*29
[Footnote 28: Among others, see Acosta, lib. 6, cap. 15. - Robertson, History of America, (London, 1796,) vol. III. p. 213.]
[Footnote 29: Ondegardo, Rel. Seg., Ms. - Ulloa, Not. Amer., ent.
21.
Humboldt, who a.n.a.lyzed the cement of the ancient structures at Cannar, says that it is a true mortar, formed of a mixture of pebbles and a clayey marl. (Vues des Cordilleres, p. 116.) Father Velasco is in raptures with an "almost imperceptible kind of cement" made of lime and a bituminous substance resembling glue, which incorporated with the stones so as to hold them firmly together like one solid ma.s.s, yet left nothing visible to the eye of the common observer. This glutinous composition, mixed with pebbles, made a sort of Macadamized road much used by the Incas, as hard and almost as smooth as marble. Hist. de Quito, tom. I. pp. 126-128.]
The greatest simplicity is observed in the construction of the buildings, which are usually free from outward ornament; though in some the huge stones are shaped into a convex form with great regularity, and adjusted with such nice precision to one another, that it would be impossible, but for the flutings, to determine the line of junction. In others, the stone is rough, as it was taken from the quarry, in the most irregular forms, with the edges nicely wrought and fitted to each other. There is no appearance of columns or of arches; though there is some contradiction as to the latter point. But it is not to be doubted, that, although they may have made some approach to this mode of construction by the greater or less inclination of the walls, the Peruvian architects were wholly unacquainted with the true principle of the circular arch reposing on its key-stone.
*30
[Footnote 30: Condamine, Mem. ap. Hist. de l"Acad. Royale de Berlin, tom. II. p. 448. - Antig. y Monumentos del Peru, Ms. - Herrera, Hist. General, dec. 5, lib 4, cap. 4. - Acosta, lib. 6, cap. 14. - Ulloa, Voyage to S. America, vol. I. p 469. - Ondegardo, Rel. Seg., Ms.]
The architecture of the Incas is characterized, says an eminent traveller, "by simplicity, symmetry and solidity." *31 It may seem unphilosophical to condemn the peculiar fashion of a nation as indicating want of taste, because its standard of taste differs from our own. Yet there is an incongruity in the composition of the Peruvian buildings which argues a very imperfect acquaintance with the first principles of architecture.
While they put together their bulky ma.s.ses of porphyry and granite with the nicest art, they were incapable of mortising their timbers, and, in their ignorance of iron, knew no better way of holding the beams together than tying them with thongs of maguey. In the same incongruous spirit, the building that was thatched with straw, and unilluminated by a window, was glowing with tapestries of gold and silver! These are the inconsistencies of a rude people, among whom the arts are but partially developed. It might not be difficult to find examples of like inconsistency in the architecture and domestic arrangements of our Anglo-Saxon, and, at a still later period, of our Norman ancestors.
[Footnote 31: "Simplicite, symetrie, et solidite, voila les trois caracteres par lesquels se distinguent avantageus.e.m.e.nt tous les edifices peruviens." Humboldt, Vues des Cordilleres, p. 115.]
Yet the buildings of the Incas were accommodated to the character of the climate, and were well fitted to resist those terrible convulsions which belong to the land of volcanoes. The wisdom of their plan is attested by the number which still survive, while the more modern constructions of the Conquerors have been buried in ruins. The hand of the Conquerors, indeed, has fallen heavily on these venerable monuments, and, in their blind and superst.i.tious search for hidden treasure, has caused infinitely more ruin than time or the earthquake. *32 Yet enough of these monuments still remain to invite the researches of the antiquary.
Those only in the most conspicuous situations have been hitherto examined. But, by the testimony of travellers, many more are to be found in the less frequented parts of the country; and we may hope they will one day call forth a kindred spirit of enterprise to that which has so successfully explored the mysterious recesses of Central America and Yucatan.
[Footnote 32: The anonymous author of the Antig. y Monumentos del Peru, Ms., gives us, at second hand, one of those golden traditions which, in early times, fostered the spirit of adventure. The tradition, in this instance, he thinks well ent.i.tled to credit. The reader will judge for himself.
"It is a well-authenticated report, and generally received, that there is a secret hall in the fortress of Cuzco, where an immense treasure is concealed, consisting of the statues of all the Incas, wrought in gold. A lady is still living, Dona Maria de Esquivel, the wife of the last Inca, who has visited this hall, and I have heard her relate the way in which she was carried to see it.
"Don Carlos, the lady"s husband, did not maintain a style of living becoming his high rank. Dona Maria sometimes reproached him, declaring that she had been deceived into marrying a poor Indian under the lofty t.i.tle of Lord or Inca. She said this so frequently, that Don Carlos one night exclaimed, "Lady! do you wish to know whether I am rich or poor? You shall see that no lord nor king in the world has a larger treasure than I have."
Then covering her eyes with a handkerchief he made her turn round two or three times, and, taking her by the hand, led her a short distance before he removed the bandage. On opening her eyes, what was her amazement! She had gone not more than two hundred paces, and descended a short flight of steps, and she now found herself in a large quadrangular hall, where, ranged on benches round the walls, she beheld the statues of the Incas, each of the size of a boy twelve years old, all of ma.s.sive gold! She saw also many vessels of gold and silver. "In fact," she said, "it was one of the most magnificent treasures in the whole world!""]
I cannot close this a.n.a.lysis of the Peruvian inst.i.tutions without a few reflections on their general character and tendency, which, if they involve some repet.i.tion of previous remarks, may, I trust, be excused, from my desire to leave a correct and consistent impression on the reader. In this survey, we cannot but be struck with the total dissimilarity between these inst.i.tutions and those of the Aztecs, - the other great nation who led in the march of civilization on this western continent, and whose empire in the northern portion of it was as conspicuous as that of the Incas in the south. Both nations came on the plateau, and commenced their career of conquest, at dates, it may be, not far removed from each other. *33 And it is worthy of notice, that, in America, the elevated region along the crests of the great mountain ranges should have been the chosen seat of civilization in both hemispheres.
[Footnote 33: Ante, chap. 1.]
Very different was the policy pursued by the two races in their military career. The Aztecs, animated by the most ferocious spirit, carried on a war of extermination, signalizing their triumphs by the sacrifice of hecatombs of captives; while the Incas, although they pursued the game of conquest with equal pertinacity, preferred a milder policy, subst.i.tuting negotiation and intrigue for violence, and dealt with their antagonists so that their future resources should not be crippled, and that they should come as friends, not as foes, into the bosom of the empire.
Their policy toward the conquered forms a contrast no less striking to that pursued by the Aztecs. The Mexican va.s.sals were ground by excessive imposts and military conscriptions. No regard was had to their welfare, and the only limit to oppression was the power of endurance. They were overawed by fortresses and armed garrisons, and were made to feel every hour that they were not part and parcel of the nation, but held only in subjugation as a conquered people. The Incas, on the other hand, admitted their new subjects at once to all the rights enjoyed by the rest of the community; and, though they made them conform to the established laws and usages of the empire, they watched over their personal security and comfort with a sort of parental solicitude. The motley population, thus bound together by common interest, was animated by a common feeling of loyalty, which gave greater strength and stability to the empire, as it became more and more widely extended; while the various tribes who successively came under the Mexican sceptre, being held together only by the pressure of external force, were ready to fall asunder the moment that that force was withdrawn. The policy of the two nations displayed the principle of fear as contrasted with the principle of love.
The characteristic features of their religious systems had as little resemblance to each other. The whole Aztec pantheon partook more or less of the sanguinary spirit of the terrible war-G.o.d who presided over it, and their frivolous ceremonial almost always terminated with human sacrifice and cannibal orgies. But the rites of the Peruvians were of a more innocent cast, as they tended to a more spiritual worship. For the worship of the Creator is most nearly approached by that of the heavenly bodies, which, as they revolve in their bright orbits, seem to be the most glorious symbols of his beneficence and power.
In the minuter mechanical arts, both showed considerable skill; but in the construction of important public works, of roads, aqueducts, ca.n.a.ls, and in agriculture in all its details, the Peruvians were much superior. Strange that they should have fallen so far below their rivals in their efforts after a higher intellectual culture, in astronomical science, more especially, and in the art of communicating thought by visible symbols. When we consider the greater refinement of the Incas, their inferiority to the Aztecs in these particulars can be explained only by the fact, that the latter in all probability were indebted for their science to the race who preceded them in the land, - that shadowy race whose origin and whose end are alike veiled from the eye of the inquirer, but who possibly may have sought a refuge from their ferocious invaders in those regions of Central America the architectural remains of which now supply us with the most pleasing monuments of Indian civilization. It is with this more polished race, to whom the Peruvians seem to have borne some resemblance in their mental and moral organization, that they should be compared. Had the empire of the Incas been permitted to extend itself with the rapid strides with which it was advancing at the period of the Spanish conquest, the two races might have come into conflict, or, perhaps, into alliance with one another.
The Mexicans and Peruvians, so different in the character of their peculiar civilization, were, it seems probable, ignorant of each other"s existence; and it may appear singular, that, during the simultaneous continuance of their empires, some of the seeds of science and of art, which pa.s.s so imperceptibly from one people to another, should not have found their way across the interval which separated the two nations. They furnish an interesting example of the opposite directions which the human mind may take in its struggle to emerge from darkness into the light of civilization.
A closer resemblance - as I have more than once taken occasion to notice - may be found between the Peruvian inst.i.tutions and some of the despotic governments of Eastern Asia; those governments where despotism appears in its more mitigated form, and the whole people, under the patriarchal sway of its sovereign, seem to be gathered together like the members of one vast family. Such were the Chinese, for example, whom the Peruvians resembled in their implicit obedience to authority, their mild yet somewhat stubborn temper, their solicitude for forms, their reverence for ancient usage, their skill in the minuter manufactures, their imitative rather than inventive cast of mind, and their invincible patience, which serves instead of a more adventurous spirit for the execution of difficult undertakings. *34
[Footnote 34: Count Carli has amused himself with tracing out the different points of resemblance between the Chinese and the Peruvians. The emperor of China was styled the son of Heaven or of the Sun. He also held a plough once a year in presence of his people, to show his respect for agriculture. And the solstices and equinoxes were noted, to determine the periods of their religious festivals. The coincidences are curious. Lettres Americaines, tom. II. pp. 7, 8.]
A still closer a.n.a.logy may be found with the natives of Hindostan in their division into castes, their worship of the heavenly bodies and the elements of nature, and their acquaintance with the scientific principles of husbandry. To the ancient Egyptians, also, they bore considerable resemblance in the same particulars, as well as in those ideas of a future existence which led them to attach so much importance to the permanent preservation of the body.
But we shall look in vain in the history of the East for a parallel to the absolute control exercised by the Incas over their subjects. In the East, this was founded on physical power, - on the external resources of the government. The authority of the Inca might be compared with that of the Pope in the day of his might, when Christendom trembled at the thunders of the Vatican, and the successor of St. Peter set his foot on the necks of princes. But the authority of the Pope was founded on opinion. His temporal power was nothing. The empire of the Incas rested on both. It was a theocracy more potent in its operation than that of the Jews; for, though the sanction of the law might be as great among the latter, the law was expounded by a human lawgiver, the servant and representative of Divinity.
But the Inca was both the lawgiver and the law. He was not merely the representative of Divinity, or, like the Pope, its vicegerent, but he was Divinity itself. The violation of his ordinance was sacrilege. Never was there a scheme of government enforced by such terrible sanctions, or which bore so oppressively on the subjects of it. For it reached not only to the visible acts, but to the private conduct, the words, the very thoughts, of its va.s.sals.
It added not a little to the efficacy of the government, that, below the sovereign, there was an order of hereditary n.o.bles of the same divine original with himself, who, placed far below himself, were still immeasurably above the rest of the community, not merely by descent, but, as it would seem, by their intellectual nature. These were the exclusive depositaries of power, and, as their long hereditary training made them familiar with their vocation, and secured them implicit deference from the mult.i.tude, they became the prompt and well-practised agents for carrying out the executive measures of the administration. All that occurred throughout the wide extent of his empire - such was the perfect system of communication - pa.s.sed in review, as it were, before the eyes of the monarch, and a thousand hands, armed with irresistible authority, stood ready in every quarter to do his bidding. Was it not, as we have said, the most oppressive, though the mildest, of despotisms?
It was the mildest, from the very circ.u.mstance, that the transcendent rank of the sovereign, and the humble, nay, superst.i.tious, devotion to his will made it superfluous to a.s.sert this will by acts of violence or rigor. The great ma.s.s of the people may have appeared to his eyes as but little removed above the condition of the brute, formed to minister to his pleasures.
But, from their very helplessness, he regarded them with feelings of commiseration, like those which a kind master might feel for the poor animals committed to his charge, or - to do justice to the beneficent character attributed to many of the Incas - that a parent might feel for his young and impotent offspring. The laws were carefully directed to their preservation and personal comfort. The people were not allowed to be employed on works pernicious to their health, nor to pine - a sad contrast to their subsequent destiny - under the imposition of tasks too heavy for their powers. They were never made the victims of public or private extortion; and a benevolent forecast watched carefully over their necessities, and provided for their relief in seasons of infirmity, and for their sustenance in health. The government of the Incas, however arbitrary in form, was in its spirit truly patriarchal.
Yet in this there was nothing cheering to the dignity of human nature. What the people had was conceded as a boon, not as a right. When a nation was brought under the sceptre of the Incas, it resigned every personal right, even the rights dearest to humanity. Under this extraordinary polity, a people advanced in many of the social refinements, well skilled in manufactures and agriculture, were unacquainted, as we have seen, with money. They had nothing that deserved to be called property. They could follow no craft, could engage in no labor, no amus.e.m.e.nt, but such as was specially provided by law. They could not change their residence or their dress without a license from the government.
They could not even exercise the freedom which is conceded to the most abject in other countries, that of selecting their own wives. The imperative spirit of despotism would not allow them to be happy or miserable in any way but that established by law.
The power of free agency - the inestimable and inborn right of every human being - was annihilated in Peru.
The astonishing mechanism of the Peruvian polity could have resulted only from the combined authority of opinion and positive power in the ruler to an extent unprecedented in the history of man. Yet that it should have so successfully gone into operation, and so long endured, in opposition to the taste, the prejudices, and the very principles of our nature, is a strong proof of a generally wise and temperate administration of the government.
The policy habitually pursued by the Incas for the prevention of evils that might have disturbed the order of things is well exemplified in their provisions against poverty and idleness. In these they rightly discerned the two great causes of disaffection in a populous community. The industry of the people was secured not only by their compulsory occupations at home, but by their employment on those great public works which covered every part of the country, and which still bear testimony in their decay to their primitive grandeur. Yet it may well astonish us to find, that the natural difficulty of these undertakings, sufficiently great in itself, considering the imperfection of their tools and machinery, was inconceivably enhanced by the politic contrivance of government. The royal edifices of Quito, we are a.s.sured by the Spanish conquerors, were constructed of huge ma.s.ses of stone, many of which were carried all the way along the mountain roads from Cuzco, a distance of several hundred leagues. *35 The great square of the capital was filled to a considerable depth with mould brought with incredible labor up the steep slopes of the Cordilleras from the distant sh.o.r.es of the Pacific Ocean. *36 Labor was regarded not only as a means, but as an end, by the Peruvian law.
[Footnote 35: "Era muy princ.i.p.al intento que la gente no holgase, que dava causa a que despues que los Ingas estuvieron en paz hacer traer de Quito al Cuzco piedra que venia de provincia en provincia para hacer casas para si o pa el Sol en gran cantidad, y del Cuzco llevalla a Quito pa el mismo efecto, . . . . . y asi destas cosas hacian los Ingas muchas de poco provecho y de escesivo travajo en que traian ocupadas las provincias ordinariamte, y en fin el travajo era causa de su conservacion."
Ondegardo, Rel. Prim., Ms. - Also Antig. y Monumentos del Peru, Ms.]
[Footnote 36: This was literally gold dust; for Ondegardo states, that, when governor of Cuzco, he caused great quant.i.ties of gold vessels and ornaments to be disinterred from the sand in which they had been secreted by the natives. "Que toda aquella plaza del Cuzco le sacaron la tierra propia, y se llevo a otras partes por cosa de gran estima, e la hincheron de arena de la costa de la mar, como hasta dos palmos y medio en algunas partes, mas sembraron por toda ella muchos vasos de oro e plata, y hovejuelas y hombrecillos pequenos de lo mismo, lo cual se ha sacado en mucha cantidad, que todo lo hemos visto; desta arena estaba toda la plaza, quando yo fui a governar aquella Ciudad; e si fue verdad que aquella se trajo de ellos, afirman e tienen puestos en sus registros, paresceme que sea ansi, que toda la tierra junta tubo necesidad de entender en ello, por que la plaza es grande, y no tiene numero las cargas que en ella entraron; y la costa por lo mas cerca esta mas de n.o.benta leguas a lo que creo, y cierto yo me satisfice, porque todos dicen, que aquel genero de arena, no lo hay hasta la costa." Rel. Seg., Ms]
With their manifold provisions against poverty the reader has already been made acquainted. They were so perfect, that, in their wide extent of territory, - much of it smitten with the curse of barrenness, - no man, however humble, suffered from the want of food and clothing. Famine, so common a scourge in every other American nation, so common at that period in every country of civilized Europe, was an evil unknown in the dominions of the Incas.
The most enlightened of the Spaniards who first visited Peru, struck with the general appearance of plenty and prosperity, and with the astonishing order with which every thing throughout the country was regulated, are loud in their expressions of admiration. No better government, in their opinion, could have been devised for the people. Contented with their condition, and free from vice, to borrow the language of an eminent authority of that early day, the mild and docile character of the Peruvians would have well fitted them to receive the teachings of Christianity, had the love of conversion, instead of gold, animated the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of the Conquerors. *37 And a philosopher of a later time, warmed by the contemplation of the picture - which his own fancy had colored - of public prosperity and private happiness under the rule of the Incas, p.r.o.nounces "the moral man in Peru far superior to the European." *38
[Footnote 37: "Y si Dios permitiera que tubieran quien con celo de Cristiandad, y no con ramo de codicia, en lo pasado, les dieran entera noticia de nuestra sagrada Religion, era gente en que bien imprimiera, segun vemos por lo que ahora con la buena orden que hay se obra." Sarmiento, Relacion, Ms., cap. 22.
But the most emphatic testimony to the merits of the people is that afforded by Mancio Sierra Lejesema, the last survivor of the early Spanish Conquerors, who settled in Peru. In the preamble to his testament, made, as he states, to relieve his conscience, at the time of his death, he declares that the whole population, under the Incas, was distinguished by sobriety and industry; that such things as robbery and theft were unknown; that, far from licentiousness, there was not even a prost.i.tute in the country; and that every thing was conducted with the greatest order, and entire submission to authority. The panegyric is somewhat too unqualified for a whole nation, and may lead one to suspect that the stings of remorse for his own treatment of the natives goaded the dying veteran into a higher estimate of their deserts than was strictly warranted by facts. Yet this testimony by such a man at such a time is too remarkable, as well as too honorable to the Peruvians, to be pa.s.sed over in silence by the historian; and I have transferred the doc.u.ment in the original to Appendix, No.
4.]
[Footnote 38: "Sans doute l"homme moral du Perou etoit infiniment plus perfectionne que l"Europeen." Carli, Lettres Americaines, tom. I. p. 215.]
Yet such results are scarcely reconcilable with the theory of the government I have attempted to a.n.a.lyze. Where there is no free agency, there can be no morality. Where there is no temptation, there can be little claim to virtue. Where the routine is rigorously prescribed by law, the law, and not the man, must have the credit of the conduct. If that government is the best, which is felt the least, which encroaches on the natural liberty of the subject only so far as is essential to civil subordination, then of all governments devised by man the Peruvian has the least real claim to our admiration.
It is not easy to comprehend the genius and the full import of inst.i.tutions so opposite to those of our own free republic, where every man, however humble his condition, may aspire to the highest honors of the state, - may select his own career, and carve out his fortune in his own way; where the light of knowledge, instead of being concentrated on a chosen few, is shed abroad like the light of day, and suffered to fall equally on the poor and the rich; where the collision of man with man wakens a generous emulation that calls out latent talent and tasks the energies to the utmost; where consciousness of independence gives a feeling of self-reliance unknown to the timid subjects of a despotism; where, in short, the government is made for man, - not as in Peru, where man seemed to be made only for the government.
The New World is the theatre on which these two political systems, so opposite in their character, have been carried into operation. The empire of the Incas has pa.s.sed away and left no trace. The other great experiment is still going on, - the experiment which is to solve the problem, so long contested in the Old World, of the capacity of man for self-government. Alas for humanity, if it should fail!
The testimony of the Spanish conquerors is not uniform in respect to the favorable influence exerted by the Peruvian inst.i.tutions on the character of the people. Drinking and dancing are said to have been the pleasures to which they were immoderately addicted.
Like the slaves and serfs in other lands, whose position excluded them from more serious and enn.o.bling occupations, they found a subst.i.tute in frivolous or sensual indulgence. Lazy, luxurious, and licentious, are the epithets bestowed on them by one of those who saw them at the Conquest, but whose pen was not too friendly to the Indian. *39 Yet the spirit of independence could hardly be strong in a people who had no interest in the soil, no personal rights to defend; and the facility with which they yielded to the Spanish invader - after every allowance for their comparative inferiority - argues a deplorable dest.i.tution of that patriotic feeling which holds life as little in comparison with freedom.
[Footnote 39: "Heran muy dados a la lujuria y al bever, tenian acceso carnal con las hermanas y las mugeres de sus padres como no fuesen sus mismas madres, y aun algunos avia que con ellas mismas lo hacian y ansi mismo con sus hijas. Estando borrachos tocavan algunos en el pecado nefando, emborrachavanse muy a menudo, y estando borrachos todo lo que el demonio les traia a la voluntad hacian Heran estos orejones muy soberbios y presuntuosos.
. . . . . Tenian otras muchas maldades que por ser muchas no las digo." Pedro Pizarro, Descub. y Conq., Ms.
These random aspersions of the hard conqueror show too gross an ignorance of the inst.i.tutions of the people to merit much confidence as to what is said of their character.]
But we must not judge too hardly of the unfortunate native, because he quailed before the civilization of the European. We must not be insensible to the really great results that were achieved by the government of the Incas. We must not forget, that, under their rule, the meanest of the people enjoyed a far greater degree of personal comfort, at least, a greater exemption from physical suffering, than was possessed by similar cla.s.ses in other nations on the American continent, - greater, probably, than was possessed by these cla.s.ses in most of the countries of feudal Europe. Under their sceptre, the higher orders of the state had made advances in many of the arts that belong to a cultivated community. The foundations of a regular government were laid, which, in an age of rapine, secured to its subjects the inestimable blessings of tranquillity and safety. By the well-sustained policy of the Incas, the rude tribes of the forest were gradually drawn from their fastnesses, and gathered within the folds of civilization; and of these materials was constructed a flourishing and populous empire, such as was to be found in no other quarter of the American continent. The defects of this government were those of over-refinement in legislation, - the last defects to have been looked for, certainly, in the American aborigines.
Note. I have not thought it necessary to swell this Introduction by an inquiry into the origin of Peruvian civilization, like that appended to the history of the Mexican. The Peruvian history doubtless suggests a.n.a.logies with more than one nation in the East, some of which have been briefly adverted to in the preceding pages; although these a.n.a.logies are adduced there not as evidence of a common origin, but as showing the coincidences which might naturally spring up among different nations under the same phase of civilization. Such coincidences are neither so numerous nor so striking as those afforded by the Aztec history.
The correspondence presented by the astronomical science of the Mexicans is alone of more importance than all the rest. Yet the light of a.n.a.logy, afforded by the inst.i.tutions of the Incas, seems to point, as far as it goes, towards the same direction; and as the investigation could present but little substantially to confirm, and still less to confute, the views taken in the former disquisition, I have not thought it best to fatigue the reader with it.
Two of the prominent authorities on whom I have relied in this Introductory portion of the work, are Juan de Sarmiento and the Licentiate Ondegardo. Of the former I have been able to collect no information beyond what is afforded by his own writings. In the t.i.tle prefixed to his ma.n.u.script, he is styled President of the Council of the Indies, a post of high authority, which infers a weight of character in the party, and means of information, that ent.i.tle his opinions on colonial topics to great deference.
These means of information were much enlarged by Sarmiento"s visit to the colonies, during the administration of Gasca.
Having conceived the design of compiling a history of the ancient Peruvian inst.i.tutions, he visited Cuzco, as he tells us, in 1550, and there drew from the natives themselves the materials for his narrative. His position gave him access to the most authentic sources of knowledge, and from the lips of the Inca n.o.bles, the best instructed of the conquered race, he gathered the traditions of their national history and inst.i.tutions. The quipus formed, as we have seen, an imperfect system of mnemonics, requiring constant attention, and much inferior to the Mexican hieroglyphics. It was only by diligent instruction that they were made available to historical purposes; and this instruction was so far neglected after the Conquest, that the ancient annals of the country would have perished with the generation which was the sole depositary of them, had it not been for the efforts of a few intelligent scholars, like Sarmiento, who saw the importance, at this critical period, of cultivating an intercourse with the natives, and drawing from them their hidden stores of information.
To give still further authenticity to his work, Sarmiento travelled over the country, examined the princ.i.p.al objects of interest with his own eyes, and thus verified the accounts of the natives as far as possible by personal observation. The result of these labors was his work ent.i.tled, "Relacion de la sucesion y govierno de las Yngas Senores naturales que fueron de las Provincias del Peru y otras cosas tocantes a aquel Reyno, para el Iltmo. Senor Dn Juan Sarmiento, Presidente del Consejo R1 de Indias."
It is divided into chapters, and embraces about four hundred folio pages in ma.n.u.script. The introductory portion of the work is occupied with the traditionary tales of the origin and early period of the Incas; teeming, as usual, in the antiquities of a barbarous people, with legendary fables of the most wild and monstrous character. Yet these puerile conceptions afford an inexhaustible mine for the labors of the antiquarian, who endeavours to unravel the allegorical web which a cunning priesthood had devised as symbolical of those mysteries of creation that it was beyond their power to comprehend. But Sarmiento happily confines himself to the mere statement of traditional fables, without the chimerical ambition to explain them.
From this region of romance, Sarmiento pa.s.ses to the inst.i.tutions of the Peruvians, describes their ancient polity, their religion, their progress in the arts, especially agriculture; and presents, in short, an elaborate picture of the civilization which they reached under the Inca dynasty. This part of his work, resting, as it does, on the best authority, confirmed in many instances by his own observation, is of unquestionable value, and is written with an apparent respect for truth, that engages the confidence of the reader. The concluding portion of the ma.n.u.script is occupied with the civil history of the country. The reigns of the early Incas, which lie beyond the sober province of history, he despatches with commendable brevity. But on the three last reigns, and fortunately of the greatest princes who occupied the Peruvian throne, he is more diffuse. This was comparatively firm ground for the chronicler, for the events were too recent to be obscured by the vulgar legends that gather like moss round every incident of the older time. His account stops with the Spanish invasion; for this story, Sarmiento felt, might be safely left to his contemporaries who acted a part in it, but whose taste and education had qualified them but indifferently for exploring the antiquities and social inst.i.tutions of the natives.