Part 5 (1/2)
Prim., Ms.]
But this is the dark side of the picture. If no man could become rich in Peru, no man could become poor. No spendthrift could waste his substance in riotous luxury. No adventurous schemer could impoverish his family by the spirit of speculation. The law was constantly directed to enforce a steady industry and a sober management of his affairs. No mendicant was tolerated in Peru. When a man was reduced by poverty or misfortune, (it could hardly be by fault,) the arm of the law was stretched out to minister relief; not the stinted relief of private charity, nor that which is doled out, drop by drop, as it were, from the frozen reservoirs of ”the parish,” but in generous measure, bringing no humiliation to the object of it, and placing him on a level with the rest of his countrymen. *39
[Footnote 39: ”Era tanta la orden que tenia en todos sus Reinos y provincias, que no consentia haver ningun Indio pobre ni menesteroso, porque havia orden i formas para ello sin que los pueblos reciviesen vexacion ni molestia, porque el Inga lo suplia de sus tributos.” (Conq. i Pob. del Piru, Ms.) The Licentiate Ondegardo sees only a device of Satan in these provisions of the Peruvian law, by which the old, the infirm, and the poor were rendered, in a manner, independent of their children, and those nearest of kin, on whom they would naturally have leaned for support; no surer way to harden the heart, he considers, than by thus disengaging it from the sympathies of humanity; and no circ.u.mstance has done more, he concludes, to counteract the influence and spread of Christianity among the natives. (Rel.
Seg., Ms.) The views are ingenious, but, in a country where the people had no property, as in Peru, there would seem to be no alternative for the supernumeraries, but to receive support from government or to starve.]
No man could be rich, no man could be poor, in Peru; but all might enjoy, and did enjoy, a competence. Ambition, avarice, the love of change, the morbid spirit of discontent, those pa.s.sions which most agitate the minds of men, found no place in the bosom of the Peruvian. The very condition of his being seemed to be at war with change. He moved on in the same unbroken circle in which his fathers had moved before him, and in which his children were to follow. It was the object of the Incas to infuse into their subjects a spirit of pa.s.sive obedience and tranquillity, - a perfect acquiescence in the established order of things. In this they fully succeeded. The Spaniards who first visited the country are emphatic in their testimony, that no government could have been better suited to the genius of the people; and no people could have appeared more contented with their lot, or more devoted to their government. *40
[Footnote 40: Acosta, lib. 6, cap. 12, 15. - Sarmiento, Relacion, Ms., cap. 10]
Those who may distrust the accounts of Peruvian industry will find their doubts removed on a visit to the country. The traveller still meets, especially in the central regions of the table-land, with memorials of the past, remains of temples, palaces, fortresses, terraced mountains, great military roads, aqueducts, and other public works, which, whatever degree of science they may display in their execution, astonish him by their number, the ma.s.sive character of the materials, and the grandeur of the design. Among them, perhaps the most remarkable are the great roads, the broken remains of which are still in sufficient preservation to attest their former magnificence.
There were many of these roads, traversing different parts of the kingdom; but the most considerable were the two which extended from Quito to Cuzco, and, again diverging from the capital, continued in a southern direction towards Chili.
One of these roads pa.s.sed over the grand plateau, and the other along the lowlands on the borders of the ocean. The former was much the more difficult achievement, from the character of the country. It was conducted over pathless sierras buried in snow; galleries were cut for leagues through the living rock; rivers were crossed by means of bridges that swung suspended in the air; precipices were scaled by stairways hewn out of the native bed; ravines of hideous depth were filled up with solid masonry; in short, all the difficulties that beset a wild and mountainous region, and which might appall the most courageous engineer of modern times, were encountered and successfully overcome. The length of the road, of which scattered fragments only remain, is variously estimated, from fifteen hundred to two thousand miles; and stone pillars, in the manner of European milestones, were erected at stated intervals of somewhat more than a league, all along the route. Its breadth scarcely exceeded twenty feet. *41 It was built of heavy flags of freestone, and in some parts, at least, covered with a bituminous cement, which time has made harder than the stone itself. In some places, where the ravines had been filled up with masonry, the mountain torrents, wearing on it for ages, have gradually eaten a way through the base, and left the superinc.u.mbent ma.s.s - such is the cohesion of the materials - still spanning the valley like an arch! *42
[Footnote 41: Dec. de la Aud. Real., Ms.
”Este camino hecho por valles ondos y por sierras altas, por montes de nieve, por tremedales de agua y por pena viva y junto a rios furiosos por estas partes y ballano y empedrado por las laderas, bien sacado por las sierras, deshechado, por las penas socavado, por junto a los Rios sus paredes, entre nieves con escalones y descanso, por todas partes limpio barrido des...o...b..ado, lleno de aposentos, de depositos de tesoros, de Templos del Sol, de Postas que havia en este camino.” Sarmiento, Relacion, Ms., cap. 60.]
[Footnote 42: ”On avait comble les vides et les ravins par de grandes ma.s.ses de maconnerie. Les torrents qui descendent des hauteurs apres des pluies abondantes, avaient creuse les endroits les moins solides, et s'etaient fraye une voie sous le chemin, le laissant ainsi suspendu en l'air comme un pont fait d'une seule piece.” (Velasco, Hist. de Quito, tom. l. p. 206.) This writer speaks from personal observation, having examined and measured different parts of the road, in the latter part of the road, in the latter part of the last century. The Spanish scholar will find in Appendix, No. 2., an animated description of this magnificent work, and of the obstacles encountered in the execution of it, in a pa.s.sage borrowed from Sarmiento, who saw it in the days of the Incas.]
Over some of the boldest streams it was necessary to construct suspension bridges, as they are termed, made of the tough fibres of the maguey, or of the osier of the country, which has an extraordinary degree of tenacity and strength. These osiers were woven into cables of the thickness of a man's body. The huge ropes, then stretched across the water, were conducted through rings or holes cut in immense b.u.t.tresses of stone raised on the opposite banks of the river, and there secured to heavy pieces of timber. Several of these enormous cables, bound together, formed a bridge, which, covered with planks, well secured and defended by a railing of the same osier materials on the sides, afforded a safe pa.s.sage for the traveller. The length of this aerial bridge, sometimes exceeding two hundred feet, caused it, confined, as it was, only at the extremities, to dip with an alarming inclination towards the centre, while the motion given to it by the pa.s.senger occasioned an oscillation still more frightful, as his eye wandered over the dark abyss of waters that foamed and tumbled many a fathom beneath. Yet these light and fragile fabrics were crossed without fear by the Peruvians, and are still retained by the Spaniards over those streams which, from the depth or impetuosity of the current, would seem impracticable for the usual modes of conveyance. The wider and more tranquil waters were crossed on balsas - a kind of raft still much used by the natives - to which sails were attached, furnis.h.i.+ng the only instance of this higher kind of navigation among the American Indians. *43
[Footnote 43: Garcila.s.so, Com. Real., Parte 1, lib. 3, cap. 7.
A particular account of these bridges, as they are still to be seen in different parts of Peru, may be found in Humboldt. (Vues des Cordilleres, p. 230, et seq.) The balsas are described with equal minuteness by Stevenson. Residence in America, vol. II. p.
222. et seq.]
The other great road of the Incas lay through the level country between the Andes and the ocean. It was constructed in a different manner, as demanded by the nature of the ground, which was for the most part low, and much of it sandy. The causeway was raised on a high embankment of earth, and defended on either side by a parapet or wall of clay; and trees and odoriferous shrubs were planted along the margin, regaling the sense of the traveller with their perfumes, and refres.h.i.+ng him by their shades, so grateful under the burning sky of the tropics. In the strips of sandy waste, which occasionally intervened, where the light and volatile soil was incapable of sustaining a road, huge piles, many of them to be seen at this day, were driven into the ground to indicate the route to the traveller. *44
[Footnote 44: Cieza de Leon, Cronica, cap. 60. - Relacion del Primer Descubrimiento de la Costa y Mar del Sur, Ms.
This anonymous doc.u.ment of one of the early Conquerors contains a minute and probably trustworthy account of both the high roads, which the writer saw in their glory, and which he ranks among the greatest wonders of the world.]
All along these highways, caravansaries, or tambos, as they were called, were erected, at the distance of ten or twelve miles from each other, for the accommodation, more particularly, of the Inca and his suite, and those who journeyed on the public business.
There were few other travellers in Peru. Some of these buildings were on an extensive scale, consisting of a fortress, barracks, and other military works, surrounded by a parapet of stone, and covering a large tract of ground. These were evidently destined for the accommodation of the imperial armies, when on their march across the country. - The care of the great roads was committed to the districts through which they pa.s.sed, and a large number of hands was constantly employed under the Incas to keep them in repair. This was the more easily done in a country where the mode of travelling was altogether on foot; though the roads are said to have been so nicely constructed, that a carriage might have rolled over them as securely as on any of the great roads of Europe. *45 Still, in a region where the elements of fire and water are both actively at work in the business of destruction, they must, without constant supervision, have gradually gone to decay. Such has been their fate under the Spanish conquerors, who took no care to enforce the admirable system for their preservation adopted by the Incas. Yet the broken portions that still survive, here and there, like the fragments of the great Roman roads scattered over Europe, bear evidence to their primitive grandeur, and have drawn forth the eulogium from a discriminating traveller, usually not too profuse in his panegyric, that ”the roads of the Incas were among the most useful and stupendous works ever executed by man.” *46
[Footnote 45: Relacion del Primer Descub., Ms. - Cieza de Leon, Cronica, cap. 37. - Zarate, Conq. del Peru, lib. 1, cap. 11. - Garcila.s.so, Com. Real., Parte 1, lib. 9, cap. 13.]
[Footnote 46: ”Cette chaussee, bordee de grandes pierres de taille, puet etre comparee aux plus belles routes des Romains que j'aie vues en Italie, en France et en Espagne . . . . . . Le grand chemin de l'Inca, un des ouvrages les plus utiles, et en meme temps des plus gigantesques que les hommes aient execute.”
Humboldt, Vues des Cordilleres, p. 294.]
The system of communication through their dominions was still further improved by the Peruvian sovereigns, by the introduction of posts, in the same manner as was done by the Aztecs. The Peruvian posts, however, established on all the great routes that conducted to the capital, were on a much more extended plan than those in Mexico. All along these routes, small buildings were erected, at the distance of less than five miles asunder, *47 in each of which a number of runners, or chasquis, as they were called, were stationed to carry forward the despatches of government. *48 These despatches were either verbal, or conveyed by means of quipus, and sometimes accompanied by a thread of the crimson fringe worn round the temples of the Inca, which was regarded with the same implicit deference as the signet ring of an Oriental despot. *49
[Footnote 47: The distance between the posthouses is variously stated; most writers not estimating it at more than three fourths of a league. I have preferred the authority of Ondegardo, who usually writes with more conscientiousness and knowledge of his ground than most of his contemporaries.]
[Footnote 48: The term chasqui, according to Montesinos, signifies ”one that receives a thing.” (Me. Antiguas, Ms., cap.
7) But Garcila.s.so, a better authority for his own tongue, says it meant ”one who makes an exchange.” Com. Real., Parte 1, lib. 6, cap. 8.]
[Footnote 49: ”Con vn hilo de esta Borla, entregado a uno de aquellos Orejones, governaban la Tierra, i proveian lo que querian con maior obediencia, que en ninguna Provincia del Mundo se ha visto tener a las Provissiones de su Rei.” Zarate, Conq.
del Peru, lib. 1, cap. 9.]