Certain preparations were essential before I plunged again into the all but unknown. The trip from Loja—the longest sustained hardship I had ever undergone—had left me a sadly depleted wardrobe. Especially were my walking-boots in the last stages. The shops of Cajamarca had no heavy ones among their stock, but I had hoped, with the assistance of the prefect, to buy a pair of the shoes manufactured for the use of the garrison-police. The department chief, however, put off wiring the president, or laying the matter before congress, until it was too late. A friendly shoemaker advised me to apply privately to a soldier or policeman.
“But they have only one pair each,” I protested.
“True,” replied the zapatero, “pero se roban entre ellos—they steal from each other.”
This hint also had been too long delayed, and I was forced to trust to native patching to carry me over the indefinite region to the next source of supply. As to socks, I had found that the best for tramping the Andes were none at all; that is, a better substitute were the “fusslappen” of the German soldier,—a square of cotton flannel on which to set the foot diagonally, fold over the three corners, and thrust it into the boot. The small silver pieces that came to me each time I threw down a sovereign on the Chinaman’s counter, I had laid away for the road ahead, spending the heavy coppers and the cartwheel soles. This petty point is extremely important in the Andes, for even the man able and willing to toss out gold for every banana he buys often finds villages of the Sierra where the yellow metal will not be accepted; and those who might otherwise be willing to change a large coin are frequently afraid to show that they have so much money on hand. The rucksack style of carrying had proved burdensome. For the load that remained I made a leather harness, not unlike suspenders, with half my possessions balanced against the rest. Then, having squandered 21 cents in the greatest banquet known to the Chinaman’s back room, I climbed the fortress hill to watch for the last time the interwoven colors of the setting sun across the rich vale of Cajamarca.
It was the seventh of May when I struck southward again along the valley floor. A wide highway sidestepped out of the city; but barely had the scent of this been left behind than a shallow river took possession of the entire width of the road. There is a sort of lawlessness both of man and nature in the Andes, and many is the hacendado who thus calmly makes use of the public highway as his irrigation ditch. When Hernando de Soto was sent with fifteen horse to visit the Inca at his baths a few miles south of the city, “they followed a fine causeway across the plain and came to a small stream with a bridge, but, distrusting its strength, dashed through the water.” An hour from town I, too, was dashing through the water, boots in hand, not because I distrusted the bridge, but because there was not the vestige of a bridge left to distrust.
Beyond the stream were the famous “Baños del Inca,” now owned by the city of Cajamarca. In the barnyard of a stone and adobe hacienda a chola woman sent an Indian boy to open for me an adjoining baked-mud room, in the floor of which was a rough-stone swimming-pool nearly ten feet square. Into this steaming sulphurous water was pouring. But as a group of Indians were washing themselves and their rags in the source of supply outside, I was forced to relinquish the rare pleasure of a hot bath, even in so famous a setting. Historians report the existence of an ancient stone bathtub that was used by the Incas, but the woman was certain there had been none in the vicinity during her career as caretaker.
The road she pointed out emerged from the back gate of the hacienda and mounted the steaming brook. Higher up, where I thrust a hand in it, the water was just hot enough to be bearable. The valley of Cajamarca, stretching far southward, had promised level going for a day or two. But though there was plenty of space for it on the valley floor, the camino real, true to its Andean environment, preferred to clamber up and down over stony, barren, broken ridges. Before noon it had raised me to a páramo where several cold, blue lakes swarmed with wild ducks that were not even gun-shy. An Indian I fell in with said they were never hunted, “because when they fall there is no way to enter the water and get them.” Evidently, like his forebears of centuries ago, he had never heard of a strange invention called a boat.
One of the few remaining simpichacas, or suspension bridges, of the Andes. In Inca days they abounded, often sagging from one mountain-top to another over appalling gorges. To-day steel cables take the place of the woven willow withes of pre-Colombian times, but the flooring is often missing and the swinging contraptions uninviting to man or beast
