redemption from savagism and their knowledge of sciences, arts, and religion to the wise teachings of their first Inca, Manco Capac, and of his incestuous sister, Mama Oello, children of the Sun, whom the great luminary had sent to raise them up from their degraded condition. This legend, even when divested of its supernatural circumstances, is not deserving of serious consideration. The fundamental tenet of religious truth of the existence of one supreme God, creator and preserver of all things-was countenanced by the accommodating policy of the Incas, but not introduced. by them, as appears from the fact that the temple of Pachacamac was built, at a great distance from Lake Titicaca and Cuzco, the Inca sacred places, and long before the advent of the Peruvian dynasty.

Nor was this tradition the only one, current among the aborigines of Peru, explanatory of their wonderful progress and refinement. Another, probably more generally received, speaks of certain white and bearded men, who established their ascendency over the natives and imparted to them the blessings of civilization. Prescott justly remarks, as would every observer, that this may remind us of the tradition existing among the Aztecs in respect to Quetzalcoatl and his companions, who, with similar garb and features, came from the East on a like benevolent mission to the natives; and the analogy is the more remarkable, he adds, as there is no trace of any communication with, or even knowledge of, each other to be found in the two nations.1 Fray Betanzos relates still another tradition, which greatly resembles those of Central America in regard to Quetzalcoatl. "There is a Peruvian myth," he says, "according to which, long after the creation by

1 Conquest of Peru, vol. i. p. 10.

the Deity, a great and beneficent being appeared at Tiahuanaco. He went from Titicaca to Cuzco, where he set up a chief named Alcaviza, and from thence went on through the country until he disappeared on the sea at Puerto Viejo." It is also stated that the people of Canas attacked him, but were converted by a miracle, and built a great temple in honor of this being, or rather of his god Viracocha, who was also called Pachacamac. This temple, now a ruin, always was in its structure and arrangement quite unique in Peru.1

These latter traditions, understood according to the interpretation we have ventured to propose, form the only available key to the mysteries of Peruvian civilization, of the vestiges of Christianity found in that country, and of its general government, planned, as it were, upon the rules and constitutions of a religious Order, where authority is as paternal as absolute, and obedience as voluntary as punctual. We find, indeed, no incongruity in admitting that the Irish Papas may have done in Mexico and Peru what the Jesuits in modern times have done in Paraguay; and that their charitable work and brilliant success were afterwards obscured and impaired by both the human proclivity to moral decay and the incursions of barbarous tribes, which introduced into the conquered provinces the abominations of their savagery and cruel worship, while at the same time they adopted a portion of the religion and civilization of the vanquished, and were, therefore, by several writers given the credit of having originated whatever they had left intact of former sound doctrines and polished institutions."

1 Winsor, vol. i. p. 224.

2 Was it the Irish or the Toltecas who introduced into Peru, as in Vinland, the Scandinavian signals of peace and of war? In both these

American countries, as in the North of Europe, the white color denoted peace, and the red, war. (Cf. Prescott, Conquest of Peru, vol. i. p. 119.)

The Toltecs who had remained in Anahuac submitted to the yoke and religion of the fierce Chichimecs. Quetzalcoatl is said to have visited them before his final departure, and to have advised them to flee with him from the contamination of triumphant idolatry; but these people did not follow their priesthood; they remained intermixed with the savages, contributed their share to establish the strange religious dualism. of Mexico, and became extinct as a nation.'

Another fact, better known in history, has apparently been more efficient still towards the disappearance of the ancient Christian colonies of America. Even though the settlers of Ireland the Great should have remained unmolested by the American natives, we yet easily understand that they were less encouraged by the mother country, and gradually lost in importance during the course of the eleventh century; when we notice that, shortly after the year 1000, the Northmen established their settlements and trading-posts in the neighborhood of Hvítramannaland. Although the conversion of the Scandinavians had considerably changed their fierce instincts, they still remained the dreaded antagonists of the Irish people, the greater part of whose native coasts they continued. to hold in subjection for two more centuries. Nor should we wonder if the Papas of Great Ireland followed the example of their brethren of Iceland, of the Shetlands, and of the Faroes, when they saw at their doors the very people whose cruelties in the northern islands made them shudder still. Some of them, as in Iceland, may have remained in their adopted country, but their posterity naturally allied with the surround

1 Bancroft, vol. ii. pp. 96, 100; iii. p. 264; v. p. 285; Winsor, vol. i. p. 140; supra, vol. i. pp. 554-556.

2

2 Beauvois, La Découverte, p. 4, n. 1.

ing aborigines and gradually became absorbed by them. A few civilized people in the midst of numerous savages, unaided by the mother country, necessarily disappear without leaving a vestige, like the sweet waters of a river in the briny billows of the ocean.1

1 Cf. Proceedings of the American Ethnological Society in 1851, a Memoir of Dr. Zestermann on the European Colonization of America in ante-historic times; Beauvois, various papers in the Congrès des Américanistes, 1875, 1877, 1883. Other references (usually favorable) to the Irish claims are to be found in Laing's Heimskringla, i. S. 186; Beamish, Discovery; Gravier, Découverte de l'Amérique, and Les Normands sur la Route,

ch. i.; Gaffarel's Études sur les Rapports de l'Amérique; Brasseur, Introduction to Popul Vuh; De Costa, Precolumbian Discovery; Humboldt, Kosmos; Rask, in Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings, xviii.; Journal London Geographical Society, viii.; Gay, Popular History of the United States; Wilhelmi, Island Hvitramannaland Grönland und Vinland.

CHAPTER VI.

CONVERSION OF SCANDINAVIAN ICELAND.

A SHORT time before the Irish colonies disappeared from America, the Northmen or people of the Scandinavian peninsula had landed on our shores and established settlements on them. They had not, however, sailed directly to the continents of the western hemisphere, but, before reaching its terra firma, had for a century and a half inhabited some of its insular territories. It is interesting to follow them on their piratical excursions of conquest and colonization.

The ninth century of our era was the epoch of glory for the Northmen, if glory there be in assaulting peaceful nations, in destroying their institutions and monuments of civilization, and in appropriating the homes of murdered families.

As prolific as cruel, these pagans of the North sent out, year after year at that time, new swarms of warlike youths, who, on their numerous fleets of small vessels, sailed along the shores and up the principal rivers of all Europe, and even as far to the South as the African cape of Sierra Leone, next to the equator.1 The coast of Ireland and the smaller islands of the North Atlantic Ocean had been, for years, their habitual field of pillage and devastation, when they chose the Seine, the Rhone, the Loire, the Garonne, and the Elbe as the highways of their dreaded fleets. In the year 850 they obtained undisputed possession of Normandy; twenty years later they laid waste the finest kingdoms

1 Navarrete, t. i. p. 29.