Through South America

by Harry Weston Van Dyke

The most important section of the ancient city was built between the two little rivers, with the great square in the center, and this site, said to have been chosen for it by the first Inca and his sister-wife, is declared by many to be the most wildly, majestically beautiful of all the beautiful mountain city sites in South America—even Santiago, La Paz, Arequipa, Cajamarca, Quito, Bogotá, and Caracas. Respecting the ancient city itself, Prescott tells us that the Spaniards were astonished “by the beauty of its edifices, the length and regularity of its streets, and the good order and appearance of comfort, even luxury, visible in its numerous population. It far surpassed all they had seen in the New World.... It” (the great square), he continues, “was surrounded by low piles of buildings, among which were several palaces of the Incas. One of these, erected by Huayana Capac, was surmounted by a tower, while the ground floor was occupied by one or more immense halls, like those described in Cajamarca, where the Peruvian nobles held their fêtes in stormy weather. The population of the city,” he goes on—

“Is computed by one of the conquerors at two hundred thousand inhabitants and that of the suburbs at as many more. This account is not confirmed, as far as I have seen, by any other writer. But, however it may be exaggerated, it is certain that Cuzco was the metropolis of a great empire, the residence of the court and the chief nobility, frequented by the most skillful mechanics and artisans of every description, who found a demand for their ingenuity in the royal precincts, while the place was garrisoned by a numerous soldiery, and was the resort, finally, of emigrants from the most distant provinces. The quarters whence this motley population came were indicated by their peculiar dress, and especially their head-gear, so rarely found at all on the American Indian, which, with its variegated colors, gave a picturesque effect to the groups and masses in the streets....

“The edifices of the better sort—and they were very numerous—were of stone, or faced with stone. Among the principal were the royal residences, as each sovereign built a new palace for himself, covering, though low, a large extent of ground. The walls were stained or painted with gaudy tints, and the gates, we are assured, were sometimes of colored marble. ‘In the delicacy of the stonework,’ says another of the conquerors, ‘the natives far excelled the Spaniards, though the roofs of their dwellings, instead of tiles, were only of thatch, but put together with the nicest art.’ The sunny climate of Cuzco did not require a very substantial material for defense against the weather.... The streets were long and narrow. They were arranged with perfect regularity, crossing one another at right angles; from the great square diverged four principal streets connecting with the highroads of the empire. The square itself, and many parts of the city, were paved with fine pebble. Through the heart of the capital ran a river of pure water, if it might not be rather termed a canal, the banks or sides of which, for a distance of twenty leagues, were faced with stone. Across this stream, bridges, constructed of similar broad flags, were thrown at intervals, so as to afford an easy communication between the different quarters.

“The most sumptuous edifice in Cuzco in the times of the Incas was undoubtedly the great temple dedicated to the sun, which, studded with gold plates, as already noticed, was surrounded by convents and dormitories for the priests, with their gardens and broad parterres sparkling with gold. The exterior ornaments had been already removed by the conquerors—all but the frieze of gold, which, imbedded in the stones, still encircled the principal building.... The fortress was raised to a height rare in Peruvian architecture, and from the summit of the tower the eye of the spectator ranged over a magnificent prospect, in which the wild features of the mountain scenery—rocks, woods, and waterfalls—were mingled with the rich verdure of the valley and the shining city filling up the foreground, all blended in sweet harmony under the deep azure of a tropical sky.”

The ruins of the palace of the first Inca, on the hill above the city, and those of the immense fortress on the summit—which is admitted by all to have been constructed with a degree of skill equaled nowhere else in the world prior to the use of artillery—are thus described by Sir Clements R. Markham:

“On a terrace, built of stones of every conceivable size and shape, fitting exactly one into the other, eighty-four paces long and eight feet high, is a wall with eight recesses, resembling those of the Inca palace at Lima-tambo, and, in the center of the lower wall, a mermaid or siren, much defaced by time, is carved in relief on a square slab. In one of the recesses a steep stone staircase leads up to a field of lucerne, on a level with the upper part of the wall, which is twelve feet high, and this forms a second terrace. On either side of the field are ruins of the same character, traces of a very extensive building or range of buildings. They consist of a thick stone wall, sixteen paces long and ten feet six inches wide, containing a door and windows. The masonry is most perfect. The stones are cut in parallelograms, all of equal height but varying in length, with corners so sharp and fine that they appear as if they had just been cut—and without any kind of cement, fitting so exactly that the finest needle could not be introduced between them. The doorposts, of ample height, support a stone lintel seven feet ten inches in length, while another stone, six feet long, forms the foot.... Behind these remains are three terraces, built in the rougher style of the masonry used in the first walls and planted in alders and fruit trees, ... where he” (the first Inca, Manco Capac) “is said to have chosen the site of his residence, the more readily to overlook the building of his city and the labors of his disciples....

“On the east end of Sacsahuaman, crowning a steep cliff immediately above the palace of Manco Capac, there are three terraces, one above the other, built of a light-colored stone. The first wall, fourteen feet high, extends in a semicircular form around the hill for one hundred and eighty paces, and between the first and second terraces there is a space eight feet wide. The second wall is twelve feet high and the third is ninety paces around its whole extent.... This was the citadel of the fortress, and in its palmy days was crowned by three towers connected by subterranean passages, now quite demolished.... From the citadel to its eastern extremity the length of the table-land of Sacsahuaman is three hundred and fifty-three paces and its breadth in the broadest part one hundred and thirty paces. On the south side the position is so strong and impregnable that it required no artificial defense. The position is defended on part of its north side by a steep ravine through which flows the river Rodadero and which extends for one hundred and seventy-four paces from the citadel in a westerly direction. Here, therefore, the position required only a single breastwork, which is still in a good state of preservation; but from this point to the western extremity of the table-land, a distance of four hundred paces, nature has left it entirely undefended, a small plain extending in front of it to the rocky heights of the Rodadero.

“From this point, therefore, the Incas constructed a cyclopean line of fortifications, a work which fills the mind with astonishment at the grandeur of the conception and the perfect manner of its execution. It consists of three walls, the first averaging a height of eighteen feet, the second of sixteen and the third of fourteen, the first terrace being ten feet broad and the second eight. The walls are built with salient and retiring angles, twenty-one in number and corresponding with each other in each wall, so that no one point could be attacked without being commanded by others.... But the most marvelous part of this fortification is the huge masses of rock of which it is constructed (one of them being sixteen feet in height and several more varying from ten to twelve feet), yet made to fit exactly one into the other and forming a piece of masonry almost unparalleled in solidity, beauty, and peculiarity of its construction in any other part of the world. The immense masses at Stonehenge, the great block in the tomb of Agamemnon at Argos, and those in the cyclopean walls of Volterra and Agrigentum are wonderful monuments of the perseverance and knowledge of the people who raised them, but they fall immeasurably short in beauty of execution of the fortress of Cuzco.”

The railroad and electric lights and the telegraph and telephone have come to Cuzco now, but in other respects the city is not much modernized. It is still distinctly reminiscent of the royal Inca régime, and even more of the régime of the Spanish viceroys. For many years after the conquest it was superior in importance to Lima. Notaries were required under severe penalties, Mozans says, “to write at the head of all public documents, ‘En la gran ciudad del Cuzco, cabeza de estos reinos y provincias del Perú en las Indias’—In the great city of Cuzco, head of these kingdoms and provinces of Peru in the Indies. Even so late as the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,” he continues, “it was, next to Lima, the city of the greatest social importance in the viceroyalty.” And so now, although there are the same long vistas of low, massive buildings through the narrow streets, the view from the hill presents a panorama of red-tiled roofs instead of thatches, of many tall church towers, and of a great square divided into three.

On the first stories of the old Indian homes Spanish superstructures have been built; on the foundation walls of the ancient temple of Voricancha, the largest and richest of the sanctuaries devoted to the worship of the Sun, has been erected the convent of Santo Domingo; the devotees in the convent of Santa Catalina occupy cells that were once used by the Virgins of the Sun; walls that were retained in the building of the Church of San Lazaro are ornamented with bodies of birds having women’s heads that were carved by the bronze chisels of the artisans of the Incas. The grand old renaissance cathedral, which, with its massive stone walls and pillars and vaulted roof, cost so much to build that one of the viceroys said it would have been cheaper to build it of silver, is one of the most imposing specimens of church architecture in America; the pulpit in San Blas is famed as one of the most beautiful in the world, and many of the interiors and cloisters, particularly of La Merced, where the remains of Almagro and two of Pizarro’s brothers lie, and the patio of the university, are perfectly superb.