Yet the difficulties I have had
to contend with a very far inferior to those which fall to the
lot of a blind man. I know of no historian, now alive, who can
claim the glory of having overcome such obstacles, but the author
of "La Conquete de l'Angleterre par les Normands" who, to use his
own touching and beautiful language, "has made himself the friend
of darkness"; and who, to a profound philosophy that requires no
light but that from within, unites a capacity for extensive and
various research, that might well demand the severest application
of the student.
The remarks into which I have been led at such length will, I
trust, not be set down by the reader to an unworthy egotism, but
to their true source, a desire to correct a misapprehension to
which I may have unintentionally given rise myself, and which has
gained me the credit with some - far from grateful to my
feelings, since undeserved - of having surmounted the
incalculable obstacles which lie in the path of the blind man.
Boston, April 2 1847
Chapter I
Physical Aspect Of The Country. - Sources Of Peruvian
Civilization. - Empire Of The Incas. - Royal Family. - Nobility.
Of the numerous nations which occupied the great American
continent at the time of its discovery by the Europeans, the two
most advanced in power and refinement were undoubtedly those of
Mexico and Peru. But, though resembling one another in extent of
civilization, they differed widely as to the nature of it; and
the philosophical student of his species may feel a natural
curiosity to trace the different steps by which these two nations
strove to emerge from the state of barbarism, and place
themselves on a higher point in the scale of humanity.
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