Page:The Present State of Peru.djvu/22

2 From such loose materials as the above, and from the slight information which a few travellers have picked up in a cursory way, all the histories, reflections, charts, geographical tracts, and compendiums, which have been published respecting Peru on the banks of the Seine and of the Thames, have been compiled. The spirit of system, national prejudices, ignorance, and caprice, have by turns so much influenced the greater part of these productions, that the Peru which they describe to us, appears to be a country altogether different from the one with which we are practically acquainted.

The consequence which we deduce from this exposition is, that we may, without presumption, set out by giving a general sketch of Peru, without fearing to incur the imputation of plagiarism; and with the certainty of furnishing more precise, and, at the same time, more novel information, than any that has been hitherto given.

This great empire, the foundation of which by the Incas remains enveloped in the obscurity of a series of fables, and of an uncertain tradition, has lost much of its local grandeur since the time when it was stripped, on the north side, of the provinces which form the kingdom of Quito, and afterwards of those which, towards the east, constitute the viceroyalty of Buenos-Ayres. Its present extent in length runs, north and