318 



nations, living' on milk and cheese, real nomades, 

 would have spread themselves over those vast 

 plains, which communicate with each other. 

 They would have been seen at the period of 

 great droughts, and even at that of inundations, 

 fighting for the possession of pastures ; subju- 

 gating one another mutually; and^ united by 

 the common tie of manners, language^ and 

 worship, rise to that state of demicivilization, 

 which we observe with surprise in. the nations of 

 the Mungal and Tatar race. America would 

 then, like the centre of Asia, have had it's con- 

 querors ; who, ascending from the plains to the 

 table-lands of the Cordilleras, and abandoning a 

 wandering* life, would have subdued the civilized 

 nations of Peru and New Grenada j overturned 

 the throne of the Incas, and of the Zaque *, and 

 substituted for the despotism, which is the fruit of 

 theocracy, that despotism which arises from the 

 patriarchal government of a pastoral people. 

 In the New World the human race has not ex- 

 perienced these great moral and political changes ; 

 because the steppes, though more fertile than 

 those of Asia, have remained without herds ; be- 

 cause none of the animals, that furnish milk in 

 abundance, are natives of the plains of South 



* The Zaque was the secular chief of Cundinamarca. His 

 power was shared with the high priest ( Lama) of Iraca. See 

 my Recherches sur les Monuments des Americains (ed. in folio, 

 p. 246 ; and Eng. transl. vol ii, or xiv of the present work, 

 p. 108—9). 



