Page:Myths of Mexico and Peru.djvu/404

 bank, with the result that the more numerous Quichua speedily gained linguistic ascendancy over their brethren the Aymara. Subsequently to this the peoples of Southern and Central Peru, led by Inca headmen, swept in a great wave of migration over Cerro de Pasco, where they met with little or no resistance, and Pachacutic lived to be lord over a dominion extending for a thousand miles to the northward, and founder of a great Inca colony south of the equator almost identical in outline with the republic of Ecuador.

Two Branches of the Incas

These conquests, or rather race-movements, split up the Inca people into two separate portions, the respective centres of which were well-nigh a thousand miles apart. The centre of the northern district was at Tumipampa, Riopampa, and Quito at different periods. The political separation of these areas was only a question of time. Geographical conditions almost totally divided the two portions of the empire, a sparsely populated stretch of country 400 miles in extent lying between them (see map, p. 333.)

The Laws of Pachacutic

Pachacutic united to his fame as a warrior the reputation of a wise and liberal ruler. He built the great Temple of the Sun at Cuzco, probably on the site of a still older building, and established in its walls the convent in which five hundred maidens were set apart for the service of the god. He also, it is said, instituted the great rite of the Ccapac-cocha, at which maize, cloth, llamas, and children were sacrificed in honour of the sun-god. He devised a kind of census, by which governors were compelled periodically to render an account of the population under their 286