[Footnote 11: These several traditions, all of a very puerile character, are to be found in Ondegardo, Relacion Segunda, Ms., - Sarmiento, Relacion, Ms., cap. 1, - Cieza de Leon, Cronica, cap. 105, - Conquista i Poblacion del Piru, Ms., - Declaracion de los Presidente e Oydores de la Audiencia Reale del Peru, Ms., - all of them authorities contemporary with the Conquest. The story of the bearded white men finds its place in most of their legends.] The date usually assigned for these extraordinary events was about four hundred years before the coming of the Spaniards, or early in the twelfth century. *12 But, however pleasing to the imagination, and however popular, the legend of Manco Capac, it requires but little reflection to show its improbability, even when divested of supernatural accompaniments. On the shores of Lake Titicaca extensive ruins exist at the present day, which the Peruvians themselves acknowledge to be of older date than the pretended advent of the Incas, and to have furnished them with the models of their architecture. *13 The date of their appearance, indeed, is manifestly irreconcilable with their subsequent history. No account assigns to the Inca dynasty more than thirteen princes before the Conquest. But this number is altogether too small to have spread over four hundred years, and would not carry back the foundations of the monarchy, on any probable computation beyond two centuries and a half, - an antiquity not incredible in itself, and which, it may be remarked, does not precede by more than half a century the alleged foundation of the capital of Mexico. The fiction of Manco Capac and his sister-wife was devised, no doubt, at a later period, to gratify the vanity of the Peruvian monarchs, and to give additional sanction to their authority by deriving it from a celestial origin. [Footnote 12: Some writers carry back the date 500, or even 550, years before the Spanish invasion. (Balboa, Histoire du Perou, chap. 1. - Velasco, Histoire du Royaume de Quito, tom. I. p. 81. - Ambo auct. ap. Relations et Memoires Originaux pour servir a l'Histoire de la Decouverte de l'Amerique, par Ternaux-Compans, (Paris, 1840.)) In the Report of the Royal Audience of Peru, the epoch is more modestly fixed at 200 years before the Conquest. Dec. de la Aud. Real., Ms.]