Owing to the diminution of the aboriginal population in Peru, and the constantly increasing corruption of the ancient language, through the substitution of Spanish for Quichua words, the introduction of Spanish modes of expression, and the loss of all purity of style, that language, once so important, which was used by a polished court and civilized people, which was spoken through the extent of a vast empire, and the use of which was spread by careful legislation, is now disappearing. Before long it will be a thing that is past, or perhaps fade away entirely from the memory of living generations. With it will disappear the richest form of all the great American group of languages, no small loss to the student of ethnology. With it will be lost all the traditions which yet remain of the old glory of the Incas, all the elegies, love-songs, and poems which stamp the character of a once powerful, but always gentle and amiable race.
Unlike the English in India, the half-Spanish races of Peru have paid little attention to the history and languages of the aborigines, within the present century; and, if left to them, all traces of the language of the Incas, and of the songs and traditions which remain in it, would, in the course of another century, almost entirely disappear. A few honourable exceptions must, however, be recorded. The late Mariano Rivero paid much attention to the antiquities of his country, and the results of his labours have been published at Vienna.[283] The curas of some of the parishes in the interior, also, especially Dr. Dava of Pucara, Dr. Rosas of Chinchero, and the Cura of Oropesa, near Cuzco, are excellent Quichua scholars, but they are very old men, and their knowledge will die with them.
Dr. Dava had a large collection of the finches, and other birds of the loftier parts of the Andes, hanging in wicker cages along the wall of his house. Amongst them were a little dove called _urpi_; the bright yellow little songster called _silgarito_ in Spanish, and _cchaiña_ in Quichua; the _tuya_, another larger warbler; the _chocclla-poccochi_ or nightingale of Peru; and a little finch with glossy black plumage, pink on the back, and whitish-grey under the wings. He also had some small green paroquets, with long tails and bluish wings, which make their nests under the eaves of roofs, at a height of fourteen thousand feet above the sea. At Pucara some of the inhabitants have small manufactories for making glazed earthenware basins, pots, plates, and cups,[284] which find an extensive market in the villages and towns of the department of Puno, and which will probably long hold their own against the same kind of coarse wares from Europe or the United States.