Page:The Incas of Peru.djvu/66



list of a hundred kings of Peru, including the Incas, was given in the writings of Fernando Montesinos, who was in Peru from 1629 to 1642. The writer was credulous and uncritical, and his information was collected a century after the conquest, when all the instructed Indians who could remember the days of the Incas had passed away. Little credence has, therefore, been given to the list hitherto. But Dr. Gonzalez de la Rosa has recently adduced good reasons for the belief that Montesinos merely copied the list of kings, which was well known long before his time. It was compiled, almost certainly, by Bias Valera, when learned men of the time of the Incas were still living, Valera himself being the son of an Indian mother, and the language of the Incas being his mother tongue. The list, therefore, comes to us on the highest authority, as a genuine tradition of the learned men of Inca times. It is thus placed in quite a different position, and calls for serious consideration.