offices of trust at home, or, more usually, sent on distant expeditions to
practise in the field the lessons which he had hitherto studied only in the
mimic theatre of war. His first campaigns were conducted under the
renowned commanders who had grown grey in the service of his father;
until, advancing in years and experience, he was placed in command
himself, and, like Huayna Capac, the last and most illustrious of his line,
carried the banner of the rainbow, the armorial ensign of his house, far
over the borders, among the remotest tribes of the plateau.

The government of Peru was a despotism, mild in its character, but in its
form a pure and unmitigated despotism. The sovereign was placed at an
immeasurable distance above his subjects. Even the proudest of the Inca
nobility, claiming a descent from the same divine original as himself,
could not venture into the royal presence, unless barefoot, and bearing a
light burden on his shoulders in token of homage.32 As the
representative of the Sun, he stood at the head of the priesthood, and
presided at the most important of the religious festivals.33 He raised
armies, and usually commanded them in person. He imposed taxes, made
laws, and provided for their execution by the appointment of judges,
whom he removed at pleasure. He was the source from which every thing
flowed, all dignity, all power, all emolument. He was, in short, in the well-
known phrase of the European despot, "himself the state." 34

The Inca asserted his claims as a superior being by assuming a pomp in
his manner of living well calculated to impose on his people. His dress
was of the finest wool of the vicuna, richly dyed, and ornamented with a
profusion of gold and precious stones. Round his head was wreathed a
turban of many-colored folds, called the llautu; and a tasselled fringe, like
that worn by the prince, but of a scarlet color, with two feathers of a rare
and curious bird, called the coraquenque, placed upright in it, were the