One
historian, indeed, assures us that they threw their years into
cycles of ten, a hundred, and a thousand years, and that by these
cycles they regulated their chronology. *15 But this assertion -
not improbable in itself - rests on a writer but little gifted
with the spirit of criticism, and is counter-balanced by the
silence of every higher and earlier authority, as well as by the
absence of any monument, like those found among other American
nations, to attest the existence of such a calendar. The
inferiority of the Peruvians may be, perhaps, in part explained
by the fact of their priesthood being drawn exclusively from the
body of the Incas, a privileged order of nobility, who had no
need, by the assumption of superior learning, to fence themselves
round from the approaches of the vulgar. The little true science
possessed by the Aztec priest supplied him with a key to unlock
the mysteries of the heavens, and the false system of astrology
which he built upon it gave him credit as a being who had
something of divinity in his own nature. But the Inca noble was
divine by birth. The illusory study of astrology, so captivating
to the unenlightened mind, engaged no share of his attention.
The only persons in Peru, who claimed the power of reading the
mysterious future, were the diviners, men who, combining with
their pretensions some skill in the healing art, resembled the
conjurors found among many of the Indian tribes. But the office
was held in little repute, except among the lower classes, and
was abandoned to those whose age and infirmity disqualified them
for the real business of life.
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