his wife taught the women to spin and weave. By these means, subsistence became less precarious, and life was rendered more comfortable. Manco next turned his attention to the business of legislation. By his instructions the various relations in private life were established, and the duties resulting from them prescribed with exactness and propriety. Thus barbarous tribes were speedily transformed into a civilized people, and the new empire of Peru, thus wonderfully established, became a well-governed community. There are many fabulous tales current among the Peruvians, in connection with these accounts; but as to the substance of the history they give, confirmed as it is by the condition of Peru at the time of its discovery, there appears no good reason to doubt. Had Solon and Lycurgus dictated their laws to a people without letters, and thus without the means of recording their actions, they might have passed for mythological personages with the sceptics of modern days. If little beside the prominent events of Manco Capac's life and career appear to be handed down to us, the fact is sufficiently explained, by the remoteness of the age in which he lived, and the absence of effectual means of recording the details of his story.. Though this renowned ruler may not have been the first individual who exercised the authority of a chief in Peru, he must be considered as the first real sovereign of that country, and the founder of the empire of the Incas. At first, the extent of his dominions was small. The territory of Cuzco, during his life-time, did not exceed fifty miles square; but within these narrow limits, he exercised absolute and uncontrolled authority. His subjects, however, had no reason to complain of his sway. Like that great luminary which he encouraged them to worship, and from which he pretended to deduce his lineage, he was continually employed in dispensing blessings to his subjects, in instructing and animating them in the exercise of their natural and moral duties. The government he established, and which prevailed over the country till the arrival of the Spaniards, was a paternal despotism, founded upon religion. The Inca was not merely the head of the state, but the messenger of Heaven. His commands were revered as the oracles of the divinity. The royal race was held to be sacred in the highest degree; and in order to prevent contamination by a mixture with inferior blood, the sons of Manco Capac married their own sisters, and no person was admitted to the throne of Peru who could not claim it by so pure a descent. The race of Capac bore the title of "Children of the Sun," and it was deemed an act of rebellion, as well as impiety, to oppose the will of the Inca. His authority, therefore, was unlimited, in the full extent of the word. The persons of the highest rank in his dominions, humbled with the sense of their natural as well as political inferiority, never appeared in his presence without a burthen on their shoulders, as an emblem of their servitude and of their willingness to bear whatever he should think fit to impose upon them. Force was on no occasion necessary to execute his commands: an officer entrusted with them might pass from one extremity of the empire to the other without meeting with the slightest opposition. On exhibiting a fringe of the royal borla, or Peruvian crown, as a token of authority, the lives and fortunes of the people were at his disposal. Political duty being thus enforced by religious reverence, the administration of the government was unimpeded by sedition or disaffection; and there is hardly known, in the traditionary history of Peru, anything in the nature of a rebellion against the reigning prince. A power so absolute was not abused by the possessor: among the twelve successive monarchs, from Manco Capac to Atahualpa, there was not one tyrant. We are told that the founder of the Peruvian empire enjoyed a long and happy reign, and died at Cuzco, exhorting his subjects to adhere firmly to the. institutions which he had bequeathed to them. From the events of his history, thus briefly stated, we may easily form a general judgment of the character of this celebrated lawgiver. Manco Capac must be esteemed one of the great benefactors of the human race, and the most enlightened of all the aborigines of the western world. He reclaimed a savage people, founded an empire, abolished human sacrifices, and established, perhaps, the purest system of religion that human sagacity, unaided by the light of revelation, has ever invented. We have already remarked that the ingenuity of historians has been exercised in endeavoring to penetrate the mystery which hangs over the origin of the great Peruvian benefactor. If we receive the current tradition as authority, it is obvious that, in order to explain these wonderful events, without a resort to miracles, we must suppose Manco Capac to have been a person enlightened by the civilization of the eastern continent. It becomes, therefore, at least a plausible conjecture, that he was a native of some portion of Asia, who, at the remote period when emigration from that quarter of the world to America, was common, found his way to the beautiful region which he made the seat of his empire. With the sagacity of a statesman he penetrated the character of the people; and, guided by the lights of Eastern mythology as well as Eastern civilization, he adjusted them to the condition of those whom he now sought to make his subjects. Taking advantage of their predisposition to adore the heavenly bodies, he professed to be sent on a divine mission by Pachakamac, the unknown deity, of whom the sun is a visible representation. Having thus gained an ascendency over their minds, he gradually proceeded to weave over them the web of government and religion. His complete success sufficiently evinces his own sagacity and the docility of the people. It is a beautiful, but, alas, almost a solitary instance, in which a savage nation has been subdued by the gentle arts of persuasion; in which a conqueror has appeared without arms, seeking dominion through the instru mentality of reason, rather than the sword; in which a despot has left behind him no bloody foot-prints in the path to power; and is only remembered by the gentleness, benignity, and wisdom of his reign and of the institutions he established. How mournful is the |