Not far from the town of Micuipampa, in a high plain called Llanos or Pampa de Navar, there have been found throughout an area of above an English geographical square mile, immediately under the turf, and as it were intertwined with the roots of the alpine grasses, enormous masses of rich red silver ore and threads of pure silver (in remolinos, clavos, and vetas manteadas). Another elevated plain west of the Purgatorio, near the Quebrada de Chiquera, is called “Choropampa” or the “Field of Shells” (churu, in the Quichua language, signifies shells, and particularly small eatable kinds, hostion, mexillon). The name refers to fossils which belong to the cretaceous group, and which are found there in such abundance that they early attracted the attention of the natives. This is the place where there was obtained near the surface a mass of pure gold spun round with threads of silver in the richest manner. Such an occurrence shows how independent many of the ores thrown up from the interior of the earth into fissures or veins, are of the nature of the adjacent rock and of the relative age of the formations broken through. The rock of the Cerro de Gualgayoc and of Fuentestiana has a great deal of water, but in the Purgatorio absolute dryness prevails. I found to my astonishment that notwithstanding the height of the strata above the level of the sea, the temperature of the last named mine was 15°.8 Reaumur (67°.4 Fahr.); while in the neighbouring Mina de Guadalupe the water in the mine showed about 9° Reaumur (52°.2 Fahr.) As in the open air the thermometer only rises to about 4° Reaumur (41° Fahr.), the miners, whose toil is severe, and who are almost without clothing, call the subterranean heat in the Purgatorio stifling.
The narrow path from Micuipampa to the ancient city of the Incas, Caxamarca, is difficult even for mules. The name of the town was originally Cassamarca or Kazamarca, i. e. the Frost town; (marca, as signifying a place or locality, belongs to the northern Chinchaysuyo or Chinchaysuyu dialect, while the word in the general Quichua language signifies the stories of houses, and also defences or forts). Our way lay for five or six hours over a succession of Paramos, where we were exposed almost incessantly to the fury of the wind and to the sharp-edged hail so peculiar to the ridges of the Andes. The height of the route above the level of the sea is generally between nine and ten thousand feet (about 9600 and 10660 Eng.) It afforded me, however, the opportunity of making a magnetic observation of general interest; i. e. the determination of the point where the North Inclination of the Needle passes into South Inclination, or where the traveller’s route crosses the Magnetic Equator.[52]
On reaching at length the last of these mountain wildernesses, the Paramo de Yanaguanga, the traveller looks down with increased pleasure on the fertile valley of Caxamarca. It affords a charming prospect: a small river winds through the elevated plain, which is of an oval form and about six or seven German geographical square miles in extent (96 or 112 English geographical square miles). The plain resembles that of Bogota: both are probably the bottoms of ancient lakes; but at Caxamarca there is wanting the myth of the wonder-working Botschica or Idacanzas, the high priest of Iraca, who opened for the waters a passage through the rock of Tequendama. Caxamarca is situated 600 (640 Eng.) feet higher than Santa Fé de Bogota, therefore almost as high as the city of Quito; but being sheltered by surrounding mountains it enjoys a far milder and more agreeable climate. The soil is extremely fertile, and the plain full of cultivated fields and gardens traversed by avenues of Willows, large flowered red, white, and yellow varieties of Datura, Mimosas, and the beautiful Quinuar-trees (our Polylepsis villosa, a Rosacea allied to Alchemilla and Sanguisorba). Wheat yields on an average in the Pampa de Caxamarca fifteen to twentyfold, but the hopes of a plentiful harvest are sometimes disappointed by night frosts, occasioned by the great radiation of heat towards the unclouded sky through the dry and rarefied mountain air: the frosts are not felt in the roofed houses.
In the northern part of the plain, small porphyritic domes break through the widely extended sandstone strata, and probably once formed islands in the ancient lake before its waters had flowed off. On the summit of one of these domes, the Cerro de Santa Polonia, we enjoyed a pleasing prospect. The ancient residence of Atuhuallpa is surrounded on this side by fruit gardens and by irrigated fields of lucerne (Medicago sativa, “campos de alfalfa”). Columns of smoke are seen at a distance rising from the warm baths of Pultamarca, which are still called Baños del Inca. I found the temperature of these sulphur-springs 55°.2 Reaumur (156°.2 Fahrenheit). Atahuallpa spent a part of the year at these baths, where some slight remains of his palace still survive the devastating rage of the Conquistadores. The large and deep basin or reservoir in which, according to tradition, one of the golden chairs in which the Inca was carried had been sunk and has ever since been sought in vain, appeared to me, from the regularity of its circular shape, to have been artificially excavated in the sandstone rock above one of the fissures through which the springs issue.
Of the fort and palace of Atahuallpa there are also only very slight remains in the town, which is now adorned with some fine churches. The destruction of the ancient buildings has been accelerated by the devouring thirst of gold which led men, before the close of the sixteenth century, in digging for supposed hidden treasures, to overturn walls and carelessly to undermine or weaken the foundations of all the houses. The palace of the Inca was situated on a hill of porphyry which had originally been hollowed at the surface, so that it surrounds the principal dwelling almost like a wall or rampart. A state prison and a municipal building (la Casa del Cabildo) have been erected on a part of the ruins. The most considerable ruins still visible, but which are only from 13 to 16 feet high, are opposite the convent of San Francisco; they consist, as may be observed in the house of the Cacique, of fine cut blocks of stone two or three feet long, and placed upon each other without cement, as in the Inca-Pilca or strong fortress of Cañar in the high land of Quito.
There is a shaft sunk in the porphyritic rock which once led into subterranean chambers, and a gallery said to extend to the other porphyritic dome before spoken of, that of Santa Polonia. Such arrangements shew an apprehension of the uncertainties of war, and the desire to secure the means of escape. The burying of treasures was an old and very generally prevailing Peruvian custom. There may still be found subterranean chambers below many of the private dwellings of Caxamarca.
We were shown steps cut in the rock, and also what is called the Inca’s foot-bath (el lavatorio de los pies). The washing of the monarch’s feet was accompanied by some inconvenient usages of court etiquette.[53] Minor buildings, designed according to tradition for the servants, are constructed partly like the others of cut stones, and provided with sloped roofs, and partly with well formed bricks alternating with siliceous cement (muros y obra de tapia). In the latter class of constructions there are vaulted recesses, the antiquity of which I long doubted, but, as I now believe, without sufficient grounds.
In the principal building the room is still shown in which the unhappy Atahuallpa was kept a prisoner for nine months[54] from November 1532, and there is pointed out to the traveller the wall on which the captive signified to what height he would fill the room with gold if set free. This height is given very variously, by Xerez in his “Conquista del Peru” which Barcia has preserved for us, by Hernando Pizarro in his letters, and by other writers of the period. The prince said that “gold in bars, plates, and vessels, should be heaped up as high as he could reach with his hand.” Xerez assigns to the room a length of 23, and a breadth of 18 English feet. Garcilaso de la Vega, who quitted Peru in his 20th year, in 1560, estimates the value of the treasure collected from the temples of the sun at Cuzco, Huaylas, Huamachuco, and Pachacamac, up to the fateful 29th of August 1553, on which day the Inca was put to death, at 3,838,000 Ducados de Oro[55].
In the chapel of the state prison, to which I have before alluded as built upon the ruins of the Inca’s palace, the stone still marked by the indelible stains of blood is shown to the credulous. It is a very thin slab, 13 feet long, placed in front of the altar, and has probably been taken from the porphyry or trachyte of the vicinity. One is not permitted to make any more precise examination by striking off a part of the stone, but the three or four supposed blood spots appear to be natural collections of hornblende or pyroxide in the rock. The Licentiate Fernando Montesinos, who visited Peru scarcely a hundred years after the taking of Caxamarca, even at that early period gave currency to the fable that Atahuallpa was beheaded in prison, and that stains of blood were still visible on the stone on which the execution had taken place. There is no reason to doubt the fact, confirmed by many eye-witnesses, that the Inca, in order to avoid being burnt alive, consented to be baptised under the name of Juan de Atahuallpa by his fanatic persecutor, the Dominican monk Vicente de Valverde. He was put to death by strangulation (el garrote) publicly, and in the open air. Another tradition relates that a chapel was raised over the spot where Atahuallpa was strangled, and that his body rests beneath the stone; in such case, however, the supposed spots of blood would remain unaccounted for. In reality, however, the corpse was never placed beneath the stone in question. After a mass for the dead, and solemn funereal rites, at which the brothers Pizarro were present in mourning habits (!), it was conveyed first to the churchyard of the convent of San Francisco, and afterwards to Quito, Atahuallpa’s birthplace. This last transfer was in compliance with the expressed wish of the dying Inca. His personal enemy, the astute Rumiñavi (“stone-eye,” a name given from the disfigurement of one eye by a wart; “rumi,” signifying “stone,” and “ñaui,” “eye,” in the Quichua language), from political motives caused the body to be buried at Quito with solemn obsequies.
We found descendants of the monarch, the family of the Indian Cacique Astorpilco, dwelling in Caxamarca, among the melancholy ruins of ancient departed splendour, and living in great poverty and privation; but patient and uncomplaining. Their descent from Atahuallpa through the female line has never been doubted in Caxamarca, but traces of beard may perhaps indicate some admixture of Spanish blood. Of the sons of the Great (but for a child of the sun somewhat free thinking),[56] Huayna Capac, neither of the two who swayed the sceptre before the arrival of the Spaniards, Huascar and Atahuallpa, left behind them acknowledged sons. Huascar became the prisoner of Atahuallpa in the plains of Quipaypan, and was soon afterwards secretly murdered by his order. Neither were there any surviving male descendants of the two remaining brothers of Atahuallpa, the insignificant youth Toparca, who Pizarro caused to be crowned as Inca in the autumn of 1553, and the enterprising Manco Capac, similarly crowned, but who afterwards rebelled again. Atahuallpa left indeed a son, whose christian name was Don Francisco, (but who died very young), and a daughter, Doña Angelina, by whom Francisco Pizarro (with whom she led a wild and warlike life), had a son whom he loved fondly, grandchild of the slaughtered monarch. Besides the family of the Cacique Astorpilco, with whom I was acquainted at Caxamarca, the Carguraicos and Titu Buscamayta were pointed out at the period of my visit as belonging to the Inca dynasty; but the Buscamayta family has since become extinct.