Cuzco.
Llamas in foreground.
At Piriatingalini and Puchalini we found light cable suspension bridges, very shaky, which swung to and fro as you rode over them. Most of them were not more than four feet wide and had no parapet at all. I cannot say that I felt particularly happy when my mule—sure-footed, I grant—took me across, the bridge swinging, quivering, and squeaking with our weight on it, especially when we were in the middle. The rivers were extremely picturesque, with high mountains on either side, among which they wound their way in a snake-like fashion over a rocky bed, forming a series of cascades. We went that day 25 kil., and arrived at the tambo of Azupizu, which was in charge of a deserter from the French navy. He was an extraordinary character. He had forgotten French, and had neither learnt Spanish nor the local language of the Campas Indians.
A tribe of those Indians was to be found near there—very handsome people, the men solidly built and muscular, with intelligent but brutal faces, with the yellowish-brown skin and slanting eyes of the Malay races. The eyes showed a great discoloration in the upper part of the iris. They possessed straight hair, slightly inclined to curl at the end. The nose was flattened at the root. They wore a few ornaments of feathers on the head. Their clothing consisted of a loose gown not unlike a Roman toga. The women were good-looking when very young.
The Campas claimed to be the direct descendants of the Incas. There is no doubt that the Campas were practically the same tribe as the Antis, once a most powerful tribe which inhabited an extensive territory to the north and east of Cuzco. In fact, the eastern portion of the Inca country was once called Anti-Suya. The Campas, or Antis, were formerly ferocious. They are now quite tame, but still retain their cruel countenances, resembling closely those of Polynesians and Malays.
We left that place on January 20th in drenching rain. The river was much swollen, and formed a whirlpool of great magnitude just over some bad rapids. We crossed from mountain-side to mountain-side, some 400 ft. above the stream, in a sling car running along a wire rope. The car consisted of two planks suspended on four pieces of telegraph wire. As the sling had been badly constructed it did not run smoothly along the cable. I had an unpleasant experience—everybody had who used that conveyance—as I was going across from one side to the other of the stream, a distance of some 200 metres or more. The ropes which were used for pulling the car along got badly entangled when I had reached the middle of the passage. The Indians and the Frenchman pulled with violent jerks in order to disentangle them, and caused the car to swing and bump to such an extent that it was all I could do to hold on and not be flung out of it. Having been swung to and fro for the best part of an hour on that primitive arrangement, I was able to proceed on the other side of the stream. Fortunately we had taken the precaution of making the animals cross over the river the previous evening, before it was in flood, or else we should have been held up there for several days. Leaving the Azupizu river, we followed the river Kintoliani, which joined the Azupizu and formed with it a most formidable stream.
A Famous Inca Wall, Cuzco.
The various rocks fit so perfectly that no mortar was used to keep them in place.