Accordingly, my father and I, and our new Indian servant, prepared to proceed alone. We were still several days’ journey from Cuzco. We slept as before at those most wretched of all inns the Indian tambos, though wherever we stopped we could not help remarking that we were treated with more than usual kindness and respect, which we suspected was owing to our being under the special protection of their chief. That also we were not deserted by our guardians, we had reason to know. On more than one occasion I had observed one or two figures hovering on the brow of some hill, or appearing from behind trees, bushes, or rocks. I perceived once one of them started up close to us. I pointed him out to our attendant, who had likewise seen him. With a significant look he answered, “Fear not them—they will not injure us.”
We encountered but few travellers, and I do not recollect any other occurrence worthy of being narrated daring our journey.
Chapter Five.
Cuzco described—We are made prisoners—Anxiety for those at home.
“Behold Cuzco!” exclaimed our Indian guide, as, throwing himself from his horse, he knelt in adoration of the glorious luminary, whose rays were just then throwing a mantle of gold over the crumbling walls of a mighty fortress, which protected the holy city of his ancestors, the capital of the Incas.
We had just reached the brow of an elevated ridge which forms one side of the fertile and extensive valley in which Cuzco stands, built, like ancient Rome, on a number of hills or slight rises. To the north of the city, on the summit of a lofty eminence, appeared the still dark and frowning fortress of Cyclopean architecture, composed of stones of vast magnitude. When I afterwards visited it, I was surprised to find the extraordinary nicety with which, without any cement, they were joined together; and I cannot tell with what machinery the Peruvians could have raised blocks so enormous to such heights, or how they could have fitted them, shaped as they are in so many various forms, with exactness so remarkable. Had I believed in the existence of giants, I should have supposed that they alone could have lifted such vast masses into the positions they hold. Many of the modern residences of the conquerors stand on the foundations of the ancient buildings of the Peruvians, and from among them we saw towering upwards the spires and towers of the magnificent cathedral, of the convents of Saint Augustine and La Merced, and of a number of other fine churches. We had not long to contemplate this scene of the ruins of the past and of modern splendour, as it was necessary to reach the city before dark; and the setting sun warned us that we had not much time to lose. We were questioned, when we entered, whence we had come; but before we could speak, our Indian attendant stepped forward and gave an answer that satisfied the guard, and we passed on.
The inn we went to was the best in the city, but it could boast of affording us little comfort, though, as we were accustomed to rough fare, that mattered little. At daybreak I was on foot, as I was anxious to see the city; and with our Indian attendant as my guide, I wandered through the larger portion of it before breakfast. We reached a collection of ruined walls, composed of huge masses of rock.
“On this spot,” said the Indian, bending reverentially towards the sun, just then rising over the walls of the city, “stood the great temple where our fathers worshipped the God in whom they trusted; away to the right, where now those convent walls appear, were the residences of the beautiful virgins of the sun; and in these fields of corn and lucerne which surround us were once laid out the magnificent gardens of the temple, filled with menageries of all the animals of our country, with aviaries of birds of many-coloured plumage, with fountains, and trees, and flowers, and ornaments of vast size, of gold and silver and precious stones, many in the form of the shrubs and plants among which they stood, and of workmanship so admirable that they seemed to vie with them in elegance and beauty. But the greedy spoiler came, and behold, stranger, what he made it! Alas! this garden is but an example of the condition to which our unhappy country has been reduced.”