CRITICAL ESSAY ON THE SOURCES OF INFORMATION. THE student of Inca civilization will first seek for information from those Spanish writers who lived during or immediately after the Spanish conquest. They were able to converse with natives who actually flourished before the disruption of the Inca empire, and who saw the working of the Inca system before the destruction and ruin had well commenced. He will next turn to those laborious inquirers and commentators who, although not living so near the time, were able to collect traditions and other information from natives who had carefully preserved all that had been handed down by their fathers.[1226] These two classes include the writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The authors who have occupied themselves with the Quichua language and the literature of the Incas have produced works a knowledge of which is essential to an adequate study of the subject.[1227] Lastly, a consideration of the publications of modern travellers and scholars, who throw light on the writings of early chroniclers, or describe the present appearance of ancient remains, will show the existing position of a survey still far from complete, and the interest and charm of which invite further investigation and research. Foremost in the first class of writers on Peru is Pedro de Cieza de Leon. A general account of his works will be found elsewhere,[1228] and the present notice will therefore be confined to an estimate of the labors of this author, so far as they relate to Inca history and civilization. Cieza de Leon conceived the desire to write an account of the strange things that were to be seen in the New World, at an early period of his service as a soldier. “Neither fatigue,” he tells us, “nor the ruggedness of the country, nor the mountains and rivers, nor intolerable hunger and suffering, have ever been sufficient to obstruct my two duties, namely, writing and following my flag and my captain without fault.” He finished the First Part of his chronicle in September, 1550, when he was thirty-two years of age. It is mainly a geographical description of the country, containing many pieces of information, such as the account of the Inca roads and bridges, which are of great value. But it is to the Second Part that we owe much of our knowledge of Inca civilization. From incidental notices we learn how diligently young Cieza de Leon studied the history and government of the Incas, after he had written his picturesque description of the country in his First Part. He often asked the Indians what they knew of their condition before the Incas became their lords. He inquired into the traditions of the people from the chiefs of the villages. In 1550 he went to Cuzco with the express purpose of collecting information, and conferred diligently with one of the surviving descendants of the Inca Huayna Ccapac. Cieza de Leon’s plan, for the second part of his