Page:Aspects of nature in different lands and different climates; with scientific elucidations (IA b29329668 0002).pdf/282

 Hernando Pizarro, the most educated and civilised of the three brothers, who for his misdeeds suffered a twenty years' imprisonment at Medina del Campo, and died at last at a hundred years of age "in the odour of sanctity," "en olor de Santidad," exclaims: "in the whole of Christendom there are nowhere such fine roads as those which we here admire." The two important capitals and seats of government of the Incas, Cuzco and Quito, are 1000 English geographical miles apart in a straight line (SS.E., NN.W.), without reckoning the many windings of the way; and including the windings, the distance is estimated by Garcilaso de la Vega and other Conquistadores at "500 leguas." Notwithstanding the great distance, we learn from the well-confirmed testimony of the Licentiate Polo de Ondegardo, that Huayna Capac, whose father had conquered Quito, caused some of the building materials for the "princely buildings," (the houses of the Incas) in the latter city, to be brought from Cuzco.

When enterprising races inhabit a land where the form of the ground presents to them difficulties on a grand scale which they may encounter and overcome, this contest with nature becomes a means of increasing their strength and power as well as their courage. Under the despotic centralizing system of the Inca-rule, security and rapidity of communication, especially in the movement of troops, became an important necessity of government. Hence the construction of artificial roads on so grand a scale, and hence also the establishment of a highly improved postal system. Among nations in very different stages of culti