Yet even thus
shorn of their splendor, the venerable edifices still presented an
attraction to the spoiler, who found in their dilapidated walls an
inexhaustable quarry for the erection of other buildings. On the very
ground once crowned by the gorgeous Coricancha rose the stately church
of St. Dominic, one of the most magnificent structures of the New
World. Fields of maize and lucerne now bloom on the spot which
glowed with the golden gardens of the temple; and the friar chants his
orisons within the consecrated precincts once occupied by the Children
of the Sun.22
Besides the great temple of the Sun, there was a large number of inferior
temples and religious houses in the Peruvian capital and its environs,
amounting, as is stated, to three or four hundred.23 For Cuzco was a
sanctified spot, venerated not only as the abode of the Incas, but of all
those deities who presided over the motley nations of the empire. It was
the city beloved of the Sun; where his worship was maintained in its
splendor; "where every fountain, pathway, and wall," says an ancient
chronicler, "was regarded as a holy mystery." 24 And unfortunate was
the Indian noble who, at some period or other of his life, had not made
his pilgrimage to the Peruvian Mecca.
Other temples and religious dwellings were scattered over the provinces;
and some of them constructed on a scale of magnificence, that almost
rivalled that of the metropolis.
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