passages, and they are scattered about everywhere throughout both parts.
The 'Royal Commentaries' were, until quite recently, the most valued authority for Peruvian civilisation and the history of the Incas. The position of the writer as an Inca on the mother's side, the fulness of detail both as regards the history and the manners, customs, and religion of the people, and the peculiar charm of his style fully account for the position his work held for so long. Prescott quotes Garcilasso twice as often as any other authority. But the Inca was writing forty years after he had left the country. Sarmiento now, to a great extent, supersedes his history. Molina, Morua, Blas Valera, Salcamayhua, and other writers whose works have recently come to light, are more reliable as regards the religion and manners and customs of the people, because they wrote on the spot and with fuller knowledge. Dr. Gonzalez de la Rosa has shown reason for questioning Garcilasso's integrity as regards the use of the manuscript of Blas Valera. Yet, in spite of all this, the Inca will continue to be an important authority, while the charm of his personal reminiscences must ever have a fascination for his readers from which no criticism can detract.
The Inca must have led a somewhat lonely bachelor's life at Cordova, yet it can scarcely have been an unhappy one, when his occupation filled him constantly with happy remembrances of his boyhood. He had the pleasure of welcoming
