“There never could be any scarcity or famine, for, if a man failed to take his turn at the water for irrigation, he received publicly three or four thumps on the back with a stone ... shamed with the disgraceful term of ... _mizqui tullu_, being a word compounded of _mizqui_, which signifies sweet, and _tullu_, which is bones.” As labor was the only tribute, the rich were not taxed more than the poor. The blind were required to cleanse cotton of seeds and rub maize from the ears. “The old men and women were set to affright away the birds from the corn, and thereby gained their bread and clothing.” No one, however impotent, could [Illustration: INDIAN WATER CARRIER, SICUANI.] escape tribute. The poorest gave lice, “making themselves clean and not void of employment in so doing.” Who, indeed, were the poor? Those who were incapable of work, who had to be fed and clothed out of the king’s store. “There were no particular tradesmen ... but every one learned what was needful for their persons and houses and provided for themselves.” Laws would hardly seem necessary to control so exemplary a nation. Here, however, are a few paternal laws, thought necessary by the Lover of the Poor: against the adornment of clothing with gold and silver and jewels; against profuseness in banquet and delicacies in diet; against the ill manners of children; of good husbandry and hospitality; providing a new division of lands every year, according to the increase and diminution of families; punishing those who destroyed landmarks or turned the water aside; devoting the services of all master workmen to the Inca, and supplying them with gold and silver and other materials for the exercise of their ingenuity. Since the Sun-god, or the Inca, had benignly bestowed them for the people’s good, laws received the same veneration as the precepts of religion, from which no subject of the Incas could dissociate them. A breaker of the law was guilty of sacrilege, and no punishment could be too severe. In fact, most crimes were punishable by death. The sinner was thrown over a precipice or into a ditch of serpents, jaguars, and pumas. The worst sin of all, high treason, exacted in expiation not only the death of the sinner, but that of his family, even of his neighbors. His very trees were pulled up by the roots, and his fields sown with salt. “But as there was never any such offense committed, so there was never any such severity executed,” a mitigating remark of Garcilasso in connection with a certain crime.