History of the conquest of Peru / by Willilam H. Prescott.

  • Prescott, William Hickling, 1796-1859.
Date:
1908
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: History of the conquest of Peru / by Willilam H. Prescott. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    46/692 (page 4)
    Intercourse was maintained between these numerous settle¬ ments by means of the great roads which traversed the moun¬ tain passes, and opened an easy communication between the capital and the remotest extremities of the empire. The source of this civilisation is traced to the valley of Cuzco, the central region of Peru, as its name implies.1 The origin of the Peruvian empire, like the origin of all nations, except the very few which, like our own, have had the good fortune to date from a civilised period and people, is lost in the mists of fable, which, in fact, have settled as darkly round its history as round that of any nation, ancient or modern, in the Old World. According to the tradition most familiar to the European scholar, the time was, when the ancient races of the continent were all plunged in deplorable barbarism ; when they worshipped nearly every object in nature indiscriminately; made war their pastime, and feasted on the flesh of their slaughtered captives. The Sun, the great luminary and parent of mankind, taking compassion on their degraded condition, sent two of his children, Manco Capac and Mama Oello Huaco, to gather the natives into communities, and teach them the arts of civilised life. The celestial pair, brother and sister, husband and wife, advanced along the high plains in the neighbourhood of Lake Titicaca, to about the sixteenth degree south. They bore with them a golden wedge, and were directed to take up their residence on the spot where the sacred emblem should without effort sink into the ground. They proceeded accordingly but a short distance, as far as the valley of Cuzco, the spot indicated by the performance of the miracle, since there the wedge speedily sank into the earth and disappeared for ever. Here the children of the Sun established their residence, and soon entered upon their beneficent mission among the rude inhabitants of the country; Manco Capac teaching the men the arts of agriculture, and Mama Oello 2 1 “ Cuzco, in the language of the Incas,” says Garcilasso, “signifies nave?.”—Com. Real., parte i. lib. i. cap. xviii. 2 Mama, with the Peruvians, signified “mother.” The identity of this term with that used by Europeans, is a curious coincidence. It is scarcely less so, however, than that of the corresponding word, papa, which with the ancient Mexicans, denoted a priest of high rank ; reminding us of the papa, “pope” of the Italians. With both, the term seems to embrace in its most comprehensive sense the paternal relation, in which it is more familiarly employed by most of the nations of Europe. Nor was the use of it limited to modern times, being applied in the same way both by Greeks and Romans. “ Yliirna <juAe,” says Nausikaa, addressing her father in the simple language which the modern versifiers have thought too simple to render literally.