Lost City of the Incas (Phoenix Press) (28 page)

Whether Tupac Amaru partook of such a delicacy as monkey meat, which the Amazonian Indians relish, but which is not eaten by the highlanders, may be doubted. Garcilasso speaks of Tupac Amaru’s preferring to entrust himself to the hands of the Spaniards ‘rather than to perish of famine’. His Indian allies lived well in a region where monkeys abound. It is doubtful whether they would ever have permitted Captain Garcia to capture the Inca had they been able to furnish Tupac with such food as he was accustomed to.

At all events, our investigation seemed to point to the probability of this valley having been an important part of the domain of the last Incas. It would have been pleasant to go further, but the carriers were anxious to return to Pampaconas. Although they did not have to eat monkey meat, they were afraid of the savages and nervous as to what use the latter might make of their powerful bows and long arrows.

At Conservidayoc Saavedra kindly took the trouble to make some sugar for us. He poured the syrup into oblong moulds cut
in a big log of hard wood. In some of the moulds his son placed handfuls of nicely roasted peanuts. The result was an emergency ration which we greatly enjoyed on our return journey.

At San Fernando we met the pack mules. The next day, in the midst of continuing torrential downpours, we climbed out of the hot valley to the cold heights of Pampaconas. We were soaked with perspiration and drenched with rain. Snow had been falling near the village. Our teeth chattered like castanets. Professor Foote immediately commandeered Mrs Guzman’s fire and filled our tea kettle. It may be doubted whether a more wretched, cold, wet, and bedraggled party ever arrived at Guzman’s hut; certainly nothing ever tasted better than that steaming hot sweet tea.

We knew that the Incas had taken refuge in the Cordillera Vilcabamba and we thought we had found and identified most of the sites mentioned in the Chronicles but it was necessary to cover the region as exhaustively as possible in order to make assurance doubly sure. So in 1912 I asked one of my engineers to make an archaeological and topographical reconnaissance of the hitherto unexplored Aobamba Valley. Assistant Topographer Heald undertook to approach this problem from the mouth of the valley at the junction of the Aobamba and Urubamba rivers. He met with almost insuperable difficulties.

Although the work looked easy as far as we could see from the mouth of the valley, he found that four miles from the mouth, up the winding stream, the jungle was almost impassable. There was no trail. The foliage was so dense that observations were impossible. During a hard afternoon’s work with four or five men Mr Heald succeeded in advancing only one mile. There was little of archaeological interest in the portion of the valley which Mr Heald succeeded in reaching. Quite unexpectedly, however, I got into the upper reaches of the valley about ten days later, and found some interesting ruins. It happened like this.

Don Tomas Alvistur of Huadquiña, an enthusiastic amateur archaeologist, took a considerable amount of interest in our work and was delighted when he discovered that some of his Indians knew of three localities where there were Inca ruins, so they said, that had not previously been visited by white men.

Don Tomas invited me to accompany him on a visit to these three groups of ruins, but when the time came to go he found that ‘business engagements’ made it impossible for him to do more than accompany me part of the way to the first group. He went to the trouble, however, of securing three Indian guides and carriers and gave them orders to carry my kit whenever the pack-mule could not be used, and to guide me safely to the three ruins and home again.

The end of the first day found us on top of a ridge between the valleys of the Aobamba and the Salcantay, about 5,000 feet above the estate of Huadquiña where we had started. Here we did discover a number of ruins and two or three modern huts.

The Indians said that the place was called Llacta Pata. But this is a descriptive term as ‘llacta’ means ‘town’ and ‘pata’ means ‘a height’. We found evidence that some Inca chieftain had built his home here and had included in the plan ten or a dozen buildings. They were made of rough stones laid in clay
with the usual symmetrical arrangement of doors and niches. It may very well have been built by one of Manco’s captains. It was on a strategic spot.

The next morning we crossed a high pass and descended rapidly into a steep-walled valley, containing one of the upper tributaries of the Aobamba. The lower slopes were covered with a dense forest. About two o’clock in the afternoon we reached the valley bottom at a point where several smaller tributaries unite to form the principal west branch of the Aobamba. The place was called Palcay.

Here we found two or three huts, one of them located in a very interesting ruined stronghold to which the Indians again gave the Quichua name for town, Llacta. As the location of the stronghold in the bottom of a valley was not easily defensible, a wall about 12 feet in height surrounded the quadrangular group of houses. The characteristics of the buildings were distinctly Inca.

The château, if so it might be called, was about 145 feet square and divided by two narrow cross streets into quarters. Two of these quarters had been completed, and consisted of five
houses arranged round a courtyard in a symmetrical fashion. The third quarter was almost complete, while the fourth quarter had only the beginnings of two or three houses. Each one of the four quarters had a single entrance gate on its north side. The work of measuring and mapping the ruins was made unpleasant by the attention of gnats.

The most remarkable feature of this Inca stronghold is that the streets run north and south, east and west, on the exact cardinal points. These ruins are in the southern hemisphere, so the north star is not visible, yet one street follows the meridian exactly. How was it done?

The next day we found ourselves near the ruins of a village. Judging by its primitive appearance it could not have been a place of much importance and it is impossible to say whether it had been occupied since the Spanish conquest or not. The guide either did not give it a name or we were unable to understand what he said.

After proceeding with great difficulty over snow-covered mountain trails, we came down into a new valley just at dusk and found that we were in one of the upper branches of the Chamana river, a tributary of the Urubamba, where we discovered several groups of Inca ruins not shown on any map. These ruins may have been in the minds of the Indians who had reported to Don Tomas Alvistur at Huadquiña that they could show us ‘three’ which had ‘never been visited by white men’.

Near them the Incas, desiring to save as much of the upland valley floor as possible for agricultural purposes, had straightened the bed of a meandering stream and enclosed it in a stone-lined channel, making it practically straight for nearly three-quarters of a mile.

This journey actually produced excellent results in the discovery of hitherto undescribed ruins and gave further evidence of the Inca occupancy of all available terrain in the Cordillera Vilcabamba. Yet we still had not identified Vilcapampa – the ‘principal city’ of Manco and his sons.

I
t will be remembered that it was in July 1911 that I began the search for the last Inca capital. Accompanied by a dear friend, Professor Harry Ward Foote, of Yale University, who was our naturalist, and my classmate Dr William G. Erving, the surgeon of the Expedition, I had entered the marvellous canyon of the Urubamba below the Inca fortress of Salapunco near Torontoy.

Here the river escapes from the cold plateau by tearing its way through gigantic mountains of granite. The road runs through a land of matchless charm. It has the majestic grandeur of the Canadian Rockies, as well as the startling beauty of the Nuuanu Pali near Honolulu, and the enchanting vistas of the Koolau Ditch Trail on Maui, in my native land. In the variety of its charms and the power of its spell, I know of no place in the world which can compare with it. Not only has it great snow peaks looming above the clouds more than two miles overhead and gigantic precipices of many-coloured granite rising sheer for thousands of feet above the foaming, glistening, roaring rapids, it has also, in striking contrast, orchids and tree ferns, the delectable beauty of luxurious vegetation, and the mysterious witchery of the jungle. One is drawn irresistibly onward by ever-recurring surprises through a deep, winding gorge, turning and twisting past overhanging cliffs of incredible height.

Above all, there is the fascination of finding here and there under swaying vines, or perched on top of a beetling crag, the rugged masonry of a bygone race; and of trying to understand the bewildering romance of the ancient builders who, ages ago, sought refuge in a region which appears to have been expressly
designed by nature as a sanctuary for the oppressed, a place where they might fearlessly and patiently give expression to their passion for walls of enduring beauty. Space forbids any attempt to describe in detail the constantly changing panorama, the rank tropical foliage, the countless terraces, the towering cliffs, the glaciers peeping out between the clouds.

You will remember that after passing Maquina where the sugar machinery had been abandoned because it could not be carried across the face of a great granite precipice, we had entered a little open plain called Mandor Pampa. Except where the rapids roared past it, gigantic precipices hemmed it in on all sides.

We passed an ill-kept, grass-thatched hut, turned off the road through a tiny clearing, and made our camp at the edge of the river on a sandy beach. Opposite us, beyond the huge granite boulders which interfered with the progress of the surging stream, the steep mountain was clothed with thick jungle. Since we were near the road yet protected from the curiosity of passers-by, it seemed to be an ideal spot for a camp. Our actions, however, aroused the suspicions of the owner of the hut, Melchor Arteaga, who leased the lands of Mandor Pampa. He was anxious to know why we did not stay at his ‘tavern’ like other respectable travellers. Fortunately the Prefect of Cuzco, our old friend J. J. Nuñez, had given us an armed escort who spoke Quichua. Our gendarme, Sergeant Carrasco, was able to reassure the innkeeper. They had quite a long conversation. When Arteaga learned that we were interested in the architectural remains of the Incas, and were looking for the palace of the last Inca, he said there were some very good ruins in this vicinity – in fact, some excellent ones on top of the opposite mountain, called Huayna Picchu, and also on a ridge called Machu Picchu.

The morning of July 24th dawned in a cold drizzle. Arteaga shivered and seemed inclined to stay in his hut. I offered to pay him well if he would show me the ruins. He demurred and said it was too hard a climb for such a wet day. But when he found that I was willing to pay him a
sol
(a Peruvian silver dollar, 50 cents, gold), three or four times the ordinary daily wage in this vicinity,
he finally agreed to go. When asked just where the ruins were, he pointed straight up to the top of the mountain. No one supposed that they would be particularly interesting. And no one cared to go with me. Our naturalist said there were ‘more butterflies near the river!’ and he was reasonably certain he could collect some new varieties. Our surgeon said he had to wash his clothes and mend them. Anyhow it was my job to investigate all reports of ruins and try to find the Inca capital.