Its origin appears to have been as follows:--A member of the family of the Incas, named Francisco Titu Yupanqui, not having money enough to buy an image of the Virgin for his church, painted a very bad picture, and the cura, Antonio de Almeida, either to please the Indian, or because there were few images or pictures in the country, allowed it to be placed near the altar. But the next cura, Antonio de Montoro, seeing that it caused more laughter than devotion, ordered it to be put in a corner of the sacristy. The poor artist then went to Potosi to learn to paint, and, after much labour, he succeeded in completing a picture which, the moment it was placed in the church at Copacabana, began to work miracles. It was set up in 1583, and the Inca painter died in 1608. The first thing the picture did was to banish all devils out of the province, and to cure many Indians of their diseases; and its fame became so great that in 1588 the Count of Villar, viceroy of Peru, solemnly delivered it to the care of the Augustine friars by a royal edict. Between 1589 and 1652 it is said to have performed 186 miracles. One Alonzo de Escote, for favours received, saved up money for the purpose of giving the Virgin a lamp, and at length he presented the richest then to be found in the Spanish colonies, twenty feet long, with sockets for as many candles as there are days in the year, all of solid silver. Even as late as 1845, when Dr. Weddell saw the church, it was very richly gilt. "Other images," says Father Calancha, "in Europe and Asia perform miracles in their own towns or provinces, but this picture of Copacabana performs them all over the new world, and in parts of Europe!"[159] Thus the Spanish conquerors supplied the Aymara Indians of the shores of lake Titicaca with an object of devotion in the shape of this old picture; which was to replace their former simple worship of the Sun and Moon on the sacred islands of the lake. It will be interesting to examine briefly the way the Spaniards treated the people they subjected, in other respects, and to glance at the kind of government which they substituted for the mild rule of the Incas.