regard to their history.
They are called "roads of the Incas," but they were probably much older
than the time of these rulers. The mountain road running toward Quito
was much older than the Inca Huayna Capac, to whom it has sometimes been
attributed. It is stated that when he started by this route to invade
the Quitus, the road was so bad that "he found great difficulties in the
passage." It was then an old road, much out of repair, and he
immediately ordered the necessary reconstructions. Gomara says, "Huayna
Capac restored, enlarged, and completed these roads, but he did not
build them, as some pretend." These great artificial highways were
broken up and made useless at the time of the Conquest, and the
subsequent barbarous rule of the Spaniards allowed them to go to decay.
Now only broken remains of them exist to show their former character.

THE PERUVIAN CIVILIZATION.

The development of civilization in Peru was very different from that in
Mexico and Central America. In both regions the people were
sun-worshipers, but their religious organizations, as well as their
methods of building temples, were unlike. Neither of these peoples seems
to have borrowed from the other. It may be that all the old American
civilizations had a common origin in South America, and that all the
ancient Americans whose civilization can be traced in remains found
north of the Isthmus came originally from that part of the continent.
This hypothesis appears to me more probable than any other I have heard
suggested. But, assuming this to be true, the first migration of
civilized people from South America must have taken place at a very
distant period in the past, for it preceded not only the history
indicated by the existing antiquities, but also an earlier history,
during which the Peruvians and Central Americans grew to be as different
from their ancestors as from each other. In each case, the development
of civilization represented by existing monuments, so far as we can
study it, appears to have been original.

In some respects the Peruvian civilization was developed to such a
degree as challenged admiration. The Peruvians were highly skilled in
agriculture and in some kinds of manufactures. No people ever had a more
efficient system of industry. This created their wealth and made
possible their great public works. All accounts of the country at the
time of the Conquest agree in the statement that they cultivated the
soil in a very