The appearance of the royal mummies found at
Cuzco, as reported both by Ondegardo and Garcilasso, makes it
probable that no foreign substance was employed for their
preservation.]
[Footnote 4: Ondegardo, Rel. Seg., Ms
The Licentiate says, that this usage continued even after the
Conquest; and that he had saved the life of more than one
favorite domestic, who had fled to him for protection, as they
were about to be sacrificed to the Manes of their deceased lords.
Ibid., ubi supra.]
[Footnote 5: Yet these sepulchral mines have sometimes proved
worth the digging. Sarmiento speaks of gold to the value of
100,000 castellanos, as occasionally buried with the Indian
lords; (Relacion, Ms., cap. 57;) and Las Casas - not the best
authority in numerical estimates - says that treasures worth more
than half a million of ducats had been found, within twenty years
after the Conquest, in the tombs near Truxillo. (Oeuvres, ed.
par Llorente, (Paris, 1822,) tom. II. p. 192.) Baron Humboldt
visited the sepulchre of a Peruvian prince in the same quarter of
the country, whence a Spaniard in 1576 drew forth a mass of gold
worth a million of dollars! Vues des Cordilleres, p. 29.]
The Peruvians, like so may other of the Indian races,
acknowledged a Supreme Being, the Creator and Ruler of the
Universe, whom they adored under the different names of
Pachacamac and Viracocha. *6 No temple was raised to this
invisible Being, save one only in the valley which took its name
from the deity himself, not far from the Spanish city of Lima.
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