All had been more or less completely hidden by trees and vines during the centuries of solitude. Fortunately for us the treasure-seeking company had done excellent work in clearing away from the more important buildings the tangled mass of vegetation that had formerly covered them. Dynamite had also been used in various likely spots where treasure might have been buried. But the workmen had found no gold and only a few objects of interest including, besides those we saw at Abancay, a few clay pots and two or three grinding stones of a pattern still in use in this part of the Andes and as far north as Panama.
At the top of the southern and outer precipice, five thousand eight hundred feet immediately above the river, stands a parapet and the walls of two buildings without windows. The view from here, both up and down the valley of the Apurimac, surpasses the possibilities of language for adequate description. The photograph gives but the faintest idea of its beauty and grandeur. Far down the gigantic cañon one catches little glimpses of the Apurimac, a white stream shut in between guardian mountains, so narrowed by the distance that it seems like a mere brooklet. Here and there through the valley are marvellous cataracts, one of which, two thousand feet high, has a clear fall of over one thousand feet. The panorama in every direction is wonderful in variety, contrast, beauty, and grandeur.
North of this outer group of buildings is an artificially truncated hill. It is probable that on this flattened hilltop, which commands a magnificent
view up and down the valley, signal fires could be built to telegraph to the heights overlooking Cuzco, intelligence of the approach of an enemy from the Amazonian wilds.
We noticed on this hilltop that small stones had been set into the ground, in straight lines crossing and recrossing at right angles as though to make a pattern. So much of it was covered by grass, however, that we did not have a chance to sketch it in the time at our disposal.
North of the lookout and on the saddle between it and the main ridge is located the main group of ruins: a rude fortification fifteen feet high, running across the little ridge from one precipitous slope to the other; a long one-story building of uncertain use in which curious carved stone rings are set into the walls in such a manner as to serve possibly for the detention of prisoners; a long one-story building that might have been a grand hall or place of meeting, whose walls are surrounded with numerous niches; and a block of story-and-a-half houses whose gabled ends are still standing. The use of gables was almost universal in the central and southern part of the land of the Incas.