The third group of buildings is higher up on the spur, a hundred feet or more above the second group. Near the path from the lower to the upper plaza are the remains of a little azequia or watercourse, now dry, lined with flat stones. The southeast corner of the third group is marked by a huge projecting rock twenty feet high and twelve or fifteen feet in diameter. Beside it, facing the eastern slope, is a giant stairway. It consists of fourteen great steps roughly made and of varying dimensions. They average about fifteen feet wide, with risers four and a half feet high and treads about six and a half feet deep. It is possible to ascend these stairs by means of small stone steps erected on one
| THE BUILDINGS NEAR THE OUTER PRECIPICE | THE UPPER SIX STEPS OF THE GIANT STAIRWAY |
end or the other of the giant step. Walls on each side, two feet wide, serve as a balustrade. A peculiarity of the construction is the locating of a huge flat stone in the centre of the riser of each step. The view to the eastward from this stairway is particularly fine. Perhaps the rising sun, chief divinity of the Incas, was worshipped here.
Beyond the stairway are terraces, alley-ways, walls, and story-and-a-half houses, filled with niches and windows. The length of the first terrace is slightly over two hundred feet and its height is twelve feet. The second terrace above it has a height of ten feet and a length of one hundred and twenty-nine feet. Above these are two long alley-ways or halls with niches in their walls and windows looking out over the terraces. These halls are five feet wide. Back of these are buildings resembling in their construction those in the lower group. They also are decorated with irregular niches and cylindrical stone projections. Under these houses, however, there ran a small passage-way or drain twelve inches wide and ten inches deep. These two houses, although roughly built, were as nearly the same size as possible. Between them ran a narrow passage-way leading to a back alley. This was curiously paved with slabs of slate half an inch thick. Back of this is another hall five and a half feet wide with windows in front and niches on the rear, or hill, side.
The gables of the upper group are steeper than those of the lower group and are in fact quite as pointed as those seen in Dutch cities. The two gable buildings of the upper group stand on the slope of the hill in such a manner that there is no gable on the side nearest the declivity. In other words, they are only half the size of the double houses below. Nearly all of these houses have two or three small, rude windows. A narrow stone stairway leads from the back alley to a terrace above. This opens out into the upper plaza on which are several buildings that overlook the western precipices. Two of the houses have no windows and one of them contains three cells. The Peruvians said they were used for the detention of prisoners. They were more likely storehouses. On the north side of the plaza is a curious little structure built with the utmost care and containing many niches and nooks. It may possibly have been for the detention of so-called “virgins of the sun” or have been the place in which criminals, destined to be thrown over the precipice, according to the laws of the Incas, awaited their doom. The plan gives a good idea of its irregular construction.
Above it the hillside rises steeply, and on the crest of the ridge runs a little conduit which we followed until it entered the impenetrable tropical jungle at the foot of a steep hill. The water in this little azequia, now dry, coming straight down the spur, was conducted over a terrace into two well-paved tanks on the north side of the plaza. Thence it ran across the plaza to a little reservoir or bath-house on the south side. This was ten feet long by five feet wide with low walls not over five feet high and had on its north side a small stone basin let down into the floor two feet by three in such a manner as to