The site of Chan Chan, once probably the largest city in the New World, with an area of fifty or sixty square miles, is now a melancholy spectacle. What ruthless destruction has been wrought! What loss to the human race, through the overthrow of ancient civilization, again and again followed by relapses into partial or complete barbarism and toilsome progress upward! Will people ever learn to moderate their greed for wealth and power, and suffer others to dwell in peace after their own fashion!
For a cursory or careful inspection of the ruins a guide should be employed, as wandering at random one may miss or fail to understand the most important remains. In the labyrinth of walls with various enclosures containing numerous buildings, an immense mound is an occasional feature. One built of stone and rubble, 150 feet high, called Obispo, covers an area of 500 square feet. To the casual observer the design would not be obvious. Originally the mounds were in terraces, upon which buildings were erected with various passages leading to store rooms or burial chambers in the interior. With gardens around their base a splendid effect must have been created. The Spaniards early searched these mounds for treasure, with great success. From one called the Toledo three million dollars are said to have been taken; from the entire city $15,000,000. A broad lower mound proved to be a cemetery, where in niches were found mummies in elaborate garments of fine cotton adorned with gold and silver. In the center is a structure doubtless for the performance of the funeral rites.
The great palace of the Chimu enclosed a large hall 100 by 52½ feet. Its walls, containing a series of niches, were covered between with stucco relief work in arabesque patterns. Two structures of unusual form are believed to be factories. Arranged around a square which had a reservoir in the center were twenty-two recesses, probably for shops. Opening on smaller courts and passages were one hundred and eleven rooms, probably workshops for artificers in gold, silver, and bronze, and for designers, dyers, potters, and weavers. Wonderful ornaments of gold and silver have been found, fine textile fabrics, and most remarkable, the pottery, white, black, and pale red, which in immense quantities has been taken from the mounds called huacas, a name applied also to the objects. On the various specimens of this ceramic ware is portrayed every kind of fish, bird, mammal, and fruit, with which they were acquainted, also human beings, some in portraits, others as caricatures. There are groups engaged in war dances, in harvesting, and in other occupations. Some specimens of the pottery are said to be equal to any which has been fashioned, from the best days of ancient Greece up to the present time. Near the banks of the river Muchi at the south, stood a temple to the moon called Si An, where important religious ceremonies and processions took place.
Evidently the Grand Chimu was a powerful monarch with a magnificent court, ruling over subjects who lived in comfort. Their language, Mochica, is little known, as the race is practically extinct. When conquered by the Incas they were neither destroyed nor robbed of all their wealth. It was Pizarro and his followers who, though amazed at the greatness and beauty of the edifices, wantonly robbed and persecuted the inhabitants until the country was laid waste. The people and their civilization vanished and were forgotten. The language, wholly different from the Quichua, gives no hint as to the origin of the people. Neither does tradition lighten the mystery, nor their art, which relates wholly to their environment, though betraying some similarity to Mayo works. An exhaustive study of the language and of the archæological remains is required to reconstruct the history of this remarkable people whose ancestors are believed to have dwelt here long before the Christian Era.
Moche. Between the city of Trujillo and the port Salaverry is an Indian town called Moche, the inhabitants of which may be remnants of this old race. They wear a distinctive dress, are proud of their unmixed lineage, and do not intermarry with others. The costume of the women, merely a chemise with a piece of dark blue cloth wrapped around the body and fastened at the waist, to be seen anywhere in Moche, is not allowed in Trujillo.
Continuing from Salaverry by express steamer, one arrives the day following at Callao, a twenty-two hours’ run.
Chimbote and the Huailas Valley. The tourist who desires to behold the wonderful scenery of the Huailas Valley and magnificent Huascarán, surely repaying a little trouble, at present transfers at Salaverry to the weekly caletero boat for Chimbote or Samanco, unless he has sailed in the Sunday Peruvian steamer. With the completion of the railway to Caráz and beyond, promised within a year or two (as, alas! since 1906), Chimbote will doubtless become a primary port, receiving calls from the express steamers. When this happens, no one should omit the delightful railway journey of 135 miles to Yungay, at the foot of the great Huascarán. At the moment, the trip may be enjoyed by the robust traveler, as the three or four days’ horseback ride into the valley involves no hardship, save fatigue to those unwonted to such journeys.
The harbor of Chimbote, by some called the finest on the entire West Coast below Panama, is practically landlocked by a peninsula and several islands. It has an area of about 36 square miles, without a single rock below its placid surface. The usual pier extends from a sandy beach which affords splendid bathing facilities; but docks, approachable by the largest ships, could be arranged on one of the islands, which a bridge across a 200-yard channel would easily connect with the main land. The American capitalist, Henry Meiggs, the prime mover in the construction of the South and Central Peruvian Railways, had the foresight in the early seventies to perceive the great business possibilities of the Chimbote harbor, and planned the railway from Chimbote up the valley of the Santa River and along the Huailas Valley to Huaráz, 167 miles. A beginning was made, the road bed was constructed for 80 miles, the rails were laid for 60, when the Chilian war broke out. The invaders, having captured Chimbote, carried off the rolling stock and supplies, and destroyed whatever could not be removed. After the close of the war, Peru being bankrupt, the project remained for some years in abeyance, during which time the road was operated only to Tablones, a distance of 35 miles. Under recent concessions some work has been accomplished and the road is now open 30 miles farther. It is expected that the Peruvian Corporation, at present in control, will soon complete the line to Recuay, a little beyond Huaráz, when better accommodations for tourists will surely be provided. At present some of the towns have no hotels whatever, while in others those existing are very poor. Happily the residents are most hospitable, and strangers with letters of introduction, or in some cases without, are agreeably entertained by some of the best families. Naturally, with better facilities for travel this pleasant custom will cease. At Chimbote the small and poor hotel where I stayed in 1906, if not already enlarged and improved, will doubtless soon be superseded by a more adequate establishment. Back of the town, together with a mound and walls remaining from an ancient city, are vestiges of an aqueduct, presumably constructed in Chimu days. When these are repaired the desert plain near by, which bears an excellent soil, will be fruitful enough to support the great city laid out by Meiggs and expected to follow the completion of the railroad. This project was originally undertaken, not for the purpose of conducting tourists to the splendid scenery of the Huailas Valley, nor primarily for the convenience of its present large population and the export of its agricultural products. The chief value of the railroad lies in its opening up the immense coal fields of the region. Along the Santa River are millions of tons of excellent coal, which some persons believed worthless, because it is chiefly anthracite and semi-anthracite, therefore non-coking; ignorant of the fact that except for smelting purposes it is more valuable than soft coal.
This railroad has an advantage over the others leading into the interior, in being able to follow the Santa River through a cut in the Coast Range, instead of climbing 15,000 feet over it. Thus by a moderate grade it will reach the Huailas Valley. A serious impediment to the construction is the narrow gorge through the mountains, impracticable even for a pedestrian; yet the difficulty will soon be overcome. After ten miles on the desert the road passes near sugar plantations and haciendas. The region of coal deposits follows, extending through the mountain range and up the two lateral valleys beyond, the north in the direction of Cajamarca, the south, the Huailas Valley, to Recuay. The passage of the sombre gorge will be along the side of splendid cliffs with a foaming stream below, a continuous spectacle of superb grandeur. Turning south into the Huailas Valley, from one to four miles wide, the traveler has the White Range on the east, the Black on the west. The floor of the valley is beautiful with green fields of alfalfa and vegetables, with vineyards, fig and orange trees, chirimoias, and other tropical and sub-tropical fruits, and with hedges of fragrant flowers: above are rounded hillsides bearing the grains, green or golden, of temperate climes, higher are cliffs either gray or black, and on the east white peaks of dazzling splendor rising 14,000, 16,000 feet above the valley, which itself slowly ascends from 4000 to 10,000 feet above the sea. The lower western wall attains an altitude of from 15,000 to 18,000 feet. Travelers may always disagree as to the finest scenery in the world, but few visitors to this valley will deny that it is unsurpassed in the Western Hemisphere. In scenic splendor excelling Chamonix, in mineral riches it rivals the Klondike; for on both sides, the mountains are veined with gold, silver, and copper, as well as the more useful if plebeian coal.
