“She might have.”
“Buddy and I were talking about those countries, those old ones. Spain had all South America, Central America, Mexico, part of the United States, Portugal, and goodness knows what else, and now she’s one of the least significant countries in the world, almost. Alfonso, he’s not half bad and of course he can’t help what his predecessors did, but I should think it would make him want to bite nails when he thinks, if he dares to, what his country might have done in all these years.”
“Probably the history of his heritage does not constitute his happiest reading,” the Don answered.
“Some of those chaps had brains enough to see that the system was a blamed poor one, but they couldn’t do much until the worst was over.”
“A few of the men who went or were sent out were the finest of their time, or any time. They were keen enough to see that their country must lose instead of gain by the ruthless oppression of a race which was intellectually superior to their own. The destruction of public works as great as any in Spain, and the wrecking of a government under which men lived more happily than any country before or since; could only react like a boomerang against them. At the time the Pizarros invaded Peru, there was no poverty among the people of the Yncas; there hadn’t been a beggar in the land in hundreds of years; every man, woman and child was trained as few were trained in the old world. There were no rats, comparatively little disease, the travelers on the great roads were guests at the depots—inns—the Spaniards called them, and there was no oppression. The poor were cared for; everyone, from the greatest to the least, worked, did his share and had plenty. They worshipped the Sun—it was their God—and they had ceremonies in their beautiful temples—but the conquerors called them heathen, destroyed the wonderful works of art—destroyed them so effectively that the world still wonders how the work was done. The great buildings were razed, the gold ripped off. One man’s share was a huge gold sun, several feet in diameter, of the purest quality, and he lost it with a throw of the dice.”
“Jinks, I never read that,” Jim gasped. “Wow.”
“It is quite true. The gold and silver workers had made marvelous vases, all sorts of pieces of service and statuary. When you are in Cuzco you can see the remains of a temple. How the stones were brought to that spot, put together, and worked, still is one of the world’s mysteries. Depots were built in every province; a whole army on the march could be supplied at a moment’s notice, and if disaster over-took one section of the land, it could be re-supplied very quickly from another. Runners traveled the road from one end to the other, men who were swift of foot, and news was passed back and forth in an incredibly short time.”
“It must have been lovely. I read somewhere that the roads were much more marvelous than the ones built by the early Romans,” Jim said.
“They were. They went over desert and Mountains, were wide and smooth, with beautiful shade trees and seats. The land was irrigated by a system which is still a mystery. In years, ten or fifteen millions of people were butchered without rhyme or reason, vast flocks of llamas were almost wiped off the face of the earth, the highways were hacked to pieces, and the guide posts set across the deserts were burned for firewood.”
“The Ynca gave them a room full of gold as a ransom.”