Page:Here and there in Yucatan - miscellanies (IA herethereinyucat00lepl 0).djvu/114

 government—and they were many—the costs being defrayed by the public treasury. Nor was any one ever distressed by want.

The cultivation of the soil was likewise regulated. Agriculture was held in high esteem by the Peruvians. The Inca himself, at a festival held in the month of November, publicly tilled the ground with a golden plow to set a good example, and the labors of the husbandman were always facilitated in every possible way.

The first land to be tilled and planted was that of the sun, or, in other words, that of the church; all took part in the labor. After that they prepared the soil and sowed the seed on such ground as belonged to the aged, infirm, widows, young orphans and soldiers in service; their wives being considered as needing the same assistance as widows: women did not work in the fields; perhaps for this reason the women's allotment of land was less than that of the man.

No one had a right to attend to his own interests until the land of all the helpless people was sown with seed. The Inca Huayna ordered a man to be hanged because he dared to till the land of one of his relations, who was well and strong, while the work for the infirm was yet unfinished; the gallows was erected on the very spot where the man had been