THROUGH THE INCA COUNTRY
Slowly at first we rose, skirting the great foothills or gently
ascending valleys and always crossing some dismantled relic of the dead
Inca empire. Then we plunged boldly into the mountain chain teetering
over spidery bridges across gorges whose bottom was a ribbon of foam or
where the rails followed a winding shelf cut in the face of the
mountain, where an empty beer bottle flung from the car window broke on
the tracks below over which the train had been crawling a quarter of an
hour before. With the increasing altitude--the summit of the pass was
still ahead and something over fifteen thousand feet above sea
level--the soroche, mountain sickness, began to be manifest in the car
in deathly, nauseating dizziness until it closely resembled the
woebegone cabin of a sightseeing steamer at a yacht race. The engineers
had been discussing the traces of the old Inca works with special
reference to their irrigation systems, of which there was generally a
ruin visible out of one window or the other. Special emphasis had been
laid on the total lack of survival of any instruments or methods by
which this hydraulic engineering had been calculated or performed. There
is a trace of one irrigation ditch something like one hundred and
twenty-five miles in length--a set of levels for such a project even
to-day would be a matter for nice calculation. The Incas simply went
ahead and did it, some way. Their engineering had been turned over and
over and compared with the great engineering works of antiquity.
"Cut and try," said one engineer in conclusion; "that was the way these
old Inca people made their irrigation systems. Put a gang of Indians to
digging a ditch from where the water supply was to come; then let in the
water as they dug--in a little ditch--and dig deeper or dike it up to
the water level as it showed in the trench. When they had that little
ditch finished there was their level; all they had to do was to dig it
as big and deep and wide as they wanted."
It looked reasonable; there was no dissent. We swung around a curve and
a vista opened out of a ragged valley, broken by gorges and cañons with
sheer walls of soft rock.
One of the other engineers chuckled. "Look at that!" He pointed up the
valley and his finger followed one of the cañons. "How did they cut and
try on that proposition?"
There, for as far as the eye could follow the turnings of the cañon way
was the line of a ditch, an aqueduct, that hung some twenty to fifty
feet below the edge of the cliff. It had been cut into the wall of rock,
leaving a lip along the outer edge to hold in the current. Here and
there, where the ragged trace of the cañon made projecting, buttressing
angles, the aqueduct had been driven as a short-cut tunnel straight
through. Here and there great sections of the cañon walls had fallen,
while occasionally it appeared as though the outer lip had been
destroyed by man-made efforts--one of the old Spanish methods of
hurrying up a little ready tribute--but never had there been a
possibility of using any "cut and try" method of its construction.
"Well," remarked the first, "there goes _that_ theory--and it isn't
original with me either--for I reckon they had to run that level first
and chalk it up on the rock to cut by in some kind of a way."
It is a trifle staggering, when you think of it, that a nation that was
able to solve engineering difficulties like these, to turn an arid
desert into a teeming farm and to organize and administer a vast empire,
should have been wantonly destroyed all for the lack of a little
knowledge of the combination of saltpetre, sulphur, and charcoal. And
the wretched waste! Think of that church-benisoned riffraff of the
medieval slums, recognizing only the greed for raw gold, wasting a whole
people in torture to satisfy the rapacious gluttony of a Spanish court.
Sometimes the train crawled along no faster than a bare walk, so steep
were the grades and sharp the turns. There was nothing of the scenic
splendor such as one may get in the railroads among the Alps of
Switzerland and where, as one climbs, one may look down and back into
the green landscape of a panorama. The scale was too great, the sense of
proportion and distance was subdued; a stretch great enough for a Swiss
panorama was one vast gorge twisting its way among the vaster masses of
the Andes. The crest of the pass itself was higher than Mount Rainier.
Sometimes the train passed over high plateaus where occasionally in the
distance could be seen the low house of some hacienda or the grouped
huts of Indians while beyond in the great distance the plain was rimmed
with a jagged line of snow-capped peaks. The winds swept across the
level stretches, raising an assortment of sand-spouts and dusty
cyclones. They were of all sizes, from tiny _remolinos_ that died in a
few puffs to towering whirlwinds that spiraled fifteen hundred feet in
the air with a base of fifty feet that juggled boulders in its vortex
like so many cork chips. They would move leisurely for a short space and
then dart like a flash in an erratic path. Sometimes fifteen or twenty
of these would be in sight at the same time. Herds of llamas grazed over
the plain, sometimes a flock of sheep or an occasional horse, each with
a wary eye on the whirlwinds; if one approached too near they galloped
off. Not infrequently a herd of guanacos would gallop off at the
approach of the train or could be seen grazing in the distance.
From beyond the high plain the grades lessened and the train rolled
along at a fine speed--for South America. At rare intervals there was a
station and a short stop, usually the lonely outpost of some mining
company. Then the grades began to slope our way and in place of the dry
bunch grass there were rolling hills and gentle valleys of soft green
grass. Little lakes nestled in the hills, their cold waters black with
wildfowl that scarcely fluttered up as the train shot by. We were making
the slight drop down to that vast inter-Andean plateau that stretches
from Bolivia on up into Ecuador.
A cold winter sunset sank beyond the cold purple of the western peaks; a
couple of feeble, smoking and smelling oil lamps irritated the darkness
and added their fragrance to the close atmosphere--for in the bitter
winds and biting cold of the high altitude the windows had long since
been closed.
Juliaca was reached, a junction by which one may connect for Cuzco, the
old Inca capital. It showed in the blackness as a few dingy lights. Here
the car emptied itself of all but half a dozen bound for Bolivia across
the lake. Once again we wheezed under way and presently with a grand
celebration from the engine's whistle the train pulled slowly into the
train yards of the terminal at Puno and as we climbed out there came the
light, musical splash of freshwater surf and the unmistakable smell of
water. Dimly under the starlight there loomed the form of a boat and the
dim reflecting surface of the water was picked out by the dark patches
of the native Indian craft. It was the great Lake Titicaca.
Down at the end of the stone dock lay the _Yavari_ a slim, patched boat,
twice lengthened, whose hull and engines had been packed piecemeal on
the backs of burros, llamas, and mules over the Andes to the Titicaca
shores over fifty years ago. It had taken a year to do it. It was the
first steamer on the lake and wonderful was the amazement of the native
population as they beheld this veritable monster of the seas--some sixty
feet in length--shoot mysteriously through the water at the prodigious
speed of some seven miles an hour.
Forward, on either side, was an array of tiny staterooms, each about the
size of a wardrobe into which penetrated a most grateful warmth from the
boilers. A scrap of tallow candle threw the suspicious looking bunks
into shadow and it was not long before I was in one under my own
blankets. From the little cabin aft came the clatter of the native
travelers over a late lunch served by a bare-legged Quechua sailor; it
was in the main some kind of a hash preparation loaded with _aji_, a
venomous pepper that will penetrate the stoutest stomach. I had tried it
and having been both warned and punished in the same mouthful, I was
glad to seek the wardrobe bunk to weep it out of my system in cramped
solitude.
In the first streaks of dawn the _Yavari_ backed out from the long dock
and swung out upon the crystal-clear, blue waters of Lake Titicaca. On
the other side of the dock at a disabled angle and under repairs lay the
more pretentious steamer _Coya_--literally the _Inca Queen_--with
diminutive bridge and chart-house and all the trappings of a deep sea
liner shrunk and crowded into small compass. Varieties of water fowl
dotted the water's edge in large flocks busily at breakfast and almost
indifferent to the occasional straw or rather reed canoe of the Indians.
All day the _Yavari_ skirted a coast that rolled back in long hills or
at times came down to the lake in a steep bluff. Very slowly the lake is
receding. Old Inca towns once evidently on the shore line are back from
the water; since Pizarro's time the distance is a matter of miles. In
the little party on the boat the old tales of the Inca gold and
Atahualpa's tribute became naturally a leading topic. The country from
the highlands of Colombia down to Chile are filled with legends of
secreted treasure and lost mines or caches, for Pizarro did not wait for
Atahualpa to pay his ransom--he burned him at the stake when he realized
that the Inca emperor could actually get together a council chamber
packed to the ceiling with raw gold.
There were scores of llama trains coming down the Andes from the
uttermost parts of the empire, a veritable flood of gold was on its way
to secure the release of the sacred Inca chief. It never arrived and
somewhere up and down some three thousand miles of Andes there are
legends galore of Inca tribute treasure concealed by the Indians on the
burning of their king. There are legends of monkish parchment maps left
by early missionaries that locate rediscoveries with apparent exactness
up to certain points, of mines relocated by accident; in one case, a
drunken Scotch donkey-engine driver took up and finally married a
wretched Aymará mine-woman, a half-human creature; she finally revealed
to him the location of one of the old concealed mines and the two worked
it together. As the story runs, they acquired fabulous wealth, he longed
for Scotland and went back taking her with him and importing for her use
the _chuno_ and _chalona_ that was her only food. He played fair.
Finally he died there and his widow managed to get back to her own
mountains where she was finally poisoned for her money or her secret.
Legend also has it that around the city of Cuzco--the seat of the
Incas--there was a great golden chain and that this, upon the approach
of Pizarro, was dropped into Titicaca. It is always a steamer discussion
as to how soon the lake will have receded enough to make its discovery a
matter of possibility. At the possible place where it was dropped in the
engineer of the _Coya_ holds that the lake has receded some six miles
since the conquest.
There is also the legend of the immense treasure train coming down in
sections from what is now Colombia and Ecuador which was on the mountain
trails at the time of Atahualpa's death; evidence is said to exist of
the despatch of this gold which would have more than completed the
ransom. It never arrived, it was never heard of again after the burning
at the stake, but it is a common belief to-day that there are many
Indians to whom these matters are tribal secrets. There are common tales
of odd Indians, neither Quechua nor Aymará, those being the two great
Indian divisions, suddenly appearing from time to time and taking part
in some Indian fiesta of peculiar importance, although evidently all the
fiestas now have been given an ecclesiastical significance--and then as
completely disappearing. There are rumors of tribes and even cities
buried in the eastern slopes of the Andes from which these irregular
excursions come.
Skirting the shore until the late afternoon, the _Yavari_ struck out
into the ocean horizon that stretched away in the blue distance, until
we raised the Island of the Sun and the Island of the Moon. The former
is reputed to have been the summer residence of the Incas and there
still remain the ruins of palaces together with a great basin or
reservoir hewn from the solid rock and traditionally known as the Inca's
bath tub. To the other island is ascribed the home of the wives and
concubines of the Incas, or perhaps a training school where they were
domiciled until, like an army reserve, they were called to the colors.
From each of them the _Yavari_ took on a little freight, a few sacks of
_cebada_, barley, and chuño, the little, dried up, original, native
American potato, not much larger than a nutmeg. The cargo was on board a
heavy, sluggish reed boat, a big affair in which burros and even
bullocks are carried to or from these lake islands--of which there are
many scattered here and there--and the mainland.
All the western slopes of the Andes are treeless, the high plains are
treeless, and the few poles that are used in the thatched roofs of the
Indian huts are dragged out from the _montaña_, as the interior over the
final Andean passes is called. These skinny little poles are regular
articles of trade. Therefore, the Lake Titicaca Indian has evolved his
reed canoe and boat.
The reed, which grows along the shores of the lake, is bound in round
bundles tapering at both ends; these bundles in turn are lashed together
to form the canoes, from the little bundles to the larger boats that can
carry freight. Sometimes a mat sail, also from these same reeds, is
hoisted on a couple of poles lashed together at the apex and at the base
braced against the inside of the clumsy craft. The steering is done with
an oar made from a pole and a board, while similar oars are used by the
crew who drive a wooden pin for an oarlock at any convenient spot along
the reed-bundle gunwale. In this kind of an outfit they put out on the
lake fishing for the little fish that alone seem to have survived in the
cold waters, or shuffling across the waves from the coast to one little
sugar-loaf island after another in their native trade. In Pizarro's day
it was probably the same--costume, craft, and barter.
[Illustration: In Pizarro's Day It Was Probably the Same--Costume,
Craft, and Barter]
One more night in the cramped wardrobe of the _Yavari_--during which my
solution of alcohol and salicylic acid procured in flea-bitten
Lima--against other similar emergencies--did valiant service, and in the
morning we awoke to the clatter of the Indian mate and his Quechua crew
as they made the little steamer fast to the dock at Guaqui. From here a
railroad runs over a continuation of the level high plain and past the
ruins of Tiajuanaca to the edge of the plateau above La Paz. The valley
of La Paz is a vast crack torn in the level plain as by some primeval
cataclysmic blast; on the farther side there is the tremendous peak of
Illomani with a cape of perpetual snow far down its grim flanks; far off
in the ragged valley and some two thousand feet below the railroad
terminal is the capital of Bolivia, La Paz. Once no trolley wound its
way down the steep sides, and in those days there still gathered at the
station every Deadwood and express coach that had ever existed at the
north. A crew of runners would meet the train, pile all the freight and
passengers that were possible inside, lash the rest on the roof, and
then with their four or six horse teams--never an animal free from a
collar gall--on a dead run race for a place at the edge of the mesa in
order to be the first on the winding trail that led downward to the
city. Whips cracking, horses on the jump, coaches swinging and banging,
here a hairy rawhide trunk goes off, and there an Indian hotel mozo is
snapped straight out in the rush as he tries to crawl up on the baggage
rack behind; and then the dropping trail in a whirl of dust over a road
scarcely better than a dry creek bottom until, at last, over the rough
cobbles of La Paz itself, to pull up at the door of the hotel with the
rough horses in a lather and with white eyes and heaving sides. That was
the way it was once. Now it is different; you can ride down sedately in
a trolley car and walk into the hotel with never a hair turned.