Even those who aided the Spaniards fared no
better, and many an Inca noble roamed a mendicant over the fields
where he once held rule; and if driven, perchance, by his necessities
to purloin something from the superfluity of his conquerors, he
expiated it by a miserable death." [Footnote: Prescott's "Conquest
of Peru."]
Charles Kingsley says there were "cruelties and miseries unexampled
in the history of Christendom, or perhaps on earth, save in the
conquests of Sennacherib and Zinghis-Khan." Millions perished at the
forced labor of the mines, The Incan Empire had, it is calculated, a
population of twenty millions at the arrival of the Spaniards, In two
centuries the population fell to four millions.
When the groans of these beasts of burden reached the ears of the
good (?) Queen Isabel of Spain, she enacted a law that throughout her
new dominions no Indian, man or woman, should be compelled to carry
more than three hundred pounds' weight at one load! Is it cause for
wonder that the poor, down-trodden natives, seeing the flaunting flag
of Spain, with its stripe of yellow between stripes of red, should
regard it as representing a river of gold between two rivers of
blood?
"Not infrequently," said a reliable witness, "I have seen the
Spaniards, long after the Conquest, amuse themselves by hunting down
the natives with blood hounds, for mere sport, or in order to train
their dogs to the game.
