Lost City of the Incas (Phoenix Press) (39 page)

The Incas were fond of bright colours and of using the feathers of forest birds as ornaments and as part of their costume. We found many birds in this vicinity. In fact the Urubamba Valley acts as a highway or migratory route for birds between the highlands and the low country.

The collection of mammals gathered by my Peruvian expeditions consists of over nine hundred specimens, belonging to eighty species. The bird collection numbers seven hundred specimens, but contains a far greater number of species than the mammal collection. We found approximately four hundred species of birds; many of which are represented by only a single specimen. In addition to the mammals and birds we brought home specimens of some twenty different species of snakes, ten lizards, and a variety of fishes. All these animals must have been known to the Incas and most of them were probably used in one way or another by the people of Machu Picchu.

Practically all our natural history specimens were deposited in the Smithsonian Institution. The archaeological material is mostly in the Yale University Museum, except that which was excavated in 1914–1915, which was all returned to the Peruvian Government.

A
fter the clearing of the ruins was fairly under way, the next object which demanded attention was the location of ancient highways connecting the city with the surrounding country. We were able to locate a paved road running south from the City Gate along the terraces and the back of the ridge towards Machu Picchu Mountain. Owing to a rock-fall in front of one of the great precipices on the mountain, this road had been partially destroyed. On the other side of the rock-fall we were able to find it again and to follow a carefully made granite stairway to the top of the ridge east of the mountain. At that point it divided, the left-hand fork leading to seemingly impassable cliffs on the south side of the mountain, the right-hand fork following the top of the ridge to the summit. There we found, as has been said, the ruins of an Inca house which would accommodate a dozen soldiers, and a carefully terraced signal station or lookout on the very top of the peak 4,000 feet directly above the San Miguel bridge over the Urubamba river.

We heard from one of the Indians that there were ruins in a region of high mountains and impassable jungles south of Machu Picchu Mountain. It was tantalizing to think of the possibilities of exploration in a country which in ancient days must have been so closely connected with the hidden city. The mystery of the deep valleys which lie in the quadrant north to north-east of Mt Salcantay had long demanded attention. Separated from Ollantaytambo and Amaybamba by the Grand
Canyon of the Urubamba, protected from Cuzco by the gigantic barrier of Salcantay, isolated from Vitcos by deep valleys and inhospitable, high windswept bleak regions called
punas
, they seem to have been unknown to the Spanish conquerors and unsuspected by their historians. Garcilasso Inca de la Vega, from whom Prescott drew so much of his fascinating
Conquest of Peru
, makes no reference to places which can with any certainty be located in the Machu Picchu quadrant. Cobo and Balboa in their detailed accounts of Inca conquests take the story right round this region. It appears to have been a
terra incognita
until the nineteenth century. Even Raimondi hardly touched it.

One day Ricardo Charaja, a full-blooded Quichua from the town of Santa Rosa, who was my most dependable native assistant, located the remains of an old Inca road leading out of the Pampaccahuana valley in the general direction of Machu
Picchu. He pointed it out to our chief topographer, Mr Bumstead. Rumours reached us of Inca ruins to be found in that direction. It was reported that ‘there was a large temple built on an island in the centre of a lake, a very beautiful place, better than Machu Picchu’.

It was with mingled feelings of keen curiosity and scepticism that Osgood Hardy and I undertook in April 1915 to follow the newly discovered roadway as far as it would carry us. It began in an affluent of the Urubamba, not very far from Ollantaytambo at the junction of the Huayllabamba river with the Pampaccahuana, near a small ruin built of rough rocks laid in clay. Located on a promontory above the two streams, this ruin probably represented a
tampu
, or resthouse, on the ancient road. It was probably used by the Inca nobles and the Virgins of the Sun.

We had engaged the services of an Indian guide who said he knew all about ‘the celebrated temple in the middle of a lake in the mountains’, but he did not put in an appearance and we had to start without him. He caught up with us later, claiming that he thought we might not start because it was raining that morning! As a matter of fact, his provisions for the journey, consisting of a small quantity of parched corn and
habas
beans, had not been prepared in time.

Led by Ricardo Charaja, who greatly enjoyed his ability to act as a guide in a region far from his own home, we worked our way through a picturesque primeval forest and emerged in the upper part of a U-shaped valley, on whose grassy slopes we had no difficulty in following the remains of a paved highway constructed by the Incas. It led by easy gradients to a pass at the head of Huayllabamba Valley and thence descended by a series of sharp zigzags into the Huayruru Valley. Not an Indian hut was to be seen. In fact, the region seemed to be extraordinarily destitute even of animal life. In a wild, unfrequented valley like Huayruru, one is very likely to see a few deer and we hoped to run across an Andean bear; but nothing of the kind appeared and we made our way across the bottom of the valley as best we could, only to find the Inca road disappearing in a maze of great boulders under the remains of a fairly recent landslide. On the
other side of the valley we saw two Inca roads winding up the grassy slopes. We decided to take the one to the right, as that appeared more likely to lead in the direction of Machu Picchu. The left fork probably goes to Palcay, the ruins of a small Inca country-house which I discovered by accident in 1912.

Halfway up the mountain side, some 2,000 feet above the bottom of the valley, we came to an interesting little Inca fortress, the name of which our guide, who had by this time joined us, gave as Runcu Raccay. It was apparently a fortified station on the old highway. Circular in shape, Runcu Raccay contains the remains of four or five edifices grouped about a little courtyard which was entered by a narrow passage. In the sides of the passage were bar-holds for the better securing of the gate. The stonework and the arrangement of the niches are typically late Inca. We pitched our camp near the ruins, our half-dozen Indian bearers from Ollantaytambo building themselves a temporary shelter as a protection against the cold rain which fell during the night.

Twenty-five years later Runcu Raccay was visited by Dr Paul Fejos, and an attractive model of it is shown in his report to the Viking Fund. He did not find the bar-holds which we photographed in 1915, so they may have been destroyed.

From Runcu Raccay we followed the Inca road over a pass out of the Huayruru Valley and into that of one of the affluents of the Aobamba. In most places the road was still in such condition that our mules could follow it with safety, but occasionally the poor animals would get bad falls and had to be entirely unloaded and helped over slippery or precipitous rocks.

We had not gone far down into the new valley before we came to another fork in the road. The left branch led by a series of steps up a steep slope to a promontory, where we found the ruins of a compact Inca group, to which our guide gave the name of Cedrobamba. Since this word is half Spanish and half Quichua, meaning ‘cedar plain’, it is obviously not the ancient name. No one seems to have lived in this valley for several centuries, so it is not surprising that the old name has been lost. The ruins of Cedrobamba are in the same style as the others located along
the highway, and while too extensive to be merely a fortified resthouse like Runcu Raccay, Cedrobamba undoubtedly represents one of the important fortified outposts subsidiary to Machu Picchu. It commands an extensive view on three sides. The promontory is surrounded by steep precipices and is extremely difficult of access except over the paved roadway. It was probably supplied with water by a small ditch brought along the side of the mountain in the manner typical of Inca engineering.

We made a small clearing not far from the ruins and camped here for several days while the Inca roadway was being cleared and made passable for our mules. In several places rustic bridges had to be constructed and a considerable amount of jungle removed before the animals could pass over the ancient trail. The only place where we met serious difficulty was at the point where the roadway ran through a tunnel behind a huge, sloping ledge. The Incas had found it easier to tunnel behind the ledge than to cut the roadway in the face of the sheer cliff, but the tunnel was not wide enough for loaded mules. Of course the Incas had used llamas with small bodies and small loads. It was big enough for them.

While the road was being made passable for our animals, I went ahead with Ricardo and was delighted to find that as the road progressed it headed more and more in the direction of Machu Picchu. Pushing on in the hope of soon getting a glimpse of Machu Picchu Mountain, I discovered a group of ruins called Ccorihuayrachina, ‘the place where gold is winnowed or washed’. Above the ruins a striking hilltop had been levelled off and surrounded by a retaining wall so as to make it useful as a signal station or possibly a primitive fortress. Beneath it we found a huge cave which showed signs of recent occupancy, probably by bears.

The Inca highway led into the ruins of Ccorihuayrachina by a long flight of stone stairs, from the top of which we secured a magnificent view of the Urubamba Valley in the vicinity of Machu Picchu Mountain. The most interesting feature of Ccorihuayrachina is a row of five stone-paved fountains in what is now a swamp, near a huge, slightly carved boulder. This may
have been what the Indians referred to when they spoke of a temple in a lake, but it hardly came up to our expectations. The name Ccorihuayrachina may have been given to the locality by reason of the five fountains, where some imaginative Indian thought gold might have been washed. To me it seems likely that this was the residence of one of the most important chiefs who owed allegiance to the rulers of Machu Picchu. It has recently been thoroughly explored by an expedition conducted by Dr Paul Fejos and proves to be an important location.

From Ccorihuayrachina the trail led along the crest of the ridge, generally following an easy grade, often the normal contours, and slowly took us towards the great promontory whose most conspicuous point is Machu Picchu Mountain. Here, within rifle shot of the city, the ancient trail disappears; but that did not worry us, for there was no denying the fact that we had reached the immediate neighbourhood of Machu Picchu and done it by following the Inca road which undoubtedly connected the citadel with the Pampaccahuana valley and the principal Inca towns of the region. In addition to locating the ancient highway, we had also been so fortunate as to discover a number of hitherto unknown ruins which seemed to represent stations at convenient intervals along the road. I had at last achieved my desire of penetrating the unexplored country south-east of Machu Picchu, a region which had tempted me for many years. We had learned a little more of that ‘something’ which, as Kipling says, was ‘lost behind the ranges’.

In order that we might have the satisfaction of actually reaching the citadel of Machu Picchu by the same route used by its former inhabitants, I asked Clarence Maynard, then the assistant topographer of the 1915 expedition, and during World War II a Major in the US Engineers under General MacArthur, to go down the south-west bank of the Urubamba river to Choqquesuysuy and to the top of the saddle which connects Machu Picchu Mountain with the region we had just been across and from here attempt to find a practical route to the citadel.

Choqquesuysuy lies above the river at a bend where there is a particularly good view. Near a foaming waterfall some Inca
chief built a temple whose walls, still standing, serve to tantalize the traveller on the river road. There is no bridge within two days’ journey and the intervening rapids are impassable. Every time we had journeyed up and down the river I had longed to get across and see what these ruins contained. They are relatively so near to Machu Picchu that I felt sure they must have belonged to the same people. Accordingly, I was extremely glad when Mr Maynard reported that he had succeeded in reaching Choqquesuysuy, which we learned later belonged to the late Inca period. Mr Maynard found that a footpath connected Choqquesuysuy with the saddle at the top of the ridge below Machu Picchu peak.