Chapter III: Part 3

“Enough!” said Fray Fernando, and he spoke very coldly. The white man’s anger needs no loud words, no fierce gestures for its expression. “I was a fool to expect gratitude or love from an Indian. You never knew what either means, José. You have never loved me, and the love I gave to you I wasted. This is our last parting. Let me pass.” José moved aside at his command, and stood watching him, with a stupified air, until he was out of sight.

Then he ran to the place whence the cliff could be descended with the least difficulty. Leaping and scrambling, and clinging now and then to a stray tuft of ychu, he soon reached the spot where lay the crucifix. He took it up, and placed it carefully in the little bag by his side.

From this spot he could see the valley, winding far beneath. He stood gazing until the short twilight was past, and the rapidly increasing darkness hid it from his view. Then he threw himself on the ground, and gave way to a passionate burst of weeping. For the patre had parted with him in fierce anger, telling him he had never loved him.

He had no sense of fear in that lonely spot. The tracks of the puma were seldom seen in the district; and the hardy Indian youth thought little of a bed on the alfalfa, and less of the want of food, especially whilst some fragrant leaves still remained in his coca-bag.

But he was sore in need of help and comfort, for himself and for his people. And, because he saw none, either in the darkened heavens or on the miserable earth, he wept and wailed, plucking up the alfalfa by the roots and flinging it from him in his bitter grief.

At last he looked up. Ynty was gone long ago. Not even a faint glow remained now on the horizon. He remembered the words of the great Inca Huayna Capac, taught him in his childhood. Ynty could not be lord and governor, thought the wise monarch, because so often absent from the earth; nay, he seemed like a servant who himself obeyed a master, or like an arrow shot from a bow by a strong hand. It was plain enough now that Ynty could not help his children in their hour of need. There was no one to hear and help in those cold distant heavens to which they cried in vain. Were the Spaniards right? Was God on their side? Instead of the departed sun, there burned above his head the bright stars of the Southern Cross, which the patre told him was the sacred emblem of the Christian Faith, written on the heavens in characters of fire. No hint of the true meaning of the cross had ever found its way to José’s heart, though he was, of course, familiar with the historical fact. He had never heard the message of divine love.

And through the best human love that he knew came the bitterest pain of that bitter hour. The patre had saved him from his cruel enemy, tended him in sickness, fed him, clothed him, taught him. And now the patre said, “You have never loved me, and the love I gave to you I wasted.”

The Indian lay quite still for a long time. Thoughts he had no power to express were struggling in his soul. José and Viracocha were at strife within him.

At last came a decisive moment. “Arri! rantihuarcca,” he said, half aloud. “Yes; he bought me.” That was the argument that turned the scale. José—for he it was who won the victory—started up, shook the alfalfa from his dress, tied his sandals more firmly, and again repeating, “Arri; rantihuarcca,” peered cautiously around through the darkness.

An hour afterwards the Indian youth was treading noiselessly through the sleeping galpon. He reached the door of Fray Fernando’s hut, and pushed it gently. As of old, it was only on the latch. The monk had his own reasons for not adopting precautions that, in real danger, would inevitably prove futile. José entered. All was still. Fray Fernando lay on his pallet fast asleep, for the hour was now very late. Whereupon José, with that peculiar kind of _sang froid_ characteristic of his race, turned quietly into his accustomed corner, and, as though he had never forfeited his right to be there, laid himself down to sleep.

VIII.

Vindicated.

“But prove me what it is I would not do.”

TENNYSON.

Fray Fernando returned to the galpon sorrowful and desolate. All the tenderness that life had left in his blighted heart had been gathered up and poured forth on the head of the Indian youth, who had truly been as a son to him. He never dreamed how much he had given, until he awoke to the consciousness that all was given in vain.

Nothing, absolutely nothing, was left him now to care for. He had not a hope remaining; just then he had scarcely a fear. His heart was too weary for conflict; it only ached with a dull and constant pain. Listlessly he went through the prescribed course of his evening devotions, repeating unfelt prayers and praises that found no echo in his heart. If he had ever really prayed, he had prayed for the child he fondly dreamed God had sent to comfort him in his misery. But that was over now; José was gone back to his people and to his gods, and his work and his prayers for him—like all his other work and all his other prayers—were wasted.

In this mood he laid himself down to sleep. Of late the slumbers that sealed those eyes had been fitful and broken. But it happened that upon this occasion Nature, usually capricious, saw fit to reassert her power and exact her revenge, and ere long he fell into a sound dreamless sleep.

He awoke with a start. A sharp cry rang in his ears. The room seemed full of furious men, struggling for mastery, clinging desperately to each other’s throats. Then some bright thing, a knife or dagger, known by its glitter in the moonlight, fell to the ground at his side.

Less than a minute restored his senses fully, and reduced the shadowy host of combatants to two—a gigantic negro and a slender stripling, who seemed about to pay for the frantic tenacity with which he clutched his adversary’s throat, by being crushed to death in his strong grasp.

That moment Fray Fernando forgot his peaceful calling, his sacred character, everything but the youth’s danger. Seizing the weapon so opportunely left at his hand, he made third’s-man in the fray to such good purpose, that the negro fled for his life, like an evil spirit of night chased by returning day.

With the dagger still in his hand, the monk stood and gazed about him in bewilderment. But he could see scarcely anything, for the moon had retreated behind a cloud.

“Much-hani Pacha-camac!” exclaimed a well-known voice. Then in Spanish, “Deos gratias!”

“José! Is it you, José? How came you hither? What is it all about?”

“It was Pepe!” gasped José. “Villain, traitor, _aucca_! May I see him hurled from the highest rock on Cerro Blanco! Patre, are you hurt?”

“No, thank God. But am I dreaming or awake? What has happened?”

“He wanted to drink your blood, but God preserved you,” said José.

Then Fray Fernando had recourse to his flint and steel. But it was some time before the tiny sparks availed to kindle the tinder. At length, however, the feat was accomplished; and a little oil-lamp shed as much light as in it lay upon the monk’s perplexities.

The first thing it revealed startled him considerably. “O José!” he exclaimed in great distress, “why did you not tell me you were wounded?” For the lad’s white tunic was covered with blood.

“It is nothing,” said José, in whose code of morality the silent endurance of pain occupied a prominent place. “Only,” he added, his dark face glowing with satisfaction, even with triumph, “the patre knows if I love him now.”

“You have saved my life,” Fray Fernando answered. But it was not his fashion to waste time in words when deeds were needful. He bound up José’s severely wounded arm, quickly and carefully, with a piece of linen torn from one of his consecrated vestments. Then he took some wine from the little store reserved for the celebration of mass, and gave it to his patient to drink. Not until all this was done, did he ask an explanation of the events of the night.

“I came back to you,” José answered simply, “because you bought me. Finding you asleep, I lay down in my place. By-and-by Pepe crept in, still and silent, as a snake creeps through the grass. I cried aloud to wake you, and sprang at his throat. What else could I do? He had a weapon, I had none. I clung to him like the puma; he struggled and struck me with his knife; but his hands were not free enough to do much harm. I pressed my fingers into his throat for very life—your life and mine. Until at last, in his pain, he lost his _think_, and dropped the knife. Then I knew you were saved.”

Fray Fernando stretched out his hand to him. “You are a brave lad,” he said; “God bless you!”

“Patre,” said José, “say ‘my son’ as you used to do.”

The monk was touched. “God bless thee, my son!” he answered warmly.

There was a silence; then José resumed,—“Patre, come with me to my people. No one will hurt you amongst them.”

Fray Fernando started at the suggestion. A hasty “No” trembled on his lips; but he began to reflect that his present position was worse than perilous. What would the morning bring? Pepe’s attempted crime could scarcely remain a secret. Should Diego pass it over, he would proclaim his own guilt; should he undertake to punish it, the negro, in his despair, would reveal everything. Clearly neither Diego nor Pepe had now any alternative but to complete their work. While a man might have repeated half a score of Paternosters, Fray Fernando pondered. Then he spoke in a decided, even cheerful tone, “José, I am going to Cuzco. Will you go thither with me?”

“To Cuzco!” José cried in rapture. “Will the river go to the Mother Sea?”

“Not so loud. We must go at once, and in silence. I must needs speak with our lord, Don Marcio Serra; and he lives at Cuzco.”

“_Chachau!_” said José. The exclamation meant, “I am heartily willing, and very glad.”

Then the monk began to put together the few articles he thought necessary for the journey.

“We need not be troubled with baggage,” said José coolly. “The men will give us all we want by the way.”

“And what of the way, José? How shall we find that? You know no more of it than I. You have only travelled along the coast, never towards Cuzco.”

“The way, patre! How could we miss it? We have only to go by the road.”

For if in the days of Roman ascendancy the proverb, “All roads lead to Rome” expressed an almost literal truth, it was yet more strictly true that in the empire of the Incas all roads led to Cuzco. Their policy was, in the highest degree, one of centralization.

“Will you take the books, patre?” José inquired. He regarded his patron’s books with almost superstitious reverence. Indeed, it is quite possible that he thought each of them possessed what his race styled a “Mother,” or spiritual essence of its own.

“I will take this,” said the monk, laying his hand on a Breviary. “Not the others.”

Two bundles comprised all that the travellers cared to take; more indeed than José, who thought he had a child’s right to everything he needed in Tahuantin Suyu, would willingly have encumbered himself with.

When his other preparations were completed, the monk took a key from the bosom of his frock, and unlocked a small strong coffer, placed for security in a kind of rude press which he had contrived in the wall of his hut. He took out some pieces of money; then paused for a moment in evident doubt. Something else was there, which he scarcely liked either to take or to leave behind; something which belonged of right to José, and which indeed his conscience told him he ought to have given him long ago. He had withheld it, fearing the memories it might awaken. But now all his precautions had been proved useless, if not worse. Better to do the thing that was right, without too much regard to consequences. “José,” he said, showing him the curiously wrought pin he had received from Don Ramon, “do you remember this?”

“My mother’s topu!” José exclaimed, eagerly taking it from his hand. For some moments he looked at it in silence, then he pressed it to his lips, while a tear glistened in his eye.

“Keep it,” said the monk. “But we must not loiter now, for the hours of darkness are waning. Are you ready?”

“Let the patre wait but for a moment,” said José. He fastened his treasure securely into his tunic; then, with some difficulty, caused by his only possessing the use of one hand, he took the crucifix from the coca-bag by his side. “This belongs to the patre,” he said, with the air of a person a little ashamed of himself.

Fray Fernando wisely accepted the unspoken apology. He restored the crucifix to its place at his girdle, merely saying, “It is a precious symbol of a still more precious Thing.”

Then they passed silently through the sleeping galpon; and, before the morning dawned, were far beyond the reach of the astonished Diego.

IX.

The Journey.

“The high Peruvian solitudes among.”

HEMANS.

Now did Fray Fernando and his young companion behold in all their glory “the works of the Lord, and the wonders of His hand.” For their way to Cuzco led them across the mighty Andes. Of these Cerro Blanco, though in any other land it would have taken rank as a monarch mountain, was only a kind of sentinel, or advanced guard. It looked down protectingly on the valleys beneath, but it looked up reverently to the white and shadowy peaks of snow which rose, one above the other, far as the eye could reach. Fray Fernando had been wont to think of the Andes as a “corderilla,” or chain; now he knew them as a vast gigantic army—God’s great army—at His creative word arising from the earth, and ranging themselves in what to the eye of man seemed magnificent confusion, but was majestic order in His sight, who saw the whole. “In His hand,” said Fray Fernando, “are the high places of the earth, and the strength of the hills is His also. He, and He alone, telleth their number, and calleth them all by name; even as He doth the stars, which their ice-crowned pinnacles almost seem to touch.”

As, in compliance with the advice of José, the travellers began their journey by descending to the vale of Nasca, in order to avail themselves of an Inca road from thence to Cuzco, they had occasion to traverse, and that more than once, each of the zones into which different gradations of altitude divide that wonderful region. They passed through valleys where tropical vegetation displayed all its gorgeous magnificence. There rose the giant palms, slender, tall, and graceful; there flourished many a wondrous flowering tree; there bloomed the magnolia, the cactus, the balsam, spreading out purple, white, or scarlet petals to the hot, heavily perfumed air; while “strange bright birds, on their starry wings,” glittering with clear hard metallic lustre, flitted from bough to bough, from blossom to blossom.

José, who took upon himself almost entirely the direction of the journey, gathered for his patron sweet dates, or luscious chirimoyas, looking like large green oranges. But he warned him that they must not linger in these valleys. “They are the abodes of fever,” he said. And indeed Fray Fernando himself was willing enough to pass on to a purer and cooler atmosphere.

Marvellous was the beauty of their next stage. It brought them to the region of the Peruvian-bark tree, which José called quina-quina, with its light-green leaves and its little clustered flowers, rose-coloured or white, filling the air with their delicious fragrance. But the cypress and the palm were the monarch trees of those primeval forests, and they gave shelter to an almost incredible undergrowth of vegetation. Their long slender stems were climbed to the very top by tangled lianas, with luxuriant leaves and gorgeous flowers. It was the land of flowers. There hung the large violet blossoms of the melastoma, there gigantic fuchsias drooped their graceful crimson bells; whilst beneath them blossoms of every hue enamelled the living green of the turf. Fray Fernando could not help asking, “Is not this Paradise?”

Just then José stooped down, and from the sweet tangle of flower-covered bushes selected and gathered a single spray. It was a cluster of curious slipper-shaped blossoms, bright yellow spotted with crimson—the calceolaria of our modern conservatories. “Amongst us,” he said, “this flower means pity and kindness. With garlands of it, mingled with the cantut[22] and the evergreen, our fathers used to crown the heads of the noble youths at the great belting festival, to teach them that as the sun brings forth flowers from the earth for the joy of man, their hearts should bring forth pity and kindness. But pity and kindness are gone now; the Spaniards have driven them away.”

And then Fray Fernando knew that this was not Paradise.

Soon afterwards they came to a land of giant trees. Many of them raised their mighty stems, like the pillars of a wonderful cathedral, a hundred feet in the air before they sent forth a single branch. Here a strange fit of home-sickness surprised Fray Fernando in the midst of Nature’s richest glories. In the lower levels there was no perceptible change of season; eternal summer reigned supreme. But here it was autumn, and these giant trees were shedding on his pathway withered leaves, like those that used to rustle round his footsteps in the cork-groves of his native land. He began to feel an affection for them such as he never could have felt for the wonderful trees of the valley, whose great spreading branches kept their green the whole year round.

Yet another day’s journey, and the travellers entered the region of mist and rain. Here were no great trees, but the perpetual moisture nourished a luxuriant growth of evergreens, of arbutus, and other flowering shrubs, in whose blossoms a bright yellow seemed the prevailing hue. José called this district the Puna, and hastened through it as rapidly as he might, unconsoled for the absence of Ynty by its numerous flowers, its verdant mosses, and its creeping mimosas.

At length they came to colder and more rugged regions, where the vegetation, at first abundant and pleasant to the eye, like that of our temperate zone, grew gradually poor and scanty. But Fray Fernando said reverently, that God had given the mountain to the beasts to dwell in. Here graceful fawn-coloured vicuñas, and guanucos with long shaggy fleeces and mild camel-like faces, roamed at large, feeding on the ychu and alfalfa, that still grew in abundance. Pretty little piscaches, with bushy tails, startled by the footsteps of the travellers, ran to hide in the ychu; and here and there a plover flew screaming into the air above their heads. Once they saw a huge condor perched on an elevated rocky peak.

Thus for many days they journeyed onwards, now ascending, now in turn descending again. By-and-by they came to grassy table-lands, where herds of llamas or alpacas roamed about, either wild, or more often under the care of Indian shepherds. Where the nature of the ground permitted cultivation, the soil was well and carefully cultivated. Even on the steep sides of mountains terraces were constructed with ingenious industry. By means of these andenaria, as the Spaniards called them, many a hill, that in another country would have been a brown and sterile mass, was transformed into a beautiful hanging-garden, displaying every variety of production, from the rich tropical splendours that adorned the broad belts around the base, to the few rows of maize which were all that even the industrious Indian could persuade to take root on the narrow strip at the top.

The long journey was a very safe and easy one. For nearly all the way our travellers had only to use the excellent roads provided by the care of the Incas. Fray Fernando was not the first Spaniard who grew enthusiastic in his admiration of these wonderful works, executed without machinery, and even without iron tools. Passages leagues in length were cut through the living rock, precipices were scaled by long flights of steps, ravines were filled up with masonry, and rivers crossed by means of suspension bridges made of maguey—the native osier. At convenient distances all along the road tampus, or post-houses, were erected, where the wayfarers found shelter. José explained that, in the old times, they would have found entertainment also in many of these tampus; but since, to use his mournful and oft-repeated expression, “the Spaniards have changed all,” they had usually to throw themselves on the hospitality of the Indians; and sometimes, in lonely places, to rely on the little store of roasted maize or of frozen potatoes (called chuñu), which José never failed to bring as provision for the way. The Indians were always kind and generous to wayfarers; but they had only to recognize José as a Child of the Sun, to induce them to lay the best their huts contained at his feet.

The hardihood and agility displayed by José during the journey surprised Fray Fernando. He made very little of the wound he had received from Pepe, though it was severe enough to have laid a European aside for weeks. But this was thoroughly Indian. No amount of walking or running seemed to fatigue him. Fray Fernando was by no means a match for him, and was always the first to propose a halt. José, compassionating his weakness, would frequently offer him some of his favourite coca, but this the monk always declined, from an unaccountable idea taken up by the Spaniards, that the use of the harmless stimulant was in some way connected with the superstition of the Indians.

From the extreme of supposing his pupil a child, whose simple thoughts he could read like an open book, Fray Fernando passed into the opposite one, of considering him a hopeless enigma. And, indeed, José, or rather, as the Spaniards would have called him—for they conceded the honours of nobility to the Children of the Sun—Don José Viracocha Inca, was a compound of so many heterogenous elements, that his character might well be a perplexity. He was an American Indian, with nearly all the peculiarities that distinguish the aborigines of the New World from the natives of the Old fully and clearly developed. But races flower as well as plants. The flower of the American race—and a strange, rare flower it was—was surely that mysterious family, the self-styled Children of the Sun. Their origin continues wrapt in obscurity, but their moral and intellectual ascendancy has been written on the page of history, in the peace, the order, and the prosperity they secured to millions of their fellow-men. José was an Inca, and heir not only to the very peculiar character, but to the traditions of the sons of Manco Capac. But upon these had been grafted seven years of careful training in the white man’s thoughts and habits, as well as in the white man’s learning and religion. And, moreover, there was that within him for which neither race, education, nor training could fully account. Had he lived fifty years earlier, he would have been the foremost “haravec”[23] at the court of his great kinsman, Huayna Capac. He would have made sweet “yaravis”[24] for the Indian girls to sing, and more ambitious dramas to be acted before the Inca and his court. But the faculties which would then have found expression in song had now no exercise, save in the ever-recurring wail over those former days, which indeed were better than these.

This preponderance of imagination in his character was the real cause of his temporary repudiation of Christianity (or rather Catholicism), and return to the faith of his fathers. But such a return could be only temporary, if indeed it was more than fancied. What Huayna Capac, on whom no gleam of the light of revelation ever shone, had been taught by the light of reason to abandon, could scarcely be held seriously by a youth instructed as José had been.

Fray Fernando saw with pleasure that his prejudices against Christianity were melting away, and that he was anxious to resume his studies. Often when they halted for the night he would eagerly take up the Breviary, and try to translate the Latin psalms and prayers it contained. He would frequently ask questions suggested by what he read; sometimes startling ones enough, betraying an acquaintance with facts, or rumours of facts, about the Old World, assuredly not learned from Fray Fernando. One day he asked: “Patre, do not the Jews also build great ships, and sail over the Mother Sea, even as far as this country?”

“Truly they are wanderers over the face of the earth, according to the just judgments of God,” returned the monk; “but that they have come hither have I never heard. Who told you of them?”

“No one,” answered José, who was caution itself in speaking of any rumours current amongst his own people. “But is it not true that they hate the Spaniards and the Catholic faith?”

“It is,” Fray Fernando responded briefly. “They are an accursed race.”

He did not know, until long years afterwards, that José was confounding the Jews with the English!

During the past six months, José had found means to supplement the well-remembered lessons of his childhood, and to complete his acquaintance with the history, the customs, and the social polity of his forefathers. He failed not to improve the various circumstances of their journey into occasions for enlarging upon these topics to Fray Fernando. One day, for instance, an Indian chasqui, or messenger, shot past them like an arrow, his body bent forward, his burden on his shoulder, and his staff in his hand. “See the speed of that fellow!” cried the monk.

“That’s nothing,” said José, smiling. “In the old times, the Inca supped at sundown in Cuzco upon fish taken from the Mother Sea at Lurin the same hour the day before.”

Fray Fernando knew the distance between Lurin and Cuzco—more than a hundred leagues. He said, “That is too much even for _my_ faith, José.”

“The Children of the Sun speak truth,” returned José, a little offended. “Our chasquis,” he continued, “were trained to the work from their earliest childhood; and each had but a short way to run until he should be relieved by another. He had plenty of rest, and plenty of good food and chica; and he was stirred to do his utmost by the hope of reward, and of praise—that was better than reward. Was not that chasqui a happy man ever after, to whom the Inca once said with his own lips, ‘Sit down, huanucu’?—The patre knows the huanucu is the swiftest of all creatures.—But this I say,” added José with a sorrowful smile, “the Spaniards will find no man to run so fast for them, even for fear of the lash.”

On another occasion they passed a melancholy troop of Indians who were being driven to their forced labour on a Spanish farm. José divided his little store of coca amongst them, and then complained bitterly to Fray Fernando of the hardship of their condition.

But the monk said it seemed not unfair that they should pay tribute in the form of personal labour. “I thought they did so,” he added, “even under your Incas.”

“True,” replied José, “they tilled the lands of the Sun and of the Inca. But after this fashion: First, the lands of the Sun, as was meet and right. Next, the lands of the widow and the orphan, of the sick man, and the soldier who was fighting the battles of his country. Then each man tilled his own tupu.[25] These tupus were given them according to their need. If a man had a child born to him, he had a little piece added to his share of land. And they were all taught to help each other in their labour. Lastly, and not until all else was done, they tilled the Inca’s land; such was the Inca’s law. The work was a happy festival: men, women, and children, in their holiday dresses, thronged to the fields together; and as they drew the plough, or sowed the maize and quinoa, they chanted merry songs, or yaravis about the great deeds of the Incas. Always they had abundance of good food and chica. Neither in the field, nor in the workshop, nor yet in the mine, was any man’s health ever known to suffer from the labour he did for his lords. And in all Tahuantin Suyu there was no man that had not food enough, and clothing suited to the climate in which he dwelt. The Spaniards know this.[26] Ask them, when you go to Cuzco, and they—even they themselves—will bear witness that never were a people more happy, more peaceful, more content with their lot, more loyal to their lords, than were we when they came to us. Why God, who governs all, let them come, He knows—I do not.”

Nor did Fray Fernando. Long did he ponder over the problem thus set before him. For the first time in his life, a great grief and wrong, with which he had personally no concern, was sinking into his heart. He used to satisfy himself that the natives of the New World received a full indemnity for their injuries and sufferings in the introduction of Christianity, with its creed and its sacraments, by which their souls might be saved from everlasting perdition. But this thought was losing its power to content him. He was beginning to learn that wrong remains wrong for ever, and cannot be changed into right by virtue of any benefits, real or supposed, which may eventually accrue from it.

That night, as they rested together in a deserted tampu, he said to José, “My son, it is not fit that I should conceal from you what I truly think. I think my people are verily guilty concerning yours. May God forgive us, and in His own time turn our evil into good.”

José made no answer, and almost immediately went out to gather sticks for a fire. Yet never had Fray Fernando been so dear to him as at that moment. Nor had any single act or speech ever done so much to bring their hearts together as that one free and generous acknowledgment. So great is the power of truth between man and man.

X.

The Dead Men who Fought against Spain.

“If thou seest the oppression of the poor, and violent
perverting of judgment and justice in a province, marvel not at
the matter: for he that is higher than the highest regardeth;
and there be higher than they.”

ECCLES. v. 8.

Three hundred years have passed away since the men of the Old World spoiled and conquered Tahuantin Suyu. Those who did and those who suffered wrong have slept side by side for ages. The ancient Incas lie in glory “with kings and counsellors of the earth, who have built desolate places for themselves, or with princes that had gold, and filled their houses with silver;” while their once happy subjects, doomed to toil in the service of the cruel stranger, have found repose at last, where “the prisoners rest together; they hear not the voice of the oppressor. The small and the great are there, and the servant is free from his master.” And the men who robbed and tortured them, who made their fair land a desolation, until the cry of it reached unto heaven, and those who were left alive envied those whom the sword had devoured,—they also have gone to render account of their deeds before Him who is the Judge of quick and dead.

Do we still say with the Inca’s son, “Why God allowed these things to be, we know not”? Not altogether. First, let it be said, once for all, that beautiful—wonderfully beautiful—as the social polity of the Incas undoubtedly was, it was no more perfect than any other scheme which man has devised for making this earth the paradise it would have been if sin had never entered. Two defects may be specially mentioned; since these probably contained the seeds of dissolution for the whole magnificent and extensive fabric. The royal and privileged race—the Children of the Sun—stood too far above the people, and looked down on them from too lofty an eminence, as beings of quite another and a lower order. Not only had the Incas different ideas and traditions—it is said even a different language—but they had actually _a different code of morality_ for themselves to that which they imposed on their subjects. Great liberties were allowed them: it is true that, in accordance with the beneficence which formed their distinguishing characteristic, they seem to have used them most mercifully,—yet still they used them. What were accounted vices in the people, were none in them; and here, perhaps, may really be found “the little speck within the garnered fruit” that, “rotting inwards,” would by-and-by have slowly mouldered all.

Moreover, the idea of freedom was unknown to them. While the Inca gave his subjects—and gave nobly, “as a king,” to friend and foe alike—every other boon his hand could bestow, he never dreamed of giving them the rights of free men. Properly speaking, they were _not_ men, they were children; to be cared for kindly, even tenderly; to be fed, and clothed, and housed; to have their work and their play, and plenty of the latter, duly apportioned them; and, in one word, to be made good and happy. It may be said, and truly, that in intelligence they _were_ children, incapable of self-control and self-government. Still, the Inca’s ideal fell below the Christian one in this, that he neither sought to raise them out of that condition, nor provided room for them should they desire to raise themselves. Under his system there was no growth, no freedom of choice; and there was to be none. Every man must be harmless, well-behaved, industrious, or there would be no room for him in Tahuantin Suyu. But a principle which should make a free man choose the good and refuse the evil, was amongst the things not revealed to the Children of the Sun.

But growth there must be, or decay will take its place. If the cruel white men from beyond the sea had not overwhelmed Tahuantin Suyu with swift destruction, it is still probable that the whole system would have melted gradually away, like a palace of ice, grand and beautiful, white and glistening with rainbow hues, but, from its very nature, unenduring. And the bloody civil war, which preceded and facilitated the conquest of the Spaniards, seems no doubtful indication of what might have taken place. One such tyrant as Atahualpa[27] (who, it should however be remembered, was not a legitimate Inca) had it in his power to cause unspeakable confusion and misery, and to destroy the fruit of the beneficent labours of a long line of honoured predecessors.

Perhaps, therefore, after all, it was not so dark and sad a fate for the Empire of the Incas to fall at once and in a single day almost from the very summit of prosperity, like a royal oak in the forest struck down by the tempest. If it was ever true of any empire (which is doubtful) that she “fell unwept, without a crime,” it was true of Tahuantin Suyu. She and her children took, once for all, their place amongst the sufferers, not the doers, of wrong; the oppressed, not the oppressors. There can be no doubt which is the better place.

More to be desired was her doom, with all its anguish, than that of her destroyer and desolater, Spain. Here God’s judgments are written on the page of history in characters of fire: “Woe to thee that spoilest, and thou wast not spoiled; and dealest treacherously, and they dealt not treacherously with thee! When thou shalt cease to spoil, thou shalt be spoiled; and when thou shalt make an end to deal treacherously, they shall deal treacherously with thee.” As Spain did to others, so was it done to her. From the foremost place amongst the nations of the earth, she was cast into the depths of a degradation far worse, far lower than that into which she plunged the Empire of the Incas. She robbed the stores of an industrious people, destroyed their water-courses, deprived them of the means of subsistence. And from that day, even to the present, want, and scarcity, and cleanness of teeth in all her cities has been her own portion. Her very nobles, amidst their pomp and pride, have hungered and suffered thirst; the children of her chiefs and conquerors have pined away, and their eyes have failed them for want of those common fruits of the field of which, under the Inca’s beneficent sway, every poor man had enough and to spare. Well have the Despoplados of Spain—bare, and brown, and barren—avenged the fertile plains of Tahuantin Suyu, laid waste by the cruel stranger.

The punishment sprang naturally out of the offence. The booty was a weight round the neck of the robber that sank him to perdition. It was the gold of Peru that ruined Spain. When she put forth her hand and took it, she took the curse of God with it. To the proud and idle Castilian, the lord of the New World, industry became the brand of slavery; commerce, a degradation; trade, the appropriate work of Jews and infidels. All those useful arts which make a people’s prosperity and happiness were neglected or despised. And the treasure that undermined the life and the energy of the nation, supplied at the same time fuel to sustain the fire of that long conflict which was the passion and the doom of the Spanish monarchy.

In the contest that followed the Reformation, Spain was the great champion of Rome. Spain and England stand out before us during the last half of the sixteenth century, representatives of the principles that were contending for the world’s future; and sometimes the conflict seems almost narrowed to a duel between them. Victory for Spain, meant victory for Rome; meant kingly and priestly tyranny; the inquisition, the rack, and the stake. Victory for England, meant an open Bible, free thought, equal rights, liberty of conscience.

And the tide of battle ebbed and flowed; and flowed and ebbed again. Sometimes it seemed as if the God of battles would declare for His own cause; sometimes it looked as though He stood aloof, and did not heed what men were doing on the earth.

But amidst the din and smoke of the fiercest conflict, the enemies of Spain were joined by a vast and shadowy host. Their voices no man heard, their faces no man saw, their footfalls were noiseless as the snow, “their arrows drew no blood.” Yet were they valiant warriors, who did good service in the cause of England, of truth, of freedom. The men of the New World,—“the men thrust through with the sword,” the men slain by famine, by torture, by excessive toil and cruel blows,—they it was who “arose, every man in his place,” and fought against Spain. The tale of their wrongs and sufferings flew like fire from heart to heart, from lip to lip, and nerved the arm of the avenger. Both on the land and on the wave the strength of the Englishman became “the strength of ten,” to smite down the cruel Spaniard, and to keep the fair homes of his native land from the men who conquered Tahuantin Suyu. Noble hearts, like that of Raleigh, burned over the wrongs of the conquered race, and it was their cherished dream, and his, to restore the Empire of the Incas.

But this work was not given to him, or to any man, to accomplish. In God’s providence empires and dynasties pass away, and come not again. “The old order changeth, giving place to new.” Yet not the less, from age to age, He is above all, the God that giveth to every man, and to every nation, “according to their works.”

Still we must allow that dread mysteries, as yet but partially explained, underlie this and every other act in the great drama of human history. Questions arise within us to which man _can_ give no answer, and to which God _has_ given none—as yet. There are those amongst us who in secret “weep much,” because the Book wherein are written the destinies of their race is sealed with seven seals, and no man is found worthy to open and to read it, neither to look thereon.

Let such accept the one thought of comfort that can avail to dry their tears: “Weep not; behold the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, hath prevailed to open the Book, and to loose the seven seals thereof.” None ever loved man as He did—He who died for man. Yet He knows _all_, from the beginning to the end. And He is satisfied.

Nay, more. He it is who shall be the Judge of man. Before His judgment-seat shall be gathered all nations—sons of Europe, who have known and dishonoured Him; dusky children of the East and West, who have never heard His name. It is in His hand—the hand pierced for man—that the destinies of man are lying. Is there any heart amongst us not content to leave them there; not satisfied, to its inmost depths, by His own assurance, “What I do thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know hereafter”?

XI.

Across the Apurimac.

An Inca king for Cuzco’s throne
In victor strength shall rise.

“Look, patre! We have but to cross yonder stream, and we shall have entered the sacred land where the golden wand of my great father Manco sank into the ground—the patrimony of the Children of the Sun. Let the patre hasten.”

“I cannot hasten; I am weary.” And Fray Fernando seated himself, or rather sank, upon a stone by the wayside.

The way was a steep, slippery descent, leading from the mountain’s height to the

“Wide cane arch high flung o’er gulf profound,”

that spanned the rapid torrent of the Apurimac. José stopped, and looked at him with concern.

“It is a hard way, patre,” he said; “but you shall soon rest. You see there is a tampu at the other end of the bridge.”

“But for your help, José, I could never have come so far. To a stripling like you these mountain-paths are easy; not so to—

“To an old man,” he would fain have said; but he knew that his age, if reckoned by years, would give him no claim to the title: it was only in sorrow he was old.

“Lend me your hand once more,” he added, rousing himself with an effort, “and I will try to reach the tampu.”

José, who was agile as one of the vicuñas of the mountain, managed to keep his own footing in the most slippery spots, while he guided the steps of his companion to the safest places, and never failed to lend him the aid of his steady hand.

“Look there, José!” said the monk suddenly, in a tone of dismay. “Before us there is no path—no place for one; nothing but a sheer precipice. How, in Heaven’s name, are we to reach the bridge? Your people must be birds, to travel by such ways.”

“Our people trusted the Inca,” said José, with a quiet smile; “and they knew that every way he made for them would bring them safely to the Golden City. There is a hole in the rock, and we are to go through it.”

It was true. A tunnel, forty feet in length, cut zigzag through the solid rock, and duly provided with steps, brought them safely and easily to the bridge. Even the weary monk was fain to gaze with admiration on the scene that met their view when they emerged from the darkness of the tunnel. Full three hundred feet below them the Apurimac dashed over its rocky bed between steep precipices; whilst the abyss was spanned by the graceful bridge of sogas, or cords of maguey, so light and apparently so frail that it vibrated in every gust of mountain wind, yet so strong that armies had marched over it without fear and without danger.

Nor was Fray Fernando conscious of fear, though he felt it tremble beneath his feet as he walked. He had crossed halfway when, in an unlucky moment, he looked down on the roaring torrent beneath. A sudden dizziness seized him; his limbs first lost their power, then shook with a nervous tremor that he could not control. In vain he laid fast hold on the rope of maguey, considerately hung breast-high over the bridge, and attached to it with cords for the greater security of the traveller. He could neither advance nor retreat; nor could he withdraw his eyes from the abyss, over which he seemed suspended on a thread. The sight had a fearful fascination for him. How many perplexities would be ended by just one plunge; not so much—one little step from the spot where he stood! The voice of the waters seemed to call him. But José seized his hand, and with friendly violence drew him onwards. Dizzy, faint, and sick, he reached the tampu at last.

He had been suffering all day from a severe pain in his head and neck, and now it became really agonizing. He was quite unable to partake of the roasted maize José had brought with him; and the tampu being as usual deserted, José had no means of procuring him any of the comforts he needed. He gathered, however, some of the ychu that grew near the place, and, spreading his cloak over it, made a kind of couch, upon which Fray Fernando was heartily glad to stretch his aching limbs.

“Just read the psalms for me,” said the weary monk; “then I will pray, and try to sleep.”

It had now become the custom for José every evening to read the psalms for the day aloud in Latin, and then, with the help of his teacher, to translate them into Spanish. By means of this simple plan, he was making fair progress in the language which he still believed to be that of the ancient Jews, and of the English. On this occasion the first psalm for the day happened to be the Seventy-first. He read it through without even a thought of its meaning, being occupied with his apprehensions about Fray Fernando. But the next—the Seventy-second—arrested his attention. Glimmerings of its purport, which flashed on him through the veil of the Latin words, deeply stirred his soul. It seemed to tell of a great King—an Inca—who should rule in righteousness, befriend the poor, redress wrongs everywhere. But just as he was eagerly proceeding to the task of translation, the patre very effectually changed the current of his thoughts by exclaiming,—

“If this pain in my head continues, I shall lose my reason.”

It was well that José’s impassive Indian countenance did not betray the alarm he really felt. He had not the least idea what remedies he ought to use; and even if he had, how was he to procure them in that solitary, desolate place? He drew near, and put his hand on the monk’s forehead. It was burning: so he took the cotton cloth in which he had carried the maize, dipped it in cold water, and laid it on the throbbing brow. The cool application gave temporary relief; and José, perceiving this, renewed it at intervals. As the air was chilly, he collected with considerable difficulty a supply of dry sticks (a few stunted bushes grew near), and made a fire.

After what seemed a lengthened period of restless pain and distress, Fray Fernando dropped into an uneasy slumber, which, however, grew gradually quieter and heavier. It lasted so long that his devoted attendant began to think he also might allow himself a little sleep; which he took, stretched on the ground at the sick man’s feet.

The next morning was far advanced when Fray Fernando opened his heavy eyes. José, who had no doubt that he would awaken refreshed and strengthened, was greatly disappointed at the pain and weariness still too visible in his countenance.

“Where am I?” he asked feebly.

“Only two days’ journey from the Golden City, patre,” José cheerfully made answer.

“Many, _many_ days from the Golden City—never like to reach it,” Fray Fernando moaned.

“Of what can he be thinking?” thought José, in dismay. “Can he be raving?” He said aloud,—“You will reach it easily, patre, when you have had a day or two of rest. Would I dare leave you alone, and I would run and fetch help for you. If God would but send some traveller this way! Patre, how does your head feel?”

“It still throbs wildly,” said the monk, feebly raising his hand to it. “What hour is it? How long have I slept?”

José answered both questions with as near an approach to accuracy as he could. Then the monk added,—

“I have an impression that I talked in my sleep. Did I?” he asked uneasily.

“Never a word, patre. You only moaned, like one in pain. Patre, I wish you would eat some of my coca-leaves; they would do you good. Woe is me! I have nothing else to give you, save cold water and maize.”

“Away with your coca!” said the monk sternly. “It would be a sin for me to touch or taste it.”

“As the patre pleases,” returned José, with apparent indifference. “But, I pray you, try to eat a little maize—just a few grains. I will make them hot for you in a minute; see what a good fire I have kindled!”

“Eat the maize yourself, my son; you must have needed it ere this.”

“Oh no, patre; I have had abundance,” said José, whose code of morality was not too high to permit what is often, though erroneously, called “a white lie.”

The day wore on. In the afternoon the monk seemed better; and José, who keenly felt the discomfort, not to say the peril, of remaining longer in their present position, ventured to ask if he might not run at least to the nearest village to obtain food and other necessaries.

“I will run like the Inca’s chasquis,” he pleaded; “my foot shall not bend the blades of ychu as I pass.”

He did not dream—how could he?—that his patron was struggling, not alone with bodily pain, but with sore anguish and bitterness of soul. In this hour of weakness, Fray Fernando could not face the thought of being left to himself amidst that dreary solitude. In proportion as the world of man seemed far away, the spirit-world seemed near. José could not, at best, return before the shades of evening fell. And Fray Fernando _dared_ not meet the darkness, with its strange

“Voices and visions from the sphere of those
That have to die no more,”

without the comfort and support of a human presence.

“Wait till next morning, José,” he said. “Then I shall be better or worse. In either case, I promise to let you go.”

José waited, with the patience of his race. Hour after hour he sat by the fire, watching Fray Fernando as he dozed, and trying to put together the disjointed fragments of meaning gathered up from that wonderful psalm. The more he pondered, the more certain he felt that it told of an Inca—a King who should reign in righteousness, and be the Friend of the poor. But who was He? Had He reigned long ago over the Jews? Or, peradventure, was He still to come? José knew well that the Psalms contained many prophecies of future events. He would ask the patre the interpretation of this one. But he would take care so to veil his questions that the patre should never guess their real drift and object. For José, who loved Fray Fernando well enough to die for him, would yet rather have died than have allowed him to suspect certain hopes and dreams that lay hidden in the depths of his heart.

Towards evening the monk appeared so much easier that José ventured to propose reading to him.

“You may, if you like,” was the answer. And José quietly began,—“_Deus, justicium_.”

“You mistake,” Fray Fernando said at once. “You read that before. This is the fifteenth evening of the month.”