Chapter II

A still more extensive railroad and one which gives the traveler a more varied view of the Andes, is that ascending from the port city of Mollendo, near the Chilean frontier. This line is the outlet for much of the commerce of Bolivia, and was built by the same gifted Yankee who fathered the Oroya road. Leaving Mollendo, the train speeds over the desert for a few miles and then begins its steady climb upward. All day it labors along the tortuous ascent through echoing walls of rock, bare, repellent, and awe-inspiring in their cold majesty. Suddenly, around a jagged precipice, the passengers look down upon a lovely valley—an oasis of green. In its midst lies the quaint, picturesque old city of Arequipa, which Pizarro, who founded it, was wont to call _la villa hermosa_—the city beautiful. Seen from the heights, it somewhat resembles La Paz, a group of low, white and blue walled, red roofed buildings, arranged in squares, with a large plaza in the center, the general flatness relieved by many church spires, and its spacious patios a mass of foliage and trees.

Thus far the penetration of the railroad into this quiet retreat has produced but little change in its old-world aspect. It has long been famous for its delightful climate and location, and as Mozans truly says of it, “If it is not the most beautiful place in South America, as its admirers claim, it is certainly the most restful. It is such a place as one would like to retire to after the stress and storms of a busy career, to pass one’s days in quiet and a congenial environment. The people who retain all the light-heartedness and cordiality and culture of old Spain, are worthy denizens of their charming city, and the better one knows them, the more he admires and loves them.”

Overlooking the city are the buildings of a branch of the Harvard Observatory. It is said that, because of the remarkable clearness of the atmosphere and the great number of cloudless nights, this observatory is probably more favorably located than any other in the world, and that, as a consequence, the astronomers stationed there have achieved results of the greatest value to science, especially in photographing the southern skies. Also they are doing valuable work in measuring the heights of the Andean peaks and charting the general topography, as well as in keeping open house to their fellow-countrymen who hunger for the sound of their native tongue after many weeks of effort to comprehend the idioms of the Castilian speech and the patois of the ever-present _cholo_. The verandas and trim green lawns and tennis courts are a reminder of Cambridge, indeed.

Above the observatory, snow-capped Misti rises sheer from the valley some 21,000 feet, like a perfect cone. Its appearance is so distinct, so impressive in its constancy and brooding grandeur, that it possesses a personality almost human. One feels impelled to address it with the prefix “_Señor_,” after the manner of the Japanese with their Fuji-san, which, by the way, greatly resembles Misti in shape and location.

Continuing upward through the mountain desert, the Mollendo road ascends to a height of 14,666 feet in the short latitudinal distance of less than two hundred miles, and across the divide to Juliaca, a town near the northern shore of Lake Titicaca, where it separates, one branch extending south to Puno, the center of the gold mining district, thence around the great lake to La Paz, the other extending northwest for about two hundred miles, down the sloping plateau to the valley of Cuzco, at the head of which is the ancient imperial capital of the Incas. Plantations and pastures begin to appear as the train descends from the high ridges into the plain, and, great as is the altitude even here, on an island in this very lake, according to tradition, the remarkable native dynasty had its birth. The legend, as Mozans quotes it from the works of Garcilaso de la Vega, the historian of the conquest, and who was himself, through his mother, a descendant of the royal Inca line, is that—

“Our Father, the Sun, seeing the human race in the condition I
have described: living like wild beasts, without religion or
government, or town or houses, without cultivating the land or
clothing their bodies, for they knew not how to weave cotton or
wool to make clothes; living in caves or clefts in the rocks, or
in caverns under the ground; eating the herbs of the field and
roots and fruit, like wild animals, and also human flesh—had
compassion on them and sent down from heaven to the earth a son
and a daughter to instruct them in the knowledge of our Father,
the Sun, that they might adore him and adopt him as their God,
also to give them precepts and laws by which to live as
reasonable and civilized men and to teach them to live in houses
and towns, to cultivate maize and other crops, to breed flocks,
to use the fruits of the earth like rational beings instead of
living like wild beasts. With these commands and intentions, our
Father, the Sun, placed his two children in the Lake of
Titicaca, which is eighty leagues from here” (Cuzco); “and he
said to them that they might go where they pleased, and that, at
every place where they stopped to eat or sleep, they were to
thrust a scepter of gold into the ground, which was half a yard
long and two fingers in thickness. He gave them this staff as a
sign and token that in the place where, by one blow on the
earth, it should sink down and disappear, there it was the
desire of our Father, the Sun, that they should remain and
establish their court.”

In this region the table-land is of vast expanse, and in many respects the panorama is more impressive even than that in the vicinity of Aconcagua. In the center is the enormous sheet of water, turquoise blue in the sunlight, stretching for a hundred and ten miles off to the south, with an average width of thirty miles and an average depth of a hundred fathoms, and, 12,500 feet high as it is, bordered on either side by superb ranges towering many thousands of feet higher, their clean-cut peaks glittering with mantles of snow and ice. Around the shore and on the islands of Titicaca and Koati are picturesque towns and small clusters of adobe houses surrounded by hills, their sides terraced and covered with farms, the water fringed with fields of reeds, and feeding in them countless birds and herds of cattle. It is no wonder that these “Children of the Sun” should have worshiped as their God and Goddess the great luminous orbs in a region where, thanks to the unwonted splendor of the moon and stars, which enable one to distinguish all the salient features of lake and Cordillera with the greatest ease, the nights, as Mozans says, are glorious beyond words; but where, “however fair the views presented to the enraptured gaze in the subdued light of the moon and her attendant handmaidens, no one can be insensible to the gorgeous vistas that burst upon the vision during the daytime.” It is then, he continues—

“Especially at the hours of dawn and twilight that the
snow-crested range of the lofty Cordillera Real is visible in
all its transcendent beauty and majesty. For then, as if by
magic, various colored fires seem to blaze from the immense
glaciers and snow fields and to convert the sparkling expanse
into glowing rubies, sapphires, and emeralds, while the lofty
peaks of the Sorata range are transformed into gleaming
pinnacles of burnished gold. Then in fullest perfection and
palpable form is realized that vision of mountain loveliness,
that crowning splendor of earth and sky, set forth in Ruskin’s
noble lines: ‘Wait yet for one hour, until the east again
becomes purple and the heaving mountains, rolling against it in
the darkness like waves of a wild sea, are drowned one by one in
the glory of its burning. Watch the white glaciers blaze in
their winding paths about the mountains, like mighty serpents
with scales of fire; watch the columnar peaks of solitary snow,
kindling downwards, chasm by chasm, each in itself a new
morning—their long avalanches cast down in keen streams brighter
than the lightning, sending each its tribute of driven snow,
like altar-smoke, up to the heaven, the rose-light of their
silent domes flushing that heaven about them and above them,
piercing with purer light through its purple lines of lifted
cloud, casting a new glory on every wreath as it passes by,
until the whole heaven, one scarlet canopy, is interwoven with a
roof of waving flame, and tossing, vault beyond vault, as with
the drifted wings of many companies of angels.’”

The railroad has been built along the very route that the first Inca and his sister-wife are said to have chosen when they started out to found their capital. Passing between two giant peaks, it descends the gradually sloping two-hundred-mile-long plateau which became the most populous section of the great empire, as it is still of modern Peru. On either side are torrential rivers that rush down through the deep defiles of the mountains to the Amazon. Every foot of the region is associated with legendary and historic events; scattered about everywhere, from the islands of Titicaca on, are wonderful ruins—ruins of towns, bridges, fortresses, temples, burial towers, some Incaic, some thought to be as old as the pyramids of Egypt. There is a lake in which, at the coming of the Spaniards, the Indians are said to have thrown the colossal gold chain that was forged at the birth of Huascar, a chain so heavy, according to the chroniclers, that it was all that two hundred men could do to carry it.

The climate is delightful. All along the road is a succession of wild, gorgeous scenery, quaint towns and villages and big haciendas, with fields green with growing crops and herds of cattle and alpaca ranging about, often tended by pretty copper-colored _chola_ (mixed breed) or Indian girls, as picturesquely dressed as those of La Paz, only here in Peru, instead of the great number of voluminous many-colored skirts the Bolivian women wear—sometimes as many as twelve or fifteen, which makes them appear as though they had on the hoops once worn by our grandmothers—they wear a single, short woolen skirt over the usual cotton ones, and, instead of the peculiar headdress of the Aymaras, broad-brimmed, gaily beribboned hats, though, like the Aymaras, they wear brilliantly colored mantles, fastened around the shoulders by a pin with a spoon-shaped head (which they also use as a spoon), and the men, like the Bolivian mountaineers, wear ponchos that vie with the mantles of the women in color. Ponchos and mantles like those worn to-day, but many centuries old, have been found in the tombs, so ancient is the fashion.

It is in this country between La Paz and Cuzco that the llama is seen in greatest numbers—that remarkable animal which Mozans aptly describes as a creature with the legs of a deer, the body of a sheep, and the head and neck of a camel. They are larger than sheep, however, and far more docile and ornamental than the ugly, ungainly camel. Their coats are of several shades: white, brown, black or parti-colored; their wool is long and thick, and they are noted for their beautiful big, wistfully inquiring eyes. From time immemorial the natives had used them as burden-bearers, and the Spaniards, when they came, found them surer-footed and more enduring than mules or burros, proof against cold and acclimated in the rarefied atmosphere of the high table-lands, and able to go as long as a camel without food and water, and to maintain themselves by grazing along the waysides in parts of the country in which no other animal could live. It was on their backs that all the material that entered into the construction of the steamers on Lake Titicaca was hauled, and most of the mining machinery, and the caravans still compete with the railroads in carrying ores and coca to the coast and bringing back supplies for the mountain towns.

In these days only the males are used for such purposes. It is said of them that when they are loaded with more than they feel that they can comfortably carry (about a hundred pounds), they lie right down in their tracks and refuse to budge for all the cajoling or in spite of the kicks and curses their tenders can bestow. The females are kept in pasture for breeding purposes and for their wool and milk, and in that region rank with cattle as a source of food supply, for their flesh resembles mutton and is quite as palatable and good to eat. It is much used in the native dish called _chupe_, a sort of thick soup which is made of the peculiar mountain potatoes grown in those parts, first frozen and dried, and then put into a pot and boiled with any other vegetables at hand and fragments of meat and fish, and seasoned with salt and red pepper. This, to the people of the mountains, is what rice is to the Chinese and macaroni to the Italians. Sometimes it is the only fare the traveler can get at the little _tambos_ or inns remote from the railroad; but even so, when properly prepared, as it usually is, with plenty of nourishing ingredients, it leaves little to be desired after a hard day’s climb.

The valley of Cuzco—a pocketlike depression about ten miles long and varying in width from two to three miles, covered with fields of barley and maize, dotted with many attractive-looking gardens and country mansions of the old Spanish colonial type, and hedged in on either side by ranges of mountains towering high above—is at the northwestern extremity of the plateau. The city, which is at the head of the valley, is a little more than a mile and a half in breadth, from the foot of the mountain range on the east to that of the range on the west, and about a mile in length. To the north, the famous hill of Sacsahuaman rises abruptly over it and is separated from the mountains on either side by deep ravines, through one of which flows the little river Huatanay and through the other the Rodadero. The Huatanay tumbles noisily past the moss-grown walls of an old convent, under the houses forming the west side of the great square, thence through the center of a broad street, where it is confined between banks faced with masonry and crossed by numerous bridges, and on beyond until it unites with the Rodadero, which separates the city from the suburb of San Blas.

The most important section of the ancient city was built between the two little rivers, with the great square in the center, and this site, said to have been chosen for it by the first Inca and his sister-wife, is declared by many to be the most wildly, majestically beautiful of all the beautiful mountain city sites in South America—even Santiago, La Paz, Arequipa, Cajamarca, Quito, Bogotá, and Caracas. Respecting the ancient city itself, Prescott tells us that the Spaniards were astonished “by the beauty of its edifices, the length and regularity of its streets, and the good order and appearance of comfort, even luxury, visible in its numerous population. It far surpassed all they had seen in the New World.... It” (the great square), he continues, “was surrounded by low piles of buildings, among which were several palaces of the Incas. One of these, erected by Huayana Capac, was surmounted by a tower, while the ground floor was occupied by one or more immense halls, like those described in Cajamarca, where the Peruvian nobles held their _fêtes_ in stormy weather. The population of the city,” he goes on—

“Is computed by one of the conquerors at two hundred thousand
inhabitants and that of the suburbs at as many more. This
account is not confirmed, as far as I have seen, by any other
writer. But, however it may be exaggerated, it is certain that
Cuzco was the metropolis of a great empire, the residence of the
court and the chief nobility, frequented by the most skillful
mechanics and artisans of every description, who found a demand
for their ingenuity in the royal precincts, while the place was
garrisoned by a numerous soldiery, and was the resort, finally,
of emigrants from the most distant provinces. The quarters
whence this motley population came were indicated by their
peculiar dress, and especially their head-gear, so rarely found
at all on the American Indian, which, with its variegated
colors, gave a picturesque effect to the groups and masses in
the streets....

“The edifices of the better sort—and they were very
numerous—were of stone, or faced with stone. Among the principal
were the royal residences, as each sovereign built a new palace
for himself, covering, though low, a large extent of ground. The
walls were stained or painted with gaudy tints, and the gates,
we are assured, were sometimes of colored marble. ‘In the
delicacy of the stonework,’ says another of the conquerors, ‘the
natives far excelled the Spaniards, though the roofs of their
dwellings, instead of tiles, were only of thatch, but put
together with the nicest art.’ The sunny climate of Cuzco did
not require a very substantial material for defense against the
weather.... The streets were long and narrow. They were arranged
with perfect regularity, crossing one another at right angles;
from the great square diverged four principal streets connecting
with the highroads of the empire. The square itself, and many
parts of the city, were paved with fine pebble. Through the
heart of the capital ran a river of pure water, if it might not
be rather termed a canal, the banks or sides of which, for a
distance of twenty leagues, were faced with stone. Across this
stream, bridges, constructed of similar broad flags, were thrown
at intervals, so as to afford an easy communication between the
different quarters.

“The most sumptuous edifice in Cuzco in the times of the Incas
was undoubtedly the great temple dedicated to the sun, which,
studded with gold plates, as already noticed, was surrounded by
convents and dormitories for the priests, with their gardens and
broad parterres sparkling with gold. The exterior ornaments had
been already removed by the conquerors—all but the frieze of
gold, which, imbedded in the stones, still encircled the
principal building.... The fortress was raised to a height rare
in Peruvian architecture, and from the summit of the tower the
eye of the spectator ranged over a magnificent prospect, in
which the wild features of the mountain scenery—rocks, woods,
and waterfalls—were mingled with the rich verdure of the valley
and the shining city filling up the foreground, all blended in
sweet harmony under the deep azure of a tropical sky.”

The ruins of the palace of the first Inca, on the hill above the city, and those of the immense fortress on the summit—which is admitted by all to have been constructed with a degree of skill equaled nowhere else in the world prior to the use of artillery—are thus described by Sir Clements R. Markham:

“On a terrace, built of stones of every conceivable size and
shape, fitting exactly one into the other, eighty-four paces
long and eight feet high, is a wall with eight recesses,
resembling those of the Inca palace at Lima-tambo, and, in the
center of the lower wall, a mermaid or siren, much defaced by
time, is carved in relief on a square slab. In one of the
recesses a steep stone staircase leads up to a field of lucerne,
on a level with the upper part of the wall, which is twelve feet
high, and this forms a second terrace. On either side of the
field are ruins of the same character, traces of a very
extensive building or range of buildings. They consist of a
thick stone wall, sixteen paces long and ten feet six inches
wide, containing a door and windows. The masonry is most
perfect. The stones are cut in parallelograms, all of equal
height but varying in length, with corners so sharp and fine
that they appear as if they had just been cut—and without any
kind of cement, fitting so exactly that the finest needle could
not be introduced between them. The doorposts, of ample height,
support a stone lintel seven feet ten inches in length, while
another stone, six feet long, forms the foot.... Behind these
remains are three terraces, built in the rougher style of the
masonry used in the first walls and planted in alders and fruit
trees, ... where he” (the first Inca, Manco Capac) “is said to
have chosen the site of his residence, the more readily to
overlook the building of his city and the labors of his
disciples....

“On the east end of Sacsahuaman, crowning a steep cliff
immediately above the palace of Manco Capac, there are three
terraces, one above the other, built of a light-colored stone.
The first wall, fourteen feet high, extends in a semicircular
form around the hill for one hundred and eighty paces, and
between the first and second terraces there is a space eight
feet wide. The second wall is twelve feet high and the third is
ninety paces around its whole extent.... This was the citadel of
the fortress, and in its palmy days was crowned by three towers
connected by subterranean passages, now quite demolished....
From the citadel to its eastern extremity the length of the
table-land of Sacsahuaman is three hundred and fifty-three paces
and its breadth in the broadest part one hundred and thirty
paces. On the south side the position is so strong and
impregnable that it required no artificial defense. The position
is defended on part of its north side by a steep ravine through
which flows the river Rodadero and which extends for one hundred
and seventy-four paces from the citadel in a westerly direction.
Here, therefore, the position required only a single breastwork,
which is still in a good state of preservation; but from this
point to the western extremity of the table-land, a distance of
four hundred paces, nature has left it entirely undefended, a
small plain extending in front of it to the rocky heights of the
Rodadero.

“From this point, therefore, the Incas constructed a cyclopean
line of fortifications, a work which fills the mind with
astonishment at the grandeur of the conception and the perfect
manner of its execution. It consists of three walls, the first
averaging a height of eighteen feet, the second of sixteen and
the third of fourteen, the first terrace being ten feet broad
and the second eight. The walls are built with salient and
retiring angles, twenty-one in number and corresponding with
each other in each wall, so that no one point could be attacked
without being commanded by others.... But the most marvelous
part of this fortification is the huge masses of rock of which
it is constructed (one of them being sixteen feet in height and
several more varying from ten to twelve feet), yet made to fit
exactly one into the other and forming a piece of masonry almost
unparalleled in solidity, beauty, and peculiarity of its
construction in any other part of the world. The immense masses
at Stonehenge, the great block in the tomb of Agamemnon at
Argos, and those in the cyclopean walls of Volterra and
Agrigentum are wonderful monuments of the perseverance and
knowledge of the people who raised them, but they fall
immeasurably short in beauty of execution of the fortress of
Cuzco.”

The railroad and electric lights and the telegraph and telephone have come to Cuzco now, but in other respects the city is not much modernized. It is still distinctly reminiscent of the royal Inca régime, and even more of the régime of the Spanish viceroys. For many years after the conquest it was superior in importance to Lima. Notaries were required under severe penalties, Mozans says, “to write at the head of all public documents, ‘_En la gran ciudad del Cuzco, cabeza de estos reinos y provincias del Perú en las Indias_’—In the great city of Cuzco, head of these kingdoms and provinces of Peru in the Indies. Even so late as the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,” he continues, “it was, next to Lima, the city of the greatest social importance in the viceroyalty.” And so now, although there are the same long vistas of low, massive buildings through the narrow streets, the view from the hill presents a panorama of red-tiled roofs instead of thatches, of many tall church towers, and of a great square divided into three.

On the first stories of the old Indian homes Spanish superstructures have been built; on the foundation walls of the ancient temple of Voricancha, the largest and richest of the sanctuaries devoted to the worship of the Sun, has been erected the convent of Santo Domingo; the devotees in the convent of Santa Catalina occupy cells that were once used by the Virgins of the Sun; walls that were retained in the building of the Church of San Lazaro are ornamented with bodies of birds having women’s heads that were carved by the bronze chisels of the artisans of the Incas. The grand old renaissance cathedral, which, with its massive stone walls and pillars and vaulted roof, cost so much to build that one of the viceroys said it would have been cheaper to build it of silver, is one of the most imposing specimens of church architecture in America; the pulpit in San Blas is famed as one of the most beautiful in the world, and many of the interiors and cloisters, particularly of La Merced, where the remains of Almagro and two of Pizarro’s brothers lie, and the patio of the university, are perfectly superb.

Of course, like La Paz, Quito, Bogotá and many of the other old mountain cities, which until very recently were isolated so far as the outside world was concerned because of their inaccessible locations, Cuzco is still behind the times in sanitary arrangements. Since there is surface drainage, there are odors, but one need have little fear of any ill effects in such a climate as theirs. Thanks to it, the cities are as healthful as most; and to the archæologist and the lover of art and the beauties of nature in her sublimest aspect, there is no more fascinating city in South America than Cuzco.

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