THE PERUVIAN CALENDAR
On marriage a home was apportioned to each couple, and land assigned to them sufficient for their support. When a child was born a separate allowance was given it—one fanega for a boy, and half that amount for a girl, the fanega being equal to the area which could be sown with a hundred pounds of maize. There is something repulsive in the Inca code, with its grand-motherly legislation; and if this tyranny was beneficent, it was devised merely to serve its own ends and hound on the unhappy people under its control like dumb, driven cattle. The outlook of the average native was limited in the extreme. The Inca class of priests and warriors retained every vestige of authority; and that they employed their power unmercifully to grind down the millions beneath them was a sufficient excuse for the Spanish Conquistadores in dispossessing them of the empire they had so harshly administered.
The public ground was divided afresh every year according to the number of the members of each family, and agrarian laws were strictly fixed. Private property did not exist among the people of the lower classes, who merely farmed the lot which each year was placed at their disposal. Besides this, the people had perforce to cultivate the lands sacred to the Inca, and only the aged and the sick could evade this duty.
The Peruvian Calendar
The standard chronology known to the Peru of the Incas was a simple lunar reckoning. But the four principal points in the sun's course were denoted by means of the intihuatana, a device consisting of a large rock surmounted by a small cone, the shadow of which, falling on certain notches on the stone below, marked the date of the great sun-festivals. The Peruvians, however, had no definite calendar. At Cuzco, the
