ons of fact, of logic, and of statement, so
that we must not seek to force any one of them into consistent unity of
form, even with itself.

I have yet to add another point of similarity between the myth of
Viracocha and those of Quetzalcoatl, Itzamna and the others, which I have
already narrated. As in Mexico, Yucatan and elsewhere, so in the realms of
the Incas, the Spaniards found themselves not unexpected guests. Here,
too, texts of ancient prophecies were called to mind, words of warning
from solemn and antique songs, foretelling that other Viracochas, men of
fair complexion and flowing beards, would some day come from the Sun, the
father of existent nature, and subject the empire to their rule. When the
great Inca, Huayna Capac, was on his death-bed, he recalled these
prophecies, and impressed them upon the mind of his successor, so that
when De Soto, the lieutenant of Pizarro, had his first interview with the
envoy of Atahuallpa, the latter humbly addressed him as Viracocha, the
great God, son of the Sun, and told him that it was Huayna Capac's last
command to pay homage to the white men when they should arrive.[1]

[Footnote 1: Garcilasso de La Vega, _Comentarios Reales_, Lib. ix, caps.
xiv, xv; Cieza de Leon, _Relacion_, MS. in Prescott, _Conquest of Peru_,
Vol. i, p. 329. The latter is the second part of Cieza de Leon.]

We need no longer entertain about such statements that suspicion or
incredulity which so many historians have thought it necessary to indulge
in. They are too generally paralleled in other American hero-myths to
leave the slightest doubt as to their reality, or as to their
significance. They are again the expression of the expected return of the
Light-God, after his departure and disappearance in the western horizon.
Modifications of what was originally a statement of a simple occurrence of
daily routine, they became transmitted in the limbeck of mythology to the
story of the beneficent god of the past, and the promise of golden days
when again he should return to the people whom erstwhile he ruled and
taught.

The Qquichuas expected the return of Viracocha, not merely as an earthly
ruler to govern their nation, but as a god who, by his divine power, would
call the dead to life. Precisely as in ancient Egypt the literal belief in
the resurrection of the body led to the custom of preserving the corpses
with the most sedulous care, so in Peru the cadaver was mummied and
deposited in the most