The conquerors of the 16th century destroyed these Aqueducts, and that part of Peru has become, like Persia, a desert, destitute of vegetation. Such is the civilization carried by the Europeans among a people, whom they are pleased to call barbarous." These people had laws for the protection of water, very similar to those of Greece, Rome, Egypt,

and all the older nations ; for those who conveyed water from the canals to their own land before their turn, were

liable to arbitrary punishment.

Several of the ancient American customs respecting water, were identical with those of the oldest nations.

They buried vessels of water with the dead. The Mexicans worshipped it. The Peruvians sacrificed to rivers and fountains. The Mexicans had Tlaloc, their god of water. Holy water was kept in their temples. They practised divinations by water. The Peruvians drew their drinking water from Deep Wells, and for irrigation in times of drought, they drew it from pools, and lakes, and rivers.

There is reason to believe that Peru, Chili, and other parts of the southern continent, were inhabited by a refined, or

partially refined people, centuries before the time of Manco

Capac, the first Inca ; and that a long period of barbarism had intervened, induced, perhaps, by revolutions similar to those which, in the old world, swept all the once celebrated nations of antiquity into oblivion. The ancient Peruvians had a tradition respecting the arrival of giants, who located themselves on the coast, and who dug wells of immense depth through the solid rock ; which wells, as well as cisterns, still remain.