Note 54 — THE PLATEAU OF CAXAMARCA, THE ANCIENT CAPITAL OF THE INCA ATAHUALLPA: AND THE FIRST VIEW OF THE PACIFIC OCEAN, FROM THE CREST OF THE ANDES.

p. 290.—“Captivity of Atahuallpa.”

A short time before the captive Inca was put to death, he was taken into the open air, in compliance with his request, to see a large comet. The “greenish black comet, nearly as thick as a man,” (Garcilaso says, P. ii. p. 44, una cometa verdinegra, poco menos gruesa que el cuerpo de un hombre), seen by Atahuallpa before his death, therefore in July or August 1533, and which he supposed to be the same malignant comet which had appeared at the death of his father, Huayna Capac, is certainly the one observed by Appian (Pingré, Cométographie, T. i. p. 496; and Galle’s “Notice of all the Paths of Comets hitherto computed,” in “Olber’s Leichtester Methode die Bahn eines Cometen zu berechnen,” 1847, S. 206), and which, on the 21st of July, standing high in the north, near the constellation of Perseus, represented the sword which Perseus holds in his right hand. (Mädler, Astronomie, 1846, S. 307; Schnurrer, Die Chronik der Seuchen in Verbindung mit gleichzeitigen Erscheinungen, 1825, Th. ii. S. 82.) Robertson considers the year of Huayna Capac’s death uncertain; but, from the researches of Balboa and Velasco, that event appears to have occurred towards the close of 1525: thus the statements of Hevelius (Cometographia, p. 844), and of Pingré (T. i. p. 485), derive confirmation from the testimony of Garcilaso (P. i. p. 321) and the tradition preserved among the “amautas, que son los filosofos de aquella Republica.” I may here introduce the remark, that Oviedo alone, and certainly erroneously, asserts, in the inedited continuation of his Historia de las Indias, that the proper name of the Inca was not Atahuallpa, but Atabaliva (Prescott, Conquest of Peru, Vol. i. p. 498.)