able engineer. The Inca roads, in many respects, rivalled their
aqueducts. From the point of view of the modern highway, it is true that
they may be considered as somewhat slender and unimportant affairs.
Certainly in the absence of any wheeled traffic no surface of the kind
as was necessary in Europe and Asia was to be met with here. Provided
that the road stretched in an uninterrupted length along the peaks,
valleys, and chasms of the rugged mountain country, no question of close
and intricate pavement was concerned, since for the troops of
pack-llamas anything of the kind was quite superfluous. Thus, as
imposing structures, these highways impress the modern traveller but
little. Nevertheless, they served their purpose efficiently, and
extended themselves in triumph over one of the most difficult
road-making countries in the world.

This road network of the Incas spread itself little by little from the
central portion of the Empire to the far north and south; for during the
comparatively short imperial status of the race their rule had extended
itself steadily. They were in many respects a people possessed of the
true colonizing instincts. Their able and liberal Government was of a
kind which could not fail to be appreciated by the tribes which they had
conquered. Indeed, the various sections of these subjugated Indians
appear to have become an integral part of the Inca Empire in a
remarkably short time.

In their conquest the rulers appear to have strained every point to
effect this end. Thus they were not averse from time to time to receive
into their temples new and strange gods which their freshly made
subjects had been in the habit of worshipping. These were received
among the deities of older standing, and were wont to be acknowledged,
and so, after a short while, were considered as foreign no longer.

A nation of which far less has been heard, but which in many respects
resembled the Incas, was that of the Chibchas. The Chibchas inhabited
the country which had for its centre the valley of the Magdalena River.
The country of this tribe, as a matter of fact, is now part of the
Republic of Colombia; thus the Chibchas were situated well to the north
of the Inca Empire. The religion of these people closely resembled that
of the more southern Children of the Sun. Like these others, they
worshipped the masculine Sun and the female Moon, and a certain number
of deities in addition.

The Chibchas have left some ruin