251 



tlie burning-mirror, supposing it to be an adaptation from 

 Plutarclij would not even be the best illustration of this mo- 

 dern phase of Mythology ; that distinction must be reserved for 

 the reproduction by another chronicler of another of Plutarch's 

 stories, that of the shout that was raised when the Roman 

 herald proclaimed the liberty of the Greeks, — such a shout that 

 it brought the crows tumbling down into the race-course from 

 the sky above.^ The Incas, says Sarmiento, " were so feared, 

 that if they went out through the kingdom, and allowed a 

 curtain of their litters to be lifted that their vassals might see 

 them, they raised so great an acclamation that they made the 

 birds fall from where they were flying above, so that the people 

 could catch them in their hands."" 



Against the abstract possibility of Garcilaso's story of the 

 lighting of the sacred fire with concave mirrors, there is no 

 more to be said than against Plutai'ch's. With a good para- 

 bolic mirror only two inches in diameter, I have lighted brown 

 paper under an English sun of no extraordinary power, and 

 other surfaces which will make a good caustic will answer, 

 though of course they have less burning power than a parabo- 

 loid of revolution of equal size. There is even a material basis 

 out of which the Peruvian story may have grown. In the an- 

 cient tombs of Peru, mirrors both of pyrites and obsidian have 

 been found. Some, three or four inches in diameter, were 

 probably mere broken nodules of pyrites, polished on the flat 

 side, but one is mentioned measuring about a foot and a half 

 (probably in circumference), which had a beautifully-polished 

 concave surface, so as to magnify objects considerably,^ and 

 such a mirror may have been used for making fire. Indeed, 

 the objection to the story of the Virgins of the Sun is not that 

 any of the details I have mentioned must of necessity be un- 

 true, but that the apparent traces of absorption from Plutarch 

 invalidate whatever rests on Garcilaso de la Vega's unsup- 

 ported testimony. 



To conclude the notice of the art of fire-making in g*eneral, 



' Pint., T. Quinct. Flamiiiius, x. 



2 Sarmiento, MS. cited in Prescott, Peru, vol. i. p. 25. 



3 Juan & Ulloa, ' Kelacion Historica ;' Madrid, 1748, p. 619. 



