[158] Fray Alonzo Ramas says that in 1611 an old woman, aged 120 years, died at Viacha, a day's journey from La Paz, who confessed that she had been a Virgin of the Sun.
[159] Cronica Moralizada de la Provincia del Peru, del Orden de San Agustin, por el Padre Fray Antonio de la Calancha. Lima, 1653.
[160] Mr. Merivale, in his Colonization and Colonies, says, "It must be admitted that, had the legislation of Spain in other respects been as well conceived as that respecting the Indians, the loss of her Western empire would have been an unmerited visitation."
[161] Others say that the word Cacique was brought from the Old World by the Spaniards, and that it is a corruption of the Arabic Sheikh.
[162] Prince of Esquilache's despatch, A.D. 1618, No. 6, p. 344, H. 53. MS. despatches in the national library at Madrid.
[163] See the sentence of death passed on the Inca Tupac Amaru in 1782, by the Visitador Areche, in which the use of these dresses, and the celebration of festivals and plays, are prohibited for the future.
[164] See Money's Java, i. p. 215, where there is an account of the position and functions of the native "Regents."
[165] The pay of an Indian was usually 1 rial (6d.) a week in the farms, and 20 rials (about 10s.) in the mines. But the miners kept back a third of the Indian's wages, nominally to form a fund to pay for his return to his home at the end of his period of service.
[166] The Marquis of Montes Claros derives the word mita from the Quichua mitta, "time," and says that the mita was established to prevent idleness, and for the good of the Indians!—Memorias, i. p. 21.
[167] Report of the Viceroy Prince of Esquilache, 1620. This, however, is not quite clear: it is more probable that Indians were lawlessly torn from their homes to work in the mines when the mita of a seventh did not yield a sufficient number of labourers. In North Peru the proportion was a sixth, and in Quito a fifth.