Juan Centeno, deputy in Congress from Cuzco, in strong and earnest terms advocated the propriety of taking the Cuzco route, telling me that ten thousand dollars, appropriated by the government for the survey of the river Amarumayo, now lay in the treasury, waiting the proper time and man to take it up; and that he had no doubt but that I might organize a surveying party and employ this money for that purpose. It was a tempting proposition, but I feared the proverbially dilatory action of the Peruvian government; and what I had seen in the journals of Smyth and Castelnau regarding the efficiency of the co-operation of Peruvian officials, revived school-boy recollections and brought to my mind Virgil's
"Non tali auxilio; nec defensoribus istis."
This route had, moreover, the same objections as that by the Bolivian tributaries; that is, that it would bring me into the Amazon too low down. It is, however, a route of great importance, and well worth investigation. Señor Centeno placed in my hands a pamphlet ("El brillante porvenir de Cuzco") written by the confessor of his family, an Italian Franciscan, Father Julian Bobo de Revello, in which the advantages of this route are strongly and ably argued; and which argument induced the above-mentioned appropriation by the Peruvian government. The Father declares that he himself, in visiting the valleys of Paucartambo, in company with Don José Miguel Medina, prefect of the province, saw from the heights of Acobamba an interminable horizon of woods towards the N. E.; and in the midst of this immense plain, the winding course of the great navigable river "Madre de Dios." He labors to prove that this Madre de Dios is the same river which, under the name of Purus, enters the Amazon a few days' journey above the Barra do Rio Negro.
There is no doubt that there is a great unknown river in these parts. Every expedition made into this country brought back accounts of it, and represented it under various names—such as Amarumayu; Tono; Mano; Inambiri; Guariguari; and Madre de Dios, according to the nomenclature of the various tribes that live upon its banks—as great and containing much water—(Grande y Caudaloso.) It is impossible to say whether this river turns to the N. W. and joins the Ucayali, flows straight N. E., and, as either the Yavari, the Jutay, the Jurua, the Teffe, the Coari, or the Purus, empties into the Amazon; or, flowing east, is tributary to the Beni. It is, of course, likewise impossible to say whether or not it is free from obstructions to navigation; but it is reasonable to suppose, from the fact that the country through which it flows (supposing it to take the general direction of the rivers there and run N. E.) is very far from the Andes on one side, and the Cordillera Geral of Brazil, which form the obstructions to the Madeira, on the other, that it is free from impediments for an immense distance up. This route, however, takes its importance, in a commercial point of view, from the following facts:
It will be recollected that I stated, in the preceding chapter, that the defeated followers of Almagro, hiding themselves in the valleys and dens of the broken country to the eastward of Cuzco, called Carabaya, discovered, in the small streams that dashed down from the neighboring Cordillera, washings of gold of great value—that they built villages, and sent immense treasures to Spain.
In the month of June, 1849, two brothers named Poblete, seeking Peruvian bark in the valleys of Carabaya, discovered grains or pits (pepitas) of gold in the "Gulch" of Challuhuma. They were soon joined by other hunters of bark; the news spread in the province; companies were formed, and petitions made to the board of miners for titles; quarrels arose about priority of discovery and rights, and the paths were broken up, and bridges and rafts for crossing the rivers destroyed, so that, up to the time of my information, little had been done in gathering the gold.
It appears from an official letter of Pablo Pimentel, sub-prefect of the province of Carabaya, in answer to certain questions propounded to him by the Treasury Department, that the mining district is situated in the valleys to the N. and E. of Crucero, the capital of the province, and is reached from that place by the following routes and distances. (It will be as well to premise that Crucero is situated in about latitude 14° south, and longitude 74° west from Greenwich; and that to reach it by the nearest route from the Pacific coast, one should land at Islay; and travelling on horseback through the cities of Arequipa and Puno, he will arrive at Crucero, by easy stages of fifteen miles a day, in about twenty days.) From Crucero the route, running to the eastward, and crossing the Cordillera at probably its highest and most difficult pass, conducts the traveller to the small and abandoned village of Phara, forty-two miles from Crucero.
Here he puts foot to ground, and travels seventy-two miles (four days' journey) to the banks of the great river Guariguari; although his provisions and implements may be carried to this point on mules or asses. He crosses this river on a perilous swinging bridge, called Oroya, and makes his way thirty miles further towards the north without any broken track, save an occasional one made by the bark hunters.
This brings him to Challuhuma.
The valley, or gulch, is from thirty to thirty-six miles long from the top of the mountains, whence descend the three small torrents which form the auriferous stream called Challuhuma, to its entrance into the Guariguari; but it is calculated that only about a fifth part of this can be worked, as the other four parts are hemmed in by precipitous rocks on each side; and "to turn the course of the river at these parts, so as to get at its bed, would be about as easy a task as to remove the Andes."