Maria-Teresa and Dick appearing disposed to listen, he explained that in the Conquistador’s first fight with Incas, before he crossed the Andes, the little band of Spaniards, hard pressed, was saved by one hidalgo being unhorsed. The Incas, knowing nothing of horses or horsemanship, were so frightened that they fled, not daring to face this extraordinary animal which became two and still went on fighting.
Naturally, nobody believed him, though he was in no way drawing on his imagination. The whole story of the conquest of Peru is so extraordinary that one must forgive incredulity.
These facts, however, are vouched for by well-authenticated documents in the Royal Archives at Madrid, which Uncle Francis had taken care to study before starting for the Americas with his nephew. They were still laughing at his adventure and his story when their cavalcade reached the walls of Cajamarca.
It was nightfall as they entered the city. The first thing to arrest their attention was the enormous number of Indians in the streets, and their silence. Cajamarca, with a normal population of between twelve and thirteen thousand, certainly sheltered twice as many souls that night. And still more people were coming.
On the highroad, the Marquis’ party had successively passed file after file of Indians, plodding in the direction of their Sacred City. For Cajamarca may be called the necropolis of the Incas, and one can hardly take a step in its streets or avenues without meeting with some reminder of the splendor of a vanished empire.
It was easy to see, by the manner of the Quichuas crowding the historic roadways, that a religious pilgrimage had brought together this mass.
The amazement of the travelers, however, was as nothing to that of the inhabitants themselves, who had never before witnessed such an invasion. In the memory of living man, the Interaymi had never visibly moved the multitude in this manner. Even the great decennial fête had been rather the occasion for a general disappearance of Indians than for their appearance.
What did it all mean? The authorities were distinctly ill at ease, and the few troops massed at Cajamarca when the news came in of Garcia’s Indian revolt at the other end of the country had been put under arms. The doors of the city’s eight churches were militarily guarded, for each one of these buildings might have made a fortress. The rest of the troops had been gathered in the main square, not far from the ruined palace in which stands the stone on which Atahualpa, last King of the Incas, was burned alive.
These ruins were the goal of the Indians’ long pilgrimage over the mountains, the visit to that stone being the religious and outward pretext for this mute manifestation by a conquered race.
Don Christobal, amazed at what he saw, nervously remembered that the great Indian revolt of 1818 had been preceded by just such happenings. Were the Interaymi festivals which began next day really to be the signal for one of those revolts which the governments of Peru had long decided were no more to be feared?