New and Interesting Discovery in South America

The National Intelligencer contains a long letter from Mr. Prickett, at Lima, commenting upon the discoveries of extraordinary ruins, said to have been found by Judge Neito in the province of Chichapoyas, while on an exploring expedition. In making a survey of the country, he found, at Cenlap, a building of the most extraordinary character, which he describes a wall of hewn stone 560 feet in width, 3,600 feet in length, and 150 feet high:

"This edifice being solid in the interior for the whole space contained within 5,376,000 feet circumference, which, it has to the before mentioned height of 150 feet is solid and levelled [leveled]; and upon it there is another wall of 300,000 feet in circumference in this form, 600 feet in length, and 500, in breadth, with the same elevation (150 feet) of the lower wall, and, like it, solid and levelled [leveled] to the summit. In this elevation, and also in that of the lower wall are a great many habitations or rooms of the same hewn stone, 18 feet long, and fifteen wide and in these rooms, as well as between the dividing walls of the great wall, are found neatly constructed niches, a yard broad or deep, in which are found bones of the ancient dead, some naked and some in cotton shrouds or blankets of a firm texture, though coarse, and all worked with borders of different colors. If this description is authentic-and we have no reason to doubt it-this must be the greatest building in the world in point of size. We know of nothing in Egypt or Persia to equal it. From the description it must have been a vast tomb, but whether erected by the Indians before the Spanish discovery, or by remote generations, cannot be decided; yet the Judge says that the ingenious and highly wrought specimens

of workmanship, the elegance of the cutting of some of the hardest stone, the ingenuity and solidity of the gigantic work, all in stone; the elegant articles of gold and silver, and the curiously wrought stones found in the mounds, all satisfy him that that territory was occupied by an enlightened nation, which declined in the same manner as others more modern, as Babylon, Balbec, and the cities of Syria; and this, he says, is evidently the work of people from the old world, as the Indians have no instruments of iron to work with."