On the night of the 15th and 16th of December in that year the
wealthy city was fired by the Carangas and the Suchimanis, and all the
inhabitants slain with arrows or clubs. The first lords of the soil
had resumed their rights.

When the news of the event was brought to Lima, the viceroy of
the period, Antonio Amat, swore on a piece of the true cross to
exterminate every Indian in Peru. It is to the persuasions of his
favorite, Mariquita Gallegas, that the preservation of the native
tribes from a bloody extirpation is due. This woman, _La Perichola_,
whose caricatured likeness we see in the most agreeable of Offenbach's
operas, and whose deeds of mercy and edifying end in a convent entitle
her to some charitable consideration, persuaded her royal lover to
operate on the natives with missionaries and teachers rather than with
fire and sword. Antonio Amat yielded, and the Indians have survived.

[Illustration: "ANOTHER SAVAGE HAD FOUND A PAIR OF LINEN
PANTALOONS."--P. 146.]

Let no traveler go to South America and cross the Andes with the idea
of unearthing a Nineveh or a Babylon on the site of San Gavan. The
emissaries of Don Santo Domingo were quickly standing, among the
grinning and amused Indians, on the locality of the Golden Depot of
San Gavan. But Nature had thoroughly reclaimed her own, and the place,
indicated again and again by the savages with absolute unanimity,
showed nothing but mounds of fern and moss under canopies of forest
trees.

A day's rest and a sketch or two were consecrated by Marcoy to this
historic spot, the grave of a civilization. It had been well if he