The whole assembly then moved
to the great square of the capital, where songs, and dances, and other
public festivities closed the important ceremonial of the huaracu.31
The reader will be less surprised by the resemblance which this
ceremonial bears to the inauguration of a Christian knight in the feudal
ages, if he reflects that a similar analogy may be traced in the institutions
of other people more or less civilized; and that it is natural that nations,
occupied with the one great business of war, should mark the period,
when the preparatory education for it was ended, by similar characteristic
ceremonies.
Having thus honorably passed through his ordeal, the heir-apparent was
deemed worthy to sit in the councils of his father, and was employed in
offices of trust at home, or, more usually, sent on distant expeditions to
practise in the field the lessons which he had hitherto studied only in the
mimic theatre of war. His first campaigns were conducted under the
renowned commanders who had grown grey in the service of his father;
until, advancing in years and experience, he was placed in command
himself, and, like Huayna Capac, the last and most illustrious of his line,
carried the banner of the rainbow, the armorial ensign of his house, far
over the borders, among the remotest tribes of the plateau.
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