South America Observations and Impressions. Viscount James Bryce
defence. Sparta was the only considerable Greek city that did not surround herself with walls, because the valour of her people was deemed sufficient protection.
On the top of the hill behind these lines of ramparts there are remains of ancient buildings, though none with such enormous stones. It is hard to make out what these edifices were, for every bit of ground built upon has been ransacked over and over again for hidden treasure. Peru is full of stories about fabulous quantities of Inca gold hidden away to save it from the rapacity of the conquerors, and some of the tales may be true, though hardly any such treasures have been found for more than a century past. But the story that there is a secret passage cut in the rock from the Inca castle at the top of the hill down through it and into Cuzco where it opens to the Temple of the Sun is too much for any but native credulity. These beliefs in long subterranean passages recur everywhere in the world. It was – perhaps still is – believed in Oxford that there is such an one from the church of St. Peter in the city to the ruined nunnery on the river at Godstow (Fair Rosamond's place of confinement) two miles distant. It is believed in Kerwan (in Tunisia) that the most sacred of the wells in that most sacred of all African cities communicates underground with the well Zem Zem in Mecca two thousand miles away and on the other side of the Red Sea. The most persistent treasure hunt carried on by the Peruvians has been that for the golden chain made by the Inca Huayna Capac, which was long enough to be stretched all round the great square of Cuzco, and was thrown into the lake of Urcos lest it should fall into the hands of the Spaniards. Everybody believes it to be still at the bottom of the lake, which is very deep.
Opposite the great walls and about a third of a mile away is a rocky eminence called, from a curious convex mass of extremely hard igneous rock upon it, the Rodadero. The rock is polished smooth and has two projecting ridges on its surface. How much of this peculiar slope down which many generations of Peruvian boys have rejoiced to slide – they were doing so in the days of Garcilaso, soon after the Conquest – is due to nature, how much to art improving nature, has been matter for controversy. But far more curious are the seats carved in the hard rock all over the top and slopes of the hill, the cutting done with exquisite care and finish, the angles perfectly sharp, the flat parts perfectly smooth. The most remarkable is a set of thirteen seats, one in the centre and highest, nine others declining from it on the left and three on the right. This is called the Seat of the Inca, but there is no record, nor any authentic tradition, of the purpose for which, or the persons by whom, it was constructed, nor of the purpose of the many other seats, and small staircases, and niches, and basins similarly chiselled out of the rock which are scattered here and there all round. In one place two great and finely cut blocks look like fragments of a doorway shattered by an earthquake, and not far off there are singular passages hewn through the rock, and now in parts closed, which have the appearance of a sort of labyrinth. Looking at the Inca's Seat, one's first conjecture would be that it was a bench for judges to sit upon. Other seats look more like shrines meant for images; but no fragments of images are found. All these strange cuttings and polishings seem so inexplicable that one would conjecture the mere caprice of a whimsical ruler, but for the immense pains that must have been taken in doing such perfect work in such hard material. No Spanish writer of Conquest days gives us any light. It is a riddle, the key to which is lost, and lost irrecoverably, because there are no inscriptions and no traditions.
Reverting to the fortress of Sacsahuaman, there is a current view that it was erected as an outwork to defend Cuzco from the attacks of the fierce tribes of the eastern and northern valleys whose raids the Incas frequently had to repel. It seems, however, superfluously huge as a defence against such enemies, not to add that they could easily have descended upon Cuzco from the other sides of the two ravines between which the fortress stands. More probably, therefore Sacsahuaman is a very ancient stronghold, probably much older than Cuzco, or at any rate than Cuzco's greatness. It may have been the earliest seat of some very early king or dynasty, and have been, in the flourishing days of the Inca monarchy, a citadel where the reigning sovereign kept his treasures and to which he could retire for safety in case of need.
I am not attempting to describe all the relics of antiquity that are to be seen in or near Cuzco. There are striking ruins not far off, such as those at Ollantaytambo and Pisac, and lower down the Vilcamayu Valley at Machu Picchu and Rosas Pata, as well as others still more distant in the high country between here and Lima.24 But what is true at Cuzco is true everywhere. The only ruins are of walls and gates of fortresses and palaces; in a few spots of temples, also. In these there are evidences of enormous labour and considerable mechanical skill, but only slight evidences of artistic talent. The walls, perfectly cut and polished, have seldom the smallest ornament, except niches. There are no domes, for the art of vaulting was unknown, and hardly ever columns. So far as we can tell, the great Sun Temple at Cuzco consisted only of lofty walls enclosing courts, with no decoration but plates of gold attached to the walls. True it is that the Spaniards destroyed all the religious and many of the secular edifices, yet if there had been temples covered with ornaments like those found in Southern Mexico and Central America, some traces must surely have remained.
Notwithstanding this want of decorative art, the Cuzco ruins leave upon the beholder a strong impression, the impression of immense energy and will in those who planned these works, of patient and highly trained labour in those who executed them. Only despotic rulers commanding like the Egyptian kings a host of obedient subjects, could have reared such a structure as the fortress of Sacsahuaman. The race that could erect such buildings and gather such treasures as the Temple of the Sun possessed, and could conquer and rule a dominion of fifty days' journey from north to south, must have been a strong and in its way a gifted race. It is hard to believe that it was the ancestor of those stolid and downtrodden Indians whom one sees to-day, peddling their rude wares in the market place of Cuzco. It is their old imperial town, but there is scarcely one among them above the rank of a labourer; and during the last three centuries few indeed have emerged from the abject condition to which the Conquest reduced them.
The sudden fall of a whole race is an event so rare in history that one seeks for explanations. It may be that not only the royal Inca family, but nearly the whole ruling class was destroyed in war, leaving only the peasants who had already been serfs under their native sovereigns. But one is disposed to believe that the tremendous catastrophe which befell them in the destruction at once of their dynasty, their empire, and their religion by fierce conquerors, incomparably superior in energy and knowledge, completely broke not only the spirit of the nation, but the self-respect of the individuals who composed it. They were already a docile and submissive people, and now under a new tyranny, far harsher than that of rulers of their own blood, they sank into hopeless apathy, and ceased even to remember what their forefathers had been. The intensity of their devotion to their sovereign and their deity made them helpless when both were overthrown, leaving them nothing to turn to, nothing to strive for. The Conquistadores were wise in their hateful way, when they put forth the resources of cruelty to outrage the feelings of the people and stamp terror in their hearts. One cannot stand in the great Plaza of Cuzco without recalling the scene of A.D. 1571, when one of the last of the Inca line, an innocent youth, seized and accused of rebellion by the Spanish viceroy Francisco de Toledo, was executed in the presence of a vast Indian crowd that filled it. When the executioner raised the sword of death, there rose such a wail of horror that he paused, and the leading Spanish churchmen hastened to the viceroy and begged him for mercy. Determined to make an example, Toledo was inexorable. The young Inca, Tupac Amaru, was beheaded and his head stuck on a pike, and placed beside the scaffold. At midnight a Spaniard, looking out of a window that commanded the Plaza was amazed to see it again filled with Indians, all silent and motionless, kneeling in veneration before the head of the last representative of the sacred line.
More than two hundred years later another more remote scion of the Incas, José Gabriel Condorcanqui, who had taken the same name of Tupac Amaru, – I have already referred to him on p. 92, – had been stirred to indignation by what he saw of the Indian population suffering from the exactions as well of the Spanish landowners who held them in serfdom as of the rapacious Spanish officials. After many vain complaints, he headed a movement to obtain redress by force, not rejecting the authority of the Spanish Crown, but trying to rouse the Indians by appeals to the faint memories of Inca greatness. The hope of relief from their miseries drew thousands of
Such as that at Choqquequirau described by my friend Professor Bingham in his book entitled