customs were first regulated? To those ages in which the lyre, and the sweet harmony of vocal sounds, subdued the ferocious tyger, tamed the enraged lion, and softened the obdurate rocks? A philosophical poet denied the eternity of the world, solely on this account, that, prior to the Theban war, and the destruction of Troy, no poems or monuments were to be found, to hand down the remembrance of those remarkable events which fame is wont to record, and which illustrate all ages[1]. But in succeeding times, and in the nations which possessed the art of writing in all its perfection, the want of the press to renew the leaves which the moth or the corroding hand of time had destroyed, has rendered archeology, or the study of antiquities, indispensable, to fill up the chasms they have left, or to comment on the fables they have transmitted to us. In rectifying chronology and history, how useful has been the examination of the hieroglyphics and enigmas of the superstitious Egyptians, the ruins of Palmyra, the odes and descriptions of the Greeks, the busts and pyramids of Rome, &c.
This subject, as it relates to Peru, acquires a new degree of value and interest. At the time of its conquest, the archives of Cuzco, Caxamarca, and Quito, were lost for ever. The fragile Quipos are now reduced to dust; and the tradition of the memorable events of the kingdom having by degrees become less and less perfect, through the ignorance and carelessness of those to whose charge it was entrusted, the observer is obliged to recur to the comparison, or, as it may be said, to the interpretation of the ancient fragments and ruins, to complete the imperfect picture of this ancient empire, as it has been
sketched
