Small lakes are sources of small rivers, by which they are emptied. But great Titicaca forms no stream at all. Its outlet has no outlet of its own. The rush of nauseous water is poured into a shallow lake-twin not far away—Poopo, through whose mysterious whirlpools the water drops back again in subterranean escapes. This tumultuous torrent, the Desaguadero, was spanned in former days by a bridge of reeds.
Recent measurements show that the level of these two lakes is constantly lowering, and eventually they will disappear. They were once the source of the greatest river in the world, but some day there will be only a salty deposit in the hollows they now fill.
Titi, the cat, kaka, the rock, Lake Titicaca was named for a little island within it, around which cluster legends of the origins of things. It was the most revered shrine in the empire of the Incas. Neither the wide fields of Chita, where the flocks of the Sun gamboled, nor the valley of Yucay could equal this enchanted isle of Titicaca.
Before the arrival of man, the island was inhabited by a tiger, carrying on its head a magnificent ruby, whose light illuminated the whole lake as the afterglow the snow-covered peaks above. The Hawaiians have an expression for the shifting of colors in a rainbow. The Indians on Lake Titicaca have special words for the glow of fading sunlight on the mountain summits and the purple of the glaciers in their hollows.
The Sun had preserved himself from the flood by hiding in the depths of Lake Titicaca. This was his island, out of whose sacred rock, after the deluge, he soared like a big flame into the sky. His footsteps are still to be seen perpetuated in iron ore. The original Incas were let down by the Sun, their father, on to the small island and commanded to go forth to teach the savage inhabitants.
But the worship given this spot by the Incas was only absorbed in that of former times. This “Island of the Wild Cat” is a field of aboriginal myth and tradition.
The sacred cliff where the Sun had risen was covered by the Incas with sheets of gold and silver, “so that, in rising, he might see the whole rock ablaze, a signal to worship.” “Sixteen hundred attendants manufactured chicha to throw at it, and pilgrims from the entire empire brought offerings of silver and gold.” Garcilasso says that “after all the vessels and ornaments of the temple were supplied, there was enough gold and silver left to raise and complete another temple without other material whatsoever.” All the treasure was thrown into Lake Titicaca to save it from the Spaniards. Ten of them were drowned in 1541, while hunting for it. Titicaca guards its secrets well.
The approach to the temple was a very complicated structure known as “the place where people lose themselves.” The pilgrims, after much fasting on the sacred ground of the island, were allowed to pass barefoot through the first gate above, the “door of the puma,” pumapuncu. After more fasting, they might go down through the second gate, the “door of the humming-bird,” kenti-puncu, so called from feathers of humming-birds plastered over its inner side. They were especially honored by the Incas, colored like the rainbow emblem. After more ceremonies, the pilgrims were allowed to go through the “door of hope,” pillco-puncu, covered with feathers of the bird of hope. Those who had come so far might now worship the holy cliff, but they were not allowed to touch the face of the cliff nor to walk upon it. Sacrifices to it were small children, whose heads the priests cut off with sharp stones. The sacrificial stone of the Island of Titicaca still remains, rubbed smooth by the iron tooth of time, split into three pieces by a thunderbolt. So does the queen’s meadow below the terraces, where the carmine, yellow, and white cantut, flor-del-Inca, recalls the blazing color of other days, when fruit ripened here twelve thousand feet above the sea, and maize of which Sun-virgins made the bread of sacrifice.
Beyond, is the island called Coati, consecrated to the Moon, where her temple used to be. The life-size statue of a woman was found here, gold in the upper half, silver in the lower.
The Fountain of the Incas still gushes two streams of clear water. “A stolid Indian sits watching it pour away, never dreaming whence it comes, as no one, indeed, knows.”