Lost City of the Incas (Phoenix Press) (24 page)

Our present objective was the Vilcabamba valley. So far as we have been able to learn, only one other explorer had preceded us – the distinguished cartographer, Raimondi. His map of the Vilcabamba is fairly accurate. He reports the presence here of mines and minerals, but with the exception of an ‘abandoned
tampu
’ at Marocnyoc (‘the place which possesses a millstone’), he makes no mention of any ruins. Accordingly, although it seemed from the story of Baltasar de Ocampo and Captain Garcia’s other contemporaries that this was the valley of Vitcos, it was with feelings of considerable uncertainty that we proceeded on our quest.

A new road had recently been built along the Vilcabamba river by the owner of the sugar estate at Paltaybamba to enable his pack animals to travel more rapidly. Much of it had to be carved out of the face of a solid rock precipice and in places it pierces the cliffs in a series of little tunnels. My gendarme missed this road and took the steep old trail over the cliffs. As Ocampo said in his story of Captain Garcia’s expedition, ‘the road was narrow in the ascent with forest on the right and on the left a ravine of great depth’. We reached Paltaybamba about dusk.

We had a long talk with the manager of the plantation and his friends that evening. They had heard little of any ruins in this vicinity, but repeated one of the stories we had heard in Santa Ana, that way off somewhere in the great forests of the
montaña
was ‘an Inca city’. None of them had been there, but if their
accounts proved to be correct that would account for the presents of a macaw and some peanuts which the Inca Titu Cusi sent to Rodriguez and also for young Tupac Amaru’s flight into the jungle when he was surprised by the forces sent by Viceroy Toledo.

The Vilcabamba valley above Paltaybamba is very picturesque. There are high mountains on either side, covered with dense jungle. Its dark green foliage was in pleasing contrast to the light green of the fields of waving sugar cane. The valley is steep, the road is very winding, and the torrent of the Vilcabamba roars loudly, even in July. What it must be like in the rainy season we could only surmise.

Our next stop was at Lucma, the home of
Teniente Gobernador
Mogrovejo. We offered to pay him a
gratificacion
of a
sol
, or Peruvian silver dollar, for every ruin to which he would take us, and double that amount if the locality should prove to contain particularly interesting ruins. This aroused all his business instincts. He summoned his
alcaldes
and other well-informed Indians to appear, and be interviewed. They told us there were ‘many ruins’ hereabouts. Being a practical man himself, Mogrovejo had never taken any interest in ruins. Now he saw the chance not only to make money out of the ancient sites, but also to gain official favour by carrying out with unexampled vigour the orders of his superior, the sub-prefect. So he exerted himself to the utmost in our behalf.

The next day we were guided up a ravine to the top of the ridge behind Lucma. This ridge divides the upper from the lower Vilcabamba. On all sides the mountains rose several thousand feet above us. In places they were covered with forest growth, chiefly above the cloud line, where daily moisture encourages vegetation. On the more gentle slopes recent clearings gave evidence of enterprise on the part of the present inhabitants of the valley. After an hour’s climb we reached what were unquestionably the ruins of Inca structures, on an artificial terrace which commands a magnificent view far down towards Paltaybamba and the bridge of Chuquichaca, as well as in the opposite direction. The contemporaries of Captain Garcia
speak of a number of forts which had to be stormed and captured before Tupac Amaru could be found. This was probably one of those fortresses. Its strategic position and the ease with which it could be defended point to such an interpretation. Nevertheless this ruin did not fit the descriptions ‘fortress of Vitcos’ nor the ‘House of the Sun’ near the ‘white rock over the spring’. It is called
Incahuaracana
, ‘the place where the Inca shoots with a sling’. Which Inca? we wondered.

We left Lucma the next day, forded the Vilcabamba river, and soon had an uninterrupted view up the valley to a truncated hill a thousand feet high, its top partly covered with a scrubby growth of trees and bushes, its sides steep and rocky. We were told that the name of the hill was ‘Rosaspata’, a word of modern hybrid origin –
pata
being Quichua for ‘hill’, while
rosas
is the Spanish word for roses. Mogrovejo said his Indians told him that on the ‘Hill of Roses’ there were more ruins. We hoped it might be true, especially as we now learned that the village at the foot of the hill, and across the river, was called Puquiura.

When Raimondi was here in 1865 it was but a ‘wretched hamlet with a paltry chapel’. Today it is more prosperous. There is a small school here, to which children come from villages many miles away. I doubt if the teacher knew that this was the site of the first school in this whole region. Yet it was to a Puquiura that Friar Marcos came in 1566. If this were his Puquiura, then Vitcos must be near by, for he and Friar Diego walked with their famous procession of converts from Puquiura to the ‘House of the Sun’ which was ‘close to Vitcos’.

Crossing the Vilcabamba on a footbridge that afternoon, we came immediately upon the Marocnyoc ruins which Raimondi had marked on his map, but obviously these were not Inca. Examination showed that they were apparently the remains of a Spanish ore-crushing mill, probably intended to pulverize gold-bearing quartz on a considerable scale. Perhaps this was the ore referred to by Captain Baltasar de Ocampo who came to Puquiura shortly after the death of the last Inca. He says that his houses and lands were ‘in the mining district of Puquiura, close to the ore-crushing mill of Don Cristoval de Albornoz’.

Near the mill the Tincochaca river joins the Vilcabamba. Crossing this on a footbridge, we followed Mogrovejo to an old and very dilapidated structure in the saddle of the hill on the south side of Rosaspata. They called the place Uncapampa, or Inca pampa. It was probably one of the forts stormed by Captain Garcia and his men in 1571.

Ocampo wrote, ‘the fortress of Pitcos was on a very high mountain whence the view commanded a great part of the province of Vilcapampa’. Garcia, as will be remembered, says that the principal fortress was ‘on a high eminence surrounded with rugged crags and jungles, very dangerous to ascend and almost impregnable.’

Leaving Uncapampa and following my guides, I climbed up the ridge and followed a path along its west side to the top of Rosaspata. It is indeed a ‘high eminence surrounded with rugged crags’. The side easiest to approach is protected by a splendid long wall, built so carefully as not to leave a single toehold for active besiegers.

Passing some ruins much overgrown and of a primitive character, I soon found myself on a pleasant
pampa
near the top of the mountain. The view from here does command ‘a great part of the province of Vilcapampa’. It is remarkably extensive on all sides; to the north and south are snow-capped mountains, to the east and west, deep verdure-clad valleys.

On the very summit of the hill we found the ruins of a partly enclosed compound consisting of thirteen or fourteen houses arranged so as to form a rough square, with one large and several small courtyards. The outside dimensions of the compound are about 160 feet by 145 feet. The builders showed the familiar Inca sense of symmetry in arranging the houses. Owing to the wanton destruction of many buildings by the natives on their treasure-hunts, as well as their natural desire to get good building stones, the walls had been so pulled down that it was impossible to get the exact dimensions of the buildings. In only one of them could we be sure that there had been any niches.

Ocampo says of Pitcos, ‘there is an extensive level space with a very sumptuous and majestic building erected with great skill
and art, all the lintels of the doors, the principal as well as the ordinary ones, being marble elaborately carved’.

Most interesting of all is the structure which caught the attention of Ocampo and remained fixed in his memory. Enough remains of this building to give a good idea of its former grandeur. It was indeed a residence fit for a royal Inca, an exile from Cuzco. It is 245 feet long by 43 feet wide. There were no windows, but it was lighted by thirty doorways, fifteen in front and the same at the back. It contained ten large rooms, besides three hallways running from front to rear. It is easy to understand why the walls were built rather hastily and are not noteworthy, but the principal entrances, namely those leading to each hall, are particularly well made. To be sure, they are not of ‘marble’ as Ocampo said they were – there is no marble in the province – but of finely cut white granite. The lintels of the principal doorways, as well as of the ordinary ones, are also of solid blocks of white granite, the largest being as much as eight feet in length. The doorways are better than any other ruins in the Vilcabamba valley, thus justifying the mention of them made by Ocampo, who lived near here and had time to become thoroughly familiar with their appearance, although they are not ‘carved’, in our sense of the word. A very small portion of the edifice is still standing. Most of the rear doors had been filled up with ashlars in order to make a continuous fence.

At last we had found a place which seemed to meet most of the requirements of Ocampo’s description of the ‘fortress of Pitcos’.

In his account of the life and death of his father, Titu Cusi gives no definite clue to the location of Vitcos, nor a description of it, but as will be remembered, Calancha remarks that ‘close by Vitcos in a village called Chuquipalpa, is a House of the Sun and in it a white stone over a spring of water’.

That night we stayed at Tincochaca, in the hut of an Indian friend of Mogrovejo. As usual we made inquiries. Imagine our feelings when in response to the oft-repeated question, our host said ‘yes’ in a neighbouring valley there was ‘a great white rock over a spring of water’! If his story should prove to be true our quest for Vitcos was over.

On the next day, I followed the impatient Mogrovejo – whose object was not to study ruins but to earn dollars for finding them – and went over the side of the hill north-east of the Valley of
Los Andenes
(‘the Terraces’). ‘Here, sure enough, was a large, white granite boulder, flattened on top, which had a carved seat or platform on its northern side. Its west side covered a cave in which were several niches. This cave had been walled in on one side and may have been a mausoleum for Inca mummies.

When Mogrovejo and the Indian guide said there was a
manantial de agua
(‘spring of water’) nearby, I became greatly interested. On investigation, however, the ‘spring’ turned out to be nothing but part of a small irrigating ditch.
(Manantial
means ‘running water’, as well as ‘spring’). But the rock was not ‘over the water’. Although this was undoubtedly one of those
huacas
, or sacred boulders, selected by the Incas as the visible representations of the founders of a tribe and thus was an important accessory to ancestor worship, it was not the Yurak Rumi for which we were looking.

When we learned that the present name of this immediate vicinity is Chuquipalta we were excited. Leaving the boulder and the ruins of what possibly had been the house of its attendant priest, we followed the little water-course past a large number of very handsomely built agricultural terraces, the first we had seen for a long time, and the most important ones in the valley. So scarce are
andenes
in this region and so noteworthy were these in particular that this vale has been named after them. They were probably built under the direction of an Inca and intended to be used for his own special corn and potatoes. Near them there are a number of carved
huacas
. One had an
intihuatana
, or sundial nubbin, on it; another was carved in the shape of a saddle.

Continuing, we followed a trickling stream through thick woods until we suddenly arrived at an open place called Ñusta Isppana. Here before us was a great white rock. Our guides had not misled us. Beneath the trees were the ruins of an Inca temple, flanking and partly enclosing the gigantic granite
boulder, one end of which overhung a small pool of running water.

Since the surface of the little pool, as one gazes at it, does not reflect the sky, but only the overhanging rock, the water looks black and forbidding, even to unsuperstitious Yankees. It is easy to understand that simple-minded Indian worshippers in this secluded spot could believe that they actually saw the devil appearing ‘as a visible manifestation’ in the water, and that Indians came from the most sequestered villages of the dense forests to worship here and offer gifts and sacrifices.

It was late on the afternoon of 9 August 1911 when I first saw this remarkable shrine. Densely wooded hills rose on every side. There was not a hut to be seen, scarcely a sound to be heard, an ideal place for practising the mystic ceremonies of an ancient cult. The remarkable aspect of this great boulder and the dark pool beneath its shadow had caused this to become a place of worship. Here, without doubt, was ‘the principal
mochadero
of those forested mountains’. It is still venerated by the Indians of the vicinity. At last we had found the place where, in the days of Titu Cusi, the Inca priests faced the east, greeted the rising sun, ‘extended their hands towards it’, and ‘threw kisses to it’, ‘a ceremony of the most profound resignation and reverence’. We may imagine the sun priests, clad in their resplendent robes of office, standing on the top of the rock at the edge of its steepest side, their faces lit by the rosy light of the early morning, awaiting the moment when the Great Divinity should appear above the eastern hills and receive their adoration. As it rose we may imagine them saluting it and crying: ‘O Sun! Thou who art in peace and safety, shine upon us, keep us from sickness, and keep us in health and safety. O Sun! Thou who has said let there be Cuzco and Tampu, grant that these children may conquer all other people. We beseech thee that thy children the Incas may be always conquerors, since it is for this that thou has created them.’ This was their customary invocation, we are told.