legends of the origin of the Inca Empire is the tradition of a tall,
imperious man of white skin, with blond hair on both head and cheeks,
who arose from the sea and took up the task of teaching the Children of
the Sun more proper ways of living. He was called Ingasman, whence some
have held that he was a castaway Briton from some ship blown to these
distant shores long before the days of Columbus. A fantastic yarn; yet
is it impossible? The imagination likes to dwell on the possibility of
the improbable story. Such an origin might account for the stolid
British temperament of the Indians of the Andes; as to complexion, leave
an Englishman in the tropics for generations and the result would be no
darker than the self-styled lineal descendant of Tupac Amaru above
mentioned. Whatever the truth of the legend, the modern teacher of the
Children of the Sun came from the sea also,—an enthusiastic, hopeful
young American who is officially rector of the university, but who, as
town councilor and even mayor, has been responsible for most of the
local improvements of recent years. For all the labors of Ingasman, the
town was probably not noted for its immaculateness before the Conquest;
to-day it is of that stagnant, Latin-American temperament that can be
set in motion only by some external force. Thus we have the anomaly of
seeing that “picturesqueness,” so often closely allied to uncleanliness,
which Americans travel to Cuzco to see, being constantly reduced by one
of their own race. Yet the influence of a single individual, however
energetic, is limited; hence one must still be circumspect in inspecting
old walls and Inca ruins, and the wise man always boils his water on the
banks of the stinking Huatenay.
Of the old Inca race there remain few traces. The vast majority of the
20,000 cuzqueños are “descendants of the Incas” only in the loose
acceptance of that phrase. For want of a proper name the people of
Tavantinsuyo, the Four Corners of the Earth, have come to be called
Incas, as the inhabitants of the United States are called Americans for
lack of a national adjective. As a matter of fact, an _inca_ was a
member of the royal family, of which the _Inca Ccápa_c was the ruling
chief. It is easy to imagine other peoples quarreling with the race over
their name—to their supreme indifference protesting that they, too,
inhabited the Four Corners of the Earth, with the same right to the term
as the tribes of Cuzco; and referring to the latter privately by
something corresponding to “yanqui” or “gringo.”
The thick upper lip, wide nostrils, and broad face of the aboriginal
race shows in some degree in all but a few cuzqueños; those of full
Indian blood still make up a large percentage of the population. The
Cuzco Indian is a type by himself. His skin is darker, his manner more
cringing, his gait more slinking, than his fellows elsewhere; the faces
of both males and females have a brutalized expression that seems to
mark them as the most degenerate of all the Andean tribes. Rumor has it
that they retain some slight and sadly mixed traditions of Huayna Ccápac
and of the days when the native Empire occupied this vast plateau; but
they are extremely chary of sharing any information they may possess.
The Inca rule of having distinguishing costumes for each community still
holds, especially in the matter of head-dress, and it is as easy for the
initiated to recognize the birthplace of an Indian by his garments as to
know a Hindu’s caste from his turban. Many from the towns surrounding
Cuzco wear knitted, tasseled caps of gay colors, with earlaps. Those of
the city are noted for their “pancake” hats, common to both sexes. These
are round disks of straw, covered with flannel or an imitation of
velveteen, one side of faded black with spoke-like stripes of color or
gilt braid, the other brilliant or dull red, according to its age, which
is generally advanced. In fine weather this is worn black side up; in
wet it is reversed. The women are invariably barefoot, the men usually
so, or with at most a strip of leather to protect their soles; except
that old men who have once wielded the silver-mounted cane of authority
over their section of the community uphold their dignity by wearing on
Sundays and feast-days heavy, native shoes often with large buckles and
always without socks. The women wear carelessly fastened blouses of
coarse material, heavy skirts bunched about their waists, and a shawl
fastened with one pin of large, fanciful head. The men dress in tight,
ragged knee-breeches or loose, shoddy trousers of varying lengths, and
ponchos which prove that full use is made of the little packages of
crude aniline dyes sold in the market-square.
The quiet of this chief gathering-place is unusual. It has no clatter,
but only a suppressed hum; for the Indian of Cuzco is as silent as he is
inoffensive. Here huge strawberries are sold at twenty-five cents a
hundred, the primitive-minded female vendors counting them out by tens
in hissing Quichua sibilants. The hot country is only a day’s tramp from
Cuzco; hence tropical as well as temperate fruits, are displayed, though
often sadly crushed and maltreated by their transportation in sacks or
nets on human backs. The Indians are here the same beasts of burden as
elsewhere in the Andes. It is no uncommon thing to see a rather small
man trot the mile from market to railway station with half a beef on his
back. The wooden-headedness of the aboriginal, as well as his lack of
strength for any labor except carrying, is often in evidence. I saw one
ordered to take an iron wheelbarrow to another part of town. He removed
the wheel and bound it on his wife’s back with a llama-hair rope, slung
the rest on his own shoulders in the same manner, and away they trotted
one behind the other.
When all is said and done the Andean Indian remains an enigma to the
foreigner. At the end of a year of constant intercourse with him the
traveler can quickly sum up his real knowledge of a race whose internal
workings he has only guessed, confessing an inability to see from the
aboriginal’s point of view, to be aware with his consciousness. There is
an enormous difference between the South American Indian and the bearers
of the same misnomer in our own country. The majority of our tribes were
warriors, with an obstinate courage that took little account of odds.
They could be killed; they could never be enslaved to a degree that made
them profitable servants. From Tehuantepec southward, on the other hand,
the aboriginals are noted for a subservience, not to say timidity, that
made it possible for the Spaniards to exploit them ruthlessly, as do
their descendants to this day. Was this characteristic the result or the
cause of the government under which the Conquistadores found them? Ruled
by the Incas in a far more autocratic form of imperialism than the worst
known to-day, carrying authority into the very depths of their cabins
and the most personal conduct of their lives, the Indians of the Andes
were robbed of all initiative—granting that they ever possessed any—and
became the most passive of human creatures. Having imbued their subjects
with a sort of fatalism, a non-resistance to anything they conceived as
authority, above all by convincing them of their own divine origin, the
Incas made their conquest by the Spaniards easy; for the credulous
masses readily accepted these bearded strangers as Children of the Sun
also, to whom any resistance would be absurd. Thus must all false
doctrines prove in time a boomerang to those who foster them.
[Illustration:
A chiefly-Indian woman of Abancay, who refused to run the risk of
having the infant face the “magic box with one eye” until assured
that it was the best-looking baby in town]
[Illustration:
A _chola_ of Abancay, wearing the _dicclla_ which all put on at the
age of puberty, and in which the baby is carried when one arrives]
To-day the domination once held by the Incas has been taken over by the
priests, public functionaries, and the _patrón_, whose wills are obeyed
without question. In the eyes of the Indian the priest is the
representative of God on earth, to whom he must show absolute submission
and obedience, as to one who holds the key to that place of primitive
joys and freedom from the sorrows and hardships of this world to which
he conceives death to lead. That the priest may be harsh and unkindly,
or worse, has nothing to do with the case. Even the God of his
conception is cruel and vengeful, taking pleasure in bringing down
misfortunes on his head, and to be placated by any means in his power.
Were priest and authorities true to their missions, their domination
over the Indian might be advantageous. Too often they are quite the
contrary. The authorities are disdainful, looking upon their positions
merely as opportunities for personal gain; the priest is less often a
shepherd than a wolf preying upon his flock with impunity. Too often
priest and authorities join together to exploit the aboriginal with
liquor and church festivals, his only recreations, at times even
inventing the latter to make an excuse for exploitation. Whatever he may
once have been, the Indian of the Cordillera is a child, to be governed
by a kindly father, as the Incas seem to some extent to have been. The
civilization which the Spaniard is reputed to have brought him is
nothing of the sort. Garsilaso assures us that the masses were little
better than domestic animals, even at the time of the Conquest. They
were certainly in no worse state than to-day. That he should have
remained or fallen so low is difficult for us of the hopeful United
States to understand; it would be more easily understood in India with
its fixed castes, or even in England, where certain boys are born with
the necessity of lifting their caps to certain other boys. His stolidity
passes all conception. He is native to, and of a piece with, the pampa,
the bare, treeless upland world where the dreary expanse of brown earth
and cold blue sky incites neither ambition nor friendliness, neither
hopes nor aspirations. Hence his flat, joyless face with its furtive
eyes suggests a soul contracted upon itself, an aridity of sentiments,
an absolute lack of aesthetic affections. Passively sullen, morose, and
uncommunicative, he neither desires nor aspires, and loves or abhors
with moderation. The native language is scanty and cold in terms of
endearment; I have never seen the faintest demonstration of affection
between Indians of the two sexes, though plenty of evidence of bestial
lust. Even his music is a monotonous wailing, an interminable sob on a
minor key. He lacks will-power, perseverance, confidence, either in
himself or others, and has a profound abhorrence of any ways that are
not his ways. He works best in “bees,” with the beating of a drum, the
wail of a quena, and frequent libations of chicha to cheer him on, as,
no doubt, in the days of the Incas. He is noted for long-distance
endurance; yet this is not so great as is commonly fancied. Like an
animal, he cannot go “on his nerve,” or will not, which amounts to the
same thing. Try to hurry him and it will be found that he needs fifteen
days rest each month, like the llama.
From his earliest years the Andean Indian forms a conception of life as
something sinister and painful. As a baby, as soon as another
uncomplaining little creature usurps his place on the maternal back, he
is shut up in some noisome patio or hut, along with chickens,
guinea-pigs, and new-born sheep, with which he fights for his scanty
fare of a handful of toasted corn. Rolling about in his own filth and
that of the animals, who now and again all but outdo him in combat, he
reaches the age of four or five, and then begins his life-long struggle
with hostile nature. In the country he takes to shepherding the family
pigs, then a flock of sheep of the patrón, learning the use of the sling
and to wail mournful ditties on his reed fife. Here, with no other
covering than a coarse homespun garment open to the waist and barely
reaching the knees, he sits day after day contemplating the dreary
expanse of puna, until its very nothingness turns to melancholy in his
soul. In town he is “farmed out,” or virtually sold into slavery to some
family, learning a few ways of the whites, some Castilian, which he
commonly refuses to talk later in life, and also the injustice of man,
or the habit of considering himself too low to be reached by justice.
When he is older, and grown superstitious with listening to the tales of
the _yatiris_, his labor is still heavier. He guides the clumsy wooden
plow that is his notion of the last word in mechanical inventions, or
carries donkey-loads on his back. Nature yields only to hard struggle
and great perseverance in tilling the sterile soil; the sun is
parsimonious with its warmth; the very fuel of dung costs hard labor to
gather on these treeless heights. Or perhaps the authorities come to
carry him off to serve as a soldier of a country he hardly knows the
existence of, probably to die of the diseases engendered in his
overdeveloped lungs in the dreaded lowlands of coast or montaña. People
of scanty, inclement soil, mountaineers in general, are canny and
lacking in generosity by nature; add to this that he was forbidden the
use of money under the Incas, and it is small wonder the Indian will
give or sell his meager produce only by force. Tight-fisted and frugal,
he lives for days on a handful of parched corn and his beloved coca, of
the depressing effect of which he has no notion. To sleep he needs only
the hard ground, be it in his own hut or out under the shivering stars,
using perhaps a stone as pillow, if there be one within easy reach. He
is a tireless pedestrian; his corneous hoofs are impervious to the
roughest going; he sets out on whatever journey fate or his masters
assign him, knowing that if he lives he will some day come back to the
point of departure. For he has an irrepressible love for his native
spot, the mud den where he was born, however miserable or inclement, and
will not abandon his home permanently under any circumstances. If he
does not return, it is because some misfortune has overtaken him on the
trail.
The woman lives the same life from babyhood; and in some ways her duties
are still more onerous. Rude and torpid as the male, she neither
conceives nor possesses any of those softer qualities peculiar to her
sex. When trouble overtakes her she does not complain, but suffers and
weeps—if at all—alone, an utter stranger to pity in either its passive
or active form. Strong as a draft-horse, she knows none of the
infirmities to which modern civilized woman is subject. She gives birth
to a child virtually every year, often from the age of fifteen on,
without any species of preparation or precaution, washes it in the
nearest brook, slings it on her back, and goes on about her business.
The husbandman of the puna plants a few potatoes, a little quinoa,
perhaps some barley, clinging to the primitive ways of his ancestors to
remote generations. A good harvest does not depend upon proper planting
or fertilization, but on the changes of the moon and stars, and the
propitiation of the fetishes to which he still secretly gives his
adherence in spite of his ostensible conversion to Christianity. He
considers himself a being apart from the governing class, referring to
himself as “gente natural” and to his superiors as “gente blanca,” as
our southern negroes distinguish between “white folks” and “colored
folks.” He takes no part whatever in political matters, rarely indeed
having any conception of the country to which he belongs. Anything which
does not touch him personally he looks upon with profound indifference
and disdain. He is submissive as a brute, lives without enthusiasms,
without ambitions, in a purely animal passivity that is the despair of
those who are moved to an attempt to better his lot.
Some knowledge of Quichua is essential to intercourse with the mass of
the population of Cuzco, as it is to the convenience of the lone
traveler down the Andes. Even in the city a large number of the “gente
del pueblo” cannot, or will not, speak Spanish; in the villages round
about it is a rare man who has a suggestion of Castilian. All classes,
on the other hand, speak the aboriginal tongue, by necessity if not by
choice. The majority, indeed, imbibe it with their nurse’s milk,
learning Spanish as an alien language later in life. A professor of the
local university, boasting a Ph.D., assured me that he did not know a
word of Castilian when he first entered school at the age of seven.
After the revolt of Tupac Amaru an edict was promulgated prohibiting the
use of Quichua, as it did the native costume, and even commanded that
all musical instruments of the aboriginals be destroyed; but like many a
Spanish-American law this was never strictly enforced. To-day Cuzco is
the Florence of Quichua, where it has retained its purest form, least
influenced by the Spanish, and there are many persons of high social
standing, the women especially, who speak it by preference.
It is typical of the Latin-American that those things which are of the
soil, and have been familiar since childhood, are treated with contempt,
are considered inferior to anything possessing the glamor of distance.
Thus Quichua, like all survivals of “los Géntiles,” is looked down upon
by the “cultured” caste throughout the Andes as something appertaining
to the lower classes, to be avoided as diligently as manual labor.
“Vulgarly speaking” is the expression with which the cane-carrying
Peruvian apologetically prefaces any use of the native tongue. “No se
dice _allco_, se dice _perro_,” a mother reproves the child that points
to a dog with a lisp of the aboriginal word. But as usual, environment
is more powerful than maternal desires, and the child grows more fluent
in the speech of the Indians than in the aristocratic Spanish. The
tendency to scorn it seems a pity to the traveler, for the ancient
tongue is certainly worth preserving, and its preservation depends
chiefly on Cuzco. The American Rector of the University has done much to
reassure the town on the importance of its mission in this respect.
Already much has been lost. The best quichuaist in town did not know the
words for boat or island, though these are familiar enough wherever any
body of water exists in the Andes. Shortly before my arrival the ancient
drama “Ollantay” had been performed, and was found to contain many words
which even those whose mother-tongue is Quichua did not understand. As
the _quipus_, or knotted strings, was the only form of writing known to
the Incas, authoritative interpretation has been lost with the
_quipumayos_ who were trained to read them. The tongue of to-day has
suffered much admixture, many Spanish words having been “quichuaized”
when there was no necessity for it, until there remains a language as
bastardized as the “German” of rural Pennsylvania. Not a few have a
distinctly hazy notion of the line between the two tongues. “Medio,”
said Alejandro, my one-eyed hotel servant, “is Quichua, and ‘cinco
centavos’ is Spanish.” How should he know which was which of the two
languages he had spoken from childhood, neither of which he could read
nor write? There is less excuse for the assurance of persons of some
education that “asno” is Quichua and “burro” Spanish, completely
overlooking the fact that the Conquistadores brought not only the
donkey, but both names, with them. Now and again some expression from
the lips of an Indian quaintly recalls the history of the Peruvians and
their two-branch ancestry to remote generations. “Ojalá, Diós
pagarasunqui!” for instance is a mixture of Arabic, Spanish, and Quichua
in as many words.
[Illustration:
The first view of Cuzco, at the point where all Indians, male or
female, going or coming, pause and uncover and, looking down upon
the City of the Sun below, murmur, “Oh, Cuzco, Great City, I salute
thee!”]
[Illustration:
It requires at least three persons to shoe a horse or mule, as it does
to milk a cow, in the Andes. Ordinarily the blacksmith is not so
bold as this one, but stands at arm’s-length from the hoof. In the
background is one of the many old Inca walls on which the modern
dwellings of Cuzco are superimposed]
Yet after all, the ancient tongue of the Incas, variously called
Quichua, Quechua, and Keshua (with the most guttural of sounds), has
survived to a greater extent than any other American dialect. Some have
called it “Runa Simi,” or general language of the common people; but the
quichuaists of Cuzco insist that it is rather the Inca or court language
that has remained. Garsilaso complained that even in the time of the
Incas there was a “confusion and multitude of tongues,” with a new
dialect almost every league. He who has attempted to make his way down
the Andes on a fixed vocabulary will recognize the justice of this
plaint. Before we left Panama, Hays and I had made up a lexicon, only to
find that all but the commonest words changed so often that it was of
little value. What is called Quichua is spoken more or less continuously
from Quito to southern Bolivia, with scatterings through northern
Argentine. But the dialects of Ayacucho, Huancayo, the valley of
Ancachs, and especially of Cajamaca and further north, include many
terms which the purists of Cuzco will not grant an honest pedigree. Only
in the ancient capital has it retained anything like the original
pronunciation, with those “sounds harsh and disagreeable to our ears”
which Garsilaso sought to soften with editorial license. Philologists
assure us that the language rose in the north and moved southward,
citing the use of more archaic terms in the more southern dialects; for
example _yacu_, which is water in the north, is flowing water, or river,
in the south, where _unu_ designates the liquid. The spread of Quichua
has been attributed to culture rather than conquest, that is, it was
adopted by new tribes coming under the Inca influence, not because it
was forced upon them, but because it afforded a more perfect means of
communication than their primitive dialects.
It is a real language, with complete grammar and all the flexibility
and shades of expression of our classical tongues. Philologists have
attempted in vain to represent its sounds by Roman letters or
combinations thereof, even by inventing new characters. But these are
makeshifts at best, and the pronunciation can only be learned by
practice in its native land. Roughly speaking, it includes all the
letters of the Spanish alphabet except b, d, f, g, j, v, x, and z. But
many of those remaining must be doubled or otherwise modified to
represent sounds unknown to European tongues. L is rare, while the
sound represented by the Spanish ll is frequent; there is no rr, but r
is much used. Harsh in its phonetics, it has a suggestion of the
Chinese in that three pronunciations of the same word, labial,
palatal, or throaty, give it quite different meanings. The traveler
who pauses in the trail to call out “Cancha acca?” to an Indian hut
displaying the white flag that announces chicha for sale, would say
something quite different than he intended if he gave the cc the sound
represented by the single c. The accent is nearly always on the
penult, lending the speech a fixed and almost monotonous rhythm.
Technically speaking, Quichua is agglutinative, that is, formed by the
tacking on of suffix after suffix, until in some cases an entire
sentence consists of a single word, making it possible to express fine
shades of meaning fully equal to the Spanish with its diminutives and
affixes. It has no articles, no genders (at least expressed), no
individual prepositions, and has virtually only one verb conjugation.
The plural is formed by adding _cuna_; the six cases, corresponding to
the Latin, by suffixes. Thus _huarma_ is boy, _huarmacuna_, boys;
_huarmacunacta_ is the accusative, _huarmacunamanta_, of the boys. In
like manner the genitive is formed by combination; _acca_ is chicha,
_huasi_, house, and _accahuasi_, tavern. The doubling of words gives a
collective and often quite different meaning; thus _rumi_ is stone,
_rumirumi_, a stony place; _runa_ is man, _runaruna_, a crowd; _quina_
is bark, _quinaquina_, the medicinal bark from which we get quinine,
as well as the name thereof. Its system of counting is built up on the
fingers, as in all languages, but is somewhat cumbersome in larger
combinations—which none of the ignorant Indians of to-day are capable
of using. Thus 299 is _iscaypachacchuncaiscconniyoc_!
As in the case of all more or less primitive languages, Quichua is often
onomatopoetic,—its words formed from sounds connected with the object
expressed. Why the animal we miscall guinea-pig should be _cui_ (kwee)
to the natives of the Andes no one who has shivered through a night in
an Indian hut listening to the falsetto, grunting squeak of those
irrepressible little creatures will wonder; why a baby is a _guagua_
(wawa) none need ask. As in most languages, _mama_ is mother; on the
other hand, father is _tata_, or _tayta_; the newcomer finds _papa_
already in use to designate potato, as it has come to in all
Spanish-America, as well as in Andalusia. The primitive origin of the
Inca tongue is further demonstrated by many crudities of expression, and
an indelicacy in the use of certain terms that have been banished from
polite intercourse among European nations. _Nustahispana_, or
_penccacuy_ (shame) are cases in point. Marriage-time is
_Huarmihapiypacha_, literally, “the time to chase a woman.” It is
natural that many more aboriginal words should have survived and become
a part of the general language in a land where the Indians have survived
themselves, than in one where the race has been virtually wiped out, or
at least set apart, as with us. Hence the language of Spanish-America is
much richer than our own in terms from the aboriginal tongue. The
ignorant Spanish Conquistadores, as devoid of “language sense” as the
most uncouth American “drummer,” gave many of the native words queer
twists; to their untrained ears _Anti_ sounded like Andes, _tampu_ like
tambo, _pampa_ like bamba, and _Biru_ like Peru. Yet Quichua has
enriched even the languages of the world at large with many words, such
as llama, pampa, condor, and alpaca.
A brief sample of the ancient tongue might not be amiss. Few works
except the Bible have been printed in the vernacular; and this was done
not that the Indians might read it, since there probably exists no man
able to read Quichua who cannot also read Spanish, but for the use of
missionaries and priests among the Andean tribes. Many words for which
there existed no equivalent have, of course, been “quichuaized,” and the
letters retain their Spanish values. The parable of the man who built
his house on sand instead of rock (St. Luke, VI, 48) runs:
Ricchacun uc huasihacluc ccaryman; pi yallicta allpata allpisca
ccaccahuan tecsirkan. Inas paractin unu llocllapi yaicumurkan mayutac
caparispa saccay huasiman choccacurkan mana cuyurichiyta atispa huasi
ccaccapatapi tiactin.
Cuzco, the last foothold of Spanish power on the American continent,
bids fair to be the last of popery also. Even Quito is little more
fanatical. With the exception of Ayacucho, I found the former City of
the Sun the only place in Peru where the priests were still permitted to
advertise their spurious wares by an incessant thumping and hammering of
all the discordant noise-producers of whatever tone or caliber or lack
thereof, in her church towers, at any hour of day or night. There is a
law against “unnecessary” ringing of church-bells in Peru; but in this
hotbed of fanaticism the prefect does not interpret his duties too
severely. With a din that awoke the echoes of the distant
mountain-flanks that shut her in, Cuzco sallied frequently forth in a
long religious procession, not a single white man gracing it, except the
priests. These latter did not permit the most solemn formalities to
weigh heavily upon them. Even within the cathedral itself I have seen
the chief padre, carrying the host or whatever it is, and marching with
sanctimonious tread under his embroidered canopy, wrinkle up his
lascivious countenance and half-surreptitiously make unbelievably
scurrilous jokes with the priests close around him about the attractive
girls of the pious, downcast audience.
Peru has long been one of the most intolerant of nations, at least
theoretically. Since the adoption of her constitution public worship by
non-Catholics has been forbidden, its fourth article reading: “The
nation professes the Catholic religion, Apostolic and Roman; the state
protects it, and does not permit the public exercise of any other.” An
attempt had recently been made to amend this to the extent of striking
out the last clause. There has long been violation of the law. Lima has
an Episcopal church of long standing and considerable congregation, and
as the membership is largely English and American, Peru has not risked a
controversy with those countries by enforcing the constitution. In fact
the strongest and chief argument of the senators supporting the proposed
amendment was not that liberty of cult is just, but that “the law is not
being enforced anyway, so let’s change it.” A very few grasped the fact
that this is one of the many reforms needed to draw to Peru the
immigration indispensable to her modern advancement. The
fourteenth-century arguments of the hidebound clerical senators against
the proposed change afforded reading compared to which the efforts of
the world’s chief humorists are staid and funereal.
Great excitement broke out in the more “conservative” cities of the
interior when the news came up from Lima. Headed by the archbishop,
ecclesiastics of every grade issued orders to all _fieles_ to combat
“por cualquier medio—by any means whatever, this vile attack on the Holy
Mother Church, the morality of the family, and the honor of Peru by the
_masones_ and _ateistas_ of the Senate.” From all the _altiplanicie_
telegrams poured in, calling upon the senators to suppress “this absurd
resolution on the liberty of cults, unnatural to Peru and abhorred by
all the faithful.” Every scurrilous little Catholic organ—and the most
outspoken “sage-bush” journal of our Southwest cannot approach these in
vituperation and positive indecency of language in attacking their
enemies—frothed with raging editorials. In Cuzco it was planned to
parade the patron saint through the streets, ostensibly as a mere
protest. A few years ago the bishop would have met the issue by calling
together a few hundred of the most fanatical, filling them with
concentrated courage, and preaching a careful sermon that would really
have been an order to sack and kill the hated “liberals,” though with a
clever wording to clear his own skirts of the matter. Such things have
often happened in Cuzco. This time a rumor that the procession was to be
merely an excuse for the priests to incite their followers of dull
complexion and understanding to riot reached the students of the
university. Though all are Catholics, these fiery “liberals” are ardent
haters of priests; only a few years before they had bodily flung the
“clerical” faculty out of the institution. Now they secretly gathered
revolvers and planned to lay in wait for some of the more fanatical
priests when the procession started. Wind of this reached some one of
higher authority and intelligence, the news was wired to Lima, and in
the nick of time orders came to the prefect to forbid the parade.
An amendment to the constitution in Peru requires the consent of two
consecutive congresses and the signature of the president after each
passage. A year later the amendment on the liberty of cult was carried
and became law amid a scene of riot in the senate, during which a
fanatical representative snatched the bill from the hands of a clerk and
tore it to bits.
It occurred to me one day that it might be unpatriotic to leave Cuzco
without calling on the only American missionaries—except a lone preacher
in Bogotá—I had so far heard of in South America. On the edge of town I
found my way at length into a mud-walled compound of some fifteen acres,
with fat green alfalfa, an exotic windmill, and a two-story mansion
surrounded by flower-plots. I had paused near what seemed to be the main
door, and stood gazing admiringly at the wall that shut out all the
troubles of this rude world, when a window opened and a lean man of
forty, his mission plainly imprinted on his gaunt features, a finger
between the leaves of a hymn-book, put out his head and murmured,
“Buenas tardes.”
“Is this Mr. ——?” I asked in English.
“It is.”
“Well, I just happened to be in town and thought I’d.... But no doubt
you are very busy....”
“Yes, I am busy,” came the reply, in a bona fide missionary voice, “but
don’t let that keep you from coming in—if you want to.”
Naturally I grasped so urgent an invitation with both hands.
“Oh, no,” I protested, “I wouldn’t think of disturbing you. I’ll stay
out here and look at the scenery.”
“Yes, look at the scenery,” replied the urgent gentleman, as he and the
hymn-book disappeared behind the closed window.
Inside arose sounds not unlike a Methodist meeting, and I had begun to
wander stealthily away when the door opened and the missionary’s more
cordial better half informed me that they were not “holding services.”
Reassured, I entered the cozy parlor. Two women and a man were gathered
about a diminutive melodeon, singing mournful hymns. Naturally, at sight
of me the musicians lost their nerve, and the cheerful pastime came to a
standstill. In due time I discovered that the youthful organist had just
been shipped down fresh and untarnished from a Canadian theological
seminary, to “bring the poor Peruvians to Christ.” His qualifications
for that feat were that he had not, up to his arrival, seen a printed
page of Spanish, had never heard of Quichua or Pizarro, and though he
did remember the name Prescott, he “didn’t know he had written about
foreign countries.” I found that Peyrounel, he of the maidenly hair,
chestful of medals, and andarín reputation, had lived a month at the
mission the year before, having posed as a poor persecuted Huguenot
among bloodthirsty Catholics. He had filled the scanty imaginations of
the group with so many wild tales of the road that I could not refrain
from giving my own inventiveness vent, and at the end of a dozen
bloodcurdling episodes the fresh young product of the seminary remarked
in a ladylike voice, “That must have been quite interesting.” Looked at
from that point of view, perhaps he was right. In the early days of
their mission the ladies had been received and called on socially by the
haughtiest of their sex in Cuzco. But they had soon been ostracized, not
because of their religion—or, from the Cuzco point of view, lack
thereof—but because, having been detected in the act of sweeping out
their own parlor, it was concluded that they were _cholas_ in their own
country and not fit to associate with gente decente.
Unless the time of my stay there was exceptional, suicide is à la mode
in Cuzco. Almost on the day of my arrival one bold youth of twenty-five
decided to die because Señorita Fulana scorned his attentions. He wrote
a long poem explaining to the disdainful damsel, and the world at large,
why he was leaving life so early—it afterward graced the contribution
page of one of the local journals—and fired four revolver shots. One
grazed his chest, a second tore a hole in the tail of his frock-coat,
the third smashed a lamp on the mantelpiece, and the fourth scared the
family cat off the divan. The date of the wedding was soon to be
announced when I left Cuzco. Among the host of disciples of this heroic
and enviable deed among the excitable _juventud_ of Cuzco were several
youth of like age, who attempted to imitate it from equally absurd
motives. All carried the act to a more or less successful conclusion,
except one who, either because he took the matter too seriously, or
neglected to practice beforehand, or because he was not a native
cuzqueño, or had been reading Ibsen, shot himself through the temple.
The subject of suicide leads us naturally to the cemetery. That of Cuzco
celebrated a sort of “Decoration Day” during my stay. Placards announced
that “for reasons of hygiene” the alcalde permitted no one but actual
mourners to visit it; but it is always easy to find something to mourn
over in Peru. An endless stream of humanity was pouring in through the
gate by which I entered, while a score of soldiers on guard stood
drinking chicha, gambling, and making love. As in all Spanish countries,
the corpses were pigeon-holed away, bricked in, and marked with the date
on which the rent would fall due. With unlimited space about the city,
it is hard to understand why the dead must be tucked away in this
expensive fashion, except that the priests refuse to sprinkle with holy
water those planted elsewhere. At the gate was posted a long list of
corpses whose rent had run out, with the information that unless it was
paid by the end of the month the contents would be dumped in the
boneyard.
A visit to any Latin-American cemetery is equal to sitting through a
well-played comedy, so lacking is the native sense of propriety. Between
the padlocked iron reja and the bulkhead of each grave is a narrow space
which it is à la mode to fill with flowers. But as flowerpots are rare
and expensive in Cuzco, there were substituted cans that had once held
“Horiman’s Tea,” or “Smith’s Mixed Pickles,” many with gay labels
adorned with the portraits of scantily clad actresses of international
notoriety still upon them. Here and there a family with a praiseworthy
sense of economy had caused the grave-head to be marked with the brass
name-plate that formerly graced the place of business of the deceased;
others had “Renewed to 1918” crudely scratched in the cement, bearing
witness to an unusually tenacious grief on the part of the survivors—or
to a well-drawn will. Many tombs were decorated with atrocious
photographs of the occupant; others had verses—no doubt the author would
call them poems—some printed, some laboriously hand-written, pasted
against them and glassed over, like the photographs. Here and there the
bulkhead of a well-to-do member of society was entirely covered by a
painting depicting the untold grief of those left behind,—in most cases
a picture of the coffin of the deceased, with a string of his male
relatives and friends on one side and the female mourners opposite, all
dressed in their most correct attire—or the best the painter could
furnish them from his palette—and standing exact distances apart in
exactly the same attitude of weeping copiously into a large handkerchief
á dos reales in any shop. Only, as the painter, who is seldom a direct
descendant of Murillo, always paints in the eyes _above_ the
handkerchief, the impression conveyed is that the entire group is
suffering from a bad cold, that the funeral was inadvertently put off
too long, or that each is keeping a worldly eye out for any suspicious
move on the part of the others.
The hospital of Cuzco is a part of the same structure as the cemetery,
with a door between—a very foresighted and convenient arrangement for
such a hospital. The building is roomy, but not much else can be said
for it. Indians and half-Indians, male and female, lie closely packed
together in long rows of aged cots along ill-ventilated halls. Hardy as
seem these mountain Indians, once they are subjected to the changed life
of the barracks, with food, clothing, and shoes to which they are not
accustomed, they succumb with surprising ease to a long list of
ailments. From kitchen to drug-shop, from nurses to Indian servants,
stalked that ubiquitous uncleanliness of the Andes. Several idiots and
insane persons were confined in noisome dens unworthy of animal
occupancy. In a dismal, half-underground corner a handsome, powerfully
built young cholo lay on a heap of rags that constituted absolutely the
only furnishings. He had been _capellan_ of the cathedral, and whenever
a church-bell rang—which was most of the time—he sprang up from the
uneven earth floor and began to sing Latin hymns at the top of his
voice, shaking and gnawing the heavy wooden bars that confined him. The
four most deadly diseases of Cuzco, in their order, are typhoid,
dysentery, tuberculosis, and smallpox. The doctors, physicians of the
town who drop in casually and hurriedly each morning, are paid $27.50 a
month. La Superiora draws $10, the first cook and the grave-diggers $5,
general male servants $3.50, and female servants $2 a month, with food
and a spot to lay their “beds” on. What they do with all that money I
cannot say. The hospital cannot afford disinfectants, and when a
surgical operation is to be performed the instruments are washed in hot
water—if there happens to be fuel. Patients are allowed 13 cents a day
for food, employees, 15, and the woman in charge, 20.
[Illustration:
Indian women of the market-place, wearing the “pancake” hat of Cuzco]
[Illustration:
An Indian of Cuzco, speaking only Quichua]
I visited most of the institutions of learning in Cuzco. The German head
of the Colegio, or high school for boys, wore his cap and overcoat even
in the class-rooms; and no one could have blamed him for it in this
dismal rainy season. An army officer had been detailed as gymnasium
instructor, the national government requiring a certain amount of
physical training of all students. He led the way to an earth-floored
building in the rear, where the pupils took turns in falling over the
crude apparatus without removing even their coats. To appear in
shirt-sleeves, even in a gymnasium, would be an inexcusable breach of
etiquette in South America. School ran from 8 to 11, and from 1 to 5,
with a ten-minute recess between each fifty-minute class, that must be
spent in the corredor and not used in study. Among the students was one
Juan Inca, of pure Indian type, and the great majority showed more or
less aboriginal blood. The chemistry class, in a laboratory with a floor
of unlevelled, trodden earth, had a peon to arrange the experiments for
the professor, who performed most of them in person. Few of the students
could be coaxed to soil their own never-washed hands in the interests of
science, and those who broke or spilled anything were sure to cry out,
“He, muchacho!”—or more likely, “Yau, huarma,” since in their excitement
their native tongue came first to their lips—and in trotted an Indian
boy to clean up the mess. The newly arrived limeño teacher, who had
tried to get them to do their own experiments, was informed that they
were not peons. Yet nine tenths of them would have been run out of the
least exacting American workshop for their evidences of avoiding the
bath. It may be that the poor, proud fellows had no servants at home to
take it for them. Upon his arrival the teacher had established the rule
that, as his class began at 1:10, any boy not in his seat by 1:11 would
be reported tardy. The students sent a telegram of protest to the
government in Lima, and word came back from the Minister of Education:
“Professor ——, Colegio, Cuzco: Do not put too much stress on small and
unimportant matters.”
As if there were any matter on which the Latin-American is more sadly in
need of education!
The class miscalled “English” was in charge of a native youth who had
spent a year in a well-known but not particularly famous institution in
our Middle West, unfortunately favored by most Cuzco youths permitted to
top off their education in the United States. When I entered some sixty
boys, of about the age at which the Latin-American begins precociously
to turn rake, were floundering through some “I want a dog” sentences.
The teacher’s knowledge of his subject was such as might be gathered in
the dormitories of that seat of jesuitical learning above mentioned, but
was not exactly what he might have learned had he been permitted to
mingle with the profane outside world. It would not have been so bad had
he been content to stick to his Cortina grammar, though his
pronunciation was at best mirth-provoking. But like so many half-learned
persons, he regarded himself as the source of all wisdom and insisted on
using his own judgment, when he possessed none. He was dictating
dialogues between two American boys, and forcing his students to learn
to mis-mumble them; just such expressions as we have all, no doubt,
heard American boys use to each other daily. Here are a few of the gems
I copied from the blackboard:
“Mys cheek it is pinkes”—which had not even the doubtful virtue of being
true.
“By Gosh, Huzle up!” The Jesuited instructor had no doubt often heard
this hasty, unLatin-American word in the dormitories, but having never
chanced to see it in print, he had chosen his own spelling, with this
happy result.
“We now shall go to the exam.” The longer word for that distressing
experience he seemed never to have heard.
“My watch it goes too fast.”
“At your service, John, thank you. What are the news?” Several students
made the error of using a singular verb in this sentence, but they were
quickly and sarcastically reminded that the noun _news_ ends in an s,
which any fool knows is a sign of the plural in English, as in Spanish.
“I shall long for you after you are gone away”; the blackboard
continued, and so on, always with a distinctly home-made pronunciation.
The traveler can scarcely blame himself if he does not understand his
native tongue when it is shouted after him in the streets of Cuzco by
the proud students of the Colegio.
The higher institution is the ancient University of Cuzco, founded
nearly a half-century before our oldest, and occupying the great stone
cloisters of the former Jesuit monastery. A young and enthusiastic
American rector has done much to give it new impulse; but one man
single-handed cannot reform the Latin-American character. Its 160
students from the four surrounding departments have increased both in
numbers and diligence since the “conservative” professors were thrown
out, but their point of view is still not exactly that of our own
college men. Among others I attended a class on “Special Literature.” It
was a third-year course, of seven students; the hour, from three to
four. I arrived at 3:15 and found the professor, a Ph.D. (Cuzco) whose
wide nostrils, broad face, and prominent cheek bones proved him chiefly
of aboriginal blood, pacing up and down the second-story corredor
smoking a cigarette. At 3:20 a white youth of about twenty-three, with a
mustache, drifted languidly across the patio swinging his cane. He and
the professor bowed low, shook hands, exchanged the unavoidable “Buenas
tardes, señor. Cómo está usted? Cómo está la familia?” lifted their
hats, and at length broke the clinch. The professor produced from his
pocket a massive key and opened a cubical, whitewashed room, having
installed himself in which, he began to “lecture” on Calderón de la
Barca. At 3:28 a half-Indian student stamped into the room and
interrupted the proceedings with a loud “Buenas tardes, señor,” causing
the professor to lose the thread of his discourse for a minute or more.
When the interruption had subsided, he continued to lecture, pausing now
and then to look at his outline notes, more often to inhale the smoke of
the cigarette he still held backward between his fingers. The white
youth soon fell asleep, woke as his head dropped, spat on the floor, and
then frankly and openly laid his head back against the wall and slept.
The other half of the class sat with the filmy, half-closed eyes of a
man who is dreaming of his cholita of not too unobliging morals in some
hut on the outskirts of town. It would have been ill-bred of the
professor, and galling to the “pride” of his class, to have waked them.
He finished his cigarette and droned unbrokenly on. At 3:46 another
haughty half-Indian, his silver-headed cane held at the approved
Parisian angle, broke in upon the lecture with a greeting, which the
professor interrupted his remarks to acknowledge. At 3:50 he took
advantage of the awakening caused by the new arrival to begin a quiz,
asking the white student something about the subject of his discourse.
The usual long preliminary sparring for wind in the form of “Ah-oh-ah,
Señor Don Pedro Calderón de la Garca, one of the most important authors
of his epoch in Spain,” and so through a long list of stock phrases, was
followed by a mumbling of some vague and general rubbish he could easily
have framed up had he not known whether Señor Don Pedro was man, woman,
or priest. When he had said nothing for about two minutes, one of the
others was given the floor—no doubt the professor apologized later for
being obliged to call upon them because of the presence of a
distinguished foreign visitor—and launched forth in another set of
phrases. Like the other, he did not know the title of any of Calderón’s
dramas, who left only a hundred or two to choose from, though the class
had “studied” several of those works during the year’s course. After
each question the professor broke in upon the meaningless mumble to
answer his query himself, and as he named the works one by one, the
student cried out each time with a great display of wisdom, “Ah, sí,
señor!” “Es verdad, señor!” as he would have done had the former
inadvertently included “Quo Vadis” or “Evangeline.” At 3:56 the
professor carefully called the roll to find out how many of the seven
were present, entered that important fact on an official blank to be
left with the rector at the end of the day, and with much bowing and
ceremonious formality the class took leave of themselves, lighted their
cigarettes, tucked their canes under their arms, and faded away.
Having long wished to attend a trial, I carried a note of introduction
to a judge of the supreme court of the department of Cuzco.
“Trial? Certainly, señor. When do you wish to see one?”
“Any time there happens to be one.”
“Choose for yourself.”
“Well, shall we say Wednesday, at one?”
“It shall be done. I shall have something of importance arranged for
you. How would this new burglary case do? Or the recent suicide? The
burglary? Very good, then, señor; Wednesday at one. Su servidor, adiós,
caballero.”
Luckily there were cases pending, thus sparing the judge the trouble of
having to arrange to have the crime committed.
[Illustration:
An Indian required to pay for the day’s mass proudly clings to his
staff of office]
[Illustration:
Youths from a village near Cuzco, each with a coca cud in his cheek]
Jury trial is unknown in Peru, as in most, if not all Spanish-America.
In the first place, if the uncle of the accused is a compadre, or his
nephew a padrino or a nineteenth cousin of the father-in-law of the
judge or anyone else high in authority, the chances are that the matter
will be dropped. Favored with none of these advantages, he must let the
law take its rigorous, snail-like course. The trial is entirely on
paper, back in the recesses of some dingy office. The one I entered at
the hour and day set reminded me of some scene from the pages of
Dickens. I was bowed to an ancient couch at one side of the dismal adobe
room, the secretary, in an aged overcoat of various degrees of fadedness
and an enormous neck muffler, sitting at a medieval table. My friend,
the “Judge of the First Instance,” in sartorial splendor, sat at
another, his silk hat upside down before him. He had “arranged” the case
of an Italian shopkeeper who had been robbed the Saturday before. The
Italian, being summoned, entered, bowed, remained standing, gave his
name, age, _religion_, and other personal details, took the oath. Then
he told his story in his own words to the judge, who asked questions but
made no attempt at cross-examination, rather helping the witness in his
answers when he stumbled or paused for want of a Spanish word. Meanwhile
the secretary busied himself with rolling and consuming innumerable
cigarettes. When he had finished his tale, the Italian was shown for the
purpose of identification some articles sent over from the Intendencia
as taken from the prisoner’s pocket, after which they still remained “in
the hands of justice.” Then the witness sat down and the judge himself
dictated the story in his own words to the secretary. The latter armed
himself with a steel pen, dipped it incessantly into a viceregal
inkwell, and peering over the top of his glasses, laboriously wrote in a
copybook hand three words at a time, repeating them aloud. Shorthand is
unknown in the government offices of the Andes. It would be too much to
ask a political henchman to learn stenography, or anything else, for the
mere purpose of holding a government position; typewriters are
expensive; moreover, typewritten documents are not legal in most
governmental formalities; so ultra-modern a system would be lacking in
dignity for such solemn purposes, and its introduction would require new
effort on the part of secretaries whose only asset is the medieval art
of penmanship. The endless task over and the Italian dismissed, one of
the prisoners, a half-breed boy of eighteen, of degenerate type, was
brought in by an Indian soldier and “testified” in the same manner as
the plaintiff had done. He was not required to take the oath, but was
warned to tell the truth. Again it was his own story, just as he chose
to tell it, with no attempt to trip him up, and even occasional
assistance. This the judge redictated in his own more cultured language,
that the archives of Cuzco should not be marred by the undignified
speech of the masses; and the “trial” was over. A deaf-mute wished to
testify in the case, but as there are no schools in Peru for those so
afflicted, there was no one who could understand him.
In short, a trial in Spanish-America consists of nothing but the making
of affidavits, there called _declaraciones_. These are seen only by the
judge, not even the prisoner’s lawyer being permitted—legally—access to
them. Later, if there is found time for it, comes the _sumario_ in which
the judge reads in his private study the various declarations and passes
judgment and sentence, likewise in privacy, which sentence must be
reviewed by the Superior Court of the Department. The curious may ask
where the lawyer for the prisoner comes in. I was informed that “he sees
the prisoner first and tells him what to say in his declaration.” Thus
is the secret, mysterious “justice” of Latin-America, “a joke at so much
a word,” as they call it in Ecuador, administered. If one has a man
arrested, one must hire a lawyer to find out what happened to him.
I next went with the judge, in his gleaming stove-pipe hat and
surrounded by his suite of courtiers, to the prison on the banks of the
noisome Huatenay. The departmental place of confinement consisted of an
old-fashioned Spanish dwelling built around a large courtyard, a dismal
patio in which were gathered prisoners from all parts of Peru’s largest
department, from white men of the capital to half-wild Indians of the
_montaña_, who know so little of the ways of government that they
thought they were being held by their tribal enemies. Everyone was doing
whatever he chose, with a freedom from restraint that recalled the
debtors’ prisons of England a century ago. As in most Latin-American
penal institutions, there was no evidence of cruelty or unkindness to
inmates, except the passive cruelty of neglect, most of the outward
forms of courtesy being kept up between officials and prisoners. By
night the latter slept in mud cells of the rambling adobe building, on
earth floors as bare as those of an Indian hut unless, like the traveler
in the Sierra, they brought their own “beds” with them. No food worthy
the name was furnished. Outside the patio, separated from it by a
massive iron wicket, were the wives, temporary or otherwise, of the
prisoners, who had brought them dinner in baskets, pots, or knotted
cloths. This custom of having the judge visit the place of confinement
is not without its advantages; at least, it gives him a personal
knowledge of what a sentence means. As long as we remained, a constant
line of prisoners crowded around my companion to tell their grievances.
Those who wore hats carried them in their hands, but the cringing
Indians, who mumbled their complaints in Quichua, did not remove their
earlap “skating” caps. The petitioners ranged all the way from four
“wildmen” from the hot-lands to the east, to a white and well-educated
youth who began:
“Your Honor excuses me, but I have now been here seven months, and if
you could be pleased to arrange that they have my trial some day before
long....”
It is a short but rather breathless climb in this altitude from the
level of the town to the ancient fortress of Sacsahuaman, frowning down
upon Cuzco from 700 feet above. On the city side the hill hangs almost
precipitous, the town piled part way up it; but a flanking road soon
brings one out beside the most massive monument of aboriginal art on the
American continent. The cyclopean ruins are, as Garsilaso put it,
“rather cliffs than walls,” and how these enormous boulders, of which
mathematicians compute the largest to weigh a little matter of 360 tons,
were set in position on this lofty headland by a race that knew neither
horses nor oxen will ever remain as great a mystery as the building of
the pyramids. Only one thing is certain; that the builders had unlimited
labor at their command and that time was no object. Prescott’s “so
finely wrought it was impossible to detect the line of junction between
the rocks” is scarcely true; the detection is more than easy. But it is
hard to believe these monster walls were constructed by the ancestors of
the stolid and ambitionless Indians one sees to-day peddling their wares
in the market-place of Cuzco. These downtrodden descendants take the
amazing works of their forebears for granted, as we accept the
constructions of nature, and never dream of attempting to imitate them.
Indeed, many contend that they were not built, but grew up by
enchantment. Nations, like individuals, have enthusiasm and initiative
for great enterprises in their youth, and are apt to settle down to
contentment with the mediocre in middle age, which there are hints that
the race we roughly call Inca had reached at the time of the Conquest.
The massive triple walls of the fortress were built in zigzag form, with
salient angles from which the defenders within could fall upon their
enemies, making it sufficient protection to the Imperial city without
the necessity of surrounding that with walls. Even after the effete
modern inhabitants have tumbled all the stones they could move down into
the city to build their own temples and dwellings—the efforts of
Lilliputians among giants—and despite the damage wrought by ruthless
treasure-hunters, the main portion of the great fortress of Sacsahuaman
still remains intact, to bring upon the beholder a rage that Pizarro and
his fellow-tramps should have destroyed, like bulls in a china-shop, the
Empire that wrought such marvels, a wonder at what might have been had
the Conquest of Peru never taken place.
In ancient days, whenever the son of an Inca put a bent pin of champi in
the Imperial chair the resulting box on the ear must have been
accompanied with a “Here, you aslla supay, go out and carve another step
in that boulder!” There is no other rational explanation of the
mutilation which every rock and ground-stone for a circuit of many miles
around the City of the Sun suffered before the Conquest. Everywhere
huge, house-large rocks, dull-gray in color, are fantastically carved in
every imaginable form, with seats, crannies, grottoes, and stairways, as
if for mere whim or amusement. There was no “scamping” of work in those
days, no “good enough” to the straw bosses of the Incas, only one
grade,—the perfect. The hardest rock is cut with exquisite care and
finish, the angles perfectly sharp, the flat parts smooth as if cast in
a mould. To the modern inhabitants every such carved seat is a “throne
of the Incas”—as if the Inca had nothing to do but sit around admiring
the widespread view from those aërial points of vantage of which his
dynasty was so fond. The imagination likes to picture him watching
athletic games on the little plain before Sacsahuaman, and chuckling
behind his Imperial mask at the antics of children sliding down the
Rodadero, or toboggan-stone, as do still those youths of Cuzco who are
low enough in caste not to jeopardize their dignity by such antics.
Over behind the ruins and carved rocks I found all the provincial
“authorities” gathered one Sunday to uncover another of the many immense
boulders that had lain for centuries disguised as a mound of earth. The
gobernadores and tenientes, in more or less “European” garb, confined
their labor to bossing; the actual work was done by the alguaciles,
jealously clinging to their silver-mounted staffs of office, even as
they toiled. The digging brought to light not only another huge,
fantastically carved ground-rock, but a hint of how Sacsahuaman might
have been built. The Incas had but to call in men from all the district
roundabout, under their commanders of tens, and if a thousand did not
suffice to move a stone, nothing was easier than to summon two, or five,
or ten thousand. Thus the government of to-day has continued many of the
ancient ways, as the Church has grafted its own forms on the religion of
the Children of the Sun.
[Illustration:
Our party setting out for Machu Picchu across the high plains about
Cuzco]
[Illustration:
Ollantaytambo, the end of the first day’s journey, in the valley of
the Urubamba. In the upper left-hand corner is seen the
bright-yellow “school” of Inca days]
But more striking even than prehistoric ruins is the view of Cuzco
from the foot of the inevitable wooden cross at the summit of
Sacsahuaman. So steep is the hill on this side, and so close to the
town, that it seems almost to bulge out over it, and all the
Imperial city lies spread out beneath, as from an aeroplane, its
every plaza and patio in full view to its very depths, the
activities of every family as plainly visible as if some magic wand
had lifted away the concealing roofs. Here and there, even on a
Sunday, an Indian in crude-colored garments and his pancake hat
crawls along the fortress hill behind his oxen and wooden plow, with
the Imperial city of his forefathers as a background. Beyond, the
greenish valley of the Huatenay stretches away southward between
velvety-brown, wrinkled hills, the four royal highways diverging
from the main plaza as principal streets and sallying forth to the
“Four Corners of the Earth” as directly as the configurations of the
Andes permit. But always the eye drifts back to the city below,
spread out in every slightest detail. Under the Incas it may have
been “bright and shining with gold and gay with color, its long and
narrow streets, crossing each other at right angles with perfect
regularity, adorned with beautiful palaces and temples”; even
to-day, under the rays of the unclouded Andean sun, it is a scene no
mere words can bring to him who has not looked down upon it in
person. The soft red of its aged tile roofs and the rich brown of
its bulking churches leaves no need for golden adornment. The
Sunday-morning noises come up distinctly,—school-boys playing in the
patios of monasteries, fighting-cocks haughtily challenging the
world to combat, a weary bell booming a belated summons, the
half-barbarous, half-inspiring screech of trumpets rising as a
regiment of the garrison that keeps Cuzco loyal to “those degenerate
negroes of Lima” sets out on a march; yet all blending together into
a sort of pagan music that carries the imagination bodily back to
the pre-Conquest days of long ago.