“You boys,” he added, “can better appreciate the magnitude of this road, if I tell you it was as far as a road from Calais to Constantinople, and through mountainous country immeasurably more difficult to travel than any country in Europe. In some places, the beds of concrete or mezcla, of which the road was formed, went down from 80 to 100 feet. The rains have since washed the earth away from under the concrete, for, I am sorry to say, the Conquerors and the later Viceroys of Spain did not see fit to care for this highway. Yet masses of it today are left suspended over washouts like bridges made of one stone, as the historian Velasco said.
“There was also a lower road, about forty leagues distant from the other, which traversed the plains country near the sea. And along both these roads, at equal distances, were built stone inns, called tambos by the natives. The word has persisted, and is still used throughout the Inca country, to describe a post house on a highroad.
“In fact,” he concluded, “it was the existence of these roads which, ironically, helped to destroy the Inca Empire. For over them the invading armies of the Spaniards were able to move with speed.”
As Don Ernesto had talked, they had continued moving forward at a brisk pace, and had drawn close to the base of a lofty mountain. Now the road began to mount, in some places the going being so steep that concrete stairways were built. Up this the guards with the prisoners, and with Prince Huaca at the head, moved steadily. With each upward step, they were enabled to see more of the valley outspread below them, the great lake, the three smaller bodies of water, the irrigation ditches like a network of bright ribbons, the little clumps of trees surrounding other country mansions like that they had stopped at, and everywhere laborers were at work in the fields.
“Truly a marvellous sight,” said Mr. Hampton, as they came to a halt at length on a wide concreted terrace with a low stone wall at the front, very thick, and loopholed, and with a stone building of fortress-like strength built at the back, seemingly into the side of the mountain. Here the path up which they climbed appeared to end.
“Senor,” said Prince Huaca to Don Ernesto, in his archaic Spanish, “here you will be blindfolded, your hands will be tied, and we enter the mountains. Fear not. There is no evil intended.”
“Very well,” said Don Ernesto with a shrug.
Guards tied each man’s hands behind his back, blindfolds were adjusted, shutting out all light, and then, with a man on each side to act as guide, they were led up a flight of steps, into what they took to be a fortress, and presently, after treading across a wide room, passed through a doorway and, by the cool and slightly earthy feel of the air, surmised they were in a tunnel.