“The violent convulsions into which the empire had been thrown, first by the civil war between the two brothers, and then by the invasion of the Spaniards, had not only deranged the order of the Peruvian Government, but almost dissolved its frame. When they beheld their monarch a captive in the power of strangers, and at last suffering an ignominious death, the people in several provinces, as if they had been set free from every restraint of law and decency, broke out in the most licentious excesses. “So many descendants of the sun, after being treated with the utmost indignity, had been cut off by Atahualpa that not only their influence in the state diminished with their number, but the accustomed reverence for that sacred race sensibly decreased. In consequence of this state of things, ambitious men in different parts of the empire aspired to independent authority, and usurped jurisdiction to which they had no title. The general who commanded for Atahualpa in Quito, seized the brother and children of his master, put them to a cruel death, and, disclaiming any connection with either Inca, endeavoured to establish a separate kingdom for himself.”[70] The Spaniards eventually became masters of the whole empire, and in their endeavours to obliterate every record of its past history they burned everything they found which had any hieroglyphics or painting on it. Though only the ruins of monuments remain, yet these attest the superior ingenuity of the Peruvians. Ruins of sacred or royal buildings are found in every province of the empire, and by their great number demonstrate that they are monuments of a powerful people. They appear to have been edifices of various dimensions; some of a moderate size, many of immense extent, but all remarkable for solidity, and resembling each other in style of architecture. “The temple of Pachacamac, together with a palace of the Inca, and a fortress, were so connected together as to form one great structure, above half a league in circuit. In this prodigious pile the same singular taste in building is conspicuous as in other works of the Peruvians.”