These accounts of the wealth and the fate of these two monarchs—the one of the extensive empire of Mexico, and the other of the equally powerful dominions of Peru—recall to mind the power and wealth of Solomon, the King of Israel. These three kingdoms were founded by Moses, and peopled and ruled by the descendants of Abraham. The wealth of Solomon was so great that it is recorded in the Bible that “he made silver and gold at Jerusalem as plenteous as stones, and cedar trees made he as the sycamore trees that are in the vale for abundance.” The display made by the two American sovereigns of their grandeur and riches before foreigners, and the consequences of their pride and ostentation, have a parallel in the scriptures. “At that time Berodach-baladan, the son of Baladan, King of Babylon, sent letters and a present unto Hezekiah; for he had heard that Hezekiah had been sick. And Hezekiah hearkened unto them, and shewed them all the house of his precious things, the silver and the gold, and the spices, and the precious ointment, and all the house of his armour, and all that was found in his treasures; there was nothing in his house, nor in all his dominion, that Hezekiah shewed them not. “Then came Isaiah the prophet unto King Hezekiah, and said unto him, What said these men? and from whence came they unto thee? And Hezekiah said, They are come from a far country, even from Babylon. And he said, What have they seen in thine house? And Hezekiah answered, All the things that are in mine house have they seen; there is nothing among my treasures that I have not shewed them. And Isaiah said unto Hezekiah, Hear the word of the Lord. Behold, the days come that all that is in thine house, and all that which thy fathers have laid up in store unto this day, shall be carried into Babylon; nothing shall be left, saith the Lord.”[69] The words of Isaiah the prophet, addressed to King Hezekiah, could have been as appositely addressed to King Montezuma and to his neighbour and kinsman Atahualpa; for they were equally applicable, and the words came true in all three cases. As the Babylonians conquered and took possession of Judea, so did the Spaniards in Mexico and Peru. Moses, the founder of these several empires in different parts of the earth, foresaw the power and opulence to which they would attain in the course of time, and forbade the colonists from having intercourse with the outer world, who were strangers to them, knowing that they would be envied by them. For wherever indigent adventurers have been admitted by the rulers of these empires, they have been deceived, and their possessions carried away, as the prophet so graphically described to King Hezekiah. The historian of North and South America continues:—