before known in Peru. Whence came these strange visitants? There seems no explanation possible save by the presumption either that they found their way from the land of the Aztecs, or that they were passengers upon one of those ancient vessels, built with the greatest solidity, and laden with rice, wheat, barley, dried and salt provisions and fruits, which traffic through the Eastern Pacific and are swept abroad over the surface of that great ocean by the typhoons, of which there are several in a single autumn. Save for the difficulty of collecting water from the rains after the supply on board has been exhausted, there is no reason why a few persons might not survive upon such a ponderous craft as long as some of our shipwrecked seamen have done upon rocky islets in the heart of the same ocean. The history of many a European or American Alexander Selkirk, who midst such a scene has cried,

"I am out of humanity's reach,

I must finish my journey alone,"

puts in our hand a thread which may guide us out of the darkness and mystery of the origin of the empire of the Incas into the light of a rational interpretation of it. The hindrance to this is more in the imaginations of our scholars in their closets than in the facts of providence annually transpiring in that hemisphere.

The customs and institutions of the Peruvians, when first visited by the Spaniards, wonderfully resembled what the same discoverers found in Mexico. They have been painted with such life, minuteness and beauty by numerous writers in our own tongue that we can dispense with a description of them at this time. What has been previously said of those of the Aztecs may almost be

applied to those of the Incas. The Oriental character of the South American race, if there be difference, is even more marked than that of the people of the North. The construction of the royal roads which led to Cuzco and Quito is equaled by no masonry outside of the Chinese empire.1 The skill in the composition and working

1 This whole most interesting subject is presented with the greatest possible brevity; but in relation to the military roads of the Peruvians I may be allowed to quote the following paragraphs from the most eminent philosopher of our day, who himself inspected these wonderful remains, which are so Asiatic in their character, to show how broad and fertile is the field of research:

...

"The impressions produced on the mind by the natural characters of these wildernesses of the Cordilleras are heightened, in a remarkable and unexpected manner, from its being in those very regions that we still see admirable remains of the gigantic work-the artificial road of the Incas-which formed a line of communication through all the provinces of the empire, extending over a length of more than a thousand English geographical miles. We find placed, at nearly equal distances apart, stations consisting of dwelling-houses built of well-cut stone; they are a kind of caravanserai, and are called tambos and sometimes Inca-pilca (from pircca, the wall?). Some of them are surrounded by a kind of fortification; others were constructed for baths, with arrangements for conducting hot water; the larger were designed for the use of the family of the monarch himself. . . . In the pass between Alausi and Loxa, called the Paramo del Assuay, as we were leading our heavily-laden mules with great difficulty through the marshy ground on the elevated Plain del Pullal, our eyes meanwhile were continually dwelling on the grand remains of the Inca's road, which with a breadth of twenty-one English feet ran by our side for above a German mile. It had a deep understructure, and was paved with well-cut blocks of blackish trap-porphyry. Nothing that I had seen of the remains of Roman roads in Italy, in the south of France and in Spain, was more imposing than these works of the ancient Peruvians, which are, moreover, situated, according to my barometric measurements, at an elevation of 12,440 (13,258 English) feet above the sea, or more than a thousand feet higher than the peak of Teneriffe. ... There are two great artificial Peruvian paved roads, or system of roads, covered with flat stones or sometimes even with cemented gravel (macadamized); one passes through the wide and arid plain between the Pacific ocean and the chain of the Andes, and the other over the ridges of the Cordilleras. Milestones, or stones marking the distances, are often found placed at equal intervals. The road was conducted across rivers and deep ravines by three kinds of bridges -stone, wood and rope bridges (Puentes de Hamaca, or de Maroma), and there were also aqueducts or arrangements for bringing water to the tambos (hostelries

of metals, in the cutting of gems and in the weaving of fine tissues, carry us back to Eastern Asia. The extended canals for the irrigation of large districts of country, often carried along mountain ranges or piercing them by stone-paved aqueducts; the postal arrangements for the use of the court; the military organization of able-bodied men by decimal numbers; the solemn ceremonial of the Inca going forth in the spring and inaugurating the general agricultural labors of the year by ploughing with a golden plough;-where but to the same far-off source shall we look for the origin of such works or usages? And in Peru we find Buddhism in all its characteristics-the twofold principle in nature, the transmigration of souls, the perpetual celibacy of or caravanserais) and to the fortresses. Both systems of roads were directed to the central point, Cuzco, the seat of the government of the great empire, in 13° 31' south latitude, and which is placed, according to Pentland's map of Bolivia, 10,676 Paris, or 11,378 English, feet above the level of the sea. As the Peruvians employed no wheel carriages, and the roads were consequently only designed for the march of troops, for men carrying burdens and for lightly-laden lamas, we find them occasionally interrupted, on account of the steepness of the mountains, by long flights of steps, provided with resting-places at suitable intervals.

"Sormiento, who saw the roads of the Incas whilst they were still in a perfect state of preservation, asks, in a Relacion which long lay unread, buried in the library of the Escurial, 'How a nation unacquainted with the use of iron could have completed such grand works in so high and rocky a region (caminos tan grandes y tan sovervios), extending from Cuzco to Quito on the one hand, and to the coast of Chili on the other? The Emperor Charles,' he adds, 'with all his power, could not accomplish even a part of what the well-ordered government of the Incas effected through the obedient people over whom they ruled.' Hernando Pizarro exclaims, 'In the whole of Christendom there are nowhere such fine roads as those which we here admire !' The two important capitals and seats of government of the Incas-Cuzco and Quito-are one thousand English geographical miles apart in a straight line (S. S. E., N. N. W.), without reckoning the many windings of the way; and including the windings, the distance is estimated by Garcilasso de la Vega and other Conquistadores at 'five hundred leagues.'"-A. VON HUMBOLDT, Aspects of Nature, pp. 415-418.

both monks and nuns, the fasts, the penances, the cloisters and convents, the sacrifices, the processions, the schools for youth and novices, the burial with the face toward the west. The imprint is so distinct that Rivero and Von Tschudi plainly infer that "Quetzalcoatl, Bochica, Manco Capac, and other reformers of Central America (including Mexico and Peru), were Buddhist priests, who, by means of their superior learning and civilization, sought to rule the minds of the natives, and to elevate themselves to political supremacy." 1

It is pleasant to review the several branches of evidence, which I have stated in its most condensed form, that to Eastern Asia we are to look for the great fountain whence flowed the ancient races whose architectural remains on this continent are so wonderful, whose history is so full of romantic interest, and whose mission it was to occupy the New World until the appointed time when from Europe the Protestant Christian nations should be brought to prepare a mould which should be the final ideal of just and beneficent government, into which should be cast first the forms of European nations and finally those of their own offspring in Asia.

And poor Mexico! Happy will be the day when the intelligent industry of the Chinese shall restore the Oriental fertility and beauty and wealth of the land of the Aztecs. A generation or two more, and they will begin to find their way to its rich mines and tropical valleys. It will be strange indeed if it be to become servants to those who have fallen so much from the manly vigor of the men who conquered the country three hundred years ago!

1 Peruvian Antiquities (translated by F. L. Hawks), p. 17.

CHAPTER XVI.

CHINESE IMMIGRATION.

DURING fifty-five centuries, at least, it pleased the

Creator of the world to confine its population, its history, its good and its evil, chiefly to one of its hemispheres. Three centuries ago the other hemisphere, which had been visited by but a few of the inhabitants of the one opposite, and had been kept in the shadow until the hour for the sun of an unending day to rise upon it, was suddenly revealed. Its mountain tops began then to receive the light which had so long shone upon the Old World. Now that light has descended to every plain and valley. And the atmosphere is purer here, and the light shines brighter here than it did through any of the clouded skies of that other side.

God had a meaning in this great plan of human history. All the nations of Europe hastened to secure each a possession in this New World. But they have been all dispossessed save one. The Protestant Anglo-Saxon race now occupies all that is valuable of North America, and moulds the destinies of the rest of the continent and of South America.

Three centuries and a half ago the African was brought here. He was taught agriculture, the uses of clothing, of various valuable arts and of letters, and the