to indicate the route.

Another colossal effort was the conveyance of water to the rainless
country by the seacoast, especially to certain parts capable of being
reclaimed and made fertile. Some of the aqueducts were of great
length--one measuring between 400 and 500 miles.

The following table gives the Peruvian calendar for a year:

I. Raymi, the _Festival of the Winter Solstice_,
in honor of the Sun June 22d.
Season of plowing July 22d.
Season of sowing August 22d.
II. _Festival of the Spring Equinox_ September 22d.
Season of brewing October 22d.
Commemoration of the Dead November 22d.
III. _Festival of the Summer Solstice_ December 22d.
Season of exercises January 22d.
Season of ripening February 22d.
IV. _Festival of Autumn Equinox_ March 22d.
Beginning of harvest April 22d.
Harvesting month May 22d.

Since Quito is exactly on the equator, the vertical rays of the sun at
noon during the equinox cast no shadow. That northern capital,
therefore, was "held in especial veneration as the favored abode of the
great deity."

At the feast of Raymi, or New Year's day, the sacrifice usually offered
was that of the llama, a fire being kindled by means of a concave mirror
of polished metal collecting the rays of the sun into a focus upon a
quantity of dried cotton.

The national festival of the Aztecs we compared to the secular
celebration of the Romans; so now the Raymi of the Peruvians may be
likened to the Panathenaea of ancient Athens, when the people of Attica
ascended in splendid procession to the shrine on the Acropolis.

In Mexico the Spanish travelers often experienced severe famines; and in
India, even at the present day (to the disgrace perhaps of our
management) nearly every year many thousands die of hunger. It was very
different under the ancient Peruvians, because by law "the product of
the lands consecrated to the Sun, as well as those set apart for the
Incas, was deposited in the _Tambos_, or public storehouses, as a stated
provision for times of scarcity."

The Spaniards found those prehistoric agriculturists utilizing the
inexhaustible supply of guano found on all the islands of the Pacific.
It was not till the middle of the nineteenth century that the British
farmer found the value of this fertilizer.

CHAPTER X

PIZARR