wrap their infants, and fastening them to their backs, they carry them
about in this manner for a whole day, whilst engaged in their work.

In their domestic relations, the Indians are unsocial and gloomy.
Husband, wife, and children live together with but little appearance of
affection. The children seem to approach their parents timidly, and
whole days sometimes elapse without the interchange of a word of
kindness between them. When the Indian is not engaged in out-door work,
he sits gloomily in his hut, chewing coca, and brooding silently over
his own thoughts. To his friend he is more communicative than to his
wife. With the former, he will often discourse, apparently on some
secret topic, for the space of half a night; nevertheless, he cannot be
accused of treating his wife with any degree of cruelty, or of
regarding her merely in the light of his slave, as is customary among
many uncivilized races of people.

Besides the official authorities, to which the Government exacts
obedience, the Peruvian Indian acknowledges other authorities, whose
functions and power are similar to those which existed under the Inca
dynasty. In like manner, though they have embraced the Christian faith,
yet they obstinately adhere to certain religious ceremonies, which have
been transmitted to them by their idolatrous progenitors. Thus their
religion is a singular combination of Christian principles and
heathenish forms. Hitherto the most patient and intelligent of their
religious instructors have failed to outroot this attachment to old
forms. The Christian religion has been spread among the Indians by
force; and for centuries past, they have regarded the priests only in
the light of tyrants, who make religion a cloak for the most scandalous
pecuniary extortions, and whose conduct is in direct opposition to the
doctrines they profess. If they render to them unconditional obedience,
accompanied by a sort of timid reverence, it is to be attributed less to
the operation of the Christian principle, than to a lingering attachment
to the theocratic government of the Incas, which has impressed the
Peruvians with a sacred awe of religion.

The superstition with which the Indians are so deeply imbued is adverse
to the inculcation of pure religious faith; it is the more difficult to
be eradicated, inasmuch as it has its origin in early tradition, and has
in later times been singularly blended with the Catholic form of
worship. Of this superst