But the practical operation of
the law seems to have been otherwise; and it is probable, that,
under the influence of that love of order and aversion to change
which marked the Peruvian institutions, each new partition of the
soil usually confirmed the occupant in his possession, and the
tenant for a year was converted into a proprietor for life.
The territory was cultivated wholly by the people. The lands
belonging to the Sun were first attended to. They next tilled
the lands of the old, of the sick, of the window and the orphan,
and of soldiers engaged in actual service; in short, of all that
part of the community who, from bodily infirmity or any other
cause, were unable to attend to their own concerns. The people
were then allowed to work on their own ground, each man for
himself, but with the general obligation to assist his neighbour,
when any circumstance - the burden of a young and numerous
family, for example - might demand it. *16 Lastly, they
cultivated the lands of the Inca. This was done, with great
ceremony, by the whole population in a body. At break of day,
they were summoned together by proclamation from some
neighbouring tower or eminence, and all the inhabitants of the
district, men, women, and children, appeared dressed in their
gayest apparel, bedecked with their little store of finery and
ornaments, as if for some great jubilee. They went through the
labors of the day with the same joyous spirit, chanting their
popular ballads which commemorated the heroic deeds of the Incas,
regulating their movements by the measure of the chant, and all
mingling in the chorus, of which the word hailli, or "triumph,"
was usually the burden.
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