Lost City of the Incas (Phoenix Press) (26 page)

By this time our curiosity was thoroughly aroused. We were familiar with the current stories regarding the habits of savage tribes who lived in the
montaña
and whose services were in great demand as rubber gatherers. We had even heard that Indians did not particularly like to work for Señor Pancorbo, who was an energetic, ambitious man, anxious to achieve many things, which required more labourers than could easily be obtained. We could readily believe there might possibly be Indians at Conservidayoc who had escaped from his rubber estate of San Miguel. Undoubtedly, Señor Pancorbo’s own life would have been at the mercy of their poisoned arrows. All over the Amazon Basin tribes visited with impunity by the explorers of the nineteenth century had now become so savage and revengeful as to lead them to kill all white men at sight.

Professor Foote and I considered the matter in all its aspects. We finally came to the conclusion that in view of the specific reports regarding the presence of Inca ruins at Conservidayoc we could not afford to follow the advice of the friendly planter. We must at least make an effort to reach them, meanwhile taking every precaution to avoid arousing the enmity of the powerful Saavedra and his savage retainers.

On the day following our arrival at the Spanish town of Vilcabamba, the
Gobernador
, Condore, taking counsel with his chief assistant, had summoned the wisest Indians living in the vicinity, including a very picturesque old fellow whose name, Quispi Cusi, was strongly reminiscent of the days of Titu Cusi. It was explained to him that this was a very solemn occasion and that an official inquiry was in progress. He took off his hat – but not his knitted cap – and endeavoured to the best of his ability to answer our questions about the surrounding country. He said that the Inca Tupac Amaru once lived at Rosaspata. He had
never heard of Vitcos or Vilcapampa Viejo, but he admitted that there were ruins in the
montaña
near Conservidayoc. Apparently, however, neither he nor any one in the village, had actually seen the ruins or visited their immediate vicinity. They all agreed that Saavedra’s place was ‘at least four days’ hard journey on foot in the
montaña
beyond Pampaconas’. No village of that name appeared on any map of Peru, although it is frequently mentioned in the documents of the sixteenth century. Rodriguez de Figueroa says that he met Titu Cusi at Banbaconas. He says further that the Inca came there from somewhere down in the
montaña
and presented him with a macaw and two hampers of peanuts, products of a warm region.

We had brought with us the large sheets of Raimondi’s invaluable map which covered this locality. We also had the new map of South Peru and North Bolivia which had just been published by the Royal Geographical Society and gave a summary of all available information. The Indians said that Conservidayoc lay in a westerly direction from Vilcabamba, yet on Raimondi’s map all the rivers which rise in the mountains west of the town are short affluents of the Apurímac and flow south-west. We wondered whether the stories about ruins at Conservidayoc would turn out to be as barren of foundation as those we had heard from the foreman at Huadquiña. One of our informants said the Inca city was called Espíritu Pampa, or the ‘Pampa of Ghosts’. Would the ruins turn out to be ‘ghosts’? Would they vanish on the arrival of white men with cameras and measuring tapes?

Although no one at Vilcabamba had seen the ruins, they said that at Pampaconas there were Indians who had actually been to Conservidayoc. Accordingly we decided to go there immediately.

After the usual delays, caused in part by the difficulty of catching our mules, which had taken advantage of our historical investigations to stray far up the mountain pastures, we finally set out from the boundaries of known topography headed for ‘Conservidayoc’, a vague place surrounded with mystery, a land of hostile savages, albeit said to possess the ruins of an Inca town.

Our first day’s journey was to Pampaconas. Here and in its vicinity the
Gobernador
told us he could procure guides and the half-dozen carriers whose services we would need on the jungle trail where mules could not be used. As the Indians were averse from penetrating the wilds of Conservidayoc and were also likely to be extremely alarmed at the sight of men in uniform, the two gendarmes who were now accompanying us were instructed to delay their departure for a few hours and not to reach Pampaconas with our pack train until dusk. The
Gobernador
said that if the Indians of Pampaconas caught sight of any brass buttons coming over the hills they would hide so effectively that it would be impossible to secure any carriers. Apparently this was due in part to that love of freedom which had led them to abandon the more comfortable towns for a frontier village where landlords could not call on them for forced labour. Consequently, before the arrival of any such striking manifestations of official authority as our gendarmes, the
Gobernador
and his friend Mogrovejo proposed to put in the day craftily commandeering the services of a half-dozen sturdy Indians. Their methods will be described presently.

Leaving modern Vilcabamba, we crossed the flat, marshy bottom of an old glaciated valley, in which one of our mules got thoroughly mired while searching for the succulent grasses which cover the treacherous bog. Fording the Vilcabamba river, which here is only a tiny brook, we climbed out of the valley and turned westward.

At the top of the pass we turned to look back and saw a long chain of snow-capped mountains towering above and behind the town of Vilcabamba. We searched in vain for them on our maps. Raimondi, followed by the Royal Geographical Society, did not leave room enough for such a range to exist between the rivers Apurímac and Urubamba. According to the latest maps of this region, published in the preceding year, we ought now to have been swimming in ‘the Great Speaker’, near its junction with the river Pampas. Actually we were on top of a lofty mountain pass surrounded by high peaks and glaciers. The mystery was finally solved by Albert H. Bumstead, chief topographer of
our next expedition. He determined the Apurímac and the Urubamba to be thirty miles farther apart at this point than any one had supposed. Our surveys opened an unexplored region,
1,500 square miles in extent
, whose very existence had not been guessed before 1911. It proved to be one of the largest undescribed glaciated areas in South America. Yet it is less than a hundred miles from Cuzco, the chief city in the Peruvian Andes, and the site of a university for more than three centuries. That this region could have so long defied investigation and exploration shows better than anything else how wisely Manco had selected his refuge.

Looking west, we saw in front of us a great wilderness of deep green valleys and forest-clad slopes. We supposed from our maps that we were now looking down into the basin of the Apurímac. As a matter of fact, we were on the rim of the valley of the hitherto uncharted Pampaconas, a branch of the Cosireni, one of the affluents of the Urubamba. Instead of being the Apurímac Basin, what we saw was another unexplored region which drained into the Urubamba!

The ‘road’ was now so bad that only with the greatest difficulty could we coax our sure-footed mules to follow it. Once we had to dismount, as the path led down the long, steep, rocky stairway of ancient Inca origin. At last, rounding a hill, we came in sight of a lonesome little hut perched on a shoulder of the mountain. In front of it, seated in the sun on mats, were two women shelling corn. As soon as they saw the
Gobernador
approaching, they stopped their work and began to prepare lunch. It was about eleven o’clock and they did not need to be told that Señor Condore and his friends had not had anything but a cup of coffee since the night before. In order to meet the emergency of unexpected guests they killed four or five of the squealing guinea pigs that are usually to be found scurrying about the mud floor of the huts of mountain Indians. Before long the savoury odour of roast
cuy
, well basted, and cooked to a turn on primitive spits, whetted our appetites.

I am willing to admit that this was the first time that I had
ever knowingly tasted their delicate flesh. Had I not been very hungry, I might never have known how delicious a roast guinea pig can be.

After lunch, Condore and Mogrovejo divided the extensive rolling countryside between them and each rode quietly from one lonesome farm to another, looking for men to engage as bearers. When they were so fortunate as to find the man of the house at home or working in his little bit of cultivated ground they greeted him pleasantly. When he came forward to shake hands, in the usual Indian manner, a silver dollar was slipped into the palm of his right hand and he was informed that he had accepted pay for services which he must now render. It seemed very hard but this was the only way in which it was possible to secure carriers.

Under the Incas the Indians never received pay for their labour. As has been said, a paternal government saw to it that they were properly fed and clothed and either given abundant opportunity to provide for their own necessities or else permitted to draw on official stores. In colonial days a less paternal government took advantage of the ancient system and enforced it without taking pains to see that it should not cause suffering. Then, for generations, thoughtless landlords, backed by local authority, forced the Indians to work without suitably recompensing them at the end of their labours or even pretending to carry out promises and wage agreements. The peons learned that it was unwise to perform any labour without first having received a considerable portion of their pay. When once they accepted money, however, their own custom and the law of the land provided that they must carry out their obligations. Failure to do so meant legal punishment.

Consequently when an unfortunate Pampaconas Indian found he had a dollar in his hand he bemoaned his fate but realized that service was inevitable. In vain did he plead that he was ‘busy’, that his ‘crops needed attention’, that his ‘family could not spare him’, that ‘he lacked food for a journey’. Condore and Mogrovejo were accustomed to all varieties of excuses. They succeeded in ‘engaging’ half a dozen carriers. Before dark we
reached the village of Pampaconas, a few small huts scattered over grassy hillsides at an elevation of 10,000 feet.

In the notes of one of the military advisers of the Viceroy Francisco de Toledo is a reference to Pampaconas as a ‘high, cold place’. This is correct. Nevertheless, I doubt if the present village is the Pampaconas mentioned in the documents of Garcia’s day as being ‘an important town of the Incas’. There are no ruins hereabouts. The huts of Pampaconas were newly built of stone and mud, and thatched with grass. They were occupied by a group of sturdy mountain Indians, who enjoyed unusual freedom from official or other interference and a good place in which to raise sheep and cultivate potatoes, on the very edge of the dense forest.

We found that there was some excitement in the village because on the previous night a jaguar, or possibly a cougar, had come out of the forest, attacked, killed, and dragged off one of the village ponies. We were really in new country.

We were conducted to the dwelling of a stocky, well-built Indian named Guzman, the most reliable man in the village, who had been selected to be the head of the party of carriers that was to accompany us to Conservidayoc. Guzman had some Spanish blood in his veins, although he did not boast of it. We carried on a most interesting conversation with him. He had been to Conservidayoc and had himself actually seen Inca ruins at Espíritu Pampa. At last the mythical ‘Pampa of Ghosts’ began to take on, in our minds, an aspect of reality, even though we were careful to remind ourselves that another very trustworthy man had said he had seen ruins ‘finer than Ollantaytambo’ near Huadquiña. Guzman did not seem to dread Conservidayoc as much as the other Indians, only one of whom had ever been there. To cheer them up we purchased a fat sheep. Guzman immediately butchered it in preparation for the journey.

Towards noon of the next day, all the Indian carriers but one having arrived, we started for Conservidayoc. We were told that it would be possible to use the mules for this day’s journey. San Fernando, our first stop, was ‘seven leagues’ away, far down in the densely wooded Pampaconas valley. Leaving the village we
climbed up the mountain, behind Guzman’s hut, and followed a faint trail by a dangerous route along the crest of the ridge. The rains had not improved the path. Our saddle mules were of little use. We had to go nearly all the way on foot. Owing to cold rain and mist we could see but little of the deep canyon which opened below us, and into which we now began to descend 4,000 feet through the clouds by a very steep, zigzag path, to a hot tropical valley. Below the clouds we found ourselves near a small abandoned clearing. Passing this and fording little streams, we went along a very narrow path and across steep slopes, on which maize had been planted. Finally we came to the end of the mule trail, another small clearing with two extremely primitive little shanties, mere shelters not deserving to be called huts; and this was San Fernando! It was with great difficulty we found and cleared a place for our tent, although its floor was only seven feet square.

At 8.30 p.m. on 13 August 1911, while lying on the ground in our tent, we noticed an earthquake. It was felt also by the Indians in the nearby shelter, who from force of habit rushed out of their frail structure and made a great disturbance, crying out that there was a
temblor
. Even had their little thatched roof fallen upon them, as it might have done during the stormy night which followed, they were in no danger; but, being accustomed to the stone walls and red-tiled roofs of mountain villages where earthquakes sometimes do very serious harm, they were greatly excited. The motion seemed to me to be like a slight shuffle from west to east, lasting three or four seconds, a gentle rocking back and forth, with eight or ten vibrations. Several weeks later, near Huadquiña, we happened to stop at the Colpani telegraph office. The operator said he had felt two shocks on August 13th – one at five o’clock, which had shaken the books off his table and knocked over a box of insulators standing along a wall which ran north and south. He said the shock which we felt was the lighter of the two.