He was not the only one who did not like the bridge. The priest of Chincheros, who had been delayed from accompanying us by the arrival of a visiting cleric that morning, overtook us here. Although a sturdy native Indian, he was rather portly and preferred not only to leave to some one else the leading across of his mule, but even to have a poor Indian bearer give him his shoulder to steady him on the swaying structure.
From the other end of the bridge we ascended the precipitous cliff by a narrow winding path and found ourselves on a lofty terrace where the enterprising Parodi Brothers have planted waving fields of sugarcane. Here we were met by the Gobernador of Tambillo and the Parodis who escorted us to their sugar factory at Pajonal, a most attractive hacienda nestled in a valley at the foot of beetling crags. Our hosts had inherited from their father an unusual stock of energy and skill. Owing to his efforts, a good irrigation ditch had been constructed that furnished the canefields with an abundant supply of water. The houses were in good repair and everything bore the marks of prosperity. It was a pleasure to see such evidence of enterprise and energy in this wild region. One brother, who ordinarily practices medicine in Lima, was here on a visit. Another brother is being educated in the States.
We left Pajonal the next morning, accompanied by the Gobernador of Tambillo, a very agreeable person of German-Peruvian descent. From Pajonal the road ascends a little valley and then climbs a mountainside to the village of Ocros, a most forlorn and wretched place, with an elevation of nearly ten thousand feet.
The adobe church, like that at Chincheros, was set back from the plaza, and had a new adobe wall around it. Earth for this seemed to have been taken right out of the plaza. No attempt had been made to fill up the huge holes that remained. The only building at Ocros that seemed to be in any kind of repair was the local telegraph office where the officer from Ayacucho who accompanied us, went to send a despatch to the Prefect.
On the way we had been struck by the extraordinary method of hanging telegraph wires that prevails in this country. The linesmen had thought nothing of planting three poles together on the top of one hill and the next three not less than a quarter of a mile away on the top of another, stretching their wire across the intervening distance in midair. This occurred not once or twice but whenever they could save poles by so doing. The strain on the wire must have been tremendous. We learned that the service was “frequently interrupted.”
The road up from Ocros was the worst that we encountered anywhere. It was really the bed of a mountain stream and our animals had the greatest difficulty in picking their way among the rocks and boulders. It was hard to imagine that this was really the highway between Cuzco and Lima. The “road” grew worse and worse until it reached a bleak paramo at an elevation of thirteen thousand feet, where snow, hail, and sleet, driven in our faces by a high wind, added to our discomforts. A steep descent on the other side of the range greatly tried the patience of our animals. The ground seemed to be a hard clay that offered no support to their feet and they slid and slipped, sometimes eight or ten feet at a time, without being able to stop. Night was falling as we reached the little collection of wretched huts called Matara. No one seemed to have any desire to receive us. In fact, the Indian who had charge of the only dry hut in the place, locked the front door and disappeared into the night. Unlike vigorous Caceres, who would sooner have died than allow an inhospitable Indian to refuse admission to the foreigner in his charge, the officer from Ayacucho was a timid soul who had gone through the world bemoaning his ill fortune and doing nothing to make it better. He could think of no solution of the problem except that we make ourselves as comfortable as possible in the shelter of a kind of a porch in front of this thatched hut. So we passed an exceedingly uncomfortable night and experienced some of the hardships that the British soldiers, who aided the patriot army in that last campaign against the Spanish viceroy, must have suffered in this very locality.
The next morning our road led across half a dozen deep gulches whose streams feed the river Colpahuayo. In one of these I was so fortunate as to find in a gravel-bank at the side of the road, which had been heavily washed by recent rains, a portion of an ancient Inca stone war-club shaped like a huge doughnut.
The road continued to be extremely slippery and was not improved by the almost continuous rain. At half past two we reached Tambillo. Here we were welcomed by the pleasant wife of the Gobernador who had ridden ahead to have a good breakfast prepared while we had waited in vain on a hilltop hoping the rain would hold up sufficiently to let us photograph a magnificent panorama that included the distant city of Ayacucho and the heights of Condorkanqui and the famous battlefield.
After lunch we crossed another gulch whose treacherous sides more than once caused our mules to fall heavily. In the village of Los Neques, we were met by a very courteous emissary of the Prefect of Ayacucho who turned out to be proprietor of the hotel. He had been sent out in the rain to apologize for the fact that there was no committee to meet us and to explain that the notables had mounted and ridden out to await us until driven back by the inclemency of the weather, for all of which we were duly thankful, as it meant that we had escaped the necessity of hurting anybody’s feelings by declining to drink more copitas of brandy on an empty stomach.
Here at Los Neques the Indians were getting ready to celebrate the days of Carnival which were soon to be upon us. A hundred men and women had gathered in the courtyard of an old house. In one corner a red cloth shelter had been erected