The descent was harder than the climb; also it was quicker. So slippery was the wet trail at that angle that whenever our heels failed to bite into the soil we sat down emphatically on the backs of our necks some feet further down the slope, fetching it a resounding wallop with the rest of the body. There is talk of some day building an electric line from Cuzco, and a funicular up to the ruins, with perhaps a tourist hotel among them. Fortunately talk does not easily breed action in Peru. One of the chief charms of Machu Picchu is inherent in the difficulty of reaching it; a scene once made accessible to fat, middle-aged ladies is ready to be marked off the traveler’s itinerary and to be turned over to the tender mercies of the tourist.
We ended the descent without broken bones, though not without shattered tempers, and finding the precarious connection with the outer world still sagging between the roaring boulders, climbed the wet jungled bank beyond. Here Rumiñaui, in addition to his regular government wage of twenty cents, was rewarded with a shilling and a handful of coca-leaves, only the latter seeming to be of any interest to him; and here, strangely enough, Tomás was waiting, as he had been ordered, with the four animals, their heads turned toward Cuzco.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE COLLASUYU, OR “UPPER” PERU
On November 11th I took train southward. Though my original plan of following the Inca highway from Quito to Cuzco had been accomplished, the thought of turning homeward with half the continent still unexplored had become an absurdity. But the scattered life of that dreary region to the south of the Imperial City promised too little of new interest to be worth covering on foot. If I did walk down to the station, behind my belongings on jogging Indian legs, it was because to have waited for the nine o’clock mule-car would probably have been to miss the nine-thirty train.
Cuzco, like its rival to the north, has been connected by rail with the outside world since 1908. The train leaves on Tuesdays and Saturdays, spending a night at Sicuani and another at Juliaca, whence a branch descends to Arequipa. Every Friday there is a vertiginous “express” that makes Puno in one day.
A fertile valley, the great bolson, or mountain pocket, that stretches from the pampa of Anta in the north to Urcos on the south, with many grazing cattle, frequent villages, and strings of laden Indians and asses, rolled slowly past. Before noon we caught the gorge of the muddy Vilcañota, the same stream that under the name of Urubamba encircles Machu Picchu, with little patch-farms far up the face of the enclosing ranges and here and there steep, narrow side valleys rich with cultivation. Yet cultivatable ground was scarce, so scarce that it was easy to understand why the ancient population spared as much of it as possible by walling up their dead in caves and planting all but perpendicular slopes.
Next day the valley rose gradually, until cultivation gave way completely to cattle and sheep, then to llama and alpaca herds grazing on the tough ichu of broad punas stretching to arid foothills that, in turn, rolled up into a great snow-clad range on our left. An aggressive, despairing aridity, rarely touched with a cheering note of green, spread in every direction. A dreary land indeed would this have been to journey through afoot. Small wonder the race accustomed always to this desolate landscape is of melancholy temperament, given to personifying nature as a host of evil spirits inimical to man.
The drear and barren land across which lay the branch line of the third day rolled ever higher to the Crucero Alto at 14,666 feet. Two large lakes, cold, steely-blue in tint, with a few barren islands, broke upon the scene and sank slowly as we panted upward; patches of snow lay above, around, and then below us; the glare of the arid, sun-flooded landscape grew painful to the eyes, recalling that many an Andean traveler holds colored glasses an indispensable part of his equipment. Towns there were none; and the stations consisted of one or two wind-threshed buildings of stone or sheet-iron, dismal beyond conception.
Then we descended gradually. Here and there in the edge of reedy lagoons stood parihuanas,—long-legged, rose-tinted birds the feathers of which in olden days formed the Inca’s head-dress, when capital punishment was meted out to anyone of lesser rank who dared decorate himself with them. Equally sacred were the vicuñas, the undomesticated species of the llama family that furnished the imperial ermine. Ordinarily the traveler is fortunate to catch sight from the train of one or two of those timid animals. To-day a group of fourteen appeared not five hundred yards away across the pampa; then within an hour we passed close by flocks of nine, twelve, seven, and eight respectively, a total of fifty, more than my Peruvian seat-companion, who crossed this line several times a year, had seen in all his life. Unlike the three domesticated species, llama, alpaca, and guanaco, the vicuñas are uniform in color, a reddish-brown with whitish belly, legs, and tail, not unlike a fawn in general appearance. A more delicate animal could scarcely be imagined; the neck seemed hardly larger than a man’s wrist, the legs fragile in their slender daintiness. They were graceful, as well as swift, even in their running, which resembled the gait of the jack-rabbit in the way they brought front and hind legs together. The flocks still belong to the government as in the days of the Incas, when they were protected by royal edict, under penalty of death. For some ten years past Peruvian law, too, has forbidden killing them, but the valuable wool and skins are still to be had in the larger cities, for game-wardens are conspicuous by their absence.
What seemed a hopeless desert thinly covered with dry, wiry bunch-grass, now spread in all directions. We were crossing the vast “Pampa de Arguelles,” so named from the family that has leased hundreds of square miles of it from the government. They in turn grant the Indians permission to graze their cattle,—at 25 cents a year for larger animals, twice that for each flock of small ones; yet “los Arguelles” derive income sufficient to permit the family to live on the fat of Paris. Mirages, as of rivers flowing landward, appeared now and then across the arid immensity. At stations lay piled great heaps of yarlta, a fuel resembling a cross between peat and giant mushrooms. Further down, a scraggly bush was cut for the same purpose and carried in bundles on donkeys’ backs. Soon that dreary Sahara of the West Coast lay on every hand, massive rocks piled up fantastically, monotonous to the last degree, yet not without a certain striking beauty under some moods. The landscape was what the Germans call eintönig, of a rich yellow-brown, dusted by the winds and bleached by the suns of centuries, and spreading away to infinity with a hint of the vastness of the earth which even the sea does not give.