Wilson's showing, must have taxed all his faculties to the utmost,
he employed himself chiefly in coining lies with which to deceive his
imperial master and all the inhabitants of Christendom,--that, although
he had a host of powerful enemies among his countrymen, enemies who were
in a position to discover the truth, his statements passed unchallenged
and uncontradicted by them,--that the numerous adventurers and explorers
who followed in his track, instead of exposing the falsity of his
relations and descriptions, found their interest in embellishing the
narrative,--that a similar drama was performed by other actors and on a
different stage,--that the Peruvian civilization, so analogous to that
of the Aztecs and yet so different from it, was, like that, the baseless
fabric of a vision,--that the whole intellect, in short, of the
sixteenth century was employed in fashioning a gorgeous fable, and that
to this end continents were discovered, nations exterminated, countries
laid waste, evidences forged, and witnesses invented. And this theory
is to be swallowed in one solid and indigestible lump, unleavened with
logic, unmoistened with grammar, unsweetened with rhetoric.
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