v, Cap.

vii.] These followers were, like himself, white and bearded.

Just as, in Mexico, the natives attributed the erection of buildings, the history of which had been lost, to the white Toltecs, the subjects of Quetzalcoatl (see above, chapter iii, Sec.2), so in Peru various ancient ruins, whose builders had been lost to memory, were pointed out to the Spaniards as the work of a white and bearded race who held the country in possession long before the Incas had founded their dynasty.[1] The explanation in both cases is the same.

In both the early works of art of unknown origin were supposed to be the productions of the personified light rays, which are the source of skill, because they supply the means indispensable to the acquisition of knowledge.
[Footnote 2: Speaking of certain "grandes y muy antiquissimos edificios" on the river Vinaque, Cieza de Leon says: "Preguntando a los Indios comarcanos quien hizo aquella antigualla, responden que otras gentes barbadas y blancas como nosotros: los cuales, muchos tiempos antes que los Ingas reinasen, dicen que vinieron a estas partes y hicieron alli su morada." _La Cronica del Peru_, cap.

lxxxvi.] The versions of these myths which have been preserved to us by Juan de Betanzos, and the documents on which the historian Herrera founded his narrative, are in the main identical with that which I have quoted from the narrative of Pachacuti.