The most astonishing circumstance connected with these ruins is the distance from which the stones which compose them have been conveyed. The huge blocks of granite of enormous dimensions rest upon a limestone rock, and the nearest granite quarry is at a distance of six miles, and on the other side of the river. On the road to this quarry there are two stones which never reached their destination. They are known as the Saycusca-rumicuna or “tired stones.” One of them is 9 ft. 8 in. long and 7 ft. 8 in. broad; with a groove round it, three inches deep, apparently for passing a rope. The other is 20 ft. 4 in. long, 15 ft. 2 in. broad, and 3 ft. 6 in. deep.
At the foot of the rock on which the fortress is built there are several ancient buildings. Here is the Mañay raccay or “court of petitions,” sixty paces square, and surrounded by buildings of gravel and plaster, which open on the court by doorways twelve feet high, surmounted by enormous granite lintels. On the western side of the ravine of Marca-ccocha, opposite the fortress, there is another mass of rock towering up perpendicularly, and ending in a sharp peak. It is called the Pinculluna (“Place of Flutes”). Half-way up, on a rocky ledge very difficult of approach, there are some buildings which tradition says were used as a convent of virgins of the sun. They consist of three long chambers separated from each other but close together, and rising one behind the other up the declivitous side of the mountain. They are each twenty-eight paces long, with a door at each end, and six windows on each side. There are steep gables at each end about eighteen feet high, and the doors have stone lintels. There may have been six cells, according to the number of windows, making eighteen in all. On one side of these buildings there are three terraces on which the doors open, which probably supplied the inmates with vegetable food and flowers, and whence they might view one of nature’s loveliest scenes, the tranquil fertile valley, with its noble river, and mountains fringed with tiers of cultivated terraces.
About a hundred yards beyond the edge of these convent gardens the Pinculluna becomes quite perpendicular, and forms a yawning precipice eight hundred feet high, descending sheer down into the valley. This was used as the Huarcuna or place of execution, and there is a small building, like a martello tower, at its verge, whence the victims were hurled into eternity.
For an account of the tradition connected with the building of Ollantay-tambo, and of the Quichua drama which is founded on it, see my work, Cuzco and Lima, pp. 172 to 188.
The authors of the Antiguedades Peruanas believe these ruins to be anterior to those of Cuzco.
[461] Cunti-suyu was the western division of the empire of the Yncas. The word was afterwards corrupted by the Spaniards into Condesuyos; and the district of that name is now a province of the department of Arequipa. It is nearly on the watershed of the maritime Cordillera, and is drained by a river which, after irrigating the valley of Ocoña, falls into the Pacific.
[462] To the eastward of the Andes are the great forests which extend unbroken to the Atlantic. Those in the immediate neighbourhood of Cuzco are watered by the tributaries of the Purus, one of the largest and most important, though still unexplored affluents of the Amazon. These forests comprised the Anti-suyu or eastern division of the empire of the Yncas, and were inhabited by wandering savage tribes called Antis and Chunchos. The forest region was first invaded by the Ynca Rocca, but no permanent conquest was made until the reign of the Ynca Yupanqui, who received tidings of a rich province inhabited by a people called Musus (Moxos) far to the eastward. All the streams were said to unite and form a great river called the Amaru-mayu (“serpent river”), which is probably the main stream of the Purus. The Ynca made a road from the Andes to the shores of the river, through the forest-covered country now known as the montaña de Paucartambo, and was occupied for two years in making canoes sufficient to carry ten thousand men, and their provisions. He then descended the river, and, after a long and bloody war, subjugated the savage tribes of Chunchos on its banks, and collected them into a settlement called Tono. They ever afterwards paid an annual tribute of parrots, honey, and wax to the Yncas. Yupanqui then penetrated still further to the south and east, and conquered the province of Moxos.
In the early days of the conquest, the Spaniards established farms for raising coca, cacao, and sugar in the beautiful forests of Paucartambo, especially along the banks of the Tono, and Garcilasso de la Vega tells us that he inherited an estate called Abisca, in this part of the country. But as Spanish power declined, these estates began to fall into decay, the savage Chunchos encroached more and more, and now there is not a single farm remaining in this once wealthy and flourishing district. The primitive forest has again resumed its sway, and the country is in the same state as it was before it was invaded by the Ynca Yupanqui. The exploration of the course of the Purus is one of the chief desiderata in South American geography. An expedition under Don Tiburcio de Landa, governor of Paucartambo, penetrated for some distance down the course of the Tono in about 1778; in about 1824 a Dr. Sevallos was sent on a similar errand; General Miller, in 1835, penetrated to a greater distance than any other explorer before or since; Lieutenant Gibbon, U.S.N., entered the forests in 1852; and I explored part of the course of the Tono in 1853. I have been furnished with a most valuable and interesting paper on the river Purús, by Mr. Richard Spruce, the distinguished South American traveller and botanist, which I have inserted as a note at the end of this chapter.
[463] These are the Chunchos and other wild tribes.
[464] Unfit for translation.