[208] There are several versions of the native tradition relating to this monolith, which is called piedra cansada, or the “tired stone”, in Quichua, saycusca rumi. The Spanish editor gives the least known and most curious of these versions, which he found in the manuscript history of the Yncas by Padre Morúa. He says that an Ynca of the blood royal, named Urco or Urcon, a great engineer and architect, was the official who directed the moving of the tired stone from the quarry, and that on reaching this spot where it stopped, the Indians who were dragging it, killed him. This Urcon designed and traced out the fortress of Cuzco. He also conceived and carried out the idea of transporting from Quito the best soil for potatoes, with the object of raising them in it for the sovereign’s table. With this soil he made the hill called Allpa Suntu, to the east of the fortress.
[209] The Spanish editor here has the following note. He says that the fault did not lie with the Spaniards, but in the very natural want of archæological knowledge in Cieza himself, and in his extreme credulity, believing all the stories of the Orejones and descendants of the Yncas, for whom everything that was worthy of notice in the country was the exclusive work of those sovereigns. It is now a generally received opinion that the very ancient cyclopean work at Cuzco was due to a people who lived long before Ynca Yupanqui, and even before Manco Ccapac, if it be true that the latter appeared in the beginning of the eleventh century. Moreover, the Yncas themselves destroyed some, and left others, without completing what had been begun by their predecessors. Not all the ruins in Peru were due to Spanish vandalism. On the contrary, the Viceroy Don Francisco de Toledo and others, far from contributing to the destruction of the fortress of Cuzco, took measures to preserve it, and, on more than one occasion, prevented the stones from being used for modern buildings. This was especially the case in the year 1577, when the Jesuits of Cuzco applied for leave to take stones from the fortress for their monastery and church, and were refused.
[210] The Viceroy Don Andres Hurtado de Mendoza, Marquis of Cañete, ordered the fortress at Huarcu (valley of Cañete on the coast) to be repaired and garrisoned, a few years after this was written by Cieza de Leon. It is called the fortress of Hervay, and there are still considerable remains of it at the mouth of the Cañete river, overlooking the Pacific.
[211] See chapter xlviii of the First Part.
[212] Worship.
[213] The reign of this Ynca Yupanqui appears to include two reigns according to Garcilasso de la Vega. Cieza de Leon makes one generation where Garcilasso makes two, namely Pachacutec and Ynca Yupanqui. Pachacutec means “he who changes the world”, and Garcilasso says that the name should have been given to Viracocha, the father, who changed the course of events by his victory over the Chancas, but that it was given to his son. Cieza de Leon attributes the victory over the Chancas to this very son, whom he calls Yupanqui, and to whom the surname Pachacutec rightly belongs. It seems likely, therefore, that Cieza’s version of the genealogy is the more correct of the two.
Garcilasso, however, makes two long reigns where Cieza has only one. To Pachacutec he attributes the conquest of the Huancas, Caxamarca, and the coast valleys, and he records several of his laws and wise sayings (ii, p. 208). To Yupanqui he assigns the expedition into the eastern forests, and the conquest of Chile.
[214] See chapter cii of the First Part.
[215] The ruins are 18 leagues west of the present town of Huanuco, in the province of Huamalies, 12,156 feet above the sea. They are of great extent, covering more than half a mile in length. They show work of the same character as the palaces at Cuzco. The work includes a reservoir 250 feet long by 130, a bath of cut stone, and a stone aqueduct. A doorway of cut stone, with a long rectangular room on each side, opens to another at a distance of 240 feet, and further on there is another doorway. Squier says,—“The perspective through this series of portals is the finest to be found in the ancient works of Peru.” Above the second portal are rudely-cut animal figures. There are many other ruined buildings, and what is called the castle, 180 feet long by 80, with a fine cut-stone wall 13 feet high. An inclined plane leads up to the terre-plein, which is entered by two portals.
[216] Chapter xliv.