After having sojourned for a whole year on the ridge of the Andes, or Antis,[[111]], between 4° north and 4° south latitude, amidst the table-lands of New Granada, Pastos, and Quito, and consequently at an elevation varying between 8,500 and 13,000 feet above the level of the sea, it is delightful to descend gradually through the more genial climate of the Cinchona or Quina Woods of Loxa, into the plains of the Upper Amazon. There an unknown world unfolds itself, rich in magnificent vegetation. The little town of Loxa has given its name to the most efficacious of all fever barks,—the Quina, or the Cascarilla fina de Loxa. This bark is the precious produce of the tree, which we have botanically described as the Cinchona Condaminea; but which, (from the erroneous supposition that all the Cinchona known in commerce was obtained from one and the same tree,) had previously been called Cinchona officinalis. The fever bark first became known, in Europe, about the middle of the seventeenth century. Sebastian Badus affirms, that it was brought to Alcala de Henares in the year 1632; but according to other accounts, it was brought to Madrid in 1640, when the Countess de Chinchon[[112]], the wife of the Peruvian Viceroy, arrived from Lima, (where she had been cured of an intermittent fever,) accompanied by her physician, Juan del Vego. The finest kind of Cinchona is obtained at the distance of from eight to twelve miles southward of the town of Loxa, among the mountains of Uritusinga, Villonaco, and Rumisitana. The trees which yield this bark grow on mica slate and gneiss, at the moderate elevations of 5755 and 7673 feet above the level of the sea, nearly corresponding, respectively, with the heights of the Hospital on the Grimsel, and the Pass of the Great St. Bernard. The Cinchona Woods in these parts are bounded by the little rivulets Zamora and Cachyacu.
The tree is felled in its first flowering season, or about the fourth or seventh year of its growth, according as it may have been reared from a strong shoot or from seed. At the time of my journey in Peru we learned, with surprise, that the quantity of the Cinchona Condaminea annually obtained at Loxa by the Cascarilla gatherers, or Quina hunters (Cascarilleros and Caçadores de Quina), amounted only to 110 hundred weight. At that time none of this valuable product found its way into commerce; all that was obtained was shipped at Payta, a port of the Pacific, and conveyed round Cape Horn to Cadiz, for the use of the Spanish Court. To procure the small supply of 11,000 Spanish pounds, no less than 800 or 900 Cinchona trees were cut down every year. The older and thicker stems are becoming more and more scarce; but, such is the luxuriance of growth, that the younger trees, which now supply the demand, though measuring only six inches in diameter, frequently attain the height of from 53 to 64 feet. This beautiful tree, which is adorned with leaves five inches long and two broad, seems, when growing in the thick woods, as if striving to rise above its neighbours. The upper branches spread out, and when agitated by the wind the leaves have a peculiar reddish colour and glistening appearance which is distinguishable at a great distance. The mean temperature of the woods of the Cinchona Condaminea varies between 60° and 66° Fahrenheit; that is to say, about the mean annual temperature of Florence and the Island of Madeira: but the extremes of heat and cold experienced at those points of the temperate zone, are never felt in the vicinity of Loxa. However, comparisons between climates in very different degrees of latitude, and the climate of the table-lands of the tropical zone, must, from their very nature, be unsatisfactory.
Descending from the mountain node of Loxa, south-south-east, into the hot valley of the Amazon River, the traveller passes over the Paramos of Chulucanas, Guamani, and Yamoca. These Paramos are the mountainous deserts, which have been mentioned in another portion of the present work; and which, in the southern parts of the Andes, are known by the name of Puna, a word belonging to the Quichua language. In most places, their elevation is about 10,125 feet. They are stormy, frequently enveloped for several successive days in thick fogs, or visited by terrific hail-storms; the hail-stones being not only of different forms, generally much flattened by rotation, but also run together into thin floating plates of ice called papa-cara, which cut the face and hands in their fall. During this meteoric process, I have sometimes known the thermometer to sink to 48° and even 43° Fahrenheit, and the electric tension of the atmosphere, measured by the voltaic electrometer, has changed, in the space of a few minutes, from positive to negative. When the temperature is below 43° Fahrenheit, snow falls in large flakes, scattered widely apart; but it disappears after the lapse of a few hours. The short thin branches of the small leaved myrtle-like shrubs, the large size and luxuriance of the blossoms, and the perpetual freshness caused by the absorption of the moist atmosphere—all impart a peculiar aspect and character to the treeless vegetation of the Paramos. No zone of Alpine vegetation, whether in temperate or cold climates, can be compared with that of the Paramos in the tropical Andes.
The solemn impression which is felt on beholding the deserts of the Cordilleras, is increased in a remarkable and unexpected manner, by the circumstance that in these very regions there still exist wonderful remains of the great road of the Incas, that stupendous work by means of which, communication was maintained among all the provinces of the empire along an extent of upwards of 1000 geographical miles. On the sides of this road, and nearly at equal distances apart, there are small houses, built of well-cut free-stone. These buildings, which answered the purpose of stations, or caravanseries, are called Tambos, and also Inca-Pilca, (from Pircca, the Wall). Some are surrounded by a sort of fortification; others were destined for baths, and had arrangements for the conveyance of warm water: the larger ones were intended exclusively for the family of the sovereign. At the foot of the volcano Cotopaxi, near Callo, I had previously seen buildings of the same kind in a good state of preservation. These I accurately measured, and made drawings from them. Pedro de Cieça, who wrote in the sixteenth century, calls these structures Aposentos de Mulalo[[113]]. The pass of the Andes, lying between Alausi and Loxa, called the Paramo del Assuay, a much frequented route across the Ladera de Cadlud, is at the elevation of 15,526 feet above the level of the sea, and consequently almost at the height of Mont Blanc. As we were proceeding through this pass, we experienced considerable difficulty in guiding our heavily laden mules over the marshy ground on the level height of the Pullal; but whilst we journeyed onward for the distance of about four miles, our eyes were continually rivetted on the grand remains of the Inca Road, upwards of 20 feet in breadth. This road had a deep under-structure, and was paved with well-hewn blocks of black trap porphyry. None of the Roman roads which I have seen in Italy, in the south of France and in Spain, appeared to me more imposing than this work of the ancient Peruvians; and the Inca road is the more extraordinary, since, according to my barometrical calculations, it is situated at an elevation of 13,258 feet above the level of the sea, a height exceeding that of the summit of the Peak of Teneriffe by upwards of 1000 feet. At an equal elevation, are the ruins said to be those of the palace of the Inca Tupac Yupanqui, and known by the name of the Paredones del Inca, situated on the Assuay. From these ruins the Inca road, running southward in the direction of Cuenca, leads to the small but well-preserved fortress of the Cañar[[114]], probably belonging to the same period, viz.: the reign of Tupac Yupanqui, or that of his warlike son Huayna Capac.
We saw still grander remains of the ancient Peruvian Inca road, on our way between Loxa and the Amazon, near the baths of the Incas on the Paramo of Chulucanas, not far from Guancabamba, and also in the vicinity of Ingatambo, near Pomahuaca. The ruins at the latter place are situated so low, that I found the difference of level between the Inca road at Pomahuaca, and that in the Paramo del Assuay, to be upwards of 9700 feet. The distance in a direct line, as determined by astronomical latitudes, is precisely 184 miles; and the ascent of the road is about 3730 feet greater than the elevation of the Pass of Mont Cenis, above the Lake of Como. There are two great causeways, paved with flat stones, and in some places covered with cemented gravel[[115]], on Macadam’s plan. One of these lines of road runs through the broad and barren plain lying between the sea-coast and the chain of the Andes, whilst the other passes along the ridge of the Cordilleras. Stones, marking the distances at equal intervals, are frequently seen. The rivulets and ravines were crossed by bridges of three kinds; some being of stone, some of wood, and others of rope. These bridges are called by the Peruvians, Puentes de Hamaca, or Puentes de Maroma. There were also aqueducts for conveying water to the Tambos and fortresses. Both lines of road were directed to Cuzco, the central point and capital of the great Peruvian empire, situated in 13° 31′ south lat., and according to Pentland’s Map of Bolivia, at the elevation of 11,378 feet above the level of the sea. As the Peruvians had no wheeled carriages, these roads were constructed for the march of troops, for the conveyance of burthens borne by men, and for flocks of lightly laden Lamas; consequently, long flights of steps[[116]], with resting-places, were formed at intervals in the steep parts of the mountains. Francisco Pizarro and Diego Almagro, in their expeditions to remote parts of the country, availed themselves with much advantage of the military roads of the Incas; but the steps just mentioned were formidable impediments in the way of the Spanish cavalry, especially as in the early period of the Conquista, the Spaniards rode horses only, and did not make use of the sure-footed mule, which, in mountainous precipices, seems to reflect on every step he takes. It was only at a later period that the Spanish troops were mounted on mules.
Sarmiento, who saw the Inca roads whilst they were in a perfect state of preservation, mentions them in a Relacion which he wrote, and which long lay buried in the Library of the Escurial. “How,” he asks, “could a people, unacquainted with the use of iron, have constructed such great and magnificent roads, (caminos tan grandes, y tan sovervios), and in regions so elevated as the countries between Cuzco and Quito, and between Cuzco and the coast of Chili?” “The Emperor Charles,” he adds, “with all his power, could not have accomplished even a part of what was done by the well-directed Government of the Incas, and the obedient race of people under its rule.” Hernando Pizarro, the most educated of the three brothers, who expiated his misdeeds by twenty years of captivity in Medina del Campo, and who died at 100 years of age, in the odour of sanctity (en olor de Santidad), observes, alluding to the Inca roads: “Throughout the whole of Christendom, no such roads are to be seen as those which we here admire.” Cuzco and Quito, the two principal capitals of the Incas, are situated in a direct line south-south-east, north-north-west in reference the one to the other. Their distance apart, without calculating the many windings of the road, is 1000 miles; including the windings of the road, the distance is stated by Garcilaso de la Vega, and other Conquistadores, to be “500 Spanish leguas.” Notwithstanding this vast distance, we are informed, on the unquestionable testimony of the Licentiate Polo de Ondegardo, that Huayna Capac, whose father conquered Quito, caused certain materials to be conveyed thither from Cuzco, for the erection of the royal buildings, (the Inca dwellings). In Quito, I found this tradition still current among the natives.
When, in the form of the earth, nature presents to man formidable difficulties to contend against, those very difficulties serve to stimulate the energy and courage of enterprising races of people. Under the despotic centralizing system of the Inca Government, security and rapidity of communication, especially in relation to the movement of troops, were matters of urgent state necessity. Hence the construction of great roads, and the establishment of very excellent postal arrangements by the Peruvians. Among nations in the most various degrees of civilization, national energy is frequently observed to manifest itself, as it were by preference, in some special direction; but the advancement consequent on this sort of partial exertion, however strikingly exhibited, by no means affords a criterion of the general cultivation of a people. Egyptians, Greeks[[117]], Etruscans, and Romans, Chinese, Japanese, and Indians, present examples of these contrasts. It would be difficult to determine, what space of time may have been occupied in the execution of the Peruvian roads. Those great works, in the northern part of the Inca Empire, on the table-land of Quito, must certainly have been completed in less than thirty or thirty-five years; that is to say, in the short interval between the defeat of the Ruler of Quito, and the death of the Inca Huayna Capac. With respect to the southern, or those specially styled the Peruvian roads, the period of their formation is involved in complete obscurity.
The date of the mysterious appearance of Manco Capac is usually fixed 400 years prior to the arrival of Francisco Pizarro, (who landed on the Island of Puná in the year 1532), consequently, about the middle of the twelfth century, and full 200 years before the foundation of the city of Mexico (Tenochtitlan); but instead of 400 years, some Spanish writers represent the interval between Manco Capac and Pizarro to have been 500, or even 550 years. However the history of the Peruvian empire records only thirteen reigning princes of the Inca dynasty, which, as Prescott justly observes, is not a number sufficient to fill up so long a period as 550, or even 400 years. Quezalcoatl, Botchia, and Manco Capac, are the three mythical beings, with whom are connected the earliest traces of cultivation among the Aztecs, the Muyscas, (properly Chibchas), and the Peruvians. Quezalcoatl, who is described as bearded and clothed in black, was High Priest of Tula, and afterwards a penitent, dwelling on a mountain near Tlaxapuchicalco. He is represented as having come from the coast of Panuco; and, therefore, from the eastern part of Anahuac, on the Mexican table-land. Botchia, or rather the bearded, long-robed Nemterequeteba[[118]], (literally messenger of God, a Buddha of the Muyscas), came from the grassy steppes eastward of the Andes chain, to the table-lands of Bogotá. Before the time of Manco Capac, some degree of civilization already existed on the picturesque shores of the Lake of Titicaca. The fortress of Cuzco, on the hill of Sacsahuaman, was built on the model of the more ancient structures of Tiahuanaco. In like manner, the Aztecs imitated the pyramidal buildings of the Toltecs, and the latter copied those of the Olmecs (Hulmecs); and thus, by degrees, we arrive at historic ground in Mexico as early as the sixth century of the Christian era. According to Siguença, the Toltecic Step Pyramid of Cholula, was copied from the Hulmecic Step Pyramid of Teotihuacan. Thus, through every stage of civilization, we pass into an earlier one, and as human intelligence was not aroused simultaneously in both continents, we find that in every nation the imaginative domain of mythology immediately preceded the period of historical knowledge.
The early Spanish Conquistadores were filled with admiration on first beholding the roads and aqueducts of the Peruvians; yet not only did they neglect the preservation of those great works, but they even wantonly destroyed them. As a natural consequence of the destruction of the aqueducts, the soil was rendered unfertile by the want of irrigation. Nevertheless, those works, as well as the roads, were demolished for the sake of obtaining stones ready hewn for the erection of new buildings; and the traces of this devastation are more observable near the sea-coast, than on the ridges of the Andes, or in the deeply cleft valleys with which that mountain-chain is intersected. During our long day’s journey from the syenitic rocks of Zaulac to the valley of San Felipe, (rich in fossil remains and situated at the foot of the icy Paramo of Yamoca), we had no less than twenty-seven times to ford the Rio de Guancabamba, which falls into the Amazon. We were compelled to do this on account of the numerous sinuosities of the stream, whilst on the brow of a steep precipice near us, we had continually within our sight the vestiges of the rectilinear Inca road, with its Tambos. The little mountain stream, the Rio de Guancabamba, is not more than from 120 to 150 feet broad; yet so strong is the current, that our heavily laden mules were in continual danger of being swept away by it. The mules carried our manuscripts, our dried plants, and all the other objects which we had been a whole year engaged in collecting; therefore, every time that we crossed the stream, we stood on one of the banks in a state of anxious suspense until the long train of our beasts of burthen, eighteen or twenty in number, were fairly out of danger.
This same Rio de Guancabamba, which in the lower part of its course has many falls, is the channel for a curious mode of conveying correspondence from the coast of the Pacific. For the expeditious transmission of the few letters that are sent from Truxillo to the province of Jaen de Bracamoros, they are despatched by a swimming courier, or, as he is called by the people of the country, “el correo que nada.” This courier, who is usually a young Indian, swims in two days from Pomahuaca to Tomependa; first proceeding by the Rio de Chamaya, (the name given to the lower part of the Rio de Guancabamba) and then by the Amazon river. The few letters of which he is the bearer, he carefully wraps in a large cotton handkerchief, which he rolls round his head in the form of a turban. On arriving at those parts of the rivers in which there are falls or rapids, he lands, and goes by a circuitous route through the woods. When wearied by long-continued swimming, he rests by throwing one arm on a plank of a light kind of wood of the family of the Bombaceæ, called by the Peruvians Ceiba, or Palo de balsa. Sometimes the swimming courier takes with him a friend to bear him company. Neither troubles himself about provisions, as they are always sure of a hospitable reception in the huts which are surrounded by abundant fruit-trees in the beautiful Huertas of Pucara and Cavico.