[Footnote 13: "Las crueldades, que Atahuallpa en los de la Sangre Real hico, dire de Relacion de mi Madre, y de un Hermano suio, que se llamo Don Fernando Huallpa Tupac Inca Yupanqui, que entonces eran Ninos de menos de diez Anos." Ibid., Parte 1, lib. 9, cap. 14.] The annals of semi-civilized nations unhappily show that there have been instances of similar attempts to extinguish the whole of a noxious race, which had become the object of a tyrant's jealousy; though such an attempt is about as chimerical as it would be to extirpate any particular species of plant, the seeds of which had been borne on every wind over the country. But, if the attempt to exterminate the Inca race was actually made by Atahuallpa, how comes it that so many of the pure descendants of the blood royal - nearly six hundred in number - are admitted by the historian to have been in existence seventy years after the imputed massacre? *14 Why was the massacre, instead of being limited to the legitimate members of the royal stock, who could show a better title to the crown than the usurper, extended to all, however remotely, or in whatever way, connected with the race? Why were aged women and young maidens involved in the proscription, and why were they subjected to such refined and superfluous tortures, when it is obvious that beings so impotent could have done nothing to provoke the jealousy of the tyrant? Why, when so many were sacrificed from some vague apprehension of distant danger, was his rival Huascar, together with his younger brother Manco Capac, the two men from whom the conqueror had most to fear, suffered to live? Why, in short, is the wonderful tale not recorded by others before the time of Garcilasso, and nearer by half a century to the events themselves? *15 [Footnote 14: This appears from a petition for certain immunities, forwarded to Spain in 1603, and signed by five hundred and sixty-seven Indians of the royal Inca race. (Ibid., Parte 3, lib. 9, cap. 40.) Oviedo says that Huayna Capac left a hundred sons and daughters, and that most of them were alive at the time of his writing. "Tubo cien hijos y hijas, y la mayor parte de ellos son vivos." Hist. de las Indias, Ms., Parte 3, lib. 8, cap. 9.] [Footnote 15: I have looked in vain for some confirmation of this story in Oviedo, Sarmiento, Xerez, Cieza de Leon, Zarate, Pedro Pizarro, Gomara, - all living at the time, and having access to the best sources of information; and all, it may be added, disposed to do stern justice to the evil qualities of the Indian monarch.] That Atahuallpa may have been guilty of excesses, and abused the rights of conquest by some gratuitous acts of cruelty, may be readily believed; for no one, who calls to mind his treatment of the Canaris, - which his own apologists do not affect to deny, *16 - will doubt that he had a full measure of the vindictive temper which belongs to 'Those souls of fire, and Children of the Sun, With whom revenge was virtue."