individually for himself. He owed nothing to inherit ance from his predecessors. On the decease of an Inca, his palaces were abandoned; all his treasures, except what were employed in his obsequies, his furniture and apparel, were suffered to remain as he left them, and his mansions, save one, were closed up forever. The new sovereign was to provide himself with every thing new for his royal state. The reason of this was the popular belief that the soul of the departed monarch would return after a time to re-animate his body on earth; and they wished that he should find everything to which he had been used in life prepared for his reception. 45

When an Inca died, or, to use his own language, was called home to the mansions of his father, the Sun,' "46 his obsequies were celebrated with great pomp and solemnity. The bowels were taken from the body and deposited in the temple of Tampu, about five leagues from the capital. A quantity of his plate and jewels was buried with them, and a number of his attendants and favorite concubines, amounting sometimes, it is said, to a thousand, were immolated on his tomb." Some of them showed the natural repugnance to the sacrifice occasionally manifested by the victims.

45 Acosta, lib. 6, cap. 12.-Garcilasso, Com. Real., Parte 1, lib. 6, сар. 4.

46 The Aztecs, also, believed that the soul of the warrior who fell in battle went to accompany the Sun in his bright progress through the heavens. (See Conquest of Mexico, book 1, chap. 3.)

47 Conq. i Pob. del Piru, MS.-Acosta, lib. 5, cap. 6.-Four thou sand of these victims, according to Sarmiento,- -we may hope it is an exaggeration,-graced the funeral obsequies of Huayna Capac, the last of the Incas before the coming of the Spaniards. Relacion, MS., cap. 65. B*

of a similar superstition in India.

But these were

probably the menials and more humble attendants; since the women have been known, in more than one instance, to lay violent hands on themselves, when restrained from testifying their fidelity by this act of conjugal martyrdom. This melancholy ceremony was followed by a general mourning throughout the empire. At stated intervals, for a year, the people assembled to renew the expressions of their sorrow; processions were made, displaying the banner of the departed monarch; bards and minstrels were appointed to chronicle his achievements, and their songs continued to be rehearsed at high festivals in the presence of the reigning monarch, thus stimulating the living by the glorious example of the dead. 48

The body of the deceased Inca was skilfully embalmed, and removed to the great temple of the Sun at Cuzco. There the Peruvian sovereign, on entering the awful sanctuary, might behold the effigies of his royal ancestors, ranged in opposite files,—the men on the right, and their queens on the left, of the great luminary which blazed in refulgent gold on the walls of the temple. The bodies, clothed in the princely attire which they had been accustomed to wear, were placed on chairs of gold, and sat with their heads inclined downward, their hands placidly crossed over their bosoms, their countenances exhibiting their natural dusky hue,-less liable to change than the fresher color ing of a European complexion,—and their hair of raven black, or silvered over with age, according to the period

48 Cieza de Leon, Cronica, cap. 62.-Garcilasso, Com. Real., Parte 1, lib. 6, cap. 5.-Sarmiento, Relacion, MS., cap. 8.

at which they died! It seemed like a company of solemn worshippers fixed in devotion,-so true were the forms and lineaments to life. The Peruvians were as successful as the Egyptians in the miserable attempt to perpetuate the existence of the body beyond the limits assigned to it by nature."9

They cherished a still stranger illusion in the attentions which they continued to pay to these insensible remains, as if they were instinct with life. One of the houses belonging to a deceased Inca was kept open and occupied by his guard and attendants, with all the state appropriate to royalty. On certain festivals, the revered bodies of the sovereigns were brought out with great ceremony into the public square of the capital. Invitations were sent by the captains of the guard of the respective Incas to the different nobles and officers of the court; and entertainments were provided in the

49 Ondegardo, Rel. Prim., MS.-Garcilasso, Com. Real., Parte 1, lib. 5. cap. 29.-The Peruvians secreted these mummies of their sovereigns after the Conquest, that they might not be profaned by the insults of the Spaniards. Ondegardo, when corregidor of Cuzco, discovered five of them, three male and two female. The former were the bodies of Viracocha, of the great Tupac Inca Yupanqui, and of his son Huayna Capac. Garcilasso saw them in 1560. They were dressed in their regal robes, with no insignia but the llautu on their heads. They were in a sitting posture, and, to use his own expression, "perfect as life, without so much as a hair or an eyebrow wanting." As they were carried through the streets, decently shrouded with a mantle, the Indians threw themselves on their knees, in sign of reverence, with many tears and groans, and were still more touched as they beheld some of the Spaniards themselves doffing their caps, in token of respect to departed royalty. (Ibid., ubi supra.) The bodies were subsequently removed to Lima; and Father Acosta, who saw them there some twenty years later, speaks of them as still in perfect preservation.

names of their masters, which displayed all the profuse magnificence of their treasures,-and "such a display," says an ancient chronicler, "was there in the great square of Cuzco, on this occasion, of gold and silver plate and jewels, as no other city in the world ever witnessed."'5 The banquet was served by the menials of the respective households, and the guests partook of the melancholy cheer in the presence of the royal phantom with the same attention to the forms of courtly etiquette as if the living monarch had presided ! 5*

The nobility of Peru consisted of two orders, the first and by far the most important of which was that of the Incas, who, boasting a common descent with their sovereign, lived, as it were, in the reflected light of his glory. As the Peruvian monarchs availed themselves of the right of polygamy to a very liberal extent, leaving behind them families of one or even two hundred children," the nobles of the blood royal, though

50 "Tenemos por muy cierto que ni en Jerusalem, Roma, ni en Persia, ni en ninguna parte del mundo por ninguna Republica ni Rey de el, se juntaba en un lugar tanta riqueza de Metales de oro y Plata y Pedreria como en esta Plaza del Cuzco; quando estas fiestas y otras semejantes se hacian." Sarmiento, Relacion, MS., cap. 27.

51 Idem, Relacion, MS., cap. 8, 27.—Ondegardo, Rel. Seg., MS.It was only, however, the great and good princes that were thus honored, according to Sarmiento, "whose souls the silly people fondly believed, on account of their virtues, were in heaven, although, in truth," as the same writer assures us, "they were all the time burning in the flames of hell"! Digo los que haviendo sido en vida buenos v valerosos, generosos con los Indios en les hacer mercedes, perdonadores de injurias, porque á estos tales canonizaban en su ceguedad por Santos y honrraban sus huesos, sin entender que las animas ardian en los Ynfiernos creian que estaban en el Cielo." Ibid., ubi supra. Garcilasso says over three hundred! (Com. Real., Parte 1, lit. 3, cap. 19.) The fact, though rather startling, is not inoredible, if, like

comprehending only their descendants in the male line, came in the course of years to be very numerOus. 53 They were divided into different lineages, each of which traced its pedigree to a different meniber of the royal dynasty, though all terminated in the divine founder of the empire.

54

They were distinguished by many exclusive and very important privileges; they wore a peculiar dress, spoke a dialect, if we may believe the chronicler, peculiar to themselves, and had the choicest portion of the public domain assigned for their support. They lived, most of them, at court, near the person of the prince, sharing in his counsels, dining at his board, or sup plied from his table. They alone were admissible to the great offices in the priesthood. They were invested with the command of armies and of distant garrisons, Huayna Capac, they counted seven hundred wives in their seraglio. See Sarmiento, Relacion, MS., cap. 7.

53 Garcilasso mentions a class of Incas por privilegio, who were allowed to possess the name and many of the immunities of the blood royal, though only descended from the great vassals that first served under the banner of Manco Capac. (Com. Real., Parte 1, lib. 1, cap. 22.) This important fact, to which he often refers, one would be glad to see confirmed by a single authority.

54 "Los Incas tuvieron otra Lengua particular, que hablavan entre ellos, que no la entendian los demàs Indios, ni les era licito aprenderla, como Lenguage Divino. Esta me escriven del Perù, que se ha perdido totalmente; porque como pereciò la Republica particular de los Incas, pereciò tambien el Lenguage dellos." Garcilasso, Com. Real., Parte 1, lib. 7, cap. 1.*

* [An analysis of fifteen words preserved by Garcilasso has led to the conclusion that the supposed secret language of the Incas was only a dialect of the common tongue. Meyen, Ueber die Ureinbewohner von Peru, cited by Brinton, Myths of the New World, p. 31.-ED.]

Peru.-VOL. I.