In ancient Peru the only very large city was Cuzco or Couzco; every where else the people lived in villages or in scattered habitations: and as the palaces of the Incas and their fortresses, which were built in all parts of the country, were rarely surrounded with the houses of the natives, very few distinct towns remain. The ancient Peruvians had traditions concerning a deluge, in which their ancestors were all drowned, excepting a few who got into caves in the high mountains; they also adored two beings named Con and Pachacamac, who created the race of Peruvians in an extraordinary manner; and they asserted that Pachacamac dwelt amongst them till the Spaniards came, when he suddenly disappeared. But the Peruvians of the present day are a very different people from their progenitors, as they are timid and dispirited, melancholy in their temperament, severe and inexorable in the exercise of authority, wonderfully indifferent to the general concerns of life, and seeming to have little notion, or dread of death. They stand in awe of their European masters, but secretly dislike and shun their society, and they are said to be of a distrustful disposition, and though robust and capable of enduring great fatigue, yet they are very lazy. Their habitations are miserable hovels, destitute of every convenience or accommodation, and disgustingly filthy; their dress is poor and mean, and their food coarse and scanty; their strongest propensity is to spirituous liquors, and to that they sacrifice all other considerations, but which is unmixed with any love for gaming: they follow all the external rites of the catholic religion, and spend large sums in masses and processions. Soon after the conquest of America, the country and the Indians were parcelled out into _encomiendas_, a sort of feudal benefices which were divided among the conquerors, and the priests and lawyers who arrived from Spain; the holder of this property was obliged to reside on his estate, to see the Indians properly instructed in religions duties, and to protect their persons. In return the natives were bound to pay the _encomendero_ a certain tribute, but they were not reduced to absolute slavery. This system was variously modified and changed by the successors of Charles V. who introduced it, till the reign of Philip V. when it was entirely abolished on account of the continual complaints which were made to that sovereign of the exactions of the Spaniards, and their total neglect of the Indians.