majority of those who have devoted themselves to this subject of the
South American aborigines have been obliged to work largely in the dark.
Considering the great extent of the ruins bequeathed by the Incas to the
later ages, it might be thought curious that so few precise data are
available. The reason for this lies in the zeal which the
_conquistadores_ displayed in the stamping out of the various pagan
religions. No sooner had the Spaniards obtained possession of the chief
cities of the Incas than every symbol, image, or, indeed, any object
suggestive of sun-worship or anything of the kind, was smashed into
fragments, and every trace of its significance so far as possible
obliterated.

There is no doubt that in the course of this wholesale destruction a
multitude of objects perished which would have given an historical clue
to much of what now remains doubtful. It is owing to this obliterative
enthusiasm that such scanty historical knowledge exists concerning the
earlier period of the Inca race, and of that highly civilized nation
which preceded the later Children of the Sun.

It is, moreover, largely on account of this vagueness and uncertainty
that some curiously wild theories have been propounded concerning the
origin of the South Americans, and more especially of the Incas. Thus,
in 1843, George Jones, a writer who had indulged in some extraordinarily
enthusiastic researches, published a work the object of which was to
prove that not only the Mexicans, but all the tribes of Southern
America, were the descendants of some old Tyrians who, fleeing from
their enemies, abandoned Phoenicia and, sailing westward, landed in
Central America, some 332 years before the birth of Christ! It must be
admitted that the structure--even though it is purely of the
imagination--thus built up by the fertile author is sufficiently