198 Distinctive Characteristics of the 



at the dictation of another. Tiius it was that a people whose 

 moral impulses are known to have differed in Uttle or nothing 

 from those of the barharous tribes, were reduced, partly by 

 persuasion, partly by force, to a state of effeminate vassalage 

 not unlike that of the modern Hindoos. Like the latter, too, 

 they made good soldiers in their native wars, not from any 

 principle of valour, but from the sentiment of passive obedience 

 to their superiors ; and hence when they saw their monarch 

 bound and imprisoned by the Spaniards, their conventional 

 courage at once forsook them ; and we behold the singular 

 spectacle of an entire nation prostrated at a blow, like a 

 strong man whose energies yield to a seemingly trivial but 

 rankling wound. 



After the Inca power was destroyed, however, the dormant 

 spirit of the people was again aroused in all the moral vehe- 

 mence of their race, and the gentle and unoffending Peruvian 

 was transformed into the wily aud merciless savage. Every 

 one is familiar with the sequel. Resistance was too late to 

 be availing, and the fetters to which they had confidingly 

 submitted were soon riveted forever. 



As we have already observed, the Incas depressed the 

 moral energies of their subjects in order to secure their own 

 power. This they effected by inculcating the arts of peace, 

 prohibiting human sacrifices, and in a great measure avoiding 

 capital punishments ; and blood was seldom spilt excepting on 

 the subjugation of warlike and refractory tribes. In these 

 instances, however, the native ferocity of their race broke 

 forth even in the bosom of the Incas ; for we are told by 

 Garcilaso, the descendant and apologist of the Peruvian kings, 

 that some of their wars were absolutely exterminating ; and 

 among other examples he mentions that of the Inca Yupan- 

 qui against the province of Collao, in which whole districts 

 were so completely depopulated that they had subsequently to 

 be colonized from other parts of the empire : and in another 

 instance the same unsparing despot destroyed twenty thou- 

 sand Caranques, whose bodies he ordered to be thrown into an 

 adjacent lake, which yet bears the name of the Sea of Blood. 

 In like manner when Atahualpa contested the dominion with 



