le
were attached not fewer than four thousand priests and fifteen hundred
vestal virgins, the latter being intrusted with the care of the sacred
fire, and from them the most beautiful were chosen to pass into the
Inca's seraglio. The popular faith had a ritual and a splendid
ceremonial, the great national festival being at the summer solstice.
The rays of the sun were then collected by a concave mirror, and fire
rekindled thereby, or by the friction of wood.

[Sidenote: Social system--the nobility, the people.] As to their social
system, polygamy was permitted, but practically it was confined to the
higher classes. Social subordination was thoroughly understood. The Inca
Tupac Yupanqui says, "Knowledge was never intended for the people, but
only for those of generous blood." The nobility were of two orders, the
polygamic descendants of the Incas, who were the main support of the
state, and the adopted nobles of nations that have been conquered. As to
the people, nowhere else in the whole world was such an extraordinary
policy of supervision practised. They were divided into groups of ten,
fifty, one hundred, five hundred, one thousand, ten thousand, and over
the last an Inca noble was placed. Through this system a rigid
centralization was insured, the Inca being the pivot upon which all the
national affairs turned, it was an absolutism worthy of the admiration
of many existing European nations. [Sidenote: Organization of Labour.]
The entire territory was divided into three parts; one belonged to the
Sun, one to the Inca, one to the people. As a matter of form, the
subdivision was annually made; in practice, however, as perhaps must
always be the result of such agrarianism, the allotments were
continually renewed. All the land was cultivated by the people, and in
the following order: first, that of the Sun, then that of the destitute
and infirm, then that of the people, and, lastly, that of the Inca. The
Sun and the Inca owned all the sheep, which were sheared and their wool
distributed to the people, or cotton furnished in its stead. The Inca's
officers saw that it was all woven, and that no one was idle. An annual
survey of the country, its farming and mineral products, was made, the
inventory being transmitted to the government. A register was kept of
births and deaths; periodically a general census was taken. The Inca, at
once emperor and pope, was enabled, in that double capacity, to exert a
rigorous patriarchal rul