Page:Researches into the Early History of Mankind and the Development of Civilization.djvu/261

Rh which they call Chipana (like the others which the Incas commonly wore on the left wrist), which bracelet the high priest kept; it was larger than the common ones, and had as its medallion a concave cup like a half orange, highly polished; they set it against the sun, and at a certain point where the rays issuing from the cup came together, they put a little finely-carded cotton, as they did not know how to make tinder, which shortly took fire, as it naturally does. With this fire, thus given by the hand of the Sun, the sacrifice was burnt, and all the meat of the day was roasted. And they carried some of the fire to the Temple of the Sun, and to the House of the Virgins, where they kept it up all the year, and it was a bad omen if they let it out in any way. If, on the eve of the festival, which was when the necessary preparations for the following day were made, there was no sun to light the new fire, they made it with two thin smooth sticks as big as one's little finder, and half a yard long, boring one against the other (barrenando uno con otro); these little sticks are cinnamon coloured, and they call both the sticks themselves and the fire-making V-yaca, one and the same term serving for noun and verb. The Indians use them instead of flint and steel, and carry them on their journeys to get fire when they have to pass the night in uninhabited places," etc. etc.

If circumstantiality of detail were enough to make a story credible, we might be obliged to receive this one, and even to argue on the wonderful agreement of the manner of kindling the sacred fire in Rome and in Peru. But the coincidences between Garcilaso's Virgins of the Sun and Plutarch's Vestal Virgins go farther than this. We are not only expected to believe that there were Virgins of the Sun, that they kept up a sacred fire whose extinction was an evil omen, and that this fire was lighted by the sun's rays concentrated in a concave mirror. We are also told that in Cuzco, as in Rome, the virgin found unfaithful was to be punished by the special punishment of being buried alive. This is really too much. Whatever may