apartments, for the accommodation of the numerous priests who officiated in the services of the temple.

All the plate, the ornaments, the utensils of every description, appropriated to the uses of religion, were of gold or silver. Twelve immense vases of the latter metal stood on the floor of the great saloon, filled with the grain of the Indian corn; the censers for the perfumes, the ewers which held the water for sacrifice, the pipes which conducted it through subterraneous channels into the buildings, the reservoirs that received it, even the agricultural implements used in the gardens of the temple, were all of the same rich materials. The gardens sparkled with flowers of gold and silver, and various imitations of the vegetable kingdom. Animals, also, were to be found there-among which the llama, with its golden fleece, was most conspicuous,executed in the same style, and with a degree of skill which, in this instance, probably, did not surpass the excellence of the material.

If the reader sees in this fairy picture only the romantic colouring of some fabulous El Dorado, he must consider that these "Houses of the Sun," as they were styled, were the common reservoir into which flowed all the streams of public and private benefaction throughout the empire. Some of the statements, through credulity, and others in the desire of exciting admiration, may be greatly exaggerated; but, in the coincidence of contemporary testimony, it is not easy to determine the exact line which should mark the measure of our skepticism.

Certain it is, that the glowing picture I have given is warranted by those who saw these buildings in their pride, or shortly after they had been despoiled by the cupidity of their countrymen. Many of the costly articles were buried by the natives, or thrown into the waters of the rivers and the lakes; but enough remained to attest the unprecedented opulence of these religious establishments. Such things as were in their nature portable were speedily removed, to gratify the craving of the Conquerors, who even tore away the solid cornices and frieze of gold from the great temple, filling the vacant places with the cheaper, but since it affords no temptation to avarice-more durable, material of plaster. Yet even thus shorn of their splendour, the venerable edifices still presented an attraction to the spoiler, who found in their dilapidated walls an inexhaustible quarry for the erection of other buildings. On the very ground once crowned by the gorgeous Coricancha rose the stately church of St. Dominic, one of the most magnificent structures of the New World. Fields of maize and lucerne now bloom on the spot which glowed with the golden gardens of the temple; and the friar chants his orisons within the consecrated precincts once occupied by the Children of the Sun.

The whole number of functionaries, including those of the sacerdotal order, who officiated at the Coricancha alone, was no less than four thousand.

TEMPLES OF ELLORA

JOHN B. SEELY

RUCE'S emotions were not more vivid or tumultuous

on first beholding the springs of the Nile than mine were on reaching the Temples of Ellora. I at once rushed into the wonders and glories of these immortal works; but it is totally impossible to describe the feelings of admiration and awe excited in the mind upon first beholding these stupendous excavations.

On a close approach to the temples, the eye and imagination are bewildered with the variety of interesting objects that present themselves on every side. The feelings are interested to a degree of awe, wonder and delight that at first is painful, and it is a long time before they become sufficiently sobered and calm to contemplate with any attention the surrounding wonders. The death-like stillness of the place, the solitude of the adjoining plains, the romantic beauty of the country, and the mountain itself, perforated in every part, all tend to impress the mind of the stranger with feelings quite new and far different from those felt in viewing magnificent edifices amidst the busy haunts of man. Everything here invites the mind to contemplation, and every surrounding object reminds it of a remote period and a mighty people, who were in a state of high civiliza