A short time before the captive Inca was put to death, he was taken into the open air, in compliance with his request, to see a large comet. The “greenish black comet, nearly as thick as a man,” (Garcilaso says, P. ii. p. 44, una cometa verdinegra, poco menos gruesa que el cuerpo de un hombre), seen by Atahuallpa before his death, therefore in July or August 1533, and which he supposed to be the same malignant comet which had appeared at the death of his father, Huayna Capac, is certainly the one observed by Appian (Pingré, Cométographie, T. i. p. 496; and Galle’s “Notice of all the Paths of Comets hitherto computed,” in “Olber’s Leichtester Methode die Bahn eines Cometen zu berechnen,” 1847, S. 206), and which, on the 21st of July, standing high in the north, near the constellation of Perseus, represented the sword which Perseus holds in his right hand. (Mädler, Astronomie, 1846, S. 307; Schnurrer, Die Chronik der Seuchen in Verbindung mit gleichzeitigen Erscheinungen, 1825, Th. ii. S. 82.) Robertson considers the year of Huayna Capac’s death uncertain; but, from the researches of Balboa and Velasco, that event appears to have occurred towards the close of 1525: thus the statements of Hevelius (Cometographia, p. 844), and of Pingré (T. i. p. 485), derive confirmation from the testimony of Garcilaso (P. i. p. 321) and the tradition preserved among the “amautas, que son los filosofos de aquella Republica.” I may here introduce the remark, that Oviedo alone, and certainly erroneously, asserts, in the inedited continuation of his Historia de las Indias, that the proper name of the Inca was not Atahuallpa, but Atabaliva (Prescott, Conquest of Peru, Vol. i. p. 498.)
[55] p. 291.—“Ducados de Oro.”
The sum mentioned in the text is that which is stated by Garcilaso de la Vega in the Commentarios reales de los Incas, Parte ii. 1722, pp. 27 and 51. The statements of Padre Blas Valera and of Gomara, Historia de las Indias, 1553, p. 67, differ, however, considerably. Compare my Essai politique sur la Nouvelle Espagne (éd. 2), T. iii. p. 424. It is, moreover, no less difficult to determine the value of the Ducado, Castellano, or Peso de Oro. (Essai pol. T. iii. pp. 371 and 377; Joaquin Acosta, Descubrimiento de la Nueva Granada, 1848, p. 14.) The modern excellent historical writer, Prescott, has been able to avail himself of a manuscript bearing the very promising title, “Acta de Reparticion del Rescate de Atahuallpa.” The estimate of the whole Peruvian booty which the brothers Pizarro and Almagro divided amongst themselves at the (I believe) too large value of three and a half millions of pounds sterling, includes doubtless the gold of the ransom and that taken from the different temples of the Sun and from the enchanted gardens, (Huertas de Oro). (Prescott, Conquest of Peru, Vol. i. pp. 464-477.)
[56] p. 292.—“The great, but, for a Son of the Sun, somewhat free-thinking Huayna Capac.”
The nightly absence of the Sun excited in the Inca many philosophical doubts as to the government of the world by that luminary. Padre Blas Valera noted down the remarks of the Inca on the subject of the Sun: “Many maintain that the Sun lives, and is the Maker and Doer of all things (el hacedor de todas las cosas); but whoever would complete any thing must remain by what he is doing. Now many things take place when the Sun is absent; therefore he is not the original cause of all things. It seems also doubtful whether he is living; for though always circling round, he is never weary (no se cansa). If he was living, he would become weary, as we do; and if he was free, he would surely move sometimes into parts of the heavens where we never see him. The Sun is like an animal fastened by a cord so as always to move in the same round, (como una Res atada que siempre hace un mismo cerco); or as an arrow which only goes where it is sent, and not where it chooses itself.” (Garcilaso, Comment. Reales, P. i. lib. viii. cap. 8, p. 276.) The view taken of the circling round of a heavenly body, as if it was fastened to a cord, is very striking. As Huayna Capac died at Quito in 1525, seven years before the arrival of the Spaniards, he no doubt used, instead of “res atada,” the general expression of an “animal” fastened to a cord; but indeed, even in Spanish, “res” is by no means limited to oxen, but may be applied to any tame cattle. We cannot examine here how far the Padre may have mingled parts of his own sermons with the heresies of the Inca, with the view of weaning the natives from the official and dynastic worship of the Sun, the religion of the Court. We see in the very conservative State policy, and in the maxims of State and proceedings of the Inca Roca, the conqueror of the province of Charcas, the solicitude which was felt to guard strictly the lower classes of the people from such doubts. This Inca founded schools for the upper classes only, and forbade, under heavy penalties, to teach the common people any thing, “lest they should become presumptuous, and should create disturbances in the State!” (No es lecito que enseñen á los hijos de los Plebeios las Ciencias, porque la gente baja no se eleve y ensobervezca y menoscabe la Republica; Garcilaso, P. i. p. 276.) Thus the policy of the Inca’s theocracy was almost the same as that of the Slave States in the United Free States of North America.
[57] p. 295.—“The restoration of an empire of the Incas.”
I have treated this subject more fully in another place (Relation hist. T. iii. p. 703-705 and 713). Raleigh thought there was in Peru an old prophecy “that from Inglaterra those Ingas should be againe in time to come restored and deliuered from the seruitude of the said conquerors. I am resolued that if there were but a smal army afoote in Guiana marching towards Manoa, the chiefe citie of Inga, he would yield Her Majestie by composition so many hundred thousand pounds yearely, as should both defend all enemies abroad and defray all expences at home, and that he woulde besides pay a garrison of 3000 or 4000 soldiers very royally to defend him against other nations. The Inca wil be brought to tribute with great gladnes.” (Raleigh, “The Discovery of the large, rich, and beautiful Empire of Guiana, performed in 1595,” according to the edition published by Sir Robert Schomburgk, 1848, p. 119 and 137.) This scheme of a Restoration promised much that might be very agreeable to both sides, but unfortunately the dynasty who were to be restored, and who were to pay the money, were wanting!
[58] p. 299.—“Of the expedition of Vasco Nuñez de Balboa.”
I have already remarked elsewhere (Examen critique de l’histoire de la Géographie du Nouveau Continent, et des progrès de l’Astronomie nautique aux 15ème et 16ème siècles, T. i. p. 349) that Columbus knew fully ten years before Balboa’s expedition the existence of the South Sea and its great proximity to the east coast of Veragua. He was conducted to this knowledge not by theoretical speculations respecting the configuration of Eastern Asia, but by the local and positive reports of the natives, which he collected on his fourth voyage (May 11, 1502, to November 7, 1504). On this fourth voyage the Admiral went from the coast of Honduras to the Puerto de Mosquitos, the western end of the Isthmus of Panama. The reports of the natives, and the comments of Columbus on those reports in the “Carta rarissima” of the 7th of July, 1503, were to the effect that “not far from the Rio de Belen the other sea (the South Sea) turns (boxa) to the mouths of the Ganges, so that the countries of the Aurea (i. e. the countries of the Chersonesus aurea of Ptolemy) are situated in relation to the eastern coasts of Veragus, as Tortosa (at the mouth of the Ebro) is to Fuentarrabia (on the Bidassoa) in Biscay, or as Venice in relation to Pisa.” Although Balboa first saw the South Sea from the heights of the Sierra de Quarequa on the 25th of September (Petr. Martyr, Epist. dxl. p. 296), yet it was not until several days later that Alonso Martin de Don Benito, who found a way from the mountains of Quarequa to the Gulf of San Miguel, embarked on the South Sea in a canoe. (Joaquin Acosta, Compendio hist. del Descubrimiento de la Nueva Granada, p. 49.)
As the taking possession of a considerable part of the west coast of the New Continent by the United States of North America, and the report of the abundance of gold in New California (now called Upper California) have rendered more urgent than ever the formation of a communication between the Atlantic States and the regions of the West through the Isthmus of Panama, I feel it my duty to call attention once again to the circumstance that the shortest way to the shores of the Pacific, which was shown by the natives to Alonso Martin de Don Benito, is in the eastern part of the Isthmus, and led to the Golfo de San Miguel. We know that Columbus (Vida del Almirante por Don Fernando Colon, cap. 90) sought for an “estrecho de Tierra firmë”; and in the official documents which we possess of the years 1505 and 1507, and especially 1514, mention is made of the desired “opening” (abertura), and of the pass (passo), which should lead directly to the “Indian Land of Spices.” Having for more than forty years been occupied with the subject of the means of communication between the two seas, I have constantly, both in my printed works and in the different memoirs which with honourable confidence the Free States of Spanish America have requested me to furnish, urged that the Isthmus should be examined hypsometrically throughout its entire length, and more especially where, in Darien and the inhospitable former Provincia de Biruquete, it joins the continent of South America; and where, between the Atrato and the Bay of Cupica (on the shore of the Pacific), the mountain chain of the Isthmus almost entirely disappears. (See in my Atlas géographique et physique de la Nouvelle Espagne, Pl. iv.; in the Atlas de la Relation historique, Pl. xxii. and xxiii.; Voyage aux Régions équinoxiales du Nouveau Continent, T. iii. p. 117-154; and Essai politique sur le Royaume de la Nouvelle Espagne, T. i. 2de édit. 1825, p. 202-248.)