The present
will be devoted to the Peruvians; and, if their history shall be found to
present less strange anomalies and striking contrasts than that of the
Aztecs, it may interest us quite as much by the pleasing picture it offers of
a well-regulated government and sober habits of industry under the
patriarchal sway of the Incas.
The empire of Peru, at the period of the Spanish invasion, stretched along
the Pacific from about the second degree north to the thirty-seventh
degree of south latitude; a line, also, which describes the western
boundaries of the modern republics of Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and Chili.
Its breadth cannot so easily be determined; for, though bounded
everywhere by the great ocean on the west, towards the east it spread out,
in many parts, considerably beyond the mountains, to the confines of
barbarous states, whose exact position is undetermined, or whose names
are effaced from the map of history. It is certain, however, that its breadth
was altogether disproportioned to its length.1
The topographical aspect of the country is very remarkable. A strip of
land, rarely exceeding twenty leagues in width, runs along the coast, and
is hemmed in through its whole extent by a colossal range of mountains,
which, advancing from the Straits of Magellan, reaches its highest
elevation-indeed, the highest on the American continent--about the
seventeenth degree south, 2 and, after crossing the line, gradually subsides
into hills of inconsiderable magnitude, as it enters the isthmus of Panama.
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