Here it would establish its outlying colonies at the terminus of its western line of advance, arrested only by the Pacific Ocean, precisely as we have seen it advancing up the valley of the Mississippi, and carrying on its mining operations on the shores of Lake Superior; precisely as we have seen it going eastward up the Mediterranean, past the Dardanelles, and founding Aryan, Hamitic, and probably Turanian colonies on the farther shores of the Black Sea and on the Caspian.  This is the universal empire over which, the Hindoo books tell us, Deva Nahusha was ruler; this was “the great and aggressive empire” to which Plato alludes; this was the mighty kingdom, embracing the whole of the then known world, from which the Greeks obtained their conception of the universal father of all men in King Zeus.  And in this universal empire Senor Lopez must find an explanation of the similarity which, as we shall show, exists between the speech of the South American Pacific coast on the one hand, and the speech of Gaul, Ireland, England, Italy, Greece, Bactria, and Hindostan on the other.

Montesino tells us that at some time near the date of the Deluge, in other words, in the highest antiquity, America was invaded by a people with four leaders, named Ayar-manco-topa, Ayar-chaki, Ayar-aucca, and Ayar-uyssu.  “Ayar,” says Senor Lopez, “is the Sanscrit Ajar, or aje, and means primitive chief; and manco, chaki, aucca, and uyssu, mean believers, wanderers, soldiers, husbandmen.  We have here a tradition of castes like that preserved in the four tribal names of Athens.”  The laboring class (naturally enough in a new colony) obtained the supremacy, and its leader was named Pirhua-manco, revealer of Pir, light (pu~r, Umbrian pir).  Do the laws which control the changes of language, by which a labial succeeds a labial, indicate that the Mero or Merou of Theopompus, the name of Atlantis, was carried by the colonists of Atlantis to South America (as the name of old York was transplanted in a later age to New York), and became in time Perou or Peru?  Was not the Nubian “Island of Merou,” with its pyramids built by “red men,” a similar transplantation?  And when the Hindoo priest points to his sacred emblem with five projecting points upon it, and tells us that they typify “Mero and the four quarters of the world,” does he not refer to Atlantis and its ancient universal empire?

Manco, in the names of the Peruvian colonists, it has been urged, was the same as Mannus, Manu, and the Santhal Maniko.  It reminds us of Menes, Minos, etc., who are found at the beginning of so many of the Old World traditions.

The Quichuas—­this invading people—­were originally a fair skinned race, with blue eyes and light and even auburn hair; they had regular features, large heads, and large bodies.  Their descendants are to this day an olive-skinned people, much lighter in color than the Indian tribes subjugated by them.

They were a great race.  Peru, as it was known to the Spaniards, held very much the same relation to the ancient Quichua civilization as England in the sixteenth century held to the civilization of the empire of the Caesars.  The Incas were simply an offshoot, who, descending from the mountains, subdued the rude races of the sea-coast, and imposed their ancient civilization upon them.