Searching for Treasure in Peru.

Te Aroha News, Volume VI, Issue 318, 21 November 1888, Page 4

Searching for Treasure in Peru.

A limited iiabiliby company (says the "New York Sun') has. been formed at Mollendo with a capital of $40,000. It is called the Compania Anomina Exploradora do Las Huscas del Inca, and its business is to be the searching of the old burial grounds of the Peruvian Incas for buried treasures in money or other valuables. It has received a concession from the Peruvian authorities, and propose 3 fco go at its work in a systematic but>ine&s>-lifce fashion. The field of the Company has been pretty well worked over already i>y haphazard plunderers from i all parts of the world, who have (locked to Peru from the times of Pi/.ano till the present day ; but there are yet some very substantial legends of buried wealth that has not been discovcied.

A Vault Full of Golden Images. Under the old Castle oi Cu&co, lor instance, Felipe de Pomanes tells bhttt. thove ib a vault containing figui*os of all the ]noas> wrought in tine gold, and that in his own day they had been seen by a eorfcain Dona Maria de B^nuevil. She, the story gne^, wa& married bo a descendant of the Inca.-, and reptoaeheci him with being too pooi- to '.support hoi 1 pioperly. Tin- ,ifc Ja?f -o irti taled him that he led hei blindfolded throujrh many wintling- pa^-a^e 3 into a room where she saw wealth fcuch a& no mortal evei dreamed of, and asked hei what »he thought of that lor a poor manS nost-egg.

The Temp c ot the Sun at Cucco. When Humboldb was exploring- in the neighbourhood of the Temple of the .Sun at Cuzco, a poor lad, a descendant of the ancient; kings, bold him the sfcory which is still current among- the Indians, that the golden chair ot the lucas was sunk in the baths afc Pulfcamarac, and that theie are gardens with artificial trees of the piue&t gold beneath the temple. These gardens, by Hie way, aie mentioned by the earliest historians of the Conquest. Humboldt's lad, when asked why he did not seek for this hidden treasure, said that it would do him no good if he found it, but would only cause his neishbouis to hate and injure him. 'We have a little Hold,' he said, 'and good wheat' That contented him. This same spirit .scenic to have animated all the descendants of the ancient race of Peru, and encourages people like those who have just put i-40,000 iiito the Society Exploiadora, to hope that only a pavt of the ancient treasure ha-. o\er ! .been discoveied. It is alleged that the ! Indians can generally get gold when they actually need it, as at the time o"f ! the rebellion of Pumacaqua in 1814, when, according to the story of an old woman of the Astete family, told bo Mr Markham some thirty years ago, her father having been a colleague of Pumacaqua and present at the time, Pumacaqua entered the council chambers laden with gold diippinsr wet, fiom a journey he had made up the bed of the Huatapay to a cave tilled with golden figuieo. it wa^ always believed then, according go the historians, that the rebel chiefs hai some such f-tore to draw upon, and it is certain that after his final defeat Puraacaqua oiieied to give a pile of gold bigger than that of Atahualpa, t-o ancient chieftain, as a ransom for his lite. The ofler was declined, and he died with the secret unrevealed, at least to his conquerors.

The Great Golden Chain of the litcas. This Atahualpa, it is a matter of history, when in captivity offered a room filled with gold as a ransom ; but Pi/arro demanded double the amount, and, the Incaa agreeing, sent messengers all over the kingdom to bring it. These messengers on their way to the capital heard that Atahualpa had been strangled, and they threw down their loads of gold, and, it is said, buried them somewhere in the mountains of Llanganati, to the noithwest of Quito, though no search has ever revealed ihe spot. Then there is the golden chain of the Incas, every link as thick at- a man's arm, and its length so great thau it went twice around the great square of Huaoapata, and which is said to have been thrown into the deep Lake of Urcos to save it from the Spaniards. There can still be seen a drift which the Spaniards "tarted through the mountains to drain the lake, but which was never completed While these and similar legends do very well to fiie the ardour of dubious investors in the stock of the Society Exploradora, it i- highly piobable that the actual work of the company will be in the less romantic line of digging up the bones of ancient inhabitants for the sake of the trinklets which may have Been buried with them. This sort of petty thievery is less atoraotive to the imagination than the exhumation of forests of golden tiees and conventions of golden Incas, but it will probably pay better in the end.