In Peru--that ancient land of mysterious civilization, that brother of Egypt and Babylon, looking out through the twilight of time upon the silent waters of the Pacific, waiting in its isolation for the world once more to come to it-in this strange land we find the following legend:
"Ere sun and moon was made, Viracocha, the White One, rose from the bosom of Lake Titicaca, and presided over the erection of those wondrous cities whose ruins still dot its islands and western shores, and whose history is totally lost in the night of time."[2]
He constructed the sun and moon and created the inhabitants of the earth. These latter attacked him with murderous intent (the comet assailed the sun?); but "scorning such unequal contest he manifested his power by hurling the lightning on the hill-sides and consuming the forests," whereupon the creatures he had created humbled themselves before him. One of Viracocha names was At-achuchu. He civilized the Peruvians, taught them arts and agriculture and religion; they called him "The teacher of all things." He came from the east and disappeared in the Western Ocean. Four civilizers followed him who emerged from the cave
[1. "Popular Science Monthly," October, 1879, p, 799.
2. Brinton's; "Myths of the New World," p. 192.]
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Pacarin Tampu, the House of Birth.[1] These four brothers were also called Viracochas, white men.
Here we have the White One coming from the east, hurling his lightning upon the earth and causing a conflagration; and afterward civilized men emerged from a cave. They were white men; and it is to these cave-born men that Peru owed its first civilization.
Here is another and a more amplified version of the Peruvian legend:
The Peruvians believed in a god called At-achuchu, already referred to, the creator of heaven and earth, and the maker of all things. From him came the first man, Guamansuri.