422 MAN : PAST AND PRESENT. [CHAP. 



craftsmen, and peasants, beyond whom were the tributary popula- 

 tions, nomads and others hovering on the skirts of this feebly 

 organized political system. It broke to pieces at the first shock 

 from without, and so disheartened had the people become under 

 their half theocratic rulers, that they scarcely raised a hand in 

 defence of a government which in their minds was associated 

 only with tyranny and oppression. The conquest was in any 

 case facilitated by the civil war at the time raging between the 

 northern and southern kingdoms which with several other semi- 

 independent states constituted the Muyscan empire. This empire 

 was almost conterminous southwards with that of the Incas. At 

 least the numerous terms occurring in the dialects of the Paes, 

 Coconucos, and other South Colombian tribes, show that Peruvian 

 influences had spread beyond the political frontiers far to the 

 north, without, however, quite reaching the confines of the 

 Muyscan domain. 



But, for an unknown period prior to the discovery, the sway of 

 the Peruvian Incas had been established throughout 

 the'irfcas C nearly the whole of the Andean lands, and the terri- 

 tory directly ruled by them extended from the Quito 

 district about the equator for some 2500 miles southwards to the 

 Rio Maule in Chili, with an average breadth of 400 miles between 

 the Pacific and the eastern slopes of the Cordilleras. Their 

 dominion thus comprised a considerable part of the present 

 republics of Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chili, and Argentina, with a 

 roughly estimated area of 1,000,000 square miles, and a popula- 

 tion of over 10,000,000. Here the ruling race were the Quechuas 

 o hu (Quichuas) , whose speech, the "Language of the 

 Race and Incas," is still current in several well-marked dialec- 

 tic varieties throughout all the provinces of the old 

 empire. In Lima and all the seaports and inland towns Spanish 

 prevails, but in the rural districts Quechuan remains the mother- 

 tongue of over 2,000,000 natives, and has even become the lingua 

 franca of the western regions, just as Tupi-Guarani is the lingoa 

 gera/, "general language," of the eastern section of South America. 

 The attempts to find affinities with Aryan (especially Sanskrit), 

 and other linguistic families of the Eastern Hemisphere, have 

 broken down before the application of sound philological principles 



