ints unmistakably to an early development on this
continent, similar in character and course, and coeval or anterior in
date, to that which has left like indications in so many parts of the
Eastern hemisphere. There the records are more scattered and more varied,
as from the size and conformation of the continents and the greater
diversities of climate we might have expected them to be; and those at
least of a later period are, from the nature of the case, more easy of
interpretation in the light of legend, tradition and written history. But
the general features are intelligible in all, and the revelation which
they make is identical. They show the human mind, under like external
conditions and with like internal conceptions, advancing on the same line
from barbarism to culture; they show a struggle and rivalry of races and
tribes, in which one or another shoots forward for a time, and is then
outstripped or pushed aside; they show a gradual sifting, blending and
consolidation, in which primitive and fortuitous forms of association are
superseded by a system presenting the symmetry and composite character of
an artificial structure. Everywhere the process is marked by the final
predominance of two principles, which stimulate, direct and regulate all
the efforts that are made toward artistic expression, industrial science
and social organization. For the human mind at this stage all conceptions
of Nature may be comprised under the name of religion, and all ideas of
order and co-operation under that of monarchical rule. The monuments of
this period that have sprung from the united labor of the community all
attest the control and supervision of one or both of these powers. Not
only do temples and palaces bear this stamp, but all public works of
whatever nature testify, by the gigantic results in comparison with the
deficient means, to such an authority in those who planned them and such a
subordination in those by whom they were executed as cannot be conceived
of either under the looser organizations of barbarism or the more
equitable arrangements of modern life. The cyclopean walls, the imposing
edifices, the subterranean aqueducts, the mountain terraces, of Peru tell
the same tale as pyramids and temples, towers and palaces, in Egypt,
Assyria or India. The critic who can find in the ruins at Gran Chimu and
Pachacamac only "communal houses" inhabited by "groups of families" on the
method of the Iroquois, in the vast isolate