The hand of Providence

by J. H. Ward

One of the most important duties of the priesthood was that of education, to which certain buildings were appropriated. To each of the principal temples, schools were attached and lands were annexed for the maintenance of the priests. Their writings were on cotton cloth or skins, or on papyrus, a kind of paper made from the aloe. At the time of the Spanish conquest, vast collections of these manuscripts were in existence; but the first archbishop of Mexico, burned them in the market-place. Rome was determined that no literature should exist but her own.

The Mexican year consisted of eighteen months and each month of twenty days; five days were added to make the number to three hundred and sixty-five. To provide for the leap years they added twenty-four days to each century. The Mexican mode of reckoning was then superior to that of Europe. When the nations of Europe adopted the calendar discovered and perfected by the Jews and Saracens, then their mode of reckoning corresponded with that discovered by the seed of Abraham on this continent and both were true.

The ancient Americans had ascertained the globular form of the earth previous to their contact with Europeans. Catholic Europe would not admit that truth till compelled to by the voyages of Columbus and Magellan.

Their agriculture was in some respects superior to that of Europe. There was nothing in the old world to compare with the menageries and botanical gardens of Huax-tepec, Chapultepec and Tezcuco.

They excelled in the arts of the jeweller and enameller. They were skillful weavers of fine cloth. They were not ignorant of the use of iron; and understood the manufacture of bronze, of which they also made use. To them we are indebted for tobacco, snuff, chocolate and cochineal. From them we learned the use of the potato, which has now extended to all parts of the civilized world. They, like us, knew the use of intoxicating drinks; and like us sometimes partook of them to excess.

This sketch would be incomplete without a reference to the civilization of Peru. As Egypt was the cradle of civilization in the old world, so Peru was in the new. Like Egypt also it was in most parts a rainless region. The ancient Peruvian empire was nearly two thousand four hundred miles in length, but scarcely sixty miles in width—a narrow strip hemmed in between the grand Andes mountains and the Pacific ocean.

Mummy.

The sides of this great mountain range might seem altogether unfitted for agriculture. But the advanced state of Peruvian civilization is at once demonstrated when it is said that these mountain slopes had become a garden. Immense terraces were constructed wherever required, and irrigation was employed on the grandest scale the world has ever seen. Peru possessed a varied climate. In the lower valleys near the coast could be raised all the products of tropical regions, at an elevation of a few thousand feet the climate was adapted for grains of a temperate zone. On table-lands, at a great elevation above the sea, there were villages and even cities. Thus the plain on which Quito stands, under the equator, is nearly ten thousand feet high, and enjoys a climate of perpetual spring. So great was their industry that the Peruvians had gardens and orchards above the clouds, and on ranges still higher flocks of sheep and llamas, in regions bordering on the limit of perpetual snow.