By such means these industrious natives always preserved deep soil, which they might dig up and turn over at pleasure, bringing a new surface of earth to yield a new crop without necessity of manure; and by the same contrivance they preserved from the washings of the frequent and heavy rains, the treasure of vegetable loam which they thus so laboriously and patiently amassed.
As we descend from the inner regions of the country, and get down among the arid and naked granite mountains near the coast, we see the ruins of Pagan dwellings showing themselves in the crevices of the rocks, where no plant is seen on the waste land, save a few scattered cacti, and no moving creature except the lizard that basks, and the kite that waits its motions, on the crumbling ruins and circumjacent blocks which have been rolled from their original seats on the face of the steep. And as we approach still nearer the capital, where Glen Rimac unfolds its wide and fertile acres of deep alluvial soil, we see that this goodly land, when denied water, puts on a look of desert sterility; but that it only requires irrigation—it needs no manure—to yield productive sugar-cane, and to throw forth choice lucern and Indian corn, that waves above the head of the overseer as he passes on horseback through the fields, superintending labourers.
As we enter these plains, susceptible of indefinite improvement and vast returns, we are everywhere surrounded with the vestiges of antiquity, particularly with the ruins of guacas, that at a distance look like little hills or knolls scattered over the open plains; but we think that they were once used as so many tombs of the Sun-worshippers of the land. In some of these mouldering monuments there are yet to be found internal chambers or sepulchral vaults, entered by very narrow openings; and, from these labyrinths, mummies, cloths of different colours, various domestic utensils, and sacred figures and idols, have been not unfrequently extracted. We have in our possession a neat silver idol in the figure of an Inca, with a llama of the same material and workmanship, procured from a guaca, and presented to us by our friend the Rev. Dr. Don Lucas Pellicer, an eminent and classical Limeño, of whose merits as a scholar and patriotic statesman his country feels justly proud. Many other curious relics of an ancient people are dug out from the same edifices, of which the assiduous Don Mariano Rivero has made the most extensive and interesting collection which is now extant in Peru; and with correct drawings and descriptions of these he has, for some time back, proposed to favour the public, and to enrich the history of his native country.
The tombs from which relics of this kind are usually taken are not, however, confined to the neighbourhood of Lima, Truxillo, or the coast in general, where their structure of moulded earth and sun-burnt clay is best preserved on account of the absence of rain. Such remains are still seen in some parts of the Sierra; and in speaking of the guacas, (which he conceives to have been temples) in his “Historia natural y moral de las Indias,” vol. ii. p. 128, Acosta tells us that “there were in Cuzco[25] more than four hundred temples of idols, looked upon as sacred earth, and all places were full of mysteries. As they” (the Incas) “went on with their conquests, so they introduced their own guacas and rites into all that state. The Great Being whom they adored was the Viracocha Pachayachic, who is the Creator of the world; and after him the Sun; and thus they said that the Sun, like all the other guacas, received virtue and being from the Creator, and that they were intercessors with him.”
CHAPTER X.
Journey from Lima to Pasco by Obrajillo.—Diversity of air and climate.—Canta, a locality favourable to consumptive individuals.—Obrajillo, residence of muleteers.—Relay of mules, and payment in advance.—Cultivation and crops.—Ascent to and pass of the Cordillera—Veta, or Cordillera sickness.—Indian hut.—Muleteers’ lodgings on the Puna.—Wallay.—Diesmo.—Pasco.
We left Lima about noon, and rode along a broad and stony road-way by the skirts of the hills, now, in the month of January, dry and sterile masses of soil and rock. To our left extended the fine but neglected valley of Chillon, once highly cultivated, and susceptible of rich improvement. We passed several Indian edifices, constructed of mud cast in huge moulds, which yet in some degree preserve their forms, notwithstanding the ravages committed upon them by time and earthquakes. These always appear above the level of irrigated land, as if intended wisely to avoid the reach of marsh effluvia, so eminently pernicious to the health of the aborigines.
We arrived in good time at Caballeros, distant six leagues from Lima, and slept very soundly, in defiance of the ceaseless barking of dogs, tinkling of mules’ bells, and noisy chattering of negroes. On the morning following we started at an early hour, with a hope that before the sun came out in his strength we might get over the parched ground of the Rio-Seco. From the heights of this hill-bound recess,—so dreary to the eye, gloomy to the imagination, and everywhere strewed with blanched bones and skeletons of wearied, foundered, and famished animals, left here to perish,—there opens suddenly and at once on the traveller’s delighted vision an unexpected view of the irrigated enclosures of the village of Yanga, close to the winding river, whose banks are clothed in vivid verdure, and garnished with trees always shady and evergreen.