A mile away to the northeast we discovered the dim outlines of a large amphitheatre where the Incas may have gathered on the grassy slopes to
| AN INCA VASE FROM CUZCO | ARTICLES OF DRESS AND A DECORATED MULE HALTER FROM CUZCO |
watch games and religious festivals. It offers an attractive field for digging, as it seems to have been entirely overlooked hitherto.
On our way back to the city we were invited to rest at Sr. Lomellini’s country house which is built in the gardens of Manco Capac, the first Inca. The entrance is through a gate in the wall of the ancient outer terrace. Near the house stands a section of the palace wall, thirty feet long and ten feet high, containing a recessed door and window. In the outer terrace the stones are of irregular shapes while in this wall they are practically rectangular. In his house, Sr. Lomellini has collected a number of extremely interesting specimens of the ceramic art of the Incas. The most striking are two very large vases resembling in shape and marking the small one figured here. This is only six inches high; those are nearly three feet. There are quite a number of imperfect specimens in the American Museum of Natural History.
After the gardener had given us a handful of roses, we left the precincts of the ancient Inca and clattered down the hill over the rough cobblestones to the picturesque sights—and distressing smells—of modern Cuzco.
CHAPTER XXI
THE INCA ROAD TO ABANCAY
There are several ways of going from Cuzco to Lima. The easiest and most frequented now is by rail to Mollendo and then by steamer to Callao, the seaport of Lima. Before the days of railroads the common route was by mule via Ayacucho, Pisco, and the Coast. Since the building of the Oroya railroad and more particularly since the extension of the line south to Huancayo, instead of going west to the coast from Ayacucho the overland traveller continues north to the Jauja valley until he meets the railway. It was this road that we proposed to take.