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The history of Manco Capac, our first Inca and the founder of our nation, is well known to all of us, and if your claim be indeed justified there must be many incidents in his career, well known to us but quite unknown to the outer world, which the claimant can recall. Let him mention a few of those incidents, and the most doubting among us will be satisfied."
The trouble is, it is so difficult to let out the whole American nature without its self-assertion seeming to take a personal character. But I never enjoy the Englishman so much as when he talks of church and king like Manco Capac among the Peruvians. Then you get the real British flavor, which the cosmopolite Englishman loses.
He was still the Inca, if only by the right of sword, and the forces of his generals were sufficiently great to render it impossible for the son of Huascar, named Manco Capac, who had escaped the massacre of his kinfolk and who was the legitimate heir to the throne, to claim the crown.
There remains but one other person whose fate excites a passing interest, unless it be Bishop Valverde, who was killed, while on a journey, by the Peruvians, some years before; this is the last Inca, Manco Capac.
The Greek historians have no advantage over the Peruvian, but in the beauty of their language, or from that language being more familiar to us. Mango Capac, the son of the sun, is as authentic a founder of a royal race, as the progenitor of the Heraclidae. What truth indeed could be expected, when even the identity of person is uncertain?
The temple, and the house occupied by the Virgins of the Sun, had been erected by Huayna Capac, and were liberally endowed by that Inca, after the sumptuous fashion of the religious establishments of Peru.
Manco disclosed to his conqueror the existence of several heaps of treasure, and the places where they had been secreted; and, when he had thus won his confidence, he stimulated his cupidity still further by an account of a statue of pure gold of his father Huayna Capac, which the wily Peruvian requested leave to bring from a secret cave in which it was deposited, among the neighboring Andes.
"Whatever truth there may be in these legends, certain it is that Manco Capac did become the first of a race of Incas or kings or chiefs and, it is said, laid the foundations of the city of Cuzco, the remains of which at the present day show the power, splendour, and wealth to which Manco Capac and his successors attained.
In the meantime the crafty Pizarro had been permitted to enjoy very little peace and tranquillity in Peru. Manco Capac had bided his time, and his Indian subjects, fervently loyal to the sacred dynasty, had crowded about him in their thousands. The Peruvians now assumed the aggressive.
"Thus saith Pachacamac, the Great and Only One. `In the days of old, when the Peruvians were but a few scattered tribes plunged in the depths of ignorance and barbarism, I took pity upon them and sent to them Manco Capac and Mama Oello Huaco, two of my children, to gather together those scattered tribes and form them into communities, to instruct them in the mysteries of my worship, and to teach them the arts whereby they might become a great and civilised nation.
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