Page:The Present State of Peru.djvu/313

Rh thousand forms. The majesty of the portico could not be described, unless by saying that Nature and Art had challenged each other at that spot, to vie in the production of its beauties. The staircases and entrances were most sumptuous. In all the inner apartments the energy of the pencil was displayed on jaspar, in portraying the august heroes, the lords of this favoured region. The floors were covered with the richest carpets of feathers, and the air perfumed with the most fragrant aromatics. Our adventurer having been ushered into the royal cabinet, found the sovereign reclined on a throne of ivory, and surrounded by his principal courtiers, who occupied various estrades of gold, superior to that of Arabia.

He was received with every token of humanity, and placed next to the throne. The ceremonials, festivals, and tournaments by which the monarch, in exhibiting his own magnificence, endeavoured to afford him pleasure, were essentials which required, for their description, the pen of Homer, or of Virgil, or, rather, that of Miguel Cervantes Saavedra. The diversions being concluded, and he being desirous to set out on his return, the eldest daughter of the king, into whose bosom the god Cupid had introduced the violent flame of love, enveloped in the graceful form of the stranger, made a tender to him of her person. But our Bohorquez, in whom the madness of Don Quixote must have been blended with the address of Cacus, chose rather to be the depredator, than the peaceful possessor of the new empire. After having beguiled Peru with his fabulous Enim, he entered that territory, accompanied by thirty-six Spaniards, in the year 1643, achieve its conquest; but was guilty of so many piracies, not only among the barbarians, but likewise in Jauxa and Tarma, that