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HISTORICAL SKETCH

Venice and Genoa, grown rich and powerful through trade with India and the nearer countries of the Orient, had for a space enjoyed a prosperity and revival of culture that were felt throughout Christendom. Then had come the conquest of Spain and domination of the Mediterranean by the Moors, and, afterward, the wars of the Crusades, which had checked the Saracen advance but interrupted all other commerce with the infidels. Meanwhile, as though to compensate for this loss, the great Mongolian conqueror Genghis Khan had fulfilled his remarkable destiny and, instead of adopting measures to prevent it, invited western intercourse with the countries he had brought under his sway, and China, about which almost nothing was then generally known, was visited overland by traders, adventurers, and missionaries. Marco Polo, a Venetian, after spending more than twenty years in the far east, part of the time in the service of the Great Khan Kubilay, had returned by way of India and Persia, laden with jewels of enormous value, and had written a book descriptive of the countries he had seen and the wealth and customs of the people. In the fourteenth century, when the Mongolian dynasty was overthrown, the Asiatics had again turned hostile and the land route was closed.

But during this open season it had become known that Cathay was not the end of the world, as had been supposed--that there was an ocean beyond and the wonderful Island of Cipango and other islands rich in spices and costly products; and Europe began to wonder, since the Tartars barred the route by land, whether these desirable places might not be accessible by water. "Between wondering and the attempt," says Hawthorne, "there was a considerable interval, for the idea was too novel to be digested all at once. But it was an age of unbridled license of imagination and of desperate courage. The mere possibility of encountering perils never until then conceived of was allurement enough, as, even to-day, our young adventurers go forth to die on the ice fields of the north and south poles, or in the mysterious heart of savage Africa, or on the ghastly plateaux of Tibet. In addition, there were the fabulous rewards that success seemed to promise."

At first, though, if the plan of sailing west was even thought of, it would seem to have been regarded as less feasible than that of rounding Africa. Prince Henry, a son of King John I of Portugal--for it was the Portuguese, not the Spanish, who were the pioneers in this series of discoveries--determined to devote his life to the work. Retiring from the splendors of the Lisbon court, he built an astronomical observatory on the promontory of Sagres , extended its hospitalities to all the wise men of the age and sent out expedition after expedition to the south. "Until then," says Dawson, "nautical knowledge was very meager. The compass served only to indicate direction, not distance or position, and did not suffice for the systematic navigation of the open Atlantic. The Portuguese first made that possible by using astronomical observations and inventing the quadrant and astrolabe."

This knowledge, once acquired, was promptly applied. Madeira was discovered in 1418, the Canaries in 1427, the Azores in 1432. To the west the Portuguese ventured no farther, but, continuing south, they reached Cape Blanco in 1441, Senegambia and Cape Verde in 1445, the Cape Verde Islands in 1460, and the Gulf of Guinea in 1469. In 1471 they were the first Europeans to cross the equator. The idea was then conceived that they had only to keep on and they could round the southern extremity of the continent and reach Abyssinia and India by sea--a hope that was realized in 1487 when Bartholomew Dias arrived at last at the Cape of Good Hope. A few miles beyond, however, he was compelled by the condition of his crew to return and it remained for his compatriot Vasco da Gama some years later to double the cape and complete the voyage up the eastern coast and across the Indian Ocean to Hindustan.

The significance of these early voyages of the Portuguese lies in the fact that thereby it was demonstrated that a shorter route was needed--that with the very small and badly equipped vessels of the period the trip around the Cape of Good Hope, at least for commercial purposes, was impracticable; also in the fact that with Dias had sailed the Genoese navigator Bartholomew Columbus, a brother of the discoverer of America.

In his letter to Columbus he congratulates him on having undertaken an enterprise--

"Fraught with honor, as it must be, and inestimable gain and most lofty fame among all Christian peoples. It will be a voyage to powerful kingdoms" "and to cities and provinces most wealthy and noble. It will also be advantageous to those kings and princes who are eager to have dealings and make alliances with the Christians of other countries. For these and many other reasons, I do not wonder that you, who are of great courage, and the whole Portuguese nation, which has always had men distinguished in such enterprises, are now inflamed with a desire to make the voyage."

Thus encouraged, Columbus began his efforts to secure patronage and money for the expedition. He tried in his birthplace, Genoa, and in Portugal and Spain, even in England, where he was accompanied by his brother Bartholomew after the latter's return from the voyage to the Cape of Good Hope, and suffered many refusals. Toscanelli had been dead eight years before he at last succeeded; and then, had he known that the distance from Lisbon to the coast of Asia was in fact some 13,000 miles, or twice that which the astronomer had estimated, and that, even so, the route straight across was barred by the Isthmus of Panama--had he known that Cathay did not, as his mentor believed, extend some thousands of miles farther east than it does, even such a man as Columbus might have abandoned the project as chimerical when the cockleshells then available for ocean travel were taken into consideration. Nor, if she too had not been misled by the same "valuable pieces of ignorance," is it likely that his plea would have prevailed on the practical Isabella of Castile, however elated and invincible she may have felt over the taking of the last of the Saracen strongholds at Granada and the expulsion of the Moors from Spain, for in that she was engaged when Columbus finally succeeded in securing her aid.

After a voyage of ten weeks, filled with difficulties and hardships, even threats of mutiny, that taxed his courage and diplomacy to the utmost, he came to land on an island on the outward bow of the Bahamas, to which he gave the name of San Salvador. The wild beauty of the foliage, the tropical luxuriance, the clear, fresh-water streams, the soft climate and perfume-laden breezes, more than ever delightful to men who had given themselves up for lost, and the natives themselves, bedecked with gold ornaments and dusky-skinned as those of Cathay were said to be--all seemed what might have been expected in the outlying spice islands of the east. So, supposing this to be one of those islands of which they were in quest, the adventurers cruised about for ten days more and finally arrived at Cuba, which they assumed to be Cipango.

"The news of his exploit set all Portugal afire," says Hawthorne.

"The King was urged to have Columbus run through the body and to appropriate his discovery; but John II perceived that there was more peril than profit in such a scheme, and he invited him to court and made much of him instead. In due time he resumed his voyage and reached Palos on the 15th of March. This was Columbus' apogee. He was called to Barcelona and welcomed in triumph; he was even allowed to sit down in the august presence of Ferdinand and Isabella. The half dozen Caribs he had brought with him were assumed to be East Indians and the Admiral's interpretation of his discoveries was accepted without question. The little detail that nothing of oriental magnificence--no Great Khans, no mighty cities--had yet been revealed, was passed over. Land had been found and it could be nothing but Cipango and Cathay. The short route to the Indies had been discovered for Spain."

This so completely overshadowed all that Portugal had accomplished that an intense rivalry sprang up between the two powers. The Pope, as the Vicar of Christ on earth, and accordingly the repository of the title to all lands still occupied by infidel peoples, was appealed to to confirm the discoveries to Spain. He issued a bull granting to His Most Catholic Majesty the lands then, and such as might thereafter be, discovered in the western sea, and to the Portuguese such as they might discover by way of the African route. This was supplemented by a second to the effect that only those lands lying west of a meridian of longitude a hundred miles west of the Azores and Cape Verde Islands should belong to the Spaniards. Dissatisfied even with that division, the Portuguese demanded a line still farther west, and, by a treaty signed at Tordesillas in June, 1494, Spain agreed that it should be advanced in that direction 370 leagues. This resulted eventually in giving Portugal title to the then yet undiscovered country of Brazil.

Meanwhile, on the 25th of September, 1493, Columbus set out on his second expedition--this time with seventeen ships and fifteen hundred men, among them his brothers Bartholomew and Diego and many adventurers of noble rank, for there was no lack either of men or money now. "Their dreams," Professor Fiske tell us, "were of the marble palaces of Quinsay, of islands of spices and the treasures of the mythical Prester John. The sovereigns wept for joy as they thought that such untold riches were vouchsafed them as a reward for having overcome the Moor at Granada. Columbus shared these views and regarded himself as a special instrument for executing the divine decrees. He renewed his vow to rescue the Holy Sepulcher, promising within seven years to equip, at his own expense, a crusading army of fifty thousand foot and four thousand horse." When the fleet arrived at Hayti and the company landed at the place where the little colony had been left, it was found that it had been annihilated. Not a whit dismayed by that, however, Columbus ordered a town to be built and the island, which he named Espa?ola , became the base of hundreds of exploring expeditions undertaken by the hordes of adventurers that followed in his wake and soon overran the neighboring islands.

Columbus himself made two other voyages, in the course of which he discovered Jamaica and the Island of Trinidad at the mouth of the Orinoco, reached the southern shores of Cuba, and, having heard rumors of another ocean to the west, coasted along the Central American mainland in search of a passage through. There he found stone houses and towns and what appeared to be a semi-civilized people, who wore clothes and knew how to weave cotton, embalm their dead, and carve ornaments on their tombs, and who had plenty of gold; and all this only confirmed his conviction that he was drawing nearer the countries of his quest. During this period, however, his fame was in turn overshadowed by that of Vasco da Gama, who had at last succeeded in discovering the African route to the Orient and had actually seen some of those spice islands and mighty cities that Columbus was still only searching for on the other side of the world so many thousands of miles away.

In 1506, soon after his return from his fourth expedition, he died at Valladolid, discredited and defrauded of his viceregal powers, a victim of treachery, jealousy, and intrigue, yet still believing that he had found the western route to the Indies. Even then "nobody had the faintest idea of what he had accomplished," says Professor Fiske. "Nothing like it was ever done before and nothing like it can ever be done again. No worlds are left for future Columbuses to conquer. The era of which this great Italian was the most illustrious representative had closed forever."

Having, in the interval between the second Columbian expedition and the discovery of the African route by Vasco da Gama, induced Spain to agree to the extension of the Papal meridian 370 leagues farther west, the Portuguese continued their activities with renewed ardor. In March, 1500, on his way to the Cape of Good Hope, Pedro Alvarez Cabral, a Portuguese nobleman in command of an expedition intended to resume the work begun by Da Gama, was blown across the Atlantic to the coasts of Brazil, where he touched at a point in the southern part of what is now the State of Bahia. Under the impression that it was an island, and assuming that it lay east of the Tordesillas treaty line, he landed and took possession in the name of his King. The news having reached Portugal in the Fall of the same year, no time was lost in asserting title and sending out a small fleet to ascertain the extent and resources of the region, also in the hope that a wealthy and civilized people like that of Hindustan would be found.

In 1513, Vasco Nu?ez de Balboa, Governor of Darien, a valiant adventurer who had been prominent in the conquest and colonization of the Isthmus, undertook by means of an expedition by land to ascertain whether such an ocean did really exist. Starting with a company of about a hundred and ninety Spaniards and a few Indians, he skirted the coast of Panama to a point near Cape Tiburon, and there disembarked and headed inland. For twenty days his party persevered over forest-clad swamps, valleys, and mountains, fought a pitched battle with the natives, and finally cut its way through the dense undergrowth to the heights overlooking what is now known as the Gulf of San Miguel, on the Pacific side, and thus resolved all doubt into certainty and completed an event which, declares Dawson, "was second in its far-reaching consequences only to Columbus' first voyage." Balboa dubbed it the Southern Sea, little thinking that it was a body of water more vast than the Atlantic that he had found to bar the way to Cathay. "So elated was he over his epoch-making discovery," says Mozans, quoting from an early chronicler, that--

"With no lesse manlye courage than Hannibal of Carthage shewed his souldiers Italye and the promontories of the Alps, he exhorted his men to lyft up theyre hartes and to behoulde the land even now under theyre feete and the sea before theyre eyes, which shoulde bee unto them a full and juste reward of theyre great laboures and trauayles now ouerpassed. When he had sayde these woordes, he commanded them to raise certeine heapes of stones in the steede of altars for a token of possession. Then, descendynge from the toppes of the mountaynes, lest such as might come after hym shoulde argu hym of lyinge and falshod, he wrote the Kyng of Castelles his name here and there on the barkes of the trees, both on the ryght hande and on the lefte, and raysed heapes of stones all the way that he went untyll he came to the region of the nexte Kynge towarde the south, whose name was Chiapes."

"The act of taking possession was so typical of similar formalities of the Conquistadores," continues Mozans, "that I transcribe from Oviedo his account of the manner in which Balboa and his companions claimed for his sovereign the Sea of the South, all islands in it and all lands bordering on it, in what part of the world soever. Armed with his sword and bearing aloft a banner on which were painted an image of the Blessed Virgin and the Divine Child and the arms of Castile and Leon, Balboa, followed by his associates, entered the water until it rose above his knees, when in a loud voice he said:

It was to the Portuguese navigator Fern?o de Magalh?es that the honor finally fell of being the first, not alone to find the passage through the new continent that was being so eagerly sought, but to cross by the western route to the East Indies and thereby blaze the way to making geography an exact science. He had already been to the Moluccas by the African route, and, disgusted by the failure of his King suitably to reward his services, had transferred his allegiance to Spain and managed to secure from the Emperor Charles V a commission and five ships, the largest of but 120 tons' burden. On the 20th of September, 1419, he sailed from the Guadalquivir, with a crew numbering 280, all told, and, having entered the Plata River and satisfied himself that it was not a strait, ran down the Patagonian coast through many storms until he found shelter in the harbor of St. Julian, where, on Easter Sunday, a mutiny broke out that only a man of such remarkable courage and resourcefulness as Magellan possessed could have suppressed. It had been a hard voyage, the chances of finding the strait seemed slim, there was only the prospect that there they must remain throughout the antarctic winter in idleness and discomfort; it is small wonder that they wanted to desert.

"But months of a voyage as trying as any they had encountered still lay before them," Hawthorne goes on. "Could the planet be so vast? Until December they kept a northerly course, then struck out boldly across the unknown waste. They ran across one or two islands, but erelong were swallowed up in the seemingly endless immensity of ocean. They were reduced to the utmost extremities for food and water; scurvy broke out; nineteen men died and thirty were too ill to work. Finally, on the 6th of March, they reached the Ladrone Islands, so named because of the thievishness of the natives. Here they got fruit and other food, and the worst was over. Ten days later the Philippines were sighted and Magellan knew the extent of his achievement. He had sailed round the world. Happier than Columbus, he did not survive this mightiest exploit of his time; in a fight with the natives the great sailor was killed."

Until the great Dutch navigator, Willim Cornelis Schouten, found the way around Cape Horn nearly a hundred years later, however, no practical advantage over her rival resulted to Spain from Magellan's discoveries--so far as trade with the East Indies was concerned, that is. The passage through the Strait was too perilous for sailing vessels, the distance across the Pacific too great. Yet only a year before Magellan set out on his famous voyage an era began in her new possessions that was to pour into her coffers a stream of gold in comparison with which the profits Portugal was deriving from her trade with the Orient seemed trivial. For in that year Hernando Cort?s, the greatest soldier and statesman Spain ever sent to the new world, began his conquest of Mexico.

Except for the spirit of emulation it inspired, except for the knowledge it brought of the existence in the newly discovered countries of a people less barbarous than the aborigines of the Antilles, of mines that were worth while and of enormous hoards of treasure, the story of that conquest has no place in the history of South America, and, therefore, will not be gone into here. It is related somewhere as an interesting commentary that in an obscure little house in the City of Mexico still lives a modest, well-educated gentleman who is directly descended from the Emperor of the Aztecs. Se?or Montezuma entertains no hope of a restoration, it is said, but quietly accepts the meager pension allowed him by the present government, while the heirs of Cort?s receive immense revenues from their Mexican estates and the Marquis del Valle, as the present-day Cort?s is called, lives in luxury and is a man of influence and power in the land.

In 1526, Sebastian Cabot was commissioned by the King of Spain to locate the Papal meridian in America and then to follow in Magellan's track and determine the corresponding longitude on the Asiatic side; but, when he put in at the mouth of the Rio de la Plata, he heard rumors of a great and wealthy people who dwelt near the headwaters of the river--rumors like those Grijalva had heard respecting the Aztecs and which had led to the Mexican conquest by Cort?s; only these wonderful accounts were of a South American empire. In proof of what they said, the Indians of the Plata exhibited silver ornaments that had passed from hand to hand from the highlands of Bolivia and Peru, along the river to the Atlantic; and, too strongly tempted to resist, and trusting that the discovery of the rich mines from which this silver came would excuse their disobedience, Cabot and his company abandoned their survey and spent three years exploring and prospecting along the Uruguay and Paran? as far north as the present site of the city of Asunci?n. As their forces and provisions were inadequate to enable them to penetrate farther, the search was in vain; and so, having found, on their return to a fort they had established, that it had been taken by the Indians and the garrison massacred, Cabot abandoned the effort and went back to Spain to make what explanation he could.

The news of this supposed encroachment, added to the ever increasing poaching of the French, proved what was needed to stimulate the Portuguese at last to make a serious attempt at colonization in Brazil. One Christov?o Jaques and a few settlers had already established a small sugar factory in the neighborhood of the present site of Pernambuco, and it had been found that much of the land in the northern part of the country was admirably adapted to the cultivation of that staple, the demand for which in Europe was constantly increasing. Five vessels were sent out, therefore, under the command of Martim Affonso da Souza. Early in 1531 he drew near Cape St. Roque, captured three French ships laden with brazil wood, sent part of his own fleet north to explore the coast beyond, and with the other ships sailed south and dropped anchor near the site of what is now the great coffee port of Santos. There he established S?o Vicente, the first permanent colony in Brazil.

There also they came across one Jo?o Ramalho, a former sailor who had been put ashore for mutiny years before by a ship on its way to India and was living among the natives of the neighborhood with his half-breed children. Glad enough to welcome his countrymen, he disposed the Indians to peace and showed the Portuguese the way up the mountains to the vast plateau that begins only a few miles from the sea. There, near the present site of S?o Paulo, was founded another settlement, from whence they could stretch out in all directions over what was destined to become the greatest coffee-producing country in the world.

A year or two afterward, encouraged by Da Souza's success, Duarte Coelho set out with a carefully selected and more numerous company and founded the colony of Pernambuco. Here, as in the south, the country back of the coast was fertile and easily accessible and there was little trouble with the Indians. Sugar planting proved wonderfully profitable, Coelho turned out to be a good manager, and so politic was he in the relations with the mother country that within a few years the colony had become self-supporting and, like the other, possessed of all the elements of permanence and prosperity. Soon afterward S?o Salvador da Bahia was established. With such a beginning, it was not long before the Portuguese began flocking to Brazil as the Spaniards had to the Caribbean.

In the meanwhile in this region of the Caribbean much progress had been made. Towns had been built, not only in Espa?ola, but in Cuba, Jamaica, Porto Rico and in Darien and other places on the Isthmus, landed estates had been apportioned, as rewards for services, among such as desired to cultivate them, mining rights had been allotted. These plantations and the mines were being worked by natives impressed into slavery, some of the communities had become large and thriving, in Spain a Council of the Indies and in the islands local governmental tribunals had been created.

Whole fleets of ships plied back and forth across the Atlantic, those setting out from Spain laden with implements of agriculture and war, clothes, and fresh companies of adventurers, coming over as colonists, or to continue the work of conquest and the search for treasure; those returning, laden with the products of the tropics and with gold and precious stones. Emeralds had been found near the coast of Colombia, and Balboa had discovered in the Gulf of San Miguel--that famous group of islands where, as Mozans tells us, "pearls were so common that the natives used them for adorning the paddles of their canoes"--pearls "as large as filberts and of exceeding beauty of form and luster," many of which, "found in the same fisheries a short time subsequently, at once took place among the largest and most perfect of the world's gems."

Francisco Pizarro had been but a swineherd in his boyhood, but later had served under Gonzolo de Cordova in that splendid body of infantrymen which fought its way to the foremost rank in Europe, and was a son, too, though an illegitimate one, of a Spanish officer of noble blood. For such a man, as Dawson says, "an admirable soldier, conscious that he possessed powers of the highest order yet hopelessly handicapped in old Europe by his base birth and illiteracy, the discovery of the new world opened up a field for his talents" that led him "eagerly to embrace the opportunity to embark with Alonso de Ojeda in 1509 for the Darien gold mines." His first appearance in history is as a member of the party that went with Balboa to search for the Pacific; afterward he was among the first of "the adventurers that flocked to the new city of Panama, looking over the mysterious sea, like a pack of wolves eager for a share in the spoils of its unknown shores;" later he happened to be the officer chosen by Pedrarias for Balboa's arrest.

As he had no funds of his own, and since it was the custom of the times for the Conquistadores who undertook such expeditions to do so at their own expense, he associated with him a priest named Hernando de Luque, who had some capital, and Diego de Almagro, a soldier of still more advanced age but of ability and good reputation. It was agreed that the Padre de Luque should contribute the funds, that Almagro should attend to the collecting and forwarding of troops and supplies, and that Pizarro himself should have the active command. Whereupon they bought one of the ships that had been carried across the Isthmus by Balboa and set out on their first expedition in 1524. As so frequently occurred in such cases, however, inadequacy of provisions caused the venture to fail.

Eighteen months later they sailed again, with a much larger stock of supplies and this time with 160 men. For hundreds of miles they found nothing but the same swampy, forest-clad wastes along the Colombian shore, inhabited only by naked tribes of savages. Pizarro's disheartened companions, too ready to believe that the country they were seeking was but a myth, would have had him return; but one day the pilot, who had been sent on ahead, suddenly reappeared with the news that he had penetrated south of the equator and had there met a large trading raft on its way north, bearing cloth, silver work, vases, and other things pertaining to civilization and manned by a crew that wore clothes. These men, the pilot reported, had told him that they came from a town called Tumbez, which lay in a fertile valley behind a penetrable coast--that the whole interior of the country was inhabited by a civilized people, subjects of an emperor whose capital was a great city, high up in the mountains still farther south. On this confirmation of their hopes, the commander succeeded in inducing his men to push on until they had reached nearly as far as the northern boundary of Ecuador, where he landed most of the company on an island called Gallo and sent Almagro back to Panama for more provisions and supplies.

"Something striking to the imagination in the spectacle of those few brave spirits consecrating themselves to a daring enterprise that seemed as far above their strength as any recorded in the fabulous annals of knight-errantry. A handful of men, without food, without clothing, almost without arms, without knowledge of the land to which they were bound, without even a vessel to transport them, were left there on a rock in the ocean with the avowed purpose of carrying on a crusade against a powerful empire, staking their lives on its success. What is there in the legends of chivalry that surpasses it?"

For weary months they awaited the return of Almagro with the provisions, and the moment they arrived set sail for the Gulf of Guayaquil. Landing at Tumbez, says Dawson, "with their own eyes they saw confirmation of what the Indians of the raft had told them. Irrigated fields, green with beautiful crops, lined the river bank; eighty thousand people, all comfortably housed, lived in the valley; commerce was flourishing; large temples, profusely ornamented with gold and silver, testified to their wealth and culture; the government was well ordered and stable, and the people received the visitors with open-handed hospitality." It is easy enough to imagine with what longing eyes these forlorn adventurers who had risked and endured so much must have gazed on such a scene as this!

On Pizarro's return to Panama, he brought with him a few kindred spirits selected from among the very flower of the fighting men of the Peninsula, including his brothers Hernando, Juan, and Gonzalo and his half-brother, Francisco Alcantara, his equals in valor if not in audacity and intellect. And then, as he believed from what he had seen of the fighting on the Isthmus, that a few scores of good men, mail-clad and well provided with artillery and horses--for these, unknown in the new world before the advent of the Spaniards, had never failed to strike terror to the natives--would be as effective as thousands in overcoming undisciplined masses of Indians, armed in their inferior fashion, instead of attempting to assemble an army he got together only a small company composed of men of whose courage and experience he was well assured. Having arranged with Almagro to follow with what reinforcements he could recruit from among the unemployed adventurers in Nicaragua, he set out once more.

This time he happened to land first among the less civilized tribes in Ecuador, where he had the good fortune to find a rich store of emeralds and gold, which he sent back to Almagro to encourage him in his work. Then, marching down the coast to Guayaquil, he crossed to the island of Puna to await the reinforcements, conquered the fierce inhabitants of the place, and was afterward joined by a detachment sent out by his associate under the command of Hernando de Soto, an adventurer who had served with Cort?s in Mexico and was later to attain still greater fame as the discoverer of the Mississippi. Even with those De Soto brought, the whole force numbered less than two hundred and fifty.

Though they had not the faintest idea of it then, the empire they were destined to bring under the Spanish sway covered a territory along the plateaux and eastern and Pacific slopes of the Andes extending from Quito in Ecuador to the river Maule in Chile, a distance of nearly three thousand miles, inhabited by hardy and warlike races, that numbered, according to the estimate of the early historians, somewhere near twenty millions of people.

So great was the empire of the Incas. But from whom were these remarkable rulers descended who brought their people to a state of civilization relatively so superior to that of the savages east of the Andes? To what race did they belong? From whence did they originally come--Europe or Asia?--and, if so, how did they get to South America? How did they acquire the knowledge of the arts and sciences that they possessed? "Students of archaeology have essayed in vain to answer these questions," says Mozans. "All is still shrouded in mystery--in mystery even darker than that which veils the advent of the Toltecs and Aztecs to the valley of Anahuac, more profound than that which obscures the first beginnings of the civilizations on the elevated Pamirs and in the valleys of the Nile and Euphrates. In all this uncertainty and mystery, however," he adds,

"One fact seems to remain incontrovertible, and that is that Manco Capac and Mama Oello" "first appeared on the shores of Lake Titicaca" . "On this point tradition and the concurrent testimony of the earlier historians are practically at one.... Another fact, too, is unquestioned. Whether Manco Capac, the Minos of Peru, was of foreign or of native birth, it is certain that he was able, in the space of thirty years, to lay the foundation of that vast empire which, under the Inca Yupanqui, extended its conquests to the Maule in Chile, and, under Huayna Capac, planted its victorious banners above the fortresses of the Shiri" , "in the extended territory of Quito, and which gave its laws and religion and language to hundreds of conquered tribes."

"What is one to do with no historical records to study over?" asks Hawthorne.

"Still, it is indisputable," he goes on to say,

And he continues:

"Viracocha annexed the land of the Aymaras" , "who are suspected of descent from the builders of Tiahuanucu" . "In the next reign the strong tribe of the Chancas, living close to the equator, resisted the march of conquest, but were finally defeated under the walls of Cuzco and their country afterward annexed. The Chimus, who gave its name to Chimborazo, were the next victims of the Incas, who now ruled the region from Lake Titicaca to the equator and from the Andes to the sea. It was under the Inca Yupanqui that this conquest took place, and he is regarded as the great hero of Peruvian history. To him was applied the name Pachacutec, Changer of the World. The successor of this champion extended the dominion of his people so much farther that it became necessary to found the city of Quito to keep watch over the northern portion of the empire. He brought in the valley of Pachacamac, where there was an ancient and desirable temple, and also penetrated far into Chile....

"The Inca language was spoken throughout the empire. Garrisons were distributed at strategic points and were connected by the famous roads which have been the wonder and admiration of the world.... There was a central highway from Quito to Cuzco, and thence southward, which is thus described by the historian Cieza" : "'I believe that since the history of man has been recorded there has been no account of such grandeur as is to be seen on this road, which passes over deep valleys and lofty mountains, by snowy heights, over falls of water, through the living rocks and along the edges of furious torrents. In all these places it is level and paved, along mountain slopes well excavated, through the living rock cut, along the river banks supported by walls, in the snowy heights with steps and resting places, in all parts clean-swept, clear of stones, with posts and storehouses and temples of the sun at intervals. Oh, what greater thing could be said of Alexander, or of any of the powerful kings that have ruled in the world, than that they had made such a road as this and conceived the works that were required for it! The roads constructed by the Romans in Spain are not to be compared with it.' The post houses were some four or five miles apart and in each were two Indians who carried messages to and from the next house in line, whereby the government was kept constantly informed of what was going on in all parts of its dominions. In this way messages could travel at the rate of nearly a hundred and fifty miles a day."

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