By their labour the crown lands were cultivated, public works were carried on, and the various houses belonging to the emperor were built and kept in repair.

Their attention to the order and management of the police was very striking. Public couriers, stationed at proper intervals to convey intelligence from one part of the empire to the other, led to a refinement in police not introduced into any kingdom of Europe at that period. The structure of the capital in a lake, with artificial dykes, and causeways of great length, which served as avenues to it from different quarters, seems to be an idea that could not have occurred to any but a civilized people. The same observation may be applied to the structure of the acqueducts, by which they conveyed a stream of fresh water from a considerable distance into the city along one of the causeways. The appointment of a number of persons to cleanse the streets, to light them by fires kindled at different places, and to patrole as watchmen during the night, discovers a degree of attention which even polished nations are late in acquiring.

Their mode of computing time is a decisive evidence of their progress in improvement. They divided the year into eighteen months, each consisting of twenty days, amounting in all to 360. But as they observed that the course of the sun was not completed in that time, they added five days to the year, which they termed supernumerary, or waste; and as these did not belong to any month, no work was done, and no sacred rite performed on them; they were devoted wholly to festivity and pastime. Such are the striking particulars which exhibit the

Mexicans as a people considerably refined. But, from other circumstances, one is apt to suspect that in many things they did not greatly differ from the other inhabitants of America.

Like the rude tribes around them, the Mexicans were incessantly engaged in war; and the motives which prompted them to hostility seem to have been the same. They fought to gratify their vengeance by shedding the blood of their enemies. In battle they were chiefly intent on taking prisoners, and it was by the number of these that they estimated the glory of victory. No captive was ever ransomed or spared. All were sacrificed without mercy, and their flesh devoured with the same barbarous joy as among the fiercest savages. On some occasions it rose to even wilder excesses. Their principal warriors covered themselves with the skins of the unhappy victims, and danced about the streets; boasting of their own valour, and exulting over their enemies. This ferocity of character prevailed among all the nations of New Spain. But in proportion as mankind combine in social union, their manners soften, sentiments of humanity arise, and the rights of the species come to be understood. The fierceness of war abates, and even while engaged in hostility, men remember what they owe one to another. The savage fights to destroy; the citizen, to conquer. The former neither pities nor spares; the latter has acquired sensibility, which tempers his rage. To this sensibility the Mexicans seem to have been perfect strangers; which leads us to suspect that their degree of civilization must have been very imperfect.

Their funeral rites were not less bloody than those of the most savage tribes. On the death of

any distinguished personage, especially of the emperor, a certain number of his attendants were chosen to accompany him to the other world; and those unfortunate victims were put to death without mercy, and buried in the same tomb.

Though their agriculture was more extensive than that of the roving tribes, yet it was not sufficient to supply them with such subsistence as men require when engaged in efforts of active industry; and consequently every mean was taken to prevent any considerable increase in their families.

Theirreligious tenets, and the rites of their worship, indicate no great progress in civilization. The aspect of superstition in Mexico was gloomy and atrocious. Its divinities were clothed with terror, and delighted in vengeance. The figures of serpents, of tigers, and of other destructive animals, decorated their temples. Fear was the only principle that inspired their votaries. Fasts, mortifications, and penances rigid and excruciating, were the means employed to appease the wrath of the gods, and the Mexicans never approached their altars without sprinkling them with blood drawn from their own bodies. But of all offerings, human sacrifices were deemed most acceptable. Every captive taken in war was brought to the temple, was devoted as a victim to the deity, and was sacrificed with the most cruel rites. The heart and the head were the portion consecrated to the gods; the warrior by whose prowess the prisoner had been seized, carried off the body to feast upon it with his friends.

The empire of Peru boasts of higher antiquity than that of Mexico. But the knowledge of their ancient history, which the Peruvians could communicate to their conquerors, was both imperfect and

uncertain; for, being unacquainted with the art of writing, they were destitute of the only means by which the memory of past transactions can be preserved with any degree of accuracy. The quipos, or knots or cords on different colours, which have been celebrated as regular annals of the empire, imperfectly supplied the place of writing. According to the description of Acosta, by the various colours different objects were denoted, and by each knot a distinct number. Thus an account was taken and a register kept, of the inhabitants in each province, or of the several productions collected there for public use. But they could contribute, however, but little towards preserving the memory of ancient events and institutions.

Very little credit then is due to the details which have been given of the exploits, the battles, the conquests, and private character of the early Peruvian monarchs. We can depend upon nothing in their story as authentic, but a few facts so interwoven in the system of their religion and policy as preserved the memory of them from being lost, and upon the description of such customs and institutions as continued in force at the time of the conquest, and fell under the immediate observations of the Spaniards.

The people of Peru had not advanced beyond the rudest form of savage life, when Mango Capac, and his consort Mama Ocollo, appeared to instruct and civilize them. Who these extraordinary personages were, we are not able to ascertain; but, taking advantage of the propensity in the Peruvians to superstition, and particularly of their veneration for the Sun, they pretended to be the children of that luminary, and to deliver instructions in his name and by authority from him. The multitude

listened and believed, and in process of time the successors of Mango Capac extended their dominion over all the regions that stretch to the west of the Andes from Chili to Quito, establishing in every province their peculiar policy and religious institutions. Indeed the whole system of civil policy among the Peruvians was founded on religion. The inca not only appeared as legislator, but as the messenger of heaven; and his injunctions were received as the mandates of the deity. His race was held to be sacred; and, to preserve it distinct, the sons of Capac married their own sisters, and no person was ever admitted to the throne who could not claim it by such pure descent. To these children of the Sun, for that was the appellation bestowed upon all the offspring of the first inca, the people looked up with the reverence due to beings of a superior order. Hence the authority of the inca was unlimited and absolute. And all crimes, being considered as insults offered to the deity, were punished capitally.

The system of superstition on which the incas ingrafted their pretensions to such high authority, was of a genius very different from that established among the Mexicans. Mango Capac turned the veneration of his followers entirely towards natural objects. The Sun, as the great source of light, of joy, and fertility, in the creation, attracted their principal homage. The moon and the stars, as co-operating with him, were entitled to secondary honours. Wherever the human mind is employed in contemplating the order and beneficence that really exist in nature, the spirit of superstition is mild. Wherever imaginary beings, created by the fears of men, are supposed to preside in nature, and become objects of worship, superstition as