The king of Peru was always carried in a species of litter covered over with plates of gold, and was attended by more than a thousand of the principal native nobles, who relieved each other in carrying the royal litter on their shoulders.  All these men were counsellors, principal officers of the household, or favourites of the prince.  The caciques or curacas of the different provinces were likewise carried in litters on the shoulders of their vassals.  The Peruvians were exceedingly submissive to their sovereigns, insomuch that even the most powerful lord always entered the presence barefooted, and carrying some present wrapped up in a cloth, as a mark of homage; and even if one person had occasion to go an hundred times in one day to speak to the king, the present had to be repeated every time he went.  To look the king in the face was considered as a criminal disrespect; and if any one should happen to stumble while carrying the royal litter, so as to make it fall, his head was immediately cut off.  At every half league on the public roads throughout the whole empire, there were Indians in constant attendance to relieve each other in carrying dispatches, which they did swifter than our post horses.  When any province or district was subdued, the natives of the place, or at least all their chiefs and principal people, were immediately removed to other parts of the empire, and natives from other places which had been long subjected were sent to occupy the new conquest, by which means the fidelity and submission of the whole were secured.  From every province of the empire, yearly tributes of the several productions of their respective countries were sent to the king; and even some sterile districts above three hundred leagues distant from Cuzco, had to send yearly a number of lizards as a mark of their submission, having nothing of any value to send.  Huana Capac rebuilt the temple of the sun at Cuzco, and covered over all the walls and the roof of that structure with plates of gold and silver.  During his reign, one Chimocappa, who was curaca or prince of a large district in the plain, above a hundred leagues in length, chose to erect the standard of rebellion; but Huana Capac marched against him in person, defeated him in battle, and put him to death; after which he commanded that the Indians of the plain should not be permitted to carry arms.  Yet he allowed the son and successor of Chimocappa to remain in the province of Chimo, in which the city of Truzillo has been since built.

Peru was astonishingly full of those animals called sheep; as Huana Capac and his predecessors had established laws for their multiplication and preservation.  Every year a certain proportion of these animals belonging to individuals were set apart as a kind of tythe or offering to the sun, and these consecrated animals multiplied greatly, no person being allowed to injure them under pain of sacrilege, except the prince only for his own use or that of his army.  On such