76 



WORSHIP OF PLANETARY BODIES. 



curiously-carved stone tools and metal castings, are the true remnants 

 of the Incas. The people seemed to fancy the hewing of stone and 

 working in metals, but we find no traces of wood-work. 



The Spaniards brought with them to Peru horses and mares, horned 

 cattle, asses, goats, hogs, sheep, tame cats, coins, and dogs of good breed. 

 They planted the grape vine in the valley of Cuzco, made slaves of the 

 Peruvians, who joined to hurl their oppressors in their turn from the 

 territory of Peru. 



A traveller told me that in 1825 he could read the news of the war 

 in the faces of the Indians as he met them on the roads. If a battle 

 had been decided in favor of the republicans, the Indians looked up and 

 were cheerful ; if in favor of the others, they hung their heads and were 

 sad. The histories of hard fought battles between their forefathers and 

 the Spaniards, and the overthrow of their religion and government, had 

 been handed down from generation to generation. Various changes of * 

 manners and customs had interfered with their happiness. The natural 

 man never forgets an injury, and it seems characteristic of the Indians, 

 as well as of some others, to hate their enemies and to love their friends. 

 These people enjoy the recollection of the example of Manco Capac to 

 this day. He seems to have shaped his conduct to the disposition^. 

 the nation. 



The worship of the planetary bodies, " the sun, moon, and stars," is 

 some evidence of astronomical information, which gave its votaries 

 power over others, ignorant of the natural laws which regulate the 

 movements and periodic changes of these heavenly bodies; and thus 

 gradually enforced a perverted reverence for them by the multitude. 



The Hebrew moral law specially objects to such worship, which ap- 

 pears to have been previously known, and, therefore, was forbidden by 

 Moses. 



During preceding revolutions, which are referred to in the scriptures, 

 ships employed in commerce between India and Egypt may have been 

 driven from the Persian gulf or Red sea, and have reached this continent. 



A remnant, one man and one woman, well educated and instructed 

 in the arts of agriculture, mechanics, and domestic industry, would have 

 effected all the improvements shown by the education of an intelligent 

 race, as the Peruvians appear to have been. 



Their customs, manners, and enterprises, assimilate so much with 

 those of remote antiquity, in Asia and Africa, as scarcely to be dis- 

 tinguished from them. 



Modern discoveries in Egypt and Assyria exhibit the same bridges 

 and idols, the same tools, weapons and utensils of clay or stone, and of 

 mixed metals — copper hardened by tin. 



