I met an old woman in Cuzco who claimed to be a descendant of the Incas family. She was unable to trace the account of descent farther back than her own mother. Old ladies tell their children wonderful stories in this part of the world. Those who claim to be of the same blood as the Incas, assume a haughty manner towards their neighbors, which becomes the Indian as little as other people. In the ruins of forts, roads, and canals, the art of spinning, weaving, and dyeing, curiously-carved stone tools and metal castings, are the true remnants of the Incas. The people seemed to fancy the hewing of stone and working in metals, but we find no traces of wood-work.
The Spaniards brought with them to Peru horses and mares, horned cattle, asses, goats, hogs, sheep, tame cats, coins, and dogs of good breed. They planted the grape vine in the valley of Cuzco, made slaves of the Peruvians, who joined to hurl their oppressors in their turn from the territory of Peru.
A traveller told me that in 1825 he could read the news of the war in the faces of the Indians as he met them on the roads. If a battle had been decided in favor of the republicans, the Indians looked up and were cheerful; if in favor of the others, they hung their heads and were sad. The histories of hard fought battles between their forefathers and the Spaniards, and the overthrow of their religion and government, had been handed down from generation to generation. Various changes of manners and customs had interfered with their happiness. The natural man never forgets an injury, and it seems characteristic of the Indians, as well as of some others, to hate their enemies and to love their friends. These people enjoy the recollection of the example of Manco Capac to this day. He seems to have shaped his conduct to the disposition of the nation.
The worship of the planetary bodies, "the sun, moon, and stars," is some evidence of astronomical information, which gave its votaries power over others, ignorant of the natural laws which regulate the movements and periodic changes of these heavenly bodies; and thus gradually enforced a perverted reverence for them by the multitude.
The Hebrew moral law specially objects to such worship, which appears to have been previously known, and, therefore, was forbidden by Moses.
During preceding revolutions, which are referred to in the scriptures, ships employed in commerce between India and Egypt may have been driven from the Persian gulf or Red sea, and have reached this continent.
A remnant, one man and one woman, well educated and instructed in the arts of agriculture, mechanics, and domestic industry, would have effected all the improvements shown by the education of an intelligent race, as the Peruvians appear to have been.
Their customs, manners, and enterprises, assimilate so much with those of remote antiquity, in Asia and Africa, as scarcely to be distinguished from them.
Modern discoveries in Egypt and Assyria exhibit the same bridges and idols, the same tools, weapons and utensils of clay or stone, and of mixed metals—copper hardened by tin.
What things are dissimilar may have been the result of intention and reform. The victory of Alexander the Great over the Tyrians, who were active, enterprising, and intelligent navigators, and the description of explorations to the Arabian sea, made by ships built upon the Indus, authorize a suspicion of very ancient intercourse by some competent means between civilized Asia and America, at the south, as well as by northern navigators upon our eastern coasts.