From Bolivia’s mighty plains,
As they hear the Gospel story,
And are loosed from Satan’s chains.
CHAPTER IX
PEARLS OF PERU
Last, but not least, we come to the most historical and romantic Republic of the whole continent, Peru. This country was discovered by an adventurer named Pizarro. He was a zealous Roman Catholic, but his spirit of greediness over-balanced his religion, and the story of his conquest of the Inca Indians of Peru, as related by Prescott, is one of the darkest in history.
Before the invasion of Pizarro and his fellow-countrymen, over four hundred years ago, there lived a very highly-civilized race of Indians who called themselves the “Children of the Sun.” They were a most enlightened and industrious people, having their own king, as well as their own laws and religion.
Since the days of Pizarro and his followers everything has changed. The king was slain with hundreds of his loyal subjects, and the Spaniards took possession of the land. There you will see the Indians to-day, living in spiritual darkness and superstition, scarcely able to call their souls their own, a crushed and conquered remnant of a once splendid race; and to-day “the children’s souls which God is calling sunward, spin on blindly in the dark.”
On the lonely mountain side we will find them, tiny mites of three and four years of age, tending the sheep, and often very scantily protected from the severe and biting winds. But the mountain children have an easy time of it compared to the children of the city, for slavery and starvation are the common lot of these little ones.