596

580 PERUVIAN ARCHITECTURE. Part 1 1. CHAPTER in. PERU. CONTENTS. Historical Notice — Titicaca — Tombs — Walls of Cuzco, etc. CHRONOLOGY. DATES. Manco Capac a.d. 1021 Mayta Capac, 4th Inca, conquers Aymara .... 1126 Conquest by Pizarro 1534 PERU is situated geographically so near to Mexico, and the inhab- itants of both countries had reached so nearly to the same grade of civilization at the time when the Spaniards first visited them and de- stroyed their native institutions, that we might naturally expect a very- considerable similarity in their modes of building and styles of decora- tion. Nothing, however, can be further from the fact; indeed, it would be difficult to conceive two people, however remotely situated from one another, whose styles of art differ so essentially as these two. The Mexican buildings, as we have just seen, are characterized by the most inordinate exuberance of carving, derived probably, with many of the forms of their architecture, from wooden originals. Peru, on the other hand, is one of the very few countries known where timber appears to have been used in primitive times so sparingly that its traces are hardly discernible in subsequent constructions ; and, either from inability to devise, or from want of taste for such a mode of decoration, the sculptured forms are few and insignificant. The material which the Peruvians seem to have used earliest was mud, and in that rainless climate many walls of this substance, erected certainly before the Spanish Conquest, still remain in a state of very tolerable preservation. The next improvement on this seems to have been a sort of rubble masonry or concrete : the last, a Cyclopean masonry of great beauty and solidity. None of these forms, nor any of their derivatives, are found in Mexico ; the climate would not per- mit of the use of the first — hardly of the second ; and in all their buildings, even the earliest, the Mexicans seem to have known how to use stones carefully squared and set with horizontal beds. Another distinction which Peruvian art has in common with many nf those derived from purely stone construction, is the sloping sides of