CUZCO AND THE LAND OF THE INCAS
None of the countries of South America, except Chile, has been
demarcated by Nature from its neighbour; it is to historical events
that they owe their present boundaries. This is eminently true of
Peru, which is, save on her ocean side, marked off from the adjoining
countries neither by river line nor by mountain line nor by desert. Her
territory includes regions naturally very dissimilar, about each of
which it is proper to say a few words here.
The western strip, bordering on the Andes and the Pacific, is
nearly all pure desert, sterile and uninhabited, except where those
river-valleys referred to in the last chapter descend to the sea.
The eastern part, lying on the farther side of the Andes, and called
by the people the Montaña, subsides from the mountains into an
immense alluvial plain and is covered by a tropical forest, thick and
trackless, unhealthy for Europeans, and inhabited, except where a few
trading towns have been built on the rivers, only by Indian tribes,
none of them much above savagery, and many still heathen. It is a
region most of which was until lately virtually unexplored and thought
not worth exploring. Within recent years, however, the demand for india
rubber has brought in the agents of various trading companies, who have
established camps and stations wherever the rivers give access to the
forests and send the rubber down the Amazon to be shipped to Europe
and North America. The harmless and timid Indians have in some places
been seized and forced to work as slaves by ruffians supplying rubber
to these companies, wretches apparently of mixed Spanish and native
blood, who have been emboldened by the impunity which remoteness from
regular governmental control promises to perpetrate hideous cruelties
upon their helpless victims. It is a country of amazing natural wealth,
for the spurs of the Andean range are full of minerals; there are
superb timber trees in the forests, and the soil, wherever the trees
and luxuriant undergrowths have been cleared off from it, has proved
extremely fertile, fit for the growth of nearly every tropical product.
Eastern Peru is physically a part, and not the largest part, of an
immense region which includes the easternmost districts of Colombia and
Ecuador upon the north and of Bolivia on the south, as well as a still
larger area in western Brazil over which the same climatic conditions
prevail--great heat and great humidity producing a vegetation so
prolific that it is hard for man to hold his own against the forces
of nature. This is indeed the reason why these tracts have been left
until now a wilderness, suffering from the superabundance of that
moisture, the want of which has made a wilderness of the lands along
the Pacific coast. To this region, however, and to its future I shall
return in a later chapter,[14] and mention it here only because it is
politically a part, and may hereafter become the most productive part,
of the Peruvian Republic. The real Peru, the Peru of the ancient Indian
civilization and of the Spanish colonial Empire, is the central region
which lies along the Andes between these thinly settled, far eastern
forests and the barren deserts of the Pacific coast.
Central Peru is altogether a mountain land, and is accordingly called
by the people "the Sierra." It is traversed by two (more or less
parallel) ranges of the Andes, the eastern and the western Cordilleras,
which with their spurs and their branching ridges cover a large part
of its area. It includes what is called the _Puno_, a comparatively
level plateau, some seventy to one hundred miles wide and enclosed
by these two main lines of the Cordilleras. Between the main ranges
and their branches, there lie deep valleys formed by the courses of
the four or five great rivers which, flowing in a northwesterly or
northeasterly direction and ultimately turning eastward, unite to form
the mighty Amazon. This Sierra region is, roughly speaking, about
three hundred miles long (from northwest to southeast) and one to two
hundred miles wide; but of this area only a small part is fit for
settled human habitation. The average height of the plateau is from
ten thousand to thirteen thousand feet above sea level, and that of
the region fit for pasture on the slopes and tops of the ridges from
ten thousand to fourteen thousand feet--the snow line varying from
fifteen to nineteen thousand. As these slopes give pasture to llamas
and alpacas and sheep, and in some favoured places to cattle, so
in the less arid and less sandy tracts of the plateau there is some
tillage. But the parts best suited for agriculture are to be found in
the valleys, especially in so much of them as lies between ten thousand
and four thousand feet above sea-level, for below five thousand feet
their conditions become tropical and resemble those of the Amazonian
forests. In these valleys the soil, especially where it is volcanic, is
extremely fertile, but many of them are so narrow and their declivities
so steep that cultivation is scarcely possible. No one accordingly who
has studied the physical features of this country need be surprised to
find that while the total area of Peru is about seven hundred thousand
square miles, its population is estimated at only four million six
hundred thousand. He may indeed be more surprised at the accounts which
Spanish historians almost contemporary with the Conquest give of the
far larger population, perhaps ten millions, that existed in the days
of the Incas. The great falling off, if those accounts be correct, is
explicable partly by the slaughter perpetrated by the first Spaniards
and the oppressions practised by their successors during nearly three
centuries, partly by the fact that districts near the coast which the
remains of irrigation works shew to have been formerly cultivated are
now sterile for want of water.
It was in the central highlands, at an altitude of from eight thousand
feet and upwards that there arose such civilization as the ancient
Peruvians developed: and its origin here rather than elsewhere in
South America may be mainly due to favourable climatic conditions.
There was enough rain to provide grass for animals and make tillage
possible, and enough warmth to enable men to live in health, yet not
enough either of rain or of heat to make nature too strong for man and
to enfeeble man's capacities for work.
Temperature and rainfall resembled generally those of the plateau of
Mexico, a region somewhat lower, but farther from the Equator: and it
was under similarly fortunate conditions of climate and agricultural
possibilities that the races inhabiting those highlands had made,
when Europeans arrived, some considerable advances in the arts of
life. This central Peruvian area is to-day, with the exception of the
irrigated banks of a few streams reaching the Pacific, the only part
of the country where either an agricultural or a pastoral population
can support itself. The rest of Peru depends upon its mines, chiefly of
silver and copper,--a source of wealth uncertain at best. It is only
in a few valleys, the most productive of which I am going to describe,
that the agricultural population occupies any large continuous area. As
a rule each community is confined to its own valley and cut off from
the others either by mountains or by high, bare ridges on which only
sheep can be kept, most of them too high and bleak even for pasture.[15]
There is no better way of conveying some notion of the character of
this central region, the true Peru, than by describing the country
through which I passed by railway from Arequipa eastward to Lake
Titicaca and thence northward to Cuzco, the ancient Inca capital. This
railroad follows the line of the most important through route which war
and commerce took in pre-Conquest times. It is the Southern Railroad of
Peru, the main highway of the country. The section from Mollendo to the
plateau at Juliaca was built many years ago, but the extension to Cuzco
had been completed and opened less than a year before our visit. Both
sections have been constructed by engineers from the United States,
and the way in which the difficulties of extremely steep ascents and
cuttings along precipitous slopes have been overcome reflects great
credit on their skill. The gauge is the normal one. The line is owned
by the Peruvian Corporation, a company registered in London, and under
the energetic management of North American engineers it is doing a
great deal to open up regions in which till some ten years ago there
was not even a road fit for wheels. The passenger traffic is of course
very small, and passenger trains run only once a day to Arequipa and
thrice a week to Juliaca and Cuzco.
Quitting Arequipa on the southwestern side, the line winds up to the
north and then to the east across a rugged and dreary region of rocky
hill slopes, pierced by deep gorges through some of which brooks come
down, fed by snow beds far above. It follows the line of a canyon, and
wherever there is level ground at the bottom, some bright green strips
of cultivation appear on the margin of the stream, with a few Indian
huts; so even these upper regions, cold and desolate as they are, are
not so wholly desolate as the Pampa below. The view looking back over
the city lying in its green oasis, with a stony desert all round, is
superb. As we climb higher, the mass of Ampato and other giants of
the western Cordillera deep with snow, rise in the northwest, while
westward one sees beyond the reddish grey mountains through which we
had mounted to Arequipa from the desert Pampa, the gleaming sands of
that desert, and behind them again, just on the horizon, the long,
low bank of clouds that covers the Coast Range. Here at nine or ten
thousand feet, one looks over the white upper surface of these clouds.
Resting on the western edge of the Pampa, they stretch far out over
the Pacific and veil it from sight. Thus steadily mounting, and seeing
below in a ravine the hamlet of Yura, where is a mineral spring whose
pleasantly effervescent water is drunk all over Peru, the train winds
round the northern flank of Chachani under its huge black precipices.
Behind it and behind El Misti, which shews as a symmetrical cone on
this side as well as on that turned towards Arequipa, we entered at a
height of about eleven thousand feet a region typical of the Peruvian
uplands. There was plenty of coarse grass, studded with alpine flowers,
a few belonging to European genera. Llamas and alpacas were grazing on
the slopes, herded by Indians: there were sheep, and a few cattle, and
in one place we thought we caught sight among low bushes of a group of
vicuñas. This is a creature like the llama, but smaller, and useless as
a beast of burden, because untameable. It roams over the hills between
eleven thousand and fifteen thousand feet, and produces the finest of
all the South American wools, of a delicate light brown tint, silky and
soft as the fur of a chinchilla.
The scenery was strange and wild, not without a certain sombre
grandeur. Below was the Chile River, the same which passes Arequipa,
and to which we had returned after our circuit round Chachani. It was
flowing in a deep channel which it had cut out for itself between walls
of black lava: and the wide bare hollows beyond were filled with old
lava streams and scattered ridges and piles of rock. To the southwest
El Misti and his two mighty neighbours shut in the valley, and away to
the south huge mountains, among them one conspicuous volcanic cone,
were dimly seen, snowy summits mingled with the gathering clouds,
for at this height rain and snow showers are frequent. The cone was
probably Ubinas, the only active volcano in this neighbourhood, about
sixteen thousand feet high.
Still mounting to the eastward, the line rose over gentler slopes to
a broad, bleak, and wind-swept ridge where tiny rivulets welling up
out of pools in the yellowish grass were flowing west to the Pacific
and eastward to the inland basin of Lake Titicaca. Large white birds
like wild geese were fluttering over us. Here were a few huts of the
Indian shepherds near the buildings of the station; and here a cross
marked the _Cumbre_ or top of the pass, which is called the Crucero
Alto, 14,666 feet above sea level. Higher ground cut off the view to
the north and clouds obscured the view to the east, but to the south we
could discern some of the lofty summits of the western Cordillera on
the watershed of which we stood. Thunderstorms were growling on both
sides, and out of black clouds far in the northwest towards Coropuna
came bright flashes of chain lightning. At this height the country is
comparatively open and the valleys shallow, and this, along with the
wonderful clearness of the air, enables the eye to range to a vast
distance. This northwestern thunderstorm which we were watching was
possibly a hundred miles away. We were awed by the mere vastness of
the landscape, in which we looked over tracts it would take many days'
journeys to traverse, and saw mountains eighteen thousand feet high
separated by nameless valleys no one ever enters, with hills and rocks
tumbled about in chaotic confusion, as though the work of world-shaping
had here just begun. Stepping out into the bitter wind, we walked about
awaiting signs of the _Soroche_ or mountain sickness so much dreaded by
Andean travellers, especially when they come straight up from the coast
to this vast height, as high as the Matterhorn or the highest peaks of
the Rocky Mountains. The air was very cold and very thin, seeming not
to fill the lungs. But nothing happened.
From the Crucero Alto the railway descends rapidly for two thousand
feet past two large lakes, embosomed in steep green hills--they
reminded me of Loch Garve in Ross-shire--till it reaches a wide, bare,
desolate flat, evidently part of the former bed of Lake Titicaca,
which was once far larger than it is to-day. Here we were in that
central plateau which the people call the _Puno_ and which surrounds
the lake, its lower part cultivated and peopled. At the large village
of Juliaca, whence a branch line runs to the port of Puno on the lake
farther to the southeast, the main line turns off to the north, still
over the flat land which, where not too marshy, is under tillage. The
inhabitants were all Indians, and only at Tirapata, which is a point
of supply for the mines on the eastern slope of the mountains, were
white people to be seen. Far to the northeast, perhaps one hundred
miles away, could be discerned a serrated line of snowy mountains, part
of the eastern Cordillera which divides the Titicaca basin from the
Amazonian valleys. At last the hills begin to close in and the plain
becomes a valley, narrowing as we travel farther north till, at a sharp
bend in the valley which opens out a new landscape, we pass under a
rock tower sixteen thousand feet high, like one of the aiguilles of
Mont Blanc immensely magnified, and see in front of us a magnificent
mountain mass streaming with glaciers. Two great peaks of from eighteen
thousand to nineteen thousand feet are visible on this side, the
easternmost one a long snow ridge resembling the Lyskamm above Zermatt;
and behind it there appears a still loftier one which may approach or
exceed twenty thousand feet. This is the Sierra of Vilcanota, the
central knot of the mountain system of Peru, as in it branches of the
western inosculate with those of the eastern Cordillera. Though very
steep, the highest peaks seemed to me, surveying them from a distance
of fifteen or twenty miles, to offer no great difficulties to an active
and experienced climber, apart of course from the rarity of the air
at this immense height, a difficulty which, while negligible by many,
is serious to some otherwise excellent mountaineers. The fact that
the railroad passes close to these splendid summits gives unusual
facilities for an assault on them, since the transportation of warm
night coverings and of food is one of the chief difficulties in a cold
and thinly peopled region. As none of the tops seems to have been yet
scaled, they deserve the attention of aspiring alpinists.
Above the village of Santa Rosa the valley is uninhabited, a deep,
grassy hollow between the Vilcanota group of peaks on the east and
a lower though lofty range on the west, with piles of stones at
intervals, and now and then we met or passed a string of llamas
carrying their loads, for the railway has not wholly superseded the
ancient modes of transportation.
Just at the very highest point of the col or pass of La Raya 14,518
feet above sea-level, in which the valley ends, the westernmost of
these Vilcanota peaks is visible on the east behind a deep gorge, the
upper part of which is filled by a glacier. From this glacier there
descends a torrent which on the level top of the pass spreads out into
a small shallow marsh or lake which the Peruvians held sacred as the
source of the sacred river Vilcamayu: and from this lake the water
flows partly south into Lake Titicaca, partly north into the Amazon and
the Atlantic. Here indeed we were looking upon one of the chief sources
of that gigantic stream, for of all the rivers that join to make the
Amazon this is among the longest. During its course till it meets the
river Marañon, it is called first Vilcamayu, then Urubamba, and finally
Ucayali. The pass itself, a broad smooth saddle not unlike, if one
may compare great things with small, the glen and watershed between
Dalnaspidal and Dalwhinnie which marks the summit level of the Highland
Railway in Scotland, has no small historic interest, for it has been
a highway for armies as well as for commerce from the remotest times.
The ancient track from Cuzco to the southern boundary of the Inca
empire in Chile passed over it. By it the Spanish Conquistadores went
backward and forward in their campaign of subjugation and in the fierce
struggles among themselves which followed, nor was it less important in
the War of Independence a century ago. Till the railway was recently
opened, thousands of llamas bearing goods traversed it every year. What
one now sees is nothing more than a fairly well-beaten mule track, and
I could neither discern any traces nor learn that traces have been
discovered either of the wall which the Inca rulers are said to have
built across it as a defence from the Collao tribes to the south, or
of the paved road which, as the old writers say, they constructed to
connect Cuzco with the southern provinces.
Were such a spot in Switzerland or Tyrol, its lonely beauty would be
broken by a summer hotel for health-seeking tourists; nor could one
imagine a keener and more delicious air than this, though people with
weak hearts might find it trying. As soon as we had got a little way
down from the top, the lungs began to feel easier, for the denser and
warmer air of its lower levels comes up on the northerly wind which we
met in descending. The valley, still smooth and grassy, sinks rapidly
and in an hour or two we had entered a climate quite different from
that of the Titicaca plateau to the south. After some six or eight
miles a place is reached called Aguas Calientes (Hot Waters), from
the numerous mineral springs which bubble up close together from the
ground, most of them too hot to taste, and all impregnated with iron
and sulphur. They are said to be valuable in various maladies, and in
France or Switzerland an Établissement des Bains would doubtless have
arisen to enclose and exploit them. As it is, the only sign that they
are used is a wooden hut erected over one of the springs in which the
station master cures himself of rheumatism. There are only two houses
besides the station, but on the hill above mines of copper and antimony
are worked by Indian labour.
Below this point the floor of the valley falls again. It is still
narrow, but the now warmer climate permits tillage, and the patient
toil of the Indians, turning every bit of ground to account, cultivates
fields of grain and potatoes sloping at an angle so steep that
ploughing or hoeing seems almost impossible. When one asks how this
happens, the answer is that the rapacity of lawyers, ousting the Indian
from the better lands below, drives him to these less productive
slopes. The hillsides are extraordinarily bare, but as fruit trees
appear round the cottages, this may be due not to the altitude, but
to the cutting down during many centuries of all other trees for
fuel. Never have I seen an inhabited region--and in the case of this
particular valley, a thickly inhabited region--so absolutely devoid
of wood as is Peru. Even in Inca days, timber seems to have been very
scarce. There is plenty to be had from the tropical forests lower
down, but the cost of carrying logs up from them upon mule-back is
practically prohibitive. A good, solid plank would be a load too heavy
for a llama.
Twenty miles below the pass of La Raya is the town of Sicuani, which
we were fortunate enough to see on the market day--Sunday--when
the Indians from many miles round come to sell and buy and enjoy
themselves. It is a good type of the well-to-do Peruvian village, the
surrounding country being fertile and populous. The better houses, a
few of them two storied, are of stone, the rest of sun-dried mud--that
_adobe_ which one finds all over Spanish America from the pueblos of
New Mexico down to Patagonia. Their fronts are covered with a wash
of white or light blue, and this, with the red-tiled roofs, gives a
pleasant freshness and warmth of tone. The two plazas whose joint area
is about equal to half of the whole town, are thronged with Indians,
all the men and many of the women wearing the characteristic poncho,
a rough woollen or, less often, cotton cloak which comes below the
waist, and is usually of some bright hue. To this the women add gaudy
petticoats, red or purplish, blue or green or violet, so that there is
even more colour in the crowd than on the houses. The greatest variety
is in the hats. The women wear round felts or cloth-covered straws,
some almost as wide as a cardinal's; many are square, set off by gilt
or silvered bands like the academic cap of the English Universities,
though the brim is larger. The man's hat is smaller; it is mostly of
stiff white felt, and underneath it is a tight fitting cloth cap of
some bright colour, usually red, with flaps at each side to protect
the ear and cheek from the piercing winds. Strings of glittering beads
complete the Sunday dress of the women, and we saw only a few with
silver ornaments. Most of the trading seemed to be done by barter,
country folk exchanging farm or garden produce with the town dealers
for groceries or cloth. The cotton cloths were largely made from the
Peruvian plant cultivated in the warm coast valleys, while some of
the woollen goods, such as blankets or stuff for petticoats, had come
from England, as I saw on them the names of Yorkshire firms. Besides
maize and nuts and peppers, together with oranges carried up from the
hot valley of Urubamba seventy miles to the north, the most noticeable
articles of commerce were a sort of edible seaweed brought from the
coast, and dried marine star-fishes, and, above all, small bags of coca
leaves, the article which is the one indispensable stimulant of the
Indian, more for him than tea or coffee or alcoholic drinks are for the
Asiatic or the European. It is a subtropical shrub or low tree which
grows on the lower slopes of the Peruvian and Bolivian Andes and is
sold to the Indians in small quantities, as indeed all the sales and
purchases seemed to be on a small scale, there being among the peasants
very little money though very little downright poverty. South American
countries are, for the traveller at least, a land of high prices, but
here we saw savoury messes of hot stewed meat with chopped onions and
potatoes and a small glass of chicha (the common drink of the country
brewed from maize), thrown in, offered at the price of five centavos,
less than two English pence or a United States five cent piece. It was
surprising that in so thick and busy a crowd there should be, instead
of the chattering and clattering that one would have heard in Europe,
only a steady hum. The Quichua Indians are a comparatively silent race,
quiet and well mannered, and inoffensive except when they are drunk.
These Sicuani people were small in stature, few exceeding five feet six
inches, their faces a reddish brown, the features regular though seldom
handsome, for while the nose is often well formed, the mouth is ugly,
with no fineness of line in the lips, although these are far less thick
than a negro's. Some have a slight moustache, but beards are seen only
on the mestizos (half breeds). Among the many diversities of feature
which suggest that there has been an intermixture of races, perhaps
long ago, there are two prevailing types--the broad, round, short face
with full cheeks, and the longer face with an aquiline nose. All have
dark brown or black eyes, and long, straight, black, rather coarse,
hair, and in all there is a curiously stolid and impassive look as of
men accustomed to centuries of monotony and submission. Impassiveness
is the characteristic note of the Indian. The Kafir is like a grown-up
child; the Chinese have a curious quiet alertness and keenness of
observation; the Hindus (and most Orientals) are submissive though
watchful as if trying to take the white man's measure: but the Indian
is none of these things. In his obedience there is no servility: he is
reserved, aloof, seemingly indifferent to the _Viracocha_[16] and to
things in general. The most noticeable in the throng were the Indian
village alcaldes, each carrying as the badge of his office a long,
heavy staff or cane, with a spike at the bottom and a large round head,
bound with silver bands and covered at the top with a silver casing.
This dignitary, appointed by the local authority annually, exerts in
his little community an undisputed sway, enforced by his power of
imprisonment. The post is eagerly sought, so that the wealthier sort
will offer money to obtain it. We saw them moving through the crowd,
all making way for them. There were, however, no disturbances to quell:
the bright sun shone on an orderly and good-humoured crowd. Some
groups, drawn a little apart, were enjoying the strains of a guitar or
an accordion or those of the true national instrument, the Pandean
pipe made of hollow reeds unequal in length, while above, on the
hillside, the donkeys on which the wealthier peasants had ridden in and
the llamas that had carried their produce stood patiently awaiting the
declining light that should turn them homeward.
The only point of interest in Sicuani is the church and the arched
gateway beside it. It is like any other village church, the
architecture dull, the interior gloomy. But it was in this church that
in 1782 Andres the nephew of Tupac Amaru, half of Spanish Biscayan,
half of Inca blood, received episcopal absolution for his share in the
great insurrection of the Indians under that chieftain, an absolution
to be shortly followed by his murder at the hands of perfidious
Spaniards; and it was on this arch (if the story we heard be true) that
some of the limbs of the unfortunate Tupac Amaru himself were exposed
after he had been torn in pieces by four horses in the great square of
Cuzco.
The valley of the Vilcamayu River below Sicuani unfolds scene after
scene of varied beauty. It is indeed even more bare of wood than those
valleys of the central Apennines, of which, allowing for the difference
of scale, it sometimes reminds one. The only tall tree is the
Australian Eucalyptus, which though only recently introduced, is now
common in the subtropical parts of South America, and already makes a
figure in the landscape, for it is a fast grower. These Australian gum
trees have now overspread the world. They are all over South Africa and
on the Mediterranean coasts, as well as in Mexico and on the Nilghiri
hills of southern India, where they have replaced the more beautiful
native groves.
In the wider and more level stretches of the valley, populous villages
lie near together, for the irrigated flats of the valley floor flourish
with abundant crops, and the rich red soil makes the hillsides worth
cultivating even without irrigation. Although stained by the blood of
battles more than is any other part of Peru, the land has an air of
peace and comfort. The mountains on each side seemed to be composed
of igneous rocks, but only in one place could I discover evidences of
recent volcanic action. About fifteen miles below Sicuani six or seven
small craters are seen near together, most of them on the northeast
side of the valley, the highest some twelve hundred feet above it;
and the lava flows which have issued from two or three of these are
so fresh, the surface still so rugged and of so deep a black, that
one may conclude that not many centuries have elapsed since the last
eruption. The higher ranges that enclose the valley, crags above and
curving lines of singular beauty below, evidently belong to a more
remote geological age. Their contrasts of dark rock and red soil,
with the flat smiling valley between and the noble snowpeaks of
the Vilcanota group filling the southern distance, make landscapes
comparable in their warmth of colour and variety of form to those of
the Italian Alps. They are doubly delightful to the traveller who has
been passing through the savage solitudes that lie between this and
the Pacific coast. Here at last he seems to get a notion of what Peru
may have been like before the invaders came, and when a peaceful and
industrious people laboured in the service of the Inca and the Sun God.
Now, to be sure, there is a railway, and the station houses are roofed
with corrugated iron. Yet the aspect of the land can have changed but
little. The inhabitants are almost all Indian, and live and cultivate
much as they did four centuries ago; their villages are of the same
mud-built, grass-roofed cottages. They walk behind their llamas along
the track, playing a rustic pipe as they go; and the women wash clothes
in the brook swollen by last night's rain; and up the side glens which
descend from the untrodden snowy range behind, one catches glimpses of
high, steep pastures, where perhaps hardly even a plundering Spaniard
ever set his foot and where no extortionate curate preyed upon his
flock.
Swinging down the long canyon of the Vilcamayu--it is long, indeed, for
there are four hundred miles more of it before it opens on the great
Amazonian plain--and rattling through deep rock cuttings and round
sharp curves above the foaming torrent, the line at last turns suddenly
to the northwest towards Cuzco, and we bid farewell to the river.
Gladly would we have followed it down the valley into scenery even more
beautiful than that of its upper levels, where luxuriant forests along
the stream contrast with the snowy summits of the Eastern Cordillera
towering above. But from this point on there are only mule paths, and
travel is so slow that a week would have been needed to reach the
finest part of this scenery.[17] Renunciation is the hardest part of
travelling.
Our way to Cuzco lay up a wide lateral valley, enclosed by green
hills, well cultivated and studded with populous villages, near one
of which can be descried the ruins of a large ancient building which
tradition attributes to the Inca Viracocha. The vale has an air of
peace and primitive quiet, secluded and remote, as of a peaceful land
where nothing had ever happened. At last, as the mountains begin to
close in, the end of the journey comes in sight; and here, under
steep hills enclosing a basin-shaped hollow--what in Peru is called a
_Bolson_--lies Cuzco, the sacred City of the Sun.
Cuzco belongs to that class of historic cities which have once been
capitals of kingdoms and retain traces of their ancient glory, a class
which includes Moscow and Krakau, Throndhjem and Upsala, Dublin and
Edinburgh and Winchester, Aix la Chapelle and Bagdad and Toledo and
Granada, a class from which imperial Delhi has now just emerged to
recover its former rank. And Cuzco was the capital of an empire vaster
than was ruled from any of those famous seats of power, the centre of a
religion and a dominion which stretched southward from the Equator for
two thousand miles and embraced nearly all that there was of whatever
approached civilization in the South American Continent.
Every traveller is familiar with the experience of finding that the
reality of some spot on which his imagination has dwelt is unlike what
it had pictured. I had fancied a walled city visible from afar on a
high plain, with a solitary citadel hill towering above it. But Cuzco
lies inconspicuous, with its houses huddled close in its _bolson_ at a
point where three narrow glens descend from the tableland above, their
torrents meeting in it or just below it; and no buildings are seen,
except a few square church towers, till you are at its gates. It stands
on a gentle slope, the streets straight, except where the course of a
torrent forces them to curve, and many of them too narrow for vehicles
to pass one another, but vehicles are so few that this does not matter.
They are paved with cobblestones so large and rough that the bed of
many a mountain brook is smoother, and in the middle there is an open
gutter into which every kind of filth is thrown, so that the city from
end to end is filled with smells too horrible for description. Cologne,
as Coleridge described it a century ago, and the most fetid cities of
Southern Italy are fragrant in comparison. The houses, solidly built
of stone, are enclosed in small, square court yards surrounded by rude
wooden galleries. Many have two stories, with balconies also of wood in
front, and a few shew handsome gateways, with the arms of some Spanish
family carved on the lintel stone. One such bears the effigies of the
four Pizarro brothers, and is supposed to have been inhabited by the
terrible Francisco himself when he lived here. But the impressive
features of the city are its squares. The great Plaza, a part of the
immense open space which occupied the centre of the ancient Inca town,
wants the trees and flower beds of the squares of Lima and Arequipa.
But its ample proportions, with three remarkable churches occupying
two sides of it, and the fortress hill of Sacsahuaman frowning over
it, give it an air of dignity. The two smaller plazas, that called
Cusipata and that of San Francisco, are less regular, but rudely
picturesque, with arcades on two sides of them, and quaint old houses
of varying heights, painted in blue, and bearing in front balconies
frail with age. The older Spanish colonial towns, inferior as they are
in refinements of architectural detail to the ancient cities of Italy
and Spain, have nevertheless for us a certain charm of strangeness,
intensified, in the case of Cuzco, by the sense of all the changes they
have witnessed.
The cathedral, if not beautiful, is stately, with its two solid towers
and its spacious and solemn interior. One is shewn a picture attributed
to Van Dyck--be it his or not it is a good picture--and an altar
at which Pizarro communicated, and a curious painting representing
ceremonies observed on the admission of monks and nuns in the
seventeenth century. But what interested me most was a portrait in the
sacristy, among those of other bishops of Cuzco, of the first bishop,
Fray Vicente de Valverde. It may be merely a "stock" picture, made to
order at a later time like those of the early Popes in the basilica
of St. Paul at Rome. But one willingly supposed it taken from the
life, because the hard, square face with pitiless eyes answered to the
character of the man, one of the most remarkable persons in the history
of the Spanish Conquest, because he is as perfect an illustration
as history presents of a minister of Christ in whom every lineament
of Christian character, except devotion to his faith, had been
effaced.[18] He was the friar who accompanied Pizarro on his expedition
and stood by the leader's side in the square at Caxamarca when he was
welcoming as a friend the Inca Atahuallpa. When Atahuallpa declined the
summons of Valverde to accept baptism and recognize Charles the Fifth
as sovereign, Pizarro, whose men were fully armed, and had already been
instructed to seize the unsuspecting Inca and massacre his followers,
hesitated or affected for a moment to hesitate, and turned to Valverde
for advice. "I absolve you," answered the friar. "Fall on, Castilians,
I absolve you." With this the slaughter of the astonished crowd began:
and thousands perished in the city square before night descended on the
butchery.
When Cuzco was taken, Valverde was made bishop of the new see, the
first bishopric of Peru. Verily he had his reward. He did not long
enjoy it. A few years later he was shipwrecked, while voyaging to
Panama, on the coast near Tumbez, captured by the wild Indians of those
parts, and (according to the story) devoured.
Of the other churches, the most externally handsome is that of the
Compañia (the Jesuits), with its florid north façade of red sandstone,
a piece of cunningly conceived and finely executed ornamentation
superior even to that of the church of the same Order at Arequipa.
Internally there is most to admire in the church of Merced (Our Lady
of Mercy, the patroness of Peru), for it has richly decorated ceilings
on both stories of its charming cloisters, and a fine staircase leading
up to the choir. All the larger churches have silver altars, some
of them very well chiselled. But by far the most remarkable piece
of work in the city is the pulpit of the old and now scarcely used
church of San Blas. It is said to be all of one piece, the glory of
an Indian craftsman, and is a marvel of delicate carving, worthy of
the best executive skill of Italy or Spain. My scanty knowledge does
not qualify me to express an opinion, but it was hard not to fancy
that in this pulpit and in the fine ornamentation of the façades of
the Jesuit churches I have described, there may be discovered marks
of a distinctive type of artistic invention which was not Spanish,
but rather Peruvian, and gave evidence of a gift which might, if
cultivated, have reflected credit upon the Indian race.
It has seemed worth while to dwell upon the ecclesiastical buildings
of these three Peruvian cities just because there is so very little to
attract the student of art in South America, less even than in Mexico.
Though the two greatest Spanish painters lived after the days of
Pizarro, one may say, broadly speaking, that the best days of Spanish
architecture and of taste in works of art were passing away before
these American countries were settled, and it was seldom that anything
of high excellence was either brought from Europe or produced in South
America, produced even in Peru, the wealthiest of all the colonial
dominions of Spain.
Before I turn from Spanish Cuzco to the ancient city a word may be
said as to its merits as a place of residence. Its height (11,100
feet) and its latitude give it a climate free from extremes of heat or
cold, and, for those who have capacious lungs and sound hearts, pretty
healthful throughout the year. We found the air cool and bracing in the
end of September. Disgusting as are the dirt and the smells, they do
not seem to breed much disease; foul gases are probably less noxious
when discharged into the open air than when they ooze out into houses
from closed drains.[19] The country round is beautiful, bold heights
surrounding a green and fertile vale, though there are so few trees
that shade is wanting. Many places of great antiquarian interest are
within reach, of course accessible by riding only, for there is only
one tolerable road, that which leads down the valley to the Vilcamayu.
Society, though small and old-fashioned, unfriendly to new ideas
and tinged with ecclesiasticism, is simple mannered and kindly. No
people can be more polite and agreeable than the Peruvians, whether
of pure Spanish extraction, or mixed, as the great majority here are,
with Indian blood. Though Cuzco is deemed, not less than Arequipa, a
stronghold of conservatism and clericalism, modern tendencies can make
themselves felt. Shortly before my visit there had been a revolt of the
students of the University against a rector deemed "unprogressive":
and there had been chosen as his successor a young North American
professor who had been living in Peru for a few years only, employed
in some government work when he was appointed here. He seemed to be on
good terms with both officials and pupils.
The university is an old one, founded in 1598, but its revenues and
the attendance of students are not worthy of its antiquity. Those who
come seek instruction in professional subjects, especially law and
medicine. Nearly everywhere in South America the demand for teaching in
philosophy, letters, or science is scanty indeed. The clergy, it need
hardly be said, are not educated in these lay institutions.
Though essentially a Spanish city in its edifices, Cuzco is
predominantly Indian in its people. The Quichua language is that
commonly spoken, and it is the Indian aborigines who give to the aspect
of its streets and squares the picturesqueness which half atones for
squalor. They set up their little booths, sometimes covered with
canvas, along the arcades and in the plazas, and loaf about in their
bright-coloured ponchos and broad, flat, straw hats, the dry-weather
side of the straw covered with a sort of velveteen adorned with tinsel,
and the wet-weather side with red flannel. Women lean over the rough
wooden balconies on the first floors of the houses, and talk to the
loungers in the plaza below. Strings of llamas bearing their burdens
pass along, the only creatures, besides the tiny mules, who do any
work. There are scarcely any wheeled vehicles, for those not forced
by poverty to walk, ride mostly on donkeys; and the only events are
saints' days, with their processions, occurring so frequently that the
habit of laziness has unequalled opportunities for confirming itself.
Though the Quichuas were under the Incas a most industrious race, and
still give assiduous labour to their fields, the atmosphere of the city
is one of easy idleness, nothing to do, and plenty of time to do it.
The only manufactory we came across was a German brewery,--there is no
place, however remote, where one does not find the enterprising German.
Neither is there any trade, except that of supplying a few cheap goods
to the surrounding country folk. By far the best general warehouse
is kept by an Italian gentleman who has got together an interesting
collection of antiquities.
Now let us turn from the Cuzco of the last three and a half centuries
back to the olden time and see what remains of the ancient city of the
Sun and of the Incas, his children. It is worth while to do so, for
here, more than anywhere else in South America, there is something that
helps the traveller to recall a society and a religion so unlike the
present that it seems half mythic. Whoever has read, as most of us did
in our boyhood, of the marvels of the Peruvian Empire which Pizarro
destroyed, brings an ardent curiosity to the central seat of that
Empire, and expects to find many a monument of its glories.
The reality is disappointing, yet it is impressive. One learns more
from a little seeing than from reading many books. As our expectations
had been unduly raised, it is right to give this reality with some
little exactness of detail. The interest of the remains lies entirely
in what they tell us about their builders, for there is nothing
beautiful, nothing truly artistic to describe. The traces of the
Incas[20] to be seen in Cuzco, and, indeed, anywhere in Peru, are all
of one kind only. They are Walls. No statue, no painting. No remains
of a complete roofed building, either temple or palace; nothing but
ruins, and mostly fragmentary ruins. The besom of Spanish destruction
swept clean. Everything connected with the old religion had to perish:
priests and friars took care of that. As for other buildings, it did
not occur to anybody to spare them. Even in Italy, not long before
Pizarro's day, a man so cultivated as Pope Julius the Second knocked
about the incomparably more beautiful and remarkable buildings of
ancient Rome when they interfered with his plans of building.
But the walls at Cuzco are remarkable. They are unique memorials, not
only of power and persistence, but in a certain way of skill also, not
in decorative art, for of that there is scarcely a trace left, but of
a high degree of expertness in the cutting and fitting together of
enormous blocks. Most of the streets of the modern city follow the
lines of ancient pre-Conquest streets, and in many of these there are
long stretches of wall from six or eight to sixteen or eighteen feet
in height so entirely unlike Spanish buildings that their Inca origin
is unquestionable. They are of various types, each of which probably
belongs to an epoch of its own. The most frequent, and apparently the
latest type, shews very large blocks of a dark grey rock, a syenite or
trachyte, cut to a uniform rectangular oblong form, the outer faces,
which are nearly smooth and slightly convex, being cut in towards the
joinings of the other stones. The blocks are fitted together with
the utmost care, so close to one another that it is no exaggeration
to say that a knife can seldom be inserted between them. The walls
which they make slope very slightly backward, and, in most cases, the
stones are smaller in the upper layers than in the lower. Two such
walls enclose a long and narrow street which runs southeastward from
the great Plaza. They are in perfect preservation, and sustain in some
places the weight of modern houses built upon them. There are very few
apertures for doors or windows, but one high gateway furnishes a good
specimen of the Inca door and is surmounted by a long slab on which
are carved in relief, quite rudely, the figures of two serpents. In
other places one finds walls of the same character, but with smaller
blocks and less perfect workmanship. Of a third type the wall of the
so-called Palace of the Inca Roca is the best instance. It is what we
call in Europe a Cyclopean building, the blocks enormous and of various
shapes, but each carefully cut and adjusted to the inequalities of
outline in the adjoining blocks, so that all fit perfectly together.
One famous stone shews twelve angles into which the stones above,
below, and at each side of it have been made to fit. This type seems
older, perhaps by centuries, than that first described. In none of the
walls is any mortar or any other kind of cementing material used: their
strength consists in their weight and in the exactness with which they
are compacted together. The most beautifully finished piece of all
is to be seen in the remains of the great Temple of the Sun on whose
site and out of whose ruins have been built the church and convent of
St. Dominick. Here, at the west end of the church, there is what was
evidently the external wall of the end of the temple. It is rounded,
and each of the large squared stones is so cut as to conform perfectly
to the curve of the whole. None of the single stones has the convexity
which appears in the walls first described, because the surfaces of all
have been levelled and polished so that they form one uniformly smooth
and uniformly curved surface, as if they were all one block. A more
exquisitely finished piece of work cannot be imagined. It is at least
as good as anything of the same kind in Egypt, and stands as perfect
now as it was when the Spaniards destroyed the superstructure of the
temple.
The city is full of these fragments of wall. I discovered in
out-of-the-way corners some that were supporting little terraced
garden beds, others in backyards, or even in pigsties, and it seemed
to me that there were four or five distinct styles or types of stone
cutting and stone fitting, belonging to different ages.[21] If all the
buildings erected since 1540 could be removed without disturbing the
older buildings beneath them, that which was left would be sufficient
to give a fairly complete ground plan of the Inca city and enable us
to form some idea of its character. But we should not then be much
nearer to knowing what was the actual aspect of the great palaces and
temples before the work of destruction began. The Incas built immense
covered halls, we are told of one two hundred paces long by fifty
wide, but it does not appear how they were roofed over, for the arch
was, of course, unknown. Apparently there was little or nothing of
that advanced form of art in pattern ornamentation and in figures of
men and animals which we admire in the ruins of Copan (in Honduras) or
Palenque (in Mexico) and other places in Central America. Perhaps the
intractable nature of the volcanic and other hard igneous stone used by
the Incas compared with the comparatively soft limestones of Palenque
and Mitla discouraged attempts at elaborate mural decoration. Perhaps
the artistic talent of the Peruvians did not go far. Their pottery,
whether plain or made to represent the forms of living creatures, is
generally rude, and the paintings on wooden vessels shew only mediocre
power of drawing, though they do shew that fine sense of colour which
is present in most of the art work of the aboriginal Americans.
Cuzco has no public museum, but there are two or three small private
collections. In one of these the most interesting objects shewn us were
the pictures on wood representing combats between Peruvian warriors and
their enemies, the savage tribes of the eastern forests. The former
fight with the spear and have the sling for their missile weapon,
the latter use the bow, as do their descendants to this day. In this
collection there were also bows taller than a man, with arrows of
corresponding size, formidable weapons, which some of the natives of
the forest, placing them flat on the ground, draw with their feet and
with which they are said to kill fish in the rivers as well as land
game. These, and the beautiful feather plumes, and the rude heads of
pumas, wild cats, and birds of prey, had all a flavour of barbarism,
and were far inferior to the remains of Egyptian or Assyrian art.[22]
The Peruvian mummies, specimens of which we also saw, are not laid out
at full length, like those of Egypt, but have the knees pressed to the
chin.
Grand as are the walls inside Cuzco, they seem insignificant when one
examines the more stupendous ramparts of the prehistoric fortress
on Sacsahuaman Hill, which rises immediately above the city to a
height of about six hundred and fifty feet. I describe them the more
fully because much study has been of late years bestowed upon the
(so-called) Cyclopean and other ancient walls of Europe, such as those
of Tarragona in Spain, of Greek cities, like Tiryns and Naxos (near
Taormina), and of the Volscian and Latin cities round Rome, so that an
account of the more imposing Peruvian structures may be of interest
to some readers. The hill, nearly halfway up which, on a terrace,
are the remains of its palace attributed to the Inca Manco Capac, is
in its upper part extremely steep, in places even precipitous, and
commands a wonderful view over the mass of red-roofed houses, the long,
straight streets in some of which the dark lines of Inca wall can just
be discerned, the three broad plazas with Indians and their llamas
creeping about like ants, the sunny vale below, and the snow-clad
summits of the Nevado (snow mountain) of Ausungate, piercing the sky
in the far distance. Stone ramparts ran all round the upper part of
the hill, and parts of them still remain on this southern face. What
with their height and solidity and with the natural strength of the
ground, the fortress must have been on this side impregnable before
the invention of gunpowder. But on the other, or northerly side, that
turned away from Cuzco, the hill is not only less steep, but has also
much less rise, for it is less than a hundred feet above the ground
behind it. Here, therefore, since nature had done less, there was
more for art to do; and here we find fortress walls on a scale of
incomparable grandeur.
They are built in three parallel lines, one behind the other, and both
their length, nearly one third of a mile, and the massiveness of their
construction, and the enormous size of many of the individual stones
make this fortress one of the most impressive monuments of prehistoric
times that the world contains.[23] It shews that those who raised it
had a boldness of conception and a persistent energy in carrying out
that conception amazing in a primitive people, for the work seems to
belong to a very early time, long anterior to those historic Incas whom
the Spaniards overthrew.
Hardly less wonderful than the gigantic proportions of these
fortifications is the military skill shewn in their construction. Their
line is not straight, as in most of the walls of ancient Greek and
Italian and early mediæval cities, but consists of a series of salient
and re-entering angles, so that from each salient angle and each inner
angle the whole space outside and below the wall as far as the next
projecting angle could be commanded by the garrison. This arrangement,
which, while it increased the length of the work and required more
labour to complete it, increased immensely its defensive efficiency,
indicates a skill hardly to be expected in a race comparatively
pacific, and more eminent in the arts of government than in those
of war. Yet perhaps it was just because they were not first-class
fighting men like the Aztecs or the Iroquois that the Quichuas were
successful in devising expedients for defence. Sparta was the only
considerable Greek city that did not surround herself with walls,
because the valour of her people was deemed sufficient protection.
On the top of the hill behind these lines of ramparts there are remains
of ancient buildings, though none with such enormous stones. It is hard
to make out what these edifices were, for every bit of ground built
upon has been ransacked over and over again for hidden treasure. Peru
is full of stories about fabulous quantities of Inca gold hidden away
to save it from the rapacity of the conquerors, and some of the tales
may be true, though hardly any such treasures have been found for more
than a century past. But the story that there is a secret passage cut
in the rock from the Inca castle at the top of the hill down through it
and into Cuzco where it opens to the Temple of the Sun is too much for
any but native credulity. These beliefs in long subterranean passages
recur everywhere in the world. It was--perhaps still is--believed in
Oxford that there is such an one from the church of St. Peter in the
city to the ruined nunnery on the river at Godstow (Fair Rosamond's
place of confinement) two miles distant. It is believed in Kerwan (in
Tunisia) that the most sacred of the wells in that most sacred of all
African cities communicates underground with the well Zem Zem in Mecca
two thousand miles away and on the other side of the Red Sea. The most
persistent treasure hunt carried on by the Peruvians has been that
for the golden chain made by the Inca Huayna Capac, which was long
enough to be stretched all round the great square of Cuzco, and was
thrown into the lake of Urcos lest it should fall into the hands of the
Spaniards. Everybody believes it to be still at the bottom of the lake,
which is very deep.
Opposite the great walls and about a third of a mile away is a rocky
eminence called, from a curious convex mass of extremely hard igneous
rock upon it, the Rodadero. The rock is polished smooth and has two
projecting ridges on its surface. How much of this peculiar slope down
which many generations of Peruvian boys have rejoiced to slide--they
were doing so in the days of Garcilaso, soon after the Conquest--is
due to nature, how much to art improving nature, has been matter for
controversy. But far more curious are the seats carved in the hard
rock all over the top and slopes of the hill, the cutting done with
exquisite care and finish, the angles perfectly sharp, the flat parts
perfectly smooth. The most remarkable is a set of thirteen seats, one
in the centre and highest, nine others declining from it on the left
and three on the right. This is called the Seat of the Inca, but there
is no record, nor any authentic tradition, of the purpose for which, or
the persons by whom, it was constructed, nor of the purpose of the many
other seats, and small staircases, and niches, and basins similarly
chiselled out of the rock which are scattered here and there all round.
In one place two great and finely cut blocks look like fragments of a
doorway shattered by an earthquake, and not far off there are singular
passages hewn through the rock, and now in parts closed, which have the
appearance of a sort of labyrinth. Looking at the Inca's Seat, one's
first conjecture would be that it was a bench for judges to sit upon.
Other seats look more like shrines meant for images; but no fragments
of images are found. All these strange cuttings and polishings seem so
inexplicable that one would conjecture the mere caprice of a whimsical
ruler, but for the immense pains that must have been taken in doing
such perfect work in such hard material. No Spanish writer of Conquest
days gives us any light. It is a riddle, the key to which is lost, and
lost irrecoverably, because there are no inscriptions and no traditions.
Reverting to the fortress of Sacsahuaman, there is a current view that
it was erected as an outwork to defend Cuzco from the attacks of the
fierce tribes of the eastern and northern valleys whose raids the Incas
frequently had to repel. It seems, however, superfluously huge as a
defence against such enemies, not to add that they could easily have
descended upon Cuzco from the other sides of the two ravines between
which the fortress stands. More probably, therefore Sacsahuaman is a
very ancient stronghold, probably much older than Cuzco, or at any rate
than Cuzco's greatness. It may have been the earliest seat of some
very early king or dynasty, and have been, in the flourishing days of
the Inca monarchy, a citadel where the reigning sovereign kept his
treasures and to which he could retire for safety in case of need.
I am not attempting to describe all the relics of antiquity that are
to be seen in or near Cuzco. There are striking ruins not far off,
such as those at Ollantaytambo and Pisac, and lower down the Vilcamayu
Valley at Machu Picchu and Rosas Pata, as well as others still more
distant in the high country between here and Lima.[24] But what is true
at Cuzco is true everywhere. The only ruins are of walls and gates of
fortresses and palaces; in a few spots of temples, also. In these there
are evidences of enormous labour and considerable mechanical skill, but
only slight evidences of artistic talent. The walls, perfectly cut and
polished, have seldom the smallest ornament, except niches. There are
no domes, for the art of vaulting was unknown, and hardly ever columns.
So far as we can tell, the great Sun Temple at Cuzco consisted only of
lofty walls enclosing courts, with no decoration but plates of gold
attached to the walls. True it is that the Spaniards destroyed all
the religious and many of the secular edifices, yet if there had been
temples covered with ornaments like those found in Southern Mexico and
Central America, some traces must surely have remained.
Notwithstanding this want of decorative art, the Cuzco ruins leave upon
the beholder a strong impression, the impression of immense energy and
will in those who planned these works, of patient and highly trained
labour in those who executed them. Only despotic rulers commanding
like the Egyptian kings a host of obedient subjects, could have reared
such a structure as the fortress of Sacsahuaman. The race that could
erect such buildings and gather such treasures as the Temple of the Sun
possessed, and could conquer and rule a dominion of fifty days' journey
from north to south, must have been a strong and in its way a gifted
race. It is hard to believe that it was the ancestor of those stolid
and downtrodden Indians whom one sees to-day, peddling their rude wares
in the market place of Cuzco. It is their old imperial town, but there
is scarcely one among them above the rank of a labourer; and during the
last three centuries few indeed have emerged from the abject condition
to which the Conquest reduced them.
The sudden fall of a whole race is an event so rare in history that
one seeks for explanations. It may be that not only the royal Inca
family, but nearly the whole ruling class was destroyed in war,
leaving only the peasants who had already been serfs under their
native sovereigns. But one is disposed to believe that the tremendous
catastrophe which befell them in the destruction at once of their
dynasty, their empire, and their religion by fierce conquerors,
incomparably superior in energy and knowledge, completely broke not
only the spirit of the nation, but the self-respect of the individuals
who composed it. They were already a docile and submissive people, and
now under a new tyranny, far harsher than that of rulers of their own
blood, they sank into hopeless apathy, and ceased even to remember
what their forefathers had been. The intensity of their devotion to
their sovereign and their deity made them helpless when both were
overthrown, leaving them nothing to turn to, nothing to strive for. The
Conquistadores were wise in their hateful way, when they put forth the
resources of cruelty to outrage the feelings of the people and stamp
terror in their hearts. One cannot stand in the great Plaza of Cuzco
without recalling the scene of A.D. 1571, when one of the last of the
Inca line, an innocent youth, seized and accused of rebellion by the
Spanish viceroy Francisco de Toledo, was executed in the presence of
a vast Indian crowd that filled it. When the executioner raised the
sword of death, there rose such a wail of horror that he paused, and
the leading Spanish churchmen hastened to the viceroy and begged him
for mercy. Determined to make an example, Toledo was inexorable. The
young Inca, Tupac Amaru, was beheaded and his head stuck on a pike, and
placed beside the scaffold. At midnight a Spaniard, looking out of a
window that commanded the Plaza was amazed to see it again filled with
Indians, all silent and motionless, kneeling in veneration before the
head of the last representative of the sacred line.
More than two hundred years later another more remote scion of the
Incas, José Gabriel Condorcanqui, who had taken the same name of Tupac
Amaru,--I have already referred to him on p. 92,--had been stirred to
indignation by what he saw of the Indian population suffering from the
exactions as well of the Spanish landowners who held them in serfdom
as of the rapacious Spanish officials. After many vain complaints,
he headed a movement to obtain redress by force, not rejecting the
authority of the Spanish Crown, but trying to rouse the Indians by
appeals to the faint memories of Inca greatness. The hope of relief
from their miseries drew thousands of the aborigines to his standard.
But they were ill armed and worse organized; the race had no longer any
strength in it for a fight, and in some months the rising was quelled,
after frightful slaughter, its leader betrayed to the Spaniards, his
family seized, and all brought prisoners to Cuzco. There, by the
sentence of the Spanish judge, a monster named Areche, the uncle and
son-in-law and wife of Tupac Amaru, had their tongues cut out and were
executed before his eyes, that death might be made more horrible to him
by the sight of their agonies. He was then, after his own tongue had
been cut out, torn in pieces by four horses attached to his four limbs.
All this happened in 1781, within the memory of the grandfathers of men
now living. Such atrocities were at once the evidence of what Spanish
rule in Peru had been and a presage of its fall. Within twenty years
thereafter began those first conspiracies against the authority of
Spain which ushered in the War of Independence.
Many another scene of horror and strife has Cuzco seen. Wandering
through its streets, one is possessed every moment by the sense of how
much has happened in a place where nowadays nothing seems to happen.
Perhaps it is because its annals are so tragic that this sense is
so strong; but there are certainly few places where the very stones
seem more saturated with history. More than three centuries ago the
historian Garcilaso de la Vega compared Cuzco to ancient Rome. The two
cities have little more in common than the fact that both were capitals
of dominions long since departed, and the seats of faiths long since
extinct. But in both this feeling of a vista stretching far back and
filled with many spectres of the past is overpowering. The long, grey,
mouldering streets and houses of Spanish Cuzco, the ancient walls of
primitive Peruvian Cuzco, defying time better than the convents and
the churches, each calling up contrasted races and civilizations, the
plazas too vast for the shrunken population, the curious sense of
two peoples living side by side in a place from which the old life
has vanished and into which no new life has come, the sense of utter
remoteness from the modern world, all these things give to Cuzco a
strange and dreamy melancholy, a melancholy all the deeper because
there was little in its past that one could wish restored. There were
dark sides to the ancient civilization. But was it worth destroying in
order to erect on its ruins what the Conquerors brought to Peru?
NOTE ON THE FORTRESS OF SACSAHUAMAN
The walls of Sacsahuaman are built in three parallel lines, the
lowest of which stands on level ground, at the very base of the hill;
the second about six yards behind the first, and therefore on the
slope; the third still higher on the slope, three yards behind the
second. The space behind each wall has been filled in and levelled,
so as to be a nearly flat terrace, supported by the wall in front
of it. These three lines of wall extend along and protect the whole
northern face of the hill, nearly six hundred yards long, between the
points where it falls abruptly into deep ravines to the east and the
west, which give a natural defence. The outermost wall at the base of
the hill is the highest, about twenty-six feet; the second is from
eighteen to twenty feet; the third, the least perfectly preserved, is
a little less high, perhaps fifteen feet. The stones in the outermost
row are the largest. One is over twenty-five feet high, fourteen
wide, and twelve thick. Not a few exceed fifteen feet in height and
twelve in width. There were three openings or gateways in each wall,
the largest of which is twelve feet high, and over each of these
was laid a long flat slab. The blocks, which are of a hard, greyish
limestone, are all or nearly all rudely square or oblong, though
sometimes where the shape of one is irregular, the irregularity is
cut into an entering angle and the next stone is made to fit into
this with its projecting angle, thus knitting the structure together.
The surface of each is slightly convex and bevelled down towards
the outer lines, where it meets the blocks laid next. All are so
carefully adjusted that even now there are virtually no interstices,
though the fitting together may probably have been even more exact
before earthquakes and time had begun to tell upon the fabric. Its
strength, as there is no mortar, depends upon the massiveness of the
stones and their cohesion. Each wall rises a little, perhaps a foot
and a half, above the terrace immediately behind it, but the level of
the terrace may probably have been originally somewhat lower, so that
the bodies of those defending the fortress would be better covered by
the wall in front of them against missiles from the enemy.
The stones of Sacsahuaman have been brought from a hill about
three-quarters of a mile distant, where a huge mound of chips cut
from them has been discovered by Mr. Bingham since the date of my
visit. (Edition of 1913.)