Dropped in the bottom of yawning red gulfs, with snow-peaks glistening overhead, are wild valleys of differing climates, the mighty quebradas of the Andes. These canyons, which the famous hanging bridges used to span, intersect the wilderness. They lie in dusk while the over-arching cliffs are bathed in full sunlight, for sunrise and sunset are within a few hours of each other. The warm air, steaming upward, pushes the snow boundary far above. Strata of black sand on the valley’s walls have been tunneled by cave-dwellers of ancient times. French sisters of charity move about in cloisters under eucalyptus trees.
Such a surprise is Yucay, tucked in snugly between two mountains, wrapped in soft air and scents of unknown flowers, the loveliest spot in all the empire of the Incas. Streams of clear water descend to it from above and form the smooth, deep river of Yucay. The Incas sought it out for their gardens of pleasure and were lulled to rest by bells of gold tied to the hammocks in which they slept.
Water has a very tranquillizing effect. It sweeps along a valley, and the jagged remnants of volcanic action are smoothed out into long undulating lines.
Water collects in all crevices; lakes green as iron vitriol, fed by subterranean springs, lie in the surly country like jewels in their setting. When night shadows have settled in the valleys, the alpine glow is reflected in the quiet surface.
There are no fish in the lake of Chinchaycocha, Laguna de Reyes. Though their element is water and they die in air, here they die in pure water for lack of air. The ingahuallpa sings a monotonous note from the bank at the close of every hour during the night. The outlet of the lake is narrow and deep, and its clear water flows smoothly and without noise.
All the lakes have their secrets. The little lake of Orcos still holds the golden chain with links wrist-thick made by Huayna Ccapac at the birth of his eldest son. It encompassed the market-place of Cuzco. It was so weighty that “two hundred Indians having seized the links of it to the rings in their ears were scarce able to raise it from the ground.” After the coming of the Spaniards, it was thrown for safe-keeping into this round, deep pool filled by unknown springs. Safe indeed it is. Orcos has not given up its charge, though repeated attempts have been made to reach the bottom. Trying to drain it by a sluice and trench, the Spaniards “unhappily crossed upon a vein of hard rock, at which, pecking a long time, they found that they struck more fire out of it than they drew water"—the opposite element from the one they expected.
Up against the sky lies a sea where men sail in boats of grass—Lake Titicaca, where ships are silently struck by lightning without crash of thunder. On these high seas the navigator has to go by instinct, because of the loadstone round about—magnetic iron, it is now less picturesquely called. Saint Elmo’s fire blazes from ships’ masts on stormy nights. Sometimes a pointed tongue of black clouds swings from above, “like the trunk of some gigantic elephant searching the ground.” A similar one raises itself from the surface of the water, slapping back and forth, seeking the point of the tongue above, and when they have found each other, they join in a mighty, black column, out of which burst thunder and lightning. It whirls off everything within reach and sucks down a passing balsa (boat of reeds) into a depth never sounded.
The water of Lake Titicaca is ice-cold and brackish. Its strangely fashioned fishes never come to the surface. It is inhabited by great animals like sea-cows, occasionally seen resting on a beach of some remote inlet. The grottoes along the shore are guarded by gray and black night herons and inhabited by the sea-cow or other monsters!
Queer birds haunt the wide stretches of totora growing along the shore, reeds whose stems are used for making boats, and whose tips are used as salad. Here live the stately puna geese, dazzling white, with green wings shading into violet; black water-hens, white quinlla, dark green yanahuico with long, thin, bent bills, finely etched ducks, ibises, licli, metallically bright, and sea-gulls from the Atlantic.
Coal is found on the shores of Titicaca, which suggests a mystery. At what elevation could tropical coal plants grow? The bones of mastodons are also here. But rocks even higher up are smoothed as if by waves, and beaches are found like those of the actual sea. Both Humboldt and Darwin found shells, once crawling on the bottom of the sea, now embedded fourteen thousand feet above its level.