The Mammoth Book of Travel in Dangerous Places (69 page)

To my astonishment I saw that this wall and its adjoining semicircular temple over the cave were as fine as the finest stonework in the far-famed Temple of the Sun in Cuzco. Surprise followed
surprise in bewildering succession. I climbed a marvellous great stairway of large granite blocks, walked along a
pampa
where the Indians had a small vegetable garden, and came into a little
clearing. Here were the ruins of two of the finest structures I have ever seen in Peru. Not only were they made of selected blocks of beautifully grained white granite; their walls contained
ashlars of Cyclopean size, ten feet in length, and higher than a man. The sight held me spellbound.

Each building had only three walls and was entirely open on the side towards the clearing. The principal temple was lined with exquisitely made niches, five high up at each end, and seven on the
back wall. There were seven courses of ashlars in the end walls. Under the seven rear niches was a rectangular block fourteen feet long, probably a sacrificial altar. The building did not look as
though it had ever had a roof. The top course of beautifully smooth ashlars was not intended to be covered.

The other temple is on the east side of the
pampa
. I called it the Temple of the Three Windows. Like its neighbour, it is unique among Inca ruins. Its eastern wall, overlooking the
citadel, is a massive stone framework for three conspicuously large windows, obviously too large to serve any useful purpose, yet most beautifully made with the greatest care and solidity. This was
clearly a ceremonial edifice of peculiar significance. Nowhere else in Peru, so far as I know, is there a similar structure conspicuous as “a masonry wall with three windows”.

These ruins have no other name than that of the mountain on the slopes of which they are located. Had this place been occupied uninterruptedly, like Cuzco and Ollantaytambo, Machu Picchu would
have retained its ancient name, but during the centuries when it was abandoned, its name was lost. Examination showed that it was essentially a fortified place, a remote fastness protected by
natural bulwarks, of which man took advantage to create the most impregnable stronghold in the Andes. Our subsequent excavations and the clearing made in 1912, has shown that this was the chief
place in Uilcapampa.

It did not take an expert to realize, from the glimpse of Machu Picchu on that rainy day in July, 1911, when Sergeant Carrasco and I first saw it, that here were most extraordinary and
interesting ruins. Although the ridge had been partly cleared by the Indians for their fields of maize, so much of it was still underneath a thick jungle growth – some walls were actually
supporting trees ten and twelve inches in diameter – that it was impossible to determine just what would be found here. As soon as I could get hold of Mr Tucker, who was assisting Mr
Hendriksen, and Mr Lanius, who had gone down the Urubamba with Dr Bowman, I asked them to make a map of the ruins. I knew it would be a difficult undertaking and that it was essential for Mr Tucker
to join me in Arequipa not later than the first of October for the ascent of Coropuna. With the hearty aid of Richarte and Alvarez, the surveyors did better than I expected. In the ten days while
they were at the ruins they were able to secure data from which Mr Tucker afterwards prepared a map which told better than could any words of mine the importance of this site and the necessity for
further investigation.

With the possible exception of one mining prospector, no one in Cuzco had seen the ruins of Machu Picchu or appreciated their importance. No one had any realization of what an extraordinary
place lay on top of the ridge. It had never been visited by any of the planters of the lower Urubamba Valley who annually passed over the road which winds through the canyon two thousand feet
below.

It seems incredible that this citadel, less than three days’ journey from Cuzco, should have remained so long undescribed by travellers and comparatively unknown even to the Peruvians
themselves. If the
conquistadores
ever saw this wonderful place, some reference to it surely would have been made; yet nothing can be found which clearly refers to the ruins of Machu Picchu.
Just when it was first seen by a Spanish-speaking person is uncertain. When the Count de Sartiges was at Huadquiña in 1834 he was looking for ruins; yet, although so near, he heard of none
here. From a crude scrawl on the walls of one of the finest buildings, we learned that the ruins were visited in 1902 by Lizarraga, lessee of the lands immediately below the bridge of San Miguel.
This is the earliest local record. Yet some one must have visited Machu Picchu long before that; because in 1875, as has been said, the French explorer Charles Wiener heard in Ollantaytambo of
their being ruins at “Huaina-Picchu or Matcho-Picchu”. He tried to find them. That he failed was due to there being no road through the canyon of Torontoy and the necessity of making a
wide detour through the pass of Panticalla and the Lucumayo Valley, a route which brought him to the Urubamba River at the bridge of Chuquichaca, twenty-five miles below Machu Picchu.

It was not until 1890 that the Peruvian Government, recognizing the needs of the enterprising planters who were opening up the lower valley of the Urubamba, decided to construct a mule trail
along the banks of the river through the grand canyon to enable the much-desired
coca
and
aguardiente
to be shipped from Huadquiña, Maranura, and Santa Ana to Cuzco more
quickly and cheaply than formerly. This road avoids the necessity of carrying the precious cargoes over the dangerous snowy passes of Mt Veronica and Mt Salcantay, so vividly described by Raimondi,
de Sartiges, and others. The road, however, was very expensive, took years to build, and still requires frequent repair. In fact, even today travel over it is often suspended for several days or
weeks at a time, following some tremendous avalanche. Yet it was this new road which had led Melchor Arteaga to build his hut near the arable land at Mandor Pampa, where he could raise food for his
family and offer rough shelter to passing travellers. It was this new road which brought Richarte, Alvarez, and their enterprising friends into this little-known region, gave them the opportunity
of occupying the ancient terraces of Machu Picchu, which had lain fallow for centuries, encouraged them to keep open a passable trail over the precipices, and made it feasible for us to reach the
ruins. It was this new road which offered us in 1911 a virgin field between Ollantaytambo and Huadquiña and enabled us to learn that the Incas, or their predecessors, had once lived here in
the remote fastnesses of the Andes, and had left stone witnesses of the magnificence and beauty of their ancient civilization, more interesting and extensive than any which have been found since
the days of the Spanish Conquest of Peru.

FOUR YEARS IN THE ICE

John Ross

(1777–1856)

Discredited for his report of an imaginary mountain range blocking the most likely access to the North West Passage, in 1829 a crusty Ross returned to Canada’s frozen
archipelago to vindicate his reputation. He rounded the north of Baffin Island and entered what he named the Gulf of Boothia. Here the
Victory,
his eccentric paddle-steamer, became frozen
into the ice. Through three tantalizingly brief summers the expedition tried to find a way out and through four long winters they endured the worst of Arctic conditions in a makeshift camp. In July
1832, with the ship long since abandoned, Ross made what must be their last bid to reach open water.

J
uly 7
The shooting of fifty dovekies [guillemots] yesterday gave the men a good Sunday’s dinner; and the last divine service we
trusted ever to attend in this house, was performed. It was the commencement of a farewell which all hoped would be eternal; but every one must answer for the feelings under which he, for the
expected last time, repeated the Lord’s prayer, and heard himself dismissed in those words which promise, to those who deserve it, that peace which passes all understanding. I trust there
were few who did not recollect to return their own private thanksgiving for so long a preservation amid such dangers and privation and who did not put up their own prayers for help in the great
undertaking now impending, on the success or failure of which must turn the event of life or death to all.

On Monday, every thing was ready, and we too were as prepared as we were anxious to quit this dreary place, as we hoped, for ever. Yet, with those hopes, there were mingled many fears: enough to
render it still but too doubtful in all our minds whether we might not yet be compelled to return; to return once more to despair, and perhaps, to return but to die. To have been able, confidently,
to say, Adieu for ever, would have been indeed to render this a delightful parting; when even the shelter which we had received was insufficient to balance all the miseries which we had suffered;
miseries to have extinguished every sense of regret that we could have felt in pronouncing those two words, which, it is said, have never yet, under any circumstances, been pronounced without pain.
This may be true; I almost believe that it would have been true even in our case, though in parting from our miserable winter house of timber and snow, we left nothing behind us but misery and the
recollection of misery; since, in the comparison with what might have been, it was, heaven knows, a shelter from evils far greater, from death itself; and, such home as it was, a Home; that strange
entity from which man never parts, bad as it may be, without reluctance, and never leaves but with some strange longing to see it again. But true as may be the pain of an adieu, or the fancy of
leaving for ever a home, or true as may be, reversely the pleasure of quitting for ever the scene of past miseries, neither the pleasure nor the pain was ours. Scarcely the feeling of a farewell,
for hope or regret, for pain or for pleasure, was in any mind, when we coldly departed in the evening with our three sledges, to encounter such fate as Providence might have in store for us.

Courtesy of the Mansell Collection.

The sick, who formed our great difficulty, bore the first journey well, and we reached our first station before mid-day. It was a fine day, and the warmest that had yet occurred; the temperature
being 48°. In the afternoon, at three, we proceeded again, with infinite toil, through nearly impassable ways, which were rendered more difficult to us by the care which the sick required and
so hard was the labour, that even here, and at night we were obliged to work in our shirts. We gained but two miles by midnight and were glad to rest.

July 10
We recommenced with all the baggage labouring through ways as bad, or worse, under a sun that was occasionally very hot and at nine, reached the third position at
the cascade, which was now pouring down abundantly into a pool filled with kittiwakes where we procured some sorrel. We found that the bears had upset a cask full of skins which we had left here
but they could not contrive to open it.

On the next day we brought forward the sick whom we could not move together with the baggage, and then proceeded to the third position, after a very fatiguing journey backward and forwards, of
twenty-four miles. We had lately obtained a good supply of dovekies, and could now afford every one a good breakfast; which was not less necessary than agreeable, emaciated as most of us were, and
nevertheless compelled to endure this constant labour. In the afternoon, the road on the shore being better we contrived to take most of our stores, the sick included: but it was not, finally till
after many difficulties in avoiding and traversing bad ice, that we reached the boats in Batty bay, at eight in the morning.

We found that the bears and foxes had committed considerable depredations on our stores, by destroying a cask of bread, some oil, and some sugar, and also all the leather shoes and boots they
could find. The weather was very fine, and the dovekies being numerous, we killed some for our provision. Even at midnight the thermometer was now 48°: it was a great revolution in the weather,
and it had been a sudden one; unexpected, but not undue. Two light sledges today [July 13] brought up the few things which we had been obliged to leave at the last place, together with some sorrel
for the sick; while we obtained thirty dovekies.

July 14
Sunday was made a day of rest. They who walked found the land quite destitute of vegetation, and a considerable river running into the head of the bay. On the following day the
ice was examined from the hills, but was not yet breaking in the offing: the weather being calm and fine, but sometimes foggy. The men were employed in repairing the boats, and in preparations for
embarking. The ice moved on the sixteenth; but the large creek was still filled, and impassable. On the two next days it rained almost constantly, and we were prisoners. About a hundred dovekies
were killed, so that our supply of fresh meat was respectable, if not great.

On the twentieth, the weather became fine again; the ice continued to move, and the caulking of the boats was continued. An easterly wind made the thermometer fall to 38°. On Sunday the ice
was reported to be broken up in the offing; but after three days, without any thing material to note, except the killing of fifty dovekies, it remained close packed on the shore, so that it was
impossible for us to move. The weather, from this time, continued variable, with occasional rain and wind, together with fogs, till the thirtieth; as the only events worth noticing, were the
improvement of the sick, and the killing of some more birds for our table.