Part 10 (1/2)

Huadquina ------

Incidentally it is interesting to note that although Sartiges was an enthusiastic explorer, eager to visit undescribed Inca ruins, he makes no mention whatever of Machu Picchu. Yet from Huadquina one can reach Machu Picchu on foot in half a day without crossing the Urubamba River. Apparently the ruins were unknown to his hosts in 1834. They were equally unknown to our kind hosts in 1911. They scarcely believed the story I told them of the beauty and extent of the Inca edifices. [10] When my photographs were developed, however, and they saw with their own eyes the marvelous stonework of the princ.i.p.al temples, Senora Carmen and her family were struck dumb with wonder and astonishment. They could not understand how it was possible that they should have pa.s.sed so close to Machu Picchu every year of their lives since the river road was opened without knowing what was there. They had seen a single little building on the crest of the ridge, but supposed that it was an isolated tower of no great interest or importance. Their neighbor, Lizarraga, near the bridge of San Miguel, had reported the presence of the ruins which he first visited in 1904, but, like our friends in Cuzco, they had paid little attention to his stories. We were soon to have a demonstration of the causes of such skepticism.

Our new friends read with interest my copy of those paragraphs of Calaucha's ”Chronicle” which referred to the location of the last Inca capital. Learning that we were anxious to discover Uiticos, a place of which they had never heard, they ordered the most intelligent tenants on the estate to come in and be questioned. The best informed of all was a st.u.r.dy mestizo, a trusted foreman, who said that in a little valley called Ccllumayu, a few hours' journey down the Urubamba, there were ”important ruins” which had been seen by some of Senora Carmen's Indians. Even more interesting and thrilling was his statement that on a ridge up the Salcantay Valley was a place called Yurak Rumi (yurak = ”white”; rumi = ”stone”) where some very interesting ruins had been found by his workmen when cutting trees for firewood. We all became excited over this, for among the paragraphs which I had copied from Calancha's ”Chronicle” was the statement that ”close to Uiticos” is the ”white stone of the aforesaid house of the Sun which is called Yurak Rumi.” Our hosts a.s.sured us that this must be the place, since no one hereabouts had ever heard of any other Yurak Rumi. The foreman, on being closely questioned, said that he had seen the ruins once or twice, that he had also been up the Urubamba Valley and seen the great ruins at Ollantaytambo, and that those which he had seen at Yurak Rumi were ”as good as those at Ollantaytambo.” Here was a definite statement made by an eyewitness. Apparently we were about to see that interesting rock where the last Incas wors.h.i.+ped. However, the foreman said that the trail thither was at present impa.s.sable, although a small gang of Indians could open it in less than a week. Our hosts, excited by the pictures we had shown them of Machu Picchu, and now believing that even finer ruins might be found on their own property, immediately gave orders to have the path to Yurak Rumi cleared for our benefit.

While this was being done, Senora Carmen's son, the manager of the plantation, offered to accompany us himself to Ccllumayu, where other ”important ruins” had been found, which could be reached in a few hours without cutting any new trails. Acting on his a.s.surance that we should not need tent or cots, we left our camping outfit behind and followed him to a small valley on the south side of the Urubamba. We found Ccllumayu to consist of two huts in a small clearing. Densely wooded slopes rose on all sides. The manager requested two of the Indian tenants to act as guides. With them, we plunged into the thick jungle and spent a long and fatiguing day searching in vain for ruins. That night the manager returned to Huadquina, but Professor Foote and I preferred to remain in Ccllumayu and prosecute a more vigorous search on the next day. We shared a little thatched hut with our Indian hosts and a score of fat cuys (guinea pigs), the chief source of the Ccllumayu meat supply. The hut was built of rough wattles which admitted plenty of fresh air and gave us comfortable ventilation. Primitive little sleeping-platforms, also of wattles, constructed for the needs of short, stocky Indians, kept us from being overrun by inquisitive cuys, but could hardly be called as comfortable as our own folding cots which we had left at Huadquina.

The next day our guides were able to point out in the woods a few piles of stones, the foundations of oval or circular huts which probably were built by some primitive savage tribe in prehistoric times. Nothing further could be found here of ruins, ”important”

or otherwise, although we spent three days at Ccllumayu. Such was our first disillusionment.

On our return to Huadquina, we learned that the trail to Yurak Rumi would be ready ”in a day or two.” In the meantime our hosts became much interested in Professor Foote's collection of insects. They brought an unnamed scorpion and informed us that an orange orchard surrounded by high walls in a secluded place back of the house was ”a great place for spiders.” We found that their statement was not exaggerated and immediately engaged in an enthusiastic spider hunt. When these Huadquina spiders were studied at the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology, Dr. Chamberlain found among them the representatives of four new genera and nineteen species. .h.i.therto unknown to science. As a reward of merit, he gave Professor Foote's name to the scorpion!

------ FIGURE

Ruins of Yurak Rumi near Huadquina. Probably an Inca Storehouse, well ventilated and well drained. Drawn by A. H. b.u.mstead from measurements and photographs by Hiram Bingham and H. W. Foote.

Finally the trail to Yurak Rumi was reported finished. It was with feelings of keen antic.i.p.ation that I started out with the foreman to see those ruins which he had just revisited and now declared were ”better than those of Ollantaytambo.” It was to be presumed that in the pride of discovery he might have exaggerated their importance. Still it never entered my head what I was actually to find. After several hours spent in clearing away the dense forest growth which surrounded the walls I learned that this Yurak Rumi consisted of the ruins of a single little rectangular Inca storehouse. No effort had been made at beauty of construction. The walls were of rough, unfas.h.i.+oned stones laid in clay. The building was without a doorway, although it had several small windows and a series of ventilating shafts under the house. The lintels of the windows and of the small apertures leading into the subterranean shafts were of stone. There were no windows on the sunny north side or on the ends, but there were four on the south side through which it would have been possible to secure access to the stores of maize, potatoes, or other provisions placed here for safe-keeping. It will be recalled that the Incas maintained an extensive system of public storehouses, not only in the centers of population, but also at strategic points on the princ.i.p.al trails. Yurak Rumi is on top of the ridge between the Salcantay and Huadquina valleys, probably on an ancient road which crossed the province of Uilcapampa. As such it was interesting; but to compare it with Ollantaytambo, as the foreman had done, was to liken a cottage to a palace or a mouse to an elephant. It seems incredible that anybody having actually seen both places could have thought for a moment that one was ”as good as the other.” To be sure, the foreman was not a trained observer and his interest in Inca buildings was probably of the slightest. Yet the ruins of Ollantaytambo are so well known and so impressive that even the most casual traveler is struck by them and the natives themselves are enormously proud of them. The real cause of the foreman's inaccuracy was probably his desire to please. To give an answer which will satisfy the questioner is a common trait in Peru as well as in many other parts of the world. Anyhow, the lessons of the past few days were not lost on us. We now understood the skepticism which had prevailed regarding Lizarraga's discoveries. It is small wonder that the occasional stories about Machu Picchu which had drifted into Cuzco had never elicited any enthusiasm nor even provoked investigation on the part of those professors and students in the University of Cuzco who were interested in visiting the remains of Inca civilization. They knew only too well the fondness of their countrymen for exaggeration and their inability to report facts accurately.

Obviously, we had not yet found Uiticos. So, bidding farewell to Senora Carmen, we crossed the Urubamba on the bridge of Colpani and proceeded down the valley past the mouth of the Luc.u.mayo and the road from Panticalla, to the hamlet of Chauillay, where the Urubamba is joined by the Vilcabamba River. [11] Both rivers are restricted here to narrow gorges, through which their waters rush and roar on their way to the lower valley. A few rods from Chauillay was a fine bridge. The natives call it Chuquichaca! Steel and iron have superseded the old suspension bridge of huge cables made of vegetable fiber, with its narrow roadway of wattles supported by a network of vines. Yet here it was that in 1572 the military force sent by the viceroy, Francisco de Toledo, under the command of General Martin Hurtado and Captain Garcia, found the forces of the young Inca drawn up to defend Uiticos. It will be remembered that after a brief preliminary fire the forces of Tupac Amaru were routed without having destroyed the bridge and thus Captain Garcia was enabled to accomplish that which had proved too much for the famous Gonzalo Pizarro. Our inspection of the surroundings showed that Captain Garcia's companion, Baltasar de Ocampo, was correct when he said that the occupation of the bridge of Chuquichaca ”was a measure of no small importance for the royal force.” It certainly would have caused the Spaniards ”great trouble”

if they had had to rebuild it.

We might now have proceeded to follow Garcia's tracks up the Vilcabamba had we not been anxious to see the proprietor of the plantation of Santa Ana, Don Pedro Duque, reputed to be the wisest and ablest man in this whole province. We felt he would be able to offer us advice of prime importance in our search. So leaving the bridge of Chuquichaca, we continued down the Urubamba River which here meanders through a broad, fertile valley, green with tropical plantations. We pa.s.sed groves of bananas and oranges, waving fields of green sugar cane, the hospitable dwellings of prosperous planters, and the huts of Indians fortunate enough to dwell in this tropical ”Garden of Eden.” The day was hot and thirst-provoking, so I stopped near some large orange trees loaded with ripe fruit and asked the Indian proprietress to sell me ten cents' worth. In exchange for the tiny silver real she dragged out a sack containing more than fifty oranges! I was fain to request her to permit us to take only as many as our pockets could hold; but she seemed so surprised and pained, we had to fill our saddle-bags as well.

At the end of the day we crossed the Urubamba River on a fine steel bridge and found ourselves in the prosperous little town of Quillabamba, the provincial capital. Its main street was lined with well-filled shops, evidence of the fact that this is one of the princ.i.p.al gateways to the Peruvian rubber country which, with the high price of rubber then prevailing, 1911, was the scene of unusual activity. Pa.s.sing through Quillabamba and up a slight hill beyond it, we came to the long colonnades of the celebrated sugar estate of Santa Ana founded by the Jesuits, where all explorers who have pa.s.sed this way since the days of Charles Wiener have been entertained. He says that he was received here ”with a thousand signs of friends.h.i.+p”

(”mille temoignages d'amitie”). We were received the same way. Even in a region where we had repeatedly received valuable a.s.sistance from government officials and generous hospitality from private individuals, our reception at Santa Ana stands out as particularly delightful.

Don Pedro Duque took great interest in enabling us to get all possible information about the little-known region into which we proposed to penetrate. Born in Colombia, but long resident in Peru, he was a gentleman of the old school, keenly interested, not only in the administration and economic progress of his plantation, but also in the intellectual movements of the outside world. He entered with zest into our historical-geographical studies. The name Uiticos was new to him, but after reading over with us our extracts from the Spanish chronicles he was sure that he could help us find it. And help us he did. Santa Ana is less than thirteen degrees south of the equator; the elevation is barely 2000 feet; the ”winter” nights are cool; but the heat in the middle of the day is intense. Nevertheless, our host was so energetic that as a result of his efforts a number of the best-informed residents were brought to the conferences at the great plantation house. They told all they knew of the towns and valleys where the last four Incas had found a refuge, but that was not much. They all agreed that ”if only Senor Lopez Torres were alive he could have been of great service” to us, as ”he had prospected for mines and rubber in those parts more than any one else, and had once seen some Inca ruins in the forest!” Of Uiticos and Chuquipalpa and most of the places mentioned in the chronicles, none of Don Pedro's friends had ever heard. It was all rather discouraging, until one day, by the greatest good fortune, there arrived at Santa Ana another friend of Don Pedro's, the teniente gobernador of the village of Lucma in the valley of Vilcabamba--a crusty old fellow named Evaristo Mogrovejo. His brother, Pio Mogrovejo, had been a member of the party of energetic Peruvians who, in 1884, had searched for buried treasure at Choqquequirau and had left their names on its walls. Evaristo Mogrovejo could understand searching for buried treasure, but he was totally unable otherwise to comprehend our desire to find the ruins of the places mentioned by Father Calancha and the contemporaries of Captain Garcia. Had we first met Mogrovejo in Lucma he would undoubtedly have received us with suspicion and done nothing to further our quest. Fortunately for us, his official superior was the sub-prefect of the province of Convencion, lived at Quillabamba near Santa Ana, and was a friend of Don Pedro's. The sub-prefect had received orders from his own official superior, the prefect of Cuzco, to take a personal interest in our undertaking, and accordingly gave particular orders to Mogrovejo to see to it that we were given every facility for finding the ancient ruins and identifying the places of historic interest. Although Mogrovejo declined to risk his skin in the savage wilderness of Conservidayoc, he carried out his orders faithfully and was ultimately of great a.s.sistance to us.

Extremely gratified with the result of our conferences in Santa Ana, yet reluctant to leave the delightful hospitality and charming conversation of our gracious host, we decided to go at once to Lucma, taking the road on the southwest side of the Urubamba and using the route followed by the pack animals which carry the precious cargoes of coca and aguardiente from Santa Ana to Ollantaytambo and Cuzco. Thanks to Don Pedro's energy, we made an excellent start; not one of those meant-to-be-early but really late-in-the-morning departures so customary in the Andes.

We pa.s.sed through a region which originally had been heavily forested, had long since been cleared, and was now covered with bushes and second growth. Near the roadside I noticed a considerable number of land sh.e.l.ls grouped on the under-side of overhanging rocks. As a boy in the Hawaiian Islands I had spent too many Sat.u.r.days collecting those beautiful and fascinating mollusks, which usually prefer the trees of upland valleys, to enable me to resist the temptation of gathering a large number of such as could easily be secured. None of the snails were moving. The dry season appears to be their resting period. Some weeks later Professor Foote and I pa.s.sed through Maras and were interested to notice thousands of land sh.e.l.ls, mostly white in color, on small bushes, where they seemed to be quietly sleeping. They were fairly ”glued to their resting places”; cl.u.s.tered so closely in some cases as to give the stems of the bushes a ghostly appearance.

Our present objective was the valley of the river Vilcabamba. So far as we have been able to learn, only one other explorer had preceded us--the distinguished scientist Raimondi. His map of the Vilcabamba is fairly accurate. He reports the presence here of mines and minerals, but with the exception of an ”abandoned tampu”

at Maracnyoc (”the place which possesses a millstone”), he makes no mention of any ruins. Accordingly, although it seemed from the story of Baltasar de Ocampo and Captain Garcia's other contemporaries that we were now entering the valley of Uiticos, it was with feel-hags of considerable uncertainty that we proceeded on our quest. It may seem strange that we should have been in any doubt. Yet before our visit nearly all the Peruvian historians and geographers except Don Carlos Romero still believed that when the Inca Manco fled from Pizarro he took up his residence at Choqquequirau in the Apurimac Valley. The word choqquequirau means ”cradle of gold” and this lent color to the legend that Manco had carried off with him from Cuzco great quant.i.ties of gold utensils and much treasure, which he deposited in his new capital. Raimondi, knowing that Manco had ”retired to Uilcapampa,”

visited both the present villages of Vilcabamba and Pucyura and saw nothing of any ruins. He was satisfied that Choqquequirau was Manco's refuge because it was far enough from Pucyura to answer the requirements of Calancha that it was ”two or three days' journey”

from Uilcapampa to Puquiura.

A new road had recently been built along the river bank by the owner of the sugar estate at Paltaybamba, to enable his pack animals to travel more rapidly. Much of it had to be carved out of the face of a solid rock precipice and in places it pierces the cliffs in a series of little tunnels. My gendarme missed this road and took the steep old trail over the cliffs. As Ocampo said in his story of Captain Garcia's expedition, ”the road was narrow in the ascent with forest on the fight, and on the left a ravine of great depth.” We reached Paltaybamba about dusk. The owner, Senor Jose S. Pancorbo, was absent, attending to the affairs of a rubber estate in the jungles of the river San Miguel. The plantation of Paltaybamba occupies the best lands in the lower Vilcabamba Valley, but lying, as it does, well off the main highway, visitors are rare and our arrival was the occasion for considerable excitement. We were not unexpected, however. It was Senor Pancorbo who had a.s.sured us in Cuzco that we should find ruins near Pucyura and he had told his major-domo to be on the look-out for us. We had a long talk with the manager of the plantation and his friends that evening. They had heard little of any ruins in this vicinity, but repeated one of the stories we had heard in Santa Ana, that way off somewhere in the montana there was ”an Inca city.” All agreed that it was a very difficult place to reach; and none of them had ever been there. In the morning the manager gave us a guide to the next house up the valley, with orders that the man at that house should relay us to the next, and so on. These people, all tenants of the plantation, obligingly carried out their orders, although at considerable inconvenience to themselves.

The Vilcabamba Valley above Paltaybamba is very picturesque. There are high mountains on either side, covered with dense jungle and dark green foliage, in pleasing contrast to the light green of the fields of waving sugar cane. The valley is steep, the road is very winding, and the torrent of the Vilcabamba roars loudly, even in July. What it must be like in February, the rainy season, we could only surmise. About two leagues above Paltaybamba, at or near the spot called by Raimondi ”Maracnyoc,” an ”abandoned tampu,” we came to some old stone walls, the ruins of a place now called Huayara or ”Hoyara.” I believe them to be the ruins of the first Spanish settlement in this region, a place referred to by Ocampo, who says that the fugitives of Tupac Amaru's army were ”brought back to the valley of Hoyara,” where they were ”settled in a large village, and a city of Spaniards was founded .... This city was founded on an extensive plain near a river, with an admirable climate. From the river channels of water were taken for the service of the city, the water being very good.” The water here is excellent, far better than any in the Cuzco Basin. On the plain near the river are some of the last cane fields of the plantation of Paltaybamba. ”Hoyara” was abandoned after the discovery of gold mines several leagues farther up the valley, and the Spanish ”city”

was moved to the village now called Vilcabamba.

Our next stop was at Lucma, the home of Teniente Gobernador Mogrovejo. The village of Lucma is an irregular cl.u.s.ter of about thirty thatched-roofed huts. It enjoys a moderate amount of prosperity due to the fact of its being located near one of the gateways to the interior, the pa.s.s to the rubber estates in the San Miguel Valley. Here are ”houses of refreshment” and two shops, the only ones in the region. One can buy cotton cloth, sugar, canned goods and candles. A picturesque belfry and a small church, old and somewhat out of repair, crown the small hill back of the village. There is little level land, but the slopes are gentle, and permit a considerable amount of agriculture.