Page:The Present State of Peru.djvu/310

204 of the pleasing subject of this engraving, taken from the representation, on canvas, of a modern Indian festival, may be deemed correct, if an analogical reasoning can be founded on the care the Indians have taken, in various other particulars, to hand down the customs and usages of their nation.

the three classes of men who exist in the universe, destined to invent fables, and to obtrude them, on the credulity of their fellow-creatures, it is uncertain which has been, the boldest and most fertile in inventing them, or the most successful in inducing their belief. They have all of them inundated the earth with visions, and have alike gained over proselytes. These are, the poets, the philosophers, and the travellers. The first insinuate falsehood even into the heavens, and cause it to be adored by stupid mortals: the second dispose tyrannically of Nature and her magnificent works, and draw into their lures the republic of the learned: the third feign marvels at their will, and impress with a belief of them, both the monarch and the minister of state.

With the conquest of the Americas, such a swarm of the latter description was raised in the western continent, that if all the empires and opulent titles of which they dreamed had been real, the planet of the earth would not have contained them, and it would have been necessary to place a part of them in that of the moon. In those times, Manoa was the first