68 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS 



climb upon their houses, and the houses, tumbling down, fell to the 

 ground ; they wished to climb upon the trees, and the trees shook 

 them off; they wished to enter into the grottoes, and the grottoes 

 closed themselves before them. Water and fire contributed to the 

 universal ruin at the time of this great cataclysm," From these two 

 sources we have but little light on our subject. We are told these 

 races migrated from a point in the far East ; and the startling 

 announcement is made that they came across the sea— the Mayas by 

 means of a passage-way opened for them, and the Queches in barks 

 or ships. We are also told the world, in the first age, was destroyed 

 by a great cataclysm, thus indicating a transmitted knowledge of the 

 deluge. But further than this, we know not. Where that land in 

 the East was, or at what date they first landed in America, and what 

 was accomplished in their new home during the long intervening 

 centuries, they could not tell ; their history appeared to have been 

 lost in the far night of ages. Whether these tribes who inhabited 

 Central America at the date of the New World's discovery, were the 

 lineal descendants of the first colonizers, is a point of discussion ; if 

 so, they must have woefully degenerated from their original advance- 

 ment, as they lived in squalid huts, had scarcely any form of civil 

 government, and were ignorant of the majestic ruins by which they 

 were surrounded. 



That the powerful nation of Aztecs and kindred tribes whom 

 Cortez conquered in Mexico, and the Incas, whom Pizzaro conquered 

 in Peru, were a people of comparatively modern date, we know from 

 their own records ; the Aztecs placing the date of their entrance 

 into Mexico at about 1300 A. D., and the Incas their advent into 

 Peru at about 1021 A. D. The Incas wrested their power from the 

 Capan and Aymaran races, whom they described as being in many 

 cases, a people of auburn hair and blue eyes. On a mountain by the 

 sea are the ruins of a grand and stupendous temple of Pachacamac 

 (Creator of the Earth), the supreme God of the Peruvians. This 

 temple is supposed to have been built by the Aymaran race. 

 Through this race also, the worship of one Divine God is supposed 

 to have been transmitted to the Peruvians. From the Capan races 

 the Incas derived their worship of the Sun and Moon ; — to their 

 own semibarbarianism they owed the more repulsive rites of their 

 worship. 



