As in our retrospect of the feminine history of Mexico, so in our review of the past of the women of South America, it is necessary to begin with a consideration of an extinct civilization,--necessary not only to the completeness but to the interest of our subject, for the chief claim of these chapters to the reader's attention rests on the consideration of those primitive cultures. Were it not for the dead civilizations of the Aztecs and the Incas, with their surrounding and dependent cultures, there would be but little to say concerning the women of Mexico or South America. For in their later aspects these American cultures represent simply a more or less decadent Spanish and Portuguese civilization, modified indeed by circumstance and the infusion of alien blood as well as custom, yet so close in all material respects to the parent stock that there is but little of variance worthy of note, while even the variations from the modern types are most frequently the result of the influence of the dead civilizations which still live in the stock which was grafted upon them, though only upon their dead trunks. Even as for long the history of the eastern coast was that of North America, so at first the story of Peru was all of true history that we find of the southern division of our continent. Yet closer in likeness is the story of Peru to that of Mexico; there is the same tale of a high, and in many respects admirable, civilization overthrown and practically destroyed by Spanish lust for gold, and yet in some wise abiding in influence upon the race which had crushed it. There is the same record of a mild race yielding to the strength of one armed for conquest; but in the case of the culture of the Incas the contrast between conquerors and conquered is still more marked to the advantage of the Peruvians, for they were of even gentler and more refined natures than the Aztecs, influenced by a higher and purer religion and dwelling under a system which encouraged and developed the noblest tendencies of human nature. There were among the Peruvians fewer paradoxes and contradictions of culture than among the Aztecs; they were not given to even the refined forms of cannibalism indulged in by their northern brethren, nor did they include human sacrifice as a part of their cult. Their religion was a pure and somewhat simple sun-worship; indeed, the Incas themselves claimed to be children of the sun. In other respects, there were many points of approach between the civilization of the Peruvians and that of the Aztecs; they might be roughly called cultures of the same class, though where there lay advantage it was usually, especially in matters which were of the ethical rather than the material cultivation, on the side of the Peruvians.