Whoever approached him bore a light burden on the shoulder as a badge of servitude, and was barefoot. The Inca was not only the representative of the temporal, but also of the spiritual power. He was more than supreme pontiff, for he was a descendant of the Sun, the god of the nation. He made laws, imposed taxes, raised armies, appointed or removed judges at his pleasure. He travelled in a sedan ornamented with gold and emeralds; the roads were swept before him, strewn with flowers, and perfumed. The national His palace at Yucay was described by the palace. Spaniards as a fairy scene. It was filled with works of Indian art; images of animals and plants decorated the niches of its walls; it had an endless labyrinth of gorgeous chambers, and here and there shady crypts for quiet retirement. Its baths were great golden bowls. It was embosomed in artificial forests. The imperial ladies and concubines spent their time in beautifully furnished chambers, or in gardens, with cascades and fountains, grottoes and bowers. It was in what few countries can boast of, a temperate region in the torrid zone. The Peruvian religion ostensibly consisted of a worship of the Sun, but the higher classes had already become emancipated from such a material association, and recognized the existence of one almighty, invisible God. They expected the resurrection of the body and the continuance of the soul in a future life. It was their belief that in the world to come our occupations will resemble those we have followed here. Like the Egyptians, who had arrived at similar ideas, the Peruvians practised embalming, the mummies of their Incas being placed in the Temple of the Sun at Cuzco, the kings on the right, the queens on the left, clad in their robes of state, and with their hands crossed on their bosoms, seated in golden chairs, waiting for the day when the soul will return to reanimate the body. The mummies of distinguished personages were buried in a sitting posture under tumuli of earth. To the Supreme Being but one temple was dedicated. It was in a sacred valley, to which pilgrimages were made. In the Peruvian mythology, heaven was above the sky, hell in the interior of the earth—it was the realm of an evil spirit called Cupay Religion of Peru, its establishments and ceremonial. The general resemblance of these to Egyptian doctrines may forcibly impress upon us that they are ideas with which the human mind necessarily occupies itself in its process of intellectual development. As in all other countries, the educated classes were greatly in advance of the common people, who were only just emerging from fetichism, and engrossed in the follies of idolatry and man-worship. Nevertheless, the government found it expedient to countenance the vulgar delusion; indeed, the political system was actually founded upon it. But the Peruvians were in advance of the Europeans in this respect, that they practised no persecutions upon those who had become mentally emancipated. Besides the sun, the visible god, other celestial bodies were worshipped in a subordinate way. It was supposed that there were spirits in the wind, lightning, thunder; genii in the mountains, rivers, springs, and grottoes. In the great Temple of the Sun at Cuzco an image of that deity was placed so as to receive the rays of the luminary at his rising; a like artifice had been practised in the Serapion at Alexandria. There was also a sanctuary dedicated to the Sun in the island of Titicaca, and, it is said, between three and four hundred temples of a subordinate kind in Cuzco. To the great temple were attached not fewer than four thousand priests and fifteen hundred vestal virgins, the latter being intrusted with the care of the sacred fire, and from them the most beautiful were chosen to pass into the Inca's seraglio. The popular faith had a ritual and a splendid ceremonial, the great national festival being at the summer solstice. The rays of the sun were then collected by a concave mirror, and fire rekindled thereby, or by the friction of wood. Social system people. As to their social system, polygamy was permitted, but practically it was confined to the higher classes. Social subordination was thoroughly understood. the noThe Inca Tupac Yupanqui says, "Knowledge bility, the was never intended for the people, but only for those of generous blood." The nobility were of two orders, the polygamic descendants of the Incas, who were the main support of the state, and the adopted nobles of nations that have been conquered. As to the people, nowhere else in the whole world was such an extraordinary policy of supervision practised. They were divided into groups of ten, fifty, one hundred, five hundred, one thousand, ten thousand, and over the last an Inca noble was placed. Through this system a rigid centralization was insured, the Inca being the pivot upon which all the national affairs turned. It was an absolutism worthy of the admiraOrganization tion of many existing European nations. The of labour. entire territory was divided into three parts; one belonged to the Sun, one to the Inca, one to the people. As a matter of form, the subdivision was annually made; in practice, however, as perhaps must always be the result of such agrarianism, the allotments were continually renewed. All the land was cultivated by the people, and in the following order: first, that of the Sun, then that of the destitute and infirm, then that of the people, and, lastly, that of the Inca. The Sun and the Inca owned all the sheep, which were sheared and their wool distributed to the people, or cotton furnished in its stead. The Inca's officers saw that it was all woven, and that no one was idle. An annual survey of the country, its farming and mineral products, was made, the inventory being transmitted to the government. A register was kept of births and deaths; periodically a general census was taken. The Inca, at once emperor and pope, was enabled, in that double capacity, to exert a rigorous patriarchal rule over his people, who were treated like mere children-not suffered to be oppressed, but compelled to be occupied; for, with a worldly wisdom which no other nation presents, labour was here acknowledged not only as a means, but also as an end. In Peru a man could not improve his social state; by these refinements of legislation he was brought into an absolutely stationary condition. He could become neither richer nor poorer; but it was the boast of the system that every one lived exempt from social suffering-that all enjoyed competence. The army consisted of 200,000 men. Their weapons were bows, lances, slings, battle-axes, swords; Military system; warlike their means of defence, shields, bucklers, helmets, and coats of quilted cotton. Each regiment had its own banner, but the imperial standard, the national emblem, was a rainbow, the offspring of the Sun. resources. The swords and many of the domestic implements were of bronze; the arrows were tipped with quartz or bone, or points of gold and silver. A strict discipline was maintained on marching, granaries and depôts being established at suitable distances on the roads. With a policy inflexibly persisted in, the gods of conquered countries were transported to Cuzco, and the vanquished compelled to worship the Sun; their children were obliged to learn the Peruvian language, the government providing them teachers for that purpose. As an incitement, this knowledge was absolutely required as a condition for public office. To amalgamate the conquered districts thoroughly, their inhabitants were taken away by ten thousand, transported to distant parts of the empire, not, as in the Old World, to be worked to death as slaves, but to be made into Peruvians; an equal number of natives were sent in their stead, to whom, as a recompense for their removal, extraordinary privileges were given. It was the immemorial policy of the empire to maintain profound tranquillity in the interior and perpetual war on the frontiers. The philosophical advancement of the Peruvians was much retarded by their imperfect method of Peruvian litewriting a method greatly inferior to that of rature-the Egypt. A cord of coloured threads, called quipus. quipus, was only indifferently suited to the purposes of enumeration, and by no means equal to hieroglyphics as a method of expressing general facts. But it was their only system. Notwithstanding this drawback, they had a literature consisting of poetry, dramatic compositions, and the like. Their scientific attainments were inferior to the Mexican. Their year was divided into months, their months into weeks. They had gnomons to indicate the solstices. One, in the form of an obelisk, in the centre of a circle, on which was marked an east and west line, indicated the equinox. These gnomons were destroyed by the Spaniards in the belief that they were for idolatrous purposes, for on the national festivals it was customary to decorate them with leaves and flowers. As the national religion consisted in the worship of the Sun, it was not without reason that Quito was regarded as a holy place, from its position upon the equator. Agriculture carried to perfection. In their extraordinary provisions for agriculture, the national pursuit, the skill of the Peruvians is well seen. A rapid elevation from the sea-level to the heights of the mountains gave them, in a small compass, every variety of climate, and they availed themselves of it. They terraced the mountain sides, filling the terraces with rich earth. They excavated pits in the sand, surrounded them with adobe walls, and filled them with manured soil. On the low level they cultivated bananas and cassava; on the terraces above, maize and quinoa; still higher, tobacco; and above that the potato. From a comparatively limited surface, they raised great crops by judiciously using manures, employing for that purpose fish, and especially guano. Their example has led to the use of the latter substance for a like purpose in our own times in Europe. The whole civilized world has followed them in the cultivation of the potato. The Peruvian bark is one of the most invaluable remedies. Large tracts of North America would be almost uninhabitable without the use of its active alkaloid quinine, which actually, in no insignificant manner, reduces the percentage mortality throughout the United States. The great Indispensably necessary to their agricultural system were their great water-works. In Spain there was nothing The worthy of being compared with them. aqueduct of aqueduct of Condesuya was nearly 500 miles Condesuya. long. Its engineers had overcome difficulties in a manner that might well strike modern times with admiration. Its water was distributed as prescribed by law; there were officers to see to its proper use. From these great water-works and from their roads it may be judged that the architectural skill of the Peruvians was far from insignificant. They constructed edifices of porphyry, granite, brick; but their buildings were for the most part low, and suitable to an earthquake country. The stages of human development always the I have dwelt at some length on the domestic history of Mexico and Peru because it is intimately connected with one of the philosophical principles which it is the object of this book to teach, viz., that human progress takes place under an unvarying law, and therefore in a definite way. The trivial same. |