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166 been equalled. Their system was necessarily complicated, but it was adjusted with such skill and ingenuity that it worked without friction and almost automatically, even when the guiding head was gone. An instance of this is recorded by Cieza de Leon, a soldier of the Spanish conquest. One of the details of the system was that when any calamity overtook a particular district, there was another neighbouring district told off to bring succour and supply its proportion of new inhabitants. Cieza de Leon testified that he saw this arrangement actually at work. When the Spaniards massacred inhabitants, burnt dwellings, and destroyed crops in one district of the Jauja valley, he saw the right people come from the right district to succour the sufferers, and help to rebuild the dwellings and re-sow the crops.

The Incarial system of government bears some general resemblance to a very beneficent form of Eastern despotism such as may have prevailed when Jamshid ruled over Iran. There was the same scheme of dividing the crops between the cultivator and the State, the same patriarchal care for the general welfare; but while the rule of Jamshid was a legend, that of the Incas was an historical fact. The Incarial government finds a closer affinity in the theories of modern socialists; and it seems certain that, under the very peculiar condition of Peru when the Incas ruled, the dreams of Utopians and socialists became realities for