For centuries the overland trail from Cuzco to Huancayo and the north was the most celebrated highway in Peru. The Incas used it in their conquests and improved it. When Atahualpa fell into the clutches of Pizarro, the largest part of his golden ransom was brought over this road. After the death of the Inca, Pizarro in his march on Cuzco found this road most convenient for his little cavalcade. During the civil wars that followed the conquest this highway was repeatedly the scene of action. For three hundred years it was replete with historic incident. Finally, the road that had seen the beginnings of Spain’s conquest, was destined to see the
bitter end. For, in 1824, it witnessed the last campaign, the final act in the drama of Spain’s Colonial Empire, when La Serna, last viceroy of Peru, was defeated by the patriot forces under General Sucre in the battle of Ayacucho.
In journeying over the three hundred miles of this historic highway, I should have preferred to have hired mules for the whole trip, but nobody was willing to undertake the contract. We were told that “in the good old times” before the railway came to Cuzco, it was very easy to hire mules; and arrieros were willing enough to go anywhere, but now there was so little demand for this sort of thing that the supply had stopped. The best we could do was to get an arriero to take us to Abancay, the capital of the next Department.
Two American civil engineers whom I had met in Arequipa had told me that the journey from Cuzco to Huancayo would be full of trouble and countless difficulties, as a large part of the region was uninhabited! They said that if it were possible to buy a tent in Cuzco, to do so, by all means, as we should otherwise be obliged to spend many nights in the open, exposed to rain and snow. They had not been over the road but had lived for months in Cuzco and had “heard all about it.” I mention this merely as an instance of the difficulty of finding out the truth about South America by hearsay.
We now learned from those who had actually been over the road that while there were no inns to be encountered anywhere except in Ayacucho, it would be only owing to extremely bad luck if we failed to reach the shelter of a village every night. Accordingly we contented ourselves with a few canned goods and kitchen utensils and found them to be all that was necessary.
In the Peruvian highlands the rains commence in November and continue until the end of March. February is supposed to be the worst of all. During that month the discomfort of travelling over the bridle-paths of the Andes is so great that the natives never undertake a journey for pleasure and stay at home as much as possible. Yet it was February that we had chosen for our march. It was “Hobson’s choice,” but I was not sorry. Several travellers have given a picture of the region as it appears in the dry season when the roads are comparatively good. We were to have an opportunity of seeing what they could be like in the worst of the rainy season, and we were further favored by the fact that this particular February turned out to be “the rainiest month of the rainiest season that any one remembered to have experienced in Peru for at least twenty-five years.” In a word, we were to see the mountain trails at their worst.
We left Cuzco on the morning of the first of February, 1909. The day promised ill. Rain fell in torrents. The preceding day we had received calls from a number of local dignitaries, all of whom assured us that they would be on hand in the morning to escort us out of town. But the continuous downpour overcame their conscientious scruples. Even the Prefect’s polite orderly, who had been unremitting in his attention, was glad enough to take our hint that we were sufficiently honored by his accompanying us for three blocks from the hotel.
The Prefect had been very solicitous about our welfare and, although we assured him that we preferred to travel without a military escort, he insisted that a sergeant and at least one soldier should accompany us as long as we were in his Department. I never discovered why he was so insistent. There was no danger, and highway robbery is unheard of in Peru. Possibly he was afraid that the delegados might otherwise go hungry at villages where inhospitable, half-starved Quichuas would say that there was no food to be had; or he may have thought it undignified for us to travel without an escort. Whatever his reasons, he meant well and it was not a case of graft, for the soldiers were ordered to accompany us at the expense of the government.