The province of Caxamarca is intersected by ramifications of the Cordillera; and having several low valleys, it consequently contains the various climates or temperatures, from extreme heat to intense cold: thus all kinds of fruit and grain peculiar to different climates are cultivated in this province: it abounds, also, in all kinds of cattle and poultry; and many obrages, manufactories of cloth, baizes, blankets, and tocuyos have been established here.
The most extensive manufactories for woollen cloths are Polloc and Sondor, belonging (1812) to Don Tomas Bueno; and that for blankets, at Yana-cancha, belonging, at the same date, to Don Miguel Sarachaga. The blankets are very tastefully embroidered by the Indians, with loose yarn, before they undergo the operation of fulling, so that the colours have the appearance of being stamped on them.
Many silver and gold mines exist in this province; but since the discovery of the rich ores of Gualgayoc, in the neighbouring province of Chota, the mines of Caxamarca have been abandoned. On the shores of the river called de las Crisnejas, which falls into the Marañon, are several washing places, lavaderos, of gold. On the north side of the province, where it joins that of Jaen, some bark trees are found, the produce of which is little inferior to the famous cinchona of Loxa.
During my stay at Caxamarca I visited several of the towns and villages; that called de Jesus, five leagues from the city, is an indian village, pleasantly situated in a small valley bounded by high mountains, at the foot of which on the north side runs the Caxamarca river; on the side of this river several water mills have been erected for grinding wheat, an abundance of which is cultivated in the neighbourhood. While at this place I several times visited my friend Don Tomas Arce, for the purpose of accompanying him to take partridges with falcons; with two of these birds and a springer we have often returned, after a few hours' sport, with five or six brace of partridges of the large red legged kind, but of a very delicate flavour. We frequently set out in the evening and slept at some farm house on the hills, and in the morning took each of us a falcon on our hard gloves and rode to the stubble fields; when the dog sprang the game, we threw up our falcons, and followed them to the place where they fell with their prey in their talons; this we could easily discover by the sound of the bells fastened to the legs of the falcon. We generally gave to our birds the brains of the partridges which they had killed, then took them on our arms, and mounted to search for more game. As the country abounds in venados, deer, Don Tomas had trained a falcon to pursue them; he stuffed the skin of one of these animals, in the eye pits of which he accustomed the bird to search for its food; he sometimes placed the stuffed skin on the shoulders of a boy, who ran away with it, when the falcon was allowed to follow him in quest of its food. In this easy manner the falcon was trained to catch deer, and it afforded us a great deal of amusement by flying after the animal and perching on its head; this gave us time to come up and secure the brute with a laso, or to kill it.
I had been convinced, before I visited this province, that the character of the South American indians was far different from what it had been reported to be by all the Spanish writers, excepting the virtuous Las Casas: otherwise, I should have been astonished at what I saw at this village, where the indians have had but little intercourse with the Spaniards, compared with those of whom Ulloa and Condamine so contemptuously speak. Many festivals are observed at this village by the indians; and although the Spanish language is little used, and the Quichua alone is spoken, two, three, or more Spanish plays are performed by them at each festival, amounting to, at least, twenty in each year. This fondness for theatrical performances, which the indians evince—the difficulty they labour under to learn their parts, in a language not their own—beside the expences incidental to the representations, must certainly prove that the aspersions of historians are unmerited.
Near to this village is a farm, called la Lagunilla, on which are the remains of an indian town, most curiously built; many of the houses are yet entire; they are all built of stone, and surround a small rock or mountain, which is situated in a valley: the bottom tier or range of rooms have walls of an amazing thickness, in which I have measured stones twelve feet long and seven feet high, forming the whole side of a room, with one or more large stones laid across, which serve as a roof. Above these houses another tier was built in the same manner, on the back of which are the entrances or doorways, and a second row had their backs to the mountain. The roofs of the second tier in front had been covered with stone, and probably formed a promenade; a second tier of rooms thus rested on the roofs of the first tier, which were on a level with the second front tier. In this manner one double tier of dwelling rooms was built above another to the height of seven tiers. On the top are many ruins, apparently of a palace or fortress.
When I first visited this place, I imagined that the rooms were excavations in the rock; but I was very soon convinced that the whole had been built, and I was astonished at contemplating such immense labour, the real purpose of which is now unknown. The rooms are seldom more than about twelve feet square and seven feet high, with a high door-way in front, narrower at the top than at the bottom; the stone has been wrought for the fronts into irregular sized squares, which are cemented together. Some of the thick walls are formed of two casings of stone, and the interstice is filled up with small stones and pebbles, held together with well tempered reddish clay, which at present forms so solid a mass, that it is almost equal to stone. The cement used to hold the stones together, was, doubtless, tempered clay; but so little was used, that some have imagined that the stones were merely placed one upon another; in this surmise, however, they were evidently mistaken.
The whole of this building would have contained at least five thousand families; but we are not certain that it was ever applied to that purpose. Some traditions call it one of the palaces, or houses of reception, for the Incas when they travelled; but this is by no means probable, for it does not stand within a league of the great road of the Incas, and being only five leagues from Caxamarca, it is not likely that such an edifice would have been built for such a purpose. Others state, that it was the general granary for this part of the country in the time of the Incas; but this is also subject to the same objections; for, as I have already mentioned, the remains of one exist on the farm belonging to Doña Mercedes Arce, near to Caxamarca; and the ruins of all those granaries which I have seen at different places are a kind of cisterns, walled round either with adobes or rough hewn stones. It appears to me as far more probable, that this was the residence of the Chimu of Chicama, when he resided in the interior of his territory, before it became subject to the Inca Pachacutec. The top of the mountain appears to have been covered with buildings of a superior kind to the rest; for some of the foundations may be traced, enclosing rooms and courts more extensive than are to be found in any other part of this mass of buildings. There are four principal roads leading from the bottom to the top, corresponding with the four cardinal points; and from each of these roads or streets the inhabitants could walk on the tops of their houses to the next, and probably round the whole by bridges laid across the intersecting roads; so that seven promenades were thus formed, besides the six circular streets. The proprietor of this estate, Don Tomas Bueno, fancied that it was the remains of an ancient temple, and supposed that a great treasure was somewhere hidden; but I never could persuade him to cut an adit through it in search of the huaca. Here are no remains of delicate sculpture, although a few arabesques may be seen on some of the stones; nor is there any appearance of elegant architecture, for which the ancient Greeks and Romans were so famous. However, the immense ingenuity of the builders in conveying and placing such huge masses of stone in such a situation, as well as the extracting them from the quarries without machinery, and shaping them without iron tools, must astound the contemplating beholder of these ruins, and make him blush at hearing the builders called barbarians. Such epithets are equally applicable to the Egyptians, on viewing their rude ancient monuments; but we feel conscious that these people were in possession of the arts and sciences when our forefathers in Europe were in a state of barbarity; we consider, too, that from their plantations the first scions were brought to Greece and Italy, and that these exotics were afterwards transplanted into our own country.
Near to these ruins is a small lake, laguna, from which the estate derives its name; it is of an oval figure, the transverse axis being nine hundred yards, and the conjugate six hundred and fifty. One side of the lake rests on the foot of the mountains, which separate the farm from the valley of Caxamarca, on the opposite side of which mountains the river runs. An excavation or tunnel is cut through one of these mountains, through which the water of the lake is discharged into the river, when it rises nearly to a level with the surrounding land, and thus a flooding of it is prevented. This lake was probably the quarry whence the stone was taken for the building just described, and the passage was probably opened at the same time by the indians, to prevent the water from deluging the low lands, which bespeaks that attention to economy so evident in the establishments of the ancient Peruvians.
The farm house here, with all the stables and other buildings, are of stone, brought from the Tambo del Inca, as the ruins are called: all the yards are paved with the same, and they have a very neat and clean appearance; however, I could not help wishing that the stones had remained undisturbed in their former interesting situation; but many have also been carried, for the same purposes, to different places.