228 QUITO. 



in the valley the dynasty of the Scyris.* Temples and 

 palaces of barbaric splendor, and ambitious tolas, f or 

 tombs, rose throughout the valley. Second only to the 

 civilization of the Incas was this early one of the Carans. 

 They were familiar with implements of bronze, and pos- 

 sessed some knowledge of astronomy. The sun, as with 

 the Incas, was the central object of their worship. But, 

 while the mountain-peaks which stand about the plains of 

 Quito were witnessing the high civilization of the Scyris, 

 there was springing up in the highlands of Lake Titicaca 

 an indigenous civilization which nowhere found a paral- 

 lel among the primitive nations of America, except upon 

 the table-lands of Mexico, and which was speedily to ab- 

 sorb the Quitonian kingdom. 



The great Inca empire had its origin aboiit the year 

 1100, four hundred years before the Spanish conquest. 

 An i land in the mountain-girdled lake of Titicaca, where 

 tradition says Manco Capac and Mama Oella, his sister 

 and wife, " Children of the Sun," first appeared, is to-day 

 held sacred as the birthplace of the Inca kingdom. But 

 of the Empire of the Incas we need speak but briefly, for 

 the pen of Prescott has made all familiar with their ro- 

 mantic history. By conquest and the assimilating forces 

 of a wise and paternal polity, they soon extended their 

 kingdom to the domains of the Scyris. The Inca Tupac 

 Yupanqui, jealous of this rival kingdom, led his warriors 

 against the king of the Carans, and wrested from him the 

 southern portion of his dominions. Both kingdoms now 

 changed rulers, Cacha the Fifteenth came to the throne 

 of the Scyris in Quito. Iluayna-Capac succeeded his 

 father, Tupac Yupanqui, in Cuzco, Capac made an heroic 

 defence of his empire. Overpowered by numbers and 



* The king of the Carans was called Scyvi. The language of this 

 race was the Quichua, the national tongue of the Incas. 



f See " Four Years among Spanish-Americans," Hassaurek. 



