Page:Aspects of nature in different lands and different climates; with scientific elucidations (IA b29329668 0002).pdf/283

 *vation we see the national activity display itself with peculiar predilection in some particular directions, but we can by no means determine the general state of culture of a people from the striking development of such particular and partial activity. Egyptians, Greeks[7], Etruscans, and Romans, Chinese, Japanese, and Hindoos, shew many interesting contrasts in these respects. It is difficult to pronounce what length of time may have been required for the execution of the Peruvian roads. The great works in the northern part of the Empire of the Incas, in the highlands of Quito, must at all events have been completed in less than 30 or 35 years; i. e. within the short period intervening between the defeat of the Ruler of "Quitu" and the death of Huayna Capac, but entire obscurity prevails as to the period of the formation of the Southern, and more properly speaking Peruvian, roads.

The mysterious appearance of Manco Capac is usually placed 400 years before the landing of Pizarro in the Island of Puna (1532), therefore towards the middle of the 12th century, almost 200 years before the foundation of the city of Mexico (Tenochtitlan); some Spanish writers even reckon, instead of 400, 500 and 550 years between Manco Capac and Pizarro. But the history of the empire of Peru only recognises thirteen ruling princes of the Inca-dynasty, a number which, as Prescott very justly remarks, is not sufficient to occupy so long an interval as 550 or even 400 years. Quetzalcoatl, Botschica, and Manco Capac, are the three mythical forms with which the commencements of civilisation among the Aztecs, the Muyscas (more properly Chib