Comets were seen flaming athwart the heavens.
Earthquakes shook the land; the moon was girdled with rings of
fire of many colors; a thunderbolt fell on one of the royal
palaces and consumed it to ashes; and an eagle, chased by several
hawks, was seen, screaming in the air, to hover above the great
square of Cuzco, when, pierced by the talons of his tormentors,
the king of birds fell lifeless in the presence of many of the
Inca nobles, who read in this an augury of their own destruction!
Huayna Capac himself, calling his great officers around him, as
he found he was drawing near his end, announced the subversion of
his empire by the race of white and bearded strangers, as the
consummation predicted by the oracles after the reign of the
twelfth Inca, and he enjoined it on his vassals not to resist the
decrees of Heaven, but to yield obedience to its messengers. *2
[Footnote 2: A minute relation of these supernatural occurrences
is given by the Inca Garcilasso de la Vega, (Com. Real., Parte 1,
lib. 9, cap. 14,) whose situation opened to him the very best
sources of information, which is more than counterbalanced by the
defects in his own character as an historian, - his childish
credulity, and his desire to magnify and mystify every thing
relating to his own order, and, indeed, his nation. His work is
the source of most of the facts - and the falsehoods - that have
obtained circulation in respect to the ancient Peruvians.
Unfortunately, at this distance of time, it is not always easy to
distinguish the one from the other.
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