ifferent tongues, although the Quichua dialect,
spoken by the Incas, and doubtless a dialect of the Aymaraes, to whom
the Incas belonged, was the official language in every part of the
empire. There was a separated and fragmentary condition of the
communities with respect to their unlike characteristics, which implied
something different from a quiet and uniform political history. These
differences and peculiarities suggest that there was a period when Peru,
after an important career of civilization and empire, was subjected to
great political changes brought about by invasion and revolution, by
which the nation was for a long time broken up into separate states.

Here, as in Mexico and Central America, there was in the traditions
frequent mention of strangers or foreigners who came by sea to the
Pacific coast and held intercourse with the people; but this was in the
time of the old kingdom. As the Malays and other island people under
their influence formerly traversed the Pacific, this is not improbable.
Some have assumed that the Peruvians had no communication with the
Mexicans and Central Americans, and that the two peoples were unknown to
each other. This, however, seems to be contradicted by the fact that an
accurate knowledge of Peru was found among the people inhabiting the
Isthmus and the region north of it. The Spaniards heard of Peru on the
Atlantic coast of South America, but on the Isthmus Balboa gained clear
information in regard to that country from natives who had evidently
seen it. To what extent there was intercourse between the two civilized
portions of the continent is unknown. They had vessels quite as good as
most of those constructed at Panama by the Spanish hunters for Peru,
such as the _balsas_ of the Peruvians and the "shallop" of the Mayas
seen by Columbus, which made communication possible up and down the
coast; but whether regular intercourse between them was ever
established, and every thing else relating to this matter, must
necessarily be left to a calculation of probabilities.

CONCLUSION.

If, as seems most likely, there was in South America an ancient
development of civilized human life, out of which arose the
civilizations found in Peru and Central America, its antiquity was much
greater than can be comprehended by the current chronologies. This,
however, can not make it improbable, for these chronologies are really
no more reasonable than the monkish fancies used in the sixteenth