This
ceremony concluded, the whole population gave itself up to festivity;
music, revelry, and dancing were heard in every quarter of the capital,
and illuminations and bonfires commemorated the victorious campaign
of the Inca, and the accession of a new territory to his empire.77
In this celebration we see much of the character of a religious festival.
Indeed, the character of religion was impressed on all the Peruvian wars.
The life of an Inca was one long crusade against the infidel, to spread
wide the worship of the Sun, to reclaim the benighted nations from their
brutish superstitions, and impart to them the blessings of a well-regulated
government. This, in the favorite phrase of our day, was the "mission"
of the Inca. It was also the mission of the Christian conqueror who
invaded the empire of this same Indian potentate. Which of the two
executed his mission most faithfully, history must decide.
Yet the Peruvian monarchs did not show a childish impatience in the
acquisition of empire. They paused after a campaign, and allowed time
for the settlement of one conquest before they undertook another; and, in
this interval, occupied themselves with the quiet administration of their
kingdom, and with the long progresses, which brought them into nearer
intercourse with their people.
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