Lost City of the Incas (Phoenix Press) (31 page)

We found it necessary to conform to the ways of the country and provide each workman, the first thing in the morning, with a handful of dried green coca leaves. This was enough for four quids. The quid of coca leaves, carefully and deliberately made by chewing the leaves one at a time, was usually allowed to remain in the mouth for two hours. Making the quid occupied the first ten minutes of the ‘working day’, a ten-minute recess in the middle of the morning, the first period of the afternoon ‘working’ time, and a recess about three o’clock. The employer who fails to provide his Quichua workmen with the daily ration of coca leaves is likely to find it impossible to secure voluntary labourers and very hard to get cheerful efforts from his conscripts.

We gave the Indians small presents on pay day, Saturday. These consisted of beads, mirrors, or other trinkets which had been carefully selected from one of Mr Woolworth’s emporiums in New Haven. Mirrors were particularly in demand and seemed to give the greatest satisfaction. Nevertheless only a few volunteers returned to work week after week. A small handful worked regularly, but others would absent themselves for several weeks to attend to the duties of their own little farms and then return for a fortnight of labour with us. The great majority, however, worked only when the
gobernador
forced them to come. Sometimes we had forty or more; sometimes we had only a dozen.

The Indians made little huts for themselves near the spring close to the houses occupied by Richarte and Alvarez. We pitched our tents on one of the large terraces not very far from the city wall and commanding a magnificent view of the Urubamba canyon.

Lieutenant Sotomayor took personal charge of the Indians who were engaged in cutting down the forest, and removing and burning the rubbish. No one could have been more efficient or persistent. So rapidly did the jungle grow, however, that we had to cut the bushes and bamboo scrub three times in the course of four months. The final cutting, made in ten days by a gang of thirty or forty Indians moving rapidly with sharp machetes, immediately preceded and accompanied the intensive photographic work at the end of the season. A few of the five hundred pictures I took then are included in this volume. They are all on file in the libraries of Yale University, the National Geographic Society, and the Hispanic Society of America.

The extensive clearing which we were able to accomplish at that time and the subsequent exploration of the region, as well as the clearing carried on in recent years by various archaeological parties enable us now to be sure that this was indeed the largest city in the province besides being an important Inca sanctuary.

T
he Ruins of what we now believe was the lost city of Vilcapampa the Old, perched on top of a narrow ridge lying below the peak of Machu Picchu, are called the ruins of Machu Picchu because when we found them no one knew what else to call them. And that name has been accepted and will continue to be used even though no one now disputes that this was the site of ancient Vilcapampa.

The sanctuary was lost for centuries because this ridge is in the most inaccessible corner of the most inaccessible section of the central Andes. No part of the highlands of Peru is better defended by natural bulwarks – a stupendous canyon whose rock is granite, and whose precipices are frequently 1,000 feet sheer, presenting difficulties which daunt the most ambitious modern mountain climbers. Yet, here, in a remote part of the canyon, on this narrow ridge flanked by tremendous precipices, a highly civilized people, artistic, inventive, well organized, and capable of sustained endeavour, at some time in the distant past built themselves a sanctuary for the worship of the sun.

Since they had no iron or steel tools – only stone hammers and little bronze crow-bars – its construction must have cost generations, if not centuries, of effort. To prevent their enemies or undesirable visitors from reaching their shrines and temples, they relied, first, on the rapids of the Urubamba, which are dangerous even in the dry season and absolutely impassable during at least half of the year. On three sides this was their outer line of defence. On the fourth side the massif of Machu Picchu is accessible from the plateau only by a narrow razor-like ridge less than 40 feet
across and flanked by precipices, where they constructed a strong little fort – a veritable Thermopylae. No one could reach the sacred precincts unless the Inca so decreed, as Friar Marcos and Friar Diego found to their cost.

Not only was the sanctuary protected against the pollution of casual visitors, it was admirably adapted for military purposes as a citadel.

While the lower slopes of Huayna Picchu are relatively easy of access in the dry season, the mass of Huayna Picchu is separated from the ruins by another razor-like ridge impassable on the east side and having only a footpath for sure-footed Indians on the west side. This trail passes for more than a hundred yards along a horizontal cleft in an overhanging precipice of sheer granite. Two men could defend it against an army and it is the only route by which Machu Picchu may be reached from Huayna Picchu.

So much for the northern approach. The east and west side of the ridge are sufficiently precipitous for 1,500 feet to be well-nigh unassailable. Rocks could easily have been rolled down upon invaders in the manner referred to by the conquistadors as a favourite method of Inca soldiers. If a path was maintained on each side, as is the case today, these paths, in turn, could easily have been defended by a handful of men. Wherever breaks in the precipices would give a foothold to intruders they were walled up and the natural defence strengthened.

On the southern side rise the precipitous cliffs of Machu Picchu Mountain. In ancient times they were flanked by two Inca roads. The road on the west side of the peak ran along another horizontal cleft or fault in the very face of a magnificent precipice. Traces can still be seen but rock slides have destroyed it. On the opposite side of the mountain the Inca road climbed the abrupt declivity by means of a stone stairway and circumvented the mountains by a trail which only goats could have followed with ease. Both of these roads led to the little ridge on
which was the aforementioned Thermopylae, and which alone gave access to Machu Picchu Mountain from the plateau and the southern rim of the canyon. Both of them could have been readily defended in various places.

In accordance with their well-known practice, we found on top of both neighbouring peaks on Machu Picchu and Huayna Picchu the ruins of Inca signal stations, from which it was possible for messages to be sent and received across the mountains. The arrival of unwelcome visitors or even the distant approach of an enemy could have been seen and instantly communicated to the city. That on top of Machu Picchu was necessarily the more important. No pains were spared to make it safe and convenient. Its construction required great skill and extraordinary courage. It is located on top of one of the most stupendous precipices in the Andes. If any of the workmen who built the retaining wall on the very edge of the signal station slipped he must have fallen 3,000 feet before striking any portion of the cliff broad enough to stop his body. I do not mind admitting that when I took pictures from it I not only lay flat on my stomach, I had two trusty Indians hang on to my legs. It really was a dizzy height. But imagine building a wall on it!

The Sanctuary of Vilcapampa was regarded as so sacred that in addition to the outer defences and the reinforced precipices which protected the city against enemies, two walls were built to keep out visitors or workmen who had been allowed to pass the mountain Thermopylae. On the south side of the city are an outer wall and an inner wall. The outer runs along the ends of a magnificent tier of agricultural terraces. Near by are half a dozen buildings which may have been intended as barracks for the soldiers whose duty it was to protect the city on the only side where it could be reached by the ancient roads, and was comparatively vulnerable. There was still an inner line of defence. At the narrowest part of the ridge, just before one reaches the city from the south, a fosse, or dry moat, was dug, its sides faced with stone. Above it the wall of the city proper extends across the top of the ridge and down each side until it reaches precipitous cliffs which make the wall no longer necessary.

On the very top of the ridge the wall was pierced by a large gateway built of massive stone blocks. The gate itself, probably a screen of heavy logs lashed together, could be fastened at the top to a large ringstone or eye-bonder firmly embedded above the lintel and underneath 6 or 8 feet of masonry. At the sides, the door could be fastened by a large cross-bar whose ends were tied to powerful stone bar-holds, stone cylinders, firmly anchored in holes left in the doorposts for that purpose. Such a door might, of course, have been smashed in by an attacking force using a large log as a battering ram. To avoid the likelihood of this the engineer who constructed the fortifications brought forward a salient from the wall at right angles to the doorway. By this means the defenders standing on top of the salient could have rained down a lateral fire of rocks and boulders on the force attempting to batter down the gate.

The walls of the city were too high to be scaled with ease. In fact, an attacking force which had been so fortunate as to overcome all the natural defences of this powerful stronghold and had circumvented the defenders of the several Thermopylae-like passes would have found themselves in a very bad situation when rushing along the terraces towards the inner fortifications. At the end of the terraces they would have found it necessary to jump down into the dry moat and scale its farther side as well as the city wall, all the time subjected to a shower of stones from the slings of the defenders. It is difficult to imagine that any attacking force could possibly have been large enough to overcome a vigorous defence even if the city were held by only a few score determined soldiers. Of course the walls served equally well in peace time to keep intruders from entering the sacred precincts of the sanctuary. In the
aclla-huasi
, or houses of the Chosen Women of the Sun, no men were permitted to enter except the Emperor, his sons, the Inca nobles, and the priests.

The city gate shows evidences of being repaired. The top of the narrow ridge is at this point occupied by a large granite boulder, which was worked into the fortifications, or, rather, the walls were strengthened by its being used as a member. As a result, the outer gatepost of the massive entrance rests on an
artificial terrace. This terrace has settled a few inches, owing to erosion in the steep hillside. Consequently the wall has been thrown out of the perpendicular and has started to destroy the fine old gateway. It will not be long before the great lintel will fall and carry with it the repaired part of the wall which is superimposed above it. One clearly gets the feeling, in looking at the entrance to the citadel, that it was rather hastily repaired at a period long subsequent to its original construction, probably by Manco II.

Space was limited and the houses were crowded closely together, but an extensive system of narrow streets and rock-hewn stairways made inter-communication within the walls of the city comparatively easy. In fact, perhaps the most conspicuous feature of Machu Picchu is the quantity of the stairways, there being over one hundred, large and small, within its limits. Some of them, to be sure, have but three or four steps, while others have as many as a hundred and fifty. In several cases the entire flight of six, eight or even ten, steps was cut out of a single boulder. The stairways which connect the various agricultural terraces follow the natural declivity of the hill even where it is so steep as to make them seem more like a ladder than a flight of stairs. In several places a little garden plot was tucked into a terrace less than 8 feet square behind and above a dwelling house. In order to make little garden terraces like these accessible the Incas constructed fantastic stairways scarcely wide enough to permit the passage of a boy. Within the city, however, and particularly in the narrow streets or alleyways, the stairs were constructed on a comfortable grade.

The stairway or flight of steps as an ornamental or ceremonial motif in Inca architecture does not seem to occur here, although it might well have originated in this locality. In the ruins of a monolithic gateway at Tiahuanaco, Bolivia, in a curiously carved rock at Concacha, near Abancay, Peru, and on the famous carved rock called Kkenko, near Cuzco, are little flights
of stairs which were carved for ceremonial or ornamental purposes and which serve no useful object as far as one can see. The stairways of Machu Picchu, on the other hand, with possibly one exception, all appear to be available for reaching locations otherwise difficult of access. While they are more numerous than was absolutely necessary, none of them appears useless, even today. The longest stairway, which may properly be described as the main thoroughfare of the city, commences at the top of the ridge at the terrace by which the highway enters the walls, and, roughly dividing the city into two parts, runs all the way down to the impassable cliffs on the north-eastern slope.

The central thoroughfare in the heart of the city consisted in part of this granite stairway of one hundred and fifty steps, and was the site of the principal waterworks.

As usual, the Incas took great pains to do everything possible to provide adequate water.

There are several springs on the side of Machu Picchu Mountain, within a mile of the heart of the city. The little
azequia
, or conduit, which brought the water from the springs, may still be followed along the mountain side for a considerable distance. It has been partly destroyed by landslides but may be seen where it runs along one of the principal agricultural terraces, crosses the dry moat on a slender stone aqueduct, passes under the city wall in a groove less than 6 inches wide, and is carried along one of the terraces to the first of the series of fountains or little stone basins which are located near the principal stairway. The first four are south of the stairway. Near the fourth the stairway is divided into two flights. At this point there begins a series of twelve. The
azequia
runs south from the last fountain and empties into the moat.