WHAT THEY WERE WHEN PERFECT. 247 



used only horses instead of the carefully treading mule, 

 who in the difficult parts of the mountains seems to de- 

 liberate on every step he takes. It was not until a later 

 period that mules were employed. 



Sarmiento, who saw the Eoads of the Incas while they 

 were still in a perfect state of preservation, asks in a 

 Relacion which long lay unread, buried. in the Library 

 of the E sco rial, "how a nation unacquainted with the use 

 of iron could have completed such grand works in so 

 high and rocky a region, extending from Cuzco to Quito on 

 the one hand, and to the coast of Chili on the other? The 

 Emperor Charles," he adds, " with all his power could not 

 accomplish even a part of what the well-ordered Govern- 

 ment of the Incas effected through the obedient people over 

 whom they ruled." Hernando Pizarro, the most educated 

 and civilized of the three brothers, who for his misdeeds 

 suffered a twenty years' imprisonment at Medina del 

 Campo, and died at last at a hundred years of age in the 

 odour of sanctity, exclaims : "In the whole of Christendom 

 there are nowhere such fine roads as those which we here 

 admire." The two important capitals and seats of govern- 

 ment of the Incas, Cuzco and Quito, are one thousand 

 English geographical miles apart in a straight line, without 

 reckoning the many windings of the way ; and includ- 

 ing the windings, the distance is estimated by Grarcilaso 

 de la Vega and other Conquistadores at five hundred 

 leagues. Notwithstanding the great distance, we learn 

 from the well-confirmed testimony of the Licentiate Polo 

 de Ondegardo, that Huayna Capac, whose father had 

 conquered Quito, caused some of the building materials 

 for the houses of the Incas in the latter city, to be brought 

 from Cuzco. 



