fetish worship, and a standard of morality which has never been
surpassed. But they ruthlessly destroyed it all, desecrated the temples
where the sun was worshipped only as a visible representative of a God
"of whom nothing could be known save by His works," as their tenet ran,
and substituted the religion which they represented as having been
taught by Jesus of Nazareth; a religion which looked for its chief power
to the horrible Inquisition and its orgies called _Autos da fé!_

As regards the mysterious race of the Incas, who in comparison with the
native Indians were almost white, and who possessed a high cultivation,
it is curious to note that during the late troubles in China records
came to light in the Palace of Pekin showing that Chinese missionaries
landed on the coast subsequently known as Peru, in ages long antecedent
to the discovery of the country by the Spaniards, and established
temples and schools there. No one who reads the minute accounts of the
Incas from Garcilaso de la Vega--himself of the royal race on his
mother's side, his father having been one of the Spanish
adventurers--can avoid the conclusion that the religion of the Incas,
thus utterly destroyed by the Spaniards, was much more nearly that of
Christ than the debased worship introduced in its place. The whole story
of these "Children of the Sun," told by one of themselves afterwards in
Córdoba, where he is always careful to keep on the right side of the
Inquisition by pretending to be a "Christian after the manner of his
father," is fascinatingly interesting as well as instructive.

It is almost impossible to speak of the Spanish Inquisition and its
baneful influence on the people without seeming to be carried away by
prejudice or even bigotry, but it is equally impossible for the ordinary
student of history to read, even in the pages of the "orthodox," the
terrible repression of its iron hand on all that was advancing in the