Shortly afterwards we descended to the Rio Grande Valley at Callanga, where we pitched our camps among the most extensive ruins that I have seen in the coastal desert.  They covered an area of one hundred acres, the houses being crowded closely together.  It gave one a strange sensation to find such a very large metropolis in what is now a desolate region.  The general appearance of Callanga was strikingly reminiscent of some of the large groups of ruins in our own Southwest.  Nothing about it indicated Inca origin.  There were no terraces in the vicinity.  It is difficult to imagine what such a large population could have done here, or how they lived.  The walls were of compact cobblestones, rough-laid and stuccoed with adobe and sand.  Most of the stucco had come off.  Some of the houses had seats, or small sleeping-platforms, built up at one end.  Others contained two or three small cells, possibly storerooms, with neither doors nor windows.  We found a number of burial cists—­some square, others rounded—­lined with small cobblestones.  In one house, at the foot of “cellar stairs” we found a subterranean room, or tomb.  The entrance to it was covered with a single stone lintel.  In examining this tomb Mr. Tucker had a narrow escape from being bitten by a boba, a venomous snake, nearly three feet in length, with vicious mouth, long fangs like a rattlesnake, and a strikingly mottled skin.  At one place there was a low pyramid less than ten feet in height.  To its top led a flight of rude stone steps.

Among the ruins we found a number of broken stone dishes, rudely carved out of soft, highly porous, scoriaceous lava.  The dishes must have been hard to keep clean!  We also found a small stone mortar, probably used for grinding paint; a broken stone war club; and a broken compact stone mortar and pestle possibly used for grinding corn.  Two stones, a foot and a half long, roughly rounded, with a shallow groove across the middle of the flatter sides, resembled sinkers used by fishermen to hold down large nets, although ten times larger than any I had ever seen used.  Perhaps they were to tie down roofs in a gale.  There were a few potsherds lying on the surface of the ground, so weathered as to have lost whatever decoration they once had.  We did no excavating.  Callanga offers an interesting field for archeological investigation.  Unfortunately, we had heard nothing of it previously, came upon it unexpectedly, and had but little time to give it.  After the first night camp in the midst of the dead city we made the discovery that although it seemed to be entirely deserted, it was, as a matter of fact, well populated!  I was reminded of Professor T. D. Seymour’s story of his studies in the ruins of ancient Greece.  We wondered what the fleas live on ordinarily.