The History Of The Conquest Of Peru (2nd ver) | Page 7

Whether I shall have the heart to enter, as I had
proposed, on a new and more extensive field of historical labor, with
these impediments, I cannot say. Perhaps long habit, and a natural
desire to follow up the career which I have so long pursued, may make
this, in a manner, necessary, as my past experience has already proved
that it is practicable.
From this statement - too long, I fear, for his patience - the reader, who
feels any curiosity about the matter, will understand the real extent of
my embarrassments in my historical pursuits. That they have not been
very light will be readily admitted, when it is considered that I have had
but a limited use of my eye, in its best state, and that much of the time I
have been debarred from the use of it altogether. Yet the difficulties I
have had to contend with a very far inferior to those which fall to the
lot of a blind man. I know of no historian, now alive, who can claim the
glory of having overcome such obstacles, but the author of "La
Conquete de l'Angleterre par les Normands" who, to use his own
touching and beautiful language, "has made himself the friend of
darkness"; and who, to a profound philosophy that requires no light but

that from within, unites a capacity for extensive and various research,
that might well demand the severest application of the student.
The remarks into which I have been led at such length will, I trust, not
be set down by the reader to an unworthy egotism, but to their true
source, a desire to correct a misapprehension to which I may have
unintentionally given rise myself, and which has gained me the credit
with some - far from grateful to my feelings, since undeserved - of
having surmounted the incalculable obstacles which lie in the path of
the blind man.
Boston, April 2 1847
Chapter I
Physical Aspect Of The Country. - Sources Of Peruvian Civilization. -
Empire Of The Incas. - Royal Family. - Nobility.
Of the numerous nations which occupied the great American continent
at the time of its discovery by the Europeans, the two most advanced in
power and refinement were undoubtedly those of Mexico and Peru. But,
though resembling one another in extent of civilization, they differed
widely as to the nature of it; and the philosophical student of his
species may feel a natural curiosity to trace the different steps by which
these two nations strove to emerge from the state of barbarism, and
place themselves on a higher point in the scale of humanity. - In a
former work I have endeavoured to exhibit the institutions and
character of the ancient Mexicans, and the story of their conquest by
the Spaniards. The present will be devoted to the Peruvians; and, if
their history shall be found to present less strange anomalies and
striking contrasts than that of the Aztecs, it may interest us quite as
much by the pleasing picture it offers of a well-regulated government
and sober habits of industry under the patriarchal sway of the Incas.
The empire of Peru, at the period of the Spanish invasion, stretched
along the Pacific from about the second degree north to the
thirty-seventh degree of south latitude; a line, also, which describes the
western boundaries of the modern republics of Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia,
and Chili. Its breadth cannot so easily be determined; for, though
bounded everywhere by the great ocean on the west, towards the east it

spread out, in many parts, considerably beyond the mountains, to the
confines of barbarous states, whose exact position is undetermined, or
whose names are effaced from the map of history. It is certain, however,
that its breadth was altogether disproportioned to its length. *1
[Footnote 1: Sarmiento, Relacion, Ms., cap. 65. - Cieza de Leon,
Cronica del Peru, (Anvers, 1554,) cap. 41. - Garcilasso de la Vega,
Commentarios Reales, (Lisboa, 1609,) Parte 1, lib. 1, cap. 8.
According to the last authority, the empire, in its greatest breadth, did
not exceed one hundred and twenty leagues. But Garcilasso's
geography will not bear criticism.]
The topographical aspect of the country is very remarkable. A strip of
land, rarely exceeding twenty leagues in width, runs along the coast,
and is hemmed in through its whole extent by a colossal range of
mountains, which, advancing from the Straits of Magellan, reaches its
highest elevation - indeed, the highest on the American continent -
about the seventeenth degree south, *2 and, after crossing the line,
gradually subsides into hills of inconsiderable magnitude, as it enters
the Isthmus of Panama. This is the famous Cordillera of the Andes, or
"copper mountains," *3 as termed by the natives, though they might
with more reason