treasure. The like, also, is to be found among these people in every
province. They have all many wives, and the lords five-fold to the
common sort. Their wives never eat with their husbands, nor among
the men, but serve their husbands at meals and afterwards feed by
themselves. Those that are past their younger years make all their bread
and drink, and work their cotton-beds, and do all else of service and
labour; for the men do nothing but hunt, fish, play, and drink, when
they are out of the wars.

I will enter no further into discourse of their manners, laws, and
customs. And because I have not myself seen the cities of Inga I cannot
avow on my credit what I have heard, although it be very likely that the
emperor Inga hath built and erected as magnificent palaces in Guiana as
his ancestors did in Peru; which were for their riches and rareness most
marvellous, and exceeding all in Europe, and, I think, of the world,
China excepted, which also the Spaniards, which I had, assured me to be
true, as also the nations of the borderers, who, being but savages to
those of the inland, do cause much treasure to be buried with them.
For I was informed of one of the caciques of the valley of Amariocapana
which had buried with him a little before our arrival a chair of gold
most curiously wrought, which was made either in Macureguarai adjoining
or in Manoa. But if we should have grieved them in their religion at
the first, before they had been taught better, and have digged up their
graves, we had lost them all. And therefore I held my first resolution,
that her Majesty should either accept or refuse the enterprise ere
anything should be done that might in any sort hinder the same. And if
Peru had so many heaps of gold, whereof those Ingas were princes, and
that they delighted so much therein, no doubt but this which now liveth
and reigneth in Manoa hath the same humour, and, I am assured, hath
more abundance of gold within his territory than all Peru and the West