62 The Ravine of ihe Unbtiried Dead. [July, 



tyrants call the book of their God.* It shone not ; it beamed not. I 

 held it to my ear ; it spoke not. I looked within it. Strange characters 

 which told me nothing were all I beheld. I threw it from me in disdain, 

 and marvelled that they who beheld with open eyes the glorious beams 

 of our god, and partook of the fruits his genial warmth calls forth, and 

 walked and wrought in the light he sends, would prefer a miserable and 

 incomprehensible record, of such petty size it might be hidden in the 

 woollen folds of our priest's garments ; to the felt, the visible, the 

 resplendent cause of all things. Listen, idolatress; when the God of the 

 eastern lands, to whom you bow, hath power to restrain, or justice to 

 punish his merciless sons; then will your sire fall down before the Deity 

 that can make even Spanish hearts prefer mercy to gold !" — " Alas \" 

 exclaimed Ualla, clasping her hands, and perceiving the hopelessness of 

 pleading for a religion, the chains of whose false professors galled her 

 captive sire, " you believe that the light set in yon heaven is the 

 glorious governor of earth and sky. With grateful homage you offer him 

 a part of those productions his kindly warmth hath called to existence. 

 To him you present the choicest works which his beams have guided 

 your hand to perform. Even the timid lama hath sometimes bled its 

 sacrificial tribute to the being who supplies its gentle race with food.f 

 Yet, look around, my sire ; tell me have all in Peru who bowed before 

 the golden orb, and confessed the sacred obligation of imitating his 

 beneficence, have all shed on the little world around them the same kindly 

 influence ? No. Yet my sire saith not that the God of the Western world 

 is a cruel God. Unhappy Ata Hualpa, the usurping Inca, still bowed 

 before that sun whose temples he had robbed, and whose children he had 

 destroyed ; yet will not my father pronounce that the golden light Hualpa 

 worshipped was a false and a merciless lord. O my father, the fallen 

 Inca was not falser to the character of his god, than these unworthy 

 christians to the author of their pure faith." 



Ere the unshaken cazique could reply, a sound of feet and voices 

 startled his child, and made her heart throb with a sickening horror. It 

 seemed as if some heavy weight were placed in the adjoining apartment. 

 The father looked haughtily prepared. The daughter turned pale as the 

 snow on her native Andes. " God of mercy," she ejaculated, " stay 

 their cruel hands. Spare yet awhile — Look in mercy on the soul for 

 which the sharer of thy throne expired." 



The Spaniards entered. The answer of Alpahula was demanded. 

 He sternly folded his arms, and seemed scarce to heed their queries. 

 They approached, and laid their hands on his person. " I have nothing 

 to say," replied the chief — " I only pray that my child may depart. 

 Farewell, Ualla, once the light of thy father's eye. I have not the heart 

 to let thee behold what these walls must now witness. Farewell, go, and 

 repent." Pierced to the heart by the kindness Avhich made her doomed 

 parent see in his sufferings only the pang they would inflict on an apos- 

 tate child, the gentle, young Peruvian strove, in despairing energy, to 

 release her sire with her own slender fingers from the grasp of his 

 enemies. She was forced back. The cazique's garment was removed. 

 He was lifted in the arms of his oppressors towards the fatal engine. 

 Ualla saw his eye turned to the east, as if to implore the support of his 



* AVe iiiiist suppose this to liavc been a Poi)ish breviary, 

 t See lloberlsoii. ice- 



