Leaving modern Vilcabamba, we crossed the flat, marshy bottom of an old glaciated valley, in which Page 272one of our mules got thoroughly mired while searching for the succulent grasses which cover the treacherous bog. Fording the Vilcabamba River, which here is only a tiny brook, we climbed out of the valley and turned westward. On the mountains above us were vestiges of several abandoned mines. It was their discovery in 1572 or thereabouts which brought Ocampo and the first Spanish settlers to this valley. Raimondi says that he found here cobalt, nickel, silver-bearing copper ore, and lead sulphide. He does not mention any gold-bearing quartz. It may have been exhausted long before his day. As to the other minerals, the difficulties of transportation are so great that it is not likely that mining will be renewed here for many years to come.
At the top of the pass we turned to look back and saw a long chain of snow-capped mountains towering above and behind the town of Vilcabamba. We searched in vain for them on our maps. Raimondi, followed by the Royal Geographical Society, did not leave room enough for such a range to exist between the rivers Apurimac and Urubamba. Mr. Hendriksen determined our longitude to be 73° west, and our latitude to be 13° 8′ south. Yet according to the latest map of this region, published in the preceding year, this was the very position of the river Apurimac itself, near its junction with the river Pampas. We ought to have been swimming “the Great Speaker.” Actually we were on top of a lofty mountain pass surrounded by high peaks and glaciers. The mystery was finally solved by Mr. Bumstead in 1912, when he determined the Apurimac Page 273and the Urubamba to be thirty miles farther apart than any one had supposed. His surveys opened an unexplored region, 1500 square miles in extent, whose very existence had not been guessed before 1911. It proved to be one of the largest undescribed glaciated areas in South America. Yet it is less than a hundred miles from Cuzco, the chief city in the Peruvian Andes, and the site of a university for more than three centuries. That Uilcapampa could so long defy investigation and exploration shows better than anything else how wisely Manco had selected his refuge. It is indeed a veritable labyrinth of snow-clad peaks, unknown glaciers, and trackless canyons.
Looking west, we saw in front of us a great wilderness of deep green valleys and forest-clad slopes. We supposed from our maps that we were now looking down into the basin of the Apurimac. As a matter of fact, we were on the rim of the valley of the hitherto uncharted Pampaconas, a branch of the Cosireni, one of the affluents of the Urubamba. Instead of being the Apurimac Basin, what we saw was another unexplored region which drained into the Urubamba!
At the time, however, we did not know where we were, but understood from Condoré that somewhere far down in the montaña below us was Conservidayoc, the sequestered domain of Saavedra and his savage Indians. It seemed less likely than ever that the Incas could have built a town so far away from the climate and food to which they were accustomed. The “road” was now so bad that only with the Page 274greatest difficulty could we coax our sure-footed mules to follow it. Once we had to dismount, as the path led down a long, steep, rocky stairway of ancient origin. At last, rounding a hill, we came in sight of a lonesome little hut perched on a shoulder of the mountain. In front of it, seated in the sun on mats, were two women shelling corn. As soon as they saw the gobernador approaching, they stopped their work and began to prepare lunch. It was about eleven o'clock and they did not need to be told that Señor Condoré and his friends had not had anything but a cup of coffee since the night before. In order to meet the emergency of unexpected guests they killed four or five squealing cuys (guinea pigs), usually to be found scurrying about the mud floor of the huts of mountain Indians. Before long the savory odor of roast cuy, well basted, and cooked-to-a-turn on primitive spits, whetted our appetites.
In the eastern United States one sees guinea pigs only as pets or laboratory victims; never as an article of food. In spite of the celebrated dogma that “Pigs is Pigs,” this form of “pork” has never found its way to our kitchens, even though these “pigs” live on a very clean, vegetable diet. Incidentally guinea pigs do not come from Guinea and are in no way related to pigs—Mr. Ellis Parker Butler to the contrary notwithstanding! They belong rather to the same family as rabbits and Belgian hares and have long been a highly prized article of food in the Andes of Peru. The wild species are of a grayish brown color, which enables them to escape observation in their natural habitat. The domestic varieties, Page 275which one sees in the huts of the Indians, are piebald, black, white, and tawny, varying from one another in color as much as do the llamas, which were also domesticated by the same race of people thousands of years ago. Although Anglo-Saxon “folkways,” as Professor Sumner would say, permit us to eat and enjoy long-eared rabbits, we draw the line at short-eared rabbits, yet they were bred to be eaten.
I am willing to admit that this was the first time that I had ever knowingly tasted their delicate flesh, although once in the capital of Bolivia I thought the hotel kitchen had a diminishing supply! Had I not been very hungry, I might never have known how delicious a roast guinea pig can be. The meat is not unlike squab. To the Indians whose supply of animal food is small, whose fowls are treasured for their eggs, and whose thin sheep are more valuable as wool bearers than as mutton, the succulent guinea pig, “most prolific of mammals,” as was discovered by Mr. Butler's hero, is a highly valued article of food, reserved for special occasions. The North American housewife keeps a few tins of sardines and cans of preserves on hand for emergencies. Her sister in the Andes similarly relies on fat little cuys.
After lunch, Condoré and Mogrovejo divided the extensive rolling countryside between them and each rode quietly from one lonesome farm to another, looking for men to engage as bearers. When they were so fortunate as to find the man of the house at home or working in his little chacra they greeted him pleasantly. When he came forward to shake hands, Page 276in the usual Indian manner, a silver dollar was un-suspectingly slipped into the palm of his right hand and he was informed that he had accepted pay for services which must now be performed. It seemed hard, but this was the only way in which it was possible to secure carriers.
During Inca times the Indians never received pay for their labor. A paternal government saw to it that they were properly fed and clothed and either given abundant opportunity to provide for their own necessities or else permitted to draw on official stores. In colonial days a more greedy and less paternal government took advantage of the ancient system and enforced it without taking pains to see that it should not cause suffering. Then, for generations, thoughtless landlords, backed by local authority, forced the Indians to work without suitably recompensing them at the end of their labors or even pretending to carry out promises and wage agreements. The peons learned that it was unwise to perform any labor without first having received a considerable portion of their pay. When once they accepted money, however, their own custom and the law of the land provided that they must carry out their obligations. Failure to do so meant legal punishment.
Consequently, when an unfortunate Pampaconas Indian found he had a dollar in his hand, he bemoaned his fate, but realized that service was inevitable. In vain did he plead that he was “busy,” that his “crops needed attention,” that his “family could not spare him,” that “he lacked food for a Page 277journey.” Condoré and Mogrovejo were accustomed to all varieties of excuses. They succeeded in “engaging” half a dozen carriers. Before dark we reached the village of Pampaconas, a few small huts scattered over grassy hillsides, at an elevation of 10,000 feet.
In the notes of one of the military advisers of Viceroy Francisco de Toledo is a reference to Pampaconas as a “high, cold place.” This is correct. Nevertheless, I doubt if the present village is the Pampaconas mentioned in the documents of Garcia's day as being “an important town of the Incas.” There are no ruins hereabouts. The huts of Pampaconas were newly built of stone and mud, and thatched with grass. They were occupied by a group of sturdy mountain Indians, who enjoyed unusual freedom from official or other interference and a good place in which to raise sheep and cultivate potatoes, on the very edge of the dense forest. We found that there was some excitement in the village because on the previous night a jaguar, or possibly a cougar, had come out of the forest, attacked, killed, and dragged off one of the village ponies.