[318] Loxa afterwards became famous for its forests of Chinchona trees yielding Peruvian bark; the healing virtues of which were not made known to the Spaniards until fifty years after the time of Cieza de Leon. M. Jussieu tells us that the first fever cured by means of Chinchona bark was that of a Jesuit at Malacotas, some leagues south of Loxa, in the year 1600. The countess of Chinchon, wife of the viceroy of Peru, was cured of a fever by a dose of Loxa bark, in the year 1638.
[319] He explored the course of the Marañon as far as the pongo or rapid of Manseriche, in 1548.
[320] Now better known as Piura.
[321] Inhabitants of the warm valleys on the coast.
[322] Nearly all travellers, from Cieza de Leon downwards, who have been on the west coast of South America, have had something to say concerning the rainless region of Peru: but “the natural reasons for these things,” for which our author asks, are given in the most agreeable form in Captain Maury’s charming book. “Though the Peruvian shores are on the verge of the great South Sea boiler, yet it never rains there. The reason is plain. The south-east trade winds in the Atlantic ocean strike the water on the coast of Africa. They blow obliquely across the ocean until they reach the coast of Brazil. By this time they are heavily laden with vapour, which they continue to bear along across the continent, depositing it as they go, and supplying with it the sources of the Rio de la Plata and the southern tributaries of the Amazon. Finally they reach the snow capped Andes, and here is wrung from them the last particle of moisture that the very low temperature can extract. Reaching the summit of that range, they now tumble down as cool and dry winds on the Pacific slopes beyond. Meeting with no evaporating surface, and with no temperature colder than that to which they are subjected on the mountain tops, they reach the ocean before they again become charged with fresh vapour, and before, therefore, they have any which the Peruvian climate can extract. The last they had to spare was deposited as snow on the tops of the Cordilleras, to feed mountain streams under the heat of the sun, and irrigate the valleys on the western slopes.” Physical Geography of the Sea, para. 195. See also Acosta’s way of accounting for the absence of rain on the Peruvian coast, in his Historia Natural y Moral de las Indias, A.D. 1608, lib. iii, cap. 23.
[323] Zarate thus describes this coast road of the Yncas. “Through all the valleys of the coast which are refreshed by rivers and trees (which are generally about a league in breadth) they made a road almost forty feet broad, with very thick embankments on either side. After leaving the valleys the same road was continued over the sandy deserts, posts being driven in and fastened by cords, so that the traveller might not lose his way, neither turning to one side nor to the other. The road, like that in the Sierra, is five hundred leagues long. Although the posts in the desert are now broken in many parts, because the Spaniards, both in time of war and peace, used them for lighting fires, yet the embankments in the valleys are still for the most part entire.” Historia del Peru, lib. i, cap. x. Garcilasso de la Vega, in his account of the Ynca roads, merely copies from Zarate and Cieza de Leon (i, lib. ix, cap. 13). See also Gomara (cap. 194).
[324] Fray Domingo de Santo Tomas was the author of the first Quichua grammar, which was printed at Valladolid in 1560 with a vocabulary.
[325] Juan de la Torre was one of the famous thirteen who crossed the line which Pizarro drew on the sandy shore of the isle of Gallo, and resolved to face any hardships rather than abandon the enterprise. He afterwards became a staunch adherent of Pizarro’s younger brother Gonzalo, to whom he deserted, when serving under the ill-fated Blasco Nuñez de Vela, and he carried his ferocious enmity to the viceroy so far as to insult the dead body, and, pulling the hairs out of the beard, to stick them in his hat band. He married the daughter of an Indian chief in the province of Puerto Viejo, and gained so much influence among the followers of his father-in-law that they revealed to him a tomb containing, as Cieza de Leon says, more than fifty thousand dollars worth of gold and emeralds. Thus enriched, he meditated a retreat to Spain, where he might enjoy his wealth, but the fear of punishment for his treason to the viceroy, and other considerations, deterred him. He first proposed to Vela Nuñez, the viceroy’s brother, that they should seize a ship and escape from Peru; and, afterwards, hearing a false report that Gonzalo Pizarro had been appointed governor by the king, he changed his mind in the hope of receiving great favours from his old commander. But Vela Nuñez knew of his earlier project to desert, so, mindful of the adage that “dead men tell no tales,” La Torre invented such a story against the viceroy’s brother as induced Gonzalo to cut off his head. The villain was appointed captain of arquebusiers in the army of Gonzalo Pizarro, and acted a conspicuous and cruel part in the subsequent war down to the final overthrow of Gonzalo by Pedro de la Gasca in 1548. Then at last he received a reward more in accordance with his deserts. After hiding for four months in an Indian’s hut near Cuzco, he was at last accidentally found out by a Spaniard, and met the fate which he so richly deserved. He was hung by order of La Gasca.
[326] Supay is the Quichua word for the evil spirit in which the ancient Peruvians believed.
[327] Paullu was a son of the great Ynca Huayna Ccapac. He escaped from his half-brother Atahualpa, when many of the royal family were killed by that usurper, and, soon after the arrival of the Spaniards, was baptized under the name of Christoval. He accompanied Almagro in his expedition to Chile, and his services on that occasion were of the utmost importance to the Spaniards. While in Chile he received tidings from his brother Manco of his resolution to rise in arms and expel the invaders; but Paullu deemed it most prudent to dissimulate until the expedition, in which he was serving, returned to Peru. He afterwards lived for many years at Cuzco, in the palace built by Manco Ccapac, the founder of his house, on a hill called the Colcampata. The ruins of this edifice are still very perfect. After the death of his brother Manco, Paullu was looked upon by the Indians as their legitimate Ynca. His son, named Carlos, was a schoolfellow of the historian Garcilasso de la Vega, and afterwards married a Spanish lady whose parents were settled at Cuzco; and his grandson Don Melchior Carlos Ynca went to Spain in 1602, and became a knight of Santiago.