[10] Commenting on the excellence of the cacao of the montaña of the Urubamba von Tschudi remarked (op. cit., p. 37) that the long land transport prevented its use in Lima where the product on the market is that imported from Guayaquil.
[11] The inadequacy of the labor supply was a serious obstacle in the early days as well as now. In the documents pertaining to the “Obispados y Audiencia del Cuzco” (Vol. 11, p. 349 of the “Juicio de Limites entre el Perú y Bolivia, Prueba Peruana presentada al Gobierno de la República Argentina por Victor M. Maurtua,” Barcelona, 1900) we find the report that the natives of the curacy of Ollantaytambo who came down from the hills to Huadquiña to hear mass were detained and compelled to give a day’s service on the valley plantations under pain of chastisement.
[12] The Spanish occupation of the eastern valleys was early and extensive. Immediately after the capture of the young Inca Tupac Amaru and the final subjugation of the province of Vilcapampa colonists started the cultivation of coca and cane. Development of the main Urubamba Valley and tributary valleys proceeded at a good rate: so also did their troubles. Baltasar de Ocampo writing in 1610 (Account of the Province of Vilcapampa, Hakluyt Soc. Publs., Ser. 2, Vol. 22, 1907, pp. 203-247) relates the occurrence of a general uprising of the negroes employed on the sugar plantations of the region. But the peace and prosperity of every place on the eastern frontier was unstable and quite generally the later eighteenth and earlier nineteenth centuries saw a retreat of the border of civilization. The native rebellion of the mid-eighteenth century in the montaña of Chanchamayo caused entire abandonment of a previously flourishing area. When Raimondi wrote in 1885 (La Montaña de Chanchamayo, Lima, 1885) some of the ancient hacienda sites were still occupied by savages. In the Paucartambo valleys, settlement began by the end of the sixteenth century and at the beginning of the nineteenth before their complete desolation by the savages they were highly prosperous. Paucartambo town, itself, once important for its commerce in coca is now in a sadly decadent condition.
[13] Notice of a Journey to the Northward and also to the Eastward of Cuzco, and among the Chunchos Indians, in July, 1835. Journ. Royal Geog. Soc., Vol. 6, 1836, pp. 174-186.
[14] Bol. Soc. Geog. de Lima, Vol. 8, 1898, p. 45.
[15] Marcoy who traveled in Peru in the middle of the last century was greatly impressed by the sympathetic changes of aspect and topography and vegetation in the eastern valleys. He thus describes a sudden change of scene in the Occobamba valley: “... the trees had disappeared, the birds had taken wing, and great sandy spaces, covered with the latest deposits of the river, alternated with stretches of yellow grass and masses of rock half-buried in the ground.” (Travels in South America, translated by Elihu Rich, 2 vols. New York, 1875, Vol. 1, p. 326.)
[16] According to the latest information (August, 1916) of the Bolivia Railway Co., trains are running from Oruro to Buen Retiro, 35 km. from Cochabamba. Thence connection with Cochabamba is made by a tram-line operated by the Electric Light and Power Co. of that city. The Bulletin of the Pan-American Union for July, 1916, also reports the proposed introduction of an automobile service for conveyance of freight and passengers.
[17] During his travels Raimondi collected many instances of the isolation and conservatism of the plateau Indian: thus there is the village of Pampacolca near Coropuna, whose inhabitants until recently carried their idols of clay to the slopes of the great white mountain and worshiped them there with the ritual of Inca days (El Perú, Lima, 1874, Vol. 1).
[18] Raimondi (op. cit., p. 109) has a characteristic description of the “Camino del Peñon” in the department of La Libertad: “... the ground seems to disappear from one’s feet; one is standing on an elevated balcony looking down more than 6,000 feet to the valley ... the road which descends the steep scarp is a masterpiece.”
[19] Figs. 67 and 68 are from Bol. de Minas del Perú, 1906, No. 37, pp. 82 and 84 respectively.