merce of the land, nor the commerce the tillage of the soil; that all, from the highest to the lowest, kept their place and order; that the Incas were obeyed as men of consummate wisdom and excellent government, as well as all their rulers and captains."

The testator goes on to lament bitterly the effect of the evil example set to this blameless people by his countrymen :

by this means, by thus building up a social | the Spaniard. Mr. Prescott has preserved fabric of such unexceptionable excellence, it in the old Spanish; but we think it commend the cause of heathenism. For it worth while to translate the most striking is not merely Garcilasso de la Vega, the passages. boasted descendant of the Incas, who has thus painted the Saturnian age of his fore- For many years I have earnestly desired to fathers. We can remember, indeed, the render this information to my Sovereign Lord King bewilderment, the perplexity, the involun- Philip, that most Catholic and Christian monarch, for the relief of my soul. I, who took so great tary scepticism with which, in the days of part in the discovery, conquest, and settlement of our youth, we explored the "Royal Com-that realm, of which we have deprived its lords mentaries," be it confessed (the original the Incas, in order to place it under the crown of being unattainable) in the cumbrous and Spain, would have his Majesty know, that the blundering English of old Sir Paul Rycaut, said Incas governed the land in such a manner, still doubting whether we were in the midst that there was neither robber nor vicious man, nor of Plato's Atlantis, or of the Arabian man of pleasure, nor adulteress or prostitute in the land; that no one was allowed to live an imNights. But as Mr. Prescott justly ob- moral life; that all the people had their honest serves, Garcilasso has added but little, if and industrious callings; that the mountains and anything, to the accounts of the earliest mines, the pastures, the chases, and the woods, writers, some of whom, as Acosta and Blas were governed and distributed so that each had de Valera, he cites as his authorities; and his own without hindrance or law-suit; that the Mr. Prescott has added to the mass of evi-wars, though frequent, did not interrupt the comdence that of two remarkable, and it should seem peculiarly trustworthy testimonies. Juan de Sarmiento was president of the council of the Indies. He visited Peru at the time when the administration of Gasca had estabished peace by the discomfiture and death of the last of the Pizarros. He professed to have gathered the materials of his work from the best instructed of the Inca race who had survived the conquest. The Relacion of Sarmiento is still among the unpublished treasures of the Escurial. A second authority is that of an eminent jurist, Polo de Ondegarde, who resided at Lima about the same period: he appears to have been a wise and good man, to have acquired deserved popularity among the Indians, and to have given excellent advice as well as valuable information to successive viceroys; as a magistrate he had the best opportunities of studying the institutions of the country. Ondegardo's work was consulted by Herrera, but has not been printed. For his MS. copies both of it and Sarmiento, Mr. Prescott was indebted to Mr. O. Rich. The most singular testimony, however, to the social condition of the Peruvians, is the preamble to the will of Mancio Sierra Lejesama, the last survivor of the early Spanish conquerors, printed in the Appendix of Mr. Prescott. It is a death-bed confession, partly, no doubt, intended to expiate the soldier's sins, but partly, we hope, drawn up under a feeling of genuine compassion for the people whose mild and parental government he had contributed to overthrow, in order to subjugate them to the iron tyranny of

"That whereas the Indian, if he had a hundred thousand pounds of gold or silver in his house, would leave his door open, or only fastened with a stick or a peg of wood, to show that the master was absent, and no one would think of entering, or of touching the property; but when these Indians saw that we put up strong doors with locks, they thought it was for fear of our lives, lest they should kill us-they could not believe that it was against robbery and for the protection of property. When they found that there were thieves amongst us, and seducers of their women, they began to hold us in contempt. But the natives have unhappily been so ruined by our bad example that there is hardly a virtuous woman left.”

The good old soldier, the last, he says, of the conquerors, earnestly entreats the King to interfere for the relief of his conscience; and humbly implores pardon of God for his share in these iniquities.

Mr. Prescott could not but be struck with the contrast between these ancient institutions of South America and those of his own country. In the former case there seems to have been the least possible freedom, and that freedom among the least possible number of the people; and yet, if human happiness consist in security of life and property, in the certainty of subsist

ence and clothing, in order and in peace, a foundling, and a priest,"-Pizarro, Almathe great Benthamite test, of" the greatest gro, and De Luque, having heard some happiness of the greatest number," seems to vague and doubtful rumors of a great emhave been more nearly approached than in pire, equal in extent and superior in wealth countries of much higher civilization. In to that of Mexico, which had already fallen the latter, in the United States, the great under the arms of Cortez, enter into a soexperiment of allowing the least possible lemn compact for the conquest and partipower to the government, and the most ab- tion of this unknown El Dorado. After solute individual freedom, is the basis of difficulties which might have broken the the social system. Mr. Prescott would spirits of less than Spanish adventurers, willingly hold the balance with a steady which would have quelled any motives but hand; and even he, as is shown by a few that strange confederacy of chivalrous paspregnant words at the close of our next ex- sion for adventure, with avarice and relitract, cannot contemplate without some awe gious zeal; after disasters and sufferings the solution of this mighty problem, of before which many shrank back, and it is which our children may see the issue:-- only surprising that any held on their stern course, Pizarro throws himself into the "A philosopher of a later time, warmed by the midst of this vast and organized empire, contemplation of the picture, which his own fancy whose sovereign might easily have mustered had colored, of public prosperity and private happiness under the rule of the Incas, pronounces a hundred thousand warriors-with less than the moral man in Peru far superior to the Euro- two hundred men, worn out with fatigue pean.' Yet such results are scarcely reconcilable and disaster, imperfectly armed-including with the theory of the government I have attempt ed to analyse. 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 de vised 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 institutions so opposite to those of a 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 ut most; 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 passed 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 !"--vol. i., pp. 157, 158.

To the romance of the Peruvian civil polity succeeds the romance of the conquest. "A bastard (in the words of Robertson),

in his force only three arquebussiers, less than twenty cross-bow men, and at most sixty-seven horsemen-and with an utter impossibility of retreat-and Pizarro becomes master of Peru!

The history of this conquest is wanting, indeed, in the perils, the vicissitudes, the incredible feats of valor, the more incredible command displayed by Cortez over the minds of his own countrymen; as when he boldly confronts a superior officer, a Spaniard of name and rank, with a royal commission, who had come to deprive him of all the fruits of his valor, and marches off at the head of his rival's army to achieve his own work. There is nothing of that desperate fighting along the causeways, the naval battles on the lake, the great temple soaring above the bloody tumult, and displaying before the Spaniards the offering of their captive brothers upon the altar. All in Peru, after the tremendous passage of the Cordillera, is achieved by one audacious act of the most consummate treachery, by one unresisted massacre, followed by the barbarous execution, out of disappointed or unglutted avarice, of the last of the Incas. In comparison with Cortez, Pizarro, with all his inconceivable daring, is but a treacherous and vulgar ruffian; nor does the same melancholy and protracted interest which dwelt on the fate of the gentle Montezuma attack to the less blameless, less generous Atahu allpa. The division of the kingdom,—the rivalry between Huascar, the legitimate heir, and Atahuallpa, the son of a concubine

camped on the adjacent fields took the alarm, and, learning the fatal tidings, were seen flying in every direction before their pursuers, who in the heat of triumph showed no touch of mercy. At length night, more pitiful than man, threw her friendly mantle over the fugitives, and the scattered troops of Pizarro rallied once more at the sound of the trumpet in the bloody square of Caxamalca.'-vol. i., pp. 376-385.

were hung with tapestry, and the floors inlaid with tiles of the same precious metal. There must be some foundation for all this. At all events, it was safe to accede to the Inca's proposition; since, by so doing, he could collect at once all the gold at his disposal, and thus prevent its being purloined or secreted by the natives. He therefore acquiesced in Atahuallpa's offer; and drawing a red line along the wall at the height which the Inca had indicated, he caused the terms The price offered by the Peruvian king of the proposal to be duly recorded by the notary. for his ransom was an error as fatal as his The apartment was about seventeen feet broad, trust in the honor and truth of the Span- by twenty-two feet long, and the line round the iard. As if avarice knew satiety !-as if walls was nine feet from the floor. This space any draught, however copious, could slake was to be filled with gold; but it was understood the thirst for gold! To the Indian, no doubt, that the gold was not to be melted down into inwho prized gold and silver but as splendid gots, but to retain the original form of the articles into which it was manufactured, that the Inca ornaments, as gorgeous and dazzling appen- might have the benefit of the space which they dages of his royal state-of whom it could occupied. He further agreed to fill an adjoining not be said,effodiuntur opes irritamenta room, of smaller dimensions, twice full with sil malorum'-the deep passion of the Europe-ver, in like manner; and he demanded two months an for that which was to him power, luxu- to accomplish all this.'-vol. i., p. 393–395. ry, even religion, by which he might pam- The Inca kept his word to an extent per his body with every indulgence, and which even Spanish rapacity could hardly purchase the redemption of his soul, was, anticipate. It does not appear whether the no doubt, utterly inconceivable. The Inca test of piling the treasure brought in, so as thought that he was making a wise sacrifice to ascertain whether it filled the stipulated of some of his pomp ; and that the strangers, space in the chamber, actually took place. so gratified in this unaccountable desire for Much of it, Mr. Prescott says, was sent in that which his mines might restore in no thin plates, which had been stripped from long time, would depart and leave the realm the walls of the temples, and therefore did in peace; at all events, that they would not occupy much room, and this turned to respect a solemn covenant; that he should the disadvantage of the Inca. But Mr. regain that freedom which he had so rashly Prescott calculates the total amount of the imperilled, be able to place himself at the gold when melted into bars of an uniform head of his subjects, and so prevent the dan- standard (the recasting consumed a full gerous designs (the only designs of which month), as equivalent, allowing for the greathe had a distinct comprehension) of his na-er value of money in the sixteenth century, tive rival, the next legitimate heir in suc- to three millions and a half sterling; the cession after Huascar. Mr. Prescott thus quantity of silver was estimated at 51,000,relates the dazzling proposition which he 610 marks. made to Pizarro :—

A curious tradition of the country is related in a recent volume of Travels in Peru. It is there said, that the bullion, when piled on the floor of the cell, did not reach above halfway to the given mark :

"In the hope, therefore, to effect his purpose by appealing to the avarice of his keepers, he one day od Pizarro, that if he would set him free, he would engage to cover the floor of the apartment on which they stood with gold. Those present listened with an incredulous smile; and, as the Inca received no answer, he said, with some emphasis, that he would not merely cover the floor, but would fill the room with gold as high as he could reach; and, standing on tiptoe, he stretched out his hand against the wall. All stared with amazement; while they regarded it as the insane boast of a man too eager to procure his liberty to weigh the meaning of his words. Yet Pizarro was sorely perplexed. As he had advanced into the country, much that he had seen, and all that he had heard, had confirmed the dazzling reports first received of the riches of Peru. Atahualpa imself had given him the most glowing picture of the wealth of the capital, where the roofs of the temples were plated with gold, while the walls i then dispersed.

"The Inca then dispatched messengers to Cuzco to obtain from the royal treasury the gold required to make up the deficiency; and, accordingly, eleven thousand llamas were dispatched from Cuzco to Caxamarca, each laden with one hundred pounds of gold. But, ere the treasure reached its destination, Atahualpa was hanged, by the advice of Don Diego de Almangra and the Dominican monk Vicente de Valverde. The terror-stirring news flew like wild-fire through the land, and speedily reached the convoy of Indians, who were driving their richly laden llamas over the level heights into Central Peru. On the spot where the intelligence of Atahuallpa's death was communicated to them the dismayed Indians concealed their treasure, and

suade him to resign his sceptre and acknowledge the supremacy of another.

"The eyes of the Indian monarch flashed fire, and his dark brow grew darker, as he replied, 'I will be no man's tributary! I am greater than any prince upon earth. Your emperor may be a great prince; I do not doubt it, when I see he has sent his subjects so far across the waters; and I am willing to hold him as a brother. As for the Pope of whom you speak, he must be crazy to talk of giving away countries which do not belong to him. For my faith,' he continued, "I will not change it. Your own God, as you say, was put to death by the very men whom he created. But mine,' he concluded, pointing to his deity, then, alas! sinking in glory behind the mountains, my God still lives in the heavens, and looks down on his children.'

"He then demanded of Valverde by what authority he had said these things. The friar pointed to the book which he held as his authority. Atahualpa, taking it, turned over the pages a moment, then, as the insult he had received probably flashed across his mind, he threw it down with vehemence, and exclaimed, Tell your comrades that they shall give me an account of their doings in my land. I will not go from here till they have made me full satisfaction for all the wrongs they have committed.'

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vivors under the terrible pressure of their assailants, that a large body of Indians, by their convulsive struggles, burst through the wall of stone and dried clay which formed part of the boundary of the plaza! It fell, leaving an opening of more than a hundred paces, through which multitudes now found their way into the country, still hotly pursued by the cavalry, who, leaping the fallen rubbish, hung on the rear of the fugitives, striking them down in all directions.

"Meanwhile the fight, or rather massacre, continued hot around the Inca, whose person was the great object of the assault. His faithful nobles, rallying about him, threw themselves in the way of the assailants, and strove, by tearing them from their saddles, or, at least, by offering their own bosoms as a mark for their vengeance, to shield their beloved master. It is said by some authorities that they carried weapons concealed under clothes. If so, it availed them little, as it is not pretended that they used them. But the most timid animal will defend itself when at bay. That they did not so in the present instance, is proof that they had no weapons to use. Yet they still continued to force back the cavaliers, clinging to their horses with dying grasp, and, as one was cut down, another taking the place of his fallen comrade with a loyalty truly affecting.

"The Indian monarch, stunned and bewildered, saw his faithful subjects falling round him without hardly comprehending his situation. The litter on which he rode heaved to and fro, as the mighty press swayed backwards and forwards: and he gazed on the overwhelming ruin, like some forlorn mariner, who, tossed about in his bark by the furious elements, sees the lightning's flash and hears the thunder bursting around him, with the consciousness that he can do nothing to avert his fate. At length, weary with the work of destruction, the Spaniards, as the shades of evening grew deeper, felt afraid that the royal prize might, after all, elude them; and some of the cavaliers made a desperate attempt to end the affray at once by taking Atahuallpa's life. But Pizarro, who was nearest his person, called out with stentorian voice, Let no one, who values his life, strike at the Inca;' and, stretching out his arm to shield him, received a wound or the hand from one of his own men the only wound received by a Spaniard in the action.

The friar, greatly scandalized by the indignity offered to the sacred volume, stayed only to pick it up, and, hastening to Pizarro, informed him of what had been done, exclaiming at the same time, Do you not see, that, while we stand here wasting our breath in talking with this dog, full of pride as he is, the fields are filling with Indians? Set on at once; I absolve you. Pizarro saw that the hour had come. He waved a white scarf in the air, the appointed signal. The fatal gun was fired from the fortress. Then springing into the square, the Spanish captain and his followers shouted the old war-cry of St. Jago and at them!' It was answered by the battle-cry of every Spaniard in the city, as, rushing from the avenues of the great halls in which they were concealed, they poured into the plaza, horse and foot, each in his own dark column, and threw themselves in the midst of the Indian crowd. The latter, taken by surprise, stanned by the report of artillery and muskets, the echoes of which reverberated like thunder from the surrounding buildings, and blinded by the smoke which rolled in sulphureous volumes along the square, were seized with panic. They knew not whither to fly for refuge from the coming ruin. Nobles and commoners all were trampled under the fierce charge of the cavalry, who dealt their blows right and left, without sparing; while their swords, ashing through the thick gloom, carried dismay into the hearts of the wretched natives, who now, for the first time, saw the horse and his rider in all their terrors. They made no resistance,-as, indeed, they had no weapons with which to make "All attempt at resistance now ceased. The it. Every avenue to escape was closed, for the fate of the Inca soon spread over town and counentrance to the square was choked up with the try. The charm which might have held the Perudead bodies of men who had perished in vain ef-vians together was dissolved. Every man thought forts to fly; and such was the agony of the sur. only of his own safety. Even the soldiery en

The struggle now became fiercer than ever round the royal litter. It reeled more and more, and at length several of the nobles who supported it having been slain, it was overturned, and the Indian prince would have come with violence to the ground, had not his fall been broken by the efforts of Pizarro and some other of the cavaliers, who caught him in their arms. The imperial borla was instantly snatched from his temples by a soldier named Estete, and the unhappy monarch, strongly secured, was removed to a neighboring building, where he was carefully guarded.

"In the hope, therefore, to effect his purpose by appealing to the avarice of his keepers, he one day od Pizarro, that if he would set him free, he would engage to cover the floor of the apartment on which they stood with gold. Those present listened with an incredulous smile; and, as the Inca received no answer, he said, with some emphasis, that he would not merely cover the floor, but would fill the room with gold as high as he could reach; and, standing on tiptoe, he stretched out his hand against the wall. All stared with amazement; while they regarded it as the insane boast of a man too eager to procure his liberty to weigh the meaning of his words. Yet Pizarro was sorely perplexed. As he had advanced into the country, much that he had seen, and all that he had heard, had confirmed the dazzling reports first received of the riches of Peru. Atahualpa imself had given him the most glowing picture of the wealth of the capital, where the roofs of the temples were plated with gold, while the walls i then dispersed.