The Last Inca, or the Story of Tupac Amaru Volume 1 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1874 edition. Excerpt: ... in the right hand, and some of the principal women carried silver doves, from whose beaks issued thin streams of thrice blessed incense. The procession walked all round the city. Each of its gates was separately blessed, and sprinkled with holy water, and a new cross planted near. And so the city acknowledged its sins, and repented of them according to the rules of a gorgeous ritual, and once more renewed its faith in that Church which, if it could not prevent earthquakes, could perhaps shorten their duration and mitigate their fury; but, without a perhaps, could make things pleasant, and restore them to the same comfortable assurance as existed before. The Spanish Government had now been trying for more than two hundred and fifty years to introduce order and civilization into Peru. It did not succeed, and one reason for its failure might be suggested by the exhibition of this morning. The Viceroy, the highest official and most important civil person in those kingdoms, was made to walk like a criminal in a public procession, his head covered with ashes, his feet bare, and a rope round his neck; which signified--if it signified anything--that the Government of Peru repented in dust and ashes for its past sins, and its members confessed that they deserved hanging for some of the sins which they had committed. The Viceroy knew well enough that the gold he had received, and which he had shown to the Marchioness, only represented so much dust thrown into the viceregal eyes--blinding him to acts of injustice, whereby the bribers would make ten or twenty times more money than they had presented to him. Well, he would repent of this. And he did, after a fashion prescribed by the spiritual authorities. But he kept the gold. Some of the best laws...