than that of Tupac Amaru. America had, in those days, become the theatre of the most wide-spread tyranny; but the Indians of Peru were those on whose necks the yoke weighed heaviest. Mitas and repartos were, in Peru, the deadly plagues of Spanish invention, which devoured the human race."6

I am enabled to give a more correct and circumstantial account of the great rising of the Peruvian Indians in the end of the last century than has yet appeared in Europe; although, as this interesting subject is a digression from the main purpose of the present work, I shall be obliged to compress my narrative within the narrow limits of one or two chapters. In this brief sketch of the state of the Peruvian Indians under Spanish rule, I have endeavoured to establish the fact that Tupac Amaru's rebellion was justified because the oppression of his people had become intolerable, and because all law was set at defiance by the Spanish officials. He protested, not against the tyranny of the laws, but against the infringement of laws, and the oppressive acts done in spite of the laws, by those whose duty it was to administer them.

In writing on this subject one is apt to be carried away by indignation against the Spanish rulers in South America; yet, if we look round at the systems of colonization pursued by other European nations, it will be found difficult to say who has a right to cast the first stone. The Spanish colonies, however, cannot properly be compared with those modern English settlements, to which thousands of the labouring classes have emigrated, and either annihilated the natives, or fenced

6 Ensayo de la Historia civil del Paraguay, Buenos Ayres, y Tucuman, por el Dr. Don Gregorio Funes, Dean de la Santa Iglesia Catedral de Cordova.Buenos Ayres, 1817, 4 vols, tom. iii. pp. 242-333. This work contains a detailed and very interesting account

of the insurrections of Tupac Amaru, and of the Cataris in Upper Peru.

7 An account of the copious materials from which my information respecting Tupac Amaru is derived will be found in a note at the beginning of the following chapter.

them off by a system of reserves and isolation. No European labouring class was introduced into South America; the Indians still continued to be the cultivators, the shepherds, and the artizans; and the Spaniards were merely the dominant race. This state of things is more allied to the conditions which now exist in British India or Dutch Java, and there is thus no analogy between the South American settlements and any British colony in the proper acceptation of the word.

Yet to Spain the credit is due, in spite of numerous shortcomings, and notwithstanding the oppression of her subordinates, of having endeavoured to establish the wisest, the most humane, and the only successful system of treating natives of an inferior race. It is certain that such a race must either continue to form the mass of the popolution, amalgamate with their conquerors, or be annihilated. The two former of these three alternatives were adopted in Peru, partly from natural causes, but partly also owing to the incessant exertions of the earlier Spanish viceroys, and of the "Defenders of the Indians;" and this result was achieved in spite of the oppression and cruelty of their subordinates. The Indians have continued to form the labouring class of Peru; amalgamation has taken place, to a very large extent, with Europeans; and the native race has thus been preserved from extinction. In the English colonies, on the other hand, owing to the influx of settlers of the labouring class, the aborigines have either been exterminated, or, through a system of isolation, are rapidly and inevitably advancing on the melancholy road to final annihilation.

But it was the intention of the Spanish system to do more for the aboriginal race than merely to preserve it

8 "Native races must in every in- | country."-Merivale's Colonies and Costance either perish, or be amalgamated lonization, p. 510.

with the general population of their

from extinction. By adopting a system of tutelage, as regarded the Indians, the Spanish Government endeavoured to defend them, in legal matters, from the superior intelligence of a more civilized race; and Mr. Helps points out that it is hardly possible to carry legislation further, in favour of any people, than by considering them as minors in the eye of the law, in order to protect them from being imposed upon in their dealings with their conquerors. The opposite plan, which has been adopted in some of the English colonies, of making native tribes equal to Europeans in the eye of the law, is a mere mockery, and cannot by any possibility exist in reality.1

9

It may then be readily allowed that the intentions of the Spanish Government towards the Indians were humane and just; that their legislation was invariably marked by tenderness and concern for the subject race; and that their policy, had it been carried into effect, was far more wise and generous than that by which modern nations have generally been influenced in dealing with the aborigines of their colonies. But I think I have clearly shown that, through the unworthiness of their subordinates, this policy was only very partially enforced; that the cruelty and oppression of the colonial officials at length became insufferable; and that no cause could be more just than that in which Tupac Amaru, the last of the Incas, at length drew his sword.

9 Spanish Conquest in America, iv. p. 368.

1 Colonies and Colonization, p. 522.

CHAPTER IX.

NARRATIVE OF THE INSURRECTION OF JOSÉ GABRIEL TUPAC AMARU, THE LAST OF THE INCAS.

THE basin of lake Titicaca is bounded on the north by the mountains of Vilcañota, which unite the maritime cordillera with the Eastern Andes, and the river of Vilcamayu rises in these mountains, and flows north through a fertile and wellpeopled valley, which is covered with fields of Indian corn. The road from Puno to Cuzco, after crossing the Vilcañota range by the pass of Santa Rosa, descends the valley of the Vilcamayu, passing through the towns of Marangani, Sicuani, Cacha, Tinta, Checacupe, Quiquijana, and Urcos; and then leaves the river near Oropesa, and ascends a valley for three leagues to the city of Cuzco. On either side of the ravine of Vilcamayu are lofty table-lands, which only yield potatoes and quinoa; the wild hills are covered with coarse grass, often weighed down with snow; and in several places there are large Alpine lakes. Uninviting as this bleak region appears, it still contains several Indian villages, ruled in 1780 by native caciques, who were subject to the corregidor of Tinta, in the valley. The principal villages under the jurisdiction of Tinta in this cold and lofty district are Sangarara, Lanqui, Pampamarca, Surimani, Yanaoca, and Tungasuca-the latter of which was the home of Tupac Amaru. It is a small village, with a few patches of potatoes and quinoa round it, near the banks of a wild-looking lake, with rocky mountains rising abruptly from the water.