Page:Native Religions of Mexico and Peru.djvu/144

 LECTURE IV.

PERU.—ITS CIVILIZATION AND CONSTITUTION. THE LEGEND OF THE INCAS: THEIR POLICY AND HISTORY.

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We pass to-day from North to South America; and as in the former we confined ourselves to the district which presented the Europeans of the sixteenth century with the unlooked-for spectacle of a native civilization and religion in an advanced stage of development, so in the latter we shall specially study that other indigenous civilization, likewise supported and patronized by a very curious and original religion, which established itself along the Cordilleras on the immensely long but comparatively narrow strip of land between those mountains and the ocean. Peru, like Mexico, was the country of