ative
faculty, which, in history and science as well as in art, gives form and
life to its material. But his conclusions, if general in nature and
limited in range, are such as commend themselves to all minds competent to
grasp the problems presented and not led astray by prepossessions. He
finds the existing relics in Peru substantiating in the main the accounts
given by the Spanish writers of its condition at the time of the Conquest,
and he finds that condition accordant with the early history of
civilization under similar circumstances in other parts of the world. He
does not think it necessary, therefore, either to account for the
existence of those monuments with the ruins of which the soil is so
thickly strewn by an immigration from India or Egypt, nor to reduce them
to the proportions and character of the Pueblo remains in New Mexico, in
order to prove that America, in contrast with the Eastern continent, has
had but one original type of development, and that the lowest. On the
contrary, he holds it certain that "the civilization of the ancient
Peruvians was indigenous," and he considers it to have passed through
several stages, and to have proceeded independently among different races
and tribes, culminating at last in the organization of a national polity
and a common rule. Under that rule he believes that "the material
prosperity of the country was far in advance of what it is now. There were
greater facilities of intercourse, a wider agriculture, more manufacture,
less pauperism and vice, and--shall I say it?--a purer and more useful
religion." With the ruins that throw light upon the "customs, modes of
life, and political, social and domestic organization" of "the vanished
empire of the Incas," are others that point to a wholly different state of
society and an immeasurable antiquity. "Combined with the stupendous and
elaborate remains of Tiahuanuco--remains as elaborate and admirable as
those of Assyria, of Egypt, Greece or Rome--there are others that are
almost exact counterparts of those of Stonehenge, and Carnac in Brittany,
to which is assigned the remotest place in monumental history. The rude
sun-circles of Sillustani, under the very shadow of some of the most
elaborate, and architecturally the most wonderful, works of aboriginal
America, are indistinguishable counterparts of the sun-circles of England,
Denmark and Tartary." Such evidence, concurrent with that which abounds in
more northern regions, po