[Footnote 1: Garcilasso de La Vega, _Comentarios Reales_, Lib. ix, caps. xiv, xv; Cieza de Leon, _Relacion_, MS. in Prescott, _Conquest of Peru_, Vol. i, p. 329. The latter is the second part of Cieza de Leon.] We need no longer entertain about such statements that suspicion or incredulity which so many historians have thought it necessary to indulge in. They are too generally paralleled in other American hero-myths to leave the slightest doubt as to their reality, or as to their significance. They are again the expression of the expected return of the Light-God, after his departure and disappearance in the western horizon. Modifications of what was originally a statement of a simple occurrence of daily routine, they became transmitted in the limbeck of mythology to the story of the beneficent god of the past, and the promise of golden days when again he should return to the people whom erstwhile he ruled and taught. The Qquichuas expected the return of Viracocha, not merely as an earthly ruler to govern their nation, but as a god who, by his divine power, would call the dead to life. Precisely as in ancient Egypt the literal belief in the resurrection of the body led to the custom of preserving the corpses with the most sedulous care, so in Peru the cadaver was mummied and deposited in the most secret and inaccessible spots, so that it should remain undisturbed to the great day of resurrection. And when was that to be? We are not left in doubt on this point. It was to be when Viracocha should return to earth in his bodily form. Then he would restore the dead to life, and they should enjoy the good things of a land far more glorious than this work-a-day world of ours.[1] [Footnote 1: "Dijeron quellos oyeron decir a sus padres y pasados que un Viracocha habia de revolver la tierra, y habia de resucitar esos muertos, y que estos habian de bibir en esta tierra.". _Information de las Idolatras de los Incas é Indios_, in the _Coll. de Docs. ineditos del Archivo de Indias_, vol. xxi, p. 152.] As at the first meeting between the races the name of the hero-god was applied to the conquering strangers, so to this day the custom has continued. A recent traveler tells us, "Among _Los Indios del Campo_, or Indians of the fields, the llama herdsmen of the _punas_, and the fishermen of the lakes, the common salutation to strangers of a fair skin and blue eyes is '_Tai-tai Viracocha_.'"[1] Even if this is used now, as M. Wiener seems to think,[2] merely as a servile flattery, there is no doubt but that at the beginning it was applied because the white strangers were identified with the white and bearded hero and his followers of their culture myth, whose return had been foretold by their priests. [Footnote 1: E.G. Squier, _Travels in Peru_, p. 414.] [Footnote 2: C. Wiener, _Perou et Bolivie_, p. 717.]