[Sidenote: The Inca--the Lord of the Empire.] The imperial dignity was hereditary, descending from father to son. As in Egypt, the monarch not unfrequently had his sisters for wives. His diadem consisted of a scarlet tasseled fringe round his brow, adorned with two feathers. He wore earrings of great weight. His dress of lama-wool was dyed scarlet, inwoven with gold and studded with gems. Whoever approached him bore a light burden on the shoulder as a badge of servitude, and was barefoot. The Inca was not only the representative of the temporal, but also of the spiritual power. He was more than supreme pontiff, for he was a descendant of the Sun, the god of the nation. He made laws, imposed taxes, raised armies, appointed or removed judges at his pleasure. He travelled in a sedan ornamented with gold and emeralds; the roads were swept before him, strewn with flowers, and perfumed. [Sidenote: The national palace.] His palace at Yucay was described by the Spaniards as a fairy scene. It was filled with works of Indian art; images of animals and plants decorated the niches of its walls; it had an endless labyrinth of gorgeous chambers, and here and there shady crypts for quiet retirement. Its baths were great golden bowls. It was embosomed in artificial forests. The imperial ladies and concubines spent their time in beautifully furnished chambers, or in gardens, with cascades and fountains, grottoes and bowers. It was in what few countries can boast of, a temperate region in the torrid zone.
[Sidenote: Religion of Peru, its establishments and ceremonial.] The Peruvian religion ostensibly consisted of a worship of the Sun, but the higher classes had already become emancipated from such a material association, and recognized the existence of one almighty, invisible God. They expected the resurrection of the body and the continuance of the soul in a future life. It was their belief that in the world to come our occupations will resemble those we have followed here. Like the Egyptians, who had arrived at similar ideas, the Peruvians practised embalming, the mummies of their Incas being placed in the Temple of the Sun at Cuzco, the kings on the right, the queens on the left, clad in their robes of state, and with their hands crossed on their bosoms, seated in golden chairs, waiting for the day when the soul will return to reanimate the body. The mummies of distinguished personages were buried in a sitting posture under tumuli of earth. To the Supreme Being but one temple was dedicated. It was in a sacred valley, to which pilgrimages were made. In the Peruvian mythology, heaven was above the sky, hell in the interior of the earth--it was the realm of an evil spirit called Cupay. The general resemblance of these to Egyptian doctrines may forcibly impress upon us that they are ideas with which the human mind necessarily occupies itself in its process of intellectual development. As in all other countries, the educated classes were greatly in advance of the common people, who were only just emerging from fetichism, and engrossed in the follies of idolatry and man-worship. Nevertheless, the government found it expedient to countenance the vulgar delusion; indeed, the political system was actually founded upon it. But the Peruvians were in advance of the Europeans in this respect, that they practised no persecutions upon those who had become mentally emancipated. Besides the sun, the visible god, other celestial bodies were worshipped in a subordinate way. It was supposed that there were spirits in the wind, lightning, thunder; genii in the mountains, rivers, springs, and grottoes. In the great Temple of the Sun at Cuzco an image of that deity was placed so as to receive the rays of the luminary at his rising; a like artifice had been practised in the Serapion at Alexandria. There was also a sanctuary dedicated to the Sun in the island of Titicaca, and, it is said, between three and four hundred temples of a subordinate kind in Cuzco. To the great temple were attached not fewer than four thousand priests and fifteen hundred vestal virgins, the latter being intrusted with the care of the sacred fire, and from them the most beautiful were chosen to pass into the Inca's seraglio. The popular faith had a ritual and a splendid ceremonial, the great national festival being at the summer solstice. The rays of the sun were then collected by a concave mirror, and fire rekindled thereby, or by the friction of wood.