This part of his work, resting,
as it does, on the best authority, confirmed in many instances by
his own observation, is of unquestionable value, and is written
with an apparent respect for truth, that engages the confidence
of the reader. The concluding portion of the manuscript is
occupied with the civil history of the country. The reigns of
the early Incas, which lie beyond the sober province of history,
he despatches with commendable brevity. But on the three last
reigns, and fortunately of the greatest princes who occupied the
Peruvian throne, he is more diffuse. This was comparatively firm
ground for the chronicler, for the events were too recent to be
obscured by the vulgar legends that gather like moss round every
incident of the older time. His account stops with the Spanish
invasion; for this story, Sarmiento felt, might be safely left to
his contemporaries who acted a part in it, but whose taste and
education had qualified them but indifferently for exploring the
antiquities and social institutions of the natives.
Sarmiento's work is composed in a simple, perspicuous style,
without that ambition of rhetorical display too common with his
countrymen. He writes with honest candor, and while he does
ample justice to the merits and capacity of the conquered races,
he notices with indignation the atrocities of the Spaniards and
the demoralizing tendency of the Conquest. It may be thought,
indeed, that he forms too high an estimate of the attainments of
the nation under the Incas.
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