Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 45.djvu/849

Rh in conjurations to avert the catastrophe. As long as the eclipse continued they kept exclaiming, "Mama-quilla, Mama-quilla!" which might be paraphrased, "God save us!" and they supplicated the sun to aid them. After the eclipse had passed away they sang in chorus the praises of the god Pachacamac, who had cured the pale star of night. Garcilaso adds to this story that these practices were all still in vogue in his time—that is, a half century after the conquest.

Mention is made in the Memoirs of Garcilaso of a comet which appeared at the time of the death of the Inca Huascas, and of another which was visible some time afterward, while Atahualpa was a prisoner of the Pizarros. These apparitions were regarded as annunciations of imminent woe. So, likewise, were shooting stars, of which an extraordinary fall took place during the reign of the same Inca. Montesinos speaks of the appearance of two comets during the reign of Yupanqui—one had the form of a lion, the other of a serpent. "The sun," he wrote, "had sent these two animals to destroy the moon. So the Indians directed a hailstorm of stones at the lion and serpent to veil their light and prevent them from tearing the moon to pieces, for if they succeeded in carrying out their purpose everything on the earth would be changed into savage and hideous beasts, women's hair into vipers, and other things into bears, tigers, and similar evil creatures." The Indians still believe that the shooting stars drop from the sky, and utter prayers for deliverance when they see them.

The Inca year was originally divided into twelve lunations, each of which had its special name. But experience having shown that this lunar year was ten or twelve days shorter than the solar year, a reform was determined upon. Montesinos asserts that an assembly of amantas in the reign of Agay Manco thoroughly rearranged the calendar, dividing the year into three months of thirty days each, and the month into three weeks of ten days each, and adding to complete the solar year a half week of five days, which was made six days every fourth year. The Inca Yahnar Huquiz, grand astronomer, soon discovered that an error of one day would appear after four hundred years in the calendar thus instituted! The Indians reckoned time by this system till the Spaniards came. Garcilaso says that the Inca Tapac Yupunpuy discovered, three centuries before the conquest, that the period between the solstices was three hundred and sixty-five days and a quarter, and that he caused the intercalation of ten days and a quarter, distributed among the lunations, in order to make the lunar and solar years agree. Is it not strange to see the Gregorian calendar invented and applied by the Incas three