Lost City of the Incas (Phoenix Press) (40 page)

A recent landslide had destroyed the lower part of the trail, but he repaired it with difficulty and got his animals safely across the treacherous slope. After a steep climb of about 3,000 feet from the banks of the river he camped on a small
pampa
south of the saddle, and after several hours of hunting, he found signs of the ancient Inca roadway, now almost obliterated. By hard climbing, these fragments of paved road were traced to the saddle.

He found that there were three possible routes which might lead from the saddle to Machu Picchu. One was along the east side of the mountain; the second lay directly up the knife-like ridge and across the top of Machu Picchu peak; the third was along the precipitous west face of the mountain.

At the narrowest point in the saddle was a ruined guardhouse. On its far side the trail was again picked up and followed to a point where the side hill merged into a sheer rock wall. Every foot of the way had to be cut through a dense jungle. The footing was extremely treacherous, the mountain side exceedingly steep, and slippery with recent rains. Here and there fragments of the paved roadway were encountered, although in order to find them it was frequently necessary to cut over a considerable area. On such occasions the Indian workmen tried in every way to discourage further search, crying to one another, ‘There is no road. No one can pass here.’ In the pouring rain they worked half-heartedly, making no serious efforts to assist
in locating the old road. Finally, at a rock-fall, all signs of the trail disappeared; yet there was no indication that it had been carried away by a landslide. Eventually, one of the workmen uncovered a flight of stone steps covered with decayed vegetable matter and leading to a cave, the entrance to which had been concealed by thick bushes.

Here again the Incas had avoided the necessity of cutting a path across the face of a sheer cliff by carrying their road behind it through a natural tunnel. However, when Mr Maynard attempted to follow this route he found the passage choked by large rocks, where the roof had caved in. Since he had no blasting powder, further progress along the old road seemed impossible. He decided that the only way of progressing was by swinging a short, rustic bridge across the face of the cliff, a plan which seemed rather dangerous and not too feasible. Accordingly, before undertaking it he decided to investigate the other two possible routes. Dividing the Indians into parties, trails were cut in various directions, in the hope of running across any other paved roads which might exist, but several attempts to reach the crest of the ridge were prevented by impassable precipices. Finally, a way was found around the precipices, and traces of a road were discovered on the crest. This was followed towards Machu Picchu Mountain until it divided, one branch continuing towards the peak, the other descending the west face of the slope towards the great fissure which crosses the western precipices of the mountain. An attempt was made to follow each route.

The upper one soon disappeared in a maze of cliffs and fallen rocks; the lower one continued along the west side of the mountain for about a mile and finally ended at a landslide. This trail was very narrow and exceedingly steep, crossing rocky precipices and flights of stone steps bordered by a sheer drop of hundreds of feet. From here it led across a steep slope on which the road was held in place by well-constructed retaining walls. All of it was overgrown and every foot of the way had to be cut through a dense jungle. The stone paving was covered with century-long accumulations of vegetable mould. From the
valley below we had often noticed the great fissure which ran horizontally across the face of the precipice and seemed as though it might have been used as part of the road between the city and the saddle.

Mr Maynard made an effort to get past the great landslide which intervened between him and the fissure on the western precipice, but this proved to be impossible, the rotten rocks and the steepness of the slope making any climbing operations excessively dangerous. All three routes therefore had proved impracticable, and the one hope lay in the possibility of being able to bridge the cliff in the trail on the eastern slope, which was the one first investigated.

Sending one man back to camp for a rope, the rest were set to cutting poles which could be used to span the gap. Projecting from the face of the cliff about 10 feet beyond the end of the trail, and a few feet above it, was a ledge of rock. Growing out of crevices at the end of the ledge and also at the end of the trail, were two small trees. They were rather unsafe foundations, but they formed the only means of further travel along this route. Poles were laid from tree to tree, and one of the Indians slid across, first having a rope tied tightly about his body, the other end being held by the men. Small sticks were lashed at right angles to the poles and where possible were wedged into cracks in the face of the wall. Brush and moss placed on this support completed the bridge, which was about 2½ feet wide.

This was not a bridge over which one could carry a heavy load. In fact, I found it to be the kind of place where one only breathes easily after it has been safely negotiated. Beyond the cliff it was fairly easy to locate the Inca road, as it came out of the north end of the cave and penetrated the dense forest which clung to the steep slope. In places the roadway had been carried away by landslides, making progress extremely slow. Heavy rains also interfered with the work. The Indians, who had not constructed adequate shelter, suffered greatly at night and were very miserable and dejected, repeatedly threatening to quit entirely. It took great determination and courage on Mr Maynard’s part to keep his gang together and make them persevere
in their efforts to reach the city.

Finally another point was reached where recent landslides and dangerous precipices made further progress absolutely impossible. It was therefore decided to move camp down into the bottom of the canyon to the bridge at San Miguel, climb from there to the city itself, and attempt to work the trail back to the neighbourhood of the dangerous landslide. This meant a descent of several thousand feet to the hamlet of Intihuatana. The trail, a modern one, over which mules had recently been driven, was too steep to permit of riding in many places. Unfortunately Mr Maynard’s feet had suffered from the rough climbing and the constant rain, so he was tempted to ride in some places where ordinarily he would have preferred to walk. At one point where the trail was bordered by a sheer drop of several hundred feet his mule slipped and fell to his knees. In attempting to rise, he lost his balance and started to go over the ledge. Throwing himself out of the saddle, Mr Maynard landed on his back in the trail. Whereupon the mule, relieved of his burden, by terrific effort scrambled back onto the road, on top of the unfortunate topographer, who in his journal laconically remarks: ‘Landed on my back on a rock. Throwing weight that way evidently righted the mule. He floundered around. His hoofs seemed to be all over me, but didn’t step on me. Managed to roll out of way. Arrived at camp about eleven thirty.’

The effort to connect the two trails was ultimately successful. By following the road south of the city up the stone stairways to the crest of the ridge, Mr Maynard finally found that he had missed a stairway which led straight up the slope of the mountain and which avoided the region of landslides that had baffled his attempt to follow the road from the point where he had built the little bridge round the tunnel. Two of the Indians finally found the missing link in the trail and thus completed the opening of one of the old Inca roads which connected the city with the saddle behind Machu Picchu peak and thence with the rest of the district. A few days after the work was completed I was able to pick up the old road where I had been obliged to leave it some weeks before and enter the city by the same road as
its builders used. I found that it was good enough for llamas and human burden-bearers. Wherever it followed the contour of a steep slope it was banked up and supported by a stone wall. Where it had to climb a steep grade, stone steps were built with care so that the bearers of burdens could be provided with secure footing. Finally, by a graceful curve, the road was brought to the top of the ridge and the City Gate. Except on some of the steepest stairways, this old Inca road was about 4 feet wide, thus allowing the human freight-carriers to pass without interfering with one another.

Thanks to Major Maynard, I had the satisfaction of going into ‘Vilcapampa the Old’ over the very road used by the Virgins of the Sun when they fled here from Cuzco and the conquistadors.

Obviously, however, this was not the road from Vitcos to the ‘principal city’, Vilcapampa Viejo, which was followed by the Friars when Titu Cusi took them on that terrible journey past and through the cold waters of ‘Ungacacha’. That road had to be looked for elsewhere, north-west of Machu Picchu and on the side towards Puquiura and Rosaspata. We were fortunate in having a new map which had been prepared by our topographer, Albert Bumstead, as a result of our surveys made in the preceding years, which had opened a wide stretch of country between the Apurimac and the Urubamba valleys that did not exist on any previous maps.

The route followed by the missionary priests presumably lay across a large, unexplored area, unknown to the local landowners, and unsuspected by Peruvian geographers. We had heard rumours that there was a trail by which Indians sometimes came from the village of Puquiura to the plantation of Huadquiña, only a few miles from Machu Picchu, without going round through the Vilcabamba and Urubamba valleys by the modern government roads which we had been using. I determined to make an effort to cross and recross this unexplored region and, if possible, find that road. We crossed the Urubamba near Ollantaytambo and went up a valley that led to
a very high pass between the beautiful snow peaks of Salcantay and Soray. Near Yanama we camped on a ridge by some small ruins near the remains of an Inca road. From here we made our way to Arma as best we could without guides, following old trails that sometimes led nowhere and that at other times led deep into dense jungles and across mountain torrents.

Near Arma we found a primeval forest located on the slopes of Mt Soiroccocha about 16,000 feet above sea level – possibly the highest forest in the world. The fact that it seemed to be primeval and that there was no indication that it had ever been invaded by axe-men gave further testimony, if any were needed, that we were in a region extremely difficult of access. After making our way through a snowy pass we found ourselves in the Colpa valley.

Here we found one or two mountain Indians and learned from them that we were not far from Rosaspata and the village of Puquiura, where we hoped to find a guide who knew the route over the mountains. Inquiry among the natives of the Vilcabamba valley finally resulted in our securing the services of an Indian who said he knew the trail to Huadquiña across the unexplored area, in the direction of Machu Picchu. As soon as he could get his family to prepare his travelling ration of parched corn and a few coca leaves, he started off in the right direction and took us up the Colpa valley, which we had explored a few days before. Passing by an abandoned quartz-crushing plant we soon discovered a long stretch of Inca roadway that led in the direction of Choqquequirau by way of a pass called Choqquetacarpo. This Inca roadway was in a remarkably good state of preservation, although slides prevented us from using it for our mules. Near it, and not far from Choqquetacarpo, we found the ruins of an ancient resthouse or tavern, consisting of a group of half a dozen circular houses.

From the Colpa valley our guide now led us into a bleak region, a wild
puna
country, where there were many little lakes and numerous bogs. Had it not been for an unusually dry season and the remarkably fine weather of the preceding months, we should never have been able to travel through it at all. It is
undoubtedly on account of the large number and wide extent of the bogs which characterize this area between Pucyura and Huadquiña that it had long remained unexplored by the Peruvians themselves.

At last the trail, which in many places followed an Inca highway, came to a dark green lake, larger than the rest, whose name I inquired of the guide. The answer gave me a thrill. As the guide shouted it back to me from the head of the caravan, I thought he said ‘Ungacacha’; in fact, it sounded more like that than Yanaccocha, or ‘Black Lake’, its actual name, as I learned later. Ever since I first came into this province looking for the capital of the last Incas, one of the places on my list was Calancha’s ‘Ungacacha’. Since 1911 I had been inquiring of Indians everywhere for a locality of that name, only to be met invariably with the reply that they knew of no such place. It seems to me entirely probable that the ‘Ungacacha’ referred to in Calancha’s story of the sufferings of the Friars was Yanaccocha, and that the monk, who probably wrote it down sometime afterward from memory, and who very likely did not hear it any more clearly than I did when I inquired the name of the place, spelled it
Ungacacha
, instead of Yanaccocha. They look so different on paper that it is somewhat difficult to realize how closely the Indian pronunciation of one approaches the other.

The old Inca trail continued up the hillside in the direction of Machu Picchu and led toward the ruins of Yuracrumiyocc, which was the Inca storehouse the foreman of Huadquiña had said was so magnificent, and which I had visited in 1911. At that time we could not understand its significance. Now we realized that it was a resthouse on the old Inca road between Manco’s two capitals, Vilcapampa and Vitcos.

It appears that the builders of Machu Picchu had an elaborate system of highways throughout this little-known and almost unexplored country which lies between the Urubamba valley and the Apurímac. This region was once densely populated, and Machu Picchu was its capital.