The virgin of the sun

by George Chetwynd Griffith

The first thing they did was to collect the Cañaris and rate them soundly for permitting the Inca to escape, emphasising their reproaches, lest they should be not fully understood, with their rein-straps and the flats of their swords, promising them further that if they went back to Cuzco without the information that was needed they should every one be put to death as traitors. They then took up the march again and rode on slowly and cautiously for the best part of the night, but without discovering a sign of the enemy.

A couple of hours before dawn they halted for food and rest and then with the earliest light rode on again. The bleak uplands over which they had passed now began to slope downwards and become more fertile, and as the light increased they saw that they were approaching the entrance to a great valley walled in on all sides by huge and precipitous mountains, and by the time the sun rose they had reached a rocky ledge from which they beheld a scene whose strange and wonderful loveliness told them at a glance that this could be nothing else than the far-famed valley of Yucay.

The lower slopes of the seemingly impassable mountains were terraced into gardens which glowed with a hundred shades of green and gold, azure and scarlet. The broad plain which lay along the centre was sprinkled with villas and temples and palaces bright with colours and glittering with gold and silver, and through the midst of them rolled a broad, winding river, glittering like a wide band of molten silver in the rays of the sun, now streaming into the valley from the eastward. All along the two sides rose ridge after ridge of bare, brown mountains, apparently without a break for miles and miles, and high above these towered into the sky, one to right and one to left, two mighty snow-crowned peaks like twin Titans guarding this enchanted realm.

But the keen eyes of the Spaniards soon discovered that the valley had other guardians than these. At every bend of the river a dark fortress rose tier above tier jutting out from the hillside and completely commanding it. All along the heights there were watch-towers on which, as the light grew stronger, they could see the sun glinting on polished arms and waving plumes, and soon shrill, wailing cries rose to right and left of them and ran along the ridges until they died away in the distance, telling that the sun shining on their own armour had already betrayed their presence and that the whole valley was alert.

“A glorious spot, by the Saints!” said de Soto, as his eye ranged delighted over the lovely prospect. “A very Garden of Eden, if such might be in a heathen land, but well guarded. Methinks it would fare badly with us even if we attacked it with all our forces. Still it is our present business to find a way into it, if such there be, and that can only be where the river flows out of it. Come, let us try the sloping ground down here to the right.”

“Ay,” replied de Candia, “it were well to keep moving lest we find ourselves surrounded, but for all that I doubt not that the Inca will find a way of showing his gratitude for what we did for him last night. He must have reached the army by this time.”

“That is certain,” said de Molina, “and I for one would so far trust him that I would ride unarmed through his whole host. Ah, look yonder,” he went on, pointing ahead past a spur of rock which they had just cleared. “Yonder is the gate of Eden.”

“And the mouth of the River of Paradise!” said ben-Alcazar. “But methinks for all that the mouth of Hell for the enemy that should seek to get into it. Were those forts guarded by well-served artillery not all the Spaniards in Peru could force the entrance.”

“I, for one,” added de Candia grimly, “would pledge my life on holding it with a dozen culverins against a thousand men.”

They had now come within full view of the entrance to the valley. It was some five or six hundred yards wide. On either side rose a steeply-sloping hill and on each of these a huge fortress of black stone built in angles like the Sacsahuaman and crowned with lofty towers dominated the little level, sandy plain through which the river flowed. The stream itself was some thirty yards wide and apparently deep and swift flowing. The moment that they came in sight the loud, shrill blast of a horn rang out, and instantly thousands of warriors, armed and plumed, sprang into view. They lined the tiers of the fortresses in perfect order, and far up the terraces of the hills were swarming in a moment with their glittering ranks. The notes of the horn had hardly died away before they were taken up and echoed far along the valley, and as they went fort after fort in endless succession was manned in full view by the glittering ranks of its garrisons.