and C. pauxi) turkies, (meleagris gallo-pavo) several species of pheasants, ducks, and moorhens, yacous, or guans, (penelope, pava de monte) and aras, (psittacci macrouri) which are considered delicate eating when young. At this period, the cock, a native of the East Indies, and common to the Sandwich Islands, was totally unknown in America. This fact, important in its connection with the migration of the Malay tribes, has been contested in Spain since the end of the 16th century. Learned Etymologists proved that the Peruvians must have had hens previous to the discovery of the New World, because the language of the Incas designates the cock by a particular word, gualpa. They knew not that gualpa or huallpa, is a contraction of Atahuallpa, and that the natives of Cuzco gave in derision the name of a prince, detested on account of the cruelties exercised by him against the family of Huescar, to the cocks. brought by the Spaniards, imagining, which appears strange enough to the ears of a European, they found some resemblance between the crowing of that bird and the name of Atahuallpa. This anec- dote, to be found in the work of Garcilasso, (t. i. p. 331.) was related to me in 1802, at Caxamarca, where I saw, in the family of the Astor pilco, the descendants of the last Inca of Peru. E SA These poor Indians inhabit the ruins of the palace of Atahuallpa. Garcilasso relates, that the Indians imitated the crowing of the cock, by pronouncing in cadence words of four syllables. The partisans of Huescar had composed burlesque songs in derision of Atahuallpa, and three of his generals, named Quilliscacha, Chalchuchina, and Ruminavi. When we consult languages as historical monuments, we must carefully distinguish what is ancient from what has been naturalized by custom. The Peruvian word for a cat, micitu, is as modern as huallpa. The Peruvians formed micitu from the radicalmiz, because they observed that the Spaniards made use of it in calling the cat, and they believed, therefore, miz to be the name of the animal. It is a very singular phisiological phenomenon, that on the Table Land of the city of Cuzco, more elevated and colder than that of Mexico, hens have only begun to season to the climate, and to propagate, within the last thirty years. Till that period, all the chickens perished immediately after hatching. At present, the different varieties of hens, especially those of Mosambique, of which the flesh is black, have become common in both hemispheres, wherever the people of the old continent have penetrated. Several tribes of Savage Indians, who live in the vicinity of European settlements have procured them. When we New Spain has supplied Europe with the E 4 Alleghany mountains*, M. Michaux, informs The Pintades (numida meleagris) designated * Voyage de Michaux, p. 190. † Beckmann, 1. c. t. iii. p. 238-270. lushanimel scorphs i meet with the human ves A 1 The cultivation of the mulberry, and the rearing of silk-worms, were introduced by the care of Cortez, a few years after the siege of Tenochtitlan. There is a mulberry tree on the ridge of the Cordilleras peculiar to the equinoctial regions, the morus acuminata, Bonpl. which we found wild in the kingdom of Quito, near the villages of Piso and Puembo. The leaf of this mulberry is not so hard as that of the red mulberry, (M. rubra) of the United States, and the silk-worms eat it like that of the white mulberry of China. This last tree, which, according to Olivier de Serres, was only planted in France, in the reign of Charles the Eighth, about the year 1494, was already very common in Mexico, about the middle of the 16th century. A considerable quantity of silk was then produced in the Intendancy of la Puebla, in the environs of Panuco*, and in the Province of Oaxaca, where several villages of the Misteca still bear the names of Tepexe de la Seda (Silk), and San Francisco de la Seda. The policy of the Council of the Indies, constantly unfavourable to the manufactures of Mexico, on the one hand, and on the other, the most active commerce with China, and the interest which the Philippine Company have in selling the Asiatic silks to the Mexicans, seem to be the principal causes of the gradual annihilation of this *La Florida del Inca (Madrid, 1723) t. i. p. 258. |