that time scarcely reckoned seven or eight thousand inhabitants. Our
departure was delayed by the number of mules which were required for
the conveyance of our collections, and by the necessity of making a
careful choice of the guides who were to conduct us across the chain
of the Andes to the entrance of the long but narrow Peruvian sandy
desert (Desierto de Sechura). The passage over the Cordillera is
from north-east to south-west. Immediately after quitting the plain
of Caxamarca, on ascending a height of scarcely 9600 (10230 English)
feet, the traveller is struck with the sight of two grotesquely
shaped porphyritic summits, Aroma and Cunturcaga (a favourite haunt
of the powerful vulture which we commonly call Condor; _kacca_ in the
Quichua language signifies “the rock.”) These summits consisted of
five, six, or seven-sided columns, 37 to 42 English feet high, and
some of them jointed. The Cerro Aroma is particularly picturesque. By
the distribution of its often converging series of columns placed one
above another, it resembles a two-storied building, which, moreover, is
surmounted by a dome or cupola of non-columnar rock. Such outbursts of
porphyry and trachyte are, as I have before remarked, characteristic of
the high crests of the Cordilleras, to which they impart a physiognomy
quite distinct from that presented by the Swiss Alps, the Pyrenees, and
the Siberian Altai.
From Cunturcaga and Aroma we descended by a zig-zag course a steep
rocky declivity of 6400 English feet into the deep cleft valley of the
Magdalena, the bottom of which is still 4260 English feet above the
level of the sea. A few wretched huts, surrounded by the same wool or
cotton-trees (Bombax discolor) which we had first seen on the banks
of the Amazons, were called an Indian village. The scanty vegetation
of the valley bears some resemblance to that of the province of Jaen
de Bracamoros, but we missed the red groves of Bougainvillæa. This
valley is one of the deepest with which I am acquainted in the chain
of the Andes: it is a true transverse valley directed from east to
west, deeply cleft, and hemmed in on the two sides by the Altos de
Aroma and Guangamarca. In this valley recommences the same quartz
formation which we had observed in the Paramo de Yanaguanga, between
Micuipampa and Caxamarca, at an elevation of 11720 English feet, and
which, on the western declivity of the Cordillera, attains a thickness
of several thousand feet, and was long an enigma to me. Since von Buch
has shown us that the cretaceous group is also widely extended in the
highest chains of the Andes, on either side of the Isthmus of Panama,
the quartz formation which we are now considering, which has perhaps
been altered in its texture by the action of volcanic forces, may be
considered to belong to the Quadersandstein, intermediate between
the upper part of the chalk series, and the Gault and Greensand. On
quitting the mild temperature of the Magdalena valley we had to ascend
again for three hours the mountain wall of 5120 English feet, opposite
to the porphyritic group of the Alto de Aroma. The change of climate
in so doing was the more sensible, as we were often enveloped in the
course of the ascent in a cold fog.
The longing desire which we felt to enjoy once more the open view of
the sea after eighteen months’ constant sojourn in the ever restricted
range of the interior of the mountains, had been heightened by
repeated disappointments. In looking from the summit of the volcano of
Pichincha, over the dense forests of the Provincia de las Esmeraldas,
no sea horizon can be clearly distinguished, by reason of the too great
distance of the coast and height of the station: it is like looking
down from an air-balloon into vacancy. One divines, but one does not
distinguish. Subsequently, when between Loxa and Guancabamba we reached
the Paramo de Guamini, where there are several ruined buildings of the
times of the Incas, and from whence the mule-drivers had confidently
assured us that we should see beyond the plain, beyond the low
districts of Piura and Lambajeque, the sea itself which we so much
desired to behold, a thick mist covered both the plain and the distant
sea shore. We saw only variously shaped masses of rock alternately rise
like islands above the waving sea of mist, and again disappear, as had
been the case in our view from the Peak of Teneriffe. We were exposed
to almost the same disappointment in our subsequent transit over the
pass of Guangamarca, at the time of which I am now speaking. As we
toiled up the mighty mountain side, with our expectations continually
on the stretch, our guides, who were not perfectly acquainted with the
road, repeatedly promised us that at the end of the hour’s march which
was nearly concluded, our hopes would be realised. The stratum of mist
which enveloped us appeared occasionally to be about to disperse, but
at such moments our field of view was again restricted by intervening
heights.
The desire which we feel to behold certain objects does not depend
solely on their grandeur, their beauty, or their importance; it is
interwoven in each individual with many accidental impressions of his
youth, with early predilection for particular occupations, with an
attachment to the remote and distant, and with the love of an active
and varied life. The previous improbability of the fulfilment of a
wish gives besides to its realisation a peculiar kind of charm. The
traveller enjoys by anticipation the first sight of the constellation
of the cross, and of the Magellanic clouds circling round the Southern
Pole,--of the snow of the Chimborazo, and the column of smoke ascending
from the volcano of Quito,--of the first grove of tree-ferns, and
of the Pacific Ocean. The days on which such wishes are realised
form epochs in life, and produce ineffaceable impressions; exciting
feelings of which the vividness seeks not justification by processes
of reasoning. With the longing which I felt for the first view of the
Pacific from the crests of the Andes, there mingled the interest with
which I had listened as a boy to the narrative of the adventurous
expedition of Vasco Nuñez de Balboa,[58] the fortunate man who
(followed by Francisco Pizarro) first among Europeans beheld from the
heights of Quarequa, on the Isthmus of Panama, the eastern part of
the Pacific Ocean,--the “South Sea.” The reedy shores of the Caspian,
at the place where I first saw them, _i. e._ from the Delta formed by
the mouths of the Volga, cannot certainly be called picturesque; yet
I viewed them with a gratification heightened almost into delight by
the particular interest and pleasure with which, in early childhood, I
had looked at the shape of this Asiatic inland sea on maps. That which
is thus excited in us[59] by childish impressions, or by accidental
circumstances in life, takes at a later period a graver direction, and
often becomes a motive for scientific labours and distant enterprises.
When after many undulations of the ground, on the summit of the steep
mountain ridge, we finally reached the highest point, the Alto de
Guangamarca, the heavens which had long been veiled became suddenly
clear: a sharp west wind dispersed the mist, and the deep blue of the
sky in the thin mountain air appeared between narrow lines of the
highest cirrous clouds. The whole of the western declivity of the
Cordillera by Chorillos and Cascas, covered with large blocks of quartz
13 to 15 English feet long, and the plains of Chala and Molinos as far
as the sea shore near Truxillo, lay beneath our eyes in astonishing
apparent proximity. We now saw for the first time the Pacific Ocean
itself; and we saw it clearly: forming along the line of the shore a
large mass from which the light shone reflected, and rising in its
immensity to the well-defined, no longer merely conjectured horizon.
The joy it inspired, and which was vividly shared by my companions
Bonpland and Carlos Montufar, made us forget to open the barometer
until we had quitted the Alto de Guangamarca. From our measurement
taken soon after, but somewhat lower down, at an isolated cattle-farm
called the Hato de Guangamarca, the point from which we first saw the
sea would be only somewhere between 9380 and 9600 English feet above
the level of the sea.
The view of the Pacific was peculiarly impressive to one who like
myself owed a part of the formation of his mind and character, and many
of the directions which his wishes had assumed, to intercourse with
one of the companions of Cook. My schemes of travel were early made
known, in their leading outlines at least, to George Forster, when I
enjoyed the advantage of making my first visit to England under his
guidance, more than half a century ago. Forster’s charming descriptions
of Otaheite had awakened throughout Northern Europe a general interest
(mixed, I might almost say, with romantic longings) for the Islands of
the Pacific which had at that time been seen by very few Europeans.
I too cherished at the time of which I am speaking the hope of soon
landing on them; for the object of my visit to Lima was twofold,--to
observe the transit of Mercury over the solar disk, and to fulfil an
engagement made with Captain Baudin before I left Paris, to join him
in a voyage of circumnavigation which was to take place as soon as the
Government of the French Republic could furnish the requisite funds.
Whilst we were in the Antilles, North American newspapers announced
that the two Corvettes, Le Géographe and Le Naturaliste, would sail
round Cape Horn and touch at Callao de Lima. On receiving this
intelligence at Havana, where I then was, after having completed my
Orinoco journey, I relinquished my original plan of going through
Mexico to the Philippines, and hastened to engage a vessel to convey
me from the Island of Cuba to Cartagena de Indias. Baudin’s Expedition,
however, took quite a different route from that which was announced
and expected; instead of sailing round Cape Horn, as had been designed
when it had been intended that Bonpland and myself should form part
of it, it sailed round the Cape of Good Hope. One of the two objects
of my Peruvian journey and of our last passage over the Chain of the
Andes failed; but on the other hand I had, at the critical moment, the
rare good fortune of a perfectly clear day, during a very unfavourable
season of the year, on the misty coast of Low Peru. I observed the
passage of Mercury over the Sun at Callao, an observation which has
become of some importance towards the exact determination of the
longitude of Lima[60], and of all the south-western part of the New
Continent. Thus in the intricate relations and graver circumstances of
life, there may often be found, associated with disappointment, a germ
of compensation.
ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS.
[41] p. 267.--“_On the ridge of the Chain of the Andes or Antis._”
The Inca Garcilaso, who was well acquainted with the language of his
country and was fond of dwelling on etymologies, always calls the Chain
of the Andes las Montañas de los Antis. He says positively, that the
great Mountain chain east of Cuzco derived its name from the tribe
of the Antis, and the Province of Anti which is to the east of the
Capital of the Incas. The Quaternary division of the Peruvian Empire
according to the four quarters of the Heavens, reckoned from Cuzco,
borrowed its terminology not from the very circumstantial words taken
which signify East, West, North, and South in the Quichua language
(intip lluscinanpata, intip yaucunanpata, intip chaututa chayananpata,
intip chaupunchau chayananpata); but from the names of the Provinces
and of the tribes or races, (Provincias llamadas Anti, Cunti, Chincha
y Colla), which are east, west, north, and south of the Centre of the
Empire (the city of Cuzco). The four parts of the Inca-theocracy are
called accordingly Antisuyu, Cuntisuyu, Chinchasuyu, and Collasuyu.
The word _suyu_ signifies “strip,” and also “part.” Notwithstanding
the great distance, Quito belonged to Chinchasuyu; and in proportion
as by their religious wars the Incas extended still more widely the
prevalence of their faith, their language, and their absolute form of
government, these Suyus also acquired larger and unequally increased
dimensions. Thus the names of provinces came to be used to express the
different quarters of the heavens; “Nombrar aquellos Partidos era lo
mismo,” says Garcilaso, “que decir al Oriente, ó al Poniente.” The Snow
Chain of the Antis was thus looked upon as an East chain. “La Provincia
Anti da nombre á las Montañas de los Antis. Llamaron la parte á del
Oriente Antisuyu, por la qual tambien llaman Anti á toda aquella gran
Cordillera de Sierra Nevada que pasa al Oriente del Peru, por dar á
entender, que está al Oriente.” (Commentarios Reales, P. I. p. 47 and
122.) Later writers have tried to deduce the name of the Chain of the
Andes from “anta,” which signifies “copper” in the Quichua language.
This metal was indeed of the greatest importance to a nation whose
tools and cutting instruments were made not of iron but of copper mixed
with tin; but the name of the “Copper Mountains” can hardly have been
extended to so great a chain; and besides, as Professor Buschmann very
justly remarks, the word anta retains its terminal _a_ when making
part of a compound word: _anta_, cobre, y _antamarca_ Provincia de
Cobre. Moreover, the form and composition of words in the ancient
Peruvian language are so simple that there can be no question of the
passage of an _a_ into an _i_; and thus “anta” (copper) and “Anti or
Ante” (meaning as dictionaries of the country explain “la tierra de
los Andes, el Indio hombre de los Andes, la Sierra de los Andes,” _i.
e._ the country of the Andes, an inhabitant of the Andes, or the chain
of mountains themselves), are and must continue two wholly different
and distinct words. There are no means of interpreting the proper
name (Anti) by connecting it with any signification or idea; if such
connection exist it is buried in the obscurity of the past. Other
Composites of Anti besides the above-mentioned Antisuyu are “Anteruna”
(the native inhabitant of the Andes), and Anteunccuy or Antionccoy,
(sickness of the Andes, mal de los Andes pestifero).
[42] p. 268.--“_The Countess of Chinchon._”
She was the wife of the Viceroy Don Geronimo Fernandez de Cabrera,
Bobadilla y Mendoza, Conde de Chinchon, who administered the government
of Peru from 1629 to 1639. The cure of the Vice-Queen falls in the
year 1638. A tradition which has obtained currency in Spain, but which
I have heard much combated at Loxa, names a Corregidor del Cabildo de
Loxa, Juan Lopez de Cañizares, as the person by whom the Quina-bark
was first brought to Lima and generally recommended as a remedy. I
have heard it asserted in Loxa that the beneficial virtues of the
tree were known long before in the mountains, though not generally.
Immediately after my return to Europe I expressed the doubts I felt as
to the discovery having been made by the natives of the country round
Loxa, since even at the present day the Indians of the neighbouring
valleys, where intermittent fevers are very prevalent, shun the use
of bark. (Compare my memoir entitled “über die China-wälder” in the
“Magazin der Gesellschaft naturforschender Freunde” zu Berlin, Jahrg.
I. 1807, S. 59.) The story of the natives having learnt the virtues of
the Cinchona from the lions who “cure themselves of intermittent fevers
by gnawing the bark of the China (or Quina) trees,”--(Hist. de l’Acad.
des Sciences, année 1738, Paris, 1740, p. 233),--appears to be entirely
of European origin, and nothing but a monkish fable. Nothing is known
in the New Continent of the “Lion’s fever,” for the large so-called
American Lion (Felis concolor), and the small mountain Lion (Puma)
whose foot-marks I have seen on the snow, are never tamed and made
the subjects of observation; nor are the different species of Felinæ
in either continent accustomed to gnaw the bark of trees. The name of
Countess’s Powder (Pulvis Comitissæ), occasioned by the remedy having
been distributed by the Countess of Chinchon, was afterwards changed
to that of Cardinal’s or Jesuit’s powder, because Cardinal de Lugo,
Procurator-General of the order of the Jesuits, spread the knowledge of
this valuable remedy during a journey through France, and recommended
it to Cardinal Mazarin the more urgently, as the brethren of the
order were beginning to prosecute a lucrative trade in South American
Quina-bark which they obtained through their missionaries. It is
hardly necessary to remark, that in the long controversy which ensued
respecting the good or bad effects of the fever bark, the protestant
physicians sometimes permitted themselves to be influenced by religious
intolerance and dislike of the Jesuits.
[43] p. 271.--“_Aposentos de Mulalos._”
Respecting these aposentos (dwellings, inns, in the Quichua language
_tampu_, whence the Spanish form tambo), compare Cieça, Chronica del
Peru, cap. 41, (ed. de 1554, p. 108) and my Vues des Cordillères, Pl.
xxiv.
[44] p. 272.--“_The fortress of the Cañar._”
Is situated not far from Turche, at an elevation of 9984 (10640
English) feet. I have given a drawing of it in the Vues des
Cordillères, Pl. xvii. (compare also Cieça, cap. 44, P. i. p. 120).
Not far from the Fortaleza del Cañar, in the celebrated ravine of the
Sun, Inti-Guaycu, (in the Quichua or Qquechhua language, _huaycco_),
is the rock on which the natives think they see a representation of
the sun and of an enigmatical sort of bank or bench which is called
Inga-Chungana (Incachuncana), the Inca’s play. I have drawn both. See
Vues des Cordillères, Pl. xviii. and xix.
[45] p. 272.--“_Artificial roads covered with cemented gravel._”
Compare Velasco, Historia de Quito, 1844, T. i. p. 126-128, and
Prescott, Hist. of the Conquest of Peru, Vol. i. p. 157.
[46] p. 273.--“_Where the road was interrupted by flights of steps._”
Compare Pedro Sancho in Ramusio, Vol. iii. fol. 404, and Extracts
from Manuscript Letters of Hernando Pizarro, employed by the great
historical writer now living at Boston; Prescott, Vol. i. p. 444. “El
camino de las sierras es cosa de ver, porque en verdad en tierra tan
fragosa en la cristiandad no se han visto tan hermosos caminos, toda la
mayor parte de calzada.”
[47] p. 275.--“_Greeks and Romans shew these contrasts._”
“If,” says Strabo, (Lib. v. p. 235, Casaub) “the Greeks in building
their cities sought for a happy result by aiming especially at beauty
and solidity, the Romans on the other hand have regarded particularly,
objects which the Greeks left unthought of;--stone pavements in the
streets; aqueducts bringing to the city abundant supplies of water; and
provisions for drainage so as to wash away and carry to the Tiber all
uncleanliness. They also paved the roads through the country, so that
waggons may transport with ease the goods brought by trading ships.”
[48] p. 276.--“_The messenger of the deity Nemterequeteba._”
The civilisation of ancient Mexico (the Aztec land of Anahuac), and
that of the Peruvian theocracy or empire of the Incas, the children
of the Sun, have so engrossed attention in Europe, that a third point
of comparative light and of dawning civilisation, which existed among
the nations inhabiting the mountains of New Granada, was long almost
entirely overlooked. I have touched on this subject in some detail in
the Vue des Cordillères et Monumens des Peuples Indigènes de l’Amérique
(ed. in 8vo.) T. ii. p. 220-267. The form of the government of the
Muyscas of New Granada reminds us of the constitution of Japan and the
relation of the Secular Ruler (Kubo or Seogun at Jeddo) to the sacred
personage the Daïri at Miyako. When Gonzalo Ximenez de Quesada advanced
to the high table land of Bogota (Bacata, _i. e._ the extremity of
the cultivated fields, probably from the proximity of the mountain
wall), he found there three powers or authorities respecting whose
reciprocal relations and subordination there remains some uncertainty.
The spiritual chief, who was appointed by election, was the high priest
of Iraca or Sogamoso (Sugamuxi, the place of the disappearance of
Nemterequeteba): the secular rulers or princes were the Zake (Zaque of
Hunsa or Tunja), and the Zipa of Funza. In the feudal constitution the
last-named prince appears to have been originally subordinate to the
Zake.
The Muyscas had a regular mode of computing time, with intercalation
for amending the lunar year: they used small circular plates of gold,
cast of equal diameter, as money (any traces of which among the highly
civilised ancient Egyptians have been sought in vain), and they had
temples of the Sun with stone columns, remains of which have very
recently been discovered in the Valley of Leiva. (Joaquin Acosta,
Compendio historico del Descubrimiento de la Nueva Granada, 1848,
p. 188, 196, 206, and 208; Bulletin de la Société de Géographie de
Paris, 1847, p. 114.) The tribe or race of the Muyscas ought properly
speaking to be always denoted by the name of Chibchas; as Muysca in
the Chibcha language signifies merely “men,” “people.” The origin
and elements of the civilisation introduced are attributed to two
mystical forms, Bochica (Botschica) and Nemterequeteba which are often
confounded together. The first of these is still more mythical than the
second; for it was only Botschica who was regarded as divine, and made
almost equal to the Sun itself. His fair companion Chia or Huythaca
occasioned by her magical arts the overflowing of the valley of Bogota,
and for so doing was banished by Botschica from the earth, and made
to revolve round it for the first time, as the moon. Botschica struck
the rock of Tequendama, and gave a passage for the waters to flow off
near the field of the Giants (Campo de Gigantes) in which the bones
of elephant-like mastodons lie buried at an elevation of 8250 (8792
Engl.) feet above the level of the sea. Captain Cochrane (Journal of
a Residence in Colombia, 1825, Vol. ii. p. 390) and Mr. John Ranking
(Historical Researches on the Conquest of Peru, 1827, p. 397), state
that animals of this species are still living in the Andes, and shed
their teeth! Nemterequeteba, also called Chinzapogua (enviado de Dios)
is a human person, a bearded man, who came from the East, from Pasca,
and disappeared at Sogamoso. The foundation of the sanctuary of Iraca
is sometimes ascribed to him and sometimes to Botschica, and as the
latter is said to have borne also the name of Nemqueteba, the confusion
between the two, on ground so unhistoric, is easily accounted for.