intervals. In 1797 the treasure called Peje chico was secured. The Peje grande has yet to be found. Altogether millions have been obtained in gold ornaments or bars. The mounds are honeycombed with passages leading to store-houses or sepulchral chambers.
The great mounds presented a very different appearance in the time of the Chimu. Originally they were in terraces, on which buildings were erected with pitched roofs, and tastefully painted walls. Verandahs, supported by the twisted stems of algaroba trees, afforded shade, and there were communications with the interior passages and chambers. From the seashore these structures, with gardens at their bases, must have presented a magnificent effect.
The principal palace has been well described by Squier. Imagine a great hall 100 feet long by 52½ wide, with walls covered with an intricate series of arabesques, consisting of stucco patterns in relief on a smooth surface. The walls contain a series of niches with the arabesque work running up between. The end wall is pierced by a door leading to corridors and passages in the pyramidal mounds. One corridor leads to a place where there was a furnace for metallurgic work, near a walled-up closet full of vessels and utensils of gold and silver.
There is a low, broad mound at a distance of a hundred yards from the palace, which has been excavated and proved to be a cemetery. There
p 2
