The forefathers of the present Aymara Indians established a civilization of which we have no record save the silent evidence of those cyclopean ruins which have just been described. Subsequently, for nearly four centuries, from the middle of the twelfth to the sixteenth, they formed a part of the empire of the Incas, and their land was then called Collasuyu. During this period the Incas followed their constant policy of superseding the language of the conquered land by their own more polished Quichua; and they so far succeeded that the Aymara, which once extended and was spoken all over the Collao, as far as the pass of Ayaviri, on the road to Cuzco, has been entirely superseded in all parts north of Puno by the Quichua, and is now only spoken between Puno and La Paz, and farther south. Nevertheless the people enjoyed a long period of tranquillity and prosperity during the happy rule of the Incas, and the population continued to increase. With the introduction of Spanish rule a blight fell upon them: and we shall now see how the beneficent laws of the sovereigns of Castile were administered by their unworthy servants. CHAPTER VIII. THE PERUVIAN INDIANS: Their condition under Spanish colonial rule. IN reviewing the deplorable results of Spanish domination in South America, it may at once be conceded that the legislation which originated from the councils of the kings of Castile was always, except in matters connected with religion, remarkable for beneficence and liberality in all that concerned the natives; and that, in the words of Mr. Helps, "those humane and benevolent laws, which emanated from time to time from the Home Government, rendered the sway of the Spanish monarchs over the conquered nations as remarkable for mildness as any, perhaps, that has ever been recorded in the pages of history."[160] It may also be allowed that the Viceroys of Peru were generally earnest and zealous statesmen, who conscientiously strove to enforce the regulations which they from time to time received from the council of the Indies. But it was almost as impossible for the viceroys to exercise efficient personal supervision over the government of so enormous a country, while residing at Lima, as it would have been if they had remained at the council-table in Seville; and their subordinates were, as a body, untrustworthy, extortionate, rapacious, and often remorselessly cruel. Thus the benign laws of the Spanish kings became a dead letter in South America, and the natives groaned, for three centuries, under a yoke which crashed them to the earth, and converted vast tracts of once thickly populated country into uninhabited deserts. Yet the humane intentions of the Spanish government, and the labours of the Peruvian viceroys, were not wholly without results; and it is partly due to them that a system of worse than African slavery was not established in Peru, and that the native race has not long ago become entirely extinct.