United States or Argentina ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"That such an insult should have been offered by so base a person was an indignity," he said, "more difficult to bear than his imprisonment";16 and he told Pizarro, "that, by the Peruvian law, it could be expiated, not by the criminal's own death alone, but by that of his whole family and kindred." 17 But Felipillo was too important to the Spaniards to be dealt with so summarily; nor did they probably attach such consequence to an offence which, if report be true, they had countenanced by their own example.18 Felipillo, however, soon learned the state of the Inca's feelings towards himself, and from that moment he regarded him with deadly hatred.
After another march of two days the Spaniards began the descent of the eastern side of the Cordillera, meeting by the way another and more important envoy, and seven days later the valley of Caxamalca lay before them, the vapour of its hot springs rising in the still air, and the slope of the further hillside white with the tents of the Inca's encampment for a space of several miles a sight which filled the Spaniards with a dismay they could hardly conceal.
There were about a thousand of this people in the place, and, as they had conceived some suspicion of the Inca's purposes, they kept an eye on his movements, and speedily reported his absence to Juan Pizarro.
A sudden cry arose of 'Black Jack! Black Jack! 'Tis him! He's caught! And the Inca's crowd, together with all the other crowds filling the market-place, surged off eastward in a dense, struggling mass. The cynosure of every eye was a springless clay-cart, which was being slowly driven past the newly-erected 'big house' of Enoch Wood, Esquire, towards the Town Hall.
Awhile later I was being borne in one of the Inca's own litters back to the camp of the Chancas, accompanied by an embassy of great lords. We passed over that dreadful, bloodstained plain where, under a flag of truce, both sides were engaged in burying the thousands of their dead, and came to the ridge whence we had charged on the yester morn.
The walls were covered with a shining plaster, both white and colored, and in the area before the edifice was seen a spacious tank or reservoir of stone, fed by aqueducts that supplied it with both warm and cold water.16 A basin of hewn stone it may be of a more recent construction still bears, on the spot, the name of the "Inca's bath." 17 The court was filled with Indian nobles, dressed in gayly ornamented attire, in attendance on the monarch, and with women of the royal household.
Look now, his lips are moving; I believe he is going to say something. See if you can hear what it is? The professor stooped down and held his ear so close that he could feel on his cheek the gentle fanning of the breath that had been still for three centuries. Then the Inca's lips moved again, and a soft sighing sound came from them, and in the midst of it he caught the words,
Next to the heir-apparent, by another wife, a cousin of the monarch's, came Manco Capac, a young prince who will occupy an important place in our subsequent story. But the best-beloved of the Inca's children was Atahuallpa. His mother was the daughter of the last Scyri of Quito, who had died of grief, it was said, not long after the subversion of his kingdom by Huayna Capac.
"A relation of the Inca's: one of the viper's brood," replied the first. "They say two strangers were made prisoners leading on the rebels," observed a third. "They are to be shot also, I hope." "No doubt of it; but the viceroy has thought it necessary to send to explain the matter to the English consul at Lima; and his answer has not arrived," remarked a fourth.
Like a string of shadows we moved across the plain past the great carved rock which is still called the Inca's Seat, and over the ridge of the Sliding Stones and down into the valley beyond, which is thickly strewn with great rock-masses carved into seats, and altars, and baths, and chambers, of which no man knows the origin, and which were ancient when Manco-Capac and Mama-Occlu first came into the land.
Word Of The Day