With the World's Great Travellers, Volume 2

by Unknown

The great and elaborate highways, or public roads, which the chroniclers and the historians, following their authority, tell us were constructed by the Incas throughout their vast empire, all radiating north, east, south, and west from the imperial city of Cuzco, if they existed at all in Central and Southern Peru, have disappeared, leaving here and there only short sections or fragments, hardly justifying the extravagant praise that has been bestowed on them. The modern mule-paths, miscalled roads, must necessarily follow nearly, if not exactly, the routes of the Indians under the Empire. The physical conformation of the country is such that communication between puna and puna, and from valley to valley, must always be made by the same passes. All these passes over the mountains are marked by huge piles of stone raised, like the cairns of Scotland and Wales, by the contribution of a single stone from each traveller as an offering to the spirits of the mountains, and as an invocation for their aid in sustaining the fatigues of travel. These great stone heaps still exist, and will remain to the end of time, monuments marking forever the routes of travel in the days of the Incas.

We know, therefore, from these rude monuments very nearly what were the ancient lines of communication. These are also further indicated by remains of the tambos, which occur at intervals all through the country, and oftenest in places remote from supplies, in cold and desert districts, where the traveller stands most in need of food and shelter.

The modern voyager would consider himself supremely fortunate were he to find one in a hundred of these tambos, now in existence; for travelling in Peru is infinitely more difficult and dangerous than it was in the days of the Incas: more difficult, because the facilities are less; more dangerous, because the laws are more lax, and the moral standard of the people lower. The influence of Spain in Peru has been every way deleterious; the civilization of the country was far higher before the Conquest than now.

As I have said, few traces of the Inca roads, such as are described by the early writers, and such as Humboldt saw in Northern Peru, are now to be found in the southern part of that country; and as the modern pathways must follow the ancient lines, I infer that they never existed here, for there is no reason why they should have suffered more from time and the elements in one part of the country than in another.

Between Cuzco and the sweet valley of Yucay there are numerous traces of an ancient road, some sections of which are perfect. These sections coincide in character with the long reaches in the direction of Quito. They consist of a pathway from ten to twelve feet wide, raised slightly in the centre, paved with stones, and the edges defined by larger stones sunk firmly in the ground. Where this road descends from the elevated puna—a sheer descent of almost four thousand feet into the valley of Yucay—it zigzags on a narrow shelf cut in the face of the declivity, and supported here and there, where foothold could not otherwise be obtained, by high retaining-walls of cut stone, looking as perfect and firm as when first built centuries ago.

High mountain-ranges and broad and frigid deserts, swept by fierce, cold winds, are not the sole obstacles to intercommunication in the Altos of Peru, and among those snow-crowned monarchs of the Andes and Cordilleras. There are deep valleys, gorges, and ravines among the mountains, or cut deep in the plains that alternate with them, in which flow swelling rivers or rapid torrents, fed by the melting snows in the dry season, and swollen by the rains in the wet season. They are often unfordable, but still they must somehow be passed by the traveller. A few bridges of stone were constructed by the Spaniards, some after the Conquest, and a few others have been erected by their descendants; but, as a rule, the rivers and mountain-torrents are passed to-day by the aid of devices the same as were resorted to by the Incas, and at points which they selected.

Had the principle of the arch been well understood by the ancient inhabitants, who have left some of the finest stone-cutting and masonry to be found in the world, there is no doubt the interior of Peru would have abounded in bridges rivalling those of Rome in extent and beauty. As it was, occupying a country destitute of timber, they resorted to suspension-bridges, no doubt precisely like those now constructed by their descendants and successors,—bridges formed of cables of braided withes, stretched from bank to bank, and called puentes de mimbres (bridges of withes). Where the banks are high, or where the streams are compressed between steep or precipitous rocks, these cables are anchored to piers of stone. In other places they are approached by inclined causeways, raised to give them the necessary elevation above the water. Three or four cables form the floor and the principal support of the bridge, over which small sticks, sometimes only sections of cane or bamboo, are laid transversely, and fastened to the cables by vines, cords, or thongs of raw hide. Two smaller cables are sometimes stretched on each side as a guard or hand-rail. Over these frail and swaying structures pass men and animals, the latter frequently with their load on their backs.

Each bridge is usually kept up by the municipality of the nearest village; and as it requires renewal every two or three years, the Indians are obliged at stated periods to bring to the spot a certain number of withes of peculiar kinds of tough wood, generally of that variety called ioke, which are braided by experts, and then stretched across the stream or river by the united exertions of the inhabitants. Some of the larger and most important structures of this kind are kept up by the government, and all passengers and merchandise pay a fixed toll. Such is the case with the great bridge over the Apurimac, on the main road from the ancient Guamanga (now Ayacucho) to Cuzco.

The Apurimac is one of the head-waters of the Amazon, a large and rapid stream, flowing in a deep valley, or rather gigantic ravine, shut in by high and precipitous mountains. Throughout its length it is crossed at only a single point, between two enormous cliffs, which rise dizzily on both sides, and from the summits of which the traveller looks down into a dark gulf. At the bottom gleams a white line of water, whence struggles up a dull but heavy roar, giving to the river its name, Apu-rimac signifying, in the Quichua tongue, “the great speaker.” From above, the bridge, looking like a mere thread, is reached by a path which on one side traces a thin, white line on the face of the mountain, and down which the boldest traveller may hesitate to venture. This path, on the other side, at once disappears from a rocky shelf, where there is just room enough to hold the hut of the bridge-keeper, and then runs through a dark tunnel cut in the rock, from which it emerges to trace its line of many a steep and weary zigzag of the face of the mountain. It is usual for the traveller to time his day’s journey so as to reach this bridge in the morning, before the strong wind sets in; for during the greater part of the day it sweeps up the cañon of the Apurimac with great force, and then the bridge sways like a gigantic hammock, and crossing is next to impossible.

It was a memorable incident in my travelling experiences, the crossing of this great swinging bridge of the Apurimac. I shall never forget it, even if it were not associated with a circumstance which, for the time, gave me much uneasiness and pain. The fame of the bridge over the Apurimac is coextensive with Peru, and every one we met who had crossed it was full of frightful reminiscences of his passage: how the frail structure swayed at a dizzy height between gigantic cliffs over a dark abyss, filled with the deep, hoarse roar of the river, and how his eyes grew dim, his heart grew faint, and his feet unsteady as he struggled across it, not daring to cast a look on either hand.