digious size. In the Province of Puerto Viejo, they had a high veneration for the emerald; and near the Cordillera, they worshipped that mountain for its stupendous height.
The sacrifices which they made to these deities were often as barbarous as the gods were senseless; for, besides beasts, fruits, and corn, they sacrificed and devoured alive, men and women of all ages, whom they had taken in war. But other Indians less cruel, and more mild in their character, though they mingled blood with these rites, never took away life, but drew it from the veins of an arm, a leg, or the nostrils, according to the nature or solemnity of the sacrifice required. Others offered sheep and lambs, conies, partridges, and various kinds of fowl, herbs, fruits, and maize, so much esteemed among them, according to the deity they adored.
These people, living and dying in the manner above described, were at length reclaimed by Inca Manco Capac, who, probably, was some Indian of a more elevated understanding and prudence than ordinary, and who, by carrying a refined manner of deportment toward them, had persuaded them that he and his wife, Mama Oello Hauco, proceeded from the sun, and were come from heaven; and that his Father, Pachacamac (the Soul of the universe, or the Sustainer of all things), had sent them to instruct and bestow benefits upon the rest of mankind. Manco Capac was the founder of the Incas, who were the native kings of Peru, and who, according to tradition, reigned in a direct lineage, until they were conquered by the Spaniards, for the space of four hundred years. The origin of these kings, the majesty and greatness of their empire, their conquests and policies in government, both in peace and in war, together with the laws they instituted for the good and benefit of their subjects, have been recorded by one of their own descendants on the maternal side, Garcilasso de la Vega, surnamed the Inca. Concerning the origin of these kings, he says, that, when he was about seventeen years of age, being one day present with his
