There were no signs to show that this lovely and wonderful land had but lately been swept by the tempest of civil war. Everything was in perfect order, and every man, woman, and child seemed contented with what Heaven and the Inca had bestowed. They passed strong fortresses fully garrisoned, and guarding narrow passages and gorges which looked impregnable if well defended, and they crossed broad, swift-flowing rivers by swinging bridges held up by cables which, huge as they were, looked like threads when stretched across the vast abysses, and so at last they came to the greatest of all these bridges, which hung in mid-air from rock-wall to rock-wall, looking frail and slender as a spider’s web as it hung more than a hundred feet above the dark, swift-flowing and hoarsely roaring torrent of the “Great Speaker.”[15]
As their litters were borne across it the whole fabric swung to and fro over the abyss with a pendulous motion like that of some huge hammock swayed by the wind which swept through the gorge; and though de Soto and his companions were men of well-proved courage there was a prayer for safety on the lips of each as they began the crossing and one of thankfulness when they got to the other side.
“I have seen nothing more like the Bridge of Jehennan, which, according to the faith of my fathers, stretches from this world to the next across the Gulf of Hell, than that!” said ben-Alcazar, when they stood on the little platform from which the bridge sprang on the Cuzco side, and where they had dismounted to take a better look at the wonderful structure.
“There would be little else than Hell for the unbeliever who fell unshriven from it,” growled de Candia sententiously, yet with a grim smile at ben-Alcazar, whose near relationship to the arch-enemies of the Cross was a somewhat serious joke in the army, and one over which there had been a certain amount of blood-letting before he had got convinced that no reproach was meant by it.
“Ay, and I for my part would not give much for the unshriven soul even of a good Catholic who chanced to fall from the middle of it while his hands were yet red and his blade wet with innocent blood,” he retorted, paying de Candia back in kind. “By the beard of the Prophet, as my fathers used to swear, I would give no more for his soul than I would for the chance of finding his body.”
“Well hit, ben-Alcazar!” laughed de Molina as they got back into their litters. “Even de Candia’s big carcase would be as sadly to seek there as charity for the heathen in Valverde’s breast.”
From the bridge the narrow yet perfectly paved and smoothed road ran ever upward round huge mountain buttresses overhanging fearful abysses, out of which the voices of the torrents rose like the whispering of spirits guarding these gloomy and lifeless regions. They rose higher and higher into wildernesses ever bleaker and bleaker, till at length they reached the beginning of the topmost pass of the journey, running between two colossal mountains which rose, snow-capped, and glacier-clad, many thousands of feet on either hand, fitting sentinels to guard the enchanted realm into which they were about to enter.
On the eighth night they rested at a tambo about three leagues to the southward of the pass, and about a league farther on they could see that the road rose up again on to a broad broken plateau, but beyond this they could see no other hills or mountains.
They were roused very early the next morning, and found their first meal prepared for them, although it was barely yet dawn. But they had been so well treated, and the journey had been made with such marvellous expedition, that they thought it best to ask no questions, and getting into their litters, they were well on their way again before sunrise.
It was plain to them that their bearers and attendants were making unusual haste for some reason, for they swung up the long, steep, winding path at a marvellous speed. Then suddenly on the crest of the ridge they stopped and set the litters down.