In their agricultural pursuits they displayed great diligence and ingenuity, irrigating their fields, and manuring them with the dung of sea fowls procured from the islands on the coast; they also turned up the earth with a sort of mattock formed of hard wood. In the arts of architecture they had advanced far beyond the other nations of America. The great temple of the sun at Pachacamac, with the palace of the Inca, and the fortress, were so connected together as to form one great building half a league in circuit, and many ruins of palaces and temples still existing, prove the extent of the knowledge and perseverance of these people. The immense obelisks of _Tiahuacan_, and the town of _Chulunacas_, with the mausolea of _Chachapoyas_, which are conical stone buildings supporting large rude busts, are among the most singular, though unfortunately the least known of the Peruvian remains; and are equally curious as the great military roads with their accompanying palaces or posts; together with the buildings still existing in the province of Quito, which have already been described. Their skill in polishing stones to form mirrors, in sharpening them to serve as hatchets and instruments of war, was as admirable as the ingenuity they displayed in all their ornamental works of gold, silver and precious stones. In the religion of the Peruvians few of those sanguinary traits which so forcibly marked the character of the worship of the Mexicans were found; they adored the Sun as the supreme Deity, under whose influence they also acknowledged various dependent gods; and instead of offering human victims on the altars, they presented to that glorious luminary a part of the productions of the earth, which had come to life and maturity through his genial warmth, and they sacrificed as an oblation of gratitude some animals before his shrine, placing around it the most skilful works of their hands. Next to the sun they beheld their Incas with the greatest reverence, looking upon them as his immediate descendants and vicegerents upon earth. The system universally adopted by these patriarchal kings, bound the affections of their people more firmly to them, than even this their supposed divine legation; and as they never intermarried with their subjects, they were kept at so great a distance that their power was unbounded. The only sanguinary feature displayed in the Peruvian rites, was in their burials; as, on the death of the Incas, or of any great curaca or chief, a number of his servants and domestic animals were slain and interred around the guacas or tumuli, that they might be ready to attend them in a future state, in which these people fully believed. When Huana Capac, the greatest of the Incas, was buried, 1000 victims were doomed to accompany his body to the tomb.