and representing what are called “Lebenskräfte,” vital forces, and
vital affinities, (Pulteney, in the Transact. of the Royal Soc.
of Edinburgh, vol. xvi. p. 305), the formation-impulse, and the
active principle in organisation. I have said, in Kosmos, Bd. i. S.
67, (English Ed. vol. i. p. 62), “The myths of imponderable matter
and of vital forces peculiar to each organism have complicated and
perplexed the view of nature. Under different conditions and forms
of recognition the prodigious mass of our experimental knowledge
has progressively accumulated, and is now enlarging with increased
rapidity. Investigating reason essays from time to time with varying
success to break through ancient forms and symbols, invented to
effect the subjection of rebellious matter, as it were, to mechanical
constructions.” Farther on in the same volume, (p. 339 English, and
367 of the original,) I have said, “In a physical description of the
universe, it should still be noticed that the same substances which
compose the organic forms of plants and animals are also found in the
inorganic crust of the globe; and that the same forces or powers which
govern inorganic matter are seen to prevail in organic beings likewise,
combining and decomposing the various substances, regulating the forms
and properties of organic tissues, but acting in these cases under
complicated conditions yet unexplained, to which the very vague terms
of ‘vital phænomena,’ ‘operations of vital forces,’ have been assigned,
and which have been systematically grouped, according to analogies more
or less happily imagined.” (Compare also the critical notices on the
assumption of proper or peculiar vital forces in Schleiden’s Botanik
als inductive Wissenchaft (Botany as an Inductive Science), Th. i.
S. 60, and in the recently published excellent Untersuchungen über
thierische Elektricität (Researches on Animal Electricity), by Emil du
Bois-Reymond, Bd. i. S. xxxiv.-l.)
THE
PLATEAU OF CAXAMARCA,
THE
ANCIENT CAPITAL OF THE INCA ATAHUALLPA:
AND
THE FIRST VIEW OF THE PACIFIC OCEAN,
FROM THE CREST OF THE ANDES.
After a residence of an entire year on the crest of the chain of the
Andes or Antis[41], between 4° North and 4° South Latitude, in the
high plains of New Granada, Pastos, and Quito, whose mean elevations
range between 8500 and 12800 English feet, we rejoiced in descending
gradually through the milder climate of the Quina-yielding forests of
Loxa to the plains of the upper part of the course of the Amazons,
a terra incognita rich in magnificent vegetation. The small town of
Loxa has given its name to the most efficacious of all the species of
medicinal Fever-Bark: Quina, or Cascarilla fina de Loxa. It is the
precious production of the tree which we have described botanically as
Cinchona condaminea, but which, under the erroneous impression that
all the kinds of the Quina or fever bark of commerce were furnished
by the same species of tree, had previously been called Cinchona
officinalis. The Fever Bark was first brought to Europe towards the
middle of the seventeenth century, either, as Sebastian Badus asserts,
to Alcala de Henares in 1632, or to Madrid in 1640, on the arrival of
the wife of the Viceroy, the Countess of Chinchon[42], who had been
cured of intermittent fever at Lima, accompanied by her physician,
Juan del Vego. The trees which yield the finest quality of Quina de
Loxa are found from 8 to 12 miles to the south east of the town, in
the mountains of Uritusinga, Villonaco, and Rumisitana, growing on
mica-slate and gneiss, at very moderate elevations above the level of
the sea, being between 5400 and 7200 (5755 and 7673 English) feet,
heights about equal respectively to those of the Hospice on the Grimsel
and the Pass of the great St. Bernard. The proper boundaries of the
Quina-woods in this quarter are the small rivers Zamora and Cachiyacu.
The tree is cut down in its first flowering season, or in the
fourth or seventh year of its age, according as it has sprung from
a vigorous root-shoot, or from a seed: we heard with astonishment
that at the period of my journey, according to official computations,
the collectors of Quina (Cascarilleros and Cazadores de Quina, Quina
Hunters),--only brought in 110 hundred weight of the Bark of the
Cinchona condaminea annually. None of this precious store found its way
at that time into commerce; the whole was sent from the port of Payta
on the Pacific, round Cape Horn to Cadiz, for the use of the Spanish
Court. In order to furnish this small quantity of 11000 Spanish pounds,
eight or nine hundred trees were cut down every year. The older and
thicker stems have become more and more scarce; but the luxuriance of
vegetation is such that the younger trees which are now resorted to,
though only 6 inches in diameter, often attain from 53 to 64 English
feet in height. This beautiful tree, which is adorned with leaves
above 5 English inches long and 2 broad, growing in dense woods, seems
always to aspire to rise above its neighbours. As its upper branches
wave to and fro in the wind, their red and shining foliage produces a
strange and peculiar effect recognisable from a great distance. The
mean temperature in the woods where the Cinchona condaminea is found,
ranges between 12-1/2° and 15° Reaumur (60°.2 and 65°.8 Fahrenheit),
which are about the mean annual temperatures of Florence and the Island
of Madeira; but the extremes of heat and cold observed at these two
stations of the temperate zone are never felt around Loxa. Comparisons
between the climates of places, one of which is situated in an elevated
tropical plain, and the other in a higher parallel of latitude, can be
from their nature but little satisfactory.
In order to descend South-South-East from the mountain knot of Loxa to
the hot Valley of the Amazons, it is first necessary to pass over the
_Paramos_ of Chulucanas, Guamani and Yamoca,--mountain wildernesses of
a peculiar character of which we have already spoken, and to which, in
the southern parts of the Andes, the name of Puna (a word belonging
to the Quichua language) is given. They mostly rise above 9500 (10125
English) feet; they are stormy, often enveloped for days in dense mist,
or visited by violent and formidable showers of hail,--consisting not
merely of hailstones of different spherical forms, usually a good
deal flattened by rotation, but also sometimes of less regular forms,
the hail having run together into thin plates of ice (papa-cara) which
cut the face and hands. At such times I have occasionally seen the
thermometer sink to 7° or 5° Reaumur, (47°.8 and 43°.2 Fahr.) and the
electric tension of the atmosphere, measured by Volta’s electrometer,
pass in a few minutes from positive to negative. When the temperature
sinks below 5° Reaumur, (43°.2 Fahrenheit) snow falls in large and
thinly scattered flakes. The vegetation of the Paramos has a peculiar
physiognomy and character, from the absence of trees, the short close
branches of the small-leaved myrtle-like shrubs, the large sized and
numerous blossoms, and the perpetual freshness of the whole from the
constant and abundant supply of moisture. No zone of Alpine vegetation
in the temperate or cold parts of the globe can well be compared with
that of the Paramos in the tropical Andes.
The impressions produced on the mind by the natural characters of these
wildernesses of the Cordilleras are heightened in a remarkable and
unexpected manner, from its being in those very regions that we still
see admirable remains of the gigantic work, the artificial road of the
Incas, which formed a line of communication through all the provinces
of the Empire, extending over a length of more than a thousand English
geographical miles. We find, placed at nearly equal distances apart,
stations consisting of dwelling houses built of well-cut stone; they
are a kind of Caravanserai, and are called Tambos and sometimes
Inca-pilca (from _pircca_, the wall?). Some of them are surrounded
by a kind of fortification; others were constructed for baths with
arrangements for conducting hot water; the larger were designed for
the use of the family of the Monarch himself. I had previously seen,
measured, and drawn with care, buildings of the same kind in a good
state of preservation at the foot of the volcano of Cotopaxi, near
Callo. Pedro de Cieça, writing in the 16th century, called them
“Aposentos de Mulalo.”[43] In the pass between Alausi and Loxa, called
the Paramo del Assuay,--(a much frequented route across the Ladera de
Cadlud, 14568 French or 15526 English feet above the level of the sea,
or almost equal to the height of Mont Blanc),--as we were leading our
heavily laden mules with great difficulty through the marshy ground
on the elevated plain del Pullal, our eyes meanwhile were continually
dwelling on the grand remains of the Inca’s road, which with a breadth
of twenty-one English feet ran by our side for above a German mile.
It had a deep under-structure, and was paved with well-cut blocks of
blackish trap-porphyry. Nothing that I had seen of the remains of Roman
roads in Italy, in the South of France, and in Spain, was more imposing
than these works of the ancient Peruvians, which are moreover situated,
according to my barometric measurements, at an elevation of 12440
(13258 English) feet above the sea, or more than a thousand feet higher
than the summit of the Peak of Teneriffe. The ruins of what is called
the Palace of the Inca Tupac Yupanqui, and which are known by the name
of the “Paredones del Inca,” are situated at the same elevation on the
Assuay. Proceeding from thence to the southward towards Cuenca, the
road leads to the small but well preserved fortress of Cañar[44],
belonging probably to the same period, that of Tupac Yupanqui, or to
that of his warlike son, Huayna Capac.
We saw still finer remains of the old Peruvian artificial roads on
the way between Loxa and the Amazons, at the Baths of the Incas
on the Paramo de Chulucanas, not far from Guancabamba, and in the
neighbourhood of Ingatambo, at Pomahuaca. These last named remains are
at a so much lower elevation, that I found the difference of level
between the Inca’s Road at Pomahuaca and that on the Paramo del Assuay
upwards of 9100 (about 9700 English) feet. The distance in a straight
line is by astronomically determined latitudes exactly 184 English
geographical miles, and the ascent of the road is 3500 (3730 English)
feet greater than the height of the Pass of Mount Cenis above the Lake
of Como. There are two great artificial Peruvian paved roads or systems
of roads, covered with flat stones, or sometimes even with cemented
gravel[45] (Macadamised); one passes through the wide and arid plain
between the Pacific Ocean and the chain of the Andes, and the other
over the ridges of the Cordilleras. Mile-stones, or stones marking the
distances, are often found placed at equal intervals. The road was
conducted across rivers and deep ravines by three kinds of bridges,
stone, wood, and rope bridges (Puentes de Hamaca or de Maroma), and
there were also aqueducts, or arrangements for bringing water to the
Tambos, (hostelries or caravanserais) and to the fortresses. Both
systems of roads were directed to the central point, Cuzco, the seat of
government of the great empire, in 13° 31´ South latitude, and which
is placed, according to Pentland’s map of Bolivia, 10676 Paris or 11378
English feet above the level of the sea. As the Peruvians employed no
wheel carriages, and the roads were consequently only designed for the
march of troops, for men carrying burdens, and for lightly laden lamas,
we find them occasionally interrupted, on account of the steepness of
the mountains, by long flights of steps, provided with resting places
at suitable intervals. Francisco Pizarro and Diego Almagro, who on
their distant expeditions used the military roads of the Incas with so
much advantage, found great difficulties for the Spanish Cavalry at
the places where these steps occurred[46]. The impediment presented to
their march on these occasions was so much the greater, because in the
early times of the Conquista, the Spaniards used only horses instead
of the carefully treading mule, who in the difficult parts of the
mountains seems to deliberate on every step he takes. It was not until
a later period that mules were employed.
Sarmiento, who saw the Roads of the Incas whilst they were still in
a perfect state of preservation, asks in a “Relacion” which long
lay unread, buried in the Library of the Escorial, “how a nation
unacquainted with the use of iron could have completed such grand
works in so high and rocky a region (“Caminos tan grandes y tan
sovervios”), extending from Cuzco to Quito on the one hand, and to
the coast of Chili on the other? The Emperor Charles,” he adds, “with
all his power could not accomplish even a part of what the well-ordered
Government of the Incas effected through the obedient people over
whom they ruled.” Hernando Pizarro, the most educated and civilised
of the three brothers, who for his misdeeds suffered a twenty years’
imprisonment at Medina del Campo, and died at last at a hundred years
of age “in the odour of sanctity,” “en olor de Santidad,” exclaims:
“in the whole of Christendom there are nowhere such fine roads as
those which we here admire.” The two important capitals and seats of
government of the Incas, Cuzco and Quito, are 1000 English geographical
miles apart in a straight line (SS.E., NN.W.), without reckoning the
many windings of the way; and including the windings, the distance
is estimated by Garcilaso de la Vega and other Conquistadores at
“500 leguas.” Notwithstanding the great distance, we learn from the
well-confirmed testimony of the Licentiate Polo de Ondegardo, that
Huayna Capac, whose father had conquered Quito, caused some of the
building materials for the “princely buildings,” (the houses of the
Incas) in the latter city, to be brought from Cuzco.
When enterprising races inhabit a land where the form of the ground
presents to them difficulties on a grand scale which they may
encounter and overcome, this contest with nature becomes a means of
increasing their strength and power as well as their courage. Under the
despotic centralizing system of the Inca-rule, security and rapidity
of communication, especially in the movement of troops, became an
important necessity of government. Hence the construction of artificial
roads on so grand a scale, and hence also the establishment of a highly
improved postal system. Among nations in very different stages of
cultivation we see the national activity display itself with peculiar
predilection in some particular directions, but we can by no means
determine the general state of culture of a people from the striking
development of such particular and partial activity. Egyptians,
Greeks[47], Etruscans, and Romans, Chinese, Japanese, and Hindoos,
shew many interesting contrasts in these respects. It is difficult to
pronounce what length of time may have been required for the execution
of the Peruvian roads. The great works in the northern part of the
Empire of the Incas, in the highlands of Quito, must at all events have
been completed in less than 30 or 35 years; _i. e._ within the short
period intervening between the defeat of the Ruler of “Quitu” and the
death of Huayna Capac, but entire obscurity prevails as to the period
of the formation of the Southern, and more properly speaking Peruvian,
roads.
The mysterious appearance of Manco Capac is usually placed 400 years
before the landing of Pizarro in the Island of Puna (1532), therefore
towards the middle of the 12th century, almost 200 years before the
foundation of the city of Mexico (Tenochtitlan); some Spanish writers
even reckon, instead of 400, 500 and 550 years between Manco Capac and
Pizarro. But the history of the empire of Peru only recognises thirteen
ruling princes of the Inca-dynasty, a number which, as Prescott very
justly remarks, is not sufficient to occupy so long an interval as 550
or even 400 years. Quetzalcoatl, Botschica, and Manco Capac, are the
three mythical forms with which the commencements of civilisation among
the Aztecs, the Muyscas (more properly Chibchas), and the Peruvians,
are connected. Quetzalcoatl, bearded, clothed in black, a high priest
of Tula, subsequently a penance-performing anchorite on a mountain
near Tlaxapuchicalco, comes to the highlands of Mexico from the coast
of Panuco; therefore from the eastern coast of Anahuac. Botschica,
or rather Nemterequeteba[48] (a Buddha of the Muyscas), a messenger
sent by the Deity, bearded and wearing long garments, arrives in the
high plains of Bogota from the grassy steppes east of the chain of the
Andes. Before Manco Capac a degree of civilisation already prevailed
on the picturesque shores of the Lake of Titicaca. The strong fort
of Cuzco, on the hill of Sacsahuaman, was formed on the pattern of
the older constructions of Tiahuanaco. In the same manner the Aztecs
imitated the pyramidal structures of the Toltecs, and these, those of
the Olmecs (Hulmecs); and gradually ascending, we arrive, still on
historic ground in Mexico, as far back as the sixth century of our Era.
According to Siguenza, the Toltec step-pyramid (or Teocalli) of Cholula
is a repetition of the form of the Hulmec step-pyramid of Teotihuacan.
Thus as we penetrate through each successive stratum of civilisation we
arrive at an earlier one; and national self-consciousness not having
awoke simultaneously in the two continents, we find in each nation the
imaginative mythical domain always immediately preceding the period of
historic knowledge.
Notwithstanding the tribute of admiration which the first
Conquistadores paid to the roads and aqueducts of the Peruvians, not
only did they neglect the repair and preservation of both these classes
of useful works, but they even wantonly destroyed them; and this
still more towards the sea-coast, (for the sake of obtaining fine cut
stones for new buildings; and where the want of water consequent on the
destruction of the aqueducts has rendered the soil barren), than on the
ridges of the Andes, or in the deep-cleft valleys by which the mountain
chain is intersected. In the long day’s journey from the syenitic rocks
of Zaulaca to the Valley of San Felipe (rich in fossils, and situated
at the foot of the icy Paramo de Yamoca), we were obliged to wade
through the Rio de Guancabamba (which flows into the Amazons), no less
than twenty-seven times, on account of the windings of the stream;
while we continually saw near us, running in a straight line along the
side of a steep precipice, the remains of the high built road of the
Incas with its Tambos. The mountain torrent, though only from 120 to
150 English feet broad, was so strong and rapid that, in fording it,
our heavily laden mules were often in danger of being swept away by the
flood. They carried our manuscripts, our dried plants, and all that
we had been collecting for a year past. Under such circumstances one
watches from the other side of the stream with very anxious suspense
until the long train of eighteen or twenty beasts of burden have passed
in safety.
The same Rio de Guancabamba, in the lower part of its course, where it
has many falls and rapids, is made to serve in a very singular manner
for the conveyance of correspondence with the coast of the Pacific. In
order to expedite more quickly the few letters from Truxillo which are
intended for the province of Jaen de Bracamoros, a “swimming courier,”
“el correo que nada,” as he is called in the country, is employed. This
post messenger, who is usually a young Indian, swims in two days from
Pomahuaca to Tomependa, first by the Rio de Chamaya (the name given to
the lower part of the Rio de Guancabamba), and then by the Amazons. He
carefully places the few letters entrusted to him in a large cotton
handkerchief, which he winds round his head in the manner of a turban.
When he comes to waterfalls he leaves the river, and makes a circuit
through the woods. In order to lessen the fatigue of swimming for so
long a time, he sometimes throws one arm round a piece of a very light
kind of wood (Ceiba, Palo de balsa), of a tree belonging to the family
of Bombaceæ. Sometimes also a friend goes with him to bear him company.
The pair have no concern about provisions, as they are always sure of a
hospitable reception in any of the scattered huts, which are abundantly
surrounded with fruit trees, in the beautiful Huertas de Pucara and
Cavico.
Happily the river is free from crocodiles, which, in the upper part of
the Amazons, are first met with below the cataracts of Mayasi. These
unwieldy and slothful monsters generally prefer the more tranquil
waters. According to my measurements the Rio de Chamaya, from the Ford
(Paso) de Pucara to the place where it enters the Amazons River below
the village of Choros, has a fall[49] of 1668 (1778 English) feet in
the short space of 52 English geographical miles. The Governor of the
province of Jaen de Bracamoros assured me that letters carried by this
singular water-post were rarely either wetted or lost. Soon after my
return to Europe from Mexico, I received, in Paris, letters from
Tomependa, which had been sent in the manner above described. Several
tribes of wild Indians, living on the banks of the Upper Amazons, make
their journeys in a similar manner, swimming down the stream sociably
in parties. I had the opportunity of seeing in this manner, in the bed
of the river, the heads of thirty or forty persons (men, women, and
children), of the tribe of the Xibaros, on their arrival at Tomependa.
The “Correo que nada” returns by land by the difficult route of the
Paramo del Paredon.
On approaching the hot climate of the basin of the Amazons, the eye is
cheered by the aspect of a beautiful, and occasionally very luxuriant
vegetation. We had never before, not even in the Canaries or on the hot
sea coast of Cumana and Caraccas, seen finer orange trees than those of
the Huertas de Pucara. They were principally the sweet orange (Citrus
aurantium, Risso), and less frequently the bitter or Seville orange (C.
vulgaris, Risso). Laden with many thousands of their golden fruits,
they attain a height of sixty or sixty-four English feet; and, instead
of rounded tops or crowns, have aspiring branches, almost like a laurel
or bay tree. Not far from thence, near the Ford of Cavico, we were
surprised by a very unexpected sight. We saw a grove of small trees,
only about eighteen or nineteen English feet high, which, instead of
green, had apparently perfectly red or rose-coloured leaves. It was a
new species of Bougainvillæa, a genus first established by the elder
Jussieu, from a Brazilian specimen in Commerson’s herbarium. The trees
were almost entirely without true leaves, as what we took for leaves
at a distance, proved to be thickly crowded bracteas. The appearance
was altogether different, in the purity and freshness of the colour,
from the autumnal tints which, in many of our forest trees, adorn the
woods of the temperate zone at the season of the fall of the leaf.
A single species of the South African family of Proteaceæ, Rhopala
ferruginea, descends here from the cold heights of the Paramo de
Yamoca to the hot plain of Chamaya. We often found here the Porlieria
hygrometrica (belonging to the Zygophylleæ), which, by the closing of
the leaflets of its finely pinnated foliage, foretels an impending
change of weather, and especially the approach of rain, much better
than any of the Mimosaceæ. It very rarely deceived us.