114 CRANIA AMERICANA. 



the minds of those surviving w^ith consternation, at the destruction of their 

 countrymen. A great part of the nation died by famine and sickness ; and the 

 w^retched remains of this people, willing to save themselves from the common 

 calamity, sought timely relief to their misfortunes in other countries."* The 

 historian then adds, that the Toltecas migrated in large bodies to various parts of 

 the continent, and extended themselves as far south as Yucatan ; and so complete 

 v^as the dispersion of these people, that the land of Anahuac (the ancient name of 

 Mexico) remained solitary and depopulated for nearly a century. Now it has 

 been mentioned in the preceding chapter, that the Inca race date their possession 

 of Peru from about the eleventh century of our era; and as this period corresponds 

 with the epoch of the migration of the Toltecas, we may reasonably conjecture 

 that both were of a common origin. This supposition gains strength when we 

 inquire into the character of the Toltecas. 



Of all the nations of the new world they had attained to the highest degree 

 of civilisation ; they lived in society, collecting themselves into cities, under the 

 government of kings and regular laws. They were not remarkably warlike, and 

 preferred the cultivation of the arts to the exercise of arms ; they also devoted 

 themselves to architecture, and cultivated with care various useful plants and 

 fruits. Nor did they practise those arts only which are considered as necessary 

 to human comfort, but those also which minister to luxury ; and it is added, that 

 although their religion was idolatrous, it does not appear that they practised those 

 barbarous and bloody sacrifices, which became so common in Mexico after the 

 Toltecan emigration. f Now, as we shall heareafter see, these are the leading 

 features in the character of the modern or Inca Peruvians ; and when we take into 

 consideration that the disappearance of the Toltecas from their own country, was 

 simultaneous with the advent of the new dynasty in Peru, may we not look upon 

 the two as cognate nations ? There is, besides, a coincidence in the squared and 

 conical form of the head in the Toltecas and Peruvians that is very striking, and 

 which will be more particularly adverted to in a future part of this work. 



Whether the preceding inference, which is by no means new, be correct or 

 not, there can be little doubt that the Inca family was an intruding nation^ led 

 perhaps by a few individuals of the sacerdotal class ; and having conquered Peru, 

 much the same political relations appear to have subsisted between them and the 

 pre-existing inhabitants, as we at present observe between the modern Greeks and 

 the Turks. 



* Clavigero, Hist of Mexico, I, p. 118. Culkn's Tr, t Ibid. I, p. 114, 116. 



