A Journey In Time Peruvian Pageant

123687

PERUVIAN PAGEANT

Thr ItHlrK

A JOURNEY IN TIME

PERUVIAN

KAMT

By BLAIR HILES

Author of Merit Paluiu, Day of Immense Suit, etc,

Pbotqgnpbic fllustratfoitf ty Rokrt Niks, Jr,

PUBLISHERS

THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY

YORK

Affectionately
dedicated

to
ROMA LVMAH NILES

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I PASSENGER BY Am 15

II Now, m LIMA 46

HI VAST CEMETERY 60

IV MUMMY NUMBER 94 71

V PARACAS 88

VI CONQUEST 94

VII INTO THE HIGH ANDES: 120

VIII Draco REMEMBERS 129

IX TODAY IK THE SIERRA 161

X THE DIARY OF SERGEANT M0CABU*u 199

XI THE VICEROY'S MISTRESS 215

XII GALLANT MRS, PROCTOR 238

XIII VICTORY 280

XIV THE UNFINISHED CENTURY 297
INDEX 303

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
The lonely Puna Frontispiece

3TACIHO FA6*

White guano islands rise out of the sea 20

The crumbling walls of Chan-Chan 28

The Pacific breaks at the foot of barren cliffs 36

A portrait vase 44

The PLr/a San Martin, Lima 68

A patio in Lima 76

El Misti 84

In the Sierra 92

A street in Cuzco 116
A Dominican monk admires the Inca stone-work of the

Temple of the Sun in Cuzco 124

A descendant of the Incas 132

Llamas at the walls of Sacsahuamin 140

A man of the Sierra 148

A redoubt of the fortress of Saaahuamin 156

Pisac 164

Woman of Pisac 172

She wears her hair in the style of Chinchcros 196

A llama and his Indian 204

Prc-lnca stone-work at Olbntaytambo 212

The gorge of the Urubamba 220

Terraced streets in the city of Machu Picchu 228

The tower at Machu Picchu 236

The lofty sundial at Machu Picchu 244

The peak above Machu Picchu 252

"La PemchoU" 260

A balsa on Lake TJticaca 268

Wings over Peru 280

Sketch Map at Peru 300

PREFACE

THIS is the very personal story of a journey in time*

I was at work on a novel of sixteenth-century Peru, and I wanted
to know in the flesh those places identified with my hero and my
heroine. The novel Day of Immense Sun covered the ten years
immediately preceding the Spanish Conquest, and ended on the
15th of November, 1533, with Pizarro marching victorious into
Cuzco,

But this expedition in time proved so fascinating, so rich in the
material of human living, that I found it impossible to limit it
to the period of the novel And so I went back to the beginning,
and traveled through the centuries in Peru down to the present
day.

Peruvian Pageant is the story of that experience- It has grown
out of an impulse to share with the reader what is to me the
greatest of all pleasures the fusing of a personal journey with
the excitement of historical research in my chosen field of Spanish-
America*

And in the telling of the tale I have not said that this or that
is important ami must be included: I have simply let memory
wander at will through the centuries, selecting for me the events
and emotions and personalities which stand out above all others*

Along the way there was everywhere kindness, for which I
would express appreciation. And for the illustrations I am grate-
ful to my husband, Robert Niles Jr., who is the Roberto of the
story*

But there could have been no journey had there not txsen men
to believe sufficiently in its object to make it possible* Gratitude
for the joy of this experience in Peru goc$ therefore to: William
Van Dusen, John Douglas MacGregor, Captain E, V* Ricken-
backer, Ambassador Fred Morris Dearing, Elmer J. Faucett, and
L & BiaiKfeiL

Bum Niua
New York City,
Jftitutfjr, 1937*

PERUVIAN PAGEANT

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PASSENGER BY AIR

THEJUE is nothing leisurely about an airport; everything happens
quickly; planes alight, other planes fly away, welcoming and ar-
riving crowds become all at once crowds of farewell and de-
parture*

The faces of those who had come to see us off were suddenly
detached from the group impersonality, and moved toward us;
while briefly the monster phosphorescent bug waited. There was
a fleeting confusion of handshakes and embraces; and a voice
saying, I brought you this; it weighs hardly anything/* . . *

Then, without quite knowing how we got there, Roberto and
I were on board the plane; Roberto going with me as far
as Miami where he had a business matter to attend to. For an
instant, through the plane windows, there were the faces of friend-
ship and affection, before we taxied down the field, and the plane
was off in the night

All so quickly; no prolonged leave-taking, no wandering about
the decks of a boat, no inspection of cabins and saloons, no or-
chestra playing, no warning beating of a gong to order visitors
ashore, no tedious maneuvering away from a dock, no last-minute
calls from ship to land, no slow pulling out, no lingering waving.
You've gone so quickly that you exclaim to yourself in surprise,
"Why, I've gone!** And the thought is scarcely formulated bo-
fore the plane has climbed high and the airport has vanished*

We were riding with the moon; a full moon which polished
the rilvcr of our wings* Very soon I got the sense later so
familiar of looking down into the sky instead of at the earth*
Trenton, Philadelphia, Wilmington, Baltimore appeared as great
glittering constellations in a dark night, with scattered here and

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there between them, the clustered lights of lesser constellations;
and stretching through the darkness a lane of beacons, each an
isolated planet in my delusion of a reversed heaven and earth.

"Why, I've gone!" From time to time, incredulous, I repeated
this to myself. "I've gone!" I had wanted this so long; worked
so hard to bring it true that when at last it happened I couldn't
believe in it.

Then, all at once, the distant goal of Peru seemed so immediate
that even the Eastern Air-liner, flying between New York and
Miami, appeared to me to share my sense of Peru as the destination,
for as the plane headed south I felt that it flew at the steady speed
of migration, its nose pointed to Peru. . . .

Miami in the morning. . . . Yes, but I was really flying back
into the sixteenth century, back to the Inca Empire and the
Spanish Conquest.

Miami . . . Miami was only incidental. Why, I even carried in
my bag a letter of introduction in Latin; a talisman which would
surely admit me to the century, for it was addressed to the Prior
of the Monastery of Santo Domingo, that Order to which the
first Catholic priest ever to enter Peru had belonged.

"Admodum Revcrendc Pater,

Sdutem in Domino ct Salutationem

in S. P. N Dominico: Blair Niles,
domina Americana Statuum
Facderatorum ct scriptor insignis,
regalem civitatem Uwiae visitat. . . "

This letter asking for me the co-operation of the Prior of the
Order in Lima seemed almost a letter to the priest Valverde of
four hundred years ago. And when Valverde had read it, of
course he would present me to Francisco Pizzaro!

The American Clipper took off from Miami early on the fol-
lowing morning. Roberto and I breakfasted at the airport, while
a loud-speaker shouted orders and instructions:

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A JOURNEY IN TIME

Will those who have baggage in the check-room call for the
same immediately ? Will Mr. or Mrs. This or That report at the
desk with their passports? There is a telephone message for
Miss Somebody Else.

And finally: Passengers for Jamaica, Barranquilla and the Canal
Zone get aboard the Clipperl . . .

Then, all at once, I have left Roberto and am boarding the
Clipper. So it is true that the thing called Business won't let him
go; not now; later, perhaps, but not now. Of course my mind had
known this for some weeks but my heart wouldn't believe it.
Now through the window of the Clipper I see him on the dock,
his camera in his hand, the camera which he'd planned to take to
Peru. But the engines have started and I am going to Peru alone.
The pontoons are washed with foam which splashes against the
windows. There is nothing to be seen but foam. The Clipper
bounds from the water. Roberto is become an indistinguishable
dot in the crowd on the terrace, and then even the airport is no
more.

The sun is bright on deep blue water, and below us is a green
necklace of islands studded with lagoons, vividly blue. But in
a little while they too have gone, and there is only water . . .
meeting the sky at a vague, out-of-f ocus horizon line.

The thoughts and events of the past weeks flash in and out of
my mind, making and breaking connection between the life I
have left and the adventure toward which I fly. Certain phrases
out of a farewell letter from a friend come to me like words
shouted from the land across an ever-widening stretch of water:

''Please have a good time. . . . People really don't get as
much as they can and ought. ... 7 don't want to go to heaven,
do you? All I want is to be young enough and footloose in
this world. . . . What more could one want?"

Yes, I felt that way too. ... I didn't want to go to heaven, but
to Peru ... by air.

Yet the idea was unbelievable, for the Clipper is like a luxurious

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compartment car which in a mood of elation has got beyond
itself and flown recklessly away. It is paneled in light natural
wood and upholstered in soft cushions of peacock blue. Each
compartment has a picture, done in sepia, of the various methods
by which man has traveled: by caravel, sailboat, balloon.

A purser, who fulfilled also the role of steward, distributed the
Miami Morning Herald, and dealt out the usual cellophane packets
of gum and cotton. He inquired whether we'd like hot consomm
or iced tomato juice. He offered magazines. . . .

If I only could be sure, I thought, that Roberto would be able
to join me later. It wouldn't be right for anyone to miss Peru.
Peru wasn't a thing you could pass up with a "Not today, thank
you." Peru didn't knock at everybody's door, not even once in
the course of life.

People don't have as much as they can and ought!

The pilot came through and stopped to speak to me: "Nothing
interesting," he said, "happens in the air. . . . Oh, maybe you
might see a whale . . . about every ten trips we see a whale."

But the weather had just been radioed, and he could let me
have that, if it would interest me: "Ceiling unlimited. Visibility
unlimited. Wind four miles an hour." And if I'd like a look
at the charts, he'd let me have them.

They were navigators' charts printed before there were air-
ships, and so the air route had been superimposed in pencil, the
charts themselves having taken no thought for the concerns of air-
planes. Depths in fathoms were sprinkled about the sea; buoys
were listed with their colors and stripes, and it was noted whether
they were whistling, or equipped with bells. And only such
matters of the land as were important to the life of the sea, were
indicated.

It was, therefore, impossible to follow the route of the Clipper
in detail, as Roberto and I were fond of doing on shipboard.
With the West India or the South American Pilot we would sit
cross-legged on the bow-deck, tracing the way in and out of har-
bors, noting currents and reefs and anchorages. Thus, vicariously,
we had once at midnight come into the harbor of Cape Haitian,

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A JOURNEY IN TIME

watching for the "occulting white light" which, we read, might
be seen seventeen miles off Picolet, and noting that, from the
moment of the Light's appearance, "the mariner should give the
shore a berth of at least a mile and a half, until said light should
bear from 160 to 220, when he should stand in toward the Light,
avoiding the Outer Shoals, the Shoal of Gran Mouton, the Mardi
Gras Reef and the Shoal of La Trompeuse."

I should like to have been able similarly to follow my flight to
Peru.

But even while I thought of it we were swooping down upon
Havana, with the purser shouting into my ear, above the roar of
engines, that there was Morro Castle, and there the Malecon, and
the Prado.

But Havana was no more than an alighting, to deposit some
passengers and take on others, to leave, and take on, mail. We
were flying with the international mail and stops were brief:
the mail must everywhere make its connections.

From Havana the Clipper more or less followed the coast of
Cuba as far as Cienfuegos. We flew over sugar plantations bril-
liantly green, over forests and broad rivers, and above a line of
surf breaking on white beaches* And then we headed for the
open sea.

The four motors of the Clipper raced through the afternoon,
yet there was never any sense of speed: but for the occasional tip-
ping of its wings the plane appeared stationary, with the sea and
the sky changing almost imperceptibly from mood to mood.

"Nothing interesting happens in the air." ... I reflected, wonder-
ing that the pilot did not realize how interesting and how com-
paratively new a thing in the world he is himself. Belonging
to a profession removed entirely from the taint of ballyhoo, the
air pilot, like the ship's captain, successfully carries out his re-
sponsibility, or he does not: it's not arguable whether his ship
has been safely delivered at its appointed destination at the time
specified, with cargo and passengers intact, for these are facts
which cannot be distorted by personal bias or misrepresentation.

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And like all men who follow the trades of reality the air pilot
is unaffected and direct, a man economical in words, steady of
eye and nerve, quietly intent upon the thing in hand, with a
concentration never tense, alert but relaxed, ready for quick
adaptation to whatever may come. And he is a new thing in the
world, since he must add to the qualities of a sea captain this
capacity for instant action: in the air there is little time for
deliberation, the pilot's decisions must be immediate. And it is
the bringing together in one person of these apparently contra-
dictory qualities that has created a type.

As the pilot takes his pkce in the cockpit, or superintends the
details which prepare for his take-offs, he is unhurried, his voice
is quiet, yet there is that quick precision in all that he does. He
accepts confidently the hazards of his calling, and by his very
attitude of mind he has cooperated with laboratory engineers to
reduce the risks of the air, until passengers are now safer in a
plane than in an automobile. He speaks in the most natural and
offhand manner of "taking the plane out," or "bringing the
plane in"; whether it is over long stretches of ocean, or over the
high passes of the Andes. Equally he takes as a matter of course
the eternal vigilance exacted by his trade: vigilance seems a part
of his uniform, he dons it as simply as he reaches for his pilot's
cap. And thus clothed in vigilance, he takes his place in the
cockpit before the complicated array of switches and buttons,
dials and valves and levers. He tests his radio, his instruments
and his brakes; he knows how much oil and gas he carries, he has
the latest weather report; then he runs the plane down the field,
stops and tests each engine, making ready for the moment of
peril which comes immediately after a plane has left the ground
or the water before it has gained the required altitude to make a
safe forced landing, if necessary.
'^Nothing interesting. . . . Oh, maybe a whale . . ."
The pilot had no idea how much more interesting than a whale
is the man who captains a great Clipper airship!

On the flight from Miami I observed my fellow passengers,

[20]

White guano islands rise out of the se

A JOURNEY IN TIME

curious to know what sort of people traveled by the Clipper ships.
Among them, one had dropped his spectacle case: it bore die
name of an optician in Maracaibo, and so I guessed correctly that
he was in the oil business, and I knew by his manner, and by
the quality of his tropical white suit that he was a person of im-
portance in Maracaibo. And there was a young woman journalist
on her way to Jamaica to write an article on the honeymoon pos-
sibilities of that Island. A well-groomed and very Nordic man
turned out to be the head of the Scadta airplane company in
Colombia, and it was on one of the planes of that company that
Roberto and I had made our first flight twelve years before. And
as always on the planes of the Pan-American Airways, there were
representatives of great industrial corporations, traveling by air
because to them time means dollars. Some day when it is realized
that in flight the world is discovered anew, travelers will under-
stand that air travel means more than speed and money.

In the late afternoon, after he had served tea, I engaged the
purser in talk. I was interested in our cargo; what did we carry
in addition to the international mail?

Well, he said, there were wedding rings billed to Costa Rica,
tennis strings to Buenos Aires, and he broke off as though he
had suddenly remembered something if I would excuse him he'd
be back in a minute. And when he returned he brought two big,
rather flat boxes, both vibrant with excitement, for one was filled
with baby ducks and the other with baby chicks: each box labeled
"Thoroughbred and Free from Disease," with, in the case of the
chicks, the added information, "Quality White Leghorn to the
best of our belief."

'They were just ten hours old/* the purser commented, "when
we left Miami this morning.'*

The chicks, he said, were bound for Jamaica, the ducks for
Maracaibo; the Clippers carried shipments of them on nearly
every trip: in the tropics poultry begins to deteriorate by the
second generation, so there's a big demand for fresh stock. Some-
times the plane had as many as two thousand on board.

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When the purser had taken his fluffy, piping charges away I
turned again to contemplation of the scene through which we
flew. That subtle change had taken place when, though it is still
day, there is in the air a premonition of sunset, an hour with
always a suggestion of heartbreak in its beauty.

Then, on the left, suddenly there were the lovely hills of Jamaica
rising out of the sea, greenly wooded in the foreground, blue in
the distance, with isolated houses scattered along an undulating
shore scalloped in green-blue water, and, running inland, a red
dirt road.

When we left the shore, it was to cross a big blue bay, the dark
shadow of the Clipper crossing beneath us like a great dragonfly
skimming the surface of the water far below, while with us,
aloft, the clouds were now tinted softly rose.

But 1 don't want to go to heaven, do you? . . . The world as it is,
that is good enough. . . ,

Again the words came back to me across the miles.

We reached the far side of the bay and once more followed
the rim of the Island; over neat fields, very green; over forest;
over a village; over a straight road, this time very white and
parallel with the shore; over farms with chimneys puffing grey-
blue smoke.

Now there was another bay with a bright green atoll in the
middle of it, and rising up before us the beautiful ranges of the
interior, while on the ocean horizon, a glowing sun was setting.

Here was Jamaica seen in its entirety, because seen from the air.

Then we were banking, losing altitude rapidly, coming down
to brush the water lightly, then to churn it into spray, and at last
to taxi up to our dock.

And there was the customs officer and the familiar black
Jamaican doctor in a white uniform. Yet it was that same morn-
ing that I had left Roberto standing with his camera on the terrace
of the Miami airport!

After the formalities of landing were over we drove over a
country road from the airport to the hotel in Kingston. The

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A JOURNEY IN TIME

air was freshly sweet with darkness fast dropping down over the
Island.

And for me all the enchantment of the tropics of the New
World was in the scent and texture of the breeze stirring in the
fronds of palm trees.

From the moment of landing in Jamaica my journey to Peru
was a drawing together of many threads of experience to form a
new pattern; new and at the same time familiar, the whole en-
hanced and made complete.

The Myrtle Bank Hotel in Kingston, for example, had always
stood for me as the threshold of some particular desire, the place
from which dreams begin to come true. And with the absurdity
of the ego, I can't quite believe that the hotel functions when I
am gone; surely it is in but a state of suspended animation. Now,
for instance, while I am writing, it cannot be possible that the
Myrtle Bank goes on.

So, after leaving the American Clipper, when our car drove up
before the door, the hotel gave the impression of springing into
action; black hotel boys in white coats and dark trousers, running
out to take our bags; clerks coming alive where they stood at
their desks ready to assign us rooms; the easy chairs seeming to
have waited on the veranda just where we had left them, waited
for us to come and recline upon them; and displayed in a stand
in the hall, postcards, newspapers, magazines and sweets, waiting
for us to purchase them; and beyond the back veranda, near the
margin of the bay, an open-air swimming pool inviting, with
everywhere welcoming palms lifting high heads as though we,
whom they've been so long expecting, had finally arrived, and
once more their fronds might come to life in the wind.

There are certain sensations which one collects, as one goes
along, and among those which never fade in my memory is
the instant of arrival at the Myrtle Bank, associated as it is with
what lies beyond the portal of desire. ;

I like the fact that the hotel has no elevator and that there are
no telephones in the rooms. These omissidns imply a sense of
essential values, as though the hotel understood how much more

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important it is that your windows should look down a walk which
proceeds quietly to the blue bay, that palms should shadow this
walk, and that the door of your room should be slatted to admit
the breeze; yes, and to let the light of dawn creep gently in.

I was lonely that night in Jamaica.

The stars were so bright and so near that they seemed to tremble
in the waving tops of the palms. An orchestra was tuning up in a
ballroom, roofed, but otherwise opening wide upon a broad
veranda. It was the regular Tuesday night "cruise dance." Drinks
went about on trays deftly balanced on black hands. Groups
lingered about the tables in a dining room also open wide to the
night. There were women in thin pastel dresses under the trees,
in the dining room, on the piazzas, the evening uniform of their
escorts merging with the shadows. The scene might have been
labeled 'The Party" and signed with the butterfly of Whistler.

British voices drifted over to me, discussing local Colonial
affairs.

"Yes," I decided, "it is so beautiful that I am lonely."

And then I remembered the Myrtle Bank's planters' punches,
the best on earth, worthy of comparison with the mint juleps
of my Virginia childhood; the same fragrant mint, the same
shredded ice and frosted glasses, the same powdered sugar; the
only difference being that the planters' punch adds lime juice
and pineapple and substitutes Jamaica rum for the rye or bourbon
of a julep.

So, in my loneliness, remembering a planter's punch, I sought
the solace that lies in rum and mint, lime juice and powdered
sugar, properly iced.

It was still dark when the crowing of Jamaican roosters re-
minded me that at a quarter before five I must be up and off again
on the Clipper. In the dawn bur little group of passengers break-
fasted on the front veranda while hotel boys packed into the
waiting cars our bags, and the gaily colored wicker baskets in
which the Mrytle Bank had put up our luncheons.

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A JOURNEY IN TIME

And then we were off, to fly high above clouds like huge
soaring swans, with beneath them flocks of lesser clouds, and far
away the sea, over whose surface traveled the dark little bird
shadow which was us. Again I had the delusion of looking down,
not at the earth but at the sky, the sea appearing as a deep blue
sky very sofdy streaked with flimsy white cloud.

The assiduous purser served the mid-morning consomme and
iced tomato juice, and I withdrew from contemplation of a Hmjt-
less blue and read the Kingston morning newspaper, a copy of
which had been at each seat when we boarded the plane.

The paper, I thought, seemed an echo of last night's talk on
the veranda of the Myrtle Bank: British Colonial talk in rich-
voiced, clipped syllables running up and down the scale; ahs and
pahs instead of hours and powers:

Somebody bowling in great form . . five wickets for eleven
runs. Only two batsmen shaped against the St. George's
bowling. Intercolony football . . . Barbados versus Granada.
Bananas . . . winds . . . rains ... so many "stems" down . , .
Panama disease. The names of places . , . Buff Bay ... St.
Mary's . . . Titchfield . . . Port Royal. Lady So-and-So's garden
party. . , ,

Cricket, football, tennis ... the all-important banana industry
with the calamities of disease and winds. . . . Society, hyphenated
names and tides. . . . This might be any paper, any year, any
month, any day in Jamaica.

But already Jamaica seemed remote, so swiftly had we flown
away. The next soil on which we were to stand would be that
of Barranquilla in the Republic of Colombia.

The Kingston paper fell from my hand while my mind went
back to my first flight. It had been by Junfyr hydroplane from
Barranquilla, six hundred miles up the Magdalena River. That
was a dozen years ago, and the Scadta airplane service in Colombia
was then the longest in the Western Hemisphere.

And even while I was remembering that first flight the airways

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of the world were constantly being extended, constantly speeded
up, the luxury of their equipment constantly increased. By the
time this- is in print the overnight stop at Jamaica will have been
eliminated, and also the overnight in Cristobal. Then the first
night will be Barranquilla, the second Guayaquil. Peru will be
two days and a half from Miami instead of three and a half.

The future "upstairs," as they say, may be almost anything you
choose to dream.

Yet I think the spirit of the air must remain the same. For,
comparing this flight aboard a great Clipper ship with the experi-
ence of the little Junker plane I find that what I would now record
tallies, almost word for word, with what I wrote then.

I had said that unless you have seen a country from the air
you cannot picture it as a whole, any more than you can know
a human countenance by examining it bit by bit, an isolated eye,
a detached mouth, an eyebrow, a nose; these assembled by an act
of memory cannot give you the face as it really is. To know a
country intimately it will of course always be necessary to study
it feature by feature, and in this even the old hurricane deck of
mule-back need not fear the rivalry of an airplane. But to see a
land in its entirety it is necessary to fly over it.

Also on my first flight I had realized that the air not only gives
physical perspective, but that it extends the vision of the mind.
In the air one thinks, as well as sees, further.

And I dare to hope that, looking through the space which sepa-
rates the earth from the plane, always the confusion of values
which so often harasses us down there, will clear away, that when
seen from the air things will fall always into their proper places,
with no uncertainty as to what is of moment and what is eternal.

As we approached the South American coast the Clipper rose
and fell, its wings rocked; yet none of this appeared to have been
caused by the wind, but gave the impression of being the mood of
the plane itself, as though it temperamentally lurched and rocked
in still air above a sea, which long before Barranquilla was visible
to us was stained with the yellow waters of the Magdalena River.

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A JOURNEY IN TIME

Following that yellow current we came down at the Barran-
quilla airport, precisely where, twelve years before Roberto and I
had taken off in the Cauca. At that time the port was no more
than a hangar squatting upon the muddy river-bank; it is now a
busy junction.

In a breezy waiting room, with on one side the river, and on
the other a palm-bordered street leading to the town, there is a
big blackboard on which are chalked the comings and goings
of planes; planes into the interior to Bogota, the capital, a thou-
sand miles away in the Andes; planes connecting Barranquilla
with Medellin, the famous Cauca Valley, Cali and the Pacific ports;
planes to Santa Marta and Cartagena on the north coast to Mara-
caibo in Venezuela, where the fluffy young ducks were going; and
planes to the Cristobal for which we and the wedding rings for
Costa Rica were bound.

At Barranquilla, there was an hour's interval when passengers
opened their lunch boxes in a bar where drinks might be ordered;
the south-bound passengers eating Myrtle Bank lunches, the north-
bound with lunches provided by the Hotel Washington at Cristo-
bal: and of course each eyed the others' lunches: which would
have deviled eggs and which only hard-boiled ones?

After lunch I sat outside under a gay striped awning, talking
to a Scadta official and watching the life of the port.

What had become of the Cauca, I asked.

"Oh, you can't see the Cauca, she's been scrapped. And her
sister plane, the Bogotd, is in a museum in Germany; in Berlin, I
think they said."

So a plane aged twelve years becomes either a museum piece^
or is scrapped! But notwithstanding these swift changes in air
travel, flight itself, the significance of the experience, remains the
same, unaltered, enduring.

We left Barranquilla for Panama with a tail wind; flying in the
Commodore, an amphibian so much smaller than the Clipper
that it really did seem as though an improbable bug had flown
away with us in its stomach.

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We flew over the now peaceful seas of the Spanish Main where
once pirates and buccaneers, Dutch, and British, so menaced the
merchantmen of Spain that armed galleons convoyed the trade
ships across the ocean in great fleets.

The low green coast line lay serene beneath us, as though all
storm and stress were forever over. The blood of conquest had
faded, slave ships came no more freighted with black agony. It
had been three hundred years since the saint, Pedro Claver, had
last scourged himself for the glory of his God.

The Commodore brought us in four hours to Cristobal where
we were to spend the night.

The Hotel Washington at Cristobal is one of the famous cross-
roads of the world. I had often stopped there on my way some-
where else, and once Roberto and I had stayed several days wait-
ing for the United Fruit boat which was to take us home.

Partaking of tea and toast with plenty of raspberry jam, we
used to sit looking out across the bay, watching the shipping of
the world come in and out of the harbor.

And part of the ritual of Cristobal for us is to take one of the
dilapidated open carriages and drive about Cristobal and Colon.
I am never quite sure where the Panamanian Colon ends and the
United Statesian Cristobal begins; for they both have the aspect of
Spanish-America, with, in addition, a liberal sprinkling of Oriental
shops where you may purchase the embroideries, ivories, and
brasses of India, China and Japan.

The carriages are driven by negroes, and drawn by single horses
whose trotting feet clink delightfully on the pavements. Most
of the horses are grey, and the negroes very black Jamaicans who
tell you that they date back to a time before the United States took
over the digging of the Canal.

Stopping overnight on the way to Peru, it seemed to me that
carriages, horses and drivers had grown fewer and older: the
carriages were battered and tipsy, as though the heavier passengers
had always sat on the same side; the drivers drooped with age,
and the horses with a weary dejection; as if they'd just been to

[28]

The crumbling walls of Chan-Chan

A JOURNEY IN TIME

fortune-tellers who had prophesied their extinction; while auto-
mobiles had increased in numbers and in purring magnificence.

But the Hotel Washington remained unchanged; its halls as
wide and high as I had remembered them, and still you looked
through them, past waving palms to the sea, and as always the
air was so relaxing that there wasn't a tense nerve left in your
body.

But for all its dear familiarity, I couldn't quite believe in it;
it wasn't possible to have come from Miami in two days; not even
though the sea and the palms, and the great bushes of scarlet
hibiscus, and the clinking feet of horses on the pavements, and
the moist clinging heat, all assured me that I was really in Panama.

From the first I fell happily into the routine of this air journey;
the long beautiful days of flight, the coming to rest at night at
some tropical hotel; just tired enough to welcome with every sense,
a bath, a good dinner, and sleep. I began to feel that this flying
dream would never come to an end, that f orevermore, in prepar-
ing for bed, I would automatically arrange each detail of the
morning dressing, ready to make the early start for another day in
the air. Dressing had become synonymous with packing, for by
the time I was dressed I was packed, and when I was packed I
was dressed, as though by well-oiled machinery, with no haste, no
confusion, and nothing left behind: even the breakfast having
been ordered and the bill paid before going to bed.

At the hour of our early departures the hotels were very quiet
The dining rooms were deserted, but for the passengers by air
and the waiters deputed to serve them. Even die chirp of birds
seemed subdued as if in consideration for sleepers, and the streets
were not so much as half awake, as passengers and bags and lunch
boxes drove through them out to the airport; with a tiny fresh
breeze just barely stirring before the imminent heat of day.

By the time we were up and off, the eastern sky was palest gold,
and we were looking at the Canal below, as at a satin ribbon
stretched between two oceans, with miniature ships like a design

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decorating the ribbon, while a tiny train crawled across the Isthmus
from one cluster of little red-roofed, mosquito-netted houses to
another, with away, to the right and the left, forested country,
green, green.

When we reached the Pacific side the sun had risen and dazzling
light lay along the water.

The purser had passed the customary package of chewing gum
and cotton, with the difference that now it was labeled in Span-
ish: "Este paquetc contiene dgod6n absorbente para sus oidos. Y
Chide Wrigley."

As for the morning paper which we found as usual at our seats,
that had gone half Spanish; the Spanish section enclosed upside
down within the English one.

After we had left behind the Canal and the green offshore islets,
I read the paper in the desultory fashion of a traveler whose eyes
arc constantly straying from the page to contemplation of the
world: my mind wandering from the page, and through the
window to "visibility unlimited," and back again to the page.
Reading first in English and then in Spanish, I felt that life is a
wanner thing to the Panamanian than to us, for every social an-
nouncement in Spanish was accompanied by friendly editorial com-
ment. If, for example, a certain South American Ambassador and
his family is in transit to Washington the entire family is saluted
and wished a happy journey. If there has been a birthday party
in honor of a little girl, the statement is followed by, "We send
our felicitations." Any who have gone to the hospital have the
editorial wish for a speedy recovery. Arrivals who have been
absent are affectionately welcomed back. The editorial voice is
pleased to extend good wishes to a gentleman returning from
his plantation with his Senora, and his daughters, Rosa, Cristina,
Maria and the baby Aida. The editor desires to be the first to
congratulate a couple upon the birth of a child; and he is glad
to note that in the past few days Senor Tal y Fulano has improved
in health. Deaths elicit his sympathy and he rejoices with bridal
pairs. And always the adjectives "distinguida, estimable, apreci-
able" are generously bestowed.

[30]

A JOURNEY IN TIME

Meanwhile, over in the English section of this paper which I
read in the air, the announcements of sailings and departures,
weddings and births are printed with as little personal expression
of interest as the megaphone information of a railroad station.

And then I forgot the paper. . . .

The Pacific was darkly sparkling and absolutely pacific. I felt
completely gone away, up there in the air above it. When Walter
de la Mare's Midget disappears at the end of his "Memoirs of a
Midget" she leaves a note pinned to the carpet, announcing with
a baffling finality, "I have gone away. Miss M."

I felt suddenly a similar finality. I was gone away.

For a little while the weary confusion of a great city, in the year
called "of Our Lord" 1935, had stopped: I had flown away from
it. It knows how to smuggle itself on board a ship, but it seems
not yet to have taken to the air.

And I kept reminding myself that I must not lose this serenity
of the sky. I must manage to keep it with me after the journey
was over and I had returned to earth. I must try always to get
my values straight, to realize which things were of importance
and which of little moment.

We were flying along a coast down which Roberto and I had
once traveled as far as Guayaquil, aboard a small British freighter
whose captain had described her as just fifty feet too short to take
the waves. She was an old boat, dirty and rat-ridden. Yet they
had told me in Cristobal that she was still afloat, while a ship of
the air, in the pride of youth when the freighter was but an aged
tub, had been scrapped, and another had been put in a museum
as a curiosity, an antiquity to be gaped at by passing crowds,
marveling that such a fossil of the air had ever been. But the
ancient freighter continued to ply up and down, calling at many
little ports never seen by a through boat. She had required forty-
eight hours to carry us from Balboa to Buenaventura; now, by
air, we would make it in four.

The thought directed my eyes again to the scene below. After

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flying for a time out of sight we had turned back to the coast.
The sea had become suddenly jungle, with a yellow river winding
far inland; a great yellow serpent crawling through the forest.

Aboard the freighter I had never realized how dense the
Colombian jungle is on the west coast.

We were flying lower now, and there was mist blowing in over
the land, appearing all at once, as is the way of things in the air,
and in no time it had cast a gauzy veil over the jungle roof, but a
veil of so delicate a texture that I could see through it to the tree-
tops below, while through a hole in the mist there was clearly
shown the river's mouth and the bay into which it pours the waters
of the far interior, and the leaves and the blossoms which have
drifted on its broad breast down to the sea.

Flight is extraordinarily like the process of thinking, episodes
and pictures merging one into another with apparently effortless
transition, so smooth that there are no dividing lines separating
one from another. In a curious way time ceases to be, the past
and the present, personal memories, historical events, and the
actual physical scene, all pass in vivid instant flashes. They come
and go and others take their places, the geographic scene chang-
ing in the same swift fashion as the procession of life through
the mind.

After a brief landing for fuel at Buenaventura we were flying to
Tumaco. . . . The filthy little freighter had also taken us to
Tumaco. And there appeared now in my mind the Scotch engi-
neer aboard that freighter. He appeared standing beside me
leaning on the ship's rail, and I was encouraging him to talk of
the West Coast which he knew well, even as far as the Straits of
Magellan; he had friends in every port "right away down south,"
and he loved the Coast as it deserves.

And then, as now, I was watching for the Island of Gorgona;
remembering how four hundred years ago Francisco Pizarro with
his sixteen loyal followers had waited on Gorgona, starving while
they waited for a white sail to appear on the horizon; but never
losing faith in their destiny. They were to conquer Peru for their
God and their King, and for the treasure of gold and rich lands,

[32]

A JOURNEY IN TIME

and for the many Indians who were to be theirs when the Conquest
was finished* With such a destiny they could wait . . . and
starve . . . until Almagro came with food and ammunition from
Panama,

And remembering, I watched for Gorgona from the air, with
the chief engineer's voice repeating in my mind, like a phonograph
record stored away and now brought out to be played once more,
'Tve been up and down this coast for twenty-one years, and I've
never seen a light on that island at night nor any sign of life by
day. It's always just as you see it, lonely and deserted. . . ."

Had nothing happened there since Almagro had come and the
conquerors of Peru had sailed away? Had there been nothing
since their last chant of gratitude to God and to the Blessed Virgin?

Never a light there at night, nor any sign of life by day. . . .

Nothing then for four hundred years, but the beat of waves
on the shore ... the sound of rain falling ... the dear song of
birds , . . and parrots, noisy flocks of parrots . . . insects too, and
frogs, tirelessly vocal.

All as Pizarro had heard them.

The image of the freighter's engineer vanished and the purser
of the Commodore was passing lunch boxes, put up for the pas-
sengers by a Mrs. Goodenough in Crist6bal. Below, the sea was
dull slate blue, and "upstairs" there was a grand potato salad in
the lunch box, turkey sandwiches, ham and chicken sandwiches,
grapes and apples and two kinds of cake, with hot tea supplied
from a thermos, or beer if you liked.

Then there was suddenly Gorgona, a small hilly island, blue
with distance, the tide low on its beach.

A good lunch in the air, as we flew nearer and nearer to Gorgona,
where the staunch Pizarro had starved, but never forgot the hours
of prayer, nor the feast days of the Church : Holy Mary, Mother of
God. . . . Pray for us poor sinners now and in the hour of our
death. . . . Holy Mary, blessed among women. . . .

On the mainland, to the left as we flew, there were beach and
jungle and river. You never know how snaky a snaky river is
until you've seen it from the air, when its twisting and turnings no

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longer deceive you and your eye may follow its tortuous course.
And only from the air can you appreciate how many are the hues
of green in the jungle and how varied is the texture of the foliage.

We were flying low, though I had not realized just when we
had begun to lose altitude. "We're getting ready to land again/'
the purser said, generous always with information.

Below us was the delta of a river sprawling untidily in green
marshes and splaying out in mud flats. Then it was gone, and
there was another river, coiling about small green islands, which,
as by witchery, were transformed into tall forest, where treetops
bloomed yellow, and there was a shadowed river flowing through
jungle.

Then ... the forest had vanished, and was become a stretch
of mud flats, and the mud flats, in turn, an inlet with thatched
huts and palms on its banks, and the palms had become more
palms, and the huts were mounted on tall poles to lift them out
of rainy-season floods. There was a white bird in flight; we were
low enough to see a child waving to us from the door of one of
the huts; and the plane was banking down, past a little island
with a white beach

That was the Island of Gallo; and again for me it was four
hundred years ago. For on that strip of beach Pizarro had drawn
a line in the sand with his sword; on one side was Panama, on
the other, Peru. A ship had come with orders from the Governor
of Panama: Pizarro was to return at once to the Isthmus, with his
men. But Pizarro, defiant, had drawn the line in the sand.

The Commodore was banking to land at Tumaco, while I re-
membered. And I seemed to hear Pizarro saying: "On the one
side ease, on the other death, toil, hunger, rain. . . . Panama, or
Peru and riches. . . . Let each choose as he feels befits a good
Castilian. . . . For my part, I go to Peru. . . ."

And as the plane came down and was moored at the floating
dock of Tumaco, in my mind sixteen brave men followed Pizarro
across that line in the sand.

While the pilot took on gas at Tumaco we waited in long deck

[34]

A JOURNEY IN TIME

chairs on the float which gently rose and fell with the movement
of the water. In a few moments we would be again on the wing,
but we had no sense of haste on the brief pauses of this flight to
Peru, just as in the air we had no impression of speed. So, while
the float at Tumaco pulsed up and down, Panagra's local repre-
sentative peeled oranges for us with an air of large leisure. "If
there's bad weather," he said "and the plane over-nights here^ the
passengers sleep in the chairs."

It would be a nice experience, I thought, to be rocked to sleep
by the soft swell of the water, and I wished that it might happen
on the homeward flight.

Then by the time the Commodore had gorged itself with gas
we had finished the oranges prepared for us and were gone;
flown away with the idea that if reports of the spirit were issued
in the form of radio weather reports, that sent from Tumaco
would read: "Leisure unlimited."

Yet, for all the desultory feeling of this journey, we would spend
the night in Guayaquil: only four days' flight from New York,

The purser of the Commodore came through the plane, dealing
out cards on which he had filled in the date and the hour of our
passing over the Line. If passengers would add their names and
addresses they would later receive a diploma from King Neptune,
commemorating their aerial crossing of the earth's equator.

Below us was Manta, and at Manta you cross the Equator.

The freighter had taken on ivory nuts there a thousand bags
of ivory nuts and boxes of Panama hats marked for London;
and it had been at Manta that I had leaned over the rail, watching
a barefoot man a zambo, half negro and half Indian. He'd been
lying flat on his back in one of the rowboats that had come out
from shore. I had seen him only by the light of a kerosene lantern
on the bottom of his boat, for the night had been dark and the
moon not yet risen. I remembered now how the zambo had been
stretched out in complete relaxation, and how he had played over
and over on a harmonica a monotonous little tune which had con-
veyed a sense of infinity. Time had been no more while I listened.

And it was the zambo I had remembered rather than the cross-

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PERUVIAN PAGEANT

ing of the Equator, just as I shall always remember the timelessness
of those brief moments on the float at Tumaco where we idled in
deck chairs and watched a citizen of the place peel oranges for us.

The experiences on the flight from Panama to Lima, I chanced
to share with Althea Lister, a young woman making the trip by air
around South America. In the hotel at Cristobal I had spotted her
immediately as a fellow countrywoman. Later, I found that she
was herself an air pilot, and so much a creature of the air that
she remarked to me reflectively: "You know, I've never been on a
steamer," much as one of another generation might say: "You
know, Fve never flown."

Together we had dinner that night in Guayaquil, in a new
hotel blazing with electricity, and as we were to make a very early
start in the morning I did not go out to seek the Guayaquil of
memory. That might be done, I thought, on the way home when
Roberto and I would be together.

Thus on my flight south Guayaquil was an interlude made
up of the proud glare of many lights, of sleep (in the "ladies salon"
because there was no other available room), of my being therefore
forgotten, and, save for my own alarm clock, not called in the
morning, and of driving in the dawn through the slumbering
town out to the airport, where we took off for Lima.

Entering the Douglas before other passengers had taken their
places, the row of single seats on either side of the central aisle,
each seat with a white linen cover over its head-rest, reminded me
absurdly of the nuns of the Order of Sts. Vincent and Paul, as
Roberto and I used to see them in Cayenne, their winged white
headgear showing above the hacks of the pews in their little
chapel.

The Douglas flies high, and almost at once after hopping off
from Guayaquil we were above great billows of frothy cloud, up
where the newly risen sun shone bright. And by the time we
had passed over this bank of cloud we had left Ecuador and were
above Peru.

The coast of Peru presents to the air traveler a wrinkled countc-

[36]

The Pacific breaks at the foot of barren cliffs

A JOURNEY IN TIME

nance, for the low hills are seamed and seared like the face of age,
crumpled hills rising from desert wastes which project into the
blue sea tentacles of rock and sand.

From the cockpit the pilot sent back to us a note scribbled on
the reverse side of a weather report. And I noticed that, like the
Panama newspaper, the weather reports had gone half Spanish,
for the slip passed back to where we sat in seats numbers One and
Two, read:

"Boletin de Ticmpo

Weather Report

WEA

Hora. . . . 1630 Metric

Estado General del Tiempo. . .

General Weather Conditions

Visibilidad Horizontal. . . .\ TT . . .

Horizontal Visibility. . . . / Unlimited

And so forth. And so forth."

On the back of this "W. E. A.," the pilot had scrawled:

"We will cross over Salinas Point You will note the holes
dug in the ground where oil is found within 10 ft. of the sur-
face Many old dinosaurs (fossils) of the years gone by may
be found here Many old treasure hunting parties even of
England and Spain still contemplate looking for the wrecks
of Pirate gold ships on the south shore of this point No fool-
ing I know a lot more about this place too."

Pirates and gold. ... Of course I didn't question them. For
this was Peru.

I had been flying over a familiar region. And now here was
Peru, never before seen.

From the air it appears as a country which, instead of lying
prone upon the surface of the globe, has raised itself until it seems
almost vertical, with its long coast line resting upon the ocean.

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PERUVIAN PAGEANT

From the narrow strip of coast, ranges of mountains rise, each
higher than the other, until they mount to the grand Cordillera
of the eastern Andes far away in the interior.

There is Peru, unrolled before you: with a cold mountain
wall, far and dim on the east, which draws every last drop of
moisture from the saturated southeast trade-winds of the Atlantic
blowing across the forests of Brazil. From the air it is easy to
realize that by the time the winds reach the coast they have had
all the rain squeezed out of them. As your eyes travel from the
Andean ranges to the desert plains and promontories of the coast,
and to the Pacific washing blue about the fluted barren line of
the shore, Peru seems to you, physically, one of the most extraor-
dinary countries in the world.

None of the soft adjectives apply to it. To Peru there belong
such words as stupendous, powerful, sublime, august, majestic,
stern; beautiful with a glory and a solemnity.

Peru exacts something of the beholder and is therefore the
more loved.

Its deserts, like its mountains, present a beauty that is never
obvious.

From an airplane (and you have not seen the desert coast of
Peru unless you have beheld it from the air) you see the streams
which at far intervals come down from the Andes to create in
the coastal desert greenly fertile fields, and you understand that
a valley perennially green implies a river whose source is in the
eternal snows, for at certain seasons rivers born lower down run
dry and their valleys become parched.

And when you would further understand Peru's coastal desert
you look out to sea and remember the icy Humboldt Current that
comes up from the Antarctic Ocean, flowing close to the shore
until, as it approaches Ecuador, it swings westward and passes
on the far side of the Galapagos Islands. It is this current which
cheats the coast out of rain from the west, as the Andes deprive it
of rain from the east: for the cold current so chills the air above
it that rain seldom falls upon the land, and the best it can do in
the way of moisture is during Peru's winter months when the

[38]

A JOURNEY IN TIME

temperature of the earth drops just enough to extract from the
winds fog and drizzle.

From the plane all this which has been but didactic statement
becomes vivid reality.

Later I was to know Peru with all the senses; to touch and
taste and smell it, to see it in intimate detail, to know it with the
heart, which is, after all, the most important of the senses; and
thus to become myself part of it for a time; and always to under-
stand it better because of this flight from its northern boundary
down into its southern region.

And since my flight was made during the coastal dry season
there was on the desert neither fog nor mist to obscure dear vision
over an immense territory.

Our first landing in Peru was at Talara. Breakfast in Guayaquil
had been a hasty roll and coffee at dawn, but it was still early
morning when the plane sat down at the Talara airport where
there were waiting sandwiches and a thermos of coffee.

As for the airport, it is an oasis of blossoms magically appearing
in a shimmering desert. There is only the airport . . . nothing
else. If we hadn't seen the busy, ugly oil development of Talara
from the sky, we could not have believed in its existence, for at
the airport great dunes shut it from sight, and it is so far off that
no sound of its machinery and no scent of its oil reaches the oasis
airport, where hollyhocks, petunias and marigolds, pink roses
and fragrant deep red jacqueminots crowd close about a small
white building; with on all sides, as far as you can see, quantities
and quantities of pale yellow sand, over which blows a sweet, soft,
dry wind.

Just twenty minutes of this, before the plane tipped up its tail
and ran, faster and faster down the field on its two wheels, when
it turned into the wind and, with a quick little spring, was up. . . .

Twenty minutes so full of loveliness that, for all their brevity,
they are to be forever remembered; together with the aroma of
coffee, the flavor of ham sandwiches nicely mustarded, and the
merry talk of passengers and pilots sharing a journey.

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And then again we were soaring above clouds white and frothy
as meringue.

My new friend, the woman pilot passenger, had told me that
when you are on high, alone in your plane, you feel like God.

But, not wanting to miss any of Peru, I was glad to drop from
cloud heavens, where there was no vestige of a created world
(lovely though those heavens were) down to an altitude where
tie coast lay brilliantly clear beneath us.

I saw a waste of drifting yellow sand, a little verdant valley
bordering a river which had come a long way to bless the arid
land. And along the beach there were small houses, arranged
in squares, and jutting out into the bay there was a pier where
boats were moored.

When these passed out of vision there lay for a long way ahead
a stretch of desolate desert; the mountain ranges had withdrawn
in mist and there was only the desert, with great crescents of sand
marching all in one direction, impelled by the force of winds
from the south; crescents of sand like the footprints of mythical
horses of gigantic stature; such horses as the Inca's people might
have seen in terrified dreams as the army of the conquering
Pizarro drew nearer and nearer, advancing mounted upon their
strange, famed beasts.

Traveling by sea, or by land, I could have seen only a fraction
of all this, seen it only in isolated bits, while from the air I was
able to realize the magnificent scale upon which Peru is sculp-
tured; its precipitous cliffs rising from the sea, flattening out into
sandy plateaus, where at intervals wrinkled hills lift heads grey
with drifting sand, its deserts sometimes extending unbroken by
irrigated valleys for as much as seventy miles. Over all this color
plays; so translucent that it appeared from the plane not to be
inherent in hills or sand, but like colored light cast upon the scene
from some invisible source, hues of blue and mauve, rose and
green, yellow and orange, trembling on the dunes, quivering over
the level wastes, deep and still in the ravines of the hills. While
beneath us always flew that dark bird which was our shadow.

Frequently, as we approached human habitations there were

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A JOURNEY IN TIME

big salt pans, tinted in the shades of varied degrees of evaporation,
green and blue when they had been newly filled with sea-water,
red and pink as they evaporated, and finally the sparkling white
of salt crystals in the sun.

The presence of these salt pans announced that in just a moment
we would be soaring above a fishing village, or a river valley,
whose irrigated fertility produces green fields of cotton or sugar
cane, or rice or alfalfa; each with its own characteristic green. In
these valleys, too, there would be sprawling algarroba trees, or
mesquite, to cast leafy shadow. If the valley is large, or if behind
the hills there are other fertile valleys, there is built out into the
sea a long pier, that ships may serve the population* Sometimes,
also, there are mines back in the mountains which send their ore
down to the ports.

After a brief landing at Chiclayo, I had time to notice that the
Andes had come closer to the shore line; and then we were flying
above cloud like a sea of milk, and nowhere any sign of Peru.

When we emerged we were losing altitude for the landing at
Trujillo. Below us were the ruins of the city of Chan-Chan, once
the capital of the kingdom of the great Chimo; eleven square
miles of ruins towering massive adobe walls; outer walls and
inner walls, streets, courtyards and buildings; disintegrating, and
partly submerged under sand; dry protecting sand, preserving
through the centuries the vivid color and design of die buried
textiles and pottery of a people long vanished from the earth, with
near to the dead city the white domes and spires of the living
Trujillo rising above many-hued houses in a valley green with
vast sugar plantations. And the breeze, when we had swooped
down to the airport, the breeze was dry and in its texture singularly
light; while on the mountains beyond, the mist had thickened.

For the sake of dear old Miss Annie Peck, the mountain climber
of a dead generation, I looked eagerly for Mt. Huascaran: "My
mountain," as she used to call it. 'The highest point," she would
say triumphantly, "ever attained on the American Continent
by man or woman!"

Watching, hoping to see at least one of its two peaks show'

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through the mist, I remembered how it was not until Miss Peck
was eighty years old that she had admitted the fact that when,
on her fifth attempt, she had at last conquered the mountain,
she had been in sight of her sixtieth birthday.

"It always seemed best not to tell my age," she confided to me,
"but now that I am eighty my friends say that it can't do any
harm to tell."

When she sat in my living room explaining that she had de-
cided to admit her age, she had just returned from a flight of
twenty thousand miles over all the commercial air routes of South
America.

In memory of this amazing old lady I wanted very much to see
her mountain. I'd not met her until she was nearly seventy-eight,
but during the six years of life that remained to her I had come
to know her well and with great affection: incidents out of those
years came back as I sat gazing eastward through the window of
the plane, across the desert and the lesser ranges to the point
where Huascaran ought to be. And this scene where she had lived
so intensely in her determination to reach the summit of the
mountain resurrected the Miss Peck I had known:

Miss Peck telling how her Swiss guide, Rudolph, had lost one
of her mittens, and his own, on the glassy, frozen slopes of
Huascaran. Miss Peck photographed in the outfit she had worn
at the summit of Huascaran; protecting her face from the cold
of that great altitude by a carnival mask, with what she called "a
rather superfluous mustache painted on it." But never mind, it
had been the only one she could procure.

And then suddenly. Huascaran came out of the clouds for me,
both its peaks incredibly white and high. The sight of them
brought back to me Miss Peck's terror and suffering on that
mountain. Four times failing to reach the summit and approach-
ing sixty when she finally succeeded!

As I looked upon the cold snows of Huascaran, I recalled her
description of the terrors of the descent, when it had seemed so
dreadful a thing if life should then be lost, before she had savored
to the last drop the sweets of her painful victory,

[42]

A JOURNEY IN TIME

"My recollection of that descent," she said, "is as a horrible
nightmare, though such I never experienced. The little moon
seemed always at my back, casting a shadow over the place where
I must step. The poncho would sway in the wind, and with my
motion as I was in the act of stepping, would sometimes conceal
the spot where my foot should be placed. . . . Again and again
I slipped. . . . Several times declared that we should never get
down alive. . . ."

I was so familiar with the story that I could recreate it on those
desolate icy steeps showing suddenly through grey mist; Miss
Peck toiling perilously, full of fear, with all the time the black
flourish of a mustache painted ironically on the mask she wore.

And then I see her, her white hair finger-waved for her birth-
day, and she is cutting a cake on which blaze eighty-four candles:
and her cheeks are flushed, for the reporters are there photograph-
ing her for the Press.

And they must be sure to write, she says, that it was "the great-
est altitude ever attained on this Continent by man or woman. . . ."

I have other memories, too, of her last days: she is telling me
how once, ever so long before she had determined that she must
climb Huascaran, she had decided that she must have a college
degree. At the time she'd been sitting on the floor putting on
her shoes. "But," she said to herself, "but I'll be twenty-seven
when I graduate!"

Then she'd put on the other shoe, "Well," she'd reminded herself,
"you'll be twenty-seven anyway!"

And so she'd risen from the floor and gone out to achieve
a college education.

When it had come to establishing record ascents she had prob-
ably reasoned similarly, "Well, I'll be sixty anyway!"

And because of what she had suffered, and because of her in-
vincible will to conquer, she seemed to me to live on among the
peaks of the high Andes; as Pizarro lives still on the islands of
Gorgona and Gallo, and in the Sierra about Cajamarca: Pizarro
setting forth at the age of sixty to conquer the vast Empire of
the Incas!

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Things, I reflected, are important in proportion to what they
mean in individual lives.

Miss Peck's empire had been her mountain.

Yet, at the end, lying bloodless and frail against the pillows, she
had not talked of her mountain. She'd talked of how good a
dancer she'd been so long ago. . . . "The lancers, you know . . ."

When these memories had followed Huascaran into the mists
of death, my eyes turned from the Andes to rove the coast line
and the sea:

A world of coves and headlands. Desert hills powdered with
sand. Tiny cattle in a green field. Ruins of the fortress which had
defended the kingdom of the Great Chimo on the south. Strange
dark cliffs bordering the sea, A wild expanse of enormous
sand dunes, big pale dunes, color playing over the sands, and color
in the salt pans. Long rollers of blue ocean coming in to break
in white surf. And beyond, the Pacific . . . blue . , . blue. Little
white guano islands dotting the blue. Masses of dark on the
white . . those were sea birds.

I recollected that the Humboldt Current supplies fresh cool
water where fish thrive, and that in turn attracts huge numbers
of seafowl which deposit guano. And because the Humboldt
Current prevents rainfall on the coast, the guano is not washed
away. And thus fish and birds and cold current combined are
responsible for bringing millions of dollars to Peru.

All precisely as the books had described it,

A stir in the plane broke into the thoughts which followed down
the coast. We were approaching Lima. Below was the Bay of
Ancon, set among barren, sand-covered hills; its houses dazzling
white, its trees dusty. Beyond Ancon the lower Andes had advanced
farther toward the sea; and bare black foothills, mottled with
pale sand, bordered the valley of the Rimac, with, back of them,
the Andes, blue and high.

And then there was Lima ... its plazas ... its bull ring . . ,
its churches ... its boulevards.

[44]

A portrait vase

(Fraro the Larco Herrera collection at ChicKn)

A JOURNEY IN TIME

Four days and a half from New York by air, and I was looking
down upon Lima!

We banked quickly to sit down at an airport where people may
breakfast and lunch and dine under a gay awning; where other
planes were coming and going, and there were many waiting auto-
mobiles.

At Lima the Douglas flew away to Arequipa and left me.

Then, as the Company bus rattled me into the city, I remem-
bered that in my pocket was a letter of introduction stating in
Latin that Blair Niles was visiting Lima.

And I remembered that I was making a journey in time.

[45]

II

NOW, IN LIMA

THE first impression of Lima is brightly modern. The
Panagra bus that whirled me from a just completed airport con-
ducted me along a broad boulevard with trees in rows of lavender
flower, past villas dripping with bloom, like the houses of southern
California. Their air of twentieth-century suburban affluence
made my Latin letter of introduction seem pretty absurd.

Then, suddenly the avenue had led us into narrow streets of
two-story houses, with latticed Moorish balconies on their upper
floors. Often these lattices were beautifully and intricately carved,
and sometimes a shutter stood open, and through the aperture a
dark head regarded the world.

But the head did not wear the high comb and the mantilla
implied in the Spanish-Colonial balcony; for the head was bobbed
in the manner of the moment. And the narrow streets were
crowded, not with painted coaches and horsemen, but with auto-
mobiles; and there were great lurid posters of plays showing at
cinema houses, the posters decorated with pictures of Hollywood
stars.

It seemed as though New York had moved into Lima.

But that impression was quickly gone, for the tension in New
York faces is not seen in Lima not yet anyway.

And in spite of the sleek motor cars of familiar makes, and
that modernity of heads to which properly belonged the grace
of mantillas, there still survives in Lima the heritage of Moorish
balconies and grilled windows and great doors of Viceregal
palaces. This gave me confidence to believe that I would be able
to find my way through the centuries back to a time when a letter
of introduction in Latin would not have appeared ludicrous ped-
antry.

[46]

A JOURNEY IN TIME

But I knew that the way back would have to be sought, for
Lima is a cosmopolitan up-to-date city passionately concerned
with today. Its head is full of pressing and immediate problems.
It does not put on for the visitor a spectacle of its romantic and
historic past. If that is the sort of thing you want you must look
for it; diligently, for in Lima it is not easy to overtake the
centuries as they hurry away into the shadows of the forgotten*
Thus, even before the Panagra bus had delivered me at the door
of the hotel, I realized that without Room 300 of the New York
Library, Lima would have been to me only a delightful modern
city where there lurked an elusive something that I tried in vain
to capture. For only the dead can open the door that leads back-
ward, and in Room 300 I had known the dead. . . ,

The open door of the Grand Hotel Maury reveals a vast white
marble staircase which rises almost from the sidewalk.

Mounting this grandiose staircase I crossed that threshold be-
yond which I was so eager to pass, for the very register of the
Maury has recorded the names of visitors to Lima for a hundred
years: if you might know all that has happened in the Maury
you would have a picture of Lima for the past century.

The hotel bedrooms are on its two upper floors, the ground
floor being given over to dining rooms and a bar; and as the
building dates back before the plumbing era, its bathroom equip-
ment has been added as an afterthought. With the exception
of a few single rooms on the third floor, the Maury's accommoda-
tions for guests are in the form of suites, of which the most com-
fortable are the apartamcntos dc matrimonio interior rooms,
lighted and ventilated by overhead skylights, like dormer windows
built into the high ceilings, and manipulated by long cords hang-
ing down into the room.

On my first stay in Lima I sacrificed the quiet of one of these
interior apartments and took a suite over the street, that I might
observe the wagging of the world. I had a very tiny salon separated
from the bedroom by starched white Nottingham lace curtain*
Beyond the bedroom there was an enclosed balcony with glass

[47]

PERUVIAN PAGEANT

windows instead of carved lattices, and a third room housed
the plumbing, with so mammoth a tub that I was in daily danger
of drowning. Everywhere there were large mirrors and a pro-
vision for clothing which made my air-passenger quota seem
pathetically scanty. Even the little reception room had a dresser
with a long mirror and drawers; the bedroom had a rack which
might have served to hold the wraps for a life-sized party, and
there was in addition a large wardrobe and a bureau with drawers,
while the very balcony was supplied with a commodious ward-
robe and a dressing table.

Back in New York I had been proud of having kept within
the fifty-five pounds of luggage allowed to each passenger by air.
After subtracting the combined weight of the old week-end bag and
the hat-box which made up my luggage there had remained to me
a possible thirty-seven pounds of equipment. And I'd put my best
mind on the selection of what that equipment must include.

In every spare moment I had scribbled lists on scraps of paper
and the backs of envelopes, as well as in the notebook where they
properly belonged. Preparation must be made for hot-weather
stops en route, for the moderate climate of Lima and for the
penetrating cold of the Andean Sierra. There must be riding
things, evening dress, traveling outfit, stout shoes for much walk-
ing, toilet articles, a sewing kit for repairs, a few medicines, and
the tools of my trade pencils and paper.

The last days before departure had been spent in repeated
weighings, additions and subtractions; and you might expect
almost anywhere in the house to stumble over the bathroom scales.

In the final decisions such vexing questions had arisen as
whether, since only one dressing robe could be included, it would
be preferable to be too warm in the lowlands or too cold in the
Andes. Memories of wretched shivers in Quito and in Bogato,
however, had answered that question.

After the essential outfit had been pared down to the minimum,
I had considered such luxuries as an alarm clock, field glasses
and an umbrella, balancing the usefulness of one against another:

As I would be arriving on the coast in November at the begin-

[48]

A JOURNEY IN TIME

ning of its dry time the umbrella seemed of remote value. In
the Andes, however, downpours were to be expected from Novem-
ber to March, and there's nothing half-hearted about Andean
rains. When I did need an umbrella, therefore, I should want
it very much indeed and an alarm clock in a deluge wouldn't be
any particular blessing.

While on the trip down the clock would avoid anxiety lest
hotel boys forget to call me in time to make early planes. And,
after all, the outfit already decided upon included rubber overshoes
and a rubber poncho. I'd buy an umbrella in whatever Andean
town was able to supply it and then abandon it before resuming
air travel.

The question had then become alarm clock versus field glasses.
There are certain things which you go through life wanting very
much, not particularly costly things, but, somehow, you never
acquire them. A pair of nice, small, light field glasses with a
wide area of vision had always been for me among the unattained.
Those which I did possess weighed a pound and a half and were
very limited in field of vision. It would really be absurd to take
them. I didn't even argue the point, yet I never understood how
they managed it those clumsy glasses went with me. After the
dock was safely packed, from somewhere the suggestion presented
itself that, without their leather case the glasses wouldn't be so
very heavy, but even after their case was discarded, they weighed
one whole valuable pound. I then went through everything:
there were some notes I could do without, I had them in my head
anyway. And there was a pair of white gloves and a clothes
brush, superfluous in comparison with field glasses. When I asked
myself why I felt the glasses so important I explained that I must
have them for the birds on Lake Titicaca, and to observe vicunas
high on mountainsides.

And so the glasses had come along, in spite of the fact of
weighing one thirty-seventh of the entire outfit, and being as
glasses, almost a total loss, for by the time I got them focused the
object I wanted to see had usually vanished.

Now, at the Maury, in the presence of extensive preparations

[49]

PERUVIAN PAGEANT

for possessions my thirty-seven pounds of luggage were almost
ashamed to be unpacked. But I made a showing by spreading
them out, storing a few articles in each of the many drawers and
wardrobes.

And when I had done I felt very small myself and extraor-
dinarily lonely.

I was alone . , . alone with the great opportunity which I had
so desired.

My novel of sixteenth-century Peru had demanded that I visit
the place of the story. I had to see where it all happened. I
must know for myself the roads trod by the feet of my characters.
My eyes must look upon the scenes fixed upon their minds by
the drama of their hearts.

But such opportunity is not easy to achieve.

I often find to my amazement that the picture I present to the
world is that of a care-free woman, eternally wandering wherever
fancy leads.

"When are you of? again?" is the question which regularly
greets me on a brief cocktail-party-emergence from work.

Yet when I went to Guatemala for the background material
of Maria Pdluna, I had been four years continuously at work in
New York, except for a few weeks in Hollywood at the time that
my story of Devil's Island was in process of preparation for the
screen. The Guatemala experience had been followed by four
more years of work in New York. These are long periods for
one with a bird's instinct for migration; especially as my particular
migrations are essential to the work which absorbs my life.

Then, still draped in that myth of "I-suppose-you're-soon-off-
again," I had struggled to achieve Peru.

And now that the unattainable had been accomplished my
mind went back to the time when it had seemed impossible.

I have always felt that if you want a thing enough unless it
be fantastically outside reason, such as possessing blue eyes in-
stead of brown it may be yours. The catch, of course, lies in
that little word enough. For enough is often appallingly much;
enough usually involves sacrifice, toil, tenacity of purpose, faith.

[50]

A JOURNEY IN TIME

And with this thought recurs again and again a certain old
Spanish proverb: "And God said, Take what you want and pay
for it.'"

Often in the months of uncertainty when Peru seemed unat-
tainable, I would wake in the night, sleepless and anxious.

I would rise then, and prowl noiselessly from room to room.
There would be a hard bright light streaming down from a
tiny window in the very top of one of the lodging houses which
backed upon our apartment; an unshaded light shining through
a naked window, streaming down, bright and hard, upon the
floor while I paced from room to room, the embodiment of an
overwhelming desire.

Thus, wandering about, I would sometimes hear, through the
wall which separates us from a Dominican Convent, the daily
matins of the nuns: those prayers which have been repeated
through the centuries in every country of the world. But I
could get only the familiar intonation of supplication. I could
not make out the words.

Perhaps, I thought, they are repeating the Kyrie; the passionate
cry of fallen humanity:

"Lord have mercy on us.
Lord have mercy on us.
Christ have mercy on us.
Lord have mercy on us.
Lord have mercy on us."

In the presence of their patient reiteration I knew that, though
persistence is practiced as part of my creed of wanting a thing
enough, patience is not.

A priest once said to me, "Time is on the side of the Church."

Yes, but time is the implacable foe of the individual, and my
desire must be accomplished here and now; not in another world.

In these hours of flagging faith my mind would turn for en-
couragement to the occasions and they were surprisingly many
when combined effort and fate had realized the seemingly im-

[51]

PERUVIAN PAGEANT

possible. There was, for instance, our visit to Devil's Island:
that had come about after months of similar planning, similar
visualization of desire. I had wanted to study crime and punish-
ment as it is isolated in that Penal Colony, bounded on three
sides by trackless jungle, and on the fourth by great ocean rollers;
that colony where, behind the bars of their cells men may hear
the wild free chorus of the howling monkeys of the forest
treetops, or listen to the monotonous pounding of the sea break-
ing upon lonely beaches.

That I might accomplish that experience of the Penal Colony
it had been necessary to overcome all the obstacles which now
stood in the path; with the added difficulty that, since France
banishes to Devil's Island men convicted of high treason, it is
forbidden territory to the outside world. Even ships, flying
other than the French flag, may not pass within a mile and a
half of the Island, and it is not permitted that the families of
the keepers may so much as set foot upon it.

Remembering that somehow I don't myself quite know how
Roberto and I had not only lived in the Penal Colony, but that
we had been able to talk to dozens of the prisoners, to secure a
wealth of first-hand material upon which I had based two books,
that in addition we had actually twice visited the forbidden Island
itself, remembering this, would convince me that miracles did
sometimes happen,

I would then take heart, and go back to bed and to sleep.

And then at last one of the most formidable of the obstacles
in the way to Peru had been surmounted. For wings had been
made possible to us, just as four years before, when I had need
to go to Guatemala, a ship had similarly been provided. Yes,
now and then a miracle does happen, coming to pass after you've
tried in vain everything you know.

We found our wings on a hot June day. Lexington Avenue
was scorching in the sun, the pavements burning through the
soles of shoes, the spaces between shop-awnings blinding. Above,
a plane soared so high in the blue that the hum of its motors came

[52]

A JOURNEY IN TIME

but f aintly down to the torrid street where wings seemed remote
and unattainable.

Once more, myself said to myself, "You are attempting the im-
possible." Whereat myself replied, "After all ..." (quoting ex-
amples to prove that attempting the impossible was once in a
way a profitable pursuit) "and . . . Q. E. D. . . . why not
expect to find wings when you need them?"

// you desire a thing enough . . .

The phrase had hung itself up in my mind like the signs over
the shops, as I walked in the hot afternoon down the shady side of
Lexington Avenue.

Why, of course we would go to Peru! And we would fly!

Life, I had reflected, is like the child's game in which you
spin a pointer and obey the instructions given where the pointer
stops:

Move forward three. Go back five. Stay where you are. Back
to the beginning. Move forward fifteen. . . .

The thing was never to despair, always to be ready to spin and
spin again.

Now in the Hotel Maury recalling that walk, I seemed one
moment to have been treading blistering pavements, and the
next to have been assured of wings. For the thing had happened;
we were to go at any time we wished; and I could not wait
to get home to tell Roberto. I shut myself in the nearest telephone
booth.

Plaza 3-6515.

Is this Plaza 3-65

Wrong number.

(Fingers too excited. Dial again.)

Plaza 3-6515.

Hello! . . . Well, we're going!

Where?

To Peru, of course! On wings. . .

The thought that I was actually at last arrived in Lima drove
me immediately out into the city.

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PERUVIAN PAGEANT

I engaged a car at the door and let the chauffeur drive me where
he would.

He showed me the handsome plaza over which the statue of
San Martin presides, high on a bronze horse, above grassy
green plots and crepe myrtle grown to the proportion of trees,
with fountains falling in cascades over flights of white steps, and
automobiles passing shining in the sun, or parked waiting to
serve the buildings which surround die plaza, buildings of the
new Lima shops and arcades, moving-picture houses, offices tall
enough to have elevators and to put on the airs of skyscrapers,
the Club Nacional, and, facing San Martin, the modern, well-
appointed Hotel Bolivar; the Plaza thus doing honor to Bolivar,
the Liberator of South America, and to San Martin, second only
in glory to Bolivar.

The chauffeur drove me about the square, and along spacious
boulevards, pointing out public buildings, other squares and
other statues, churches and convents. We turned unexpectedly
into narrow congested streets where, for all the glitter and move-
ment of the present, there persists that evanescent breath of what
has gone before, tantalizingly hovering on the fringe of recollection,
teasingly elusive, but in just a moment surely to come alive. . , .

And then I left the past to materialize when it would, while
the living, visible Lima absorbed me. Senor Salocchi sent his
car to drive me about, through the city and out to blossoming
suburbs, to Miraflores, Chorillos, San Isidro, Barranca, to the port
of Callao, and along the shore of the bluest sea in the world.
Through other acquaintances, I met the intelligentsia, the diplo-
matic circle, the old aristocracy, University students, newspaper
men, mining men, and the sort of Society that everywhere gets it-
self spelled with a capital S. My Spanish, which since Guatemala
had been used chiefly for research, now warmed up and got under
way, and I talked to them all, adding shop-girls, the staff of a
nearby beauty parlor, the hotel boys, the chambermaids and an oc-
casional chauffeur. I talked to youth with a dream in its eyes, so
certain that Utopia is a matter simple of accomplishment; and to

[54]

A JOURNEY IN TIME

maturity, not always cocksure, often humble, seeking a way out for
civilization. I heard guarded talk of the Apristas, and all over
Peru I was later to see the letters APRA chalked here and there on
walls, and stones; Apra, the symbol of the Alianza Popular Revo-
lucionaria Americana, whose founder and leader, Haya de la
Torre, was somewhere in hiding; whether in exile or in Peru
was debatable.

And much of the talk I heard touched problems which each
faction would solve in its own way; the universal problems of
labor and capital, wages and working hours, the land, the local
problem of the Indian, and what should be the national policy.

"What do you make of all this?" I asked a chauffeur who
occasionally drove me to keep some engagement which demanded
arriving in style.

"I am a working man," he replied prudently, "and do not
concern myself with politics." He had just bought a new car
and was paying for it on the installment plan. Let others concern
themselves with political affairs.

Occasionally, I would remain quietly in the hotel, letting my-
self float on the current of life as it flowed under my balcony:
sitting there for hours, with my chin on my crossed arms, watch-
ing:

Over the way balconies similar to mine look down upon the
high shops. Buses pass, all going in the same direction, the street
being so narrow that they must return by another way. And
there is always great congestion of automobiles. A push-cart
selling alligator pears works its way among them, and another,
this time painted scarlet and labeled "hclados" advertises itself
by the tooting of a horn. Lima loves ices and the halting of the
hclados cart holds up traffic. Then a woman with a cerise manta
closely wrapped about her head draws my eyes to the sidewalk,
to marvel at her great shawl of royal blue and the immensely full
bottle-green skirt which reaches her ankles. She is followed
by women trimly got up in grey suits with grey hats, or black
hats with black suits, and all mounted upon high-heeled pumps.
There are prayerful women, too, with black lace veils instead

[55]

PERUVIAN PAGEANT

of hats, rosaries in their hands, and the thought of Mass in their
eyes. Dignified gentlemen stop short to embrace and pat each
other on the back, or there is a sedate nun, all in black with a
stiff white bib. Again a bevy of nattily turned out women in
tailored suits, a girl in a bright pink dress, a man loaded with
brooms and feather dusters, a young dandy in double-breasted
grey suit and a blue felt hat, a cart heaped with oranges and
mangoes under a white awning. And there are always mes-
sengers passing with flowers, baskets of flowers and set-pieces;
lilies and roses, sweet peas, heliotrope, jasmine, carnations, violets;
for Lima adores flowers.

And as I watch this flow of life certain phrases out of the talk I
have heard return to me:

"// you could see the Indian! . . . If you could %now how he
worths. In the Sierra and on the coast. How he wor\s and for so
little! If you could see!"

"Peru is on the threshold of a great prosperity. . . . If it can
avoid revolution."

When it is noon all the shops roll down the shutters which
close their wide entrances; and they will not reopen until two
o'clock. And at that hour Lima breakfasts. The early morning
meal of Spanish-America is a stingy matter of rolls and coffee,
the noon breakfast a substantial affair, an elaborate luncheon rather
than a breakfast.

As for the cookery of the Maury, it has been famous for gen-
erations, and in its great, airy, lofty, white dining room, sooner
or later you will see all Lima, drinking the celebrated Pisco-sours,
eating such distinctive dishes as broth into which an egg has
been dropped, there to semi-poach itself in the savory liquid, or
you may select a shrimp soup, or eggs Huancayna prepared with
an indescribable sauce, or tiny fried fish called pejerreyes, beside
which all other fish are coarse; but whatever you may choose it
pxust include alligator pears stuffed with mayonnaise, and the
most amazing shrimps, like no other sea food in the waters of

[56]

A JOURNEY IN TIME

the earth. And you may finish of? with luscious ripe figs if they
happen to be in season, or with chirimoyas or grenadillas.

I had early felt myself a part of Lima, added to that company
which through the generations have loved the Maury, and com-
plained of the Maury, and told jokes at the expense of the Maury,
and at last come to speak of it as the "old Maury," or the "dear
old Maury." "The Maury," I heard a man say affectionately, "the
Maury is Pre-Inca!"

But, unbelievably lacking as I am in a sense of locality, for all
my love of Lima I never learned to find my way about the city.
I was fond of going about on foot. I think you never touch a
city intimately in any other way, and from their sidewalks all
Spanish-American towns permit you to look into their privacy.
Shops and hotels are frankly open, and through grilled door-
ways you may gaze upon patios where fountains play and flowers
bloom beneath the fanning fronds of palms. Such houses are
at the same time open and reserved, like half confidences which
give and simultaneously withhold. In Lima the numbers of the
great houses of Spanish-Colonial type, obviously abandoned by the
prosperous, show the tendency of the wealthy to forsake the things
of the past. The neglected patios are mutely pathetic. Some
day I think these houses will be again valued, restored and re-
habilitated, appreciated perhaps by a new wealth that will make
them fashionable. What has had true beauty endures beyond
fashion and eventually lives again; and a Lima of gracious and
lovely distinction awaits this resurrection which, while it adds
the comforts of progress, will preserve that beautiful thing which
was born of the Moor and the Spaniard, and transplanted across
the seas to the New World where it flourished as though it had
never been uprooted.

I found an endless pleasure in walking about lima. Then,
wearied and hungry, I would decide that it was time to return
to the hotel.

But where was the hotel? I would begin to inquire.

So many blocks to the right, so many straight ahead, so many

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on the left, then straight ahead again, and to the right. . , . So
many . . . And there you are.

It would all be quite clear. The directions had been explicit.

Yet, invariably, my roving mind betrayed me. I was to proceed,
let us say, half a dozen blocks to the right . . . but, suddenly I
realized that I hadn't the very smallest notion of how many blocks
I had proceeded ! There had been perhaps a courtyard surrounded
by an arcade under horseshoe arches, an imposing stairway to
another arcade and more arches* You enter the courtyard by a
zaguan with hooks in the wall to which gentlemen once tied
their horses' bridles, and a stone seat where grooms and coachmen
once sat to gossip about the foibles of their masters. A zaguan
the Moorish name delighted me. . . . But how many blocks was
it that I was to proceed? I could remember my instructions; the
difficulty was that I could never keep track of how far I had walked
in any given directions, so that the instructions became, of course,
quite valueless. And I would have to make fresh inquiries,
starting blithely off again, and again the mind betraying me,
dancing off on its own pursuits. For example: Would Roberto
really be able to come down and join me as we had planned?
If it happened to be a Monday or a Friday there might be a
letter from him on the south-bound plane. . . .

And now, how many blocks had I come?

Would you have the fyndness to tell me where I may find the
Hotel Maury?

Again instructions. Really I was tired and very hungry. It had
been long since that mere coffee and rolls.

(Roberto has so phenomenal a sense of direction that I've never
had to develop one.)

The Maury, Senorita? Como no? Four to the right and you
come to the Plaza de Armas. And then

Yes, it was very simple. At the Plaza de Armas I would be
within two minutes of the hotel.

And for sheer shame I couldn't confess that I was never more
lost than at that same Plaza de Armas. Therefore I would wait
and, with mortification, inquire further at the Plaza itself.

[58]

A JOURNEY IN TIME

And off would go the mind; endlessly it would occupy itself
with that novel of sixteenth-century Peru which had brought me
on this journey. The characters had a trick of carrying on con-
versations in my head. Tito, the hero, would have Salla, the
heroine, know ... Or Tito was listening to the Spanish soldiers
discussing their commander, Francisco Pizarro, whose statue pre-
sides triumphant over the Plaza de Armas in Lima.

But how many blocks was it to the Plaza?

The streets of Lima have a hateful trick of changing their
names every little while, sometimes every block, so often that
the names were useless to me.

Then arrived by chance at the Plaza, I would make my inquiries.

Would you have the kindness . .

The Maury, but the Maury is not more than a minute, Senorita!

And once, questioning at a newspaper stand on the Plaza, I
was told smilingly, "The Maury? Why, it's just where it was
when you asked me yesterday!"

And that, of course, made it impossible for me ever again to
put the query to that particular news vender 1 Though the need,
I confess, often arose.

At other times, the Maury had a trick of appearing as if by
wizardry: when I least suspected how near it was, suddenly I
would see it looking at me from across the street, and with an
immense joy I would go in to breakfast.

When I had happened to be returning by bus, or street-car, the
same thing would occur. When paying my fare I would always
ask whether the conductor would be good enough to tell me
where to get off, at the corner nearest the Maury. And with the
kindness of Peru my fellow passengers would take an interest,
discussing among themselves just what was the best corner. Then
when I had been deposited on the sidewalk I would wait for
bus or car to disappear, that my bus-friends might not see that
even on the "nearest corner" I must still make inquiries.

And then something happened which took me back ever so
much further than that sixteenth century in search of which I
had come to Peru.

[59]

HI
VAST CEMETERY

EVER since the Spanish Conquest Peru has been as generous in
opportunity to the alien as has the United States. Toward the
end of the eighteenth century the exalted position of Viceroy of
Peru was held by an Irishman Ambrose O'Higgins who rose
to that dizzy height of power and honor from the obscure posi-
tion of an unsuccessful peddler, with a single mule to carry his
goods about the country. It was Henry Meiggs, of the United
States, who built the spectacular Oroya Railroad which is rated
a miracle of engineering. And in more modern times Peru has
welcomed the miner, the shipping man and the aviator from
foreign lands.

So that I should not have been astonished to find that a Phila-
delphian had been Rector of the ancient University of venerable
Cuzco, or that when I met him his first question was: "What can
I do for you?"

For this was in the Peruvian tradition.

And with his intimate knowledge of the country there is much
that Dr. Albert Giesecke can do to direct the traveler who would
know Peru, since for the last twenty years he has lived either in
Cuzco or Lima, and he is married to a Cuzquena.

The first of Doctor Giesecke's many kindnesses was to take me
to visit Cajamarquilla.

We drove out of Lima along a dusty road to the ruins of a
city of such antiquity that history records nothing of its life.

The city stands on a plain set about with barren hills, as lifeless
as the long-abandoned ruins themselves. A thin stream flows
through the plain, with overhanging willows whose branches
are full of little singing, rose-breasted birds. Vultures soar high

[60]

A JOURNEY IN TIME

in the blue. But all else is dead. So dead a city that it could hold
no hope for the vultures. So dead that it has only a name. It is
the city of Cajamarquilla. And that is all that anybody knows.

We wandered for hours through its narrow streets between
thick roofless adobe walls, in many places demolished by the
earthquakes which have punctuated the history of the Peruvian
coast.

In the city, and in the adjacent cemetery, there are signs of
diggittg* where grave-robbers have sought loot, and archaeologists
the treasure of knowledge. The ground is strewn with the
wreckage of these excavations. We walked among blanched and
crumbling bones, sometimes veiled by the drifting sand, some-
times naked in the sun. And with the bones are wisps of human
hair, scraps of mummy-cloths, fragments of pottery, rotting bits of
fabric whose bright pattern still survives.

And all exudes a strange pungent smell, somehow oddly familiar,
though I tried in vain to place it. As we passed through the
streets, stopping to examine a bit of rose-colored stucco still ding-
ing to a wall, or to look into subterranean cavities which were
perhaps the granaries of long ago, the odor was faint, but when
we took one of the old bones and stirred up the sand of what
had evidently been a tomb, then this curiously familiar scent
was strong.

At intervals to rest we would sit upon a wall looking out over
this silent city of death where nothing now lives but the tiny
air-plants which grow on the dry adobe, such tiny plants that
from a distance they look like pigment staining the walls in pink
and in a pale greenish white.

Yet for all its deadness it was there in Cajamarquilla that I
first felt the reality of that dim Peru which precedes history. It
was Cajamarquilla that was my introduction to the vast cemetery
which stretches from Chan-Chan in the north, down along the
coast of Peru as far as Paracas, Nazca and lea in the south. And
what had been before merely an academic interest, a museum in-
terest you might say, came alive among the ruins of Cajamarquilla.
I was suddenly eager to know more of the great civilization which

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had flourished on the coast of Peru long before my sixteenth
century.

On the afternoon of that same day we drove to Pachacamac,
twenty miles south of Lima, beside the sea.

Pachacamac is more beautiful, more striking than Cajamarquilla.
Its terraced temple stands upon an eminence facing the ocean.
From the summit you look across a limitless blue, you hear the
roar of waves breaking on the beach. Far below on the left is
the Lurin Valley, incredibly green in contrast to the desert sands
which stretch to the north; and back of you, in the east, rise the
Andes, range upon range.

And though everywhere the bones of the dead litter the sands,
crunching underfoot as you walk, yet Pachacamac is less dead
than Cajamarquilla, for of this temple by the sea there is both
historical and legendary knowledge.

My people of the sixteenth century had known Pachacamac, for
Francisco Pizarro sent one of his brothers on an expedition to
investigate tales of the riches of the temple. With this expedition
there was Pizarro's secretary, Estete, and he set down in writing
what he saw.

"It must be a very old place [Estete wrote] for there are
numerous fallen edifices. It has been surrounded by a wall,
though now most of it is fallen. . . . The people beHeve that
all things in the world are in the hands of the idol of this
temple. ... It is held in such veneration that none except
its priests and servants may enter where it is or touch the
walls. ... To it they make great sacrifices and pilgrimages
from a distance of three hundred leagues or more, with gold
and silver which they give to the custodian who enters and
consults the idol, and returns then with his answer. And
before any of the idol's ministers can enter they must fast
many days and abstain from all carnal intercourse. . . . We
doubt not that the devil resides in this figure and speaks with
his servants things that are spread all over the land. . . ."

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A JOURNEY IN TIME

And when, forty years later, Cieza de Leon came, the Indians
told him that Pachacamac still talked with certain of the aged
people, even though the Spaniards had destroyed his idol and
set up a cross in its place.

And nearly three hundred years after Cieza de Leon, the
archaeologist, Squier, came to Pachacamac, and out of its graves
he sought to reconstruct the ancient life.

In little vaults of adobe bricks, roofed with canes or rushes, he
found the dead. Some had been laid away in "elegant cerements,
but often the cerements were coarse, the ornaments scanty and
mean, the mass of mankind, then as now, poor in death as they
had been impoverished in life."

And among the mummies which he found, Squier has described
a family group which was "not of the rich, nor yet of the poorest*"

"This particular tomb [he wrote] was one of the second
stratum of graves, and was neither of the earliest nor the
latest date. ... It contained five bodies: one of a man of
middle age; another of a full-grown woman; a third of a
girl of about fourteen years; the fourth, a young boy; and the
fifth an infant. The little one was placed between the father
and the mother; the boy was by the side of the manj the girl
by the side of the woman. All were enveloped in a braided
network of rushes, or coarse grass.

"Under the outer wrapper of braided reeds the man was
wrapped in a stout plain cotton doth. Next came an envelope
of cotton cloth of finer texture which when removed disclosed
the body, shrunken and dried hard, of the color of mahogany,
but well preserved* Passing around the neck was a net of

twisted fibre of the agave This seems to indicate that the

man had been a fisherman a conclusion further sustained
by finding wrapped in a cloth between his feet some fishing
lines of various sizes, some copper hooks, barbed like ours,
and some copper sinkers. . . .

"His wife, beneath the same coarse outer wrapping of
braided reeds, was enveloped in a blanket of alpaca wool finely
spun. It was in two colors a soft chestnut brown and a pure

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white. Below this was a sheet of fine cotton cloth with a
diamond-shaped pattern formed by very elaborate lines of
ornament, and in the spaces between the lines were repre-
sentations of monkeys which seemed to be following each
other up and down stairs. . . .

"The woman's long hair was black, in some places lustrous.
In one hand she had a comb, made by setting what I took to
be the long parts of the rays of fishes' fins, in a slip of the hard,
woody part of the dwarf-palm-tree. , . .

"Resting beneath her body are several small domestic imple-
ments, among them an ancient spindle for spinning cotton,
half-covered with spun thread. . . . The contrivance is precisely
the same as that in universal use by the Indian women of the
present day. . . .

"The body of the girl was seated on a kind of work-box
of braided reeds. ... In it were grouped together things
childish and things showing approach to maturity. There
were rude specimens of knitting, with places showing where
stitches had been dropped; there were mites of spindles
and implements for weaving; skeins and spools of thread,
the spools being composed of two splints placed across each
other at right angles, and the thread wound 'in and out' be-
tween them. There were strips of cloth, some wide, some
narrow and some of two and even three colors; and needles
of bone and bronze. . . . And there were several sections of
the hollow bones of a small bird, carefully stopped by a wad
of cotton, and containing pigments of various colors. I as-
sumed at first that these were intended as dyes for the cotton
textures . . . but became doubtful when I found a curious
contrivance made of the finest cotton and evidently used as
a 'dab' for applying the colors to the face. . . . And there was
a substitute for a mirror composed of a piece of iron pyrites,
resembling the half of an egg, with the plain side highly
polished.

"Among all these things I dare say none was prized more
in life than a little crushed ornament of gold evidently in-
tended to represent a butterfly.

"The girl's hair was braided and plaited around the fore-
head, encircling which was a cincture of white cloth orna-

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A JOURNEY IN TIME

mcnt with little silver spangles; a thin narrow bracelet of the
same metal still hung on the shrunken arm; and between her
feet was the dried body of a parrot, doubtless her pet in life,
brought perhaps from the distant Amazonian valleys.

"Surrounding the body of the boy there was nothing of
especial interest, but the finely braided sling bound about
his forehead.

"The body of the infant, a girl, had been embedded in the
fleece of the alpaca, then wrapped in fine cotton cloth. The
only article found with the body was a sea-shell containing
pebbles, the orifice closed with a hard pitch-like substance.

"It was the child's rattle."

Squier assumes that in life the family laid to rest in this tomb
lived in an apartment ... in one of the tenement houses in the
ancient city. He described such apartments as of "one story,
with no narrow, dark passages, but all opening on a spacious
central court. Some of the apartments were composed of a single
room. This family probably had three; a large one, about fifteen
feet square; a small sleeping-room with a raised bank of earth
at one end; and another smaller room, a kitchen, with niches
in the wall to receive utensils, and with vessels sunk in the earth
to contain maize, beans and other articles of food."

And with the testimony of Estete, of Cieza de Leon, and of
Squier in your mind, as you climb the terraces which lead to
the summit of the temple of Pachacamac, that far past springs into
life.

The high perpendicular walls of the temple terraces which,
here and there, still show rose-red and chrome-yellow stucco, are
once more brilliant under the blue sky. And once more you
see the vivid murals of men- and beasts, and the gold door of the
idol's temple, inlaid with coral and precious stones, and you get
the odor of .bloody sacrifice as Hernando Pizarro and Estete
rudely throw open the door.

When you reach the summit and look down upon the plain
where the drifting sand of the centuries has buried the

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remains of what was formerly a sacred Mecca, the city again
is crowded with pilgrims, many bringing their dead from great
distances that they may rest forever in this holy place, others
coming with gold and silver to consult the great oracle.

Somewhere in that past a fisherman spreads his net, his
wife combs her long black lustrous hair, a baby aimlessly waves
a sea-shell rattle, a young girl dreaming bewildering dreams of
puberty is carefully painting her face. A small boy, scornful of
the new absorptions of his sister, goes off to play alone with his
sling; while with a detached air the parrot surveys the scene.

From the summit of this temple of Pachacamac you look out
upon a land of sands, shimmering like the sands of Egypt, and
a valley green as the valley of the Nile, a land as rich in tombs
and temples as the land of the Pharaohs. But with the difference
that here is the Pacific, stretching away in the west to a far
horizon, while in the east rise the Andes; and this combination
of mountain and sea and haunted desert is Peru, and nowhere
else in the world.

As I stood on the summit of the temple, the sea below was
flecked with white guano islets. The wind blew from the ocean
and was strongly charged with that same odor which clung
to the content of every grave. I realized then that the odor came
from the guano islands, and suddenly I understood the familiarity
which had puzzled me.

It was the odor of guano. And I was a child on a tobacco
plantation, and great brown canvas sacks of guano were piled
high in the ox-cart which brought them from the nearest railway
depot.

But why are the ancient graves saturated with that pungent
odor?

The explanation, I was told, is that perhaps guano was in some
way used in the mummification of the bodies, or it might be that
the odor was caused in both the guano and the mummies by the
action of salt air upon organic matter. But whatever the cause the
odor or guano pervades my memory of the vast cemetery of Peru.

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A JOURNEY IN TIME

After that golden day at Cajamarquilla and Pachacamac,
archaeological collections from the coast o Peru can never again
be merely abstract relics of vague vanished civilizations, for I must
ever after see each specimen as the treasure of some human heart,
as a human desire for expression.

The Museum of Archaeology in Lima is as interesting as the
Egyptian Museum in Cairo, and both have the immense ad-
vantage of being so near the tombs from which their objects were
taken that it is easy to relate the collections to the setting where
the life of which they were a part was lived. It is as though the
fragments of a picture had been put into your hands and you
have only to call upon your imagination to reconstruct that life,
to set it all again in motion.

In addition to the Museum there are private collections to be
seen in Peru, especially the rich collection of Senor Larco Herrera
at Chiclin, near Trujillo.

In these contents of the ancient tombs of the Peruvian coast
you may read so much that it scarcely seems credible that not one
of the civilizations had any sort of writing, that there remain only
the crumbling ruins of buildings, a few utensils, tools, ornaments,
the fabrics in which the dead were wrapped, and the pottery which
was placed in the tombs.

For the decoration of pottery and textiles tell the story.

The Peruvian archaeologist, Dr. Julio Tello, says of these pic-
tographs that when they are carefully studied you find a definite
relationship between them. Certain representations of men and
animals and mythological creatures may be traced on any number
of specimens, each with its own personality, its own particular
r61e, as it were. To Doctor Tello these individual representations
appear as characters in a novel whose history he follows, as from
fragmentary pages of a book.

Even as a layman, marveling among the collections, you may
read much in the pottery and the textiles. You see what were
the fruits and the vegetables of these ancient peoples. You know
that they kept dogs and parrots and macaws, that they hunted
deer, killed seals, and went fishing, that they planted and harvested

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crops, that they danced and sang, that they played upon tam-
bourines and flutes and trumpets, that they brought offerings to
their chiefs, that the various tribes made war upon one another,
wearing helmets and armed with javelins and dubs and axes, their
faces and legs painted in geometric design, that when a lord
traveled he was carried in a chair on men's shoulders or sat upon
a raft propelled by men swimming, that crime was punished by
cutting off an arm, a leg, a nose, or a pair of lips. You see repre-
sentations of those suffering from disease. You know that surgery
was practiced among them, and that they found diversion in fiestas
and dances, that they performed symbolic religious rites, offered
human sacrifice, and possessed an involved mythology. The
pottery shows, too, that in the great kingdom of the Great Chimo,
whose capital was Chan-Chan, people lived in houses with gabled
roofs, and had pleasure pavilions open to the breezes.

Upon other pieces of pottery there is represented every step in
the art of weaving. One shows a man fishing, using a basket
trap, upon one a man is preparing to cook his catch in an earthen
pot, on still another a man drags by a halter an unwilling llama,
upon another, while a man is drinking, a monkey perched on his
shoulder appears in the act of whispering something slyly in his
car.

And as though these departed artists would have us know all
that their art could tell, they have expressed in portrait vases the
individuality of character of their time, and the range of human
emotion. The most interesting of the portrait vases have been
found in the tombs about Trujillo. They are modeled in clay,
the faces usually about half life size. There are among them the
faces of young and old, tragic faces and gay, serene and thoughtful,
patient, proud, resentful, and angry.

I remember especially the face of a blind man in Senor Larco's
collection. There is no question that the eyes are sightless, or
that the man has come to accept his infirmity with resignation,
that he has reached contentment.

Among the many examples of mythological subjects, are studies
in which the artist has forsaken realism to depict, "not the world

[68]

The Plaza San Martin, Lima

A JOURNEY IN TIME

as it is, but man's conception of it." On one of Senor Larco's vases
are modeled the figures of a very drunken god, carefully escorted
by two kind, wise, sober birds who support his reeling figure,
a bird on either side, standing about shoulder high to the god,
who is something like six inches tall.

To all this that the artist has related of his time, we know
also that what we consider obscenity had its part in their civiliza-
tion, for behind a heavy curtain in the Larco Museum at Chidin
there are segregated those pieces which are said to be pornographic;
I say "said to be" because I was not allowed to see them.

And sometimes a living Indian of today will unconsciously
throw a sudden light into the far past. There frequently appears,
for example, on various pieces in the collection at Chiclin, a small
fruit native to the near-by hill country. Senor Larco happened
one day to question an Indian about this fruit The man im-
mediately gave a name to it, and added that unless it is eaten in
silence it turns sour in the stomach. Possibly secrecy was the
significance of this fruit, used by a people without writing as a
symbol to express necessity for silence and caution.

Your mind thus full of what you have read in this pictured
life of the ancients of the coast, you may drive through pale
green fields of sugar cane rustling like silk in the breeze, and
then along a desert road to the old city of Chan-Chan.
J^tjigantic walls surround the ruins covering eleven square miles,
oricerthe capital of the kingdom of the Great Chimo who ruled
the coast for a distance of some six hundred miles, his territory
irrigated and fertile beyond anything known today, for the huge
sugar plantations of the present take in only part of a region once
Intensively cultivated.

! Behind its forty-foot walls the city of Chan-Chan was elaborately
laid out, with palaces and gardens and baths, storehouses, water
tanks and aqueducts. Its walls were covered with arabesques in
geometric design, and with murals of scenes painted in black and
in shades of red and yellow and orange and blue.'/

And at intervals in the city towered the huge huacas the holy

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places, chambered pyramids where they buried their illustrious
dead in whatever pomp their rank demanded, and with them
the huacos, the sacred things, the ceremonial pottery vases which
record their life, the ornaments and figurines which show that
they understood the working of gold and silver and copper.

Huacas and huacos rested in the quiet of centuries, untouched
by the Inca Conquest, unmolested throughout the long period of
Inca rule.

Then the Spanish Conquerors, avid of gold, discovered that
wealth lay buried in these holy huacas, and excavation began.
From the greatest of the tombs of Chan-Chan it has been esti-
mated the Spaniards took between five and seven million dollars
in gold and silver.

Chan-Chan stands now, abandoned and disintegrating, piled
with drifted sand; what remained of its arabesques and murals
washed away by the rains which in 1925 fell so unexpectedly upon
this normally rainless coast.

So, from Chan-Chan, Moche, Paramonga, Nepena, Pachacamac,
down along the coast to Paracas, lea and Nazca, every fertile
valley had its dynastic history, its characteristic art, its periods
of realism and of stylistic convention the modeled.partrait vases
of the Ctun3jk.the extravagantly symbolic bird-demons and cat-
deDaons and centipede-gods and many-headed gods of Nasca.
From an analysis of these art-forms the student classifies epochs
and dynasties in an effort to figure out the historical events of
that Him past.

But for those of us who are not specialists, it is enough to know
that in the tombs of this vast cemetery extending for a thousand
miles from north to south, those whose home was on the coast of
Peru have left in the expression of their art, the story of their daily
living. Here, they seem to say, look and see how it was that
we lived, what were our activities, and our diversions, our food
and our dress; look into our faces and understand what were our
emotions; look upon our gods and behold what manner of things
we believed.

[70]

IV

MUMMY NUMBER 94

THERE are people who so completely live in the lifework which
is their destiny that you never think of talking to them about any
other subject. Their work appears inseparable from the pulsing
of their hearts, as vitally essential as air to the lungs. To people
like this everything outside the chosen pursuit seems incidental
to the role for which they have been cast. They have, as it were,
become merely tools through which an absorbing interest expresses
itself*

The Peruvian archaeologist, Dr. Julio Tello, is such a man, The
bare mention of the archaeology of Peru turns on a light which
shines out of his eyes and through the thick lenses of his spectacles,
illumining his face. The zest of his work is in his quick step:
there is not time enough for all that he would do. His voice is
vibrant with an inner propelling force. His whole personality
is so charged with the subject to which he is dedicated that
the man himself makes an unforgettable impression.

My own enthusiasm is for the historical past of Peru. I often
feel as though I were born really in the sixteenth century and
have since lived through the centuries which have followed. Now
my interest was extended into a time before Columbus set sail
from the little port of Palos, with the good friars of the Monastery
of La Rabida praying for his safe return. I had already gone
back to the days when Cajamarquilla and Pachacamac lived and
flourished; and, within a few moments after presenting my letter
of introduction to Doctor Tello, I was prepared to travel as far
into the past as he could guide me. But I had to win his guidance.
After all who was I? True, my letter of introduction had come
from his good friend, Philip Means, a distinguished authority on
Peru* But I was not an archaeologist. I was just a woman writing

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a book about a country not her own, and that, not unreasonably,
made me a suspect character to begin with. Of course, people were
cordial: the South American is always that, but still it is for you
to show that you are in earnest, genuinely interested.

So the days passed and gradually Doctor Tello gave me more
and more of what time could be spared from his classes at the
University of San Marcos. And as I came to know him I began
to understand how archaeology was woven into the pattern of
his personal life.

He was born in a little village in the high Sierra: a village still
so isolated that to reach it you must for part of the way travel
on the back of mule or horse.

The village, which is called Huarochiri, lies at the foot of the
majestic snow peak of Paria Kaka in the dominion of the tribe
of the Yuayos, conquered by the Incas many centuries ago.

And Julio Tello is of untarnished Indian blood. He comes of
an ancient family whose ancestors, according to a tradition handed
down through the years, were sons of a deity whose abode was
the eternal snows of Paria Kaka.

**As a child, Doctor Tello lived the life of the village. He took
part in pagan ceremonies celebrated at the seasons of sowing and
reaping. One of his happiest memories is of the great agricultural
dances when all the members of the tribe, men, women and chil-
dren, dressed and adorned in Inca fashion, danced to the music
of flutes and tambours, and more memorable still were the cere-
monies of the herds, taking place on the high lonely Puna. And
each year, in August, the month of its anniversary, there was
enacted the drama of the execution of Atahualpa, the last sovereign
Inca.

It seems as though Destiny had, with infinite care, trained the
child, Julio Tello, for the profession to which he was to give his
life.

His mother was descended from a tribe of weavers, and breeders
of llamas, who came originally from the heights of Llampilla
where there still remain the ruins of their ranches and their
villages. Doctor Tello remembers how, in the patio of their moun-

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A JOURNEY IN TIME

tain home, his mother and his aunts and his sisters would sit at
their looms, competing with one another in the weaving of
blankets, girdles and mantles, of rich color and fine texture.

Watching his mother at her work, the art of weaving associated
itself in the little Tello's heart with every tender emotion, with
happy childhood in the friendly village, and with love for the
mother under whose fingers beautiful designs in warm color took
shape.

So that now, Dr. Julio Tello, the Peruvian archaeologist with a
world-wide reputation, can never examine a textile from the
ancient graves without unconsciously relating it to his mother
at her loom. There is an emotional quality in his appreciation of
the skill and the art of the ancient textiles. I think only a full-
blooded Peruvian Indian could add this reverence to a scientific
study of the archaeology of his country.

Little by little the background of the man came alive for me*
And when I saw his small daughter, Elena, I seemed to know
Doctor Tello himself as a boy.

Elena is a slender, ardent child whose passion is archaeology.
You couldn't imagine her playing with ordinary toys: her play-
things are tiny sacred objects taken from the graves of Peru's
vast cemetery. She will sit for hours lovingly fingering these
huacos, making up for herself a little song, over and over re-
peated:

gustan los huacos,
Los huacos me gustan. . . .

7 likf huacos . . . Huacos,
I li^c huacos. . . /'

And while I saw in Elena a feminine replica in miniature of
what her father must have been, he saw in her his mother. Elena,
he said, was extraordinarily like his mother.

I knew then that Doctor Tello's mother had been beautiful
as she sat at her loom; that her eyes were very bright and

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very black, her teeth white and even, her hair a burnished ebony,
and her skin of a color not easy to describe; not the copper hue
of the North American Indian, nor the clear amber of the
Oriental, but something between the two. And when I think of
her hands guiding the threads on her loom, I see them finely
formed, delicate little hands, busy over the pattern of the fabric,
all unconscious that the work of her fingers was to be forever
inseparable from the profession for which her little Julio was
destined.

Because of Elena, Doctor Tello's mother is thus a clear image
in my mind.

So I see her at her weaving in the quiet of the high village, when
something happened which was to play a decisive part in her
son's future.

His father was a man of vision, a leader in progressive ideas;
he would have schools established and irrigation works: as mayor
of the village, he would keep the inherited ceremonies free from
the debauchery of liquor: altogether he was a man of importance
in Huarochiri. Thus, when the director of an asylum in Lima
wanted to assemble a collection of trepanned skulls from the
ancient Inca graves, it was logical that the Prefect of Lima should
have appealed to Doctor Tello's father for assistance in the matter.

And the child Julio saw these skulls before they were shipped
down to Lima. He was interested and curious, though he did not
then guess the influence they were to have upon his own future.

The next memorable event in his life was the decision that
he should be sent to school in Lima. The education of his chil-
dren had been his father's great concern; education he thought
the most precious thing to which a man might aspire. While the
little Julio's mother could conceive no greater felicity than the
tending of flocks, or the cultivation of the soil, or the arts of weav-
ing and of music. She could not read nor write, and she did not
feel the need of either. She had learned by heart the contents
of the elementary school books, the catechism, and the prayers of
the Mass; and she taught them from memory to her children be-
fore they had learned to read

[74]

A JOURNEY IN TIME

She did not sec that more education was necessary.

To his father, the education of his sons was a contribution to the
well-being of the family; to his mother its cost would consume the
patrimony of the home, exposing the home to a future of misery,
since such cost could not be met without disposing of the lands
which were the life of the family.

Doctor Tello cherishes the memory of his mother's little figure
busy in that cultivation of the soil which was her delight, selecting
seeds, nursing the young plants, and then at the communal fiestas
exhibiting with pride the finest fruits of the harvest.

And as she went about this work, or as she sat at her loom, she
must often have thought how extravagant a value her husband
set upon the thing called education, life being so happy and so
satisfying without it.

Then, when the son, Julio (tenth in the thirteen children she
had borne), reached the age of twelve, it was decided that the
silver antiquities which had been guarded as sacred family relics
must be converted into money for his education.

Looking back upon that decision, Doctor Tello says reflectively:
"I had not in truth, at that time, any great ambition to be edu-
cated. I had only a grand curiosity to know Tima. I wanted to
see what white men were like, and negroes, and Chinamen and
soldiers and doctors and monks, and houses such as had been de-
scribed to me by those who had seen Lima."

Taken to Lima, he was lodged in the house of a senora who
lived in one of die poorest sections of the town, and he was
entered at school.

Two months later his father had come to bid good-by forever
to his son: 'When I am gone/* he said, "you will have to rdy
wholly on your own efforts."

And on his return to the village in the Sierra he had died*

For a little while help had been contrived by the boy's mother
and an aunt, but they had not been able to keep it up.

His father's words had then come back to him: "When I am
gone you will have to rely wholly on your own efforts,"

How the words had come true; Julio Tello was twelve years

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old and fatherless; lie must support and educate himself. He sold
papers in the streets; he hung about the railroad station at train-
time hoping for passengers who had bags to be carried.

In reminiscent mood he said to me: "Oh, I did not really have
it hard! Everything came easy. Do you know, that in all that
time I was only once put out in the street? . . . And then I went
with my mattress and knocked at the door of the Monastery of
Santo Domingo, and asked the monks to let me come and work
for my keep. But inside of two days I had found other work.
At school Td made friends with Ricardo Palma's son "

Doctor Tello broke off here to ask if I knew who Ricardo
Palma was.

Ricardo Palma? . . . Oh, yes, I knew. I knew and admired him
through his collections of the traditions of Lima.

Doctor Tello then went on to say that Ricardo Palma had
interested himself in the little Indian boy who sold papers and
carried bags to earn an education. And he had employed him
to go every day to the postoffice and bring him his mail. He must
go at noon, Ricardo Palma had said, and long after Doctor Tello
realized that this hour had been selected so that on his return from
the postoffice he might be on hand for the midday meal.

"Oh, no," Doctor Tello repeated, "I did not have it hard!"

Ricardo Palma, as it happened, was Director of the National
Library, and when it seemed that Julio Tello could not continue
his education, suddenly he was made assistant in the Library. In
the course of this work, he chanced upon a volume in which
to his great surprise he found photographs of the skulls which
his father had collected from the Inca graves of the Sierra.

And in that moment he knew that the work of his life was to
study the past of Peru. He began then the study of the aboriginal
tongue, he went on his first anthropological expedition, and
throughout his university training he devoted himself to studies
which would fit him to become an archaeologist. He began, too,
to collect for himself the skulls of ancient Peru, and when he came
to write the thesis for his degree, it was based upon these skulls.
The thesis won him a scholarship to study abroad. He came to

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A patio in Lima

A JOURNEY IN TIME

the United States and took an MA* degree at Harvard, and later
studied in Europe. And lie had been just an Indian boy in a
Sierra village!

Then, returned to Peru, he gave over his life to archaeological
exploration and study,

"My greatest joy," he says, "is in the discovery of the works of
my ancestors."

As he talks, you see how closely his profession is woven into
the memory of his family and of ids village, how it is inseparable
from a deep love of his native land.

I saw that this love has an almost religious quality, and that
it is the motivating influence of the man's life. It has guided him
to the discovery of the great archaeological centers, at Paracas, at
Chavin, at Huaylas, and at Nepena. It is this love which led
him to organize the Archaeological Museum of the University
in Lima, and the National Museum of Archaeology; and out of
this same love has come the dream to establish in Peru an Inter-
national Institute of Peruvian Archaeology. The dream has sent
him traveling through the United States, winning the co-operation
of the great authorities on Ancient Peru. "Doctor Krocber of Cali-
fornia," he says eagerly, "Doctor Alfred Kroeber will preside over
the Institute. . . ."

And as I heard him talk I shared the enthusiasm of his vision.

I have been always an apostle of the New World; wondering
when we, its citizens, would cease to be like Dunsany's fish which
went on a long journey to find the sea; when we would realize
that in the Americas there is everything, matchless scenery, dnir
matic history, legend, beauty, and a past distant, mysterious-
awaiting exploration. I was eager for the success of this Inter-
national Institute of Archaeology in Peru.

And while Doctor Tello's voice was saying, "We've just scratched
the surface of what is to be done," part of my mind was thinking
that here in the Americas lies the hope of a truly great civiliza-
tion, if only we are wise enough to understand that. Doctor Tello's
Institute of Archaeology would be an important factor in the
realization of that hope.

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Back in the high Andes, all this time, I had felt Cuzco and the
Inca Empire waiting. And yet I lingered on in Lima. I would
know more of what had gone before the Incas.

And then Doctor Tello took me back two thousand years. He
unwrapped for me a mummy.

Oh, I had had to see him often before he would do this, for
the unwrapping of a mummy is to him not a matter for passing
curiosity, but a thing of serious scientific importance and a ritual
to be approached with reverence. Ambassador Bearing had inter-
ceded with hirn for me in this business of the mummy, and there
was also my letter of introduction from Philip Means, and yet I
had to prove myself. Doctor Tello had to be convinced that my
feeling about the mummy justified his giving me that rare ex-
perience.

And so I had seen him often before at last he said: "Very well,
tomorrow we open the mummy. Can you be at the Magdalena
at eight o'clock?"

The Magdalena stands on the square of a little suburb of Lima,
not far from the sea. In the days of its splendor the Magdalena was
a famous country house. San Martin stayed there when, a hun-
dred years ago, he came with the expedition from Chile to aid
Peru in the fight for independence. And later it was for many
months the home of the great Simon Bolivar and his lovely
mistress Manuelita.

Part of the building is now the Museo Bolivariano, but what is
not used for this purpose has been given over to Doctor Tello for
the housing of those of his collections which are not on ex-
hibition.

You enter the Magdalena from a quietly dreaming little square
set about with pink and blue and yellow one-story houses with
the gratings of Colonial Spain at their windows. And inside
the doors of the Magdalena, you find yourself in a high arched
corridor surrounding a garden. The corridor is paved in alternate
squares of black and ivory tiles, and horseshoe arches are re-
peated around a long-neglected garden where, smothered almost

[78]

A JOURNEY IN TIME

out of sight under foliage, a fountain trickles gently. The gera-
niums of the garden grow twelve feet tall and bloom as red as
Bolivar's military coat in the Museum portrait* Bushes of ver-
milion hibiscus fight for place with white musk-cluster roses.
There are red and pink roses, too, and enormous daisies and
heliotrope and elephant-ears and grape-vines, fig-bushes and glossy
orange-trees and an ancient olive; all in wild luxuriance, with
little overgrown flagged paths converging on the fountain. There
are of course hummingbirds lured by the flowers, and butterflies
in the sun, and somewhere, unseen, endlessly cooing doves.

This might be any patio of a deserted mansion in the tropics.
What makes it unique is that in the arched corridors of Doctor
Tello's section of the building and in the rooms which open off
them, there are stacked on the floor great bundles wrapped in
sacking, many of them like huge lopsided cones. And the bundles
give forth the peculiar acrid odor of guano.

These are the mummies.

Of these rooms which open from the corridors, one is a big
rotunda lined with shelves, on which stand rows and rows of
human skulls, ashy-white against the dull terra-cotta red of the
walls. In other rooms there are pottery and boxes of textiles.
Under one of the arches there hang side by side a male and female
skeleton. Everywhere there is death and the work of dead hands,
with Doctor Tello curiously alive in the midst of it. And as he
took me from room to room I understood that to trim none erf it
was dead. He spoke rapidly in a very soft voice, and while he
talked his eyes shone behind his spectacles with the light of a
spirit that lives outside self.

His eager talk touched first upon a collection of figurines in
clay; a spotted cat done in dark grey and decorated with white
polka-dots, a dull red llama lying down, a white llama with a
fat little boy, grey toes, ears lined with grey, and a hind foot
thoughtfully scratching his head just under the right ear.

As we moved through the rooms we paused before boxes of
hundreds of scraps of pottery. When there was money Doctor
Tello used to employ children to fit together these fragments; six

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PERUVIAN PAGEANT

pieces for half a cent. They found it more fun than any picture
puzzle, and how clever they were at it! The girls better than the
boys. They loved seeing the result of their work after an expert had
joined the assembled fragments to form the beautiful ceremonial
jars which stood on shelves in the various rooms.

Then from fabrics of the intricate design and exquisite work-
manship of the coast we passed on to those of the Inca period.

"You see/' Doctor Tello said, "they are not so much, nor so rich,
as the work of the coast. The Inca time was, after all, so quick
only a few hundred years, and it takes centuries to develop great

art."

While he talked a great bee, strayed in from the garden out-
side, droned lazily.

"Yes, the Inca time was quick. They built upon what had gone
before, just as what had gone before was built upon a still older
civilization.* 5

He spoke of the earliest times as "the first horizon," and of the
later period, that which preceded the Incas, as "the second horizon."

'The Incas," he went on, "knew only a little of the second horizon
and nothing of the first."

As I listened I saw Doctor Tello's assistants making ready for
the opening of the mummy, passing back and forth along the
corridor; pretty Senorita Carreon, a slender figure with a dark
bobbed head, and an earnest-eyed young man whom Doctor
Tello called "Mejia."

"How pretty and young the Senorita is!" I interrupted.

"Senorita Carreon? . . . Yes, yes. She has her Ph.D. degree, you
know. And she's professor of early Peruvian history at the
Woman's College as well as my assistant at San Marcos." And
then his mind went back to archaeology.

"Ah, the work that waits to be done in Peru! Perhaps now
you understand a little of what there is to do. With a great Insti-
tute of Archseology we can study what has already been found
and then we can dig with new knowledge. . . . Yes, we will study
and then we will say, *Ooof ! . . . Come, let us go and see how
it isF Often I do that. I study, and then I go and dig.

[80]

A JOURNEY IN TIME

"And now that we know more . . . now that we begin to know
a little, it seems that we go straight to the spot where wonderful
things are waiting. Yes, now that we know just a little they seem
to call to us*"

It was the mystic poetic quality in this man of science that in-
spired for me the archaeology of Peru.

And then Senorita Carreon came to say that all was now ready.

And I felt a tense expectancy, as of one about to be initiated into
a great mystery.

The Senorita had brought linen smocks for each of us, explain-
ing that there would be much dust. And while we put them on
Doctor Tello went right on talking: "The mummy we are going
to open," he said, "was found at Paracas, near Pisco, you know.
It was in 1925 that I made the find, and I took more than four
hundred mummies from just that one cemetery. And I'll prophesy
that this mummy we are going to open will be a priest and an old
man, for every mummy that we've opened so far from that ceme-
tery has been old and a priest. There was another cemetery near
by where the mummies were of poor people, buried, some of
them, almost naked, and others just wrapped in plain cotton
cloth. There were many children in this cemetery, as well as
men and women. And nearly half of them had had operations
on their skulls, trepanning, you know. And any number had
suffered from bone diseases. But this mummy that we arc going
to open now . . . that will be a priest and an old man."

By the time we got our smocks on, a loud knocking on the outer
door announced that the photographer had arrived.

And we began.

The photographer had set up his camera. Doctor Tello and
Mejia were ready. Senorita Carreon and I were perched on high
stools with notebooks ready to record what might be found. A
young woman was prepared with papers and pins and a wooden
table to receive the contents of the mummy-bundle which waited
on a low platform standing about eighteen inches from the floor, a
mysterious bundle like a lopsided cone.

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PERUVIAN PAGEANT

The entrance door locked out the present and we were alone
with the past. And the age of this mummy whose mystery we
were to investigate, was more than two thousand years.

At the top of blank pages in our notebooks Senorita Carreon
and I each wrote:

Paracas Mummy, Number 94.

Doctor Tello and Mejia removed the outer sacking in which
the mummy had been protected at the time of its discovery, and
it then stood forth in its original wrapping of heavy, dun-colored
cotton cloth laced together with cord.

Now the work proceeded slowly and with the greatest care.
As the outer cloth was taken off there appeared at the pointed
end of the bundle a cluster of yellow feathers, the yellow and blue
feathers of a parrot.

Yellow . . . the color was sounded like the first notes of a
musical composition,

As the dun-colored fabric dropped away there was seen a bunch
of arrows tied together, and a broken staff, and beneath a thick
layer of dust was the pattern of a textile. Doctor Tello brushed
the dust away with a soft brush. But the once beautiful fabric
had disintegrated into mere scraps which were, however, care-
fully put away and numbered for future study.

Doctor Tello's staff had worked so long together that each
automatically carried out certain parts of the work. And all went
forward in a stillness unbroken except for Doctor Tello's voice
dictating descriptions to Senorita Carreon, or stopping occasionally
to command a photograph.

Now that the disintegrating fabric had been taken away more
feathers came into view, and the bone handle of what had been a
flat feather fan, standing upright at the head of the bundle. And
beneath the fan was the yellow and brown skin of a small tawny
fox, and under that a fabric enveloping the whole bundle. When
the dust was brushed off it was seen to be composed of alternating
squares of peacock blue, and squares into which was fitted a geo-
metric design of birds in yellow and red. Stretched out full
length, it was a mantle some nine feet long by about three feet

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A JOURNEY IN TIME

wide, and perfectly preserved, as brilliant in color as it was two
thousand years ago when it was laid away in the cemetery at
Paracas.

Its removal from the mummy-bundle showed another fabric,
whose center was indigo, with an embroidered border where
sharks in yellow and blue and green frisked as though gaily
sporting in the sea. And when this had been removed with in-
finite care we saw at the conical end of the bundle a turban of
twisted fabric on which smaller sharks swam against a cerise back-
ground. And above the turban, yellow feathers stood erect like a
Spanish comb.

As the folds of the mantles dropped away little roundish grey
stones fell out of their creases; stones perhaps sacred to the dead
man, lucky fetiches.

Fold after fold was thus unwrapped, but the bundle still main-
tained its conical shape, though very gradually diminishing in
size. But it had as yet no resemblance to a human figure.

As the work went on we found in the folds now a few peanuts,
now the dried root of the yuca, now a sweet potato, and a tiny
ear of corn wrapped in the skin of some animal.

At intervals the work of unwrapping was halted for a photo
graph and then as soon as the camera had clicked Doctor Tello
would say, "Uisto, Mejia. Let us go ahead. Vamos*'

So, fabric after fabric was removed, large and small, mantles
and scarfs, and diminutive replicas of a man's garments tunics
and a kind of "shorts"; some embroidered, others with the design
woven in; some of cotton and some of wool; all brilliant in color.

I began to feel a symphony of color, a composition that ran
through all those many fabrics. There was a recurring play of
yellow and red in varied combination, with peacock blue, with
black, with indigo; yellow and red in geometric pattern, or in
repeated design of stylized birds and of sportive sharks.

Out in the square I knew that the ice-cream man was pushing his
red cart through the streets, for I heard the thin toot of his shrill
trumpet, but within, in a tense excited stillness the task erf un-
wrapping the mummy went forward

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PERUVIAN PAGEANT

And then it was necessary to leave off work for the day.
'Tomorrow," Doctor Tdlo said, "promptly at half past eight

tomorrow."

We left the bundle standing, a diminished cone, on its plat-
form in the far corner of the corridor. We took off our smocks,
washed from our hands the thick dark dust, and went out of the
door and across the parti-colored square to the trolley which would
take us back to the city of Lima.

In the morning, doves continued to coo in plaintive rhythm,
echoing from corridor to corridor. The skeletons, male and
female, hung suspended in their arch, skulls still leered in rows on
the shelves of the rotunda; all was as before, and so still that not
even a quiver of air stirred the palm fronds in the sunny abandon
of the flowery patio.

And our mummy waited, hidden within the curious bundle on
the low platform.

We resumed our smocks then and went to work.

Again layer after layer of rich fabrics. Our mummy evidently
had been a personage of high rank.

Sometimes the unwrapping went on at the top of the cone, at
other times around its broad base. Always the dust lay thick
and dark and had to be brushed away, and the odor of guano
became increasingly strong.

We came upon layers of cloth which had been partly consumed
by some powerful chemical, and then upon yards and yards of
plain buff-colored cotton doth.

Sometime during the morning, suddenly I realized that the
bundle had ceased to be a lopsided cone and had taken on the
aspect of a human figure, heavily swathed still, but now vagudy
a human being, huddled in a sitting posture. And then, as the
folds fell away, it was apparent that the figure sat in an oval
basket

Once more the envdoping textiles were of lovely design and
perfect preservation. A thin gold disk was found near what was
obviously the mummy's head. And the human outline was in-

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ElMisti

A JOURNEY IN TIME

crcasingly distinct, swathed now in a daffodil yellow, its head
enveloped in scarlet, warm and vivid as blood. And when these
were taken off it sat enveloped in mustard color decorated in
cerise. Beneath that mantle was one of midnight blue, on which
had been laid enormous tassels in variegated orange and red and
green. And over all had been scattered small yellow feathers.

I felt that in the putting away of this mummy nothing had
been accidental, that the whole scheme was as much a creation
as was the design on any individual piece; a composition with
yellow, like a clear treble, pervading the whole conception.

The removal of the tassels and the dark blue mantle revealed
a wrapping of green, bordered in yellow and red and blue. And
after that another in blue with a brilliant fish border, and more
yellow feathers. Below that, a fabric embroidered in birds, and
two more big variegated tassels, and finally we came to a blue
mantle decorated with rosettes of yellow feathers, some three inches
in diameter and set three inches apart

This feather tapestry gave place to a new design: and for the
first time there appeared a pattern of little figures of mythical
human spirits, each with a human head in its left hand and an
arrow in its right hand; the figures worked in yellow and blue
and green against a red ground.

Thus enveloped we left our mummy while we went out for lunch.

After lunch it seemed only a matter of moments before we
would reach the mummy itself, but we were not so near the end
as we thought, for textile after textile, large and small, followed,
until we came to a wide fringe over the shoulders and at last
there was revealed the head, an artificially elongated head with
greyish hair brought forward and knotted on the forehead, just
above a glittering gold disk, rayed like the sun. The mummy
wore a necklace of shells, and there was another gold disk which
had evidently fallen from its place under the nostrils. In the
bottom of the basket, on the right side near the feet was the large
calabash bowl which Doctor Tello said was always found with
every mummy, rich or poor.

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PERUVIAN PAGEANT

And now the whole mummy sat veiled in yellow gauze, its
chjn resting on its right knee, both knees being drawn up close
to the body, the arms under the legs.

Somewhere a hen cackled, and a rooster crowed and flapped
its wings. The sound came in to where we worked in hushed,
tense excitement, and seemed in a curious way to be related to
the unwrapping of the mummy.

When the pale yellow gauze was gently removed from the
mummy, it sat naked in its basket, a dark and shriveled figure,
in the attitude of the child in the womb, its heels close to the end
of its spine, its feet crossed, the sole of one foot on the top of the
other, the toes turned in and up. It sat upon a deerskin spread
in the bottom of the basket, and under its right arm there was
tucked a tiny feather fan. And the fan was yellow, clear golden
yellow.

The figure seemed to wait there; its yellow fan under its arm,
as though with confident expectation of a rebirth; waiting, not
stretched out in the finality of death like an Egyptian mummy,
but huddled within its many wrappings, like a child in the womb.

And now the unwrapping was over. It had taken ten hours.

Doctor Tello was completing his dictation to Senorita Carreon.
I heard his voice saying, "Mummification pcrfecta. Casi cocinada"

Then, turning to me, Doctor Tello said: "You see, as I told
you, this is the body of an old man, and from the richness and
the number of its trappings we know that the man was a priest
of high rank. 5 *

And suddenly I realized that I was in the presence of the "first
horizon." I, in the twentieth century, had gone back to that far
horizon of whose existence even the Incas had possessed no
knowledge.

"If he could only tell us all about it!" I exclaimed "If only
he could come alive and tell us!"

"No," Doctor Tello said thoughtfully. "No, it's better as it is.
For now what we have here is the truth. And if he could come
alive he might want to impress us, and some of what he would
tell us might not be true."

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A JOURNEY IN TIME

While the others were busy putting away the fabrics, I sat look-
ing at the mummy, stark in the light of twentieth-century day.

In the flesh he had been perhaps a worldly-wise old man, with
a priestly knowledge of the gullibility of man. Yes, it was prob-
able that if he could speak to us he might embellish his tale with
concocted wonders, unaware of the value and the supreme wonder
of the truth.

[87]

PARACAS

HIGH, in the Andes Cuzco waited, a brooding presence always in
my mind. But Mummy Number 94 was insistent that I should
make a pilgrimage to Paracas, to those dunes beside the sea where
for two thousand years he had slept beneath the sands.

I discussed the idea with Doctor Tello. Could he direct me
to the exact spot from which he had taken the mummy? And
Doctor Tello was enthusiastic. I must go first to Pisco, then from
Pisco fifteen miles across the desert to the Peninsula of Paracas,
and there, beyond the blue bay, I would come to the great dunes.

And while we talked he rapidly sketched a map of the locality:

*TThere is Pisco. There the beach, and a hotel on the beach.
You will go at once to the hotel, leave your bags, and hire a car
to take you to the dunes to the great dune of Cerro Colorado
where the mummy came from. On the way you will pass by the
village of San Andres. There is a man in the village who knows
where I took the mummy. If you tell him that you want to see
where Doctor Tello took the four hundred mummies, he will
know. I will give you a letter to him and he will go with you
himself, or send his boy. They both know the place. And you
must have a letter, too, to the watchman at La Puntilla who is
there to prevent the cemeteries being robbed by treasure-hunters.
With the watchman and the man, Garcia, from San Andres, you
won't have trouble finding the spot."

Also it had been clearly indicated on the penciled map.

And on the following day I flew, by local Panagra plane, to
Pisco.

We left Lima in the very early morning, and reached Pisco in
three hours. The flight along a coast of desert and rocky cliff
and occasional fertile valley was much like the flight from

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A JOURNEY IN TIME

Trujillo to Lima, a landscape to me always strangely lovely.

The airport at Pisco is just a little adobe box set down upon
desert sands, and from the port a few minutes by car brings you
to the hotel which stands at the very brink of the sea, with on
its right a few little wooden houses sprinkled along the shore,
and on its left a steel pier jutting far out beyond shallow water
to a depth where ships may anchor.

The hotel is a dilapidated building which seems at any moment
about to tumble into ruin. The proprietor, a barrel to which had
been added arms and legs and a head, appeared astonished to
see me, and it took an interminable time to prepare a room. Mean-
while the proprietor would see about a car to take me to Paracas.

I was impatient because Doctor Tello had advised visiting the
dunes in the morning, since in the afternoons a high wind a
Paracas, to use the native name springs up and blows the sand
into blinding stinging clouds.

So I did not wait to inspect my room, but as soon as a bargain
was made with a quite delightful cholo chauffeur, I was off,
delaying only to buy some bananas and oranges for refreshment
by the way.

In San Andres a very fishy village we found the man Garcia,
and presented Doctor Tello's letter. Garcia produced his "boy"
to guide us. The "boy" turned out to be a mustachioed man o
serious mien. And to the son, Garcia added a daughter, a Senorita
in a worn, faded cotton dress and a huge straw sombrero. The
Senorita, too, would accompany me, Garcia said.

That made four in the little car, and we had still to pick up the
watchman at La Puntilla. But as the Senorita treated me so
caressingly in a best-girl-friend manner I hadn't the heart to sug-
gest that she might be left behind.

Then, all in the gayest mood, we bumped over the sands, the
chauffeur pointing out the sights:

There was a palmy litde oasis from which Pisco's supply of fresh
water was brought in each day by carts. There by the edge of the
sea, was a small monument, marking the place where San Martin
had landed a hundred years ago when he came with the Chilean

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expedition to help Peru win independence from Spain. There
were the guano islands, and there was La Puntilla, the little dock
where sail-boats landed the guano.

At La Puntilla we set up a shout for the watchman, and taking
him aboard we went on across the roadless sands until the car
came to a stop at the foot of a lofty peaked dune powdered with
fine red porphyry.

"This," my escort said in chorus, "this is Cerro Colorado.*'

Together, under a dazzling sun, we climbed the great dune,
and at the summit I got out Doctor Tello's little map.

It was on the northern slope that I would find the site of that
cemetery of the four hundred mummies which Doctor Tello speaks
of always as "The Great Necropolis."

We followed down this north slope until we came to a depres-
sion not yet entirely obliterated by the drifting sands. Human
bones were scattered about the spot, and, to mark the excavation,
there had been left a small heap of little stones and a low wooden
cross which tallied with the locality indicated on my map as the
Great Necropolis.

"There," Garcia's son exclaimed: "there, that's where Doctor
Tello found the four hundred mummies."

With the map in my hands, my new friends and I then walked
over the dunes, identifying various sites: the spot where Doctor
Tello had found the cemetery of the bone-diseases, and on the
opposite slope of the dune, the location of the deep burial caverns
which he had found cut into subterranean rock. And near by
was the Cabeza Larga excavation where the skulls of all the
mummies were found to have been artificially elongated. It was
at Cabeza Larga that the most elaborate and lovely of Peruvian
fabrics the famous Paracas textile was discovered. It had
swathed the body of an old man, with whom five children (three
of them babies) had been buried, sacrificed evidently in honor
of the exalted rank of the dead man.

We scrambled over the dunes until each excavation had been
identified, and then, sitting on the summit of Cerro Colorado, I
looked out over the surrounding scene,

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Back over the way we had come the wheels of our car had left
parallel lines of bright yellow where the sand showed through
the red layer of porphyry, until, in the distance, the powdered
porphyry came to an end, and beyond the sand was lemon yellow,
down to the margin of the sea. Not far from the great dune, a
bay narrowly rimmed at one end with green, jutted into the sand,
and the bay was full of rosy flamingoes. Away to the right, dunes
rolled into the distance, and color shimmered over their sands,
with deep purple cloud-shadows lying in the hollows, the clouds
themselves a pale, blue-white. And the dune on whose crest we
sat, and the sand at its foot, glowed red in the sun* From the
height of the dune our waiting car looked small and out of char-
acter in the lonely setting.

I took out once more Doctor Tello's little map, but already the
afternoon Paracas had risen, whipping the map in a stiff breeze.
The Senorita knelt beside me and together we held the map so
that it might not fly away. Thus, I relocated each site, that the
picture which I was to carry away in my mind might be accurate.
And, noting the line which Doctor Tello had drawn to represent
how very little had been explored, and how much remained unr
known, I realized the extent of that mystery beneath the surface^
the riddle of vanished civilizations waiting to be solved.

A people of great antiquity had dug the circular chambers into
which they had lowered the mummy-bundles of their departed.
And below the sands are remains of little villages which appear
to have been inhabited at that time, and then for some reason for-
saken.

There are in addition the cemeteries, also subterranean, of a
people which immediately followed those of the funeral caverns.
And to these belonged Mummy Number 94. They have left
more traces of their culture than have the people of the cavern
tombs. Twenty or thirty feet below the surface, day walls of
buildings with vestibules which lead by little stairways down to
other rooms, to kitchens with ovens and the ashes of dead fires-, to
patios which in turn proceed down to chambers where mummy-
bundles heaped one upon another suggest that the rooms were

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used for funereal purposes, where bodies were prepared for inter-
ment, undertaking establishments which probably served the
people of the fertile irrigated valleys of near-by lea and Nazca.

Beneath the rosy surface of the dunes there are still no one knows
how many mummies huddled in their bundles like the unborn
in the womb; mummies of rich and poor, old and young, priests,
and surgeons with the skill to operate on human skulls, removing
injured or diseased parts and substituting for them precisely fitted
plates of metal. The surgeons' instruments have been found, and
cotton pads used to dress the wounds, and rolls of gauze for
bandages. And in the mummy-bundles is hidden an art of weav-
ing and embroidery, of color and pattern unexcelled ever in the
world.

In pottery there is nothing at Paracas to compare with the sculp-
tured vases of the ruins about Trujillo, nor anything to equal the
elaborate art of Nazca and of lea, but for the rare beauty of their
textiles the mummies of Paracas are unrivaled.

The wind was rising to a gale, molding the sands into a new
design of arabesques, before we took refuge in the car, refreshed
ourselves with fruit, and drove back over the sands to the Grand
Hotel de Pisco beside a sea which stretched away over the world's
edge to China.

I was never more completely alone than in that hotel, and yet I
never felt less lonely.

I had a little table brought out to the veranda overlooking the
ocean, and there I ate a very postponed lunch.

Five long lines of rollers came in and broke in ceaseless repetition
at my feet, ever nearer for the tide was rising.

Off the end of the long wharf, in calm water beyond the rollers,
there were anchored three ships surrounded by a flock of flat-
bottomed lighters. And the sun glittered on the water and on
the guano islands off the shore. The crests of the rollers caught
the sun, flashing like lines of lightning.

Just inside the door was a monkey chained to the back of a
chair, and there were half a dozen cages of birds, in one of them

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A JOURNEY IN TIME

a troupial whose clear treble song ran gaily up and down the scale.

In so tranquil a place had the plane left me when in the morn-
ing it had picked up its tail and flown away from Pisco.

A waiter came and took away my lunch table and I was left
alone on the veranda. Beyond the hotel, on an adjoining veranda
sat two ragged men, and farther away on still another a black-
haired woman in a faded orange frock sat, with her arms
crossed on the railing, gazing out to sea. The hours passed and
we all just sat, as if action were the least important thing in the
world, and what truly mattered was the capacity to sit and dream.

And while we sat, the tide had risen until the waves beat
heavily against the wooden posts on which the veranda stood, and
the sun had dropped until it now flooded us with a warm light
which was not too hot because of the little breeze which had
sprung up fresh and salt from the ocean. And by the time the
sun had tumbled, round and red, over the rim of the Pacific the
wind had become a Paracas which blew us all indoors.

At night in my little room facing the ocean I felt myself aboard
ship upon a stormy, wind-tossed sea. The timbers of the old house
creaked and rattled and groaned, as a ship in a gale. And outside
the moon shone strangely bright on the troubled waters.

And I lay down to sleep with in my ears the dear familiar sound
of wind and rushing restless waves.

But I did not forget the dunes, nor the fact that it was a mummy
that had sent me to Pisco, the mummy of an old man, in the crouch-
ing posture of an embryo, a shriveled mummy, with a little fan
of yellow feathers tucked under one arm.

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VI

CONQUEST

WHEN the Spanish Conquerors came to Peru they heard stories
of that Inca who had come down from Cuzco and conquered the
coast. People said that "everywhere he had showed clemency
after submission, and had not deprived the people of their liberties
nor prohibited their ancient customs," and that in their charming
valleys he had "rested, drinking and enjoying his pleasures."

But all this, of course, was long after the mummy with the fan
of yellow feathers had been put away in the Great Necropolis at
Paracas, the very existence of that civilization to which he had
belonged having been forgotten. And even the Inca conquest of
the coast had slipped into the past, for the victorious Inca had been
grandfather to the sovereign, Atahualpa, whom Pizarro had found
wearing the royal fringe.

And when I made ready to go to Cajamarca that I might visit
the scene of Pizarro's triumph and Atahualpa's tragedy, I had
moved forward in time from the mummy of Paracas at least six-
teen centuries.

But even today there is no direct means of transportation to
Cajamarca. You may go from Lima by sea or air to Pacasmayo,
where once a week there is a train which will take you in six
hours to Chilete, whence in another six hours a motor bus will
convey you to Cajamarca, though in the rainy season there is some
degree of uncertainty about the bus.

Of course I was determined to go to Cajamarca. It was one
of the things I had come to Peru to do. But I was grateful that
the interest of Ambassador Dearing and a kind genii, known as
"Slim" Faucett, arranged for me to go by air. The cards in Peru
fell my way.

I was to take the regular Faucett service north as far as Tru jillo,

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and from there, over the mountains to Cajamarca, a special plane
was to drop me down into the historic valley.

After a hurried lunch in the airport at Trujillo we flew away
in a wasp-colored plane to Cajamarca, leaving the sea behind and
turning inland, heading straight for a range of orange hills, the
sugar plantations of Cartavio and Casa Grande dropping quickly
away below us, for we were rapidly gaining altitude. We must
fly high to surmount the Andean wall.

I sat in front with the pilot, Irving Haynes, who had been pilot
for the Shippee-Johnson expedition which some years ago had
mapped certain portions of Peru from the air, and Haynes had
the heart of an explorer.

At Trujillo, an affable representative of the Faucett Company
had added himself to our party, and there was a fourth passenger
whose name has slipped from me.

There was something about that flight to Cajamarca which
will always be a bond between the affable representative, the fourth
passenger, the pilot Haynes, and myself. Weeks later we were to
meet by chance, and with a sense of having shared a precious
experience. As for me, I had of course been eager in the realiza-
tion of a dream, almost despaired of. I was going to Cajamarca . . .
flying through a blue, bright day.

At nine thousand feet we were passing above a little high
village. At ten thousand, men were threshing grain on top of
a mountain. Our altimeter climbed to eleven thousand: now
the trees in a valley below had shrunk to bushes. At eleven
thousand seven hundred, a world of stark forbidding mountains
tumbled around us. It was at about this altitude that a condor
soared in a nonchalant ease. Planes, Pilot Haynes told me, must
always yield place to a condor, for a condor, never having swerved
out of tic way of anything on wings, has no idea of giving place
by so much as an inch. And any plane that collides with a
condor will be sorry. At eleven thousand nine hundred feet,
patchwork fields whose slopes are cultivated, appeared to us
like little plots in a garden. And at fourteen thousand feet, there

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in the distance far below lay the oval green valley of Cajamarca.

These were the mountains over which Pizarro's army had toiled
in its march up from the sea. There, climbing and dipping among
the mountains, was the road they must have followed* On any
of the Passes it would have been a simple matter for even a frac-
tion of the Inca's army to have fallen upon them and left no man
or horse alive. As they had proceeded inland the vastness and
the wealth of the Empire had increasingly impressed them, and
the limidess power of its ruler.

Yet, when he could, Pizarro had not turned back. . . .

When you remember the story, with those wild mountains
spread out beneath you, you forget for the moment the Spanish
Conquerors' cruelty and avarice, in the presence of their daring.
You see the valley as they saw it on that November afternoon in
1532, when reaching the crest of the range they had looked down
upon the tents of Atahualpa's hosts, white on the slopes of those
mountains which shut in the valley on the east, the tents of an
army of forty thousand.

And the Spaniards, with but ninety horses and not quite two
hundred men!

Our plane dropped down into the valley, green with fields and
trees, watered by a meandering river.

A battered Ford had come out to meet us and we drove along
a tree-bordered road into the town, some distance away.

When I had feared that it might never be possible for me to
see Cajamarca I had sought to construct it in my mind. I had
assembled every scrap of geographic information, every stray word
of description, especially every word recorded by the chroniclers
of the sixteenth century. And out of this I had constructed the
place as it was four hundred years ago. I had set the town in
the valley and surrounded the valley with mountains.

I had then marched Pizarro's men up to the summit and been
present with them when they had first seen the alarming array
of Atahualpa's tents.

At the same time Tito, the Indian shepherd of my creation, had

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been on his way from Cuzco to Cajamarca, sent with his old
uncle to gather news of the bearded strangers for the Temple
of the Sun. As shepherds of a caravan of llamas the Temple had
thought they could travel unnoticed and thus bring back informa-
tion. The Temple would know the numbers of the strangers and
whether it was true that they rode upon fabulous beasts and
made war with weapons of thunder.

So Tito and his uncle, Hanco, had reached the crest of an op-
posite range and they, too, had looked down upon Atahualpa's en-
campment.

Thus, as we drove into Cajamarca I was returning to a place
where four hundred years ago I had lived for nine months in
the Spanish barracks. And that familiar past was now intensified
in the presence of the actual scene.

The automobile deposited us at the door of the Hotel Los
Andes. The hotel occupied the second floor of a small two-story
building: it consisted of a kitchen, a dining room, two bedrooms,
a small sitting-room, and a toilet in the hall. It seemed a hotel
existing without customers, for the whole place was at our disposal.

A ragged barefoot urchin, who appeared to be part o the
establishment, at once took me under his patronage. To my mind,
there are no children in the world so enchanting as the small
cholo boys of Spanish-America. In their little persons they combine
the gravity and the mysticism of the Indian with the courtly
courtesy of the Spanish cavalier.

This particular cholo child, who was called Fernandez, I felt
immediately to be an incarnation of the shepherd, Tito, hero of
the sixteenth-century novel which had brought me to Peru.

Fernandez appeared to be about nine years old, though he assured
me that he was twelve. He had the same air of a wisdom beyond
his little span which I had imagined in Tito: the proud responsi-
bility which Tito had felt for the llamas in his caravan, Fernandez
felt for guests putting up at the Hotel Los Andes. And I, hap-
pening to be at the moment its guest, became automatically
Fernandez* responsibility. It was his care to see that my bag was
put into my room, that the room door was locked with a great

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key which he took under his personal charge. It was Fernandez,
too, who later guided me through the churches of Cajamarca, and
Fernandez whom I entrusted with delivering a note of introduction
to the principal of the Colegio of Cajamarca, given me in Lima
by Cajamarca's authoress, Amalia Puga.

This arranged, I went out to find the room which Atahualpa had
filled with gold in ransom for his liberty. Fernandez, after
delivering the note, was to join me. It was the matter of a moment
only, for Cajamarca is a place of little distances, and Fernandez
reappeared by my side almost at once.

Yes, he was really Tito, I thought. He had Tito's subdued eager-
ness and Tito's quick response to everything about him.

As we walked in crisp clear Sierra air, between brightly colored
houses, through narrow cobbled streets, each with an open sewer
flowing cheerfully down its center, Fernandez and I conversed.

"Fernandez," I asked, "do you know about Atahualpa?"

"No, Senorita."

"Did you ever hear of Pizarro Francisco Pizarro?"

"Not Pizarro, either, Senorita."

"The Inca," I put my question about Atahualpa in another
form, "did you ever hear of the Inca?"

"Of the baths of the Inca, I have heard, Senorita. They are near
to Cajamarca,"

The conversation was interrupted by our having suddenly to
flatten ourselves against a wall, to make way for a herd of cows.
And then we were joined by the affable representative of the
Faucett Company who had flown over with us from Trujillo, an
ingratiating person who now explained that he had come with
us because certain of his ancestors had been born in Cajamarca,
and he had never seen the place. Therefore this Senor, by name
Del Campo, would also visit the sights.

We had been told that to see Atahualpa's ransom chamber we
must apply to the Mother Superior in charge of the hospital and
orphanage conducted by nuns of the Order of Sts. Vincent and
Paul.

The Mother Superior herself took us about^ hugely proud of

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her establishment. I must see everything. There was the church,
the ancient church of Belen where nuns and patients worshiped,
entering by a side door from the hospital. Especially I must see
the old confessional, beautifully carved with a hood in the form
of a great carved shell. And of course I must already have admired
the elaborate facade and noticed the bells in the tower, how old
they were, cracked and broken in the years. And naturally I
must visit each of the hospital wards, the maternity ward, the
consumptive wards, and the pharmacy where medicines were
prepared.

I duly and sincerely admired the good work the nuns were doing,
but I had come to see the room which Atahualpa had filled with
gold. * . .

Yes, yes, of course. But here were the kitchens. The nuns
would have me see the kitchens. And here was the patio where
at a great central fountain the laundry work was done.

But . . . the ransom chamber. . . .

Privately I was beginning to be uneasy about the authenticity
of the ransom chamber, for the hospital was so obviously a Spanish-
Colonial building. I reassured myself, however, by recalling that
reputable historians and archaeologists had visited and described
the room. It must, therefore, I reasoned, exist.

Now the orphans surely I would be interested to see the
orphans. Here was a room full of girls being taught to sew. I must
examine their work.

Yes, the work was neatly done, admirable. But Atahualpa's
r^nson*}

These, the nun continued, were the older girls. Now I must
see the little orphans. . . .

The flapping white head-gear, perched like a captive kite upon
the nun's head, led the way.

Some of the little orphans were babes in cribs. Each must be
admired.

Meanwhile a group of the older children would gather violets
and roses for me in one of the patios*

Then at last I was permitted to see the ransom chamber, used

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now as a place of storage for wheat which lay heaped in a corner
upon the floor.

As soon as I had passed inside, through a door cut into walls a
yard thick, I knew this to be beyond doubt an Inca room, long
familiar to me in description, in drawings and photographs; all
as Sqtiier and the rest had portrayed it.

The room was built of finely fitted stones of varying sizes, and
set into the walls was a series of small idol-niches, their sides
sloping inward toward the top in characteristic Incaic fashion.
It was Inca, and nothing else in the world; massive, austerely
simple, depending for beauty upon workmanship and line, scorn-
ing decoration.

" "The room measured some twenty by thirty feet. Del Campo
stepped it off, counting aloud, the walls giving back an echo of
his Spanish count, walls dating to the time of Inca supremacy
before Spaniards or Children of the Sun knew of each other's
existence.

Twenty by thirty feet, to a height as high as Atahualpa could
reach, stretching up his arms, that was to be the amount of gold
which he offered in return for his freedom. He, the Inca, would
buy his liberty from the Spaniards who held him prisoner. It had
not taken long for Atahualpa to discover the Spaniards' passion
for gold; a strange passion, for in the Inca Empire gold was
without purchasing power; valued merely as the most beautiful
of the metals, and accordingly its use sacred to the Temple, to the
Inca, and to those of royal blood. To the Spaniard, however, the
Inca saw that gold was beyond all things desirable, and thus he
had hit upon the plan of ransoming himself with gold. He had
sent for Pizarro, and through one of the two Indian interpreters,
he had explained his scheme:

If his life was spared and he was set free, Atahualpa promised
that he would in return give much gold.

"How much?" Pizarro had asked.

It was then that Atahualpa, raising his arms, had said that he
would fill the room with gold, as high as his arms could reach.
And another room, twice its size, he would fill with silver.

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And Pizarro had summoned a scribe to set down the contract
in writing.

On this expedition to conquer Peru Pizarro had brought with
him from Toledo his young cousin, Pedro, at the time of the
ransom a youth of seventeen or eighteen. Pizarro, who could not
himself read and write, had his official secretaries who kept record
of all that took place.

But in recalling the story, I prefer the impressions which young
Pedro received. The secretaries have never been more to me
than names, men whose chronicles are invaluable, but who do
not emerge as persons, while the boy, Pedro, from the grim old
town of Toledo, with the waters of the Tagus swirling about its
walls and its dungeons, this cousin, Pedro, was always a definite
personality, as real to me as the young Lorenzo Sanchez de
Montalvo who had been created out of my imagination to be
the friend of Tito. So it is to Pedro's account (as Philip Means
has translated it from one of the only two existing copies) that
I turn for an eyewitness story of the ransom.

"When the scrivener was ready to write," Pedro says,
"Pizarro inquired on whose behalf Atahualpa, the Inca,
ordered this thing. And Atahualpa had replied that it was
commanded on behalf of all Spaniards then present in Caja-
marca holding guard over him, and to those who had routed
his forces.

"This was the act and declaration made before the scrivener.

"And when the act was drawn Atahualpa had dispatched
his captains to cause a great treasure to be gathered together
and sent in to him.

"And Pizarro kept the Inca prisoner awaiting the time when
the treasure should be assembled.

"This Atahualpa," Pedro explains, "was a well disposed
Indian of fine person, of moderate size, not too fat, beautiful
of face and grave, a man much feared by his people. He wore
on his head a thick colored wool, in the manner of a crown,
the fringe falling to just above the eyebrows."

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And It was thus, as Pedro described him, that I saw Atahualpa
in the ransom chamber of Cajamarca.

A nun then appeared, blocking the doorway with her full indigo
skirts and her white head-dress. There was a senor, she said,
asking for me. And so I left the room where Atahualpa stood
with upstretched arms promising gold in exchange for liberty,
while Francisco Pizarro, his fierce black eyes lit with greed, com-
manded the scrivener to write down the terms.

The senor inquiring for me turned out to be Senor Vivas Serra,
head of the Colegio to whom Fernandez had delivered my letter
from Amalia Puga.

Senor Vivas Serra had learned at the hotel that I was gone to
visit the ransom chamber and had followed to ask if he and
his wife might not drive me out to the Inca's baths.

In that November of 1532, when the Spaniards, looking down
from the crest of the range, had seen the tents of Atahualpa's army,
there had been no turning back. All way of escape had closed
behind them; the peril of retreat was as great as the peril that
lay ahead.

And when they descended into the town their anxiety had
been increased at finding it deserted: the general population had
vanished, and they had been received by soldiers who escorted
them to the buildings about the central square. Here, the soldiers
said, Atahualpa had commanded them to be quartered.

Pizarro, putting a bold front upon his dismay, had at once,
though it was the hour of vespers and night imminent, sent a
deputation of cavalry to wait upon the Inca with an invitation to
visit him on the following day.

Pizarro's brother, Hernando, and Captain De Soto had headed
the delegation.

Everywhere the Spaniards had relied upon fear of their horses,
strange beasts which had filled the natives with a terror that was
superstitious as well as physical.

Now on the return of the deputation Pizarro would know the
effect of the cavalry at Atahualpa's camp. But Atahualpa had

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not shown even a flicker of fear, though De Soto had put his horse
through all its paces, prancing so near the Inca that foam from
the animal's mouth had sprayed his garments.

And the delegation had had much to say of the splendor and
state of this Lord Atahualpa.

Hearing all this, and seeing the tents which covered the moun-
tain slopes, it began to appear to the Spaniards that they were
trapped beyond hope. They had looked then to Pizarro for
courage. And the courage he gave them was of the stern stuff
of desperation:

"Now that there is no other you must trust in God as your
fortress. . . . Remembering that God ever fights for His Own."

Throughout the whole of the next day the Spaniards had waited
in suspense for the promised visit of the Inca. He had agreed that
he would come unarmed, as a friend. But that the Spaniards
could not believe, and Pizarro had made all preparations for attack.
At the signal "Santiago!" his men were to fall with all their might
upon the enemy. The horses had been decked with bells in the
hope that, as they charged, the ringing of the bells might increase
the Indians* fright. And at the same time there would be let
loose the thunder of the guns.

Still, who could forget the numbers of the Indians, with the
Spaniards less than two hundred!

So they had waited in terror for the coming of the Inca. * . .

And then, at last, toward the end of the day he had been seen
proceeding in pomp across the valley, heralds going ahead sweeping
the road over which he was to pass. Musicians had followed,
playing upon drums and trumpets and flutes, and there were
also men singing. After them had come soldiers arranged in
companies, each with its own uniform and banner. And finally
the Inca himself, borne on a magnificent litter on the shoulders of
his nobles, with over his head a canopy gorgeous with feathers of
tropical birds, and with glittering plates of gold and silver.

Thus had Atahualpa arrived, his retinue crowding the great
square.

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And now, four hundred years later, at approximately the same
hour and the same time of year, Senor Vivas Serra was driving
me in an automobile across that valley to the Inca's baths*

We passed Indians along the way, patient and silent, returning
to their homes in the valley or on the mountain slopes. They were
unkempt and ragged, as though their race had not yet recovered
from the calamity of the Conquest.

The hot springs of the baths still gush from the earth, a
sulphurous steam lies low over the ground, and there, fed by
pipes of hot and cold water, is the pool where the Inca bathed:
anyone else presuming to use it was punished with death.

We lingered, reluctant to leave the scene, I reminiscent, Del
Campo as always ebullient, talking much of the fortune that might
be made in a commercial exploitation of the baths. And while
we tarried, the sun went down, and all at once the air was frigid.

The drive back to Cajamarca was bitterly cold, and Senor Serra
invited us to come in for a drink. A drink of "Johxmy Walker,"
he said, would do us good. And while we drank, for our enter-
tainment he turned on a radio.

To my amazement the first words that came over the air were
the words of a Spanish proverb which I had imagined as repeating
themselves in the mind of one of my soldiers as he had stood in
the square so long ago, awaiting the arrival of Atahualpa. The
beat of the Inca's drums, the wail of the Inca's flutes, the voices
of the Inca's singers, had sounded each moment nearer. And
my soldier had thought: what could be the Spaniards* hope, out-
numbered as they were? It was then that there had come into
his mind the proverb. Back in Spain, in the province of Estre-
madura, famous for its swine as well as for being the birthplace of
so many of the Conquistador c$, it had, for as long as people could
remember, been customary to slaughter the hogs early in Novem-
ber, on St. Martin's Day. Out of that custom had arisen the
proverb, that to every hog there comes his St. Martin.

This saying had pulsed in the brain of my soldier, as he had
waited in fear for Atahualpa to arrive in the square of Cajamarca.

Now, by an extraordinary coincidence, on my first night in

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Cajamarca, drinking "Johnny Walker" only a few hundred yards
from where my trembling soldier had waited, the proverb had come
to me over the radio:

"Coda puerco a su San Martin!'

Sefior Serra was turning the dial, and the station broadcasting
the proverb was gone.

"But that's my proverb!" I exclaimed. "Where did it come
from?"

It is one of my favorite fantasies to imagine that one day, through
some miraculous invention, it may be possible to reach back and
capture the waves of long-ago sound : to hear, for example, Pizarro's
speech on the Island of Gallo: "Let each man choose as becomes a
good Castilian. For my part I go to Peru!' Or to hear the voice
of Columbus when he first sighted land.

And now, here was my proverb, come to me as out of the past!

What station had broadcast it?

But Sefior Serra was unable to locate the station. In the attempt,
within fifteen minutes, we had tuned in on a broadcast from
Philadelphia of a football game, music from Schenectady, a
Cockney monologue from London, an orchestra from Germany, a
song from Madrid, a comedienne from Paris, a brass band from
Panama, songs from Bogota, Medellin and Lima.

Sefior Serra's radio, which brought the world to the faraway
Andean town of Cajamarca, was marked with the familiar trade
name, Philco. That achievement of linking the world to Caja-
marca was a miracle, but the wonder that went with me, back
through the night to my bleak little room in the Hotel Los
Andes, was the coincidence which had brought to me words that I
had imagined in the mind of a soldier of four hundred years ago.

After dinner, while I made ready for my arctic bed, I heard a
voice softly singing, and looking down into the street I saw that
it was a woman, swathed from head to foot in black, walking
close to the wall, and singing softly to herself in the darkness.

Was her song, like the proverb, also out of the sixteenth century?

I wondered.

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And in the morning I was wakened by the sound of a drum
and a trumpet under my window. Throwing open the doors on
the little balcony I saw a procession of Indians, led by a drummer
and by men with wooden trumpets twelve feet long. Following,
high on a platform was a blue and tinsel Virgin, swaying uncer-
tainly on the shoulders of her bearers.

The procession passed and I went out into the plaza. The
cold of night was forgotten in the tender warmth of the sun.
By day it is impossible to believe in the Andean night, just as in
the sunlight I found it hard to believe in the rains. Surely the
plaza was always sunny, with Indians softly coming and going,
their voices soft like their footfalls.

When I remember Cajamarca I feel as though a mantle of still-
ness had descended upon me. My voice shifts to the low key of
the Indian and my spirit is quiet.

It was on a Sunday that I sat in the plaza of Cajamarca. It was
also a fiesta of some sort. That I knew from the promenade of
the Virgin, and from the fact that in various parts of the town
a rocket would suddenly go up, bursting into a shower of sparks
whose brilliance could not compete with the shining day. The
rocket would die away, and after an interval, another would cut
its swath in the air, and then perish like those which had pre-
ceded it.

In the plaza itself only memory is left of the fateful months
when the Incaic buildings which once surrounded it were used
as barracks for Pizarro's soldiers, and certain rooms as the place
of Atahualpa's captivity.

The houses which now stand about the square are of the
Spanish-Colonial type, two-story houses painted rose and green
and white, with balconies overlooking the plaza. The Cathedral
fronting on the square and the fountain gently trickling in the
center, they, too, are Spanish. But the hills which circle the
valley, the hills are eloquent of the Empire of the Children of
the Sun. The hills had beheld Atahualpa borne on the royal
litter into the square. They had seen Valverde, the priest in the

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black and white of the Dominican Order, advance toward the
Inca, a book in his hand.

And from my friend, young Pedro Pizarro, I knew what had
then happened. In Pedro's long, stirring life nothing ever equaled
the extraordinary events of Cajamarca. And he thus relates
what, with his own eyes, he saw.

"Valverde carried in his hand a breviary, from which (the
Indian boy Felipillo, interpreting) he read the matters which
he preached. Atahualpa would examine the book, but not
knowing how to open it, it fell to the ground. And upon
that Valverde ordered one of the soldiers, a certain Aldana, to
attack Atahualpa. And Aldana drew the sword and bran-
dished it, but he did not want to plunge it into the Inca.

"Then Atahualpa told the Spaniards to get hence, as they
were no more than scurvy rogues, whom he was going to
have put to death.

"And Pizarro ordered the troops to sound the guns, and
fire, and the cavalry to come out.

"Then in confusion the Indians were cut to pieces, and the
cavalry pursued them as far as the baths, working great
havoc among them.

"Meanwhile the litter of Atahualpa had been attacked.
But they were unable to pull him out of the litter. Though
they slew the Indians who bore it, others at once took their
places and held it aloft. In this manner the soldiers spent
much time attacking and killing the Indians. And out of
weariness a Spaniard made as if to give Atahualpa a blow
with his knife to kill him. But Don Francisco Pizarro pre-
vented it, and himself received a wound in his hand from the
Spaniard. But he cried out, 'Let no one wound the Indian
on pain of death!'

"Then eight Spaniards rushed upon the litter and with
great effort turned it on its side.

"And so was the Inca, Atahualpa, made prisoner, and then
taken to a room and a guard set to watch him day and night,

"Then darkness having fallen, all the Spaniards gathered
to give thanks to our Lord for the mercies he had vouchsafed.**

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Looking back across the centuries you may see how Fate had
moved steadily toward that hour.

You see a boy herding swine in the oak forests of Estremadura.
He had plenty of time to think while the hogs industriously
fattened themselves on the sweet acorns, wasting no time, as
though they understood that they must be ready against the
butchery of St. Martin's Day.

Every youth of the Spain of that century had his head full of
fabulous tales of the New World. Especially this young swine-
herd, who was Francisco Pizarro, would have been attracted by
adventure and conquest, for that way lay his only chance. In
Estremadura there was nothing for the neglected bastard, son of
a fine gentleman by a peasant woman. Francisco knew that he
must get away. There were his brothers, Gonzalo and Juan, also
penniless illegitimates, and his half-brother Martin, his mother's
son by the man, Alcantara. And no future for any of them in
Estremadura. And if Francisco's ambition needed prodding, there
was the older brother, Hernando, legitimate and the sdn of a
great lady. He would be made a gentleman like their father.

These were the things which the boy, Francisco, had to think
of among his swine, in the quiet of the oak forests.

The result of thinking enlisted him as a soldier. That at least
took him away from the swine.

And then, at last, somehow, Pizarro got to Santo Domingo.

Now it remained only to rise to the heights that every man
dreamed would be his provided he could reach the New World.
But for long Pizarro found little reward, beyond the accustoming
of his body to hardship and his spirit to peril.

In Santo Domingo he had seen something of a cousin, on
the Pizarro side, a certain Hernando Cortez. This cousin had
everything that Pizarro had not, legitimacy, noble birth, worldly
position, education. He could even converse in Latin with the
priests and the learned doctors. He was a ladies' man, too, with
many amorous adventures to his credit Altogether this cousin
was an elegant personage, and with a rich taste in dress. Pizarro
was a crude fellow in comparison.

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A JOURNEY IN TIME

In Santo Domingo, the two had parted, Cortez to go eventually
to Mexico, Pizarro to Panama.

For Pizarro, encounters with hostile Indians were to continue,
slaughter on both sides; he was to face disease and famine, and at
last to have nothing to show for it but an unhealthy plantation
on the Isthmus, with some Indians to cultivate it. He was then
past fifty, and only this had come of his grandiose ambitions,
while his cousin, Cortez, had become conqueror of Mexico. Cortez
had won gold and glory. And there was Pedro de Alvarado, also
from Estremadura. Alvarado had become famous as conqueror
of Guatemala.

And since the failures in life feel more bitterly the success of
those close to them than that of strangers, Pizarro's envy would
have focused upon the exploits of the men of his own province^
and especially upon those of his cousin Cortez. For it is natural to
lament that if Ted y Fulano, born like yourself in such and such
a locality, perhaps even related to you by blood, has grasped the
glittering bauble of success, why not you likewise? And if in
addition there has been similar opportunity, then there is rancor
in your disappointment. And Pizarro had had his chance in
the New World. Why had he not, like Cortez and Alvarado,
men, be it remembered, of his own Estremadura, why had he^
too, not won the prize of power and riches? Had he not fought
with equal bravery? Had he not suffered equal hardship? Had
he ever hesitated to risk his life? Yet they had won, and to him
there had fallen only that fever-ridden plantation in Panama.

There, in partnership with Diego de Almagro, another dis-
appointed adventurer, also like himself, uneducated and illigiti-
mate, Pizarro had set about the raising of cattle for a livelihood,
when the news of his cousin's conquest of Mexico had set his
ambition once more aSame. The will to conquer had blazed in
him again, more compelling even than in the dreaming days of
youth when he had herded swine in the oak forests, because there
was now added knowledge that the time was short* If he was
to triumph it must be at once, or never.

His mind had begun then to play about those rumors of a vast

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golden empire to the south, which poor Balboa had dreamed of
conquering, before his jealous old father-in-law had had him
beheaded.

Pizarro recalled that the rumors had had their source in an
Indian chief who one day, watching Balboa weighing gold, had
said that to the south, on the shores of the Pacific, there was
a land where gold was so common that people ate and drank out
of golden vessels.

Why should not he, Pizarro, conquer this rich empire as Cortez
had conquered Mexico?

So it had come about that Pizarro and his friend, Almagro,
had entered into a new partnership. Both past fifty, both without
wealth, or influence, both looked upon as definitely losers in the
great game of conquest, they now determined to sell out the cattle
business and to stake all on one last desperate venture. They
would conquer this Peru of golden rumor. And fantastically im-
probable as their plan had seemed, they had succeeded in winning
the support of the priest, Luque, who was able to finance for them
the outfitting of two small ships.

Their first attempt had ended in failure. In a skirmish with
hostile Indians, Almagro had lost an eye, and all had suffered
much from disease and hunger, until it had been necessary to
return to Panama. But the people they had encountered on the
coast had worn gold ornaments, and they had also confirmed the
reports of that rich country, ruled over by a powerful monarch,
an Inca, who was the Son of the Sun.

And on the basis of these tales a second expedition had been
equipped. This time they extended their exploration farther
south. They had seen more gold, and more evidences of the
reality of the fabulous empire. And it had been decided that
Almagro should return to Panama for supplies and recruits, while
Pizarro with a small force waited on the Island of Gallo.

But a discontented soldier had sent, by the hand of Almagro,
a gift to the Governor's wife at Panama, a ball of wool in which
he had hidden a couplet, to the effect that Pizarro retained his
men by force and that all were in peril of their lives.

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A JOURNEY IN TIME

So that the ship which returned to the Island of Gallo had
brought, not fresh recruits, but a command from the Governor
that Pizarro return immediately,

It was then that Pizarro had drawn that line in the sand, and
defying the Governor's order, had made the fateful speech de-
claring that for his part he went south to Peru.

After that, with the sixteen men who had dared to follow him
across the line, pledging themselves to the conquest, he had
moved from Gallo to the Island of Gorgona, to wait there in the
hope that Almagro might still come with reinforcements; while
the Governor's ship took back to Panama those without the spirit
or the stomach to continue.

There, on Gorgona, for months they had waited, hoping, fearing;
waiting. . . .

Then at last the ship had come, come, not with the recruits, but
to rescue them from their obstinate folly.

But Pizarro's determination had not faltered. He had used
the vessel for futher exploration. And with every mile that they
had sailed south, they had seen signs of a rich country. At Tumbez
there had been an Inca noble, with the lobes of his ears so distended
to receive great golden ear-plugs, that the Spaniards from that
moment had given to the Inca nobility the name of Orejoncs
Great Ears. They had seen also temples decorated with plates of
gold and silver, and sacred vessels of these precious metals.

With such ornaments as these, with a couple of the strange
llamas which the Peruvians used as beasts of burden, with some
of the native textiles, and with two Indian boys whom he planned
to train as interpreters, Pizarro had returned to Panama. Surely
now, he had thought, a great expedition might be organized.
But still the Governor was uninterested. And Pizarro, Almagro
and Luque, in conference, had decided that they must appeal to
the Court of Spain. And thus it was that Pizarro, with his
Indians and his llamas, his textiles and his ornaments of gold
and silver, had set sail for Spain, to lay his plan before the
Emperor, Charles V, then in residence at Toledo,

And upon his arrival Pizarro had gone first to pray at the shrine

PERUVIAN PAGEANT

of the Virgin in the Monastery of La Rabida, at whsDse gates
Columbus, forty years before, had knocked, begging bread and
a drink of water for himself and his little son. There, Columbus
had found at last belief in the dream for which he had been
eighteen years seeking a patron. And it had been through the
Prior of this Monastery that he had finally won the support of
Isabella.

So, Pizarro had wished to pray before La Rabida's miraculous
Virgin, before going on to Toledo. And at La Rabida, by an
amazing coincidence, he had found his cousin, Cortez, on the
way from Mexico to lay his case before the Emperor; Cortez, too,
praying first to the Virgin of La Rabida.

From the Crown eventually Pizarro had received authorization
for conquest in the land called Peru, and with it the rank of
Governor and Captain General.

Living at the time in Toledo there had been Pizarro's cousin
Pedro, eager, of course, to go himself to the New World. And
Pizarro, hard and inflexible always, except toward his family,
had taken Pedro to serve as his page. Pizarro's brothers also had
been added to the expedition: Gonzalo and Juan Pizarro, the
half-brother, Martin de Alcantara, and the gentleman-brother^
Hernando Pizarro.

Then, at last, after many vicissitudes, and after quarrels with
Almagro, because at the Court of Spain Pizarro had taken for
himself the greatest honors and powers, finally Fate had brought
Pizarro to Cajamarca, and had at the same time brought Atahualpa
there to meet him; Atahualpa, Lord of the great Inca Empire,
which in the four hundred years of its existence had extended
its rule from Cuzco north to Quito, south to the River Maule in
Chile, west to the shores of the Pacific, and in the east, had reached
over the Cordillera, down into the jungle country of the Amazon.

As the Empire had grown in size and power its Inca had be-
come increasingly an exalted personage, a monarch more absolute
than any the world has ever seen, worshiped, feared, obeyed with-
out question by all, by the highest equally with the lowest. Even

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A JOURNEY IN TIME

the greatest of the nobles must enter his presence barefoot,
with a burden on his back. The Empire prostrated itself before
him, crying:

"Lord, Most High Lord, Child of the Sun. Thou art the Sole
and Beloved Lord. The Whole Earth Truly Obeys Thee."

It had come to be considered that for such a monarch only his
sister, equal with himself in glorious birth, was worthy to be his
queen, and to bear the future Inca. As in the beginning the
dynasty had been founded by the first Inca miraculously arising
from the waters of Lake Titicaca with his sister wife, similarly the
Incas of the latter years had married their sisters and loved their
concubines.

So much, in fact, had the great old Inca, Huayna Capac, loved
the mother of his son, Atahualpa, that the boy had been dearer
to him than Huascar, son by his sister, Rahua, and therefore heir
to the throne. And when Huayna, at the end of a long reign,
had come to die, he had willed to Atahualpa the northern kingdom
of the Empire.

And again Fate was setting the scene for the conflict that was
to be; for had Huayna not so greatly loved Atahualpa, he would
have let the Empire descend in entirety to the legitimate prince^
Huascar. And thus there would never have been that bitter War-
of-the-Brothers for supremacy. Pizarro would not, therefore,
have found the Empire bleeding from the devastation of civil
war, and Atahualpa victorious and arrogant, resting at Cajamarca,
his brother imprisoned, and the chief of his enemies executed.

Why should Atahualpa, now supreme, have feared the little
band of strangers? Let them proceed to Cajamarca. Atahualpa
had been naturally curious to see men so bold and so strange* At
any moment, should they become troublesome, he could make
an end of them.

Thus, Atahualpa, sublimely confident in the arrogance of a
ruling Inca and in the strength of the hosts implicitly obedient
to hiiTij enjoyed the mineral waters of Cajamarca, while up from
the coast the Spaniards recklessly marched each day farther into
the Empire. Let them come. What had Atahualpa to fear?

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There will perhaps never again in the world be so dramatic a
racial conflict as that clash between the aboriginal peoples of Amer-
ica and the Spanish Conquistadores. For modern communications
have so shrunk the earth that it can never be possible now for
civilizations to be born and to reach maturity, ignorant of the
very existence of other lands.

When, in Cajamarca, Spaniard met aboriginal, two widely
different civilizations were opposed. A bold individualism,
dominated by two consuming passions greed for gold, and pious
devotion to the Catholic Faith met in conflict an established
system, a paternal despotism, in which the individual was merged
in the whole, all power proceeding from the inviolate person of
the ruler; a rigorous, oppressive system meticulously organized,
in which the highest virtues were industry, thrift, honesty, and
blind obedience to authority.

The people of the Inca might not raise their station. The
most minute details of life were controlled. Even the highest noble
might not choose where he would live, nor whom he would marry,
A man's diversions and his occupation were commanded. His
dress, the cut of his hair, the size of his ear-plugs, all were deter-
mined for him by the system. The population was divided into
units of ten households, each unit under the direction of a
captain, and these captains in turn were responsible to the rulers
over fifty households, and so up to the lords of the four provinces
into which the Empire was divided. And at the top, was the
Inca, sole and final authority.

If jie-Iuca^ wished to pick up an entjrejvillageLjand move it
~t&^me c^errparfr Perhaps his reason

was that it seemed advisable to transplant to a newly conquered
territory a loyal village trained in the Inca idea, and speaking the
Quechua language which it had been decreed must be the official
tongue. Or perhaps the Inca might have had as his motive for
the transfer the fact that over-crowded sections must be relieved.
But he did not have to give his reasons, for he was above reason.
In the same way armies were levied when he needed them, and

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A JOURNEY IN TIME

great roads were constructed connecting every part of the realm
with the capital at Cuzco, while relays of post-runners conveyed
quickly to Cuzco news of what was happening everywhere, even
in the remotest parts of the Empire.

The ruling Incas had understood how to keep contented the
peoples living under this implacable system. They had succeeded
in limiting the wants of the populace to the stark necessities. And
they had seen that these necessities were unfailingly provided*
They had recognized man's need for amusements and for re-
ligion, and these, too, they had supplied.

In return, the lives and the labor of their subjects were com-
pletely under their control.

As Atahualpa himself was later to explain to Pizarro, the very
birds in his dominion would not dare to sing against his will.

And inevitably the system carried in itself the germs of its own
destruction.

Such were the people whom Pizarro had come to conquer,
while his own followers recognized no limit to the glory and the
power and the riches which each might win for himself; even
though, like their leader, Pizarro, they might be illiterate ad-
venturers who had begun life as swineherds. In the Spanish
forces there fought side by side courtly cavaliers, unlettered peas-
ants, jail-birds, disgruntled sycophants of the Crown, and eager
youths seeking adventure. Each believed that, with a good sword
in his hand, and the protection of his God, the world might
be his. As for Francisco Pizarro himself, he burned with the
fire of frustrated ambition, with the fierce determination of agc^
aroused to supreme, final effort

Fate seemed thus through the centuries to have been preparing
for what was to happen in Cajamarca.

Had she placed a bet on the outcome? And which side was
she backing? The Individualist or the System?

And now that Atahualpa was Pizarro's prisoner, what next ?
Pizarro must have been uncertain what should be the next

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step, when Atahualpa himself had made tie move. He had
proposed the ransom. After that, Pizarro's policy was to wait.
The Inca bargaining for life and freedom, was easily persuaded to
command his people to go about the work of the Empire as though
nothing had happened. And his will being paramount, no
regiments came to his rescue.

The Spaniards, keeping rigorous guard over their royal captive,
simply waited, while gold and silver, borne on the backs of men,
flowed in from all parts of the Empire.

The Spanish soldiers found the women of Cajamarca beautiful
and very amorous." And while waiting for the ransom to be
assembled these ladies delightfully passed the time. Also there
was plenty of intrigue, of quarrels between Almagro's faction
and the Pizarros, of gambling, of cross-questioning Indians about
possible plots and uprisings, and of receiving those supporters of
the defeated and imprisoned Huascar who schemed secretly against
Atahualpa. Life was not dull in the Spanish barracks.

To the historic characters, as seen through the chronicles of
Xerez, Estete and young Pedro Pizarro, I had added the Indian
Tito, shepherd of a llama caravan, and Lorenzo Sanchez de
Montalvo, a dark handsome boy, born in the town of Sevilla, and
a student under the monks of La Rabida at the time when Pizarro
and Cortez had come to pray before the miraculous and blessed
Virgin, on their way to Toledo to kiss his Majesty's feet.

Through Lorenzo I could remember that dramatic meeting of
the two great conquerors in the lonely little Monastery of La
Rabida. Through Lorenzo I saw the elegant Cortez with the
diamond ring upon his finger, I heard the suave words upon his
tongue and was impressed with the lordly airs of this conqueror
of Mexico.

And through Lorenzo also, I saw Pizarro, setting forth at the
age of sixty to conquer an empire; black-haired, black-browed,
black-eyed, black-bearded Pizarro, a man of few words, but capable
of eloquence when there was need, a man of vast energy held in
leash for the moment when it would be required., a man of great

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A street in Cuzco

A JOURNEY IN TIME

dignity, though without any polish or grace, a hard, stern man.

In Lorenzo I knew, too, the youth of Spain in that far-off
century, and then through his eyes, and through those of Pedro
Pizarro, I saw Peru, and with them I took part in the tragedy of
Cajarnarca.

As for Tito, I had brought him to Cajamarca that I might see
how the Spaniard impressed a simple subject of the Inca.

And because they were all young I had pictured a friendship
between the actual Pedro Pizarro and the imagined Lorenzo and
Tito.

And on that Sunday morning when I myself at last sat in the
plaza of Cajamarca, it was today which was a mirage, and Pizarro's
century which was reality.

The one-eyed Almagro had just arrived from Panama with
recruits and with certain officials of the King. And when they
saw the ransom gold pouring in, and learned that according to
the terms of the contract it was to be divided only between those
Spaniards in Cajamarca at the time the agreement had been drawn,
they were indignant at having no share in it They had forced
Pizarro to declare the ransom completed and a division made
among those entitled to receive it For in any future treasure all
were to have a part.

Pedro says that these King's officials and Almagro had insisted
also that Atahualpa should die. . . .

"And they said to Don Francisco Pizarro that it was not
fitting that he should live, for if he were released His Majesty
would lose the land and all the Spaniards be slain

"While matters were thus, a demon availed himself of
the interpreter, Felipillo, one of the boys who had been taken
to Spain, and who was at present enamoured of a wife of
Atahualpa's, and in order to win her he gave Pizarro to un-
derstand that Atahualpa was causing the assemblage of many
troops in order to kill the Spaniards. . . .

"And Pizarro sent Hernando de Soto out to find if any as-
semblage was being made. . . .

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"Almagro and the officials, seeing the departure of Soto,
hastened to Pizarro, and with the aid of the sly Felipillo, con-
vinced him that Atahualpa should die. For Pizarro being
very jealous for the service of His Majesty, they filled him with
apprehension, and against his will he sentenced Atahualpa
to burn at the stake. . . .

"And I saw Pizarro weep at not being able to grant the
Inca his life. . . ."

And Pedro describes how when they took Atahualpa into the
square to execute him, the priest Valverde exhorted him to become
a Christian. Atahualpa then asked whether they would then
burn him, and it was agreed that if he consented to baptism they
would kill him by strangulation instead of by burning.

So Atahualpa had been baptized into the Holy Catholic Church,
before his death by the garrote in the great square of Cajamarca.
And it was the twenty-ninth of August, in the year 1533; the
sun had set, so that he died by the light of torches.

And Pedro says that at the end, "all the natives who were in
the plaza with him prostrated themselves upon the ground/'

And on the next day his women sought for him everywhere,
calling to him, expecting him, because he had said that if his
body was not burned the Sun would restore him to life.

So they went about, calling everywhere. . .

A few days later Hernando de Soto returned, to find Pizarro
slouching about in a great black hat by way of mourning. And
De Soto was indignant, for Atahualpa had spoken the truth. There
was no uprising among the Indians.

But, it was protested, there had been other charges against
Atahualpa. He had been accused of having commanded the death
of his brother Huascar, who had a short time before been murdered.
And he had been proved guilty of idolatry, and of adultery in
having many wives and concubines, and of incest in having
married his sister.

Altogether it appeared to them pleasing to God that he should
have died.

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At intervals my reminiscence in the plaza of Cajamarca, had
been disturbed by something out of the present. A cow had
gently mooed her way across the square. There had been the
occasional rockets, the drumming and trumpeting for the Virgin
in procession about the town. Now, arrangements were being
made for an outdoor celebration of Mass. An altar was set up
outside the Cathedral, and a carpet laid for the priest to stand
upon. Just such a Mass, Valverde might have held for the Spanish
soldiers.

Meanwhile, inquisitive about this new creature who had come
to Cajamarca, there had gathered around me a pack of small
cholo boys, subjecting me to curious examination, questioning my
way of life, avid for all that I could tell them of travel by air.
Thus young Peru, eagerly alive, came to me in the old square
where long ago the great events of which I was dreaming had
begun the shaping of the Peru that is to be the Peru of these
quivering young things. . . .

[119]

VII
INTO THE HIGH ANDES

AREQUIPA is four hours by air from Lima, south along the
coast. If the day is clear you will see the dazzling snows of
Sarasara, Solimani, Coropuna and Ampato. At Arequipa there
is fortunately at least one night's hiatus in the journey to Cuzco,
for Arequipa must be part of what you will take away with you
from Peru.

You will pass through a door in a long, high wall, and there
you will find yourself in a garden, under whose flowering trees
there are lounging chairs and swinging seats heaped with gay
cushions, and set about conveniently little tables where, if you
like, you may have breakfast. The drive from the airport has
been dusty, and the greenness of the garden is astonishing by
contrast.

A big, rambling two-story house, obviously built a section at a
time to meet increasing demands upon its hospitality, has covered
itself with flowers, as though it had drawn about its shoulders a
great embroidered shawl, and back of the house rise the symmetric
cone of El Misti and the frosted summit of Chichani. It is all as
you expect to find it, if you have read Stella May's charming
description in her Men, Maidens and Mantillas.

And when you arrive Tia Bates is standing at the top of
the steps to welcome you. For this is the famous Quinta Bates,
whose proprietress has made herself and her pension in the
garden at Arequipa known and loved all over the world. "If you
don't know Tia Bates," people say, "then you don't entirely know
Peru."

Tia f or at once to everyone she enters the relationship of aunt
has lived most of her life in Peru. Through her doors have passed
explorers, mining men, traveling salesmen, scientists, diplomats,

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A JOURNEY IN TIME

railroad men and aviators, authors and artists and playwrights,
actors and actresses, owners and managers of great haciendas.
They have come from the four quarters of the earth, perhaps they
spend only a night at the Quinta, but the flavor, the personality
of the place is borne away with them. Scarcely a book has been
written on Peru in the last quarter of a century that does not men-
tion the Quinta, and the woman who presides over it like a medieval
duchess. For Tia is a virile, hearty person, a duchess in the manner
of pre-Victorian days, when women combined the strength of men
with feminine tenderness and feminine elegance. This Tia of
the Quinta Bates tosses off her whiskies and sodas, berates and
spoils her servants, swears when occasion demands, is so generous
that the paying of your bill is not made easy for you, and you
wonder what keeps the Quinta out of bankruptcy. To the young
and the old and the troubled she is gentle and understanding.
At the same time she has a gift for shrewd appraisal of the human
species. I can't imagine Tia reading a printed page, for in her
busy life among flesh-and-blood characters there is no time. At
the Quinta, people are daily coming and going, up by train from
Mollendo; down from Cuzco, from Lake Titicaca and Bolivia;
arriving and departing by air from the north and the south.
There are train days and plane days, and days when, because of a
ship having docked at Mollendo, there may be more guests than
the Quinta can contain, and Tia then juggles things about so that
she may squeeze in as many as possible.

Outside the garden wall there is Arequipa, a typical Andean
town with the usual plazas, and churches in whose towers hang
bells. I had an upper room at the Quinta, and from the terrace
outside my door I could look out over the garden to the city. At
night it was so cold that I crept thankfully under the vicuna robe
which Tia had had spread upon my bed, and then in the morning
I breakfasted on the roof among treetops to whose blossoms
quantities of hummingbirds came on little whirring gauzy wings.

Arequipa stands at about the same altitude as Cajamarca, acting
as a landing on the mountain stairway, where you may draw a
deep breath before the steep ascent ahead of you.

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It is when you have said good-by to Tia and entrained for the
twenty-four-hour journey into the Andes that your preparation
for Cuzco actually begins.

The country immediately beyond Arequipa is as desolate as
despair. Mighty boulders strew the arid landscape. The boulders
are powdered thickly with dust, as though for centuries the land
had been abandoned. You decide that this is the most cruel
landscape that your eyes have ever rested upon. And then, sud-
denly, to your amazement, you know that it has become beautiful
to you.

The traveler whom Peru thus captures can never reply to the
question: "What is Peru like?" For it is a country so varied, so
complex in its appeal, the grip that it has upon you, once it has
possessed you, is so inexplicable that you grope for words.

There is, I think, but one indisputable statement that can
be made about Peru: it never leaves anyone indifferent. You
become attuned to its strange beauty, as the eye becomes trained
to a new art.

I find my own mind returning again and again to Peru, dwell-
ing upon its regions of desolation as well as upon its regions of
conventional beauty, for there is sublime grandeur in its lonely
wastes.

It is at Pampa de Arrieros that the climb which is to take you
up over the Passes, and eventually to Cuzco, seriously begins.
And while the train pauses there, you must walk about, looking
widely over the barren Pampa to the stark mountains which en-
circle it, the highest of their heads snowy against the sky. And
if the walls of life hem you in, you will find release as your
eyes travel from an adobe corral in the foreground with per-
haps a train of llamas passing under its roofed gateway out
across the wastes to the horizon mountains. There seems infinity
between you and those mountaintops, infinity and a great silence.

If you are making the trip to Cuzco entirely by day, you will
spend a night at Juliaca, or you may take a "dormitory** train

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A JOURNEY IN TIME

out of Arequipa, and thus make only half the journey by day.
But whichever you elect, during the first twelve hours, even though
you are not a mountain-sickness sufferer, you cannot fail to realize
a steady increase of altitude: the chill of the high, thin air, and
the travail of the engine, will make you aware of the altitude,
even without any soroche to emphasize it

"Imagination," people tell you, "has a lot to do with whether
you have soroche."

I once believed that myself. I had never known mountain sick-
ness. I had even that sense of superiority about it, so odious a
trait in the never-seasick.

Then, suddenly without warning, I felt that death would be
preferable to life. There is something in this soroche of the
Andes that strikes down those susceptible to it. You are too
wretched to bother to take aspirin, or to remember that some-
where you've heard that onions are good for it, and garlic, and
wine. You are a stricken creature without resistance. You've
experienced nausea before, youVe had headache before, but this
nausea and this headache seem unlike any other. And with your
giddy faintness you feel a profound melancholy.

The reasoning part of my mind detached itself from the despair
of soroche, reminding that in a few hours the average human
organism adapts itself to the new altitude, and recollecting the
terrible suffering of Bolivar's soldiers when soroche hit them
on their famous march from Venezuela over the Andes into
Colombia, and what San Martin's men endured when they crossed
the Cordillera from Argentina into Chile.

But though reason may still function, soroche dominates the
emotions and the physical body.

Still I had had my heart's wish, I was come up into the Sierra
of Peru, and not even the fact that I must first behold it with sick
eyes could spoil it for me.

At Juliaca we had dropped down to twelve thousand feet, but
we had still to cross the high Pass at La Raya.

We were now crossing the rolling, uneven floor of the Puna,
that lofty plain which stretches between the central and the eastern

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Cordilleras* It is a region of enormous ranches estancias. Miles
of fencing enclose vast tracts of land over which roam huge flocks
and herds, sheep, cattle, donkeys, mules, horses, llamas and
alpacas. You wonder that they find sustenance in the coarse
dry ichu grass of the Puna. In the rains, people say, the Puna is
green, but, as I saw it, it was parched and dusty. Only occasional
mossy clumps of clareta were green. The altitude is here too
great for the cultivation of maize. Even a gnarled and stunted tree
is a rare event in the march of the plateau from one mountain
range to another. Railroad stations are small and spaced far
apart, and human habitations are few, merely clusters of two or
three round huts, with walls of the stones scattered about the
Puna, and roofs thickly thatched with ichu grass. But human
population is incidental to the Puna whose life is the life of flocks
and herds. Vicunas come fearlessly close to the track, lovely, fawn-
colored creatures, taller and more slender than deer, but with
deers' eyes and the wide-awake, alert air of deer, holding their
dainty heads high on long necks. There are herds of parti-colored
alpacas, shaggy awkward beasts with short necks and short legs,
and caravans of llamas moving in stately precision with the haughty
superiority of camels, style in every move they make. You feel
that they enjoy the colored fringes and bells with which their
shepherds often adorn them, for they carry decoration with an air,
while the alpacas have no more style than the flocks of sheep
which trot over the plain, like animated sheafs of ripe grain,

The beasts of the Puna are shepherded, usually by something
small with always, somewhere about it, a splash of red. And now
and then, there is a galloping horseman in a flopping poncho, or
a woman in a great fringed hat, spinning as she walks, her long,
very full skirts giving the impression that she is being blown across
the landscape, with her small bare feet no more than lightly
touching its surface.

It was across this same Puna that my shepherd boy, Tito, used to
travel with his caravan of llamas, and across this Puna, too, that my
little heroine, Salla, traveled when she went from her father's
house on the shore of Lake Titicaca, to enter the Convent of the

[124]

A Dominican monk admires the Inca stone-
work o the Temple of the Sun in Cuzco

A JOURNEY IN TIME

Virgins of the Sun in Cuzco. And in the four hundred years since
all that happened, the Puna itself is little changed. To be sure
the cattle and the horses, the donkeys and mules and sheep all
came over with the Spaniards. The wire fences and the train
puffing now so heavily as we approach La Raya, these are of course
modern, but they seem unimportant to the spirit of the Puna
which remains aloof, untamed; a wild land recognizing no re-
straint but that of the snow ranges which set a limit to its extent.

At the Pass of La Raya there is a little lake which serves as
mirror to one of the loveliest peaks of the whole line of snows.
And out of the lake flow two small streams, one running north, to
reach by devious ways the Amazon, the ofher running south,
equally fast, as if to pretend that its destination were just as im-
portant as that of the Amazon-bound streamlet. My little Virgin
of the Sun had spent the night at La Raya, where in those days
there was stationed one of the Inca rest-houses a tambo, to give
it its old name. The tambo looked down upon the lake, and across
the Puna to snows of breath-taking beauty.

I remembered how sick for home my little Virgin had been on
that night at the Pass, sick for the voice of her father, for her
mother's impulsive tenderness, and for the sound of the wind
in the tall rushes of the lake.

It had been at La Raya, that she had discovered the tragedy of
parting, of change, of the end of the familiar; discovered this, not
in words of course, for she was just a little girl, but discovered
it in emotion.

And the disruption of the established which had so shaken
Salla's little individual life was destined soon to happen in the
larger life of that Empire which Salla had been taught was the
Universe.

While the train halted at La Raya, I remembered how everlast-
ing the Empire had seemed to its people in the days before Pizarro
had first landed on the coast.

Then, when we pulled out of the station at La Raya my eyes
filled with tears as I gazed out upon the passing landscape. , . .

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Salla's life, though she was only the child of my imagination,
became indistinguishable from my own, and realization of the
tragedy of the Conquest rushed unbearably over me. Through
Him eyes I watched the Puna, again rolling away to the foot of
the beautiful snow range* . . .

The seat in front of me was occupied by a chola serving-maid,
nurse to a German family returning to Cuzco from a seashore
holiday at Mollendo.

This chola nurse-girl observing my tears, turned to me with
compassion:

"The Senorita is alone?"

"Yes."

"But the Senorita has friends in Cuzco?"

"No, I don't know anyone in Cuzco."

This was too much. The little figure in its soiled calico dress
faded to a dingy pink, in its too long petticoats, its coarse cotton
stockings, its unkempt black braids, drooped with dejection for
my plight.

"Ah," the sympathetic voice said, "ah, the Senorita cries be-
cause she is sick and she thinks that in Cuzco there is nothing.
But" the voice became reassuring "but in Cuzco there is a
doctor, there is medicine, there is everything! . . . Do not cry,
Senorita!"

And I knew that explanation would have been useless, for my
new friend could not have believed that a woman in her senses
would have chosen to leave her home and travel thousands of
miles alone, in order to look upon the scene of the Conquest,
Neither could she have understood that it was because of the
Conquest and because of all that has since happened, above
all because of the piteous ignorance with which we advance to
meet Fate, that my eyes were dim. She would have been be-
wildered had she been told that I sorrowed for the sorrow of the
world, or if she had known that her own name which was
Felicit6 was in itself infinitely touching to me in that mood
when soroche and history combined to fill me with overwhelm*
ing compassion, just as my tears had filled Fdicit with sympathy.

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A JOURNEY IN TIME
Felicite! . . . and so pitiably little to bring her felicity!

After leaving the Pass the train comes gradually down from
that great altitude to a mere eleven thousand feet or so, and still
for the remainder of the day the soroche persisted.

But beyond La Raya the country takes on a beauty very differ-
ent from the relentless beauty of the Pass. Valleys are freshly
green with fields of young corn, the surrounding hills are bril-
liantly red, with, laid upon them squares and rectangles of green,
fields of potatoes and of grain. About the villages there are rows
of tall, straight eucalyptus trees. Sometimes the red of the hills
is repeated in the adobe walls, and in other villages the houses
are brown, or whitewashed. And then, in the distance there is
Cuzco, its dull red roofs snuggled in a green valley, girdled by
red hills, with limitless blue mountains rising above them, . , .

There at last was the Cuzco I had come so great a distance to
see.

At a station, not far from the venerable city, the station-master
of Cuzco came aboard the train, inquiring for me. A certain
Mr. Paterson, one of the company officials in Arequipa, had tele-
graphed ahead to the Railroad Hotel (the Hotel Ferrocarril) at
Cuzco, and here was Senor Fuentes, the station-master, to greet me.

The burden of responsibility dropped from Felicite's shoulders.
"Ah," she sighed happily. "The Senorita has friends!"

The train puffed into Cuzco, I politely explaining to the station-
master that, soroche being what it is, I found it impossible to
be polite, that I must be excused from expressing appreciation,
that tomorrow . . . tomorrow I would be polite but not now.

The Hotel Ferrocarril and the Railroad Station, I found to be
one and the same. You step from the train into the hotel, where
a short flight of stairs takes you, past the dining room and a
small bar, up to the bedrooms.

"Tomorrow/* I repeated, as Sciior Fuentes, plus a room-boy,
and plus the administrador of the hotel, escorted me to my room,
"tomorrow I can be polite, but not now,"

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I then put myself to bed, and Juan, the room-boy, brought me
supper on a tray, very solicitous, adding the diminutive "itct* or
"ito" to every possible word. Soup, on the lips of Juan, is sopita,
instead of sopa, and cafe is cafedta.

Soroche, I thought, falling asleep with Juan's pretty diminutives
singing in my mind, soroche is a small price to have paid for
having arrived at last in Cuzco.

[128]

VIII

CUZCO REMEMBERS
The Navel of the World

IN LIMA the present and the hovering future so dominate the past
that it has become elusive, haunting, not to be found without
seeking. Even in the old town of Cajamarca, the future is on the
lips and in the exploring eyes of those gangs of eager urchins who
gather in the plaza. In Arequipa, too, the coming and going of
air-services, the arrivals and departures of trains, the passengers
who pause for the night at the Quinta Bates, all are concerned
with today, with the busy commerce of the world. But in Cuzco
the little that is modern seems negligible. For Cuzco remem-
bers. . . .

Venerable Cuzco remembers that it was once considered so sacred
a city that travelers proceeding from it took precedence over all
others on the road. Cuzco does not forget that in the days when
it was the brilliant capital of the Inca Empire, men called it the
navel of the world ; for here converged the life of the four provinces
which made up the Empire, and the Empire was the universe.

The soil of Cuzco's Holy Square was the soil of the Empire,
for whenever a new region had been brought under subjection,
earth from that section had been carried to the square so that
every tribe might feel that it had a part in Cuzco, And radiating
from the city were the four royal roads, stretching away to the
northeast, the southeast, the northwest and the southwest, uniting
Cuzco with each of the great provinces. And as the earth of
the Holy Square was symbolic of the unity of the Empire, so the
city itself was divided into wards representing the provinces,
the citizens brought for various purposes to Cuzco living each
in his proper ward.

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On this journey in time I always sought as guides those who
had been eye-witnesses, who could say to me: "These things I my-
self saw."

And when eye-witnesses were lacking, because during the early
centuries of my journey few were skilled in the business of writ-
ing, then I turned for guidance to such as could say: "These
things I had from those who themselves had seen, from those of
the conquered who survived, while the scenes I have described
from my own observations, made soon after the events recorded."

Throughout the sixteenth century, I turned often to Pedro
Pizarro as one who had been a part of the Conquest. In matters
concerning his Pizarro cousins, Pedro is sometimes partial, but
always honest, never, I think, intentionally misrepresenting, and
his personal feeling adds vitality to his story. You know that this
is how one Pedro Pizarro felt and thought, from the moment
of his landing in Peru as his great cousin's page, down through the
years, when as a crusty old gentleman dwelling in the city of
Arequipa he looked back over three-quarters of a century of liv-
ing, and told his story.

Other eye-witnesses of the time are Francisco Pizarro's various
secretaries, Xeres, Estete and Sancho, though, unlike Pedro, their
stories cover only the earlier days.

Among the secondary chronicles there are the priests Molina,
Morua, Father Cabello de Balboa, and the Commentaries of
Garcilaso de la Vega, son of a Spanish conqueror and an Inca
princess, who having spent the first twenty years of his life in
Cuzco, wrote out of reminiscence and out of the tales he heard
when his mother's family talked of the old days, before the
Conquest. But Garcilaso, born of both the victor and the van-
quished, has always a case to prove, so that in spite of my affection
for him, it was the young soldier, Cieza de Le6n, to whom I turned
when eye-witnesses failed; though my doing so would, I know,
irritate old Pedro Pizarro, who used to say waspishly: "Who is
this Cieza de Le<5n anyway? I never heard of him in the early
days."

As for Cieza, he was possessed of an intellect, of the gift of

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A JOURNEY IN TIME

acute observation, and of a detached sincerity, while my friend
Pedro had none of these qualities. Cieza came out to America
at the age of fourteen. He went first to what is now Colombia,
and from there he traveled overland into Peru, and through the
greater part of his seventeen years in the New World he had kept
a journal

"Oftentimes [he says] when the other soldiers were repos-
ing I was tiring myself by writing. . . . Neither fatigue nor the
ruggedness of the country, nor the mountains and rivers, nor
intolerable hunger kept me from this task."

But when I wanted to know how Cuzco had appeared in that
November of 1533 when, marching victorious from Cajamarca,
the Spaniards had entered the city, I consulted first the eye-
witnesses, Pedro and Sancho.

And from them I learned that it was so large and so beautiful
that it would have been worthy of admiration even in Spain . . .
"its streets laid out at right angles, very straight, paved, with down
the middle a gutter for water, lined with stone, the chief defect of
the streets being that they were so narrow that only one horse
and rider could go on one side of the gutter, and another upon
the opposite side. . . ." And Sancho was impressed with a fortress
which crowned the hill to the north of the city. It was of a size,
he explains, which "might well contain five thousand Spaniards,
and built of stones so large that anyone who sees them would not
say that they had been put in place by human hands."

The Spaniards marching in with Pizarro found the fortress
stored with all manner of arms, clubs and axes, lances and bows,
shields and doublets heavily padded with cotton.

In those days on the four sides of the Holy Square, there stood
the palaces of the Incas, and the Convent of the Virgins of the
Sun* Back of one of the palaces was the Houses-Learning, where
youths of the nobility were educated; those designed to be the
wise-men of the nation were instructed in history, tradition and
ballads, for in the Inca civilization there was no form of writing,

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and all culture was carried forward by word of mouth, with only
the knotted cords of the quipu to serve as aids to memory.

The buildings of royal and official Cuzco were of stones finely
cut and fitted together with exquisite precision. Windowless walls
stood twenty feet or more in height, with spaces at far intervals;
doors, whose sides sloped inward toward the lintels. The streets
between these massive blind walls were like narrow fissures cut in
stone.

On the banks of the Huatanay River there was the Temple of
the Sun, with a garden terraced down to the water, and in the
garden, beautifully worked in gold were representations of the
animals and the plants of the Empire. Even the outer wall of this
Temple was banded in gold, while within were great plates of
gold, and ranged against one end were the mummy bundles of
departed Inca rulers.

These palaces, whose architecture was so austere, contained
gardens and courts, halls and chambers* There were niches
cut into the stone walls, their sides too, sloping inward, as the sides
of the doors sloped toward the lintels. And in the niches were
the figures of idols.

Of this city of Cuzco, Cieza (who arrived upon the scene shortly
after the Conquest) says that it "was full of strangers . . . many
different tribes and lineages, each tribe distinguished by its head-
dress ... the Collas wore caps in the shape of a pump-box and
made of wool. The Canaris had crowns of thin lathes, like those
used for a sieve. The Huancas had short ropes which hung
down as low as the chin, with the hair plaited. The Canchis

had wide fillets of red or black passing over the forehead all

so clear and distinct that when fifteen thousand men were as-
sembled, one tribe could easily be distinguished from another/*

Cuzco remembers how life then flowed in its streets, how cara-
vans of llamas came and went, how runners arrived with news
from the farthest confines of the Empire, and "so well was this
running performed that in a short time they knew at a distance
of three hundred leagues, five hundred, and even eight hundred,
what had passed, or what was needed or required. With such

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A descendant of the Incas

A JOURNEY IN TIME

secrecy did the runners keep the messages that were entrusted to
them that neither entreaty nor menace could ever extort a relation
of what they had thus heard."

All over the Empire there were post-houses where couriers
watched the road in both directions, so that fresh runners could
immediately take over the message from incoming couriers and
carry it on to the next post-house, where in turn other runners
waited.

The whole life of the Empire had been similarly organized, with
the virtues of industry, thrift, honesty, and obedience, supreme.

And the Incas, appreciating man's need to worship, and his
need for diversion, had decreed in every month three holidays
and three market days; their celebration, like everything else,
being obligatory.

On these holidays, all over the land great festivals were held, each
in its appropriate month, the greatest of them being the festival
in adoration of the sun. Other festivals honored the moon and
the earth, and the months of sowing and of harvesting. And
there were also the yearly ceremonies of puberty, and the festival
to ward off sickness and disaster, which was celebrated at the
beginning of the rainy season* Each of these days had its dis-
tinctive ritual, with officiating priests in magnificent regalia, and
the chosen Virgins of the Sun in white robes, with gold belts and
gold diadems. And there were dances and the performance of
dramas and the sacrifice of llamas, varying in color and in num-
ber according to the occasion.

Looking back upon the Inca civilization, Sir Clements Mark-
ham, nearly four hundred years later, reflected; and in the in-
tensive cultivation of the land extending in terraced fields even
up on the mountainsides, he saw proof of a people "well cared
for and nourished who had multiplied exceedingly. In the wild-
est and most inaccessible valleys, in the lofty Punas, surrounded
by snowy heights, in the dense forests and in the sand-
girt valleys on the coast, the eye of the central power was ever
upon them* and the never-failing brain, beneficent, though in-

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exorable, provided for all their wants, gathered in their tribute,
and selected their children for the various occupations required
by the State. . . .

"This government existed because the essential conditions were
combined in such a way as is likely never to occur again. These
are an inexorable despotism, absolute exemption from outside
interference of any kind, a very peculiar and remarkable people
in an early stage of civilization, and . . . skillful statesmanship."

Pizarro had thought that he might similarly rule with despotic
power, seating upon the throne young Manco, the legitimate heir,
and governing through him; Manco to be but his puppet.

Cuzco remembers the pomp of that ceremony in the Holy
Square, when, after Valverde had celebrated Mass, Manco received
the royal fringe from Francisco Pizarro, the Conqueror.

And the people of the Inca had been comforted, believing that
still they were to be ruled by an Inca, by a Son of the Sun.

They were comforted, because they did not know. . . .

The Long Siege

In the year after Pizarro had crowned young Manco sovereign
of the conquered Empire, a certain Don Alonzo Enriquez de
Guzman, having heard much of the fabulous fortunes to be made
in Peru, decided to seek there all that he had failed to win in
Spain. The Don Alonzo, upon reaching the age of eighteen, had
seriously considered his prospects:

"I found myself," he says, "fatherless and poor, with a mother
who was a very talkative, yet honest, good and pious woman.
But she was unable to provide for me . , . and so, oppressed
with poverty and desirous of riches, I determined to go in
search of adventures, and set out from Seville which was my
native place, with a horse, a mule, a bed and sixty ducats. . . .
I resolved to write down all that happened to me and not
to record anything which is not worthy of credit."

In the course of the next sixteen years, Alonzo's pursuit of for-

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tune took him with the army to the Balearic Islands, to Sicily
and Naples and Rome. He became a hanger-on at the Court of
Charles V, and as he puts it, his mother unable to support him,
he had "of necessity" taken a wife.

He was a shallow fellow of showy tastes, and disappointed that
none of all this had brought him the wealth he craved.

In fact, at the age of thirty-four, he was actually further from
his goal than upon that day when with horse, mule, bed and
ducats, he had gone forth to conquer the world. For his pugna-
cious and scheming nature had acquired for him more enemies
than riches, and eventually he had fallen into disgrace with the
Emperor, so that once more he had felt compelled to take stock
of his prospects, and concluded that there was nothing left but
the New World: he would go to the New World, . . .

Alonzo landed in the northern part of Peru, and traveled over-
land to Lima. There he found Francisco Pizarro absorbed in
carrying out ambitious plans for the city he had founded. Already
as many as sixty houses had gone up; adobe houses, Alonzo says,
"handsomely painted and finished like those of Spain, with good
gardens behind them-"

And in Lima, Alonzo heard much of the eternal quarrels be-
tween Diego Almagro and the Pizarros, especially between
Hernando Pizarro and Almagro. People said that from the be-
ginning, those two had been like rival dogs, everlastingly picking
a fight. Now that Almagro was gone to Chile there was some
hope of tranquillity, but before he'd gone there'd been a great
squabble, so that Don Francisco had been compelled to go him-
self to Cuzco to make the peace. That particular contention had
had to do with division of the Empire; what part Francisco
Pizarro should rule and what should fall to Almagro.

But that, Don Francisco had said, must be left to His Majesty;
Hernando had gone to Spain with His Majesty's share of Atahu-
alpa's ransom the customary "royal fifth." Hernando would
bring the Emperor's decision in this matter of partition of land.
And Pizarro had insisted that Almagro await that decision.

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A pact of friendship had then been signed between the two,
and Almagro had gone south, lured by rumors that Chile would
be as rich a prize as Peru. With him had gone many of the Span-
ish soldiers who had come down from Guatemala with Pedro de
Alvarado.

Hernando was now recently returned, and later there had come
the great news that Don Francisco was made a Marquis. As for
the division of territory, Almagro's share was to commence where
that of the Marquis left off, and to extend south for two hundred
leagues. But just where the territory of one ended and the other
began was indefinite. And one day Almagro would return from
Chile, and then the boundary would have to be decided.

Meanwhile the Marquis appeared to desire nothing so much
as to devote himself to the building of Lima. He seemed to wish
now to settle down, as was but natural, he being on his way to
seventy, and become a family man with a royal princess of the
Incas to bear him children* He hadn't married her it was true,
for he'd never been of the marrying sort> but the children would
be treated as legitimate.

When you looked at it, so the talk ran, Pizarro had won every-
thing. The men of Estremadura could remember when he was
just a swineherd. And now he was the Conqueror of Peru, and
a Marquis, like Cortez. He had riches, too, as well as glory .-
There was nothing more to struggle for. Pizarro, the Marquis,
had everything.

As for Alonzo, he, also, would be great. And with high hope
he said good-by to Lima and rode up over the mountains to Cuzco,
all unknowing that he rode toward the long siege which Cuzco
so well remembers.

With Alonzo de Guzman and Pedro Pizarro as eye-witnesses,
it is possible to know the siege in the words of two who lived
through that dreadful time.

If I could have chosen whom I would, to give contrasting eye-
witness accounts of the siege of Cuzco, and of what came after it,
I would have selected Pedro Pizarro and Alonzo de Guzman.

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Alonzo, vain, frivolous, arrogant in his descent from the Kings
of Castile, a cad and a knave, versed in Court trickery, but with a
jovial temperament which readily made him the friends his falsity
so often converted later into foes, was an entirely different fellow
from the brusque downright young soldier, Pedro Pizarro. Danger
and hardship had educated Pedro; Alonzo, though he had con-
ducted himself well in what military service he had seen in Europe,
was by nature a luxury-loving creature and a snob, with, however,
that saving grace of bravery in peril, that physical daring which
lifts the Spanish Conquistadores to the highest pinnacle of courage.

There was additional divergence in point of view, since Alonzo
had taken an instant dislike to Hernando Pizarro, while Pedro
quite naturally leaned to the Pizarro side, though never extrava-
gantly glorifying his cousins.

For example, in Alonzo's eyes, Hernando Pizarro was a "great
and boastful talker, a bad Christian, with no fear of God and less
devotion to our King."

Pedro saw this same Hernando as "a heavy man in the saddle,
but valiant, wise and brave,"

Of his other cousins, Pedro says that Juan Pizarro was "very
courageous, magnanimous and affable/' that Gonzalo was "val-
iant, knew little, had a fine beard and a good countenance, and
was a good cavalryman." The Marquis, Francisco Pizarro, he
describes as "tall and spare, with a good face and a thin beard,
personally valiant, vigorous and truthful, a man who always said
*no/ because he did not wish to break his word; very zealous in
service of His Majesty, and a very Christian man."

For himself, Pedro admits to being "a man in the war and a
very good cavalryman who had distinguished himself in some
things."

Alonzo had scarcely arrived in Cuzco when the siege began,
and he was wishing himself well out of it and back at the Span-
ish Court, for, as he said later, he could "certify that this was the
most fearful and cruel warfare in the world."

He explains that in his opinion it had come about because the

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Spaniards had "ill-treated the Indians, over-working them, burn-
ing them, and tormenting them for gold and silver," so that one
day the Inca, Manco, a youth not yet twenty, had, "under pre-
tence of seeking gold for Hernando Pizarro, left the city and never
returned." "He raised the country against us," Alonzo writes,
"and collected fifty thousand armed men, the Christians not num-
bering more than two hundred, half of whom were lame or halt."

And Pedro says that when Manco's troops were all encamped
on the plains and the heights about Cuzco, that they "covered
the fields, and by day it looked as if a black cloth had been spread
over the ground for half a league around the city. And at night
there were so many fires that it looked like nothing other than a
very serene sky full of stars. And there was so much shouting
and din of voices that all of us were terrified. . . . And then one
morning they began to set fire to Cuzco, At times they shot flam-
ing arrows at the houses which, as the roofs were of straw, soon
took fire. And they soon made use of a stratagem which was that
of taking several round stones, heating them red-hot, and wrap-
ping them up in cotton, they threw them by means of slings into
the houses, and thus they burned our houses before we understood
how. . .

"And we were in a sufficiency of uneasiness, for certainly there
was much din on account of the loud cries and alarms which they
gave to the trumpets and the flutes ... so that it seemed as if
the very earth trembled."

Hernando had then conferred with his captains as to what
should be done. There were those who thought that they should
flee the city, but to do that would only have meant death on the
Passes, so that there seemed nothing left but to try to take the
fortress above the city, for it was from this fortress that they re-
ceived most of the damage. And Juan Pizarro was appointed to
lead the attack.

Unluckily, on the day before the assault, his head had been
struck by one of the large stones with which the Indians pelted
the town; and thus wounded it was impossible for hjm to wear
his helmet

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A JOURNEY IN TIME

Pedro described how they went from the city to the fortress by
way of the steep cliff, and how, after darkness had fallen, they
attacked.

Under fire of stones from the Indians, the Spaniards captured
the first barricade. Then under Juan's leadership, they captured
the second, and penetrated as far as the courtyard within. There,
from a terrace above, the Indians rained stones upon them, and
Juan being unable to wear his helmet, one of these stones had
broken his skull But still he fought on, until the terrace was won.
And then soldiers had borne him back, down into the city, and
at dawn Hernando came up and took his place.

The storming of the fortress continued throughout that day
and the next, with the Indians holding the upper levels, resisting as
long as their supply of water lasted. But when the water supply
gave out, then they began to lose courage and some hurled them-
selves from the walls, and others surrendered.

"Thus," Pedro says, "we arrived at the last level which had
as its captain an Orejon (a great-eared noble) so valiant that
the same might be written of him as has been written of the
Romans. This Orejon bore a shield upon his arm, a sword in
his hand, a cudgel in the shield-hand, and a morion upon
his head. These arms this man had taken from Spaniards
who had perished upon the roads. , . . And this Orejon
marched like a lion from one end to another of the highest
level of the fortress, preventing the Spaniards who wished to
mount with ladders from doing so, and killing the Indians
who tried to surrender, attacking them with blows upon the
head with the cudgel which he carried. And whenever one
of his men warned him that some Spaniard was climbing up,
he rushed at him, . . .

"Seeing this, Hernando Pizarro commanded that three or
four ladders be set up, so that, while the Orejon was rushing
to one point, the Spaniards might climb up at another. * . .
And Hernando ordered those Spaniards who climbed up not
to kill this Indian, but to take him alive, swearing that he
would not kill him if he had him alive. . , .

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"Climbing up at two or three places the Spaniards won the
level. And this Orejon, perceiving that they had conquered
him, and taken his stronghold, threw down his arms, covered
his head and face with his mantle and cast himself down from

the level . . . and was shattered And Hernando was much

grieved. . . ."

With the fall of the fortress the Indians had a little withdrawn,
and that had brought some relief to the besieged. Then, at the
end of a fortnight Pedro says that Juan Pizarro Juan who was
"magnanimous and affable, popular, and valiant" Juan died in
great agony as the result of that stone which had struck his un-
protected head while he was fighting to capture the second barri-
cade of the great fortress.

But Alonzo says merely that Juan Pizarro died, and that he was
"a youth aged twenty-five and possessed of two hundred thousand
ducats in money."

Mercenary Alonzo could not, of course, get over those two hun-
dred thousand ducats in money!

And during the long siege certain miracles were recorded:

Alonzo wishes to make known what "Our Lady, the Virgin
Mother of God, did for us on her own holy day." . . .

All the five months that they had been besieged in the city of
Cuzco, Alonzo says they had known nothing of what had been
happening outside. Because the Marquis Pizarro had not come
to their rescue, they had concluded that he must be dead. And
then, on the day of the Holy Virgin, the Indians on the heights
had cast down into the city the heads of eight of those Spaniards
whom Pizarro had dispatched to their aid, and with the heads
were letters which the Spaniards had carried with them, and from
the letters those in the city knew that Pizarro was alive and trying
to help them.

And it is still told in Cuzco that in the thick of battle St Jaraes
himself descended from Heaven on his white charger, and fought
by the side of the Spaniards.

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Llamas at the walls of Sacsahuaman

A JOURNEY IN TIME

But the miracle which especially impressed Pedro was the
preservation of the church. The Indians had wished to burn the
Christians' church, but though it took fire it had extinguished it-
self. Seeing this, he says, the Indians were dismayed. And as
the month of sowing had arrived "they began then to go home
to their lands" until finally all were departed, the Orejones and
some of the warriors going to join Manco in the great fortress
where he was established.

But they said that when the winter had passed and the crops
were harvested they would again lay siege-to Cuzco. . . .

"Men of Chile"

Cuzco remembers how, when the siege was at last over and
those who had withstood it were resting exhausted from the long
strain, two Indians captured by Gonzalo reported that Almagro
had returned from Chile and was on his way to Cuzco. The
same Indians said also that a Spanish Captain had arrived in the
town of Jauja with a force of soldiers. These, it was thought in
Cuzco, had undoubtedly been sent to their rescue by the Marquis,

As for Almagro's return, that was bound to be a mischievous
business. He had been absent for more than a year, and as there'd
been no news of him the optimistic thought that he might pos-
sibly be dead. Now the wrangling was to be all over again.

Hernando rode out to meet him where he was camped at Urcos,
while Cuzco nervously waited:

"What news? What news of the Men of Chile? Had the Men
of Chile found the riches they had sought?"

But their great expedition had come to nothing but pain and
trouble. They had found no gold. And their minds were set
upon taking Cuzco, for Cuzco, they insisted, was within Almagro's
territory.

And what of Almagro himself? What had he to say?

But Almagro had not been present: he was gone to confer with
Manco in the fortress of Ollantaytambo.

And from that, Pedro says, Hernando knew that Almagro was

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plotting against Cuzco, so that no one was surprised when he
sent messengers demanding the surrender of the city.

Hernando urged that the question of Almagro's territory be
left to arbitration, and a truce was accordingly arranged.

But Pedro was uneasy. Almagro, he considered, was a man
who when he said yes, meant no. In fact Almagro was in Pedro's
opinion altogether tricky, "a man who when angered treated very
badly those who were with him even though they were gentlemen,
a man of bad language, too, and very profane But valiant. . . ."

Valiant! . . . that was a quality so universal among the soldiers
of the Conquest that it was not denied, even by a man's greatest
enemy.

As for Alonzo, who was among the messengers dispatched to
Almagro's camp, in his mind Almagro was a prince with every
virtue lacking in Hernando. But then Alonzo would have loved
Almagro merely for not being Hernando.

Still, even Alonzo concedes that Almagro broke the truce,
captured the unsuspecting city in the darkness of night, and im-
prisoned the Pizarros: though- this, he insists, was because Almagro
believed Hernando to be secretly fortifying the town.

Meanwhile that Captain, who had been reported as having
arrived at Jauja, was marching toward Cuzco.

And Manco, dismayed by the approach of reinforcements, was
said to have hidden himself farther in the Andes. He had well
chosen the time of his uprising, the Spaniards in Cuzco being
weakened by Almagro's expedition into Chile, and many others
away on the vast estates which had been granted them. It had
seemed to Manco the moment to break the bondage of his people.
The attempt had been long planned and was wisely timed, with an
Indian rebellion on the coast arranged to prevent the Marquis
Pizarro from hurrying aid to Cuzco.

Now, here were soldiers advancing from Jauja, and probably
more to follow them. The Indians had failed, without perhaps
knowing how nearly they had succeeded. For the simultaneous
besieging of Lima and Cuzco had driven the Marquis to write in
panic to Cortez in Mexico, and to friends in Central America, beg-

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ging help : the whole conquest of Peru, he'd said, was involved. And
soldiers had at once been sent, many of them veterans in war,
like the redoubtable old Francisco de Carbajal, who arrived, bring-
ing Pizarro a rich ermine mantle, as a gift from Cortez.

Aid had thus come and Pizarro was hastening relief to Cuzco,
with no surmise that the troops were to fight fellow Spaniards, and
not the armies of Manco, the Inca.

The Men of Chile went out to meet the men of Pizarro, and
battling with a desperation born of the disappointment and futility
of the Chilean expedition, they defeated Pizarro's rescue force and
returned triumphant to Cuzco.

Almagro now determined to attack the Marquis himself: he
would take his men down to the coast and defeat the Marquis.
Should he first cut off Hernando's head and Gonzalo's and
Pedro's ? He wavered. His men urged it, but he was reluctant.
Perhaps, after all, they would be more valuable as prisoners than
as corpses. It ended by his taking Hernando with him, under
guard, and leaving Gonzalo and Pedro incarcerated in Cuzco.

Then, when he was well on his way, a certain Aldana, with
whom he had had a squabble, contrived their escape. And of
course they at once got together a group of supporters and set off in
pursuit of Almagro.

In the valley of Mala, not far from Paracas where the mummies
of a vanished people slept unsuspected beneath the dunes, the
two old friends, Almagro and Pizarro, partners in the Conquest,
met as enemies to negotiate terms.

Before everything else Pizarro demanded the release of his
brother Hernando, threatening Almagro's life if it was refused.

Hernando was freed, but in the matter of Cuzco, the negotia-
tions failed. Both sides charged duplicity. Almagro left the
conference to lead his men back to Cuzco. The Marquis reas-
sembled his troops, put them under Hernando and sent them
after Almagro.

And at Las Salinas, within sight of the valley of Cuzco, Hernando
and Almagro engaged in battle. Alonzo says that Almagro was

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so weak from age and illness that he had to be carried on the
field in a litter. But for all his supreme effort to animate his men,
the day went against him, and it was now his turn to be prisoner.
Of what happened after that, Pedro hasn't much to say: the
stark facts were damaging enough to the Pizarros, and it is evident
that Pedro shuns the details. But Alonzo tells the story in full:

"Hernando," Alonzo says, "brought Almagro to trial, con-
demned him to death, and informed him that he should now
dispose his mind to think of spiritual things, for that the

sentence would be executed Then the poor old man went

down on his knees and said: *O my Lord, remember that
when you were my prisoner, those of my council importuned
me to cut off your head, and I resisted and gave you life.'

"And Hernando Pizarro answered: 'Sir, do not degrade
yourself; die as bravely as you have lived. . . .'

"But the old man said that he was human and dreaded
death. . . .

"But Hernando Pizarro went away, saying that he would
send a friar to him that he might confess his sins.

"Then Almagro confessed and made his will

"And when the executioner was placing the rope around
his neck he cried out that tyrants were killing him without
cause. . . .

"Then, when the deed was done, they carried the body to
the plaza of the city and placed it beside the gibbet where it
remained for seven hours, and was afterward buried in the
Monastery of Our Lady of Mercy.'*

According to Alonzo, when Almagro's will was read it was
found that he had left his chief fortune to the Emperor, remember-
ing next his beloved son, Diego, born to him of an Indian girl
in Panama. And among his other bequests something had gone
to Alonzo himself, and something to one Juan de la Rada who
had been with him in Chile.

And Alonzo . . . Alonzo concludes the relation of his exper-
iences in Peru by saying, "At this time the said Hernando Pizarro

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A JOURNEY IN TIME

and I had become friends, because he was alive and Almagro
dead, and it is very disastrous to have any intercourse with the
dead."

This belated friendship with Hernando, however, did not
prevent Alonzo from later writing to the Emperor to denounce
Hernando.

So Alonzo, returning to Spain, passes out of my journey in time.

Certainly he was a scoundrel, at the same time crafty and
naive, yet it is only fair to say that he appears to have been less
cruel than most men of his day. Garcilaso de la Vega, born
in Cuzco in the year after Alonzo's departure from Peru, heard
him talked of as a man of kindness, and one of the bravest and
most gallant of the knights defending Cuzco against the Indian
army of the Inca, Manco.

Pedro says that his cousin, the Marquis, was full of deep regret
when he learned of Almagro's death. And it was thought wise
that Hernando should go to Spain to put the whole case before
His Majesty. Gonzalo, meanwhile, was ordered to lead an attack
against Manco in the Andes,

And before Hernando left, he warned the Marquis that those
of Chile were "going about very mutinous," and that if Pizarro
should allow "any ten of them to assemble within fifty leagues"
of him they would kill him.

Thus the brothers had parted, and Gonzalo, taking Pedro with
him, went to attack Manco. But Manco retreated farther into
the Andes, and the only result of the punitive enterprise was the
capture of some of his people, among them "a woman who loved
him greatly,"

"And the Marquis," Pedro says, "because of a trick which
Manco had played upon him, ordered her to be killed, causing
her to be beaten with rods and pierced with arrows. . . . And
the Spaniards who were present told that this Indian woman
never spoke a word, nor uttered a complaint, and so she died
under the blows and the arrow shots which they gave her. . . ."

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To his account of the event Pedro adds that "it is worthy of
admiration that a woman should make no moaning even in the
pains of her wounds and in the moment of her death. . . .

"And," he later reflects, "I understand that for this cruelty
Our Lord punished the Marquis in the end which was his. . . ."

The Marquis Dies

When it was told in Cuzco that the Marquis, Don Francisco
Pizarro, was dead, there was no Pizarro there to mourn him,
The gallant young Juan was dead. Hernando was in Spain to
justify himself before the Emperor. Gonzalo was away on an
expedition to discover the Great River. But there were living
in Cuzco Spanish soldiers who had been with Francisco Pizarro
from the beginning. To them Pizarro was Peru, its Conqueror
and its Governor. "The Governor" they had called him that
so long that even after he was become Marquis as well as Governor,
the more familiar tide clung to him.

And now the Governor was dead.

Why hadn't he heeded Hernando's warning that if he per-
mitted as many as ten of the Men of Chile to gather within fifty
leagues of him they would surely kill him?

Now it had happened.

And Cuzco listened to the details. Little Garcilaso was only
two years old, but as he grew up he often heard the story as it was
repeated in Cuzco.

It seemed that the Spanish Government was sending out Vaca
de Castro to pass judgment upon Almagro's death. Should the
Marquis be dead at the time of Castro's arrival, Castro was to
succeed him as Governor, but if the Marquis was living, then
Castro was merely to investigate and pass sentence upon Almagro's
execution. Meanwhile Hernando had been imprisoned at Medina
del Campo in Spain.

With the news of Castro's coming, Almagro's followers had
assembled in Lima to await his arrival, Almagro, the Lad, as

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the Men of Chile called the adored son of their old commander,
was with them as was also Juan de la Rada who gave to the
"Lad" all the devotion he had felt for his father.

These Men of Chile waited in Lima for Castro's arrival, and
while they waited, they had grown increasingly bitter, looking
about them and contrasting their own hard poverty with the
riches of Pizarro and his followers.

And still Castro did not come to execute justice.

Finally then, they had determined to kill the Marquis, and to
seize Peru for themselves.

They had set Sunday the twenty-sixth of June, and the year
was 1541. They would kill the Marquis on that day, as he was
returning from Mass. And on the day before this was to happen,
what they had plotted was confided by a priest to Picado, secre-
tary to the Marquis. But the Marquis took the warning lightly,
and though he agreed not to attend Mass on that day, he made
no preparations to protect himself. He merely remained at home
and entertained at midday dinner a large group of friends.

Everybody was there: the Marquis's half-brother, Martin de
Alcantara; Francisco de Chaves who had been one of those to
go on record against Atahualpa's execution; Dr. Juan Velasquez,
Mayor of Lima; the inspector, Garcia de Salciedo; and the Bishop-
elect of Quito. All told there'd been present twenty gentlemen
of Lima.

The great door of the house stood open and a young page,
Diego de Vargas, was out in the square. It was he who saw the
murderers as they came across the square, with Juan de la Rada
at their head. And Diego had rushed into the house, shouting
that all the Men of Chile were on their way to kill the Marquis.

But already they were on the stairs. , . . And there was no time
to put on armor.

Some of the guests escaped by die garden, and of those who
remained, Francisco de Chaves, who defended the door, was
killed, and Pizarro's brother, Martin, and two boy pages, leaving
Pizarro fighting ferociously alone. Between them they had killed
four of the assassins, and wounded four more.

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Then Rada had shouted, "Let us make an end to the tyrant 1"
Then, at last the Marquis fell, a wound in his throat.
People said afterward, and the tale came to Cuzco, that the
Marquis had dipped a finger in the blood which gushed from
his throat, and that with it he had traced the sign of the Cross
on the floor, and that the last word he had spoken had been the
word "Jesus." This had happened in the instant before one of
the assassins had taken a heavy jar of water which stood in the
room, and hurled it at the head of the Marquis, and killed him.

So he had gone. . . .

And after the murderers had left the house, crying, "The tyrant
is dead!" a man who served the Marquis, a man from ids own.
town in Estremadura, took the body from the floor and dressed
it in the habit of Santiago and wrapped it in a sheeet and, with
the aid of his wife and some negro servants, buried it in the
church which was called "Los Naranjos."

For fear that they also would be murdered no one else had
dared come near the body.

And venerable Cuzco added this story of Francisco Pizarro's
death to its memory of his arrogant entrance into the sacred city
seven years before.

Pedro Pizarro, looking back upon the tragedy, laments: "It
was Picado [one of the men from Guatemala], who was the
cause of the hatred which the Men of Chile had for the Marquis,
and for which they killed him; for Picado desired that everyone
should reverence him, and those of Chile took little heed of him,
and, for this reason Picado had persecuted them. . . . And this
Picado, the secretary of the Marquis, did much harm to many
men, for the Marquis, not knowing how to read or how to write,
trusted in him, and only did those things which he advised- * . .
And the friends of Picado got the best of everything, taking it
away from the Conquerors."

Pedro has forgotten that when he wrote of life in the barracks

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A JOURNEY IN TIME

at Cajamarca, he recorded the quarrels between Almagro and
the Pizarros, saying that he wished to make clear what was the
beginning of those troubles which were to cost the lives of more
than two thousand Spaniards, and the violent death of the Con-
querors, Diego de Almagro and Francisco Pizarro.

And he forgets, too, that he had given the cruel murder of
the Indian girl who had so greatly loved Manco as the reason
that "Our Lord punished the Marquis in the end that was
his. . . .

And, strangely, Pedro fails to remember that, though Pizarro's
greed and cruelty were great (and which among the Conquerors
was innocent of cruelty and avarice, conquest inevitably involv-
ing those qualities?), yet there remained to Francisco Pizarro,
over and above his supreme courage, one other virtue, one deep
loyalty.

He had been treacherous in his dealings with Almagro and
with Atahualpa, he had tortured Indians to obtain information,
he had burned his enemies at the stake, and there was the fate
of that Indian girl who had greatly loved the Inca, Manco. And
to all this cruelty he had, on occasion, added hypocrisy, mourning
in his black hat for Atahualpa, deeply regretting the execution
of Almagro which he might have prevented. It is probable that
he had an affection for his children, but that is often no more
than an expression of a powerful ego. Certainly he did not marry
their mother, though in his own mother, he had had opportunity
to understand what that might mean to a woman.

In this hard, self-centered man, there appears only one warm,
human emotion, undeniably sincere and unselfish his family
feeling, especially his feeling for his brothers. Hernando, Gonzalo,
Juan and Martin de Alcantara he had given them their op-
portunity, from the beginning he had shared with them the rich
rewards of the Conquest, and always their safety had come
before everything. Hernando's pugnacious temper had made
endless trouble. Perhaps, but for Hernando, there might not have
been so bitter an animosity between himself and Almagro, Yet
Pizarro seems never to have lost patience with Hernando. ,

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But this loyal family devotion is never mentioned by Pedro,
the young cousin whom Pizarro brought out with him as page;
not even in those passages where he attempts to justify Pizarro,
or in his estimate of the man: "A very Christian gentleman, zealous

in the service of his King, honest in the keeping of his word **

But no mention of the one unequivocal loyalty, the one generosity.

"Demon of the Andes"

Of all the extraordinary men whom Cuzco has known, none
was more amazing than old Carbajal Francisco de Carbajal. Car-
bajal was so hugely fat that the credulous believed that he could not
have traveled as he did up and down the Andes had not a familiar
spirit transported him by air. They considered him, therefore
not a mortal being, but a supernatural creature, which had for
reasons of its own assumed the vast shape which appeared as
Francisco de Carbajal. And because this incarnated spirit did
much evil, Carbajal came to be known as the "Demon of the
Andes."

Old Carbajal had been born in Spain, and was a man grown
when Columbus discovered America. He had done military
service under some of Spain's most distinguished Captains and
had fought in many famous battles. He had been at the sacking
of Rome in 1527, and with the ransom of certain papers which
he took at that time, he had migrated to Mexico with his wife,
a lady of the Portuguese aristocracy. In himself he combined the
stoic valor of Estremadura with the pungent wit of Andalusia.
Some said that his wit was so keen that it was "quite a pleasure
to be hanged by him."

At the time of the long siege when Carbajal came to Peru with
the forces from Mexico, he was nearly seventy years old.

And he had stayed on in Peru. After Pizarro's assassination he
supported the new Governor, Vaca de Castro, in resisting the
men who had joined Almagro, the Lad, in his fight to inherit
his father's territory, a matter which had been decided at the battle
of Chupas, when after his defeat the Lad had been captured and

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executed in the plaza of Cuzco; and at his own request buried
beneath the bones of his father in the Church of Our Lady of
Mercy.

In fact it had been Old Carbajal who had inspired the victorious
troops which defeated the Lad at Chupas.

In the crisis of the combat a cannon volley had cut a swath in
Castro's army, and Carbajal had thrown himself into the gap,
shouting that Nature had made him the biggest target of all.
And because he had cast off his shield and his morion and fought
unprotected like the common soldier every man had done his
utmost to be worthy of so gallant a leader,

Carbajal, then past seventy!

When victory was won Carbajal would have liked to enjoy a
prosperous peace. But back in Spain something had been hap-
pening.

Bartholome de Las Casas, the saintly Dominican priest of
Guatemala, had published his famous book demanding humanity
and justice for the Indians of the Spanish possessions in America.
Laws had been formulated which Charles V had signed, and
was sending out by the hand of the man who was the first of
Peru's Viceroys Blasco Nunez Vela.

Nunez came determined to enforce the Laws. If any thought
he would be influenced by the greed of those who opposed the
statutes, "let them not be surprised if he beheaded them as traitors/'
For he would carry out the King's orders if it cost him his life.

And Carbajal, shrewdly foreseeing the tumult that was to be,
exerted himself to leave Peru with his highborn wife before the
calamity which he knew impended.

For the New Laws declared that upon the death of those to
whom grants of Indians had been made, the Indians were to
become vassals of the Crown, and not to be inherited by the
descendants of Conquerors to whom they had been awarded.
The laws further proclaimed that all who had fought, on either
side, in the disputes between the Pizarros and Almagro were to
be immediately deprived of their Indians, as were also the bishops

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and the monasteries and the officials. And as if that were not
enough, no Indians could be compelled to carry loads without
pay, to work in the mines or in the pearl fisheries, or forced to
perform personal service of any sort.

Carbajal understood well the disturbances that were to follow
the proclamation of such laws. And he would leave Peru. But
in the crisis no ships were allowed to sail.

Meanwhile Gonzalo Pizarro, broken by his experiences in the
jungle wilderness of the Great River, arrived in Quito, and learned
of the assassination of his brother.

He had had an impulse to demand for himself the governorship,
but he had been wisely persuaded to retire to his rich territory
where he had set about operating the silver mines of PotosL

And then he received letters which contained copies of the
New Laws. And from all parts of the land appeals came urging
him to lead a resistance against their enforcement; a thing which
they said it was proper he should do, since of the Pizarros who had
discovered the kingdom, only he was left in Peru. And there
were those who reported that the Viceroy had said it was not right
that Peru should remain in the power of "pig-drivers and mule-
teers." Some hinted that the Viceroy had it in mind not only to
confiscate all Gonzalo's property but also to behead him.

These things aroused panic in Gonzalo and he determined to
go to Cuzco and assemble forces against the Viceroy. And he
began again to say that it would have been only just to have
appointed him Governor on his brother's death; in return for
all his services it was the least that should have been done.

From every province of Peru pleas came to the Viceroy, im-
ploring him to postpone the proclamation of the laws until the
case could be placed before His Majesty, who must be informed
that men would die rather than give up their grants of Indians.

And the Viceroy promised that he would delay.

Gonzalo had immediately written to Old Carbajal at Arequipa
where he had gone in the hope that there he might arrange
his departure from Peru. Gonzalo urged Carbajal to join his

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forces, but not until the old Demon realized that it was impossible
to leave the country did he consent. When he finally accepted
he said, "Ah, I am like a cat that has been so teased and ill-
treated that at last it turns to scratch its own master. . . . Anyway,
if His Majesty has sent such Laws it is a decent thing to oppose
them."

When news came to the Viceroy in Lima that Gonzalo was
preparing for battle, Cieza says that the Viceroy "struck his fore-
head with his hand, exclaiming: 'Is it possible that the great
Emperor, our Lord, who is feared in all the provinces of Europe,
and to whom the Turk, master of the East, dare not show him-
self hostile, should be disobeyed here by a bastard who refuses
to comply with his Laws?"*

And he ordered that any who spoke well of Gonzalo should
be given a hundred lashes.

Then, in indignation, ignoring his promise to delay, he had the
New Laws proclaimed by the common crier in the streets of
Lima.

And when the citizens heard, "they were gready agitated,
saying to one another: 'How can a Prince so very Christian as
His Majesty seek to destroy us, when we have acquired this
land at the cost of the death of so many of our comrades ?' "

And very many soldiers joined Gonzalo.

Cieza has been telling the story of this struggle between Pizarro
and the Viceroy Nunez, but there comes a point when suddenly
he interrupts the narrative:

"The blessed Gregory," he writes, "says that a great reward
cannot be determined without great labor, great knowledge,
long vigils. . . . And in putting my hand to a work so dif-
ficult as this ... in no way can I avoid passing these long
vigils to make sure that the stories agree one with another. . . .
I have felt that my weak judgment is insufficient to decide
such great questions, insomuch that I have thought I must

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bring my narrative to an end, . . . However, the hold I have
taken of it gives me courage to proceed onward"

Thus Cieza, taking fresh heart, continues. He tells among
other things, that after having murdered a man he suspected of
treason, Viceroy Nunez had felt it prudent to leave Lima,

And then Cieza's story of Gonzalo comes abruptly to an end.
Yet it is known that when all loyal officers were called on to come
to the aid of the royal forces in Peru, Cieza was one of those who
had hastened south to join the army marching against Gonzalo, It
is known that he was an eye-witness of the tragic end of the
struggle.

But he leaves to others the description of the Viceroy's departure
from Lima, and the account of Gonzalo's subsequent entrance as
Governor, supremely looking the Conqueror's part, plumes in his
helmet, a richly embroidered tunic over his armor, and a mantle
of cloth of gold, while Old Carbajal proceeded to hang any that
seemed to him unfriendly.

News had then come that the Viceroy had landed at Tumbez,
and Gonzalo, with Carbajal, set off in pursuit. And there was a
battle in which the Viceroy was killed.

Gonzalo now held the power, but could he maintain it without
the royal sanction ? In his uncertainty, he considered sending a
mission to present his claims to His Majesty. And out of the
wisdom of his years Carbajal warned and advised:

Because of the death of the Viceroy, Carbajal predicted that
Gonzalo could not hope for pardon.

Make yourself a king, he advised. Marry an Inca princess. In
that way win the Indian support. Flatter the Spaniards by creat-
ing them dukes and counts and marquises and officials. Grant
them Indians, but make laws to improve the conditions of their
servitude- Thus win the combined support of Spaniards and
Indians.

But Gonzalo let the moment pass. And already a new envoy
was on his way from Spain. This time it was the priest Gasca,
an Inquisitor, ugly and deformed, astute and wily. He brought

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with him revocation of the New Laws and pardon for those who
had resisted them. And with that news men began everywhere to
desert Gonzalo.

But when Gonzalo retired to Cuzco he had still a following
in the city.

There was, however, a certain Seiiora Maria Calderon who said
that in her opinion Gonzalo was a tyrant. This Seiiora was, as it
chanced, an old friend of Carbajal. They had in fact stood as
godparents to the same child, a relationship held to be so intimate
a bond such sponsors were in the habit of addressing each other
as Compadre and Comadre.

Carbajal, learning that Maria Calderon had spoken unfavorably
of Gonzalo, warned her: "Comadrc, if you do not stop this abuse,
you'll have to be killed."

But the Sefiora went on as before.

Carbajal then came saying: "My Comadre, I am here to hang
you/'

But the Seiiora merely laughed. Her witty old friend was,
of course, jesting.

Then when the unhappy Senora's body dangled lifeless from
a window, Carbajal said to it: "My dear little Comadre, if you
do not profit by this warning, I do not know what I shall do."

Thus ruthlessly everywhere Carbajal disposed of Gonzalo's
enemies, but eventually he had to concede that hope for Gonzalo's
victory was futile. Strong support had gathered about the canny
priest, Gasca, who was marching against Cuzco. But Gonzalo
would not let himself know that now only retreat was left.

Gonzalo would still fight. The Pizarros were all used to
victory against frightful odds. That was how Peru had been won.
Yes, Gonzalo would fight.

On that plain of Sacsahuaman where blood had so often stained
the earth, he threw what remained of his army against the forces
of Gasca. And fighting with Gasca there were Pedro Pizarro and
Cicza de Leon., both then sturdy, hardened young soldiers in their
early thirties.

Now for the first time Pizarro was opposed to Pizarro.

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And Gonzalo had not so much as a chance, for in panic his
soldiers were deserting on all sides. Tradition says that in this
hour, Carbajal, watching the desertions, hummed over and over
to himself the refrain of an odd, old song:

"These, my little hairs, Mother,
One by one, the wind blows away/'

Then, as the army vanished before his eyes, he spurred on his
horse, and under his prodigious weight the exhausted animal
struggled forward ... but finally collapsed. And Carbajal was
captured. . . .

A court-martial condemned to death both Carbajal and Gonzalo.

And Pedro's comment is that his cousin Gonzalo "had some
good opportunities to yield himself to His Majesty but with his
small intelligence, he did not do so."

So it happened that Gonzalo was beheaded . * . going to his
death richly dressed, as became a conquering Pizarro.

And Cuzco remembers that his body lies in the Church of Our
Lady of Mercy. ... "A man," Pedro says, "of a fine beard and a
good countenance."

As for the Demon, he died as he had lived.

When the lengthy sentence enumerating his crimes was read,
he interrupted to say: "Is it not enough to be killed?" And
when they put him into a pannier drawn by two mules, in order
to drag him to the scaffold, he exclaimed, "Ah, the baby in a
cradle, and the old man, too, in a cradle!" Then as men crowded
about to see him die, he commanded: "Gentlemen, gentlemen,
permit justice to be executed!"

So Carbajal died, and he was eighty-one years old. "It was
a thing," Pedro says, "that I did not wish to see. . . ."

The Christening

Twenty-two years after all this happened, Viceroy Don Fran-

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A JOURNEY IN TIME

cisco de Toledo came to Cuzco. Cieza had gone back to
Spain, published parts of his series of works on the New World,
and died. Hernando Pizarro had spent twenty years imprisoned
in the castle of La Mota at Medina del Campo. During that time
he had been permitted to marry, and his wife was daughter to
his brother the Marquis by the Indian Princess, Inez. Hernando's
niece had borne him children, and finally he had been liberated
and returned to his native town in Estremadura where he had
built an imposing home which he called "The House of the
Conquest." And at the time of Viceroy Toledo's visit to Cuzco,
Hernando still lived, though he was well past ^ninety.

Pedro had married the daughter of a fellow-conqueror and
settled down in Arequipa. In the month of Toledo's visit, he was
completing the writing of his Relation of the Discovery and Con-
quest of the Kingdoms of Peru.

Back in his refuge in the Andes, the Inca Manco had received
fugitives from the followers of Almagro, the Lad, fleeing from
punishment at the hands of the victorious Castro: and eventually
Manco was murdered by these men to whom he had granted
hospitality. Of the three sons who survived him, the eldest was
persuaded to exchange his fugitive sovereignty for a pension from
the Spaniards, and an establishment in the Valley of Yucay, where
in a brief time he died of melancholy. The second and the third
of Manco's sons Cusi Titu and Tupac Amaru remained in
their mountain fastnesses.

In Cuzco, Manco's brother, Paullu, who had from the beginning
allied himself with the Spaniards, lived until his death in the
beautiful palace of Colcampata, overlooking the city of Cuzco.
Paullu left a son, Don Carlos, who married a Spanish woman, and
at the time of Toledo's visit to Cuzco they were about to celebrate
the christening of their son, Melchior Carlos.

Toledo had come in pomp to Peru, with enough officials in his
train to set up court in Lima. He planned to live in grandiose style
and brought a quantity of magnificent furnishings for his palace.
He had spent a year, settling himself in Lima, and establishing

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there the Holy Inquisition, and then he set forth for Cuzco,
arriving in time for the christening of the baby, Melchior Carlos,
whose mother was Spanish and his father of the royal family
of the Inca. The Viceroy himself had consented to be one of
the child's sponsors.

It seemed as though this were to be a very great day, the first
occasion when Spaniard and Indian had united in a happy national
festival. It was almost like a return of that departed time when
men believed Cuzco to be the navel of the world. For Indian
chiefs those who had survived the Conquest came from the
north and the south, the east and the west. It was said that even
Manco's sons Cusi, now reverenced as Inca by his people, and
with him, his younger brother, Tupac had come in disguise,
leaving the safety of their Andean refuge to do honor to this baby
who was of their blood.

The christening was held in the little church of San Cristobal,
on the terrace just outside the palace of Colcampata. Against the
brilliant color of the Indian dress, the Viceroy Toledo was a somber
figure; tall, and elderly, with shoulders that stooped, a face sallow
and morose with a high naked forehead, sharp, hard, black eyes,
a black pointed beard and upturned mustaches. He was dressed
in black, a high-crowned, narrow-brimmed black hat, a suit of
black velvet; unrelieved except for the red cross of Santiago
embroidered on his cloak, and the glint of his sword. A sinister
figure in the festival rejoicing.

As in the time of the Empire, the feasting and merriment had
lasted for several days and then quiedy Cusi and Tupac had
disappeared to return in secret to the mountains.

There, Cusi had had for some months living with him an Augus-
tinian monk and a half-caste interpreter. After his return from the
christening Cusi fell ill and was treated by the monk, but dis-
astrously he died, leaving the Indians convinced that his death was
the result of the friar's medicines, and the Indians cruelly murdered
both the monk and the interpreter.

Then they sought Tupac, the young brother, and made him
their Lori

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But none of all this was known to Toledo, who sent another
messenger to Cusi, commanding him to come to Cuzco to swear
fealty to the King of Spain. And along the way, Indians murdered
Toledo's messenger.

When that news was carried to the grim Toledo, he had the
pretext for which he had been waiting, and he sent an expedition
against the new Inca, the youth, Tupac Amaru, and captured
him with his chiefs and with many others of his people. And
Tupac was sentenced to be beheaded, after baptism into the
Catholic Church.

Cuzco remembers well the scaffold set up in the Holy Square
where so much had happened. It remembers Tupac, dressed in
white, a crucifix in his hand, entering the square riding on a
mule with a priest walking on either side of him.

And how can Cuzco ever forget the cry of anguished horror
that went up from the great crowd gathered there, when they
saw the executioner raise his knife! And it must remember al-
ways that startled silence when Tupac lifted his hand and began
to speak.

He told his people that his race was run, and he reproached
himself, saying that this death was punishment for an act of
disobedience to his mother.

The priests had interrupted to insist that his death was by the
will of God.

Tupac prayed then pardon for what he had said. And his
innocence was so touching that the execution was delayed while
Priors of all Religious Orders and the Bishop of Popayan himself,
went to the Viceroy and fell on their knees begging mercy for
this young Inca*

But there was in Viceroy Toledo no mercy.

And when Tupac's head fell, once more that unforgettable cry
of heartbreak rose from the crowded plaza.

Then the Viceroy commanded Tupac's head to be set up beside
the scaffold, while in the Cathedral priests, defying Toledo's dis-
pleasure, interred the body with all solemnity.

And in the dark of night, Indians crept to the plaza to worship

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the head of their last sovereign. They came so quietly that the
thing was not known until one night a certain Spaniard, rising
in the night, happened to look out of his window, and in the
shining moonlight he saw that the whole square was crowded
with kneeling Indians, their eyes fixed in adoration upon their
Inca's head.

When Toledo was told of this he had the head buried with
the body. And again the priests performed a solemn service
in Tupac's honor.

Looking back upon this thing which Cuzco may never forget,
the words of Cieza de Leon young Spanish soldier of the long
ago echo in that remembering square:

"We must beseech God to give us grace to enable us to
repay in some measure those people to whom we owe so much,
and who had given such slight offence to justify the injury we
have done them."

[160]

IX
TODAY IN THE SIERRA

WHEN I woke in the morning after my arrival in Cuzco, I knew
at once just what I would do first.

"Juan," I said to the room-boy, as I sipped my cafecita, "Juan,
I want to go to the Church of Santa Ana."

He seemed surprised. "Not to the fortress ?" he reasoned. "Or
to the Temple of the Sun? Or the Cathedral?"

"No, to the Church of Santa Ana."

But Santa Ana was only a poor little church, he explained: the
church of the Indians really. Hardly anybody asked to go to
Santa Ana. Juan himself had a certain admixture of Spanish
blood, and spoke distantly of Indians, Santa Ana was the church
of Indians really. .

But I knew that it contained a series of murals done in Cuzco
by an artist of the sixteenth century, who, in painting a religious
fiesta, had portrayed also Cuzco and its people, both Indian and
Spanish, as they were in that faraway day.

The Church of Santa Ana is on the northern margin of the
city, and my hotel on its southern edge, so that in going to the
church it is necessary to pass through the town.

Juan elected himself my companion, pointing out along the
way what he considered of interest, not realizing how unnecessary
that was, for it was all as familiar to me as though I were returning
to a place long and intimately known; in some ways actually
better known to me than to Juan himself, for I was seeing, not
only the present Cuzco, but Cuzco as it had been before the
Spaniards had destroyed (wholly or partly) its palaces and temples,
erecting often on the ancient foundations their own buildings:
for example perching the church and monastery of Santo Domingo
upon the walls of the Temple of the Sun.

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In fact, on our way to the Santa Ana, I saw really three Cuzcos.
There was the Cuzco of the Inca Empire, the Cuzco of the colonial
period, and the present-day city, where to the past there have been
added electric light and telephone wires, and a few automobiles.

The Church of Santa Ana looks across a deep gaping ravine,
to the hill of the fortress of Sacsahuaman. Through the ravine
there runs the road by which the Spanish Conquerors entered
Cuzco when they came triumphant after the execution of the
Inca, Atahualpa. By that road, too, Cusi and Tupac had come
to the christening of the baby, Melchior. And over the same road
Tupac had been brought, a captive, to be beheaded in the great
square.

Another highway passes directly in front of the church, and
along it Indians continually come and go on their way to the
Cuzco market, men, women and children, with their beasts, mules
and burros and strings of llamas.

From the slope on which it stands the church looks down upon
the city, and widely out across the hills to ranges, blue with distance.
And ascending the mountains are roads, leading to what in the
old days were the four provinces; roads which you might follow
northwest to Quito, northeast to the jungle country of the Amazon,
southwest to the coast, or southeast to Lake Titicaca and Bolivia.

The church itself gives the impression of gradually sinking
with age into the earth. At a little distance from its entrance
there is a square squatty tower of adobe, roofed with faded terra-
cotta tiles. And four ancient bells hang in this tower.

We found the church closed, and Juan went seeking someone
to open it, while I sat on the doorstep and watched the stream of
Indians, full-skirted women and poncho-clad men, repeating in
varied combination strong shades of red and blue.

And then Juan returned with a boy of about fourteen, barefoot,
upon whose body hung patched and faded garments; a half-breed
like Juan himself, though, unlike Juan, he was almost wholly
Indian.

The boy fitted a great key into the lock and pushed open the
antique doors.

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Within, the church appears of even greater age than from
without. Its sagging floor has been worn by many feet. The
heavy beams of its ceiling are dark. There is a very old pulpit in
black and gold, and carved confessionals of a dull red. It all
appears as much out of a vanished past as a spinning wheel standing
cobwebby in a dusty attic. And the murals I had come to see,
they, too, were out of the past.

The sun, within that little church, seemed a stranger, and my
eyes adjusted themselves slowly to the dim light, but gradually
the pigment of the old canvases glowed in mellow color.

On an impulse I turned suddenly to the ragged youth who had
opened the church: "Tell me about the pictures," I said, desiring
to see them through the eyes of this boy in whom the Indian strain
was so slightly diluted by the Spanish. "Tell me about the
pictures."

The boy looked bewildered. Perhaps he had never before
thought about them. He was accustomed to do no more than lock
and unlock the door on those infrequent occasions when that serv-
ice was required. Certainly, I am persuaded, no one had ever be-
fore asked him to describe the paintings.

Juan had remained outside to gossip with passers-by, so that the
boy and I were alone in the dim old church, with no audience
to make him shy, once he had accepted the eccentric Senora, who,
it appeared, could not observe pictures for herself, but must
have them explained.

Then, with that gentle docility which made the Peruvian Indian
submissive clay under the shaping hand of Inca rule, he attempted
to gratify my wish.

He gazed for some minutes at the mural before which we stood,
and then he spoke slowly, in a very careful Spanish, as though
while he talked he was translating his native Quechua into the
tongue of the Conquerors. And he spoke with the simple natural
dignity of the Indian, wholly unself conscious, thinking, as it were,
aloud.

"It is a procession of Corpus Christi," he said. "There are monks
with a tall cross, and there are priests."

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"Yes," I encouraged, while I noted the full stiff silk gowns of the
priests, elaborately embroidered and ornate with lace. "Yes?"

"And there are Indians. ... An Indian Princess who is old.
She has a white turban on her head. Her mantle is fastened with
a pin of gold ... her ring is also of gold. The mantle is red and
black, embroidered in gold."

"Her face?" I suggested.

"Her face is round. The skin is a little brown. She has eyes
looking up ... and sad also. Her eyes are full of wonder. "
(As he talked I was jotting down the hoy's exact words, of which
this is a literal translation.)

"Eyes sad and full of wonder . . . watching the procession of
Corpus Christi."

The boy seemed to be living now in the picture and scarcely
aware of me.

"The old Princess has her little grandson beside her. His face
is round also, but it is not so sad."

We passed thus from picture to picture, pausing before each
while the boy put into words what he saw.

"And here is a Spanish family. A Spaniard with a hat, large
and black . . . and a beard also black and long hair. . . . His
eyes a little angry are his eyes. Next to the Spaniard is an
Indian girl with long hair, very long. Her face is round, of a
brown color, but not so brown as the face of the old Princess.
She is young jovcncita. I think she is the daughter of 'the old
Princess ... but her eyes are happier. . . .

"And here is the image of San Crist6bal in procession. It is
a fiesta. There are many people in the windows and on the
balconies. Banners are hanging from the balconies . . . blue,
green, red, rose-color. Many Spaniards on the balconies, and in
the street Indians . . . barefoot . . . some of them are carrying
silver candelabra and candles."

We passed on to the next picture.

"Priests of La Merced . . . with the Virgin of La Merced in
procession. ... A grand fiesta . . . many Indians. Mantles of
rose-color, embroidered with blue, bright blue and bordered with

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A JOURNEY IN TIME

dark blue. And there is the Cathedral and the Temple of Jestis
Maria, And priests in gold embroidered robes. There's a red
canopy. . . . And behind all these things there are the moun-
tains. . . .

"And this shows the procession of the Virgin of Bel&i. She is
riding in a four-wheeled cart of gold and silver. Sacristans are
following with silver candelabra. Ahead there is walking a
Spaniard with an Indian. The Spaniard wears a long black cape.
He has very big white sleeves with lace, and a big black hat. The
Indian wears a red turban and a tunic of many colors. He carries
a red banner in one hand and a wand in the other. There are
people in the cart with the image. They are playing on cornets
and a harp. And all the windows arc full of people who watch
the Virgin pass. The Indian with the banner has an expression
very intelligent . . ."

So the sixteenth century in Cuzco moves in procession on the
walls of the ancient little Church of Santa Ana. It is the late
sixteenth century, because there has been time since the Conquest
to build churches and many houses in the style of Spain, with
carved Moorish balconies. Spanish families live in the houses,
and many monks and priests even a few nuns have arrived
in Cuzco. While among the Indians, some still survive of the
nobility, and the Spaniards are still recognizing certain chiefs,
with the hope of controlling the Indians through a few of the
former leaders. And the pageantry of Catholicism has been
superimposed upon the old worship of the Sun. Catholic fiestas
have taken the place of aboriginal festivals. There has been time,
too, for a new race to be born in Peru, a race whose skin is less
brown, whose eyes are not quite so sad as those of the old
Princess of the picture, who had actually herself seen the Conquest.

The murals were perhaps done at the time when Garcilaso de
la Vega was growing up in Cuzco, and there was a school for
the education of youths born of Conquistadores and Inca
Princesses. But that was before sinister Viceroy Toledo took
measures to exterminate all possible members of Inca aristocracy,

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and accordingly banished from the land many of the young half-
caste nobility.

On returning from my visit to the Church of Santa Ana, I
settled down to what was to be my life in the weeks that I spent
in Cuzco. I was established in the Hotel Ferrocarril, which is in
the section called in the days of the old Empire, "the tail of the
Puma," at the southern extremity of what may be considered the
city. The hotel and railway station are, as I have said, practically
one and the same. On certain days in the week the express up
from the coast arrives at Cuzco at the end of the line. On certain
other days it returns by the way it has come, down to Mollendo,
thirty-six hours distant. On other days there may be a freight
train, and once a week there is a local.

With the arrival and departures of the passenger trains the
station swarms with Indians, diluted with cholos and Peruvians
of Spanish blood. There are soldiers, policemen, priests and
friars, as well as a motley mass of women, children, babies and
dogs, and upon special occasions a very brass band. In the hours
between trains the station is deserted, with scarcely a sound but the
sputtering tick coming over the wires into the telegraph office.

For some time the hotel had but one other guest in addition to
myself. He was a pale, ill young Dutchman, a permanent res-
ident, not a pasajero, as Juan called those of us who were visitors.
In a dining-room full of vacant tables, laid out as though expecting
many customers, the Dutchman and I had our meals at adjoining
tables. The room was so quiet that knives, forks and spoons
seemed to clatter nervously against the china. Always on enter-
ing and leaving the room the Dutchman made a stiffly correct
little bow, like the bow of a marionette whose bowing-string has
been suddenly jerked.

Finally, after some days I decided to break the monstrous silence
in either English or Spanish,

"Do you speak English ?" I asked.

"Of course."

After that the knives and forks and spoons resumed the

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A JOURNEY IN TIME

subordinate place which should be theirs, while the Dutchman
and I exchanged impressions.

He had come to Peru to make a living, and had not found it
so easy as the large talk of a friend had implied. He had had a
disillusioning experience on one of the great cattle estancias, and
was now living in Cuzco, dangling before his own eyes the
hope that at any moment one of his various schemes would come
off.

Ill luck had made him cynical but he had a sense of humor
which salted the cynicism, and he was a companionable someone
with whom to talk at dinner, and with whom to hang out of the
window and watch the train come in. It was the custom for
everyone in the hotel and the station to hurry excitedly to see
the train.

Everyone was swept into the excitement the station master
Senor Fuentes, the administrator of the hotel, the hotel cook,
the dining-room boy, Juan the room-boy, Juanito the room-boy's
son, such citizens of Cuzco as were at leisure, the pale Dutchman
and I. ...

Juan and his Juanito undauntedly expected the sort of pas-
sengers who would put up at the hotel As for me, I watched
the train, partly because the station-life was really something to
watch, and also because the train fed my hope that it brought me
a letter from Roberto. My last news from him had been a
cable to Arequipa saying that his departure from New York was
delayed, but that he planned to reach Cuzco on Christmas night.
And of course I was anxious lest his coming should be again
postponed. I was especially anxious because I was putting off
until his arrival a visit to the extraordinary, long-forgotten city of
Machu Picchu. And since this city stands upon a steep mountain-
ridge around whose base sweeps a swift turbulent river, it is
not possible to reach it after heavy rains have swollen the river,
perhaps washed away the bridge, and converted the trail into a
mud-flow. Each day was now making the ascent to the ridge
uncertain, for the rains had already begun. And Machu Picchu
was an essential part of my trip to Peru, because it happened to

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be identified with the destiny of the Tito and Salla of my novel.
I must not delay Machu Picchu until it was too late. So in a tense
suspense I waited for news of Roberto's coming.

But the trains brought no letters, though I had given explicit
forwarding directions both in Lima and Arequipa.

Also this being out-of-season for Cuzco, the train brought no
passengers to fill hotel rooms, and Juanito, therefore, had time to
wander with me about Cuzco.

And as little Fernandez of Cajamarca had been the child re-
incarnation of the Tito of my imagination, so Juanito was Tito
as he was at the age of fifteen.

Juanito's mother was apparently pure Indian, for he is in every
way closer to the aboriginal type than his father. His skin is
darker than Juan's, and as smoothly flawless as bronze. His
pretty precise Spanish is that which Tito spoke after his months
in the Spanish barracks at Cajamarca with Pizarro's soldiers, and
Juanito's voice has that vibrance which all remarked in Tito.
And Juanito's gestures duplicate Tito's. I used to say that Tito
thought with his fluttering hands. And here was Juanito doing
the same thing. Tito's spirit was reverent in the presence of
Nature. And when Juanito talked to me of these things, he was
Tito speaking. There was in his mind, too, the same mystic
quality; he had the same gift of poetic expression. In knowing
Juanito I was able to enter further into the mind and soul of Tito,

But for all this, I did not always take Juanito with me; for there
were moods in which I would be alone in Cuzco, absorbed back
into its memories,

I often sat in the great plaza, which was so long ago the Holy
Squ^e^ij&e;'I*^ %^zp*0/as it used- sometimes

to be called The Terrace of the Fringe; fringe being the Inca
equivalent of a sovereign's crown.\ , And as the Inca was holy,
so the Plaza of the Fringe was- synonymous with the Holy Square.

As I sat in this plaza, bright with the yellow blossoms of a
low shrub and with the twittering song of little Andean white-
throats, the past was all about me.

High on the agade of El Triunf o, there is a life-sized figure

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A JOURNEY IN TIME

of Saint James on his white charger, commemorating the tradi-
tion that, at the long siege, he came down from Heaven to bring
victory to the Spaniards. Next to El Triunfo is the Cathedral
where priests, defying Viceroy Toledo's anger, held solemn Mass
for the poor beheaded young Inca, Tupac, who was the last ever
to be crowned with the royal fringe.

On the site of the great palace of that Inca who was Atahualpa's
father, there is Cuzco's University and the Church of La Com-
pania de Jesus built by the Jesuits before their expulsion, when
they were a powerful Order. And leading out of the plaza is
the narrow Incaic street which you may follow past the beautiful
rose-grey stone walls of the ancient Convent of the Virgins of the
Sun. And these things stand as witnesses insisting upon the
truth of what Cuzco remembers.

In the plaza itself the Spaniards set up the gibbet and the
scaffold. It was here that Almagro the Elder's body was exposed
after Hernando had had him strangled in the prison, and here
that his son, the Lad, was beheaded. This son of the elder
Almagro was of those born of aboriginal mother and Spaniard,
the first to distinguish himself in Peru, fighting bravely for what
he believed to be justly due his father as one of the two leaders of
the Conquest.

And it was here, too, that young Tupac rode upon a mule
to meet the death they had decreed for him; and here that his
people came in the dark silence to worship his head: here also
that two hundred years later there was the unspeakable horror
of yet another execution. . . .

It was so quiet in this plaza that, sitting there, I was conscious
of every footfall even of the bare feet of the Indians. It is as
though Cuzco treads softly, fearful of disturbing the tragic past.

God, my spirit often cried, can this place never forgetl Four
centuries ago, but still Toledo is leaning from his balcony watch-
ing Tupac's young head severed from his body! And I felt that
still, in the depth of the night his long-dead people gather,
worshiping his head.

The plaza's memories seem rarely to go back to the time before

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the Spaniard, when the great festivals of the Children of the
Sun filled the square with gorgeous glittering robes of iridescent
feathers and with the color of Inca fabric, while to the music of
flutes and tambourines, the populace danced, and the mummy-
bundles of the ancestors were brought out to enjoy the spectacle.

All that is less real now than the Conquest and what came
after it.

In the historic buildings that surround the square there are
many of Cuzco's treasures. In El Triunfo, there is the wooden
cross which Valverde, the priest, carried in Cajamarca. The great
altar of the Cathedral is of lustrous Peruvian silver, the choir-
stalls are a miracle of carving, in one of the many chapels is
the life-sized image of Our Lord of the Earthquakes, and in the
sacristy is the silver cart in which on Holy Thursdays this very
miraculous image goes in procession through the street. In the
sacristy also are kept the famous jewels of the Cathedral, and
in one of the towers hangs the bell, "Maria Angola," whose golden
tone may be heard at a great distance. The interior of the Com-
pania is richly ornate with gold and carving, and among its
pictures are paintings of the wedding of the Inca Princess, Beatriz,
to a nephew of Saint Ignatius of Loyola. The Princess Beatriz
was the daughter of the eldest of the Inca Manco's sons. It was
she whom the Spaniards sent to persuade her father to ex-
change his sovereignty for a pension and a palace in the valley
of Yucay, where so soon afterward he died of the sadness in his
soul. And in the Church and Monastery of Santo Domingo, just
a little distance from the plaza, there are many ecclesiastical
treasures, but they fade in importance beside the fact that this
building stands upon the beautiful stone walls of the Inca Temple
of the Sun, and that within the Monastery are the Inca chambers
sacred to the Sun and the Moon pagan chapels of that stone
workmanship which has immortalized the Peru of the ancients.
Of Santo Domingo's paintings, I remember only that one in which
the Spanish artist turned from orthodox Catholic subjects, and
painted the Conquest, with the Inca, Atahualpa, the chief figure
on his canvas.

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When the Conquerors partitioned among themselves the build-
ings and the riches and the women of Cuzco, the Temple of the
Sun fell to the gallant Juan Pizarro who was fatally injured at
the storming of the fortress. And Juan Pizarro gave the Temple
to the Order of Santo Domingo.

Wherever you go in Cuzco, your point of departure is usually
the central plaza. It was from here that Juanito and I followed
the steep Incaic street which led us to the Fiesta of the Three
Kings, which we had been told was to take place in the square
in front of the Church of San Bias.

It was Sunday afternoon, and Indians in their colorful best were
streaming from all directions to San Bias, Teetering on platforms,
unsteadily borne on men's shoulders, a blue and tinsel Virgin and
a cherubic Jesus made a circuit of the streets, with banners flying
and drums beating, while the square jammed with Indians and
half-breeds, waited their return, when the drama would begin.

"It is a play of Herod," Juanito said, "and the three kings
coming to adore the Child" . . . the "Child!" Juanito's voice
was hushed in reverence when he uttered the word.

For nearly four hours we stood some thousands of us on that
afternoon, cold because the sun was wanly veiled with gauzy
cloud. The performance we watched was a strange compound
of patriotism, Catholicism and Paganism. On a high platform,
erected just outside the church, school children, one by one, de-
livered patriotic discourses to the accompaniment of wooden ges-
tures. Those who were frightened by the great audience lost their
voices completely, only the gestures remaining.

When this speechifying was done, the play began.

There was the wicked Herod, sending three mounted soldiers
with orders to seek out and to murder all new-born males, so
that the "Child, Jesus" would surely not survive. The crowd
made room for the horsemen to search for Herod's victims,
and when paper infants were provided to be decapitated by the
soldiers, the excitement was breathless. But of course the "Child"
had escaped and, when the decapitating was over, appeared with

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the Virgin on the platform, dressed in white and wearing great
white wings.

And now the three kings arrived on horseback, instead of
camels, each king attended by a page on foot.

Of the three kings, one represented a Spaniard in the dress of the
Conquest period, the second was in the garb of an Inca, and the
third was made up as an Ethiopian. Each king made a lengthy
oration, lauding the birth of the "Child." Even the pages had
speeches, the Ethiopian page delighting the audience with clown-
ish stunts, leaping about in joy that the "Child" was born.

And this adoration of the Savior was followed by scenes from
Inca days when in the costume of the Empire, Indians danced
as in the old days before their Lord.

When it was over and we returned to the hotel, Juanito told
me that the fiesta was in honor of the Sun, as well as of the
"Child."

In the cold Andean country, how can the cult of the Sun ever
die! For when the sun has set, or is hidden by cloud, the world
is altered. Without the sun the mountain chill lays numbing
hands upon heart and spirit. More than anywhere else in the
world, in the Andes, the sun is life.

In the Cuzco market-place it is easy to recall the days of the
Empire. As Cicza de Leon used to say of the city, the market is
"full of strangers." You see there the distinctive types of the sur-
rounding Sierra, with their characteristic head-dress and fashion
of arranging the hair; you hear Quechua spoken and little Spanish.
But trade is now conducted through the medium of money where
formerly it was carried on in the direct barter of goods; so many
ears of corn for so many potatoes, so many potatoes for so much
llama meat, or so many peppers. Of course in that time there
were only Indians in the market, for the new race created out
of the Conquest had not yet been born. But for all the changes
that have taken place the llama still holds his own as the Andean
beast of burden, and no conquest has cowed his haughty manner.
And still, those virtues which the Inca system bred in its people

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at the sacrifice of freedom of thought and of action, those virtues,
I think, survive, for you must be everywhere impressed with the
patience and the industry of the Indian, with his restraint, his
dignity and his capacity for worship.

As they sit about the market in groups around the cooking-pot
enjoying a hot midday stew you feel that they take pleasure in
companionship, for all their subdued, almost hushed, voices, and
the look of remoteness in eyes which know the solitude of shep-
herding flocks on the lonely Puna and the communion with vast
spaces and high mountains.

To be exuberant, the Indian requires the copious drinking of
chicha, just as, to endure toil at lofty altitudes, he fortifies the
physical body with the chewing of coca-leaves, that herb which,
as one of the old chroniclers puts it, "any man having these leaves
in his mouth hath never hunger nor thirst/*

Reformers insist that coca should be taken from the Andean
Indians, but I remember the strain of great altitudes upon the
physical system. Even bodies with a lung capacity and heart
muscles developed through the centuries in adaptation to altitude
must to some extent feel that strain. And I remember also the
hard terms of Indian life, and I think no comfort, however
dubious, should be removed unless at the same time some im-
provement in conditions is substituted for it. And the chewing
of coca is said not to affect the health or the disposition or the
morals, as alcohol, morphine, or opium do.

In the Cuzco market, though long ago the Inca aristocracy
perished under the Conquest, yet today you see occasionally men
who have about them the regal air to which the hard facts of
living have added a philosophy, an inner wisdom, and a shrewd-
ness tempered by humor. Such are, however, the exception, for
the bitter toil of poverty and the tradition of tragedy has stamped
a melancholy resignation upon the Andean Indian which makes
a market scene in the Andes strikingly different from the markets
of Guatemala. As the civilization of the Inca was a loftier thing
than that of Guatemala, so the Conquest in Peru has been a more

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enduring calamity. And the descendants of the Children of
the Sun cannot forget.

This, their sadness, pervades Cuzco, even the Cuzco of the
Conquerors. Looking through the imposing doors of establish-
ments magnificent in that long ago when the wealth of the Indies
was fabulous, you see interior courtyards surrounded by ornate
balconies and arched galleries, and beyond the first courtyards
you may look into others with similar arches and balconies*
You know that in these houses Spanish grandees, some of whom
had Inca princesses for wives, once lived in a medieval splendor,
served by the Indians who had been "granted" them, and that
silks and velvets and plumes and the fine laces of Flanders were
at home here. Some of the doors bear a coat-of-arms sculptured
over the lintel, and all is on a grandiose scale* But most of them
now have an air of abandonment, with only occasional pots of
flowers to enliven neglect and poverty where formerly there were
pride and life.

Garcilaso de la Vega says that the Cuzco of his boyhood, in the
years not long after the Conquest, was gay. But that is four hun-
dred years ago.

Lima Francisco Pizarro's City of Kings attracted fashion and
wealth from Cuzco to the gentler climate of the coast, leaving
Cuzco to remember ... far away in the high Andes.

One of the roads which ascend the hill to the fortress, passes
by what remains of the palace of Colcampata, on the terrace
which, under the Incas, was called "The Terrace of Carnations.'*
The palace looked down upon the city, then roofed with golden-
brown thatch. Today the city roofs are of henna-colored tile,
with only occasionally the hideous intrusion of corrugated iron,
and all that is left of Colcampata is the beautiful outer wall into
which are set a row of niches where sentinels were stationed, while,
within the gardens, there remains but a lovely fragment of the
palace walls. A caretaker's cottage is close by, and he has planted
gay flowers to bloom about tie rose-grey ruin, daisies and roses
and sweetpeas.

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Outside the wall Paullu, that Inca Prince who was from the be-
ginning friendly to the Spanish, built the little Church of San
Cristobal to celebrate his conversion to the Catholic faith. It was
there that Paullu's grandson, the infant Melchior, was baptized
at that gala christening which had seemed to portend brighter
times.

But soon Toledo was using the happy palace as a prison for poor
young Tupac, before having him beheaded.

On the summit of the hill back of the palace, there is the famous
fortress of Sacsahuaman, most of it dating back to a mysterious
people who preceded the Inca. The might of its blue-grey walls
of cyclopean stones astonishes you, no matter how your reading has
prepared you to expect it; for the size of the great boulders is
amazing, and the precise fitting of stone upon stone is an incredible
achievement. How the stones were transported from, the distant
quarry without the aid of machinery, and how the cutting was ac-
complished with only the rudest tools has never been explained.
The only answers thus far are toil, patience, time, laborers, all
without limit.

I saw the fortress first on a sunny morning, when from its
height the city of Cuzco was brilliant in its setting. A deep Prussian
blue painted the sky; the foreground mountain-slopes were done in
brick-red, on which were spread, like lengths of lustrous silk, the
spring green of fields of potatoes and young wheat and corn,
still far from maturity. And there was in the air a blue shimmer,
out of which stood the snows of far, high ranges. At the foot of
the fortress llamas passed, going in to the Cuzco market, as un-
changed as though no centuries separated the present from that
day when the great chief had wrapped his mantle about his head
and leaped to his precipitous death.

Yet, it was the present, and not the sixteenth century, for
chalked in great red letters here and there on the massive boulders
was the word APRA symbol of the Alianza Popular Revo-
lucionaria Americana.

And as we were walking back to the hotel, Juanito talked to me

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of a certain fabulous city, more wonderful, he said, even than
Machu Picchu.

Juanito had been himself to Machu Picchu and it could not be
compared with this city of which he spoke. "It is," he said, "a
city of great houses and beautiful gardens, and much gold. And
the strange thing about the city is that there is in it no commerce,"

"But why not?"

"Because anyone leaving the city is never able to find the way
back."

'Xet us go some day, Juanito, and look for your city!"

"Yes, we could do that."

"Do you think we could find it?"

"We might find it."

"Is it near to Cuzco?"

"Oh, no, it is far."

"Near to Machu Picchu?"

"Not near to Machu Picchu either,"

I tried the names of various other cities, and the names of moun-
tains and rivers.

"Can it be," I said finally, "near to Madre de Dios?"

"It is possible that it is near to Madre de Dios."

"And so we will go one day and look for it?"

"Yes, we may go. But if ever we come away, we can never
again find the beautiful city."

So my days passed in Cuzco, and there was still no word from
Roberto. Trains arrived with much noise and show, much puff-
ing and ringing of bells. A swarm of rags would gather to take
charge of the luggage of possible passengers. Then the crowd
dispersed, and the locomotive went snorting into its shed. But
the trains brought no letters.

I became uneasy, at first about possible rain preventing a trip to
Machu Picchu. On rainy days I was alarmed for fear that, in my
anxiety that Roberto should not miss Machu Picchu, I had waited
too long and that now it would end in neither of us getting there.
Then when the sun shone, I was in despair for fear all the good

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weather was being used up, and Roberto would have nothing
but rain, and continuous rain in the Sierra is a dismal hopeless
business. Each day now there was more rain than on the day
before, and I always took with me the vast umbrella, which I had
purchased in Arequipa; for the rains had a trick of coming on
suddenly, though equally suddenly they would be gone, and sun-
light would glisten on the tile roof-tops of Cuzco.

If Roberto was not coming I said to myself I must make the trip
to Machu Picchu, without delay.

I decided then to send a telegram inquiring what had happened
to my mail, and so it came about that I made the acquaintance
of the telegraph operator, an unshaved and genial person, who at
once adopted my troubles as his own.

We then waited. I say "we" because the telegrapher had made
me feel that it was "we." We waited, but no answer came. And
a few days before Christmas, I developed a lively sense of disaster.

I began to believe that something must have happened, and I
decided to telegraph to a nice British Mr. Paterson in Arequipa,
asking him to find out if letters had arrived for me. . . . Hours
passed before there was a reply, and when it came it was in Eng-
lish, which I had to translate at once in order to relieve the teleg-
rapher's suspense.

Mr. Paterson was forwarding a package; so the message said.

But it was letters that I wanted! Not a package.

The telegrapher would immediately send another telegram:
Had letters or a cable arrived?

But it was now after seven o'clock, and the telegrapher broke it
gently to me that, since the office in Arequipa closed at eight
o'clock, I probably could not get a response until the morning.

I went drearily to my room. Rain was trickling down the
window pane. And it was cold. Cuzco, you remember, stands
more than eleven thousand feet above the sea, and it is cold when
the sun is gone.

I sat down at the little table in the middle of my room. I was
convinced that something must have happened to Roberto. And
I didn't know how to reach him. If he was coining, he would

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already be on his way, flying down from New York to Arequipa.
If I sent a cable to his office it might not be answered, and then
I would have added to my reasons for anxiety. Anyway the cable
could not be sent that night. There was nothing to do, therefore,
but wait until I heard from Mr. Paterson in the morning. And
even then, all he could say was that there were or were not letters
or a cable.

I despaired. . . .

There was a knock at the door and the dining-room boy in-
serted a smiling face: Dinner was ready.

Oh, I didn't want dinner! Just bring me some hot water and
whisky. . . . Cuzco was really so far away and anything might
have happened!

I put my head down upon the table and wept.

I wasn't fit to be a woman with her dream of Cuzco come
true!

Just bring me whisky and hot water.

Then there was excited pounding on the door: "The reply,
Senorita! The reply from Meester Paterson."

And in burst the telegrapher with a message in his hand. In
English . , . "Meester Paterson" could not, of course, know that the
telegrapher, too, was in suspense.

Accordingly I translated: "No cable. Sending letters. But
they cannot arrive until Wednesday night."

Actually this told me little, beyond how kind Mr. Paterson was.
I had letters . . . but I did not know their contents nor from whom
they had come. Still I was strangely comforted, even if without
real reason.

Juanito brought the hot water and whisky, and I went hope-
fully to sleep.

And in the morning it was the day before Christmas, and it
was raining, but under my umbrella I went to see what Cuzco
did on the day before Christmas, and by the time I reached the
plaza a heavenly sun was shining.

I found small booths set up in the plaza, selling all manner of
figurines, little images of saints, representations in china and

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papier-m&che and clay of the birth of Christ manger, cattle,
baby and Virgin complete. There were also china animals of
various sorts and artificial flowers and dolls' furniture and flower-
pots of dolls' size, and tin automobiles, and very small Japanese
lanterns, and cakes and candies and buns, and birds in cages, with
all Cuzco walking about to see, celebrating Christmas in a plaza
full of yellow flowers.

When I returned to the hotel Juan's shouts greeted me: "Tele-
grams! Telegrams! From Meester Paterson and one from Don
Roberto himself!"

The telegrapher exuded joy. But, Roberto's telegram being in
Spanish, he already knew its contents, while what "Meester Pater-
son** had said was an enigma in English. Therefore I was first
given the English message that I might translate it for the benefit
of all

And Mr. Paterson said: "Mr. Niles arrived this morning. We
are sending him on by autocarril!'

Why, by autocarril? I could not guess. But that did not matter.
None of the misfortunes I had imagined had come to pass:
Roberto was safe and due to arrive in Cuzco on Christmas night
at seven o'clock. Now ... if the rains permitted the visit to
Machu Picchu, I had no more to ask of Fate at the moment.

Juanito had said that I was not to be uneasy about rain, for
he would pray to the Sun: he would pray in Quechua, for, he said,
he felt that the Sun would give more heed to a prayer in Quechua
than in Spanish.

The matter of rain being thus arranged, we held a conference-
telegrapher, Juan, Juanito and I. I had the idea that I'd like to
surprise Roberto by going down the Line to meet him at some
station near Cuzco. But the train schedules made that difficult,
and we concluded that I would take an automobile and drive to
the little flag-station at Sailla.

All this is perhaps a trivial memory to record in looking back
over the centuries in Peru, and yet to me the warm, understanding
friendliness of the little Hotel Ferrocarril is a thing I shall always

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cherish; a happy experience which belongs in my particular pag-
eant of Peru.

On Christmas Eve, the night before Roberto was to arrive,
Juan and I went to Mass in the Church of La Merced that
Church of Our Lady of Mercy where Gonzalo Pizarro and the
Almagros father and son had been buried after their respective
trials, convictions, confessions and executions.

Cuzco at night is dimly lighted, and silent. No matter what
the weather, it is impossible at night to get any sort of cab. Once
after a dinner party, my host and hostess escorted me all the way
back to the hotel on foot, in a slow heavy drizzle. To be elegant,
I had not taken the great Arequipa umbrella, failing to realize that
the night life of Cuzco's streets is limited to corner policemen in
thick dark overcoats, and to a few noiseless Indians skulking in
the shadow of walls, wrapped in their ponchos.

But on Christmas Eve there were automobiles about, and Juan
and I rode to Mass.

The Church of La Merced was so packed with people chiefly
Indians that it seemed at first as though we could not squeeze
ourselves in. Each pew was occupied by three times the number
of people for which it was intended, for there were people kneel-
ing, people sitting on the seats, and people sitting also on the
backs of the seats. And yet courtesy somehow made a way for
Juan and me.

The old paintings on the walls, the carved woodwork, dark
with the years, the black garb of those who were not Indians,
the mellow tint of the faces, all were fused in a picture as richly
somber as pigments on some ancient canvas, composed with the
aim of centering attention upon a high altar where tall candles
blazed and priests in long white robes moved in a ritual centuries
old.

Somewhere, out of sight in the organ gallery, there was music
which to my ears seemed to combine the cry of trumpets and the
dash of cymbals. I felt it to be pagan, Incaic, unrelated to the
familiar reverberating Latin of the service.

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And looking into the eyes of those Indians who were near me,
I saw that expression which the boy in the Church of Santa Ana
had described in the eyes of the Old Princess in the picture
"eyes full of wonder."

On Christmas afternoon the automobile we had ordered came
to drive me to the flag station at Sailla, where I planned to board
the train which was bringing Roberto. It was raining hard and
the road a morass. Then, within a few moments after starting,
it was obvious that not all the crazy lurching of the car was due
to the condition of the road. The chauffeur, beyond question, had
been making Christmas cheery with liquor- We careened from
one side of the road to the other, reeling and skidding and bump-
ing every mile of the way.

Then at last there was Sailla. Or to be exact, there was a house,
though it was securely locked and its occupants off somewhere,
probably celebrating Christmas. And adjoining the house, was
an open shed, under which three little Indian girls squatted, each
over a cooking pot set upon the ground above small smoky fires.
A few dogs, chickens and guinea hens had come into the shed
out of the rain. The three diminutive women for Indian children
are duplicates in dress and manner of their elders paid not the
slightest attention to our arrival, being exclusively absorbed in
puffing life into their damp smoldering fires.

When I ventured to ask them if the train did stop at Sailla, the
chauffeur said: "Oh, you can't talk to them,, Senorita! They
don't know any Spanish, only Quechua."

The chauffeur announced then that he would leave me and
return to Cuzco.

But suppose the train should conclude that really it was not
worth while to stop at that shed where three little Quechuas
puffed three dismal fires. . . Suppose. . . .

The chauffeur was firm ... I equally so.

He, declaring that he must return to Cuzco; I, vowing that I
would not be left in the shed, for what if the train did not stop ?
Then, I explained, my husband would arrive unwelcomed at

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Cuzco and I would have to walk all those muddy miles in darkness
back to the hotel.

I had allowed more than an hour's margin just in case we were
stuck in the mire along the way. So that now there was that hour
to be spent in wrangling about the chauffeur's getting back to
further carousing in Cuzco.

Then I saw a little group of people coming across the fields; a
man, and two young women, one of them carrying a baby in
her arms.

It appeared that they had come to take the train in to Cuzco.

Very well ... the chauffeur might go. If they had faith in the
train's stopping, then I could have faith too.

So the car drove away and left us there, and we sat down to-
gether on a bench to wait. And while we waited the rain ceased,
the sky was briefly blue, sunset gilded the tops of the close,
encircling mountains, and night fell. The train was obviously
going to be late.

One of my new friends was a student in the University of Cuzco,
a pretty girl, thoughtful and earnest. We talked about Peru, about
its troubled history and its possible future. She took its future
seriously, and with a shining patriotism.

And then, still far off in the darkness, we saw a great light ap-
proaching. The light paused and then came on again. "It's
stopping at Oropesa," one of my companions informed me.

After that, it came rushing at us, every minute bigger and more
blinding. Soon we were able to hear the throb of the locomotive.

We all got up then, and stood in the track, all but the little
Quechuas who never moved from where they squatted over their
fires. Now it was an enormous, dazzling bull's-eye of a light, and
the force which brought it toward us was slowing down. The
train was stopping.

I found Roberto in the last seat of the coche sdonl Roberto and
his camera, just as I had seen them when I had flown away and
left him at the airport in Miami. He had traveled, by air and
train, more than five thousand miles and here he was only thirty
minutes late for his Christmas dinner!

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On the run back to Cuzco he told his story. He, too, had
failed to receive letters. On the flight from Lima to Arequipa
bad weather had forced the plane to turn back and spend the
night in Pisco instead of Arequipa. That meant that he had
missed the early train out of Arequipa for Cuzco, and there would
not be another for two days. From the air he had seen the train
he was to catch moving out of Arequipa!

"If you could get an autocarril" the pilot suggested, "there's a
chance you might overtake the train, and catch it at Pampa de
Arrieros where it stops twenty minutes for the ten-thirty break-
fast."

And so Roberto had jumped into an automobile, dashed in
from the Arequipa airport to the railroad station, and there,
through the great kindness of the Southern Railroad of Peru, an
autocarril had been put at his disposal.

Hence Mr. Paterson's telegram: "Mr. Niles arrived this morn-
ing. We are sending him on by autocarril!'

An autocarril is an automobile which has been adapted to run
on railroad tracks. And into such a vehicle Roberto, bag and
baggage, set forth in pursuit of that train which he had seen from
the air. The autocarril had rushed him through that wild deso-
late mountain country beyond Arequipa. He must reach Pampa
de Arrieros before the train left. Otherwise there would be
nothing but to return to Arequipa and await the next train.

But the autocarril, tearing along in frenzied speed, won the
race. And Roberto's telegram which the telegrapher and I had
received so joyfully had been sent from Pampa de Arrieros.

Details of the muddle about letters and cables not received until
after Roberto's arrival are not interesting. The point of the ex-
perience is the adventure in kindness.

Of course, as soon as arrangements could be made, Roberto and
I went to Machu Picchu. And the sun shone upon our going.

The miracle which really was a miracle for we were in the
season of heavy rains Juanito attributed to the Quechua prayers
which he had been addressing to the Sun. He talked much of

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the Sun, and of the Indian nature being one of profound thought
of "mucho pensamiento" And again I realized the striking
identity of Juanito with Tito. For so, with a quaint gravity,
would Tito have talked to me.

I was thinking of this when at five o'clock on the morning of
December twenty-eighth, we left Cuzco for Machu Picchu.

Our plan was to go by autocarril to the end of a single-track,
narrow-gauge railroad, intended originally to connect Cuzco with
the sugar and coca plantations in the tropical region beyond the
mountains. But before the line could be completed, motor buses
had been introduced and the project abandoned. At the point
where this railroad came to an abrupt termination we would take
one of the buses to the bridge at the foot of the Machu Picchu
ridge, and from there we would ascend on horseback to the ruins.

For various reasons we had decided to travel by autocarril in-
stead of by train. The train runs just one day a week and returns
to Cuzco almost immediately, allowing insufficient time to see
the ruins, while by autocarril you are free to come and go as you
please, to stop where you will along the way. Also we wanted
to spend a night at Ollantaytambo which is not possible if you
go by train. Then in the autocarril, you can put down the top
of the car, and the world is yours!

And such a world!

In the cold of early morning, our autocarril took us up, over
hairpin switch-backs, out of the Valley of Cuzco, over a twelve-
thousand-foot Pass. Our adjustment to altitude having been
made within the first twelve hours of coming to Cuzco, soroche
was no more than a queasy memory.

Once over the northern Pass out of Cuzco's valley, we were
on a high, wide, wind-swept plain, with as always in the
Sierra a mountain horizon. The spacious valley is a scene of
pastoral plenty with roaming flocks of sheep, and herds of pigs
and cattle.

The green expanse was dotted with the red-striped ponchos
of shepherds, and Indian women, in enormously full skirts dis-
tended by many petticoats, floated upon the sea of gree^ like

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buoys painted cerise, cherry red and Prussian blue, and topped
with the head and shoulders of women wearing little bright
shawls pinned about their shoulders, with big, round black hats
faced with scarlet precariously perched on their black braids*

And of course there were llamas, standing tall, very chic in
their decoration of red fringe and bells. And where there is a
village on this plain of fertility, its walls are of adobe brown
or red according to the character of the soil. The thatch of these
houses shone yellow in the sun on that morning when we
journeyed to Machu Picchu.

As the autocarril slid over the rails, I felt an immense and over-
whelming gratitude. For I had on that day all my heart's desire.
I had come on wings to Peru after months of uncertainty when
the very idea had sometimes seemed just about as possible as a
trip to the moon. I had come to Peru, and I knew now, strange,
unforgettable Cuzco, the Andes were mine to remember forever,
I was going upon a golden day to Machu Picchu, and all this was
shared with Roberto, who had come so close to having had to
renounce it.

When we left the spacious valley, we plunged into a ravine
so narrow that there was room only for the railroad and a river
which flowed along beside it. On the left a trail zigzagged up
mountains over which wisps of cloud drifted high. When the
valley widened a little there was a group of huts, no longer made
of adobe, but of roughly piled stone, and thatched almost to the
ground. It was early summer in the Peruvian Andes, and every-
where birds were singing and flowers blooming. Yet because we
were still ten thousand feet high, the air was cold and fresh, danc-
ing air.

And again I remembered the words of Isabel Paterson's farewell
letter: "I don't want to go to heaven, do you? To be footloose in
the world as it is what more could anyone want?' 9

If there could be in life but one such day as that of our journey
to Machu Picchu, it would be enough to make the whole ad-
venture of existence worth while.

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The chauffeur of our autocctnilz. charming person in an
absurdly long-visored jockey cap entered into the spirit of the
occasion, as if he, too, were aware of an enchantment which
proved perfection possible of realization.

It was a gay, eager, free day, set in a world incredibly lovely.

Peru is a land of superlatives, of exaggeration; where shadows
are deep, and light is brilliant, where green fertility is contrasted
with stark aridity, where at the same moment you may look upon
the Pacific rolling in to break upon the beach while in the east the
snows of majestic mountains appear to reach the sky.

And in the journey to Machu Picchu there is similar contrast,
for the glistening peaks of the Cordillera are reflected on the
surface of pools and streams which mirror also golden flowers,
arranged like gladioli on tall stalks, and blooming in great clumps
along the way. The rivers alternate between a swift calm and
excited rapids.

Sliding through the village of Ollantaytambo, we made hotel
reservations for the night by shouting to a nondescript urchin
who stood staring beside the track. "We'll be back for the night,"
our chauffeur called, and on we went.

At intervals along the way, on both sides of the river there
were the grey stone ruins of Inca buildings, fortresses on great
cliffs where the valleys narrowed, and spaced what was once a
day's journey apart, the Inns which they used to call tambos.
Fuchsias and verbenas and geraniums grew among these ruins.
And on all arable hillsides, terraced fields supported by stone
walls rose, like the steps of great staircases. The old chroniclers
had not exaggerated the huge population of the Inca Empire, for
it had been necessary to make literally every possible inch of soil
produce.

Since leaving the high valley above Cuzco, we had been, by
degrees, descending, and I began to notice a difference in the air.
There were bamboos now, as well as willows, along the river-
banks. The trees and the cliffs were decked in moss and orchids.
Trumpet flowers hung like white bells over the shrubs which

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bore them. Another shrub bloomed in a pendulous scarlet fringe,
and miles of clear yellow blossoms flowed like a stream of gold
along the river banks. The chauffeur said they were called
retame.

We had come down to that most delightful of all altitudes
six thousand feet in the tropical zone. The mountain slopes had
become a velvet green, rocks were mossy, forest trees grew to the
river's edge, banana leaves rustled about a little hut. Cascades
hurried down the hills to join the river, and it, too, flowed fast,
fast, as when it had been a mere streamlet born out of that cold
little lake at the high Pass of La Raya. The strumming of in-
sects could be heard, even above the foaming rush of the river.
And a great flock of green parrots flew chattering out of a tree.

So, we arrived in the tropics and at the end of the Santa Ana
Railroad. There, we took the Santa Ana motor bus, over that
road which Hiram Bingham had ridden twenty-five years ago
when he discovered Machu Picchu. It was at that time a recently
built trail, following, more or less, a very old footpath. None of
the Inca highways had passed through the narrow perpendicular
canyon of the Urubamba River, so that the secret of Machu Picchu
had been well kept. And Bingham, in fact, did not even have
Machu Picchu in his mind as he rode through the gorge. He was
traveling about that part of Peru seeking to locate the refuge to
which the Inca, Manco, had fled after Gonzalo Pizarro had at-
tacked him at Ollantaytambo. The chroniclers had said that
Manco took refuge in a place called Viticos, which place, Bing-
ham says, had been "lost for nearly three hundred years."

Yet it was known that certain of the Spanish soldiers, escaping
punishment after the defeat of the Lad, Almagro, had gone to
Viticos, had actually lived at Manco's court, and that there they
had later murdered him. At this same mysterious lost Viticos,
Manco's son, Cusi, had maintained his court and, like his father,
had been much reverenced by his people. Also it was from there
that Cusi is said to have gone in disguise to see his relative, the
baby Melchior, christened in the Church of San Cristobal, at
Cuzco. And at Viticos Cusi had died, as the result, his people

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believed, of those remedies administered by Friar Diego.
Bingham in 1911, traveling over the newly opened trail through
the spectacular Urubamba gorge, was inquiring of everyone about
the presence of ruins, hoping to locate Videos which the chron-
iclers had said was "near to a great white rock over a spring of

water."

And falling into talk with an Indian who sold fodder for the
horses of any passing travelers, Bingham was told that there were
ruins on the top of the ridge, in the saddle between the two peaks
Machu Picchu and Huayna Picchu.

Forty years before, the French explorer, Weiner, had reported
having heard of these ruins, but he had evidently not visited them.

Now, at last they were to be made known to the world. With
the Indian as guide Bingham crossed the Urubamba over a dubious
bridge of logs lashed together and supported on the boulders
round which rapids boiled. Once over the bridge, they climbed
through massed, matted jungle, and up perilous rocky steeps,
until they finally arrived at the top of the ridge. And there
overgrown with forest trees and heavy vines Bingham found the
ruins of Machu Picchu! From all but an occasional Indian they
had remained hidden for nearly four hundred years. Bingham
had not yet found that refuge described as "near to the large
white stone which is over a spring," but he had discovered some-
thing which was to amaze the world. He was later to find the
Videos he sought, but it was not to compare in interest or in
beauty with this Machu Picchu to which he had been led, casually,
by an Indian selling fodder for horses passing over the new river-
trail down to the sugar plantations of Santa Ana.

Then, in 1911, 1914 and 1915, Bingham conducted scientific ex-
peditions, which, after clearing away the destroying jungle, studied
in detail all that was found at this astonishing citadel

Since that time a substantial new bridge has spanned the agitated
waters of the Urubamba. And at this bridge we took horses for
the ascent; patient little bay-colored horses.

Before the jungle was cleared away the ruins were invisible from

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the river-road, but now, you may see high on the ridge a white
gleam which you know must be Machu Picchu.

A well-made trail twists up the once difficult face of the ridge,
making the ascent an easy matter except in the months of heaviest
rainfall when I could see that, even if not actually impassable, it
would be a slippery wretched experience. And it would be too
bad not to have a serene mind with which to enjoy the matchless
beauty of the scene.

Far below is the river, roaring through a narrow canyon whose
sides tower thousands of feet, and in every direction mountains
stand like clustered spires. Sheer walls of rock are tinted with
the lichens that grow upon them and with the orchids blooming
in the crevices. Other slopes are mossy green and others are
wooded to their conical summits. These cones tower above the
ridge, their shape making them seem immensely tall. You feel
yourself to be an insect just flown out of space and alighted on the
surface of the earth. You are the minutest possible insect, and
you are merely poised for an instant there on the trail which
leads up to Machu Picchu, enjoying the bright white light of the
sun shining in a deeply blue sky, and marveling, as you look about
you, at the breath-taking loveliness of the scene.

And then the fancy passes, and you are again a human being
mounted on a docile little bay horse which must pause now and
again to rest with great heaving breaths, for the trail is steep and
you are climbing from the level of the river, up two thousand feet
to an altitude of between eight and nine thousand feet.

In forty-five minutes we had arrived at the lowest level of the
ruins, where we swung off our little beasts, and entered a maze
of buildings, all of pale stone, some grey and some white. The
streets which separate the buildings are so narrow that you must
sometimes walk in single file. The houses stand on terraces, one
above another to the summit. Their doors face the streets, their
windows look out upon the wonder of the view. "A window,"
in the language of the Incas, "a window is a hole that sees."
Therefore the beauty-loving Incas who selected always for their

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sacred places their sundials and their temples sites command-
ing the most beautiful panoramas, also gave to their windows
what was most lovely in the surrounding scene.

Arrived at the city, I hurried eagerly through the streets, like
one returning at long last to a well-known place. I would go
first to the sundial on the height above the Sacred Plaza. I
mounted by the Staircase of the Fountains, passed in front o
the Temple of the Three Windows, and up a flight of stone steps.
I felt in that moment as if I had traveled all the miles from New
York, just to that sundial. For here, in the end, had come the
people of my novel Tito and Salla, the "Ugly Abbess," and the
Amauta, wise in the culture and philosophy of his time. There,
I would look out, as they had, upon that scene which had in-
fljienced the decisions they had had to make.

The sundial is of grey stone, chiseled out of solid rock, with a

central finger of stone some two feet talL The shadow of this

stone finger records the movements of the sun, and upon it the

Incas based their astronomical observations. The sundial was a

Jholy-pfece-to those worshipers of the sun.

From its elevation I looked down upon the city-on-the-ridge,
some thirty feet below. Back of me, dominating the city, rises
the sheer, rocky cone of Huayna Picchu, and upon it, too, are
ruins. Just in front of the sundial is a little temple of white stone
with windows, and beyond this are the steps going down to what
remains of the beautiful buildings of the Sacred Plaza. Beyond
that, the Staircase of Fountains descends on the eastern slope of
the ridge, down to the first level of buildings, and at the foot
of the stairway are a lovely semicircular tower, and a row of gabled
houses, protected by an outer defensive wall.

As I saw the city, of course it was roofless, the thatch which once
covered its buildings, having long ago disintegrated and gone. So
that both the inner and the exterior structure of the buildings were
visible, and as if to compensate for the vanished paraphernalia
of living, there were flowers blooming everywhere, within and
without the walls, dahlias and begonias and enormous yellow
lilies* On the western slope of the ridge, less rocky and prccip-

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itous than the eastern, stone walls supported terraced plots where
the long-ago inhabitants once had gardens to supply them with
grain and vegetables. The terraces, too, could have served as
points of defense, in case of attack from below, an improbable
event, for the river, sweeping around three sides of the ridge was
a moat provided by Nature, Far away, I could see its foaming
current and faintly hear its roar.

Across the gorge, on the east, there is dense forest to the sum-
mit of the foreground mountains, and occasionally a flowering
tree makes a splash of carmine or yellow in the green, and in the
distance are snow-capped ranges. In the west, the nearer moun-
tains are treeless, but green, as though clothed in moss, while the
further slopes are thickly forested. In the southeast and the south-
west, are the stupendous and precipitous crags. And guarding
the city on the south and on the north, are the cones called Machu
Picchu and Huayna Picchu; it is on the saddle between these two
peaks that the city stands, on a site almost impregnable, and from
most directions invisible.

Bingham has called Machu Picchu "the city of a hundred stair-
ways," and looking down upon it from the sundial, I saw that
these many stairways some of them of not more than three or
four steps connect one with another the various levels at which
the houses stand on the steep slope of the ridge.

The pale stone walls were dazzling in the clear light for which
Juanito had prayed in Quechua to the Sun. Black-and-yellow
heliconia butterflies flapped on unhurried wings as though life
were for them everlasting* Hummingbirds quivered before the
flowers, and a flock of brilliant green parroquets flew low over
the city, and out across the gorge. Below me I could see Roberto
with his camera moving about among the buildings.

The beauty and the grandeur of Machu Picchu, I thought, can
never be forgotten by anyone who has seen it.

Philip Means likes to think that the young Inca, Tupac, whom
Toledo beheaded, spent his youth here. "Certainly," Philip says,
"no one could ask for a more gorgeously beautiful environment in
which to pass his days." And Bingham thinks it probable that

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when the Augustinian monk, Father Calancha, wrote (centuries
ago) of "Vilcabamba, the Old," he was speaking of Machu Picchu.

"In Vilcabamba, the Old," Father Calancha says, "was the
University of Idolatory, where lived the teachers who were wiz-
ards and masters of abomination, . . ." "There," Bingham ex-
plains, "the Inca, Manco, treasured the remains of his religion
and restored the University of Idolatry, and kept the Virgins of
the Sun who had escaped from the ravages of the Spanish Con-
querors."

And when the burial caves on the ridge beneath the city were
opened the scientists of Bingham's expeditions discovered that
the large majority of those buried in the caves were women, and
that the male skeletons found were of an effeminate type "who
might very well have been priests." These facts point to the in-
ference that Machu Picchu and Vilcabamba, the Old, may have
been the same. Father Calancha says also that Vilcabamba was
three hard days' journey from Videos, and Bingham, when he
later located Viticos, found that this applied as well to Machu
Picchu. Bingham further describes how "Calancha relates that
the Inca used every means in his power to tempt and try the
monks and to endeavor to make them break their vows of celi-
bacy . . . selecting some of the most beautiful Indian women not
only of the mountainous districts, but from the tribes of the coast
valleys, who were more attractive than those of the mountains."
And scientists studying the contents of the burial caves at Machu
Picchu found that among the skeletons of the women there were
many of the coast type.

Looking down from the sundial it is obvious, even to one who
is not an archaeologist, that Machu Picchu was constructed at
two distinct periods; some of the buildings are of finer stone and
more precise workmanship than others somewhat carelessly put
together. Perhaps, in establishing here his "University of Idola-
try," Manco had found it necessary to add to the accommodations
of the abandoned citadel, and so had hastily erected additional
buildings.

Considered as a whole these various facts make it easy to be-

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lieve the interesting theory that Machu Picchu was that Vilca-
bamba of which Father Calancha heard so much, but which he
never actually saw with his own eyes.

And while I sat on the sundial dreaming of these things, the
two small boys who had carried our lunch baskets up from the
bridge, arrived. They had stopped by the way to decorate the
baskets with daisies, with dahlias of many colors, with rosy be-
gonias and yellow lilies, the Indians of today loving flowers as
did their ancestors, the Children of the Sun.

I sent the two boys to summon Roberto, and the watchman in
charge of the ruins, and together we lunched at the sundial, on
the good food prepared for us at the Hotel Ferrocarril.

And after lunch I explored the buildings of the city, in imagina-
tion covering the open roofs with golden thatch and furnishing
the interiors, as Philip Means describes, with "curtains hung in
the doorways, llama-pelts and vicuna pelts scattered about the
floors." I lined the walls with tinted plaster. I laid down "beds of
coarsely woven materials, finished on the top with finer fabrics."
Then, in fancy, I put into the niches such articles as were found
during the clearing of Machu Picchu, and when the burial caves
were opened. I could therefore set forth pottery jugs whose
handles represented the heads of jaguar and llama, and dishes
decorated in geometric design, or in the stylized figures of butter-
flies, and my mind might place ready for use, various ornaments,
silver rings and bronze bracelets, necklaces of bronze and silver
disks, ear-plugs for the men, and the shawl-pins with which
every woman fastened her mantle. One of the pins was decorated
with the long-beaked head of a hummingbird, and on another
there was a miniature Indian boy lying on his stomach with his
heels in the air, playing tug-of-war with a fish, large in proportion
to himself, the fish tethered at the end of a little bronze rope.
(For thus was one of the pins described by Bingham.) And I
laid out bronze tweezers with which the men used to tweak out
superfluous hairs. I had little bronze mirrors, too, in which the
result of all this might be admired. There were also to be ar-

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ranged ready to hand, needles of bronze and bone, ax-heads and
spindle-whorls, terra-cotta flutes, little bronze bells, and a
medicine-man's jar, filled with the materials of his profession-
bits of shiny rock, bits of bone and charcoal, teeth, seeds, the skull
of a small animal, and a tiny corncob not two inches long.

I may furnish Machu Picchu thus, since all these things were
collected there by the exploring scientists. I was free also to
imagine the fountains on the staircase, glistening water flowing
from level to level and women going to fill their water-jars;
Incaic water-jars designed to be carried on the back by ropes
slipped through the jug-handles; that side of the jar which showed
while it was carried, being decorated in colored design.

The city now reconstructed and furnished in my mind, I re-
turned to the sundial, to picture its inhabitants coming and going
in the streets, priests in rich trappings, Virgins of the Sun in white
robes with girdles and tiaras of gold: all fugitives from the Con-
quest, and among them, perhaps, was the youth, Tupac Amaru.

It might have been so.

And suddenly then I recalled the ragged boy and the murals
in the church of Santa Ana at Cuzco: "The Indian," he spoke
slowly, as though really observing the paintings for the first time,
"the Indian has a face, very intelligent . . . And the eyes of the
Old Princess are sad."

The autocarril took us to Ollantaytambo for the night* It was
dusk when we arrived and the snows of the mountains were a
cold blue-white, and the mountains themselves black* The rooms
which we had commandeered as we passed on our way to Machu
Picchu were ready, and as we had been up since four o'clock we
decided to rest before supper. Then, when I saw that our room
looked over the river, I thought it would be pleasant to have
supper served there.

"We'll have just a light supper," I said to the three very small
and untidy boys who appeared to be managing the establishment
"And we will have supper here in the room. Just soup and toast,
some guava preserves and manzanilla tea."

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The three managers agreed and withdrew. And we lay down
to rest. Night fell in the room, but I could not sleep. There was
an exaltation in the experience of Machu Picchu which would
not let me sleep. I lay in the darkness re-living the day, while
under the window the Urubamba River rushed over the boulders
in its way.

After a while, with an infinite softness, the door of the room
slowly opened. And three little figures entered. The first carried
a lighted candle which seemed very tall because the figure itself
was so very small, the candle, moreover, gaining height by being
stuck into the mouth of an empty beer bottle. This figure was
followed by a second smaller still bearing the largest tray I
ever saw. And in the center was, of a size proportionate to the
tray, a rack holding glass cruets: salt, pepper, vinegar, oil and
mustard. The child with the tray was, in turn, followed by a
third child, carrying a large plate heaped with great chunks of
toast

They were the three managers of the hotel!

They entered speechless, on silent bare feet, and proceeded in
procession around the room, as though they had no idea what to
do now that they were there, with no notion how to go about
serving a meal in a bedroom. In the darkness, lighted by a single
candle, the effect of that strange little procession was as of some
solemn religious ritual. It seemed a pity to interrupt it with
directions about where to place the candle and the tray.

In the morning there was Ollantaytambo, In the hotel patio
you looked from pink roses and honeysuckle straight up to a
peak of eternal snow.

To reach the primitive sanitary arrangements of the hotel,
you must go through the patio, and past the entrance door which
was presided over by so ferocious a dog that guests are warned
not to attempt visiting the plumbing without first summoning
one of the three infant managers to protect them against the dog;
this being accomplished merely by the small boy putting his
hands over the animal's eyes.

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"Why do you keep a beast so dangerous to your guests?** I
questioned.

"Well ... you see, Senorita, there are plenty of robbers about
and the dog is the sole defense/'

"Hay bastante ladrones, y d pcrro cs la Anica defensa"

When we went out into Ollantaytambo, we found it to be
largely an old Inca village with very narrow, cobbled streets, often
passing between typical Incaic walls. Most of its roofs are thatched
as in the ancient days. In some of its buildings there are the
sloping Inca niches, and on the mountainsides rise the terraced
fields of Inca industry. Beside the river, lie two enormous cut
stones, monoliths, planned for some building begun centuries ago,
and never completed. The stones wait abandoned by the river
side. "Tired stones," the Indians call them because they never
succeeded in arriving at their destination.

The river itself suddenly I realized this to be the river down
which there was floated the body of that Indian woman whom in
the long-ago Francisco Pizarro had had so cruelly killed because
she was the favorite wife of Manco, and Manco had, in a certain
matter, betrayed him; in fact murdering two messengers whom
Pizarro had sent to him. For this the woman had been killed. I
remembered how they had shot her with arrows and beaten her
until she was dead, and how Pedro had said that she had uttered no
moan in the pain of her death, and how he, Pedro, had believed
that it was because of the cruelty to this woman that God had
"punished the Marquis in the end that was his."

When she was dead, Pedro says that, because Pizarro would
have Manco see the vengeance he had taken, he had ordered that
the woman's body be put into a basket and set upon the river to
float down to Ollantaytambo where Manco was living in the
fortress. But Cieza says that it was the woman's own wish her
last request that when she was dead they should put her body in
a basket and set it afloat upon the river, that she might in death
return to the Lord she had so deeply loved in life.

However it had happened, I stood, remembering beside the river

F1961

She wears her hair in the style of Chincheros

A JOURNEY IN TIME

whose current had borne her poor mutilated body down to Ol-
lantaytambo. And there, high on a great precipitous yellow cliff
above the river I saw the massive fortress where Manco had taken
refuge when he first fled from Cuzco, before he had retreated to
that Viticos where eventually he had been murdered.

The way to the fortress leads up from a cornfield where, under
a cluster of trees at the foot of a terraced hill, there is the tiled bath
which they call "the bath of the Princess/' Heavy stone walls
support the terraces which climb steeply up to the fortress. And
at the top stands the " adoratorio" : six mammoth slabs of rose
granite, exquisitely fitted together to form an unbroken surface.
And no one knows how these stones, weighing as much as twenty
tons each, were transported from the quarry across the river and
up to the fortress, nor what tools were used in fitting them so
perfectly together.

Now that the visit to Machu Picchu had been made it did not
greatly matter whether it rained. And many of the delightful
excursions which we took from Cuzco were in alternate showers
and sun. As I look back upon them, I see wayside trees full of
singing birds, hedges of organ cactus, bearing starry white
blossoms like water lilies. I see wide, placid, fertile valleys, ter-
raced mountains, little villages of adobe houses, smoke oozing
through their thatched roofs, and bouquets of flowers attached at
the end of long poles and hung out over the street like flags
wherever chicha, the native liquor, is for sale. Wherever there is
a plaza, no matter how small, it is full of flowers, and always on
one of its four sides there is a church, as a rule a very old church,
dating from Colonial days, with a chunky little tower where bells
hang. And on the doors of houses that mourn a black cross is
painted. I remember, too, when I look back upon our excursions
about the Sierra, llamas and llamas and llamas, with necklaces of
bells and red woolen fringe tassels in their ears. There are molle
trees with bunches of green berries ripening red, and willows,
and tall straight eucalyptus trees. And everywhere Indians,
women, in great hats whose upturned brims are faced with scarlet,

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spinning as they walk, women with babies on their backs, men and
women chewing coca, and young men who have stopped by the
wayside to put flowers in their hats.

It is thus that I remember Chincheros, the village of Urubamba,
San Sebastian, Hambutio, Urcos, and Pisac where high on the
brow of a hill there is an ancient sundial; everywhere the remains
of Inca civilization.

These were days full of beauty, whether the skies were blue or
swept with rain-clouds.

And always in Peru I found myself remembering my friend,
Harriet Adams, who, better than any other woman, knows the
land; for in her unique achievement of (as she puts it) "following
each of the Conquistadores from the cradle to the grave," she has
journeyed to every country where the flag of Spain ever flew.

So it was that the memory of all that had gone before enriched
my personal experience of Peru.

Then at last our time in the Sierra had come to an end, and
we were leaving Cuzco for Lake Titicaca. Tito and Salla had been
born beside that lake, twelve thousand feet above the sea, and I
would explore its shore until I found a suitable spot for their
birthplace. Also I must see the great reed balsas in which Salla
had always wanted to sail, and I must hear the rustling of the tall
rushes in the wind that blows across the lake and I must hear
the music of the shepherd's flute beside the lake. And of course
I would remember that out of the waters of Titicaca the mythical
first Inca had risen with his sister-wife, commanded by their father,
the Sun, to rule over the land.

It was on the shores of the lake that I left the sixteenth century.
We were returning to Lima.

[198]

X
THE DIARY OF SERGEANT MUGABURU

I PRESENTED my passport into the seventeenth century. The friar
who opened the door of the Monastery of Santo Domingo in
Lima undertook to deliver to the Prior of the Monastery that
Latin letter of introduction which had seemed to me such an
anachronism in the equipment of a passenger by air.

While the Friar was gone with my letter, off down the cloisters,
I waited, sitting upon an antique horsehair sofa in a vast somber
salon furnished with many chairs and sofas, arranged in sedate
precision beneath dark pious paintings, the whole presided over
by a heavy carved ceiling. And my eyes strayed from the dim
room, out through a window opening on the cloisters.

An arched corridor encloses a large square patio. Columns in
a mosaic of blue and yellow and green support an upper gallery,
where there is a similar repetition of arches. And surrounded
by beds of flowers, there is, in the center of the patio, an old
stone fountain the fountain where Martin de Porres had per-
formed his miracle of washing brown sugar white.

I gazed idly into this patio, and finally the Prior appeared, a
cheerful little man, comfortably rotund under his white gown.
He was glad to have the letter from his ecclesiastical colleague in
New York. If he could give me information, he would be de-
lighted. There were tiny packets of earth from the tomb of
the Blessed Martin ... he was sure that I would like to have
one. And there was a miniature replica of a broom. Did I
know that one of the Blessed Martin's tasks had been to sweep
the cloisters? Also I must have the booklet giving an account
of the life of this, Peru's "Great Miracle-Worker ... the Blessed
Martin de Porres." These things acquired, the Prior proposed to
accompany me from the cloisters into the church*

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There, on the left of the altar, is the shrine of Santa Rosa
Lima's patron saint the first saint of the New World, and so
far, I think, the New World's only woman saint. And of all
feminine saints anywhere Santa Rosa has the most romantic
allure, more even than that twentieth-century saint the "poilu's
saint" who came to be called "The Little Flower," because she
had said of herself, "I am just a little spring-time flower, the
little flower of Jesus."

But Santa Rosa is unquestionably more romantic, perhaps be-
cause she lived and was canonized in a century which has now
the accumulated glamour of three hundred years of Lima.

Her image, represented in life-size, stands high in her shrine
in the Church of Santo Domingo, with on her left the image of
holy Friar Masias, while the niche on her right belongs to the
Blessed Martin de Porres. The Prior explained that Martin's niche
was vacant because the image had been temporarily removed to
the body of the church. The Blessed Martin, it seems, is passing
through the tedious stages leading to sainthood. "Virtues in
heroic degree" must be proved, there must then be established
"confirmation of miracles of the first order," and finally proof
of "miracles wrought by the relics." Martin has reached the
stage of beatification, but Rome has still to be convinced of his
qualifications for the status of saint.

Now, while in Lima a Novena was being said for him, his
image was taken from its niche. We would see it in just a few
moments, the Prior said, after I had sufficiently admired Rosa,

Rosa is shown as a young girl, so pretty, so softly rounded, so
ardent and girlish that it is easy to believe in the many chances
that her mother had to marry her off advantageously. But Rosa
had at the age of five determined to dedicate herself to God and
to lead a life of chastity; for all that she was so pretty and the
family so poor.

That is, however, more than three hundred years ago, and
Rosa is now an image of shining triumph with a golden halo
about her head, pink roses heaped at her feet, candles burning be-
fore her, and people coming to pray.

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"Que linda, Rosita, no? Que prcciosa . . . La Santa Rosa!"

In an urn at her feet are her mortal remains, and in a glass
case is her effigy done in alabaster. And I was told that this was
the first image ever to be made of little Santa Rosa. Capa, the
Italian sculptor, had done it by order of Pope Clement IX, who
had sent it as a gift to Lima at the time that Rosa was made a
saint.

When we turned away from Rosa's shrine I saw that the church
was filling with people come because of the Novena for the
Blessed Martin, Many had brought sick children in their arms
to implore for them his aid.

Meanwhile the Prior talked in a soft undertone, explaining all
things, pausing only when a genuflection was necessary.

He pointed out, in a glass case, the skull of the Blessed Martin
and the image ... I must note the Dominican robes. The Blessed
Martin, as the robes told me, was a Dominican. I would observe,
too, that he was a mulatto. Did I know that his father had been
a Spanish knight, and his mother a negro slave?

Of course, without any letter of introduction to the Prior, I
would merely have had to go into the church to see for my-
self these images of Santa Rosa and the Blessed Martin, but the
presence by my side of a similarly white-robed Dominican, was
a link in the mighty chain of Catholicism, and I like to remember
the day the Prior and I stood together before the images.

And yet my guide in that century when saints were in the
making was not the Prior, but a certain Sergeant Mugaburu who
has been dead for nearly three hundred years. Sergeant Muga-
buru was a child when the saint was just "Pretty Rosa Flores."
Her story was familiar to him. He knew how her mother had
said that of all her children and she had eleven only Rosa's
birth had been entirely painless. And it was often told in Lima
how it happened that the child was called Rosa, for she had been
christened Isabel after her grandmother, but when she was three
months old, her mother, pausing one day to look at her as she
slept in her cradle, was so overcome by her beauty that she caught
her up in her arms and, covering her with kisses, exclaimed: "You

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are a rose, and you shall never be known by any other name!"

"Pretty Rosa Flores!" Mugaburu would have remembered all
about her. He, of course, knew that she did fine sewing to help
in the support of those many brothers and sisters. And he knew
for it was no secret that Rosa's mother had dreamed of a mar-
riage of riches and position for Rosa. Through Rosa the whole
family was to be lifted out of poverty. Rosa was the sole hope.
And Rosa pretty Rosa was so gentle and docile. She would
certainly understand that she was the one hope, and that nothing
could be expected from her father, an old man and in poor
health.

And since the girl's beauty proved to be of the sort irresistible
to men, it became but a question of selecting for her the most
desirable among the many. Mugaburu knew, too, that when
this matter of marriage was proposed, and Rosa explained that
since the age of five she had been vowed to perpetual chastity, her
whole family had been indignant. It was even said that her
mother had thrashed her; and that she had forbidden the cloistered
life her daughter wished so much to lead. Without Rosa's earn-
ings, her mother had said, the family could not live.

It was then that Rosa had decided to put on the habit of the
Third Order of the Dominicans, for in the Lima of that day it
was a very usual thing for the pious to assume the habit granted
to laymen by the Religious Orders. It has been said that the Lima
of the seventeenth century became "one vast cloister." Thus
would Rosa live the monastic life in her own home, even though
prohibited from becoming, in the literal sense of the word, a nun.

Pretty Rosa Flores! Oh, yes, Mugaburu certainly knew all
about her. Her father, the old Sergeant, over sixty when Rosa
was born, lived to be a hundred, and was a familiar figure in
Lima. Mugaburu would have been only a child when Rosa died,
but not too young to have remembered her, perhaps to have seen
her little figure in its white habit and black veil hurrying to help
and comfort all who suffered or sorrowed. He would have heard
the older people tell that when Dutch pirate ships were reported
on their way to attack Callao, and to sack the city of TJnr^ people

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A JOURNEY IN TIME

went in fearful despair to little Rosa, crying that she must save
them, and that Rosa, smiling and tranquil, had assured them that
the Dutch would not so much as set foot upon the land. It was
because this prophecy had come true, they said, that Rosa is often
pictured with an anchor in her hand*

Even while Rosa lived, it had been understood that she was a
saint.

For Rosa slept on a bed of rough logs covered with fragments
of broken glass and earthenware. She mixed ashes and bitter
herbs with her food, and rinsed her mouth with gall. Three
times a week she fasted, and three times each night she scourged
herself with an iron chain, until the very walls of her room be-
came blood-stained. Under her black veil, she wore a ring of
metal with sharp points pressing into her temples, and over her
heart an iron cross which lacerated her flesh. Beneath her white
robe was a tunic of haircloth, and wrapped three times about her
waist, next to the skin, was an iron chain. And because there were
times when the flesh rebelled against this torture, Rosa threw into
a well in the orchard back of her home the key which locked
the chain around her body.

And yet, all day she sang about her work. She delighted in the
perfume and the beauty of the flowers in her orchard, and in
the butterflies and the birds. Her heart was full of love and
charity toward every living thing. And her kindness to the sick
and the unfortunate was so great that they came to call her the
"mother of the poor."

When Rosa died, all said, "A saint has gone,*' and women, so
the talk went, came with scissors hidden under their mantos,
that they might cut from Rosa's robe a miraculous fragment, and
so many such sacred bits were cut that it was reported that six
times it had been necessary to re-clothe her corpse. And when the
coffin was carried through the streets roses had been showered
upon it from the balconies.

With all these things I was familiar, but without Mugaburu's
diary they would never have lost their mythical character. I

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would have heard from the Prior of the Monastery of the "prodi-
gious" lives of Santa Rosa and of the Blessed Martin. I would
have visited in Lima the Sanctuary of Rosa, and seen the well into
which she dropped the key that locked the chains about her waist,
and seen the little hermitage which she built for herself in the
orchard in that corner which she held sacred to Jesus, her "spouse."

But none of this would have told me what was the day-by-day
life of Lima in the century of its saints. The tradition of saints
is easily perpetuated but it comes down to us isolated from the life
which produced the saints, for it is rare to find any chronicle of
the ordinary life of that distant time.

So would the saints of Peru Santa Rosa, Santa Toribio, the
Saint Francisco Solano, and the Blessed Martin who is not yet
quite arrived at sainthood have been no more than myths to
me, but for the diary of Sergeant Mugaburu, this merely average
fellow, this man-of-the-street in that far-past Lima.

The diary begins in the year after Martfn de Porres' death, and
as Mugaburu was at that time not far from forty years old, Martin
was not to him a childhood memory as in the case of Rosa, but
a man of his own period. And everyone then living in Lima knew
about Martin, who was a lay brother in the Monastery of Santo
Domingo, and before that, by trade a barber and doctor in the
street called Malambo. There, the difficulty had been that he
would insist on doctoring the poor without charge, giving free
his skill in the healing of wounds and ulcers, and in bleeding
when the sickness indicated that treatment. Because of his trade
Martin was known to both the rich and the poor, so that all
classes could testify to his virtues and his miraculous powers.
There were many, like Isabel Ortiz de Torres, whom he had cured
after hope had been abandoned by physicians. Merely the touch
of his robe was felt to possess healing power, and simply by call-
ing three times aloud, he had raised Friar Tomas from the dead*
He had also the gift of prophecy, and of levitation. There were
those who swore that they had actually seen him suspended in the
air in the attitude of prayer, both in his cell and in the church

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A llama and his Indian

A JOURNEY IN TIME

before the Crucifix, where he drank the blood from the wounded
side of the image of Christ. He had, too, many said, the power
of invisibility and of passing miraculously from place to place;
from the Monastery to a plantation outside Lima owned by the
friars, returning at will in the same fashion. But most wonderful
of all was the report that by means of this "gift of agility" he
was able to fly to China and Japan and other distant places where
he converted the heathen to Christianity. There had come a man
to Lima, one, Don Francisco de Vega Montoya, who insisted that
when he was a captive in Barbary he had seen Friar Martin de
Porres going about healing those of the prisoners who were ill,
clothing those who were naked and comforting those who
despaired. In fact this Francisco de Vega Montoya declared that
he had himself been one of those whom Martin had thus min-
istered to, and he added that at the time he had not known what
was Martin's native land, since possessing, by a miracle, the gift
of languages Martin had spoken to each in whatever happened to
be his tongue. Then, coming to Lima after his release from
captivity, Vega Montoya had been amazed to see there this very
Martin de Porres, whom he had known in Barbary. Martin had
begged him to say nothing of their former acquaintance, but when
Vega Montoya was later told that Martin never left Lima, except
to go to the Monastery plantation a few miles out of the city, he
realized the magnitude of the miracle, and broke his silence in
order that people might praise God and do homage to His servant,
Martin de Porres.

But for all these wonders, Martin was a man of deep humility,
of much prayer and so given to the mortification of the flesh that
each night he flogged himself through the cloisters, accompanied,
so it was said, by four angels carrying lighted candles. And in
Martin's hours of recreation, which he was fond of spending with
Friar Masias, the two companions would go, into the orchard,
there to scourge themselves with such ferocity that their blood
watered the earth.

As for the love in Martin's heart, it was so great that it overflowed
to include the smallest and meanest of God's creatures.

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Coming one day upon a rat imprisoned in a trap, he had
entered into a contract with the animal:

" 'My dear little rat, if you will but agree to go to your
friends and persuade them not to do so much mischief in the
Monastery, then I may be permitted to set you free.* "

" Which is all very well, Friar Martin, but after all, rats
must live.' "

" 'Rats must live, it is true. Very well, if the bargain is kept,
I will bring food to you, each day here in the orchard.' "

As for the cat which the Monastery had acquired, Martin,
people said, had actually made friends between cat and rats, so
that they fed amicably from the same plate; a singular sight,
something certainly never seen in the Old World from which
the Conquest brought for the first time to America the rat and
the cat.

This, and much more, Mugaburu must have heard of Martin
de Porres, for it has all been handed down, and is included in
that Vida Prodigiosa with which the Prior of Santo Domingo
supplied me.

And to men's faith in such things, Mugaburu, just an ordinary
man, just a sergeant-at-arms, gives the color of reality.

Mugaburu was a simple, hearty fellow with an enormous zest
for life. His interest in the world in which he lived never lan-
guishes in all the forty-six years of the diary. It is a frank, in-
genuous chronicle which as it proceeds does not age. The Muga-
buru of its beginning is the same Mugaburu who at the age of
eighty-four, just before he dies, sets down its last entry.

For many years after his death the diary remained unknown.
None of the writers of the century which followed Mugaburu refers
to it. And then the manuscript, so obviously written without
thought of publication, came into the possession of the historian,
Carlos Romero. He describes it as a notebook of two hundred
pages, bound in parchment. And in Lima, in 1935, Doctor
Romero published the diary.

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A JOURNEY IN TIME

It opens without preamble of any sort. Mugaburu does not even
hint who he is. Actually he has been keeping the diary for four
years before you know that he is a sergeant, a fact which he then
mentions casually in connection with an official procession in
which he takes part among other sergeants.

The chronicle begins simply with the statement that "On Satur-
day the first day of September, 1640, nuns entered the Convent
of Our Lady of Prado," that "the five first nuns came from the
Convent of the Incarnation," that, for Abbess, they had Dona
Angela de Zarate, and that there came with them various dis-
tinguished personages whose names are given.

And this, Sergeant Mugaburu's first entry, strikes immediately
the note of the century: Nuns entered a certain convent, and it
was an occasion at which distinguished personages were present.
The selection of such an item is significant because of having
been chosen, not by an ecclesiastic, but by a military man, a
sergeant-at-arms.

From that beginning the items follow one another through the
years, months sometimes passing without record, so that you
feel that the author has set down only those matters which seem
to him of especial interest and importance. In its style the diary
is written as objectively as the Bible and as simply. Yet it is an
extraordinary revelation of the spirit, his own, and Lima's in
that far-off day. Although emphasis and analysis are lacking
in the narrative, they are supplied by the repetition of the subjects
selected for recording out of the passing years.

Nuns, for example, entered the Convent of Our Lady of
Prado. The Community of the Jesuits, carrying a Christ with
many lights went in procession through the streets, in penitence,
praying that the city might be forgiven for sin and delivered from
temptation. The Inquisition met and there was an auto-da-f,
with men whipped through the streets, the most guilty hanged
and garrotted, A fiesta was held in honor of the Immaculate
Conception of the Virgin, with banners hanging from the bal-
conies, ladies in carriages, the Viceroy and many gentlemen, very
elegant, wearing much scarlet and plumes in their hats, and in

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the plaza a bull-fight, with fine, ferocious bulls. "Truly a happy
day with much to see," And all in honor of the Immaculate Con-
ception of the Mother of Christ. But, alas, in the rejoicings, no
Dominicans, for those of that Order refused to admit that the
Virgin had been conceived without Original Sin!

From time to time, Mugaburu sets down also the news that
was cried in the plaza:

An armada was leaving with treasure for His Majesty. An
armada had arrived with news from Spain, what had been hap-
pening in Madrid and who was coming out to Peru. Proclama-
tions, too, were cried in the plaza. For example, it was proclaimed
that no mulatto, or negro, or any born of Indian and negro, might
carry a knife, or arms of any sort, either by night or day, under
penalty of one hundred lashes and four years at the galleys, with
a fine of fifty silver dollars to be paid by his master, whether
that master be an ecclesiastic or a layman*

The diary records, too, the various earthquakes, especially that
which "lasted for a space of four credos." And it describes the
procession of the Penitents who after an earthquake scourged
themselves through the streets.

Then, there is the description of a certain Novena in honor
of the Virgin of Rosario. And this image that was carried with
much solemnity, possessed diamonds and pearls to the value of
more than two million dollars. Many sermons were preached at
her Novena, and all were concerned with the Mother at the foot
of the Cross. For two days there was much coming and going,
both on foot and on horseback, in the City of Kings, (Mugaburu
loves to speak of Lima by its title of the City of Kings.) And
there was the firing of many guns, the squadrons being reviewed
by the Viceroy and the grandees of the city, and with them were
many sergeants, "of which," Mugaburu concludes, "I was one."

Has a diary, I wonder, ever before been kept for a period of
four years without a word to say even who its author was! And
then nothing more than that there were many sergeants, of which
he was one!

In the course of the chronicle there arc at rare intervals bits of

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personal information about the family Mugaburu. It appears
that there were ten children, whose doings are now and then set
down. Antonio, for instance, aged eleven, was angel in the
Archbishop's procession. The son, Joseph, grew up and entered
the priesthood. A daughter was married. Joseph sings his first
Mass. Joseph goes with much "luster" to Cuzco to take charge
of a parish. Mugaburu visits him there. Joseph, his "dear son,"
dies, and Mugaburu returns to Lima.

But these intimate events are briefly related and Mugaburu's
emphasis is upon the recital of great public events.

A Viceroy's arrival, with His Excellency riding in a carriage
drawn by six mules, very elegant, with twenty lackeys all in
scarlet, and four dwarfs. Knights, too, in a livery never before
seen in Lima, "the plaza seemed liked a garden of flowers." Grand
salvos from the artillery, and in the square many games of canas
and tilting with lances and bulls who were "muy bravos. . . .

"And every one was delighted to have seen a thing so grand
and prodigious/'

There was also a most scandalous event concerning the election
of the Abbess of the Convent of the Incarnation. To pacify the
nuns, whose difference of opinion in the selection of their Abbess
had led those religious ladies to physical blows, His Excellency
had sent cavalry and infantry. The trouble had begun on a
Sunday night and on Monday the Convent was surrounded by
armed men and a proclamation had been cried to the effect that
no person of whatever quality might communicate with, or aid
the militant nuns, under pain of exile; and, if the offenders were
mulattoes or negroes they would receive two hundred lashes. This
order was to remain in force until the election of the Abbess was
over.

In the meantime, the authorities decided to remove to different
convents four of these mischief-making "Senorita Nuns." And
throughout Sunday night and Monday, there had been great noise,
because the nuns had incessantly rung the Convent bells* But
at last all had been tranquilized by the Abbess whom they finally
elected.

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Already Mugaburu's diary has made it plain that religion was
the chief preoccupation of that century. Most events were linked
to the great absorbing subject of religion. Almost all games, bull-
fights, and fiestas in general, were pious in character, honoring
the many saints and images, celebrating the laying of corner-
stones in some ecclesiastic establishment, or the raising of bells
to a newly completed tower, or the festal days of the Church.

Someone has said that in the Lima of that time it was the
"function of a soldier to be elegant and decorative in processions
and fiestas." And in all such matters Mugaburu delighted.

He was pleased also by the festivals of the various trades, of
the plasterers and the masons and the painters and the metal
workers, the makers of tile, and the confectioners, the brewers
and the grocers. The Indians had special fiestas, as did the
mulattoes and the negroes. They gave masquerades and dramas
which Mugaburu found diverting. There were companies of
professional entertainers, too, who performed comedies in a corral
which served as a theater. But practically everything was arranged
to be in some way linked to religion. And because Lima was
by night so dark a city, with only here and there a lamp flickering
before the street-corner image of a saint, every festival was an
occasion for fireworks and many lights.

Mugaburu revels also in the regal and ecclesiastical dress of
the functions, and in the display of courtesy. Many of his descrip-
tions end with the words: "And there was much courtesy*"

Even the funerals played a decorative part in the life of Lima*
Mugaburu speaks of coffins draped in black velvet, of portals in
mourning, of the Archbishop preaching very well, of the proces-
sion as "sumptuous." And he lists always the distinguished
among those present, concluding with the modest little phrase:
"And there were sergeants of which I was one."

The whole diary is charged with its author's capacity for un-
selfish, impersonal happiness. He glories in every honor received
by someone else. He is fascinated by luxury and grandeur, and
it does not in the least matter that these things are for others,
and not for himself. To Mugaburu life is a gorgeous experience.

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The bulls are always "the fiercest and finest ever seen." A fiesta
is invariably an occasion when there is "much joy and much to
see/' Sermons are good. Wafers and chocolate and cool drinks
are appreciated.

Even hangings and floggings are not allowed to cloud the
delight of living. These matters are recorded as briefly as may be.
There is nothing sadistic in Mugaburu, but as a conscientious
author he will not omit any event of importance. So it is that
he includes the sitting of the Holy Inquisition and the auto-da-fe
which follows upon such sittings: sorceresses are flogged and
heretics burned or hung. The ordinary crimes of murder and
thieving are duly punished. A grocer's shop, for example, has
been robbed, and the thieves two mulattoes, a negro and two
zambos are hung in the plaza. Indian uprisings are punished by
hanging, flogging and sentence to the galleys. For bringing
"bad false news" from Chile an Indian receives two hundred
lashes through the streets, and is sentenced to carry rock for
six years.

Just what was that "bad false news" Mugaburu does not say.
Nor does he allow himself to dwell upon any of these dismal
things, accepting them cheerfully as part of Kf e, and concentrating
his attention on such happy matters as the Vice-queen's attendance
at Mass after the birth of her child, dressed in white and carried
in a "hand-chair."

The only real distress that runs through the diary is the Do-
minicans' obstinate refusal to concede the Immaculate Conception
of the Virgin. As for Mugaburu, he was a valiant champion of
the Virgin's conception without sin. "Nucstra Senora? he would
say fervently, "Nuestra Scfiora conccbida sin pccado original.
Amen. Jests"

The controversy on this subject of the Immaculate Conception
depressed even the spirit of Mugaburu. Over and over he de-
scribes processions and bullfights in its honor, concluding his
account sadly: "But no Dominicans." Or of a sermon he laments:
"But the Dominicans refused to say 'conceived without sin.' "

And then, at last, in December of the year 1662, the Prior of

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the Monastery of Santo Domingo had paused in the midst of his
sermon to praise the Holy Sacrament. And those listening had
added, "And praises be to the Immaculate Conception of the
Virgin Mary, Our Lady, conceived without original sin/*

Then the Prior had said: "And that I say, and to that I submit.'*
But it was felt that the words were lukewarm, spoken with the
lips only; even though at the close of the sermon, he had again
repeated them.

But that night, in "such a procession as had never been seen,"
when ten thousand people marched in the streets carrying lighted
candles and singing, "Concebida sin pccado'/ there had still
been no Dominicans. Church bells had rung, and with those
marching, there had been the friars of San Francisco, of San
Agustin, and la Merced, but the bells of Santo Domingo had been
silent, its doors closed, and in the procession no Dominicans; for
all the words their Prior had spoken that day in the pulpit.

It was not until two years later that Mugaburu's triumph had
been complete. For then, at last, the friars prostrating them-
selves before the altar of the Dominicans had cried aloud: "Blessed
and praised be the Virgin, Our Lady, conceived without sin from
the instant of her conception."

And when the people crowded in the church, hearing this,
went out and told what had happened, Mugaburu says that "all
the city was filled with solemn joy."

It was when he was seventy that at last an honor came to
Sergeant Mugaburu whose life had been so given over to rejoicing
in the renown of others* A new Viceroy had come to Lima, a
Count Lemos, whose father, back in Spain, had been the patron
of Cervantes. And this new Viceroy promoted Mugaburu, the
sergeant, to a captaincy.

"I was given," Mugaburu says, "the degree of Captain of
Spanish infantry in the Presidio of Callao. . , . And they an-
nounced the tide and the honor which the Viceroy made to

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Prc-Inca stone-work at Ollantnytamho

A JOURNEY IN TIME

me Jose de Mugaburu y Honton. . . . And, wearing a very
magnificent suit of buckskin, I marched carrying my lance."

But he is no happier, you feel, in this personal glory than all
along he has been in celebrating the honors that have come to
others.

And he has soon a new excitement, for "Pretty Rosa Flores"
has been declared a saint, and an image of her done in alabaster
is coming from Rome. Mugaburu, stationed as Captain at Callao,
is present on its arrival.

The Viceroy, he says, came down from Lima to welcome the
image. He was dressed in crimson and carried the baton as
insignia of his rank as captain-general. When he reached Callao
the artillery fired its guns, and the Viceroy commanded that there
should be a salute of three guns when the crate containing Santa
Rosa's image was landed on the dock.

Then, on the following morning, with volleys from the artillery,
the image was borne on the shoulders of men while the women
of Callao followed on foot carrying lighted candles. And at
Lima the friars came out to meet it, with crosses. And that
night there was grand illumination all over the city, in the
windows and on the streets. The next day, after High Mass,
the image was carried in procession to Santo Domingo,

"And it was an afternoon very much to be seen."

So the diary proceeds to the final entry. It was a Wednesday,
the second of October, the year 1686.

The entry describes the arrival in Lima of a certain General
who had gone in charge of the Armada when, in the previous
year, it had sailed with treasure for His Majesty. . . . "Whom
(Mugaburu prays) God preserve. . . ." And on the day of this
General's return to Lima, he adds, "There was much rejoicing in
the city."

Such is the end of this chronicle faithfully kept for forty-six
years.

Six weeks later, Francisco, Mugaburu's son, records in the diary

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that, after two months of great suffering his father died. And
that in his illness he twice received Extreme Unction, that he many
times confessed, and that he left them with sure hope of his salva-
tion, "by reason of his good life as well as of his good death."

Francisco goes on to say that his father was buried in the early
morning, the hour having been selected because in the afternoon
there was to be a bullfight in the plaza. . . .

A bullfight! But without Mugaburu to declare that never were
bulls more "bravos" and that it was an afternoon of rejoicing with
very much to be seen!

Thus as his century moved toward its close, Mugaburu had died,
but his having lived gives to it reality: he sets the stage for the
making of saints.

For some time after his father's death Francisco carried on the
diary, and twelve days later, he entered this item:

"On the twenty-third of November, 1686, a request was
made to the Monastery of Santo Domingo, for information
concerning the servant of God, Friar Martin de Porrcs. Many
illustrious persons accompanied the request, and there went
ahead mulattoes with banners, dancing and rejoicing in honor
of Martin, the glorious servant of God. . . ."

This was the beginning of the beatification of Martin de Porres,
a man known to all in the town in the years when Mugaburu was
growing up and marrying, and becoming sergeant in the guard.

Yet, more than two hundred and fifty years later, Martin has
gone no further on the road to sainthood,

"I wish he could be made saint," I said to the Prior as we stood
together before his image in the midst of the flowers and the
candles of a Novena. "I wish he could be."

There was on the face of the image a gentle patience. That,
I thought, he would have had from his slave mother. But I re-
membered also that his Spanish father had been a proud Knight
of Alcantara. "I wish they'd make him a saint/' I repeated- "I
think it would make him happy."

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XI
THE VICEROY'S MISTRESS

THE chauffeur he who was so busy paying for a Plymouth car
on the installment plan that he had no time to concern himself
with political matters drove me, on a bright December after-
noon, straight into the eighteenth century.

And we conversed along the way:

"Are you Senorita or Senora?" he asked. (On our various ex-
cursions about Lima he had been addressing me as Senorita.)

Now I confessed to being Senora, adding meditatively that
Senorita was a pretty word; thinking, as I spoke, of its tender
quality, its implication of enduring youth and romance, of the
picture that it conveys of a lover singing to his guitar beneath the
window of his lady.

"Senorita," I repeated, "is a pretty word."

"Verdad, pero Scnora cs muy deccntc"

We drove through the modern Lima, where pink crepe myrtle
bloomed in the handsome new plaza of San Martin, and across
the bridge over the Rimac, into a Lima not after all much altered
by the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The chauffeur was taking me to the house where tradition
insists the famous actress La Perricholi once lived; and, with
the comment that Senora is a highly respectable word still
idling about my mind, I was thinking how incidental the con-
ventions had been in the Perricholi's life, how she had valued
other things above what was meant by the chauffeur's "muy
dcccnte" Her profession, for example. To be an actress, that
to the Perricholi had stood beside her religion, while to be
mistress to the Viceroy, that, too, was a glamorous thing; marriage
a matter so secondary that it might be indefinitely deferred,

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The Perricholi knew precisely what she wanted of life which is,
of course, the first, and the longest step, toward achieving it.

As I journeyed through the centuries in Peru, certain personal-
ities stood out in time, as though in life they had lived with such
intensity that they may never wholly leave the scenes which once
knew them.

So the Perricholi lingers on in Lima. And when I arrived in
her century she was the person that I most wanted to know.
For to know the Perricholi is to know Lima of the eighteenth
century.

And the rose-colored villa to which the chauffeur took me is
so exactly the sort of thing that she would have loved that I accept
as fact the tradition that it was hers*

The viceregal coach would have looked well waiting before
its imposing gates, and on the balconies overlooking the entrance
court a lovely actress would have shown herself to such advantage
to a worshipful crowd following her home after a triumphant
performance at the theater.

The villa would have been to Perricholi a palario, with its huge
high rooms, its black-and-white tiled stairway, its vast carved
doors, its enormous windows with their ornamental gratings, the
long mirrors reflecting her adorable self, her costly velvet furniture,
her brocade hangings, her bric-a-brac from Europe and China, her
exquisite hammered dishes of Peruvian silver, and at night the
many flickering candles in her chandeliers.

Even yet the villa retains an air of splendor and that gaiety which
the Perricholi loved; although now a wing of the building is
used as barracks for a garrison of soldiers, and the rest is but one
deserted room after another, with an occasional piece of furniture,
seeming, in the bare rooms, as though forgotten by the moving
men of long ago.

Yet it seems so much the villa of the Perricholi that it is easy
to fit into the house and the garden whatever may be your own
conception of Lima's enchanting Perricholi.

Prosper Merimee, out of a vague traveler's tale, created the
Perricholi of his L Carrosse du Saint Sacrcmcnt. Thornton

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Wilder, in The Bridge of San Luis Rey, has another, the authors
of the libretto for Offenbach's opera La Perichole have a third,
who is later revamped and elaborated for the Moscow Art Theater's
production. These various versions all give her the name "Ca-
mila" Perichole, and all call the Viceroy "Don Andres de Ribiera."

There remains, however, the real Perricholi, Micaela Villegas,
the Perricholi of Lima, perpetuated in those traditions which
Ricardo Palma gathered so carefully from survivors of her time.
And these traditions are further enriched by the Perricholi por-
trayed in 1776, by an annoymous contemporary in a pamphlet
attacking the Viceroy who was her patron. And there are in
the archives of Lima a few stray documents, which reveal some-
thing more of the actual woman.

From these traditions assembled while some still lived who
knew her, from evidence quoted from that suppressed and scur-
rilous pamphlet written while she was at the zenith of her fame,
and from the factual testimony of the documents, I have shaped
the Perricholi whose image flashed for me in the glittering mirrors
of this house where perhaps she lived ever so long ago. When I
walked in the great walled garden back of the house, this Perricholi
seemed to move among the bright flowerbeds, or to come toward
me between green clipped hedges along a flagged walk shadowed
by quivering palm fronds and the foliage of fruit trees, and
sometimes I fancied that I saw her plunge into the big tiled pool
under the pavilion.

The sunny garden is fragrant with roses and heliotrope and
great starry white jasmine, and there is always the soft rushing
music of the waters, long ago diverted from the Rimac River
to supply the pool and to keep the garden always freshly green
even in the driest months.

I never went into this garden of enchantment without the con-
viction that it was the Perricholi's. And certainly the soldiers now
quartered there have no doubt that it was hers. They take you
about and graciously fill your hands with her flowers. They
show you a marble bust of her, discovered, they say, in 1934, in
the course of some excavation about the place.

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The bust stands on a pedestal back of a circular stone fountain,
at the end of the flagged walk which bisects the garden. The
fountain is so choked with the leaves and the blue flowers of
water-hyacinths that its flow has dwindled to the merest trickle.
Over this fountain the marble Perricholi looks down the walk
to the house with its wide, second-story veranda.

The face of the sculptured Perricholi is lovely and seductive,
the head crowned with marble grapes and grape-leaves, the hair
soft even in the cold medium of stone, I remember that it was
in life profuse and of a lustrous black, and that it was the fashion
of the day to wear the black hair in long curls, or to plait it
into several braids so looped that they hung to the shoulders,
held together at the neck by a gold dagger set with diamonds or
pearls.

On the pedestal is engraved the information that the bust was
found in June of 1934, and with it a document stating that it had
been executed at the order of Viceroy Amat, by a Genoese artist,
and that it is a representation of one, Micaela Villegas.

As I read the words the Peruvian army officer who accompanied
us was explaining to me how it came about that Micaela Villegas
was given the name of "La Perricholi."

But that is anticipating the story, which is of the sort that should
begin in the dear familiar manner of "Once upon a time "

Once upon a time then, there was a little girl named Micaela
Villegas. She was a chola child which means that both Spanish
and Indian blood went to her making; she was born in the Sierra
at a place called Huanuco.

But when she was five years old, in the year before the "Great
Earthquake," her mother brought her down to live in the capital
city of Lima, not far from the sea, where you are never too
warm and never too cold, a place gentle and balmy, where the
act of living is pleasantly easy.

And this was in the city's proud days, when its streets were full
of gilded carriages, paneled in florid design and lined with brocade
in brilliant colors, while for the nobility there were magnificent
coaches drawn by four mules. People used to speak of Lima as

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a city of more than four thousand carriages. There were cavaliers,
too, in graceful capes which swung with the motion of their
horses.

Pleasure was the business of life, and there were so many slaves
that no one of them was overburdened.

But to support the luxury of Lima, on the haciendas of cotton
and sugar cane slaves were slaves, and in the mines of the Sierra,
Indians toiled that Lima might live in this picturesque pomp,
where only those predisposed to sainthood ever thought of saying
"no" to the flesh.

This was Lima in the voluptuous eighteenth century, the century
of Madame du Barry and La Pompadour, of Versailles, of Marie
Antoinette and the Petit Trianon.

Great caravans of mules brought into Lima what the city re-
quired from the haciendas, and from the port of Callao the fine
merchandise arrived by sailing ships from Europe and the Orient.
So many caravans of mules that the streets were full of their
dung, which in the dry season disintegrated into a dust which
drifted like smoke, with the passing of carriages and coaches and
mounted gentlemen.

To a little girl from the Sierra the fine ladies of Lima were
astonishing in silks and velvets which opened in front to show
petticoats flounced in the best laces of Europe, lace bodices low
over their bosoms, and jewels sparkling in their ears, in their
necklaces and their bracelets; even in their girdles and in the
buckles which adorned their tiny shoes. Equally fascinating these
ladies were, too, when they shrouded themselves in black mantos
and went about the city showing just one great dark eye, so that
you did not know who they were, and were kept guessing.

Travelers of long ago have described this Lima to which little
Micaela had come down from the Sierra. And invariably they
were impressed with the Moorish quality of the city. The domes
of its churches reminded them of Mohammedan mosques, while
the patios, the flowers, the trickle of fountains, the flat roofs, the
horseshoe arches, the stretches of blind, mysterious walls, the
gratings, even the veiling of women when they walked in the

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streets, these were all Moorish legacies transplanted from Spain to
Lima, far away in the New World.

A child never tires of the life in the streets and to one like
Micaela, with a genius for mimicry, the street cries of Lima
would have provided never-ending diversions.

There was the milk-seller calling in the very early morning.
At that hour, too, there was the woman selling herb teas; mate
from Paraguay, manzanilla, native to Peru, and baldo which
comes from Chile; each tea claiming to regulate human ills and
to prolong life.

La Icchera! La tisancral Calling up and down the streets,

You could tell the time by these street cries. The tea-woman
and the milk-woman that meant six o'clock. And it would be
eight o'clock when you heard the man calling buns-for-sale. At
ten, there was the tamale-woman; at eleven, the melon-woman
sang; at twelve, the man with fruit, oranges and figs, alligator
pears, the fruit of the passion-flower, chirimoyas and grapes. And
at the same hour a man who sold peppery little mincemeat tarts.
At one, men with alfalfa to feed Lima's mules and horses, little
donkeys so loaded with alfalfa that they seemed like moving
stacks of grass, to each of which had been attached a donkey's
head and tail. At two o'clock there were maize-cakes, at three
the taffy-man, at four the pepper-woman and at five a man who
sang of the flowers he carried:

"Here is a garden! A garden! Lassie, don't you smell it?"

And when his cry had died from the street there came at six
o'clock the poultry-man, at seven the caramel-man, at eight a
man who sold ice-creams and another with wafers rolled very
thin*

Then at nine, at the bell to cover up the fires, there came,
each in a red cape and each with a lantern in his hand, those who
begged alms for the souls in Purgatory*

Then it was time for Micaela to go to bed; to sleep until the
milk-woman and the tea-woman came to wake the world.

And if a little girl was born an actress she could reproduce
these cries of the hours.

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It was a period when women got on with small education;
elementary religious instruction and some training in music was
thought sufficient. But Micaela's talent was an impetus to go
further. She learned to play with skill on both the harp and the
guitar. She had a voice so full of harmony that inevitably she
sang to their accompaniment. And her memory was so quick that
while she was still a child people were delighted with her recita-
tions. Even as a little girl she could give scenes from the gallant
capa y cspada dramas, and from the comedies of Lope de Vega,
Calderon de la Barca, and Juan de Alarc6n.

Naturally the lines which she so early memorized from these
authors had a part in the fashioning of her mind and her
spirit

Lope de Vega stimulated her own wit, and taught her to live
in the world of the imagination. He appealed to her natural
gaiety, and introduced her to the history and legends of Spain.

The Corpus Christi plays of Calderon de la Barca were full
of a mysticism which could not fail to appeal to the Indian in
Micaela, to the capacity for profound worship so strong in the
race.

While Alarcon, the hunchbacked, red-bearded genius of Mexico,
spoke to her in the spirit of her native America as well as of
Spain. That exotic quality in his work which his fellow writers
in Madrid had found so disturbing, so irritating, because un-
familiar, would not have been strange to Micaela with her fusion
of the two bloods.

As she grew older she must have felt it a bitter thing that he
had been so cruelly attacked by the Spanish writers, that in their
dislike they should have ridiculed even his physical deformity;
and that it should have been left to the great Frenchman, Corneille,
so to value his work that he said he would have given his own
two best dramas to have been the author of Alarc6n's La Vcrdad
Sospechosa.

Alarc6n had been dead a hundred years when Micaela was born,
but all that he had suffered seemed still to endure in the lines
he had written:

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"Prdvida naturaleza,
Nubes congela en el viento,
Y reparticndo sus Ihivias,
Riega el arbol mas pequeno"

Thus Alarcon would have taught Micaela compassion for the
unfortunate. While the artistry of the lines which he so carefully
composed and polished, with such regard for restraint and for
style, must have influenced her great respect for her art, which is
a thing remote from any vanity of the ego.

When Micaela was twenty the thing happened for which she
had been created. She got her chance to appear on the stage,
and immediately she was the sensation, the darling of Lima's
one playhouse: in return she gave to the theater a love of her
art which never knew any rival

And of course her mother, and the brother Felix who all his
life adored her, exulted in her instant success. Their Miquita
in the pretty diminutive of intimacy their Miquita was all at once
become the first actress in Lima, to them the first actress in the
world.

If proof were needed, there was the contract with Maza, impre-
sario of the theater. . . . Imagine Miquita with a contract and a
salary of a hundred and fifty dollars a month!

So glittering a thing is success, a sun in whose warmth those
who love you, who have believed in you, may bask content, justi-
fied

Now when Lima was not talking of "La Villegas," as they
called Micaela, they were speculating upon what sort of man
would be the new Viceroy, expected soon to arrive. The beauty
of La Villegas, her latest role, her newest song, alternated with
exchange of information about the Viceroy, Don. Manuel Amat,
who was on his way from Chile*

Everyone wanted to know if he was married. And when
it was learned that though he was past sixty he was still a bachelor
the news sped through Lima. "Though what good it docs you
all, I can't see/' said a shrewd old marquise, "since you know

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A JOURNEY IN TIME

perfectly well a viceroy is forbidden to marry within his jurisdic-
tion. And a good rule too, or the mothers with daughters in
the market would claw each other's eyes out."

It was in the lovely month of December that the new Viceroy
arrived; at the beginning of Lima's summer, when the crepe
myrtles are blooming like rosy clouds drifting through green
foliage, and the jacandra trees border the avenues with bouquets
of lavender, and in the roadside willows, flocks of small birds
twitter and sing all day, and the air is clear, with no more mist
to veil the city until May shall come again.

To welcome this new Viceroy, the balconies were hung with
banners and tapestries, and triumphal arches had been set up
along the way by which he was to pass. The cavalry led the pro-
cession, followed by the artillery, the city militia and the troops of
the line, the university professors in their robes, the members of
the Audience on horses covered with trappings of black em-
broidered velvet, the magistrates on foot in scarlet velvet robes,
and then the Viceroy. . -

What would he be like, this Don Manuel Amat, who was come
to rule Lima?

Micaela looked at him certainly with the eyes of a woman used
to appraising men.

The Viceroy came on horseback with two of the city aldermen
in their official robes, on foot, leading his horse, while eight mem-
bers of the Corporation, also on foot, supported a crimson and
gold canopy over his viceregal head.

They had said that he was past sixty but his face seemed younger
than that. It was a round plump face, smooth shaven beneath
grey hair worn long enough to be curled up over each ear in a
soft roll.

The outgoing Viceroy's hair was longer and curled under.
Amat's shorter, upturned cut raised the lines of his face and at
the same time lifted the years, directing attention to his dark wide-
spaced eyes tinder their well-marked brows. His figure, too,
had a young upstanding air. After all, he had been an army
man from the beginning*

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As for his dress, even the King could not have been more
impressive than this Viceroy riding with royal pomp under a
canopy of gold and crimson, while in the plaza, the Archbishop
waited to receive him with all the honors of the Church.

And when the days of celebration were over, and there had
come at last an end of speech-making and feasting and bull-
fights, it appeared that the new Viceroy's favorite diversion was
the theater.

And upon sight he loved Micaela Villegas to madness,

Was she so beautiful?

Not, Ricardo Palma says, if by beauty you mean an orthodox
regularity of features, but if you find beauty in supreme grace,
then Micaela was irresistible.

She is described by one who knew her as being very small, with
a rounded figure and the tiny hands and feet so characteristic
of the Peruvian Indian. Her bosom was full, "titrgcntc" as her
contemporary puts it, and such a bosom was the fashion of her
day. She had exciting shoulders and a beautifully turned neck*
Her face was a delicate oval of pale olive, lit by bright black eyes
and tiny brilliant teeth. Her lips were full, like her bosom, and
on the upper lip was a provocative little mole. For her nose, he
does not say much, and he adds that, here and there, her skin
showed the marks of smallpox which she managed skillfully
to conceal with the aid of cosmetics.

She understood how to dress with a taste extremely restrained
in spite of the flamboyant tendency of the time.

This Micaela Villegas possessed evidently the magic of creat-
ing that illusion of beauty which is a thing, after all, more
potent than mere beauty itself. Without having been born in
Lima she had succeeded in making her own all the seductive
charm of the Limenian which through the centuries has led
men to devote pages of serious Memoirs and Histories to the
fascinations of the women of Lima.

And Micaela had them all, the tang of a salt-and-pcpper wit, the
lively fancy, the vivacity, the coquetry, the tenderness, and the

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A JOURNEY IN TIME

gift of making people happy, making them pleased with them-
selves. To these qualities she added a great love of the beautiful
and the noble, and a spirit deeply religious. The combined traits
were essentially Spanish, while the necessity to worship was
profound in her Indian blood. For Micaela was a chola of the
Sierra as well as a seductive Limenian.

To the Viceroy, Don Manuel Amat, in his box at the theater,
she was more even than all this: to the dying fires of his age she
was tremendously alive. His experience showed him at once
how vivid an intelligence and eager an imagination she brought
to the roles she played.

And he loved her with the extravagant folly of maturity*
His infatuation could not have been concealed, and he made
no effort to hide it. All Lima knew that the Viceroy had fallen
in love with La Villegas.

Micaela's mother, whose temperament can be inferred from just
one sentence in Palma's Tradicioncs, had been of course inflated
with the pride of her Miquita's success on the stage, but that her
child should be loved by a Viceroy that was something!

His very titles made the mind dizzy:

His Excellency, Viceroy and Captain General of Peru, President
of the Royal Audience, Superintendent of the Royal Finances,
Director General of Mines, Knight of the Order of San Juan

It was quite impossible to remember them all. But in a word
he was representative of the King himself and responsible only
to him.

And he loved her Miquita to madness. The whole of Lima
knew it.

The aristocracy, not then sufficiently intelligent to pride them-
selves upon any save royal Indian blood, raged that their Viceroy
should be the slave to a chola actress, a half-breed girl from the
Sierra, but their raging did them no good

Actually the Viceroy was building a palace for Micaela, and
it was not long before she was riding in his retinue when he drove
out in the viceregal coach.

PERUVIAN PAGEANT

God be thanked, they said, that a Viceroy was prohibited from
marriage within his jurisdiction.

Nevertheless Micaela gave Amat a son and had the effrontery to
name him Manuel Amat.

The hope that he would tire of the girl passed with the years.
Micaela went on acting and the Viceroy went on adoring her.

As for the grandmother of the little Manuel, her airs were
infuriating to the haughty grandees. She had a habit of calling
from the balcony: "Keep out of the sun, child* Remember that
you are not a nobody. . . ."

"Quitate del $ol, nino, que no cres cualquiera, sino hi jo dc cabcza
grande"

And this arrogant presumption which so exasperated Lima was
handed down through the years until Ricardo Palma perpetuated
it in print.

Meanwhile the Viceroy was growing a crop of enemies* For,
as though his imbecility in the matter of Micaela were not enough,
he made himself further detested by his strict carrying out of the
King's every edict, being especially offensive in scrupulously col-
lecting the King's revenues.

But nobody could say that Amat did not work hard for the good
of Lima. He had reorganized the army. He had under construc-
tion a new bullring and a cockpit. He was himself personally
directing the building of the Church of the Nazarenes and restor-
ing the tower of Santo Domingo so greatly damaged by a great
earthquake, and he was planning new avenues and plazas. He
saw Lima as the Versailles of the New World.

But he continued to love Micaela, and that was not forgiven
him.

Meanwhile Micaela laughed and sang and delighted her
Viceroy. She might so easily have given, herself up to luxury and
pleasure, and to lolling on the low, cushioned daisanother of
the Moorish legacies transplanted to Lima. For her diversion
she would have had her guitar and her harp, and there were the
parties at the palace where she met the most distinguished men
of Lima. But none of these compensated for the theater. First

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A JOURNEY IN TIME

and last Micaela was an actress. The Viceroy's adulation never
touched that. It was perhaps this fact that she might never
be wholly possessed that held Amat.

And in her devotion to her own profession of course she under-
stood his ambition to excel as a viceroy.

Through all that troubled time of the expulsion of the Jesuits
from Peru, Micaela's companionship must have been his comfort
The banishment of the Jesuits was a business of immense difficulty,
and Amat knew well enough that it would increase the already
disturbing number of his enemies. But the command had come
in the hand of the King himself, sent out from Spain by a special
messenger, and it was Amat's duty to carry it out in every detail.
The Jesuits were powerful, with many relatives and connections.
It was necessary to act with complete secrecy, arresting and as-
sembling members of the Order all over the country, at the same
time that a ship was made ready to take them out of Peru. It
was a difficult, dangerous business, and the Viceroy needed the
comfort which was Micaela's to give. The mere presence of such
a woman is like the hypnotic touch of tender stroking fingers
driving out care, refreshing the mind, preparing it to resume its
burdens.

In all Micaela's life these must have been the happiest years,
Amat was still a fine specimen of a man, with a shapely leg
inside his silk stockings, a figure which set off well his embroidered
jacket and waistcoat, and under their fine lace ruffles his hands
were not yet aged, while his upturned rolls of grey hair crowned
the whole man with distinction. True he had lost some teeth, but
Micaela's admiration of achievement could overlook a mere matter
of teeth.

Meanwhile the eighteenth century was advancing toward its
close. In France the Pompadour had died, the King had replaced
her with Madame du Barry, and in the Colony of Virginia, Patrick
Henry was beginning to talk about liberty or death, though few
yet dreamed of such a thing as freedom for slaves. Still his words,
like far off thunder, presaged a storm.

But in Lima it seemed as though life would go on forever as it

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was, "ancha y lenta? a broad leisurely stream of pleasure, with
gallantry the supreme business of existence.

Micaela's life in those days seemed cloudless. She knew,
naturally, that aristocratic Lima detested her, that it would hurt
her if it could. But what of it? Even the sneer of "chola" could
not touch her. What did the taunt of "half-breed" matter while
on the stage she could still fascinate, by her every word, her every
movement, by her song and her beauty ? After all, in spite of their
jealousy of her they, too, were her slaves really.

Surely nothing could ever alter her radiant life. The Viceroy
had loved her for eleven years. She was not afraid of losing him,
for he had not so much as listened to the cabal against hex. And
to the prestige of his patronage, to the glamour of their relation-
ship, there was added the deep satisfying joy of acting.

Then, in a moment, she herself shattered her own paradise, as
the great earthquake had suddenly without warning destroyed
the Lima she had first known. As quickly, as unexpectedly as
that, her paradise fell into ruin.

It happened at the theater. The play was CaldenSn de la Barca's
Fuego de Di6s en el querer bienl Maza, the impresario, had the
role of the gallant* Micaela played the lady r&le.

For some time past she had suspected that Maza was showing
partiality to a new actress, a certain Inesilla, Now, as Micaela
was reciting her lines, Maza murmured low in her car: "More
spirit, woman! More spirit! Inesilla would play it better/'

Micaela then forgot everything; forgot the audience, the Viceroy
in his box, everything but the injustice, the insult of Maza r s words*
And instantly she raised a whip which she carried in her hand,
and struck Maza across the face.

The curtain went down upon a house shouting, "To prison with
her! . , * To prison "

In his box the Viceroy turned the red of a crab. It was long
told in Lima, and recorded by Ricardo Palma, that the Viceroy
was as red as a crab when he left the viceregal box.

And with his going the perf onnance for that night was aban-
doned.

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Terraced streets in the city of Machu Picchu

A JOURNEY IN TIME

So it was that Micaela Villcgas destroyed herself.

She had done what was to the Viceroy an inexcusable thing;
she had made a disgraceful scene, and she had been justly hooted
by the audience. He, the Viceroy, as her lover, felt that the insult
was his as well as hers. He had ignored the enmity brought upon
him by his love of her, but, as representative of the King of
Spain, he could not condone that outrageous scene. Micaela had
put herself in the wrong.

Late in the night, when the Viceroy thought that Lima slept,
he went with a lantern, cautiously through the dark streets to
Micaela.

"It is all over," he said. "All that has been between us is over.
And you should be grateful that I don't order you to go tomorrow
to the theater on your knees to beg pardon of the public,"

And then he said good-by: "Good-by, Perricholi."

He would have flung at her the scornful taunt, "Perra chold*
^half-breed bitch." But the words emerged as "Perricholi."

Afterward it was said that in his anger, what with the absence
of certain lost teeth, and what with his Catalonian accent, the
Pcrra chola, the insult he would have hurled out of his sore
heart, became Perricholi:

"Adios, Perricholi!"

So Micaela, who had been the petted actress, La Villegas, came
to be known as La Perricholi in disgrace with the Viceroy and
not permitted to appear on the stage of Lima's playhouse.

'That's the end of her," people said, as the months passed and
Micaela went no more to the palace and rode no more in the
Viceroy's retinue. All the best rdles were now Inesilla's. La
Villegas was forgotten. La Pemcholi was that ignominious thing,
a fallen favorite.

Thirteen years the first actress of Lima, eleven years mistress to
the Viceroy, she was well accustomed to the enmity of the jealous,
but enmity sweetened with envy is a difierent matter from tri-
umphant contempt

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And because the bitterness of failure lies much in its effect
on those most dear to you, Micaela must now have heard with
agony her mother's voice calling from the balcony to the little
Manuel: "Qmtate del sol, Nino." . , . "Remember you are not a

nobody " The familiar words were uttered with a plaintive

attempt at their former arrogance. And Manuel, Micaela was
ambitious for him. He was to have been educated, taught Latin
even; perhaps one day to be a viceroy like his father.

And always she must suffer the thought that at the theater
Inesilla was playing her roles, singing her songs.

The theater was Micaela's life and she had lost ft

But for her comfort there was Felix, the brother who had never
failed her. . . . Surely there must often in those days have come
to her the lines from the hunchbacked poet who had known how
deep scorn cuts into the soul.

"Dios no lo da todo a uno. * * .
Pr6vida naturaleza
Nubes congda en d vicnto,
Y repartiendo sus lluvias,
Riega el arbol mas pcqucno"

"God does not give all to one* . *
Beneficent nature
Gathers into winds the clouds,
And dispersing the showers,
Refreshes even the smallest tree/'

What folly to have believed that God would give all to oacl
Just because for a time all had seemed to be hers.

But it was beyond question difficult for one who had been La
Villegas to become used to being only La Perricholi.

In her banishment there were inevitably tongues to bring to
Micada news of the Viceroy. The Viceroy, so these gossips said,
was much concerned that robbers were grown so bold that nobody
dared go out at night without sending ahead several slaves

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A. JOURNEY IN TIME

with lanterns. And Amat had set himself to arrest the whole
brazen gang.

However sad of heart he might be, a viceroy could go on with
his work, but for an actress without a stage, without an audience,
there was nothing. The days were long without new roles to learn
and rehearse, the nights were intolerably lonely. Perhaps the
Viceroy had forgotten.

Lima buzzed with the Viceroy's prosecution of crime, and then
it was known that the criminals had been arrested, proved guilty
and sentenced.

In the great square then, the convicted were hanged, and the
women who had been accomplices, their heads shaved, were
made to walk three times under the gallows, and sent then to
the prison to receive each fifty lashes.

The Viceroy was tireless. Now he announced that Lima must
be properly lighted, and he made it compulsory that a lantern
should burn all night before the door of every private house, and
that, at the expense of the shopkeepers, there should be lanterns
burning on every street-corner.

Perhaps, Micaela must often have thought, in all this activity
he had no time in which to miss her.

But it was not easy to forget Micaela. The theater was not
the same without her. The palace rooms which she had filled
with laughter and with the rustle of taffeta were as rooms whose
light had been put out. Lima itself ... of what use to have
lanterns burning before every door and at street-corners, when for
him, the light of it all was gone?

And then there was Manuel ... he would see his little son.

Finally thus Amat came to the end of his endurance. Viceregal
indignation, viceregal pride could no more hold out against his
longing for Micaela.

And Amat went back to Micaela.

"Keep out of the sun, child/' Manuel's grandmother called from
the balcony; once more the happy number of a Viceroy's titles,
spinning like a merry-go-round in her brain: Gentleman of His

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Majesty's Bedchamber, Superintendent of the Royal Finances,
Knight of the Order of San Juan, Lieutenant-General of the Royal
Armies, His Excellency the Viceroy of Peru, representative of
the King himself. * . .

And all this had come back to Miquita, her Miquita, just a
chola child, born far up in the Sierra.

Was there ever more noble a sight than the Viceroy stepping
from the viceregal coach, coming back to Miquita? The very
dung that his six mules deposited before the door while they
awaited His Excellency was royal dung.

But Micaela was thinking of the theater, which was her life,
explaining to Amat that she must return to the stage.

She would make the name "La Perricholi" that contemptuous
gibe which had fastened itself upon hershe would make it as
brilliant as ever "La Villegas" had been.

La Villegas that was the past La Perricholi should be the
shining future.

But for all her high spirit Micaela came trembling upon the
stage on the night of her return* Then it was Amat himself who
cried encouragement from the viceregal box;

"Courage and sing well!"

And never in Lima had there been anything like the ovation
that was La Perricholi's on that night.

Micaela was intoxicated with the success of the Perricholi.

There had always been in Lima an unwritten law that only
the nobility of Castile might ride in coaches drawn by as many
as four mules; others, no matter what their wealth, must be content
with a lesser number. And there now came to Micaela the idea
that she would scandalize this aristocracy by setting up for her-
self a coach-and-four. The coach should be decorated in gold,
with panels elegantly painted. Postilions in a livery trimmed with
silver should mount the mules, and there should be lackeys too,
also in livery. So would she drive through the streets to the
dismay of all who had gloated over her humiliation.

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A JOURNEY IN TIME

This had been perhaps a fantastic dream, fashioned in an hour
of despair. Now, down to the smallest detail, it came true. And
Micaela, in silks and laces and jewels almost as costly as the ward-
robe of the image of Our Lady of Rosario in the Church of Santo
Domingo, set forth in her coach-and-four to ride through the
streets of Lima.

But there, in the street of San Lazaro, went the Parish priest on
foot, taking to one who lay dying the last Sacrament the Viati-
cum. Following the priest was an acolyte with a tinkling bell to
announce their coming, so that all might fall to their knees in
homage to the passing of the Host.

Micaela then felt her heart break that she should ride in the
pomp of four mules, while the body of Christ was carried in
humility, and she stopped the coach and ran to the priest begging
him to take her place in the carriage.

So, in the end it was the Sacrament that drove in the magnif-
icence of coach-and-four, while Micaela, her triumph washed in
tears, followed on foot.

The coach, its mules, its postilions and lackeys in livery, she
gave to the Parish, to be used only when the Sacrament was sum-
moned to the dying.

The individual life falls into epochs, much as the life of the
world is separated into centuries; both in turn further redivided
into smaller units of experience. And now Viceroy Amat was
being retired; he would go back to Spain for what of time re-
mained to him on earth.

And Micaela? People wondered about Micaela. Would she
go with him? Or why didn't Amat himself remain? He was
old and had been absent many years from Spain.

But the Viceroy sailed away forever and Micaela stayed on,
the famous Perricholi of Lima's theater. Perhaps they both
realized that what had been between them had gradually faded
out of existence- And it was not in Amat's nature to live where
he must see a successor ruling in his stead, while for Micaela it
was too late to risk establishing herself as an actress in a new

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country. She clung to the city where she had made her place,
It was better so for them both.

The fourteen years of their union thus came very quietly to its
end. Yet, though it passed from the visible and the actual, it
still survives in the ghost-world of Lima.

Change was coming, too, to the aging eighteenth century. As
it approached its close it broke into fragments, as though shattered
by some missile hurled with deadly aim out of space, destroying
much that had long been familiar.

In North America a Revolutionary War had been fought and
won by Colonies which then formed themselves into the United
States. In Venezuela a child named Simon Bolivar had been
born. In France heads were falling under the guillotine. But
in Lima, beyond the outgoing of one Viceroy and the incoming
of another, the life-stream flowed still wide and slow.

The young Manuel de Amat was having his Latin lessons,
Micaela was playing at the theater, and there was a new actor,
Don Fermin Vicente de Echarri, who had become her friend.
She had entered upon a period devoted to the quiet satisfaction of
work.

While, far away in Barcelona, her old lover, Amat, had amazed
all who yet had any interest in him by the astonishing fact of
marrying his niece.

How old was he?

Lima computed. Why, he must be nearly eighty.

Already it seemed long ago that he had madly loved Micaela*

And when he at last died the news was not important to Lama*
For he was become merely a romantic tradition.

Then, in his turn, the Viceroy who had succeeded Amat was
retired and Ambrose O'Higgins, Marquis of Osorno, took his
place.

Micaela could remember that when she was a girl this O'Higgins,
a young Irishman, had come to seek his fortune in the New World*
He had been just a peddler with a stall in the row of shops under
the Cathedral, a stall and a mule, and Riquera, a young Spaniard,
for partner. But their business had failed The young Spaniard

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A JOURNEY IN TIME

had gone back to Spain, and O'Higgins had ridden his mule down
into Chile where he had joined the army.

Amat had been Captain-General of Chile at the time, and he
had assigned O'Higgins to the task of building stone huts on
the east and west approaches to the Pass over the Andes, to serve
as shelter for travelers between Mendoza and Chile.

Now the foreign peddler O'Higgins was come back to Lima
as a Marquis and the Viceroy of Peru. How greatly this would
have astonished Amat! And Riquera who had been his partner
in that shop under the Cathedral had got himself educated and was
become Archbishop. They'd been just a couple of itinerant
peddlers, and were now the greatest men of all South America,
since Lima was the richest and most important city of the con-
tinent.

But her own Manuel, who had had every advantage her money
could give, was a worthless young sport, hanging forever about the
women of the town. Micaela sent him to Europe in the parental
delusion that a far place works miracles, but he returned unaltered
and she had later to shut him up in a religious reformatory to pre-
vent his marrying a strumpet, a proceeding which made an un-
fortunate scandal, for both Manuel and the girl tried to bring
legal action against her, as is shown in the archives of Lima. But
really Micaela couldn't let Manuel marry out of his rank like
that. After all, as her mother used so often to say, he was the son
of a Somebody. It was a duty to Viceroy Amat to get his son
properly married.

Micaela was nearly sixty when she herself finally took on the
"muy dccente" title of Senora, by marrying her fellow-actor,
Fermin Vicente de Echarri. It was toward the end of the century
that she entered this epoch of her life, and with her husband
signed the lease for a new theater of which together they were to
be the managers.

So Micaela's life flows over into the nineteenth century, the
century of South American independence. She was beginning to
hear talk of Simon Bolivar and San Martin. People said that
Bolivar had freed Venezuela and New Granada from Spain, and

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that in Buenos Aires and in Chile San Martin had done the same.

Strange talk, that would have seemed insane in the time of
Amat! Slaves, too, it was said had been set free. But strangest of
all, she, Micaela, had become an old woman. Now after the
names of so many that she had known, her mind wrote the
words, "ya difunto"

The Viceroy, Amat, now defunct.

Her mother, now defunct.

Then her husband, also defunct.

But the brother Felix dear faithful Felix remained.

Then it seemed to have happened all at once the time came
when she was too old to act.

Nothing was now the same, but Felix, and the coach-and-four
which she had given to the Parish, still passing on its way to
the dying.

This new century seemed to move more quickly than the one
in which she'd been born, for as the time shortens it appears un-
accountably to speed up. It was hard to believe that Manuel had
settled down to a proper marriage and that she had a grand-
daughter, grown already to womanhood.

Then before Micaela knew where the time had gone she was
sending for a notary to draw up her Will:

"In the name of all powerful God, I, dona Micaela Vil-
legas . . , believing in the mystery of the Holy Trinity . * .
trusting in our Holy Mother, the Apostolic Church, in whose
faith I have lived. . , . Begging the intercession of the most
serene Queen of the Angels, Maria, Holy Mother of God,
and the intercession of all the Saints of Heaven. . . .

"And because to die is natural, and it must not find me
unprepared, I commend my body to the earth and my soul
to the most precious Blood, Passion and Death of our Re-
deemer. , . . And when I am dead I would be dressed in the
habit of the San Franciscans, and have my funeral held in
the Church of the Recoleci6n ... but with no more than four
candles, for I would give the cost of pomp to the poor* . * ,

"I bequeath to my brother Jos Felix Vilicgas, for the great

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The tower at Muchu Picchu

A JOURNEY IN TIME

love and affection with which he has served me eight hundred
dollars, and a room in my house for the rest of his days. . . .
"Of what remains, two thirds goes to my son, Manuel
de Amat, and a third to his legitimate daughter, dona
Toniasa. . . . With my blessing and the benediction of
God. . . ."

And now all was ready. But there remained yet three months
in which life might slowly ebb away:

"Felix, do you remember?" . . .

"Miquita, I was thinking of the time that "

Outside, the street cries told off the hours:

The tea-womanteas for every ill but that final inevitable
death, hourly creeping nearer.

The flower-man: "A garden! A garden! Muchacha, don't
you smell it?"

Ice cream and wafers rolled thin.

Those who went begging alms for the souls in Purgatory.

Night now, and because of Viceroy Amat, lanterns burn-
ing before every door and at the street-corners; Amat the first
to give Lima light throughout the night. . ,

"Felix, do you remember?" . . .

Then the trotting feet of mules, the rattle of the coach. , * .
The Sacrament coming in a coach-and-four. . , . Why did it rattle
like that? . . . The coach, too, was getting old. Yes, of course,
the coach was old. . . .

Three years later Captain Basil Hall of His British Majesty's
ship, Conway, chanced to be in Lima and saw a "great lumber-
ing old-fashioned coach drive up to the entrance of the Cathedral
where it received the priest charged with the Host, and then
moved slowly away to the house of some dying person."

And in answer to his questions he was told that the coach had
belonged to a certain Perricholi, a famous actress now dead. It
was she who had given the coach to the Parish. . . * Oh, it was
a long time ago that she'd given it

[237]

XII

GALLANT MRS. PROCTOR
Across the Pampa

A CERTAIN Mr. Proctor went out to Lima from England as agent
of the contractors for a loan just negotiated with Peru. He took
with him his wife, an infant son, a man-servant and two maid-
servants. The party shipped to Buenos Aires aboard the Cherub*
a brig of two hundred and six tons.

And it was more than a hundred years ago that they set sail.

King George IV was Proctor's sovereign, and the painter, Dem-
ing, was doing a portrait of the little four-year-old Princess Vic-
toria; wearing a vast plumed hat, a fur piece sedately crossed upon
her bosom, and a very full velvet frock right down to her ankles.
Pedro The First had just been crowned Emperor of Brazil,
Thomas Jefferson was approaching the end of life and James
Monroe was President of the United States, when the brig,
Cherub, sailed from Gravesend for Buenos Aires, with Proctor and
his family en route to Lima.

I eagerly turned the page!*

This man Proctor was actually to see what my imagination was
struggling to recreate. He was on his way to the Lima of a cen-
tury ago.

The voyage was long; sixty-three days from Gravesend to
Buenos Aires. Then, from Buenos Aires to Lima there were two
routes, one by sea around the Horn, the other overland across the
Cordillera of the Andes into Chile, where the journey was con-
tinued by boat. There were plenty of people in Buenos Aires to
describe the discomforts and dangers of the voyage around the

* Narrative of a Journey across the Cordillera of the Andes and of * Residence in
ISrna, by Robert Proctor, Esquire. Published 1825, Edinburgh.

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A JOURNEY IN TIME

Horn, and plenty of others to say that the trip over the Andes was
"impossible for females." But after sixty-three days aboard the
brig Cherub, Proctor fancied the way over the mountains. And,
after all, there had been previously two Englishwomen who had
crossed the Cordillera with their children.

Therefore it was decided to travel by way of the Andes. And
Proctor began immediately to make preparation, for the Cordillera
winter was near at hand and there was no time to be lost.

A carriage must be purchased, for, as Proctor says, there were
"females to be conveyed." Also there would be needed a cart
for luggage. The carriage was a light two-wheeled affair, with
a pole instead of shafts. Each horse carried a postilion, and the
pole was attached by leather thongs to their saddles. It was ex-
plained to Proctor that this method prevented the horses* upsetting
the carriage, "however they might rear and kick." And he was
advised to take along wine and spirits and biscuits, since on the
road even the necessities were scarce.

All other arrangements he might safely leave to the courier
who, for the sum of a hundred and fifty dollars, would take com-
plete responsibility for the trip; across the Pampa to Mendoza,
over the Cordillera, and down to Santiago. Postilions and the
necessary relays of horses would be provided by him. The
couriers were under the government and were fully experienced,
having been, as it were, born and bred upon the road.

Then, when all was ready, the Proctor family had galloped
forth from Buenos Aires, bound for Mendoza, at the foot of the
Andes, a thousand miles away over the level Pampa.

And at Mendoza they would find General Don Jos de San
Martin* Proctor carried letters to him. San Martin would be
able to make clear all that had been happening in Lima. Far
away in Buenos Aires it was impossible to know what to credit
and what to reject.

Quite naturally Proctor was anxious for detailed information.
He was charged with ratification of the Peruvian loan and with
the power of drawing for the amount on London. It was of
importance to him whether the Royalists or the Patriots would

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be in control of Lima when he arrived Much had happened
that was not easy to understand. But General San Martin who
was at Mendoza would be able to explain out of personal knowl-
edge. General San Martin was a remarkable man. To him,
more than to anyone else, Buenos Aires owed her independence.
Then he had marched an army right up over the Andes that he
might help to free Chile from Spain. Later it was San Martin
who had first carried the word of independence to Peru.

After that, what had occurred was not clear. The Royalists had
been driven out of Lima, but now there were rumors that they
were regaining lost territory. It was known that San Martin had
gone to Guayaquil to meet and confer with Simon Bolivar; to
ask his help in Peru, people said.

But Bolivar had not yet come, and San Martin had left Peru
and retired to Mendoza.

Why?

Who could explain that but General San Martin himself?

Proctor would find him in Mendoza, at the foot of the Andes,
a thousand miles away over the Pampa.

And San Martin, out of personal knowledge, could explain all.
Therefore Proctor would reach Mendoza as soon as possible.
Moreover winter in the Cordillera was coming on. So they had
galloped out of Buenos Aires*

They were to cover fifty, sixty, seventy miles a day, depending
upon the condition of the road, and upon whether or not the ex-
pected relays of fresh horses were waiting* They were to travel
all day from early morning, and their nights were to be spent in
post-houses.

As I turned the pages I had sought some word which would
make Proctor's wife come alive for me. But not even her name
was given,

I would like to know whether she was Ruth or Elizabeth,
Violet or Isabel or Marjorie. I would know, too, what she looked
like this woman who so long ago had traveled out from England
to Lima; whether she was a tall, long-faced blonde, or a bnmcttc,

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A JOURNEY IN TIME

small, but not too small, and with the face of a wild rose. The
more I thought about her, the more persistently she appeared to
me as the wild rose. And by the time I was convinced of that
I was sure that her name was Dorothy, because more than a hun-
dred years later I knew a wild rose British Dorothy Dorothy
Popenoe who would have undertaken just such a journey of
hazard and discomfort, in the same gay eager spirit which I felt
was Mrs. Proctor's; and she also had never found a baby a handi-
cap. Guatemala and Honduras, the later Dorothy had known
them well, and when she went from the earth, had left behind
her, not only a quiver of babies, but a pictorial and a written record
of her knowledge.

Erudition I could not bestow upon Mrs. Proctor for it was only
in spirit that I found a resemblance in her to the Dorothy who
was my friend.

My conception of Mrs. Proctor's character was drawn more
from all the things her husband does not say in his narrative,
rather than from what he says. I was confident that she loved
that galloping forth from Buenos Aires, that she was both serene
and merry, and that she possessed the gift of conveying these
qualities to others, also that she was resourceful and practical.
For had all this not been the case Proctor's narrative could never
have been the carefree chronicle that it is. The scene was set
for endless trouble. There were, for example, the maid-servants
who might with good reason have complained every inch of the
way; and there must not be forgotten the complications that might
well have arisen from the fact that there were two maid-servants
and but one man-servant* And how perturbed Mrs, Proctor
might have been about that infant son, and how much she might
have grumbled on her own account

Yet there is in the narrative no hint of any of this.

As for Proctor himself, I found him a gentleman of integrity,
observant of detail, conscientiously recording events precisely as
they occurred, but never seeing around, or beneath or into any-
thing* I imagined Mrs. Proctor (with that sparkle of humor

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PERUVIAN PAGEANT

It was obvious that the writer's motive was jealousy. But to
strike at such a moment, at a time of momentous crisis, when,
with dangers and difficulties on every side, the General was
preparing for that conflict which was to decide the fate of all, to
strike thus was an infamous thing.

OXeary understood that the blow had gone deep into that
region of the heart which never forgets. It was the sort of injury
for which, whatever joyful thing the future may hold, there is
no healing.

It has happened, and nothing can ever be done about it.

There is only to call together what remains, and with that to
carry on.

Bolivar thought of Sucre, tireless, selfless, loyal He must write
to Sucre at once. Sucre must understand that the great final battle
for liberty was now to be his, and not Bolivar's. The responsibility
and the glory would be Sucre's. Only he must not fail to realize
that the Patriots could not afford to lose so much as one battle.
Any repulse would be fatal. There must be nothing but victory.
Therefore Sucre must proceed with the greatest caution. And he,
Bolivar, would forward reinforcements and money.

In calling upon what remained to him he summoned the
blessed solace of work. He could still work for the great cause*
In Lima there was much to be done, and as he traveled back to
the coast he mustered along the way a thousand additional men,
as well as supplies and horses; sending them back to Sucre's army
as it marched over the Sierra in the wake of the retreating Royal-
ists.

Yet all the time there was heavy in Bolivar's heart the unbeliev-
able fact that command of the Colombian Army had been taken
from him his own army, the thing he had created, which was
part of himself*

It could not be. , , * Yet it was*

I wondered if at that time he knew, if a letter had come to tell
him, that Manuelita SScnz was on her way from Quito to Peru*
But whether he expected her, or whether her arrival was a surprise,
there she was, meeting him in the village of Haura, on ihc coast

A JOURNEY IN TIME

And often a gaucho pursued his herd, galloping widely across the
Pampa, his poncho streaming vivid, his lasso, an aerial serpent,
descending unerringly upon that particular beast which he would
capture. I can see Mrs. Proctor pointing out these riders of the
wind to her dumpling of an infant son (he must have been that
sort of a child), while her husband is methodically recording that
"the most valued horses to the gauchos are the roan and the pye-
balled. They do not like black horses."

Then fertile pasture lands gave place to flat arid country and
there was a day when the wind was high and the dust thick. Mr.
Proctor had a bad horse and was five times thrown. In the dense
dust it was difficult to see or to speak, and Mrs. Proctor must have
been alarmed waiting for assurance that he had not been injured.

In that desolate and melancholy country there had been no
habitation save the wretched post-houses marking oft the land-
scape into lengths of a day's journey. Sometimes the desolation
was peopled by herds of small deer which scurried away from
the noisy approach of the carriage. And there were armadillos
and lizards, locusts of enormous size, quantities of little bizcochos
grunting around the underground burrows they share with the
small grave owls which Mr. Proctor saw standing solemn guard
at the entrance of the burrows. So much for Mrs. Proctor to point
out to the child on her lap ! Ostriches, too, the ostrich of the South
American Pampa, and often gauchos hunting them.

When there had been rain the country was flooded, and once
or twice the carriage was mired and they had had to send for
aid. And it happened that sometimes they found a post-house
abandoned, and had to drive on to the next to find their relay of
horses.

But Mr. Proctor passes lightly over their disappointment, as
though no weary females had murmured.

When they had come again into fertile country the posts were
better and it was even possible to get eggs and milk. And there
was a region where the landscape took on the bizarre aspect of
delirium, because of the native custom of storing grain in the
hides of oxen; sewed together in pairs, suspended between up-*

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PERUVIAN PAGEANT

right beams, and stuffed tight with corn; so that the land seemed
inhabited by a monstrous species of beast, of which, curiously
enough, none was living. It was a country where grass and
thistles grew so tall that they might well have nourished gigantic
beasts. It was a region, Mr. Proctor says, where Indians from the
north and the south frequently raided the haciendas, murdered
the inhabitants and carried off their cattle. Near the deserted
post-house of Barrancas he found the stark fact of vengeance in
the "perfect but quite dry corpse of an Indian, hanging by his
wrists in a stunted tree." Mr. Proctor "cut off one of the arms
and kept it as a curiosity."

And how did Mrs. Proctor feel about that, I wondered.

And then I decided that she must have been the sort of woman
who accepts her man as he is.

He was her man, that was enough. Still, it is possible that she
did object a little for Mr, Proctor comments, "after all, it has no
odour."

The fact of the arm led me to speculation about the female
servants. I concluded that they couldn't have been Irish, or
Welsh, or even Scotch, or they would have had qualms about
traveling in company with the arm of an Indian who had been
hanged to a wayside tree. There were dangers enough in the
visible world, they would have felt, without inviting the Lord
knows what from the spirits. The master might have been better
occupied than cutting the arm off a dead Indian.

But even though they were apparently without superstition
they must have been glad that as they neared Mendoza the post-
houses were larger, and gayer, with grog-shops where the gauchos
came to drink and to gamble. It must have been cheering to see
some life even though it were the life of what they would have
called barbarians; barbarians in red ponchos with knives at their
belts. It was something for any woman to watch men like this;
to see them stick these knives into the counter of the bar, as a
pledge that there was to be no blood over the game; or to sec them
when in anger they forgot the pledge and fenced fiercely with
the great knives, as though they had been foils-

[244]

The lofty sundial at Machu Picchu

A JOURNEY IN TIME

Truly these were men! In the eyes of mistress and maid alike.
And how they could ride! Why, they thought it nothing to be
able to pick up a dollar from the ground at full gallop!

Sometimes they would bring their women with them to the
post-house. Creatures less savage than the men, and full of
curiosity about the dress of this Mrs. Proctor and her female ser-
vants. Did they have things for sale? And if there was nothing
for sale, why were they traveling through the country?

Often at the post-houses there would be someone who played
the guitar. And to music which spoke of the desolate melancholy
beauty of the Pampa, Mrs. Proctor must often have fallen asleep.

Sitting under a green-shaded light in Room 300 of the New
York Library, I had thus turned the pages, forming my picture of
Mrs. Proctor of her little son and her maid-servants.

And then at last I had come to a paragraph in Mr. Proctor's nar-
rative which proved me right in at least one of my conjectures.

Crossing a wide plain, Mr. Proctor saw in the distance the en-
campment of a caravan of mules, and rode over to investigate.
They were carrying wine from Mendoza to Buenos Aires; red
wine, a cask of it balanced on each side of every mule. Securing"
some of the wine Proctor went with his prize at full speed to
rejoin his own party, and from the summit of a ridge of rolling
ground he saw with anxious dismay that the carriage had been
overturned.

His wife, his infant son, the two maid-servants. * * . What had
happened?

Spurring on his horse he dashed forward, to find when he pulled
in his breathless animal that his females were making very merry
together over the accident, and that no one was hurt*

Yes, I had known she was like that; glad of heart and with
the gift of imparting her gladness to others*

At Mendoza

The Proctors had been twenty days on the road whea they

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saw rising up before them the stupendous wall of the Andes, so
high that to look up at the snowy peaks it was necessary to
strain their necks. Staring up at those prodigious mountains
it must have seemed to them incredible that they could ever cross
over into Chile. They must have had to remind themselves again
of those two English women who, with their children, had safely
made the journey.

Now, as they neared Mendoza, at the foot of the mountains,
the post-houses had become more comfortable; luscious Muscatel
grapes were hung from the beams, and all about were vineyards
and fields of verdant clover.

And finally there was Mendoza itself, its domes and spires
shining among the trembling green of poplar trees.

A thousand miles of Pampa lay behind them, a mosaic of
memories; wide horizons drawing a circle about a fiat world,
where gauchos galloped, whirling the sinuous writhing coils of
rope which at their will lassoed cattle and horses and ostriches;
the Pampa punctuated with post-houses, gauchos there too, stick-
ing their knives in the counter of the bar, drinking, gambling,
fighting, sometimes singing to the soft twanging of a guitar;
sleep then, and another long day's journeying over the wild free
Pampa; and once an Indian, hung by his wrists in a low scrubby
tree "quite dry, no odour."

And now at last Mendoza.

There the Proctors were guests at the house of an English
"medical gentleman," What a change from the post-houses on
the road! It would be good to rest there for a few days.

A traveler just come down over the Pass had reported the first
snowfall, and the Proctors were counseled to allow time for this
to melt before going on. It seemed that before the Cordillera
winter actually set in, there were these preliminary falls of snow.
And while they waited for it to melt Mr. Proctor could be making
the necessary preparations for their journey.

The traveler had brought news that Lord Cochranc,
Commander-in-Chief of the Chilean Navy, had been invited by
the Emperor, Pedro, to take charge of the Navy of Brazil, and

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A JOURNEY IN TIME

that some weeks ago Cochrane had sailed around the Horn-
bound for Rio de Janeiro. Also the traveler brought a rumor that
the Royalists were about to regain possession of Lima.

Because of this, Proctor was impatient: he must get on as soon
as possible to Lima. But to occupy his impatience there were the
preparations and the letters which he must present to General San
Martin.

Of course everyone in Mendoza knew General San Martin.
They called him the Lion of the Andes because he had led an
army over the Pass. Now the Lion had come back and settled
down on an estate not far from the town. Why had he left
Peru just when he did? Naturally Mr. Proctor wanted to know.

As to that, people explained, the General himself said that his
part was over when he had delivered to Peru the great message
of independence. That done, he would leave the future conduct
of the country in the hands of its citizens. He would not have
any accuse him of scheming for the power of dictatorship. His
youth, he reasoned, had been given to Spain; his middle years
to the cause of independence for the South American colonies; his
old age he wished to spend as he pleased.

Now, on his hacienda, they said, he was making many improve-
ments, and in Mendoza he had established a library and a school.
And he was making plans for his daughter. His wife had died
gone like his youth and his middle years. He would take his
daughter to Europe for her education; to Miss Phelps' English
school at Brussels. Then he would travel; visit his friend, Lord
Fife, in Scotland, and William Miller's mother at Canterbury.

Of all that unhappy business in Lima the General seemed to
speak with reticence. It was known that Lord Cochrane blamed
him; had Martin had a stronger policy, he said, the Patriots might
not be now in danger of losing what they had gained. But
others thought the General a hero. He had left Peru, they argued,
because he had felt that only Sim6n Bolivar could bring victory
to the Patriots, and that Bolivar would not share with any the
glory of that achievement* Therefore San Martin had with-
drawn. Also, it was believed that they had differed in opinion:

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PERUVIAN PAGEANT

San Martin had favored a monarchy for Peru, ruled by some Euro-
pean prince, and that against such an idea Bolivar had been ever-
lastingly opposed.

But these matters, freely gossiped about in Mendoza, San Martin
himself seemed reluctant to discuss.

At Mendoza there would also have been many to explain to the
Proctors the causes of the furious struggle to free South America
from Spanish domination. "Spain was to be great," they said,
"at our expense. It was money that they wanted of us, always
more money. Do you know that they forced Spanish goods on
us at their own price? We were not to traffic with foreign na-
tions; not even with other Spanish- American colonies! And we
were not to grow anything that would compete with what was
grown in Spain. As for the Indians hundreds of thousands have
died in the mines to supply the gold that Spain demanded. Spain
was ruining us and at the same time scorning us as Creoles*

"Some years ago there was an Indian of the royal family who
rose up, calling himself Tupac Amaru II. He had tried in every
way to help his people without bloodshed, and then he rose
up. ... But in the square of Cuzco they tore him to pieces. Yes,
literally tore him to pieces* What they did to him there, and to
his wife and his children, and many others of his followers, is
too horrible to be told. We heard about it here because they sent
asking troops to help put down the revolt. And this that hap-
pened in Cuzco was so dreadful a thing that it helped to rouse the
Peruvians to independence.

"But all this you will hear when you get to Lima. . . ,"

And at Mendoza, the Proctors would have been told something,
too, of the sort of life which they themselves would live beyond
the towering mountain wall, and something of the people they
would meet.

It was a pity that Lord Cochrane was gone to Brazil Things
would not be so gay without Lady Cochrane, No one who had
been present at their arrival in Chile would ever forget it. Lord
Cochrane, tenth Earl of Dundonald, with his spectacular record
in the British Navy had come out to organize and command the

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A JOURNEY IN TIME

Navy of Chile. Matchless, intrepid Lord Cochrane! Valparaiso
had made him a welcome that none could forget. And he had
given in return a great banquet where he had presided in the full
regalia of a Scottish chief.

And after that what a place Valparaiso had been while San
Martin and Lord Cochrane had been preparing for the expedition
to free Peru, for they had agreed that with Spain ruling in Peru
there could be no safety for a Republic in Chile. Peru also must
be free. And while they were organizing this expedition, Val-
paraiso had been gay; every day a picnic, or a ball, a dance, or a
dinner. Fascinating Lady Cochrane had loved all this. She and
the Chilean wife of Commodore Blanco had been the very heart
of it; each beautiful, each supreme in her own type.

Now, perhaps, life would be less brilliantly gay. But there re-
mained many whom the Proctors would enjoy knowing; Captain
Basil Hall of his Majesty's ship, Conway, cruising up and down
the coast in the interest of British trade and the rights of British
subjects. True, the Conway might, by this time, have been ordered
elsewhere, but certainly they would meet their countryman,
Colonel William Miller (there was talk now of his being made a
brigadier general). Born in England at Wingham in the County
of Kent, he'd been a soldier in the service of his own sovereign
until there was peace. Then he'd come out to Buenos Aires full
of enthusiasm for the struggle of the Americans against Spain.
He'd come out six years before in the year that San Martin had
marched the army over the Pass into Chile,

Everyone liked Miller. He'd been popular when he was in
Mendoza: a young man, tall and good-looking and very fond of
parties; especially the big Sunday gatherings when people rode
in from the haciendas to dance and sing and play at forfeits. And
in Chile it had been the same; everyone had liked William
Miller. San Martin was devoted to him.

So, in its delight at the arrival of new ears, would Mendoza
have immediately poured out the story.

And then the Proctors met San Martin.

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PERUVIAN PAGEANT

"He often joined us without ceremony," Proctor writes,
"and amused us much by his interesting anecdotes. ... He
had a happy method of relating them; his features animated,
especially when conversing of past events/'

In this talk of the past, San Martin must certainly have ex-
plained to Mr. Proctor, as he had to Captain Hall of the Conway,
the methods he had used for the winning of independence in
Peru. He could not fail to be anxious that Proctor, sent out to
Lima on the important matter of the loan, should understand. , . .

"The contest in Peru," he would have explained, "was not of
an ordinary description; not a war of contest and glory, as I saw
it, but entirely a war of opinion; a war of new and liberal prin-
ciples against prejudice, bigotry and tyranny.

"People used to ask why I didn't march to Lima at once; so I
might have, and instantly would, had it been suitable to my views,
which it was not. I did not want military renown. I wanted
solely to liberate Peru from oppression. Of what use would
Lima have been to me if the inhabitants had been hostile in
political sentiment? ... I did not choose to advance a step beyond
the gradual march of public opinion.

"Thus, patiently, I brought about the Royalist evacuation of
Lima."

As to what had happened since, Proctor must see for himself.

But the talk could not have been all serious, for according to
Captain Hall "San Martin could be playful when that was the
tone of the moment." He could turn from "that flashing energy
with which he spoke of those political matters close to his heart,
and he would then enchant his listeners with stories of his past:"

So long and varied a past; Paraguay where he was born, that
Spain which had claimed his youth, South America again, and
the great dream of independence.

How was it that Miller had put it? 'The object of the Inde-
pendence," Miller had said was to "assure the political existence
of a vast continent and to ascertain whether or not the time had
yet arrived when the influence of South America upon the rest

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A JOURNEY IN TIME

of the world should be rendered commensurate with its extent,
its riches and its situation."

Ah, but that was getting serious again

Perhaps now Mrs. Proctor might be interested in the story of
an extraordinary old dame who owned an hacienda near to Lima.
It might be that Mr, Proctor would meet her. When he San
Martin had been in Lima this lady had come asking him for a
safe conduct pass. She wanted to go to Pisco. Owing to the up-
set conditions of the revolution, there was a shortage of Pisco
brandy in Lima, and it was the old lady's idea that she would
take a matter of fif ty mules, go to Pisco, buy brandy at something
like eight dollars a jar and return to sell it in Lima. If she could
get in ahead of other speculators she might sell her brandy for
as much as eighty dollars the jar.

The lady and her mules had turned up near Pisco at just the
moment when Miller was direly needing transport animals. He'd
pressed her mules into service, told her the emergency was great
and that he could not respect the General's safe conduct papers.
She'd called him "a wretch who could never hope to reach the
gates of heaven"; she'd gone further and said he was the "very
devil himself."

But Miller had calmly appropriated the mules. Then, vowing
not to let her beasts out of her sight, she'd gone along with the
army, in pursuit of the Royalists, There wasn't a man who could
manage a horse better, and not a muleteer who could beat her
throwing the lasso. She'd ridden beside Miller through long
exhausting marches, riding astride and wearing big silver spurs.
You'd have thought she'd passed her whole life in the army. Now
she said she didn't give a whistle about the brandy, or whether
she ever got her mules back, provided only the Patriots put the
Royalists to rout. Miller said she had a voice like a boatswain's,
and that she'd shout encouragement to the men, until the desert
rang with her words.

When it was over, and the Royalists driven back from the coast,
Miller returned her mules and offered to pay for their use, but
she wouldn't accept a penny.

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And a year later Miller heard that the lady had willed her
hacienda to him!

A remarkable woman! Perhaps Mrs. Proctor would meet her,
for die hacienda was near to Lima.

Ah, there were so many stories ! It was a pity the Proctors were
going on so soon to Lima.

After these days in Mendoza Lima must have taken on for the
Proctors the color of reality.

But, barring the way, there stood the Andes.

And in Mendoza there were not only stories of Lima, but of
the Andes. Travelers who had met death on the desolate sum-
mits were reported to haunt their unburied bones, and there were
also the demons of the mountains. Things happened up there
that you couldn't explain.

Yes, but remember the two Englishwomen with their chil-
dren. . . .

Over the Cordillera

The number of mules, Mr. Proctor says, were thirteen, and it
was necessary to take everything that would be needed; beds,
blankets, provisions, cooking utensils as along the way there
would be nothing. All must be foreseen in advance. As for the
transportation of the females, they were to ride> he explains,
"upon pillions with straps to support the back; the women sat
with legs hanging down and resting their feet on a small board
attached to the saddle. And the infant rode in the areas of a
mounted peon."

In this fashion they set out from Mendoza to surmount the
Andes.

I could fancy Mrs. Proctor again reminding the maid-servants
that two Englishwomen with children had once made the journey.

Proctor had perhaps been too impatient to get under way to
dwell upon the difficulties. His mind was heavy with the re-
sponsibility of ratification of the loan to Peru and with fear of the
delay which might be caused by snow on the Cordillera. Travelers,

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The peak above Mnchu Picchu

A JOURNEY IN TIME

he knew, had been forced sometimes to spend the winter in
Mendoza because of snow in the high Passes. And then the
Lord only knew what might at that moment be happening in
Lima! Every hour's delay might mean that he would find the
Patriots the revolutionaries deposed, and the Royalists in
power.

But now at last he saw his expedition ride out of Mendoza.

They spent the first night at a farm, only six miles from the
town, and from there made a very early start the next morning, for
they must that day cover forty miles.

The road for some distance skirted the edge of mountains,
barren, sandy and hot, with not a tree to give shade. It passed
then over rugged ground piled with stones; a wearying road for
beasts and men.

In the late afternoon they entered the Sierra and began to climb,
winding up and up between two high ridges until they came
to water, to a brook where at last they could drink, could moisten
lips parched in the high dry air. But it was dusk before they
reached the hut where they were to stop for the night.

"The females," Mr. Proctor says, "were so wearied as scarcely
to be able to walk, besides being stiff with the falls of which they
had several during the day." The little boy, however, bore it re-
markably (I'd known from the beginning that that child was a
happy dumpling of an infant!) "and at the end of the day did not
even wish to quit the peon who carried him,"

The rest were too fatigued to eat, too exhausted to do more than
take reviving drinks of hot white Mendoza wine and get at once
into bed*

Again, on the following day the mules climbed, the mountains
ever more and more precipitous, and Proctor increasingly admir-
ing the sagacity of mules.

And at that page I had ceased for a moment to read; meditating
myself upon the wisdom of mules. If there is any earthly creature
of which it may be said that he is always right, that creature is a
mule. If you might say of a man that he was strong of body, and

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o an industrious energy; that he never took a step without weigh-
ing the conditions, testing the feasibility, assuring himself pru-
dently in advance; that once having made a decision he then
proceeded with confidence however hazardous the way; that he
was sure of himself and not to be turned aside; then, if all this
were true, you would have described a superman, a man fitted to
live, to survive all others, to triumph.
Yet this describes the merely average mule.

"The mules [my mind had returned to Mr. Proctor's page],
the mules stopped frequently to look how they could best
avoid a chasm or reach a rock on the other side. Standing

firmly on their hind legs and trying with their fore feet

After winding in this manner for a few hours, the valley was
closed by a mountain, and the road struck to the right, up
the face of the range."

(Oh, I knew it would do just that!)

"The road," Proctor resumes, "struck to the right, up the
face of the range. The ascent was accomplished by a zig-
zag pathway worn by the feet of mules in the shape of a stair-
case the animals' heads all turning different ways as they
were passing different angles of the road."

At the end of that day there was a miserable hut for travelers
where the Proctors spread their beds in a shed, hanging up all
the blankets they could spare, as windbreaks.

And the day after that was one of those days which, as you look
ahead, appear impossible,

A tremendous snow-crowned mass blocked the way, but the
mules descended into the dry bed of a river which in the rains
was furious enough to have cut a great chasm through which it
might rush unfrustrated. Beneath a sun which parched and
blistered, the mules followed the path of this river, the trail wind-
ing up and down, sometimes no more than fifteen inches wide,
the mountainside falling steeply away hundreds of feet below* the

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path at times so precarious that it was necessary to dismount and
lead the mules.

"The situation of the traveller," Proctor explains, "if not
dangerous, is certainly extremely awful. Below is the preci-
pice . . . above, the mountain, in many places overhanging,
and consisting of such loose substances that the traveller is
fearful lest they give way and overwhelm him. Small wooden
crosses stuck in the side of the mountain, here and there, tell
the fate of some poor wretch thus destroyed."

And all the time the Proctors' mules, mule-fashion, kept to the
very edge of the trail, remembering that if the burdens they
carried should strike against the mountain, they would be dashed
down into the great gaping abyss on the other side.

When this perilous day had at last come to an end the Proctors
spread their beds close to a roaring torrent. The muleteers
made a fire of the dried dung collected along the way. Arrow-
root gruel was prepared for the small son, slices of boiled beef were
fried, and in a ketde there was brewing that comforting fragrant
drink of white Mendoza wine. The muleteers drank mat tea
and smoked. And all about towered black peaks pointed with
snow. And a bright moon shone down upon the tethered beasts,
upon the group around the fire, while, in the shadows, their beds
waited.

"And thus," Proctor says, "we spent the evening pretty
merrily, our eyes every now and then directed to the stu-
pendous mountains, reclining calmly in the light of the moon."

And the strange exaltation of such evenings following upon
such days, I also was to know, ever so many years after Proctor
had gone to his grave: so that as I read what he had written
memory and experience wrote between his lines a second book,
fragments of which have now and then insisted upon being set
down on these pages where, with the Proctors as my companions,
I journeyed into the century of independence in Peru.

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The Proctors had left Mendoza on the fourteenth of April, and
on the fifteenth had begun the ascent of the Cordillera, continued
on the seventeenth, and early on the morning of the eighteenth
had arrived at the second of the Passes which lead up to the
cumbre the Great Pass. On either side of the cumbre, at inter-
vals of a day's journey there was to be found in those days (be-
fore Pan-American airplanes flew travelers over the "hump,") a
small stone hovel raised twelve feet from the ground, to lift it
out of the depth of possible snowfall; one of those huts which
Ambrose O'Higgins had built at the order of Perricholi's Viceroy,

At the second Pass the Proctors slept in another of these hovels,
and in the morning their water jars were frozen three inches
deep.

It was on the following day that they came to hot springs where
they stripped the infant son and bathed him in a natural stone
basin in the top of a mountain-cone. It was on that day, too, that
they came upon the bones of an Englishman, murdered two years
before, and on that day also that they crossed the cumbre.

At the foot of the ascent they made lunch, taking plenty of
onions and wine as a preventive against the mountain-sickness
of the Andes- And then, remounting, they arrived at the Pass,
after a two hours' climb up a staircase cut in the steep face of the
range. They arrived, without sickness and in the "highest spirits,"

And at the summit they paused:

"Behind, nothing but the valley we had left, at an immeasur-
able depth, dismal and solitary. Above, on each side, craggy
peaks, snow covered. Before, the view dreary and unpromis-
ing. Enormous black mountains, barren and savage* The
descent appeared to lead only to a gloomy pit, down to a road
to look at which almost made us giddy* The wind was pierc-
ing, the air cold, our lips swollen."

They had paused, and had then begun the descent, painful and
dizzy, down the stony slope, until finally the trail had dropped
to where vegetation began timidly to show itself; cactus

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A JOURNEY IN TIME

with scarlet flowers, and then willows and blossoming vines.

They had come over the Cordillera, and into Chile.

Now to future women travelers it might be said in Mendoza
at the foot of the Andes in the east, and in Santiago, at the foot
of the range in the west: "Oh, yes, it is possible. There were the
two Englishwomen with their children. . . . And just the other
day there was Mrs. Proctor, with an infant son and a couple of
maid-servants. Oh, yes, it is possible; difficult, but possible*"

Lima

Eventually the Proctors arrived at Callao, Lima's seaport, toward
the end of May, after a voyage of ten days from Valparaiso aboard
the East Indiaman, Medway. And from Callao they traveled to
Lima in a carriage, seven miles over a wide busy road, crowded
with carriages and horsemen and droves of mules. The carriages
were of brilliant color, painted blue with red wheels, the decora-
tion gold, and the lining of yellow silk. Men on horseback were
in ponchos, sometimes gaily striped, sometimes rich with em-
broidery, the stirrups were heavy, of carved wood or silver, the
spurs enormous, the hats of white fiber. Negro muleteers, under
vast brimmed hats, seated atop mules, their long naked legs hang-
ing almost to the ground, cracked whips and shouted directions
and curses to lines of animals burdened with barrels of flour
from North America, bales of silks and cottons from India and
China, of tobacco from Guayaquil, sugar from the north coast, and
huge eighteen-gallon jars of brandy from Pisco- And all stirring
up a fine haze of dust.

About a mile from Lima the Alameda came out to meet the
travelers, with its paved road twenty yards wide, bordered by
four rows of feathery willows, and at the end the three arches of
the main gate into the city.

The Proctors* carriage drove through the gate, and past houses
with great studded doors and grilled windows, the plaster of the
outer walls often adorned with fresco paintings, with everywhere
the steeples and domes of churches, convents and monasteries, and
in the streets cowled priests and mysterious, hooded ladies.

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They found the town preparing for a ball, the Patriots still in
power, and the natives of Buenos Aires living in Lima, giving a
ball on the anniversary of their own independence.

Lima, like a woman by nature of gay heart, never lost for long
her gift of joy. "Ah," the Limenians used to say to Captain Hall
of His Majesty's ship Conway, "ah, before the revolution our city
was that in which pleasure held court; wealth and ease were our
attendants. Enjoyment was our only business, and we dreamed of
no evil but an earthquake."

So Lima was now making ready for a ball, though the shadow
of capture by the Royalists grew every day darker.

After the coming of San Martin the Viceroy had set up his
capital in the far interior at Cuzco, but there were persistent rumors
that any day he was making ready to attack.

Yet, here was Lima dancing at a great patriotic ball, and Proctor
commenting on the decorations, the regimental band, the con-
fectionary, the fashions, the distinquished personages on whose
chests shone San Martin's Order of the Sun, the speeches and toasts
and the elegance of the Spanish dances.

A week later Proctor obtained the formal ratification of the
loan, and now his duties were concerned with drawing for the
amount on London; whatever that may mean.

Meanwhile Lima Lima refused still to be uneasy. Simon
Bolivar would, of course, come to drive the Spaniards out of all
Peru, as San Martin had driven them out of Lima. Already there
was talk of a fiesta in Bolivar's honor.

Of course when Bolivar came, then the Godos (as the Patriots
contemptuously nicknamed the Royalists) would be easily and
completely vanquished. But within six days there was a report
that up in the mountains the Godos were moving. The Patriots
would not believe it. ... It couldn't be possible that die Godos
were coming before Bolivar arrived to defeat them.

Bolivar had previously sent to the aid of Lima Colombian
troops under General Sucre. But why didn't he come himself?
Why did he insist that he had to wait for permission from the

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A JOURNEY IN TIME

Colombian Congress? He was President of Colombia; why
couldn't he act without authorization ?

And further dispatches were sent urging the necessity for his
coming.

Then in six days more, it was certain that the Godos had ad-
vanced to within seventy-five miles. William Miller (a general
now) was sent with eighty dragoons along the road which they
must follow down from the Cordillera, and preparations were
made for defense: the Colombian regiments were stationed in one
quarter, the Chileans in another, while those of Buenos Aires
garrisoned the forts at Callao.

General Miller took his dragoons out, and the government gave
orders to pack and send everything to Callao, Private families
did the same, and the sick troops were moved from the hospital.

"Congress must now dissolve itself," people said.

But still there were Patriots who could not yet believe in the
return of the Royalists.

And Bolivar remained in Ecuador awaiting his country's per*
mission to join in the Peruvian campaign.

The Proctors had been just two weeks in Lima when General
Miller sent word that the Royalist army was advancing.

Now, even the most sanguine were perturbed.

Mules and horses . . * everybody wanted mules and horses to
take them to safety in Callao, or up the coast to Trujillo. But the
government had commandeered what animals there were. Mr.
Proctor, notwithstanding his official capacity as agent for the
London loan, could not get mules; he must wait until the govern-
ment effects had been taken to Callao.

And still the Congress argued, until there was sounded the
cry:

"Ya cstdn los Godosl"

There was no contesting the fact. The Royalists were arrived.

Then at last the Congress surrendered its power to the Presi-
dent And on the next day Proctor received a license for forty
mules.

Three weeks in Lima, and now Mrs. Proctor was making ready

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to flee, gathering together what things they would need in Callao
and what they must attempt to save from the probable sacking of
the city. Mules came jostling and pushing into the patio, and
while they were being loaded Proctor had the doors locked to
keep out the mob. Again the females were stowed away in a
carriage and again Proctor rode beside them on horseback.

The road, so busy with trade and travel when they had arrived,
was now jammed with the terrified inhabitants of Lima, carrying
with them what they could.

Callao was crowded and thousands more were on their way.
Every arcade in the seaport was converted into a dwelling, by
hanging matting between the arches, and along the beach there
were rows and rows of huts made of matting attached to poles
driven into the sand.

Afraid of pestilence in the overcrowded town Proctor moved
his family out to the East Indiaman Mcdway, in which they had
come up from Valparaiso. And, anchored in the harbor, they
saw the transport arrive bringing six hundred soldiers sent down
from Guayaquil by Bolivar.

But Bolivar himself why did he not come?

Bolivar, General Sucre said, still awaited the consent of the
Congress in Bogota.

It was decided to send a force south to keep back Royalists forces
in that direction, and the Mcdway was chartered to transport
troops.

The Proctors then transferred to the Harlcston, another East
Indiaman lying in the harbor of Callao. From its decks they
could see the forts on land and the mountain ranges rising back
of Lima. Sea-birds flew up and down the coast, to and fro from
their guano-white islands; shrilly crying, if that was the nature of
their species, or if they happened to be pelicans, passing in a
majestic silence. It was June, and the soft grey mist of the Lima
winter lay often upon the land and the water.

The Congress and the President moved the government to
Trujillo.

The Royalists had entered Lima.

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"La Pcrricholi"

A JOURNEY IN TIME

If Bolivar would come, people said, even yet, by the very magic
of his prestige, they might be saved.

Proctor, leaving his family living aboard the Harleston, went
north to Trujillo, there to confer with the fugitive government.
When he returned, five weeks later, the Royalists had left with
their booty, feeling themselves not at the time strong enough to
remain at the risk of possible attack from the Patriots in Callao,
nor sufficiently prepared to advance against the forts of the seaport.
When they had gone Lima's inhabitants had returned to their
homes, and those members of the Congress who had not moved
to Trujillo had elected another President: so that there were in
Peru two Presidents and two Congresses, one at Trujillo and
another at Lima.

And Proctor transferred his family from the Harleston to the
apartment of a friend leaving Lima for England.

The house was the usual two-story quadrangle built around a
patio. The Proctors had the section on the right while the owners
occupied the opposite side and the part which faced the great
entrance doors. The colonnade surrounding the patio was gilded
and painted, and the lofty rooms enormous,

At last Mrs. Proctor could establish a home. And there she
came to know Lima's way of life in the century of independence,
sharing as she did thus intimately with the owners one of the city's
great houses.

She found that the early breakfast was of chocolate and rolls,
and that to occupy the morning hours there were Masses in the
various churches. The streets were then full of women whose
slaves followed a few paces behind carrying the rugs on which
their mistresses would kneel, for there were no pews in the
churches. And when they walked in the streets the ladies of Lima
went shrouded in black mantos which covered them, like dom-
inoes, from the waist up, while from waist to ankles they wore
the say a which Proctor says "showed a good shape in the most
exciting manner."

But for the fact that the manto completely enveloped its wearer

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above the waist, enclosing the arms, shrouding the head and face,
leaving exposed just one bright eye, the say a might not have been
so devastatingly exciting. For it was perhaps this contradiction be-
tween the two garments that was so irresistibly provocative that
for long before the costume was abandoned, it was hotly opposed
by the clergy.

The manto ostensibly represented what the Church held as the
ideal of womanhood, pious modesty hurrying to morning Masses.
It was in a sense a cloister behind which a woman might live
apart from the world. But it was also a disguise, a mask, making
recognition almost impossible, difficult even for those to whom
a woman was most intimately known. It kept all secrets, and
therefore granted freedom as well as modesty.

As for the saya it mocked at any virtuous pretensions on the
part of the manto, for the saya revealed everything* It fitted the
figure as a stocking fits a leg, and as it approached the ankle it
narrowed until it allowed barely space in which to take a mincing
step. (Mr. Proctor thought it produced a "wanton gait") And
beneath the saya the astonishingly small feet of the Lima women
tripped in satin shoes, their ankles clothed in silk stockings.

It was a costume that could be executed simply and cheaply as
well as in the finest materials. The poor woman's saya might
be of plain stuff in black or brown, the woman of wealth would
have it made of satin, the frivolous would trim it to the knees with
embroidery, or with rows of pearls, or deep lace flounces: though
the woman of aristocratic elegance preferred it in plain black
satin, laid in innumerable fine pleats.

The manto was always of a light but impenetrable black fabric,
gathered on a cord about the waist, with an opening left in
front. It was worn turned up over the head, and inside, one
hand held the opening closed, leaving visible only a single glow-
ing, luminous black eye. If a woman had pretty hands and
bright jewels she might permit the fleeting glimpse of a hand,
and sometimes she would let a brilliant bit of scarf or shawl
flutter through the opening in her manto.

The combination was perhaps the most sensational dress that

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A JOURNEY IN TIME

women ever wore. During the years when it was the mode no book
descriptive of Lima fails to mention it. Every visitor, however
serious his business in Peru, has something to say of the saya-y~
manto. Captain Basil Hall was impressed. The brave soldier,
General William Miller who led cavalry and won battles, who
knew how to suffer as well as how to fight, whose body carried
to its grave twenty-two wounds, he, too, took the trouble to set
down a detailed description of the saya-y-manto in the Memoirs
which his brother compiled from letters which he sent back to
England in those ten years when he was in the service of the
Republic of Peru.

Of course you would expect Miller to be interested, for he had
always an eye for the feminine; for the "fairy grace of Lady
Cochrane," and the "fascinating beauty" of Senora Blanco. Did
not the woman at Mendoza who had danced the minuet in her
riding habit appear in his Memoirs? And after all was it not a
woman who, by saying, "Were I a young man, I would never
abandon a career of glory for a career of gain," had influenced him
in his decision to join the army of Independence?

Other writers, too, were concerned about the saya-y-mantos of
Lima, for Robert Burford, in a prosaic description of the city,
digresses a hundred years ago to write of the feminine costume
of the streets of Lima:

"It will be long/' he says, "before a disguise so well adapted
to intrigue will be relinquished. . . . The saya defines the
contour of the figure to the best advantage, distinctly showing
the muscular play of the body and limbs and the rich fullness
of person for which the women of Lima are celebrated. , . .
The manto is so complete a disguise that the wearer goes
wherever and does whatever she pleases without fear of de-
tection. Ladies of the first rank will sometimes disguise
themselves in the meanest soyas."

And writing a century ago the English physician, Dr. Archibald
Smith, practicing medicine in Lima, and the Lady Emmeline

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Stuart Wortley, an effervescent globe-trotter of her day, both
have much to say of the devastating saya-y-manto.

Thus attired, women once passed through the streets of Lima,
never to be forgotten by any who saw them; gay, pious, ad-
venturous, mysterious. They made history, these masked women:
their soft-voiced influence was felt in courts of justice, in politics,
in diplomacy, and on the fields of battle.

And in yet another way they were unique. Dr. Archibald
Smith who, as a physician, saw them more intimately than any
who have described them, found that there was among them an
esprit de corps which seems never to have existed between women
elsewhere in the world:

"The greatest sinner among them," he says, "is never left
without a gentle voice to plead her cause* This forgiving
system runs through every class and rank from the highest
to the lowest, but it is in lofty circles that its influence is most
worthy of particular notice. No one ventures to throw the
first stone at the unfortunate; and there insensibly arises a
gradation of vices and virtues, dove-tailed into each other,
so as to constitute a social whole, wherein the different degrees
of moral deviation, are all shared by an overwhelming
charity."

Overwhelming charity among women! For that quality alone
those masked ladies merit immortality,

To Doctor Smith's testimony, those who knew the women of
long-ago Lima have added that they were also of warm, caressing
nature, that they were adepts in coquetry from their cradles,
practiced in the language of the fan, lovers of pleasure, graceful
dancers, musically talented, tender in illness and with children,
and devoted worshipers in the Holy Catholic faith.

"In the manner of the Limenians," General Miller said, "there
is a spell" And Ulloa, the Spanish explorer, thought the charm
of their conversation and their manner inimitable.

It was among such women that Mrs. Proctor had come to
live. And, as she was almost the only Englishwoman then in

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A JOURNEY IN TIME

Lima they were curious about her. Mr. Proctor says that often
they would stop her in the street to examine and admire her
dress, and to exclaim over her little son: "Quc frcciosol Que
bonitol"

After the morning Mass it was the custom for these ladies of
Lima to drive in their carriages along the Alameda which
bordered the river, out to the baths a mile away where in tiled
pools, under vine-covered trellises, they bathed wearing light
dresses made for the purpose.

At noon, in elaborate gowns, formally seated on velvet sofas
and chairs in a grand sala hung with silk, they received guests.

From these, her new friends, Mrs. Proctor learned the social
usages of Lima. Women, she found, always embraced each other,
but they must never shake hands with a man. She discovered
that it was considered elegant for slaves to bring in perfume which
the hostesses poured down their own bosoms and the bosoms of
their feminine guests; and that there were baskets of flowers over
which scent had been sprinkled, a blossom to be ceremoniously
presented to each gentleman.

When the visitors had gone, and the great doors were closed
for the hour of midday breakfast and siesta, then, says Mr. Proctor,
it would invariably be discovered that the household was in need
of something spice or vinegar, salt or butter and slaves would
be sent hurrying to the plaza to buy; to buy also from the street
vendors of cooked meats what was needed for the meal. Thus
purchasing, Mr. Proctor laments, "always at the dearest rate.'*

Food was prepared with much lard, even in the soup, a quantity
of red pepper was added, and the meal finished off with very sweet
preserves.

After the siesta, in their most elegant costumes, the ladies of
Lima went to drive on the Alameda, in painted carriages with
postilions in livery* And gentlemen displayed themselves on
dashing horses.

And in the evening, when there happened to be neither theatrical
performance, nor parties, then the proper amusement was to walk
to the bridge to enjoy the freshness of the night air and to gossip

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with friends. On the way home everyone would stop in the
plaza to eat at the fruit stalls and to drink frescos cooled with
ice brought down on mule-back from the mountains. Lima loved
ices and iced drinks, and concessions were let out to companies
organized for the purpose of regularly maintaining the mule-
service which supplied the city with ice from the Andean heights.

And when Lima society thus made merry abroad, at home
the slaves danced and sang to the music of guitar and harp and
drum.

Then the city slept, and Mr. Proctor found it a fact, "shocking
to an Englishman that both sexes slept entirely naked, without
even covering their heads."

And through this naked sleeping city, along the dim streets
watchmen passed crying the hours: "Ave Maria purisirna! Viva la
patriar then the hour, and whether or not all was welL

But while Lima was thus again quickly forgetful of sorrow and
danger, in the north and the south and the west Royalists forces
made ready for the struggle that was to be. This time they would
be prepared for victory.

But Bolivar did not come*

August passed, and the rumor that Bolivar was at last on the
way began to take on an air of certainty. A salute from the guns
in the forts of Callao would announce his arrival. And on the
first of September the guns were heard.

Bolivar had come. Bolivar would drive the Royalists out of
Peru.

And that, it was thought, would put an end to all troubles and
solve all problems! There was then no premonition of distressing
years of reconstruction, of the hazards which lay ahead.

Bolivar had come. That was enough.

Flags were flown from windows and balconies, the flags of
free Chile, free Buenos Aires, free Colombia, while along the
road to Callao troops marched to meet the Liberator*

To Proctor, Bolivar appeared as "a small thin man with an
appearance of great personal activity; his face well-formed but

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A JOURNEY IN TIME

furrowed with fatigue and anxiety; the fire of his quick black
eyes very remarkable; his mustachoes large; his hair dark and
curling." Proctor felt that "there was never a face which gave a
more exact idea of a man . . . boldness, enterprise, activity, intrigue,
proud impatience, persevering and determined spirit."

And Lima threw itself at the feet of this man who was to be
i v s deliverer.

\mong all the festivities in his honor there were bullfights.
The Patriot Congress had two years before abolished the bullfight,
just as it had prohibited any further extension of slavery. These
things it considered unworthy of an enlightened nation. But for
General Bolivar who was fond of the sport there was now organ-
ized a series of bullfights, and the fiercest bulls from all the
countryside were sent into Lima.

Proctor went to the first of them. He calls it "a day of bustle
and joy when the whole splendour of Lima moved toward the
spectacle. Horsemen nobly mounted, most of them officers riding
up and down to show off their gaudy costumes and medals. Ladies
in carriages splendidly dressed. Other ladies, after the fashion
of the country, curveting astride their sprightly palfreys; attired
in white gowns and long white trousers, with rows of small tucks;
a neat foot in a satin shoe with a light silver spur and a small
silver stirrup."

In the arena he found military bands playing, while in the bulls'
dressing room the animals were "tortured to fury by being clothed
in a dress of ribbons sewn to their skin by packing needles, and
fireworks fastened about them, to be exploded when they sallied

out."

And, in the President's box, there was Sim6n Bolivar.

Then came the procession; the matador in sky-blue satin jacket
and breeches, with a Spanish mantle of scarlet, also of satin; the
picadores on horseback armed with spears; the capcadores in
crimson with cloaks of different colors; behind them on foot,
others carrying figures of men and beasts stuffed with fireworks,
to be set off at moments when it was desired further to enrage a
bull

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And now the gate of the bulls' dressing room was thrown open
and the first of the tormented creatures came charging into the
arena.

The capeador curveted about him, blinding him with his cloak,
winding the animal until it was safe to turn him over to the
dagger-men who assailed him on foot; while the matador shining
in scarlet and blue satin calmly- waited. * . .

Horses were gored and died; a man was tossed in the air;
another was wounded and carried from the arena; the Images
stuffed with fireworks were exploded; the bull streamed with
blood from the flesh-wounds. And the matador waited . . *
waited for the breathless climax of death.

And then it was the moment,, He came forward quietly, his
cloak in his left hand, his sword in his right. He advanced to
within ten paces of the maddened bull. The bull lunged, his
sides panting, his tongue rolling, his head low. But the matador
received every attack with the cloak, his body moving swiftly and
lightly aside. And always the matador sought to plant his weapon
deep in the bull's heart. If he succeeded at the first thrust there
would be a prize of money.

Then at last Proctor saw the death; and the great gates opened
to let in a cart which dragged the dead bull from the scene.

In an intermission iced drinks and fruits and flowers were passed
among the crowd, and then again the gate into the bulls' dressing
room opened.

Thus, bull after bull was sacrificed in honor of Bolivar's coming.

"Then," Proctor writes, "the Alameda was full of bustle and
departure, when suddenly the deep Cathedral bell was heard
and all in a moment was silent, . . . The prancing steed was
curbed, the half-uttered compliment unfinished, the haughty
soldier doffed his shining helmet, and the whole Concourse
bowed for a moment in prayer/*

And as I read, the words of the Angelus came back to me;

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A balsa on Lake Titicaca

A JOURNEY IN TIME

"Holy Mary, Mother of God.
Pray -for us poor sinners
Nous and in the hour of our death.
Holy Mary, Blessed among women. . . .
Pray for us" . . .

Was it on the following day ? Or was it a few days later? At
any rate it was on the eighth of September, after Bolivar had been
a week in Lima, that, as Proctor briefly records, his wife was
"brought to bed of a son,"

To the event he devotes just that sentence and nothing more.

The information sent my mind back over the nine months of
her pregnancy: to the sailing on the brig Cherub from Gravesend
on the eighth of December; to the time when the carriage was
overturned on the Pampa, and Proctor found his three-months'
pregnant wife "laughing merrily" with her maid-servants; to the
mule-back ride over the Cordillera which had followed those
twenty days across the Pampa, ten days on a mule, over the dizzy
wearying trails of the Andes, with along the way wooden crosses
marking the place where death had come to many who had pre-
ceded her, and then, before the steep descent, the lofty cumbre
which she had crossed, as her husband puts it, in the "highest
spirits." I saw her then arriving in Lima (now five months
pregnant) and three weeks later forced to flee from the menaced
city, and, for fear of pestilence on land, to find refuge on a ship
lying in the harbor of Callao: to be left there while Proctor went
north to interview the government at Trujillo. And then, just
a few weeks before her baby's birth, her husband returning and
transferring the family back to Lima.

Yet the narrative in which Proctor records all this has no word
of anxiety about the conditions under which his wife was bearing
and giving birth to this second son. Not a word to say whether
she had come through the ordeal well, or with difficulty*

Merely that she had been brought to bed.

It would have been at best a suffering time, for it happened
long before the merciful use of ether or chlorof orm> and consider-

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ing the fatigue and exposure and turmoil of the whole period
of her bearing, you would have thought that Proctor's solicitude
could not have been kept out of the story. Nor would the whole
matter have been thus lightly treated had not Mrs. Proctor been
the gallant spirit she was.

"On the eight of September my wife was brought to bed
of a son."

That is all.

And so my mind turned to Archibald Smith, M.D., practicing
medicine in the Lima of that day: Doctor Smith would help me
to fill in the background of this part of Mrs. Proctor's life.

In another place Mr. Proctor has said that an English doctor
attended his family in Lima. And, through Archibald Smith, I
understood that Mrs. Proctor would often have heard the phrase
which he so frequently found flung at a foreign physician: "He
does not understand our climate," as if (Doctor Smith argues)
there were some occult quality in the climate of Lima, So
Mrs. Proctor's friends would have said: "El doctor ingUs? Pcro
no conoce nucstro clima "

And how solicitous they would have been about her every
symptom! Did she suffer from fatiga? Did she know that in
such cases it was highly dangerous to employ the usual restor-
atives lavender, or hartshorn, or eau-de-cologne ? In other forms
of aintness, yes, but never for the expectant mother ! If a physician
said otherwise, then he did not understand the climate of Lima.
But a piece of warm toast applied externally to the stomach, or
a breast of fowl sprinkled with cinnamon and moistened with
wine similarly applied, these would be found excellent remedies;
both for fatiga and for desconsuclo, that disconsolate sensation
which often accompanied fatiga*

Mrs. Proctor would have found that everyone was full of interest
and advice. There was not (Doctor Smith laments) a professed
sick-tender, nor a half-breed Indian housekeeper, nor a seamstress,
nor a female shopkeeper, nor a vendor of cigarettes, or chocolate,

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A JOURNEY IN TIME

who "was not always ready to talk with confounding fluency and
volubility, and without knowledge, concerning the temperaments
of patients, and the qualities of all diseases and all medicaments/'

If Mr. Proctor's English physician disagreed, why then, it was
evident that he failed to understand the climate. Otherwise he
would recognize the danger of hartshorn and cologne and lavender
in cases of fatiga and dcscansuclo.

And had Mrs. Proctor made her plans in case she could not
nurse her baby? Did she know that in the matter of wet-nursing
there was a vast difference between negro and Indian women?
All diets and all medicaments were, like all people, divided into
two classes, the cold and the hot, the heating and the cooling.
Black, for example, was cooling. Swollen joints must always be
bandaged in black. If one were ill of a fever it was a good thing
to go to the country and drink the milk of a black cow. So it was
that the milk of a negro woman was cooler and more refreshing
than that of an Indian. Mrs. Proctor must remember, in such
a climate as that of Lima, these things were important. Also
that at the birth of her child no perfume of any sort must be
allowed in the room for perfume would almost certainly cause
convulsions. In England, this might not be true, but in the
climate of Lima

I am justified in assuming this interest on the part of the women
in whose house the Proctors lived because Mr. Proctor, after an-
nouncing the bringing to bed of his wife, goes on to say that one
of the women of the house begged to be godmother to the child
at its christening in the Cathedral, where the Canon himself per-
formed the ceremony, he being a particular friend of the god-
mother, and that afterward they took the baby to the Archbishop's
palace to receive the rare honor of benediction by the venerable
Dean.

Obviously Mrs* Proctor had intimate friends among the women
of Lima, and made herself beloved.

Therefore, of course, those confidential medical conversations
which I have imagined must actually have taken place*

From the birth of Mrs. Proctor's child to the end of the story,

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the Proctors' fate was shaped by the rapidly developing course of
history, though for a time it seemed to proceed calmly enough, so
that Proctor who felt himself depleted by the monotony of the
climate was considering a trip into the Sierra.

Bolivar was busy with the tangle of intrigue between the rival
Presidents and the rival Congresses, and the machinations of both
against himself: those distressing complications which have al-
ways, everywhere, arisen in the crises of great revolutionary con-
flicts. Bolivar knew that domestic difficulties must be disposed
of; for it would not be possible for them to fight the Royalists and
each other at the same time, and to settle these squabbles he had
found it necessary to go north to Trujillo.

Meanwhile, far away in the city of Washington, James Monroe,
fifth President of the United States, was reading his message to the
Congress. In Europe after the final overthrow of Napoleon,
Russia, Prussia and Austria had formed the "Holy Alliance,"
whose "holy" purpose was to reestablish monarchial powers every-
where in Europe and in all dependencies of Europe. The Alliance
would have Spain proceed at once to put down revolt in its
American possessions and to subjugate those colonies which had
set up independent Republics.

England's Prime Minister, Canning, had suggested that Eng-
land and the United States should unite to protect the Spanish-
American Republics, and this was so important and delicate a
business that Monroe went to Thomas Jctfcrson for advice.

"Our first and fundamental maxim," Jefferson had said, and
for me the words echo in the familiar Virginian accent; echo
with a slow emphasis, always caressing, "our first and funda-
mental maxim should be never to entangle ourselves in the broils
of Europe; our second, never to suflfer Europe to intermeddle with
cisatlantic affairs,"

Therefore a courteous regret was sent to England and in that
December when Mr. Proctor was considering a trip into the in-
terior to restore his "depressed animal spirits," President Monroe
was reading to the Congress assembled in Washington the address
in which he proclaimed the doctrine that "The American con-

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A JOURNEY IN TIME

tinents, by the free and independent condition which they have
assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as
subjects for colonization by any European power. . . . We should
consider any attempt on the part of the powers of the Holy
Alliance to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere
as dangerous to our peace and safety. . . . And we could not view
an interposition for oppressing the Spanish-American Republics,
or controlling in any other manner their destiny, by any European
power, in any other light than the manifestation of an unfriendly
disposition toward the United States."

Wise statesmanship, if only there had been the further vision to
follow it up immediately with an invitation to the Spanish-
American Republics to incorporate the doctrine into a pact wherein
they played an equal part with ourselves! Then the New World
would have long ago formed that friendship toward which at
last it now moves.

My mind was full of all this as I went back to that December
when, in Lima, Proctor's physician was advising him to go up
into the hills to recover from his nervous depression.

Proctor thought it safe enough to leave his family. The trouble-
some President in Trujillo had been exiled, Bolivar had taken
the Patriot troops up to Cajamarca where they might be ac-
customed to the high altitudes at which the final struggle against
the Royalists must be made. With thus no immediate prospect
of that struggle, Proctor concluded to leave his family, and himself
seek recovery in the mountains.

But within a week after leaving he heard the amazing news
that again the Godot were advancing upon Lima, coming this
time along the southern coast. Perhaps already they were arrived!

Proctor, fearful for the safety of his family, turned his horse
about and hurried back to Lima. As he approached the city he
met many Indians on foot: the government had comandeered
their animals; Lima was in confusion; bands of robbers were
abroad; the Godos however had not yet arrived.

And BoHvar was ill at Pativilca and Masses were being said
for his recovery,

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Weeks of anxiety and wild rumor dragged by, and still the
Godos delayed their coming. And still the Proctors made no
effort to leave Lima. Proctor had come on a mission; while any-
thing might yet be accomplished he would remain. He docs
not so much as mention the idea of departure, even though the
eldest of the infant sons had long been drooping.

Then in the early morning during the first part of February
they were aroused by dreadful screams in the streets. The alarm
bells were ringing, people were rushing for shelter, and doors
were being barred.

But what had happened? What . . . ?

The garrison at Callao, die garrison of the forts had mutinied . . .
and was then on its way to pillage Lima.

The government ordered the gates closed, the shops shut, and
valuables hidden. At the ringing of the Cathedral bell every man
in Lima was to rush at once to the plaza; prepared to fight for
life and property.

Proctor knew now that he must have some means of escape;
he led his horses up the wide stairway and hid them in a small
upper room* At least there would be animals to take them if
necessary out of a besieged city.

At the same time the government was sending dispatches to
Bolivar to say that the President was suspected of treason and
that the Congress, after removing him from office, had dissolved
itself and put the whole power in Bolivar's hands. Bolivar then
appointed one of his Generals to take charge of Lima, and order
was to some extent restored.

And now the elder of the Proctor sons was so gravely ill that
the doctor said he could not be saved unless he were taken out
of the country or given sea air.

Leaving their baby with his nurse in Lima the Proctors took
the sick child to Chorillos some miles away beside the sea. But
they had been only a few days there when a servant came to say
that the baby was in danger of death. Also that the Godos had
advanced nearer to the city and that Bolivar's General in charge
had that morning gone out with a, force of eight hundred to meet

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A JOURNEY IN TIME

Then, regardless of peril the Proctors dashed back to Lima,
though they did not dare to risk taking with them the older child:
he must remain with his nurse in the sea air of Chorillos.

And in Lima, after the troops had gone out to meet the advanc-
ing Godos, the mutineers had entered.

Night fell thus upon terror.

Proctor had the great doors closed and the balconies fortified
with guns, pistols and ammunition: the danger was so great that
he forgets to say in what condition they found the baby.

Keeping watch through the night, they heard the firing of
muskets blowing the locks off doors, and then the frantic piteous
cries for help.

And in the morning such of these mutineers as had been caught
were bound to posts in the plaza and shot.

Even the enemy even the Godos people now said, would
be better than this terror*

Alarmed for the child and the servant left at Chorillos, Proctor
sent off two men for news. The men met them returning in a
carriage to Lima, for they had been terrified by thieves which
had broken into the house.

Meanwhile the Godos were now close to Lima.

Two days later they entered the city; three thousand men of
whom five hundred were cavalry: long yellow coats faced with
blue marching into a silent stricken city. While in Callao the
forts had gone over to the enemy.

And now the older child was so ill that he had again to be sent
away, this time to the house of a German living in the near-by
village of Miraflorcs. Robbers everywhere, the government sur-
rendered, both his children ill, Proctor at last concluded to get
away as soon as was possible. Nothing more could be done for
his employers, and he need no longer risk the very lives of his
family.

For many pages he has said nothing of Mrs. Proctor. Distracted
by anxiety, as she must have been for her children, there is no
suggestion that she urged flight from the desperate situation. No
steps had been taken to leave until the political chaos had made
it impossible for Proctor to carry on further.

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But now they would go.

The Crown, "a good vessel of three hundred tons/' was about to
sail for Rio, and from Rio they could be sure of return passage
to England.

With what relief Mrs. Proctor would have heard of that good
vessel sailing for Rio! And they to be aboard her!

Proctor brought the family down to Callao, and applied for the
necessary signature to his passport to Rodil, Royalist officer in
charge of Callao. But Rodil, in a frenzy of anger, marched about,
a green great coat flapping about his heels.

Proctor? Agent for the London loan! ... the loan to these
infernal Patriots! Proctor * . . who had broken neutrality . . .
asking now for signature to his passport! Proctor. . . , Never!

Lying in the harbor of Callao was His Majesty's corvette, the
Fly.

Proctor went aboard her, decided to claim naval protection as
a British subject,

Her captain, Captain Martin, was ashore. Proctor left a letter,
asking him to intercede with Rodil.

The family waited.

A night passed and a day. And in the evening Mr. Cragg,
master of the Crown, brought a message from Captain Martin
to say that Rodil would consent to allow Proctor's family to sail,
but that he still refused permission to Proctor himself.

There now remained but one day before the Crowns sailing,
Captain Martin had gone in to Lima, and Proctor had been
ordered not to leave Callao.

"Disappointment and vexation!" (Proctor wails.)

And what to do?

In the morning he discovered that permission for his family
to embark had been given to the Captain-of-the-Port who had
at the same time been warned not to allow Proctor to board the
Crown.

He decided, at whatever risk, to go to Lima and make another
appeal to Captain Martin.

Captain Martin regretted: he understood how distressing all

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A JOURNEY IN TIME

this was; he would write a letter to the Viceroy. Beyond that,
he said, there was nothing further that he could do.

But the Viceroy was in Cuzco, distant many days' journey I

And on the following day the Crown would sail for Rio.

Proctor went to his friend the family physician.

Which of the ideas buzzing in his brain was the most practi-
cable?

Should he go to Chorillos, and from there, after dark, hire a
canoe to take him out beyond the island of San Lorenzo? The
Crown could pick him up after she had left Callao. But the
Indians of Chorillos might not dare to let him have a canoe: they
would fear the anger of the Godos.

No, that was not a workable idea. But perhaps, if in disguise,
he left Lima after the fall of night, and rode some thirty miles to
an uninhabited stretch of beach, might he not arrange to board the
ship there? Yes, but where was he to find a muleteer that could
be trusted not to betray the plan ? And suppose the ship missed
his signal, or was blown so far out to sea that he could not reach
her. And suppose he should be attacked by one of the hordes of
roaming thieves ?

This scheme had scarcely a chance of success.

There remained, therefore, nothing but to try, somehow, to
get away from Callao itself, even though the Captain-of-the-Port
had been instructed to prevent his embarkation.

Proctor spent the night in Lima and after a very early break-
fast set out for Callao, in company with a consignee of the Crown.
Orders had been issued that no one could leave the city without
showing the proper papers.

A guard stood at the gates. It was a moment when salvation
lay only in a confident air. And, touching their hats, they
trotted unmolested through the gate and out upon the highroad.

That much was accomplished.

But at Callao the guards would be more strict. Proctor decided
that there he would ride ahead while his friend made lengthy
explanations about the lack of passport.

That, too, was achieved, and after stabling their horses

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Proctor and his companion walked arm in arm to the dock,
assuming a bold careless manner as they walked past the guards
and sentries stationed every few yards. They then hailed a small
boat and put off to where the Fly lay at anchor, as though Proctor
had no idea of disobeying RodiPs orders by going aboard the
Crown.

Now they must pass the line of gunboats; by miraculous luck
the sailors had gone ashore to be paid, and they passed unchal-
lenged, successfully boarding the Fly. There, by further luck,
was Cragg, Master of the Crown. His suggestion to Proctor was
to go out to another British ship, the Swallow, which lay out of
gun-range of the Callao forts. Keep the boat he'd taken from
the dock; otherwise the returning sailors might report against him.
Keep the boat, and wait on the Swallow for the firing of a gun
which was the Crown's signal for the harbor police-boat to come
off for inspection. Be ready then, and when the Crown hauled
down her colors, give the order, and try to make her as she sailed
out.

This plan the Master of the Crown must have explained to Mrs.
Proctor, waiting aboard with her babies and her servants.

Gulls whirled and mewed about the ships at anchor in the
harbor. Pelicans flew solemnly in single file north and south
above the shore line. Vultures soared over the town of Callao,
It was March, the end of summer and the air clear and soft,
with no haze to dim the Crown as Mr. Proctor anxiously watched
it from the Swallow, or the Swallow as Mrs, Proctor must have
scanned it from aboard the Crown.

They waited, but not until the middle of the afternoon was
the Crown's gun fired.

Proctor saw the police-boat reach the Crown; and again he
waited, until at last the colors began to come down, flapping in
a wind which blew out of the bay.

Now. . . . Row, men! Row fast.

But at that moment he saw the Captain*of-the-Port put out from
shore.

The sea was running high, and the Giptaia-of-the-Port gave

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A JOURNEY IN TIME

chase. He had a fine galley of oarsmen and was coming on fast,
gaining every moment on Proctor's boat. There was no hope save
in the wind which blew out of the bay, and fortunately his boat was
equipped with a sail.

Lay by the oars then, and hoist the sail.

It took time, of course, but it was the one chance.

Wind filled the sail. Now they were nearing the Crown, and
the Captain-of-the-Port, with his orders to prevent Proctor's de-
parture, was not gaining upon them quite so fast

The wind blew strong and true.

And surely Mrs. Proctor leaned over the rail watching . , .
hoping.

And then Proctor had grasped the rope. The crew was squaring
the Crown's sails. Proctor had reached the deck. Only a hun-
dred yards away now the Captain-of-the-Port waved and gestured
and shouted.

But the Crown sped before the wind, bound around the Horn
for Rio de Janeiro.

And the Proctors were gone.

[279]

XIII
VICTORY

I WATCHED the Proctors sail out of the harbor of Callao. When
they were gone I felt at first abandoned, left alone in that vanished
century.

Should I return to Lima ? But Lima was in the hands of the
Royalists, and my sympathies were with the revolutionary Patriots.
I decided therefore to join Bolivar at his headquarters in Trujillo,
ninety miles north of Lima. I loved the coast of Pcru > the long
strange stretches of desert cut across by bright green river valleys,
and the brilliant sea rolling in from the far horizon. I loved the
pure yellow and red of cactus blooms, the dry sweet wind blow-
ing off the desert, and the ranges of barren hills rising abruptly
from the sands. Therefore I would go to Trujillo.

And because Proctor had ridden overland when he went up
to confer there with the fugitive President, I, too, elected to travel
by land; over the hot sands among the pink and violet hills, and
along the firm hard beach where a furious surf roars and pounds,
and seals yelp among the glistening rocks, with at intervals of
what Proctor called "mortal leagues'* little villages with fighting
cocks tethered before every doorway.

And so I came to the busy military headquarters of General
Bolivar, more than a hundred years ago.

I was delighted to find there William Miller, for, like everyone
else, I had grown attached to the tall, straightforward young
Englishman, with his open friendly manner, his unpretentious
bravery, and his love of parties, I didn't at all wonder that the
old lady speculating in Pisco brandy, had lost her heart to him,
in spite of his having commandeered her mules in a military
emergency. He was 50 cheerful a companion, so simply and
naturally courageous, so entirely to be counted on.

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A JOURNEY IN TIME

He had been in Chile recovering from a sharp attack of fever,
but as soon as he had heard of the tragic conditions in Lima he
had hurried north to offer his services to Simon Bolivar.

And in Trujillo I met for the first time General Antonio Jose
Sucre. Of course Sucre's name was familiar, but it was at Tru-
jillo, in the year 1824, on my journey in time, that Sucre became
for me a real person. From the beginning I liked him. I liked
his alert intelligence, the quick movements of his body, and his
vivacious, always aristocratic manner; and especially I liked the
look in his eyes.

Sucre was dark and of medium height, where Miller was tall
and fair; he was the volatile Latin, where Miller was the essence
of all that is characteristically British- But out of the eyes of
both there looked the same honest valor.

At Trujillo, also for the first time, I met the Irishman, Daniel
OTLeary, then a colonel and secretary to Bolivar.

Miller, Sucre, O'Leary were all under thirty, and O'Leary was
only twenty-four. He had been just seventeen when he had come
out to Venezuela to enlist in the War of Independence. Since
then he had campaigned under Bolivar on the Llanos of Vene-
zuela; with him he had made the amazing march over the Andes
into Colombia; and he had fought in most of the celebrated battles
of Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador. He had in his blood a
love of liberty, for he was related to the famous Irish agitator,
Daniel O'ConnelL He was related, too, to the great Burke and
possessed something of Burke's gift for statesmanship and for
literary expression*

But above all those gathered at Trujillo, Sim6n Bolivar shone,
as the sun dominates the sky from the moment of its rising to its
going down.

I have known men who worked tirelessly, but never any who
toiled so feverishly and everlastingly as Bolivar- He understood
that the fate of independence in the whole of South America was
bound up with the outcome in Peru. For if Spain should retain
control there, there was no hope that the adjacent countries could
survive as free Republics* San Martin, realizing that there could

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be freedom for none unless there was freedom for all, had marched
an army over the Cordillera to help Chile to independence; and
Chile in turn had known that her own safety was impossible with-
out a free Peru. Equally a free Peru was essential to the safety
of the greater Colombia of which Bolivar was Liberator and
President. Let Madrid rule in Peru and it would be only a matter
of time before that region which he had freed in twelve years of
struggle would again be subject to Spain: that territory mapped
in his heart, stretching from the Orinoco to Quito, would be lost if
the Patriots were worsted now in Peru; all that he had so pain-
fully won would be eventually subjugated, "enslaved," as he put it.

Already the Royalists held Callao, occupied Lima, and were
firmly established in the Sierra. The very breath of liberty might
be snuffed out.

Bolivar's mind went over and over the situation: "We cannot
afford to lose so much as a single battle," he would say. "The
Liberty of all South America depends now upon us."

He had not tried to hide the truth: "The state of affairs is hor-
rible, but we must not despair." And to Sucre he said: "I am re-
solved to spare no means to compromise even my soul to save
this land." And then, courage flaming up within him, he vowed:
"This year shall not end before we are in Potosi!"

And I wondered whether thus desperately preoccupied as
Bolivar was he had time to remember Manuelito Saenz; Manuel-
ita the beautiful, people called her. Had she promised to leave
Quito and join Bolivar in Peru? Was he expecting her?

Miller never spoke of Manuelita. He was far too much in
the tradition of the British officer to gossip.

But I could not help thinking of her and wondering if Bolivar
was remembering, if in the frantic turmoil of preparation there
was not sometimes suddenly the memory of Manuelita.

But for Ricardo Palma (Peru's great man of letters) I should
never have known very much about hen As the young purser
on a ship calling at Paita where she lived in her old age, Palma
had been her friend, and his impression of her is direct and
personal; he had the story from her own lips. And of course

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among his acquaintance in Lima there were many to tell him of
her youth.

"La Saenz," as he was fond of calling her, was a great woman,
but frankly not the sort of woman that Palma could have fallen
in love with himself. He preferred the softer, more clinging type,
like San Martin's favorite who rode always in a carriage.

Manuelita rode astride, wearing full white cotton breeches and
a scarlet dolman. No, she wasn't unfeminine, for she added gold
or coral earrings. On the other hand she was not perfumed with
the romantic scents, but with the fresh odor of the verbena. Her
beauty was strong and vivid; lustrous hair, very dark, and bril-
liantly black eyes.

And she seemed never so much at home as in the hurly-burly
of a military headquarters. If she ever had nerves, she had learned
to master them. She could remain serene, people said, in the
midst of shot and shell; serene and efficient, even when facing
the keen-edged dagger of an assassin. And she had never known
the comfort of tears, finding her relief only in anger.

But there have been few women in the world who so well knew
how to love as Manuelita Saenz, And she loved Sim6n Bolivar.

She had been five years married to the English doctor, James
Thornc, when she first met General Bolivar. He had come to
Quito in the glory of Liberator of South America. Because of him
all the territory from the Orinoco to her own city of Quito was
free. And Quito received him in a delirium of adulation. Bolivar
was their deliverer. Bolivar was the greatest man in the world.

And he was romantic!

He had been an orphan at seven years old. (Pobrccitol) And
a widower at nineteen. ( Ah f qu& Idstimal) He had vowed never
again to marry, (QuS tristc, no?) With his heart in the grave
of a dead young wife.

Yet he could be gay; he could dance. Was there ever a man
who danced with so much passion as Sim6n Bolivar! Especially
the waltz. At the same time that he was virile, he was elegant,
dashing in his manner and in his dress,

And he could talk * , * how brilliantly he could talk!

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Because of all this he was become a legend of battle and victory
and heroism and romance. He could have won a crown, for the
people wanted to name him Emperor, but he had refused. He
had had riches, but he had freed the slaves he inherited and
poured out his fortune for the independence in Venezuela.

And, because of his greatness, how bitter his enemies were, even
employing assassins in the attempt to destroy him!

Women could do nothing but fall in love with such a man.
They scattered flowers for him to walk upon, they worshiped and
adored.

As for Manuelita Saenz, Manuelita la bclla, wife of Dr. James
Thome, she fell utterly, irrevocably in love.

And at Trujillo I wondered if he remembered.

I saw him in those days with the eyes of Daniel O'Leary.

O'Leary's eyes dwelt upon the lines of thought which seared
Bolivar's high narrow forehead. The lines, he said, had been
there when he'd first met him, six years before, though Bolivar
had been then only thirty-four* His cheeks had been sunken
then too. And at that time there'd been a wen on his nose, a
great annoyance to him, but it had gradually disappeared, leav-
ing just the merest vestige to show where it had been. His lips
were too thick O'Leary thought, and his upper lip too long, but
these defects were forgotten in the flash of his smile, in the white
perfection of his teeth. His skin was dark and his black hair,
fine and curly. He'd worn it long when O'Leary first knew him,
but now that he was greying he'd had it cut; but at Trujillo he had
not yet shaved his mustache. His hands and feet were beautifully
formed, and he was always slender and tremendously alive.

But his expression, O'Leary warned: "You wouldn't believe
how his expression changes when he is in bad humor. It be-
comes then terrible; the change is unbelievable.'*

Yet those who loved him, loved him deeply* He was just, and
never jealous of another man's achievements, as generous with
praise of others as he was with money. He detested liars and
tale-bearers, and he had no patience with drunkenness or
gambling. In matters of discipline he was strict. But the troops

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loved him; those who had followed him from the far corners
of Venezuela idolized him. They had fear of nothing so long as
he led them; no danger alarmed them and no fatigue wearied
them. He could make men work beyond reason because he
worked himself beyond reason.

It seemed to me in those days at Trujillo that he never rested.

"There remains only a month for preparation/* he would say;
"in May we must be marching and in June we must be ready if
need be to fight. And we cannot afford to lose so much as one
battle."

With each fresh realization that he moved toward that struggle
which was to decide the fate of all Spanish South America, he
fell more furiously than ever upon the work of preparation.

"Europe," he cried, "is finished, worn out! The hope of the
world lies here in the western hemisphere."

And because the hope of the world was at stake they must win.

O'Leary had never seen him live more sternly or work more
feverishly than at Trujillo.

For look what the situation was. The whole Patriot army was
no more than seven thousand men, and not above four thousand
of them were disciplined to war. They were ill-equipped too,
in rags and wasted to skeletons by lack of food.

And the treasury was a vast deficit.

As for the Royalists, they had eighteen thousand highly trained
men and all the resources of the interior at their disposal, from
Jauja to the rich mines of PotosL

"Yet, before the year is out" Bolivar declared, "we shall be
in Potosi."

He had girded up his soul to perform a miracle.

He sent appeals for troops and money to Colombia, Chile,
Mexico, Guatemala, From the well-to-do citizens about Trujillo,
and from the gold and silver of its churches, he raised a hundred
thousand dollars of the four hundred thousand that he felt was
needed for the campaign.

And he set everyone to work. Uniforms were required. The
women must make them* Men must be drilled, shoes made

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for the horses, food supplies, muskets, and mules provided the
army needed everything. And there remained but a month for
preparation, for in May they must march.

Three times Sucre made the hard trip up into the Andes, All
must be ready in the mountains for their coming, when they
marched in May.

Yet, though the hours were so crowded, Bolivar must have
thought of Manuelita, for she was not a woman who could be
forgotten. He must sometimes have smiled to himself to think
that Manuelita had been trained in a Quito Convent. She was so
different from his gentle little dead first wife that she must have
astonished him at every turn. Imagine a convent girl reading
Plutarch and Tacitus, Mariana's History of Spain, Garcilaso's
Commentarios on Peru, Cervantes too; and her eyes glowing
when she recited verses from her favorite poets, Cienf ucgos, Quin-
tana and Olmedo.

Manuelita was a woman that such a man as Bolivar could
talk with ... as well as make love to*

Ah, La S4enz had everything, brains and beauty, and daring,
and never was there a more ardent Patriot! The same flame that
consumed Bolivar burned in her also.

Bolivar must have remembered all this, even while his mind
was saying, over and over: "This month for making ready; next
month for marching; and in June perhaps the battle."

And then the march began^ up over the mountains to Cerro,
twelve thousand feet above the sea. And there they were joined
by the regiments from Cajamarca and Huara*

But it was August before all had arrived at the high plain of
Sacramento between Rocas and Pasco. And when, on the second
of August, Bolivar reviewed the troop$ there were assembled
nine thousand men trained and equipped* Part of the miracle
had been performed.

No one present could ever forget the scene, or the excitement,
or the swelling pride that each man felt in that army which
Bolivar had created out of almost nothing.

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Upon young General Miller, used as he was to the Andean
landscape, and accustomed as he was to the sensations which pre-
cede battle, it made a profound impression, not only in itself
but because of what it represented. He put upon paper some-
thing of how he felt that his mother and his brother John, back
in England, might understand:

"The view," he wrote, "from that vast tableland is one of the
most magnificent in the world. In the west rose the Andes,
just surmounted with so much toil On the east were the
enormous ramifications of the Cordillera stretching toward
the Brazils. North and south the view was bounded by
mountains whose tops were hid in the clouds,

"And among the men assembled, there were in addition
to those of Peru, men from Caracas, Bogota, Panama, Quito,
Chile and Buenos Aires; and among them foreigners who
had crossed the seas to fight for the cause of liberty; Americans
who had fought in Chile, at San Lorenzo, on the banks of the
Parani, at Carabobo in Venezuela and at Pichincha; foreign-
ers who had fought on the banks of the Guadalquivir in Spain,
and on the Rhine, men who had witnessed the conflagration
of Moscow and the capitulation of Paris.

"And all were animated by one sole spirit:

"To assure the political existence of a vast continent, to
ascertain whether or not the period had arrived when the
influence of South America upon the rest of the world should
be rendered commensurate with its extent, its riches and its

situation."

Miller could never forget the scene; nor the address which,
on the shore of the high cold lake, Bolivar made to the troops*

Miller proudly headed the Peruvian cavalry. He was fond of
boasting that there were nowhere any such horsemen as the
Patriot cavalry.

As he listened to Bolivar's speech he was conscious of the sur-
rounding country* They were close to the margin of the lake
of Reyes, and Miller recalled that it was the principal source of
the Amazon and that the Amazon was the mightiest of the earth's

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rivers. Thus he thought while Bolivar's words rung out in the
high cold air; words like brave bright banners:

"Soldiers!

"You are about to finish the greatest undertaking Heaven has
confided to men Even Europe beholds you with delight, be-
cause the freedom of the New World is the hope of the uni-
verse. . . .'*

"Vival Vival Viva!"

The plain echoed with cries of hope, enthusiasm, faith:

"Vival Vival Vival"

Four days later, suddenly they saw the Royalist army march-
ing over the plain, half a dozen miles away across the lake.

And in the afternoon the Royalist cavalry charged. The
Patriots met the shock with a counter-charge. Not a shot was
fired. The two opposing forces hurled their cavalry in charge
after charge, steel met steel Baydnet and saber pierced living
flesh. The iron shoes of horses trampled fallen bodies. And
no explosion of musketry drowned the sound of pounding hoofs,
the clash of metal, the snorting breath of charging beasts, the
shouts and the cries of men. Not a shot fired and no smoke of
powder drifting away into the clear crisp air. Only the dust
of the plain raised by the horses* feet; dust swirling in a yellow
cloud about a scene of death; death in the fury of battle.

And in an hour it was over, the dreaded army of the Royalists
flying before the Patriots.

"The freedom of the New World is the hope of the universe"

Bolivar had written the words on every heart.

As the enemy fled it was as if those words pursued them. The
memory of that disgrace would weaken them in the decisive con-
flict which was still to come.

They retreated, leaving to the Patriots horses and cattle, aban-
doned guns and ammunition; soldiers dead and wounded, and
the miles of cultivated territory over which they had retreated.

And in the high exhilaration of victory. Bolivar planned the
future.

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In the next few weeks he would inspect the regiofi, carefully
studying the conditions. They could not risk another battle until
reinforcements should arrive. News had come that three thousand
soldiers were on their way from Colombia. The Patriots must
not attack until they came. Bolivar, thinking over the situation,
decided to return to the coast. On no account must the Colombian
reinforcements be cut off . The thing to do now was to strengthen
the army for attack. He would therefore return to the coast, leav-
ing Sucre in charge. There was money, too, which he would
draw on a London loan.

Bolivar was confident, full of hope, happy in the triumph of
putting to flight the enemy army.

Certainly by the end of the year the Patriots would be in
Potosi, and the independence of Spanish South America would
have been won. The years of struggle would then be over. There
would be no more months of planning, how in God's name to
raise those vast sums which war devours, no more painful marches,
no more anxiety, no more intrigue and treachery to threaten the
fate of battles, no more suspense, no more necessity to draw from
his own font of courage in order to restore faith to the despairing.

That victory toward which his life had moved for so many
wearying years was now in view.

Potosi before the end of the yearl

So do dreams take shape in the mind, coming true before their
time.

Bolivar rode back over the trail which would take him down
to Lima- And while he was still in the high Andes a messenger
came up from the coast with the mail from Colombia.

And there was a letter from Colombia. The letter regretted
to inform General Bolivar that the Congress of Colombia revoked
the extraordinary powers which had been granted him. Because
Bolivar had accepted supreme control in Peru, he might no longer
be considered Commander-in-chief of the Colombian Army.

It was a wordy letter, but its meaning required no more rhetoric
than a stab in the back dealt by the dagger of a friend.

O'Lcary flamed with indignation:

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It was obvious that the writer's motive was jealousy. But to
strike at such a moment, at a time of momentous crisis, when,
with dangers and difficulties on every side, the General was
preparing for that conflict which was to decide the fate of all, to
strike thus was an infamous thing.

O'Leary understood that the blow had gone deep into that
region of the heart which never forgets. It was the sort of injury
for which, whatever joyful thing the future may hold, there is
no healing.

It has happened, and nothing can ever be done about it.

There is only to call together what remains, and with that to
carry on.

Bolivar thought of Sucre, tireless, selfless, loyal. He must write
to Sucre at once. Sucre must understand that the great final battle
for liberty was now to be his, and not Bolivar's, The responsibility
and the glory would be Sucre's. Only he must not fail to realize
that the Patriots could not afford to lose so much as one battle.
Any repulse would be fatal. There must be nothing but victory.
Therefore Sucre must proceed with the greatest caution. And he,
Bolivar, would forward reinforcements and money.

In calling upon what remained to him he summoned the
blessed solace of work. He could still work for the great cause*
In Lima there was much to be done, and as he traveled back to
the coast he mustered along the way a thousand additional men,
as well as supplies and horses; sending them back to Sucre's army
as it marched over the Sierra in the wake of the retreating Royal-
ists.

Yet all the time there was heavy in Bolivar's heart the unbeliev-
able fact that command of the Colombian Army had been taken
from him his own army, the thing he had created, which was
part of himself*

It could not be. , , * Yet it was*

I wondered if at that time he knew, if a letter had come to tell
him, that Manuelita SScnz was on her way from Quito to Peru*
But whether he expected her, or whether her arrival was a surprise,
there she was, meeting him in the village of Haura, on the coast

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not very far from Lima; appearing as though miraculously she
had heard the sorrow in his heart calling, and had come.

Whatever Bolivar had lost, Manuelita was his utterly and always.
Her shining eyes were a mirror in which he saw himself tri-
umphant Her quick responsive mind required no explanation of
the bitterness of his disappointment. The injustice of it stung
her as it did him. She understood. She knew that he scorned
money and position, but that the glory of achievement was his
life. She knew, for in everything Manuelita Saenz was Sim6n
Bolivar's mate* Her sympathy was not pity, but that fortifying
thing passionate understanding, the sympathy of militant re-
sentment against injustice, not the sympathy of tears.

The very fragrance of her was stimulating, the fresh scent of
the verbena which she always used-

And how entirely she gave herself!

Her husband continually begged her to return, but this was her
reply to his pleading:

"No, no, no! Why do you force me to tell you a thousand
times No? . . . You are good, excellent, inimitable, I shall
never deny that. And, my friend, to leave you for Bolivar
that is something! To leave a different husband, without
your qualities, would be nothing.

"But can you think that, having been the chosen of BoKvar,
having possessed his heart, I could be the woman of another?
Not even though he be the Father, the Son, the Holy Ghost
or the most Sacred Trinity!

"I well understand that there can be for me no union with
Bolivar that you would call honorable. But do you think me
less virtuous because he is my lover and not my husband?

"Ah, I do not live for social conventions!

"Leave me then in peace, my dear Englishman. In heaven
we may be again married, you and L But on this earth,
never. * . ,

"In the celestial country we shall pass an angelic life; all
will be as in church, since such monotonous life is the char-
acteristic of your nationality; that is, in matters of love. For

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in commerce, who more quick than the British? It is love
which finds them without enthusiasm, conversation in which
they lack grace, and jest in which they do not smile

"No, I cannot picture myself living on the earth condemned
to England!

"And so, frankly, without laughter, with all the seriousness
of an Englishwoman herself, I tell you that never again shall
we be together.

"No, and no and no, ... But I am your friend always."

Such a love as Manuclita's for Bolivar has moments gifted with
the power to lift all burdens. And in the intervals between those
moments of oblivion, there was Manuelita's blazing interest in
every detail of the campaign for freedom; Manuelita was as ardent
a Patriot even as Bolivar. She had been living in Lima with her
husband when San Martin had aroused in Peru a desire for in-
dependence and because of her eager revolutionary zeal she had
been one of the women whom he had decorated with the Order
of the Sun. Bolivar could delight in the reality of her patriotism,
since it was as genuine as his own, and ht.d nothing to do with
her personal passion for him. Wherever she was Manuelita was
active always for the dream of freedom- Once, when therc'd been
rioting in Quito she'd ridden at the head of the company which
put it down; a glorious figure in scarlet and white, with earrings
quivering in the dear air of lofty Quito,

Certainly Manuelita's arrival at Haura was a comfort*

And with Sucre in the Sierra, Bolivar felt that he had left
his right arm to direct the battle that was coming; then there was
Miller always to be trusted; and loyal young O'Leary; and BOW
Manuelita, and the work wailing in Lima hurrying troops up
to Sucre, and money.

So Bolivar called together what yet remained to him*

The Royalists had recently drawn their forces out of Lima, con-
centrating their strength in the Sierra, making ready for the final
battle* They had left the city crushed after months of tyranny,

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but it rose up in joy to greet Bolivar's return. It would have him
know how it had suffered. Now that he had come back it could
hope once more, and every bell in the city rang in frenzied de-
light. The terror was over now that the Liberator was come.

Bolivar established himself with his staff and with Manuelita
at Magdalena, in a commodious country mansion near the sea,
just a little way out of Lima.

There, on the very afternoon of his return, he sent out an invita-
tion to all the governments of America to meet in the first Pan-
American Congress ever to be held.

Long ago eleven years before when he was a refugee in
Jamaica he had dreamed of a great federation of the Spanish-
American Republics, with an Assembly meeting in Panama. Even
then he had believed that the hope of the universe lay in the New
World.

But first the independence had to be won.

Now, certain of victory in that battle so soon to be fought in
the Sierra of Peru, he dictated the invitation to the governments
of ail American Republics to send representatives to the Isthmus
of Panama.

He dictated rapidly, always sure of what he would say. Ever
restless, he swung back and forth in his hammock, and from
time to time in his excitement he jumped up to pace the floor.

Thus, swinging in his hammock looking out over the spacious
patio of the house at Magdalena, he dictated the invitation to the
first Pan-American Congress, to be held at the Isthmus of Panama
in the summer of 1826:

"After fifteen years devoted to the cause of Liberty in
America, the time has now come when the interests which
unite those Republics formerly Spanish [the words long wait-
ing in his mind came fast] demand that in order to perpetuate
that for which we have fought, we establish and consolidate
in a sublime authority which will direct our governments
and maintain the uniformity of their principles. Such an
authority can exist only in an Assembly of Plenipotentiaries
named by each of the Republics.

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"And since Panama is situated in the center of the globe it
appears to be indicated as the meeting place of the first As-
sembly.

"The day on which this body meets will be immortal in
the history of America. , . ."

And while secretaries busily made copies of the document for
each of the governments of the western hemisphere, Bolivar was
occupied in reorganizing demoralized Lima. By this time the
three thousand Colombians under fiery young lose Maria Cordova
would have reached Sucre in the Sierra. Now, he turned his
mind to the government which would succeed the victory. He
set about founding schools in Lima, as he had done in Trujillo,
in the very midst of creating an army. In his mind a new Constitu-
tion was shaping. So much to be done, and only Bolivar to
dream and plan!

From morning until night people came and went between Lima
and the mansion at Magdalena. For hours on end the secretaries
worked over Bolivar's correspondence, They missed CXLeary who
had been sent to Sucre with Bolivar's last suggestions for the plan
of battle, Manuelita presided as the brilliant lady of the mansion.
When she rode out, triumphant in her beauty and her love, she
was accompanied by a military escort. There were dinner parties
and distinguished guests sitting clown at the great table under
the chandelier. And Bolivar himself, eating little and plainly,
was proud of the epicurean understanding of foods and wines
which everywhere made his dinners famous* His return had
restored gaiety and music to Lima.

Victory in the Sierra seemed to them all certain, and none could
look into the dark pain of the years to follow upon that victory.
Bolivar could not foresee what a futile thing his great Panama
Congress was to be in actuality; how little was accomplished and
how few attended, the United States not even represented, since
of their two delegates one died upon the way and the other did
not arrive until the Congress was over. Bolivar in his vast dream

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of a glorious future for the Americas, did not know that he was one
day to look upon the collapse of the dream and compare himself
to that insane Greek who, standing on an island waving his arms,
fancied that he directed the movements of the ships that sailed
the Mediterranean.

For Bolivar dreamed ahead of his time, with no vision of all
that must be suffered before the dream had even a chance of
realization.

So with high hope he had dictated his invitation.

And then there came the letter from Sucre. A battle had been
fought, the battle of Ayacucho, high in the Sierra, not far from
Cuzco.

Bolivar read Sucre's letter in a passion of joy. At last victory
had come. The Royalists were not merely routed, they were
conquered. The Viceroy was captured and in the name of Spain he
had surrendered. And Peru was added to the company of free
American Republics. Now the liberty of Buenos Aires, of Chile
and the greater Colombia (which included Venezuela, New Gra-
nada and what is now Ecuador) was assured. They need no
longer fear that Spain would overthrow their infant Republican
Governments. The hated Godos had made their final surrender
at the battle of Ayacucho.

It was all there in Sucre's letter.

Bolivar tore off his military coat and threw it upon the floor.
They were done at last with the war which that coat symbol-
ized. The war was over and the coat of the military dictator of
Peru was cast upon the floor.

Bolivar danced about the room, crying, "Victory I Victory!
Victory!"

The thing for which he had lived was accomplished and there
was in his spirit no envy that the battle had been Sucre's and
not his, that it was at Sucre's feet, and not his, that up in the
Sierra the proud flags of Castile were laid, and the swords
surrendered.

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If there were moments when the triumph seemed an illusion*
there was Sucre's letter to be reread, proving the truth:

"The war is over, my General. And the freedom of Peru is
accomplished. But I am happier in having carried out your
trust than ia anything else. . . ."

[296]

XIV
THE UNFINISHED CENTURY

OFTEN and often on this journey in time I have made the
fantastic wish that I might find someone who had neglected to
die. People are so careless, I said to myself, why couldn't some-
one simply have forgotten to die? And why might I not find this
person and hear the whole story, complete, not just pieced to-
gether from fragments preserved more or less by chance?

Now, arrived in the journey at the twentieth century, and look-
ing back over the way I feel suddenly as though my wish had
amazingly come true and that I have myself become that person
who has forgotten to die. For, without any attempt to write ail-
inclusively of the saga of Peru, putting down only what is most
vivid to me in the years since Mummy Number 94 was laid in
his tomb at Paracas, somehow, through that which my mind
has spontaneously selected to remember, I have come to feel that
it is I who, living through the centuries, have forgotten to die.

And so, as though having passed through a personal experience,
I have come finally to that century which is still so new that we
have no perspective upon the troubled years of its infancy, and no
clairvoyant gift to see what we shall make of the years between
1937 and 2000, though we begin with the bright hope of enduring
peace and increasing friendship among the Americas.

That was long ago Bolivar's dream,

I was thinking of this, as, in Lima, I lingered in the Museo
Bolivariano, looking back into the receding centuries before re-
crossing the threshold into the twentieth.

Out in the patio unseen doves cooed very softly, incessantly,
The fig-tree which Bolivar had planted more than a century ago
was loaded with ripening fruit The once tidy flower-beds were
crowded with unrestrained growth, a jungle of roses, red and

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pink and white muskcluster, heliotrope, red geraniums grown
to mammoth size like the deceptive illustrations of a florist's cata-
logue, vermilion hibiscus, palms and an orange tree, and flower-
ing vines; all in a luxuriant tangle. The flight of butterflies wrote
invisible messages in the air, and hummingbirds quivered gleam-
ing before first one flower and then another.

Beyond, in a second patio, lay those mute enigmatic mummy
bundles which Doctor Tello had brought back from Paracas.

Save for the continual cooing of the doves the house and its
patios were enveloped in a silence wherein the stirring century of
independence slept at peace, unconcerned with the troubled life
of today.

But I have only to remember that century to bring suddenly
alive the house on the quiet square of little many-colored houses,
and the still rooms with their relics of a vanished life, and the sunny
flowery patio. Bolivar's cry of "Victory!" shatters the silence.
And I fancy the fragrance of Manuclita's verbena as I move from
room to room.

Bolivar, Sucre, San Martin look down from the walls. In glass
cases neatly labeled are fading documents once of vital import.
There is Bolivar's traveling box, Bolivar's camp-bed. Bolivar's
hammock, hanging limp and empty, there is a vast chandelier
dimly reflected on the gloss of the banquet table, and there is
Manuelita's dressing table, of beautifully inlaid woods divided
into many cunningly devised compartments.

Bolivar and Manuelita, Pizarro and Atahualpa, gallant Mrs-
Proctor, the Perricholi, and Sergeant Mugaburu, these, like all the
past, are no more dead than my own living memories of Lima,
their words no more dead than those sentences, heard in the Lima
of today, which so often recur to me:

"Yaw should see the Indians, how they uwr\ on the haciendas
and in the Sierra, you should see how they workj*

It was an Indian who spoke, in a voice vibrant with the long
patience of his race* He wanted me only to see; that was all

And I hear, too, the steady voice of a man who has observed
the life of men in many parts of the world: Russia, France, Eng-

[298]

A JOURNEY IN TIME

land, Spain, the two Americas. He is a man who loves Peru,
and he is saying:

"If only Peru can avoid revolution I thin\ there lies ahead for
her a great prosperity. All is made ready now for an era of pros-
perity, for unity. For long the country was held bac\ by lac\ of
transportation, of communication between coast and Sierra and the
jungle country beyond the mountains.

"There are now motor roads continuing where the railroads
leave off; airplanes fly up and down the coast and into the interior;
and there are more ships, better ships, to unite Peru with the rest
of the world.

"If only she can avoid revolution^

Revolution, I thought, contemplating the problems of Peru so
similar in essentials to our own, Revolution in a Republic is the
assassin of Democracy, and I would have Democracy live. At
least let us perfect the thing we began to build, before we topple
it over and replace it with something else. Those who willed
it to us paid for it a great price.

In the still patio of the Museo Bolivariano, it came to me that we
owe it to them to let Democracy have its chance.

That thought brought me to the preoccupations of the twentieth
century, with its struggle to find some way to the making of a better
world. And because, upon this long journey in time, I had seen
so much that is of value, as well as the many cruelties and blunders
to be avoided, I realized the importance of preserving out of each
century what is worthy to endure,

The art of the ancients of Peru, for example, is a precious herit-
age* The thrift and the industry and the honesty of the Inca's
people would anchor civilization, their worship of Nature would
enrich life, while if the social security they achieved had not in-
cluded a tyrannical annihilation of the individual, their system
might have survived to solve the perplexing problems of today*
And if, in some way we might regain the courage and endurance
of the sixteenth-century Spaniard, we would add to the power of
life; for he possessed the priceless gift of extending the span of
active life. He considered no one too young or too old for virile

[299]

PERUVIAN PAGEANT

living; boys of fifteen and octogenarians alike played valiantly a
man's part. As for that courtesy which in the seventeenth century
Sergeant Mugaburu so valued, it still persists, making contact with
Spanish-America a warm and charming experience. While the
dauntless vision o the century of independence is an inspiration
for this the century whose vision seeks to find a way to social
justice.

Considering thus what we are to make of our unfinished century,
suddenly I recalled something that Cieza de Leon said four hun-
dred years ago, in writing of the Spanish Conquerors:

'They went out to explore that which was unknown and
never before seen. . * * And I esteem them because, until now,
no other race or nation has with such resolution, passed
through such labors, or such long periods of starvation or
traversed such great distances/'

With that there came another memory. Two eager-eyed young
students of the venerable University of San Marcos had come
to call upon me at the Hotel Maury in Lima, And in the course
of our talk one of them with a blazing sincerity said: "We
must find out what we are ourselves. , , . And so we are going
now through anguish,"

Thus we, too, though in another sense, go out "to explore that
which is unknown," but with knowledge of what has been, there
is a light to warn and to guide, shining upon the path ahead

THE END

[300J

INDEX

INDEX

Adams, Harriet, has followed the

Conquerors, 198
Alarc6n, Juan de
La verdad Sospechosa, 221
Alcantara, Martin de, half-brother
of Francisco Pizarro, 108, 112,
147

Aldana, 143
AUanza Popular Revolucionaria

Americana, 55, 175
Almagro, Diego de, 109, 133
and Francisco Pizarro, 110#., 135
and Hernando, 142-143
captured Cuzco, 142
goes to Chile, 136
Almagro, the Lad, son of Diego de
Almagro, 147 ff., 150, 157, 187
Alvarado, Pedro de, 109, 136
Amat, Manuel, Viceroy of Peru,

222

and La Perricholi, 225-234
description of, 223
Amat, Manuel, son of the Viceroy,

226, 230, 231, 234
Amazon River, 112, 162, 287
American Clipper t airplane, 16$,
Ampato, 120
Ancon, Bay of, 44
Antarctic Ocean, 38
APRA, 175

see AUanza Popular Revolucion-
aria Americana
Apristas, 55

see AUanza Popular Revolucion-
aria Americana

[303]

Archaeological Museum of the Uni-
versity in Lima, 77
Arequipa, 45, 120#, 129, 130, 152,

167, 177, 183
Argentina, 123
Atahualpa, the Inca, 72, 94
attitude toward Spaniards, 113-

114

and Pizarro, I02ff.
in painting in Santo Domingo,

170

ransom chamber of, 100
autocanil, 179, 183, 184, 185, 186,

194
Ayacucho, battle of, 295

Balboa, beheaded, 110

Balboa, Father Caballo de, chronicle

by, 130
baldo, tea, 220
Barranca, suburb of Lima, 54
Barranquilla, airplane service, 17,

25, 26, 27
Bates, Tia, 120-121
baths, of the Inca, 102, 104
Beatriz, Inca Princess, 170
Bele*n, ancient church of, 99
Bingham, Hiram
found Machu Picchu, 187-188,

192

Blanco, Commodore, 249
Bogotd, airplane, 27
Bolivar, Sim6n, 235, 240 #, 258
and Manuelita, 283$.

INDEX

Bolivar, Simon continued
and San Martin, 247-248
appearance of, 266-267
issues call to first Pan American

Congress, 293-294
relieved of command, 290
statue of, in Lima, 54
stayed at Magdalena, 78
Bolivia, 121, 162
Brazil, 38

Buenaventura, 31, 32
Buenos Aires and the Spanish Con-
querors, 21, 236, 238, 242, 258,
259, 266, 295
bullfights, in honor of Bolivar, 267-

268

Burford, Robert, quoted on manto,
263

Cabeza Larga, 90

Cajamarca, 43, 67, 94#, 129, 273,

286

Pizzaro at, 96

Cajamarquilla, ruins of, 60-62
Calancha, Father, Augustinian monk,

192

quoted on Vilcabamba, 192
Calder6n, Scnora Maria, killed by

Carbajal, 192

Calder6n de La Barca, 221, 228
Call, 27
Callao, port for Lima, 54, 202, 213,

219, 257, 266, 269, 274, 276,

279

exodus to, 259$.
Canal (Panama), 17, 28, 29
Canning, Prime Minister of Eng-
land, 272
Capa, made first image of Santa

Rosa, 201
Cape Haitian, 18

[304]

Carbajal, Francisco de, 143

"Demon of the Andes,"
Carlos, son of Paullu, 157
Carreon, Senorita

assistant of Dr. Tello, 80, 81, 84
Cartagena, 27

Cartavio, sugar plantations of, 95
Casa Grande, sugar plantations of,

95

Castro, Vaca de, sent to investigate
Almagro's death, 146, 150, 157
Catica, 27
Cauca Valley, 27
Cayenne, 36
Cerro Colorado, 88, 90
Chan-Chan

description of, 69-70

life of, 68

ruins of, 4 1

vast cemetery, 61
Charles V t Kmperor of Spain, 111,

135, 1M

Chavcs, Francisco dc% 147

Chavm, 77

Chmtb, Proctor family on, 238$.,

269

chicha, drunk by Indians, 173
Chichani, mountain, 120
Chiclfn, Larco Museum at, 67, 69
Chile, and the Spaniards, 123, 135,

136, 220, 235, 238,266
Chilete, 94

Chimo, kingdom of the*

69

Chinchcras village, 19H
cholo boys, 97
Chorilios, suburb of Lima, 54, 274,

275, 277

Chupas, battle of, 1 ^0
Ckment IX, Pope, 201
Club National, Lima, 54
coca, chewed by Indians, 175

44 t 68,

INDEX

Cochrane, Lord, 246, 247, 248#.
Colcampata, palace of, 157, 158, 174
Colegio of Cajamarca, 98, 102
Colombia, 21, 25, 123, 266, 281,

282, 289

and Bolivar, 259#
Colon, 28
Columbus, 71, 112
Commodore, plane, 27-33
Convent of the Incarnation, scandal

concerning, 209
Conway, British ship, 237, 250
Cordillera, of the Andes, 38, 112,
123, 124, 186, 238, 239, 252,
256, 282

C6rdova, Jose* Maria, 294
Corneillc, and Alarc6n, 221
Coropuna, 120
Cortez, Hernando, 108-109, 110,

143

Costa Rica, 21, 27
Cragg, Mn, master of the Crown,

276
Cristobal, 27, 28, 31, 36

airplane service, 26
Crown, British ship, 276, 277$.
Cuba, 19

cumbrc, of the Cordillera, 256, 269
Cusi Tku, Indian prince, 157, 158-

159, 162, 187
Cuzco
as it appeared to the Conquerors,

131

Importance of, 129
market place of, 173
siege of, 136#.
University of, 60

De Torres, Isabel Ortiz, cured by

Martm, 204
Devil's Island, 50, 52

Echarri, Fermin Vicente de, 234
La Perricholi married, 235

Ecuador, and the Spanish, 36, 38,
259, 281, 295

El Misti, mountain, 120

El Triunfo, fagade of, 168, 169, 170

equipment for journey, 48-49

Estete, Miguel de, 116, 130
quoted on Pachacamac, 62

Estremadura, home of many Con-
querors, 104, 108, 136, 150,
157

Faucett, 94

Felicit<5, chola nurse-girl, 126-127
Fernandez, cholo boy, 97-98, 168
Ferrocarril, Hotel, 127, 166, 179,

193

Fife, Lord, 247
"first horizon," 80, 86
Fly, British ship, 276ff.
Fuentes, Scfior, station master, 127,

167

Dealing, Ambassador, 78, 94
Del Campo, Senor, 98, 100, 104
De Soco, Captain, 102#, 118

Galapagos Islands, 38

Gallo, Island of, Pizarro on, 34, 43,

110, 111
Garcia, 88, 89

Gasca, an Inquisitor, 154-155
George IV, King of England, 238
Giesecke, Dr. Albert, 60
Gorgona, Island of, 32, 43, 111
Gran Mouton, 19
guano, 44, 66ff., 79, 89, 90
Guatemala, and the Spaniards, 50,

52,54,151,241
Guayaquil, 26, 31, 35, 36, 39, 240,

257, 260
[305]

INDEX

Guzmin, Don Alouzo Enriquez de
activities of, 134-135
and Hernando> 137-145
characteristics of, 137
went to Cusco, 136

Hall, Captain Basil
cruised South American coast,

249, 250, 258, 263
quoted on La Perricholi's coach-

and-four, 237
Hambutio, village, 198
Hanco, uncle of Tito, 97
Harleston, 260, 26l
Haynes, Irving, 95
Herrera, Senor Larco, 67, 68-69
Hollywood, 46, 50
Honduras, 241
htiacas, at Chan-Chan, 69, 70
huacos, at Chan-Chan, 70, 73
Huanuco, birthplace of La Pcrri-

choli, 218
Huarochiri, birthplace of Doctor

Tello, 72, 74
Huascar, brother of Atahualpa, 113,

116, 118
Huascardn, 44
Huatanay River, 132
Humboldt Current, 38, 44
Huaylas, 77
Huayna Capac, father of Atahualpa,

113
Huayna Picchu, 188, 190

lea, 61, 70, 82

Immaculate Conception, controversy

over, 208, 211
Inca civilization, 114$.

no writing in, 131
Inesilla, actress, 229
Inez, Indian Princess, 157

International Institute of Peruvian
Archaeology, envisioned by Dr.
Tcllo, 77

Jamaica, 17, 21, 23, 24, 25

airplane service, 26
Jauja, 142
Jefferson, Thomas, 238

and the Monroe Doctrine, 272
Jesuits, banishment of, from Peru,

227

Juan, room boy, 1 6ff.
Juanito, 167, 168
Juliaca, 122

Kingston, 22, 23, 25
Krocber, Doctor Alfred, 77

Las Casas, BarthoSomc de, 151
LaMoca, 157

La Merced, Church of, 180
La Perricholi, see ch* XI

and Ahrcon, 221-222

and the theater, 22*i$,

beauty of, 224

came to Lima, 218

description of> 224*225

early life of, 219-220

gave coach-and'faitr to priest* 233,
237

married Echarri, 235

son of, 326

source of information o*t, 217, 224

will of, 23&2J7
La Pumilla, #8, 89, 90
La Rahida, Monastery of, 71, 112,

116

La Raya, Pass of* 12}, 125-127, 187
La Trompcwsc f 19
La Vega, CSarcilasco de, chronicle

by, 130, U5, 165, 174
[306}

INDEX

Leraos, Count, Viceroy o Lima, 212
Leon, Ciczadc, 157,196
at Pachamac, 63
fought against Gonzalo, 155
quoted, 160
on conflict between Gonzalo

and Nunez, 153-154
onCuzco, 132
on Spanish Conquerors, 300
Lima

description of, 45-47, 54-57
modernness of, 46-47
Moorish influence in, 46
Museum of Archaeology in, 67
Spanish-Colonial type houses, 57
Uampilla, 72

Luque, financed Pizarro, 110
Lurin Valley, 62

Machu Picchu, 167
description of, 188
found by Hiram Bingham, 187*
188

trip to,
Madre de Dios, 176
Magdalena,

description of, 78-79

Manuelita at, 293

Museum in, 78
Magdalena River, 25, 26
Mala, 143
Manco

and siege of Cuzco, 138#.

at Vilcabamba, 192

at Viticos, 187, 197

crowned Inca, 134

death of, 157, 197

Gonzalo sent against, 143
mantos, described, 261-263
manzanilla, tea, 220
Maracaibo, 21, 27

Mardi Gras Reef, 19

"Maria Angola," in Cathedral of

Cuzco, 170
Maria Ptduna, 50
Markham, Sir Clements, 113
Martin, Captain of the Fly, 276
Martin de Porres, 199#.

life of, 204

Novena for, 201

stories about, 204

Masias, Friar, image of, in Church
of Santo Domingo, 200

friend of Martin, 205
mate*, tea, 220
Maule, River, 112
Maury, Hotel, 53, 300

age of, 57

cookery at, 56-57

description of, 47-48
May, Stella, 120
Maza, impresario, 228
Means, Philip Ainsworth, authority
on Peru, 19, 71, 78, 101

quoted, 191, 193
Medina del Campo, Hcrnando

imprisoned in, 146, 157
Mcdway, 257, 260
Meiggs, Henry, built Oroya Rail-
road, 60

Mejia, assistant of Dr. Tello, 80, 84
Mdchior Carlos, 157, 162, 175

christening of, 158$.
Mendoza, 235, 239, 240, 244, 245,

249
Mcrimfc, Prosper, La Carrossc du

Saint Sacrtmcnt, 217
Mexico, 109

Miami Morning Herald, 18
Miller, Colonel William

and independence of Peru, 247 ff .,
264, 281

characteristics of, 28

[307]

INDEX

Miller, Colonel Williamcontinued
description of Andean landscape

quoted, 287

Miraflores, suburb of Lima, 54, 275
Moche, art of, 70

Molina, Father Cristobal de, chron-
icle by, 130

Mollcndo, 121, 126, 166
Monroe, James, president of the

United States, 238
and the Monroe Doctrine, 272
Montalvo, Lorenzo Sanchez dc, 101,

116-117

Moorish influence, in Peru, 165, 219
Mortia, Friar Martin dc, chronicle

bj, 130

Mugaburu, Antonio, angel in Arch-
bishop's procession, 209
Mugaburu, Francisco
carried on Sergeant Mugaburu's

diary for some time, 214
reported father's death, 213-214
Mugaburu, Joseph, in priesthood,

209

Mugaburu, Sergeant Jose* dc
characterization of, 206
death of, 214
diary of, 206

religious dement in, 209
family of, 209
promoted, 212
source for early Lima, 204
source for Santa Rosa, 201
mummies, 90
Paracas Mummy Number 94,

compared with Egyptian, 86
Museo Bolivariano, 73
Myrtle Bank Hotel, 23

National Museum of Archeology,
77

Nazca, art of, 61, 70, 92
Nepena, art of, 70, 77
New Granada, 235
New Laws, 151452, 155

Offenoach, opera, La Pcrickolc, 217
O'Higgins, Ambrose, Viceroy of

Peru, 60, 256
O'Lcary, Daniel, and independence

of Peru, 28I#.
OUantaytambo, 184, 186, 187, 194

description of, 195
Orinoco River, 282
Oroya Railroad, built by Henry

Mciggs, 60
Our Lady of the Prado, Convent of,

207

Pacasmayo, 94
Pachacamac

compared with Egypt, 66

description of, 62^56
Paita, 282
Palma, Ricardo

tourcc of material on La Pcrri-
cboli, 217, 224

source of material on Manucliu,
282

Trtuticioncs, 225
Palos> 7t
Pampa dc Arrieros, 122, 183, 243,

245, 246
Panama, and the Conquerors, 33,

34, 36 t 37, 109
Pan-American Airways, 21
Paracas, 61, 7&77
Paraguay, 220
Paramonga, 70
PariaKaka, 72
Pasco, 286

[308]

INDEX

Paterson, Mr., railroad official, 127, Pizarro, Hernando, 102, 108, 112

177

Paterson, Isabel, 185
Pativilca, 273
Paullu, brother of Manco, 157

built San Cristobal, 175
Peck, Annie

climbed Huascarin, 41-43, 44
Pedro Clavcr, 28

Pedro, Emperor of Brazil, 238, 246
Perricholi, see La Perricholi
Picado, secretary to the Marquis, 147
Picolet, 19
Pisac, village, 198
Pisco, 81, 88, 251, 257

airport at, 89

Pisco-sours, Lima celebrated for, 56
Pizarro, Francisco, 16, 40

and Atahualpa, 100, 105, 117tf,

and Lima, 136

asks aid of Cortez, 142

at Cuzco, 13 1#.

characteristics of, 149

death of, 148

description of, 1 37

early life of, 108

had Indian woman put to death,
145-146, 149, 196

in Panama, 109$.

in Santo Domingo, 108

made Marquis, 136

on Gallo t 34, 111

On Gorgona, 32

returns to Spain to get support of
Charles V, 111

ent brother to investigate Pacha-
camac, 62

statue in Lima, 59
Pizarro, Gonzalo, 108, X12, 149

governor, 154

10 conflict with Viceroy, 152$,

sent against Manco, 145

and Almagro, 135, 144
at siege of Cuzco, 138
imprisoned at Medina del Campo,

157
sent to explain Almagro affair to

His Majesty, 145
sent to Pachacamac by brother,

62, 65
took share of Atahualpa's ransom

to His Majesty, 135
Pizarro, Juan, 108, 112
at siege of Cuzco, 137 ff.
death of, 140

given Temple of the Sun, 171
Pizarro, Pedro, 116, 130, 131, 196
characteristics, 137
death of, 156

fought against Gonzalo, 155
honesty of, 130
quoted on

Atahualpa's death, 117-118
Atahualpa's ransom, 101
encounter between Atahualpa

and Pizarro, 107
family, 137
Indian woman's death, 145-

146

Pizarro's death, 148
siege of Cuzco, 137$.
Relation of the Discovery and
Conquest of the Kingdoms of
Peru, 157
Proctor family, see ch. XII

Quinta Bates,

Quito, 48, 112, 162, 282, 283

Rimac River, 44, 215
Rio dc Janeiro^ 247, 279
Rocas, 286

[309]

INDEX

Rodil, royalist officer in charge of

Callao, 276
Romero, Doctor Carlos, published

Mugaburu's diary, 206

Sacsahuamdn, 155, 162, 175
Sienz, Manuelita

and Bolivar, 282$.

characterization of, 286

appearance of, 286

letter to husband, 291-292
Sailla, flag-station, 179, 181
Saint Francisco Solano, 204
Saint Ignatius, 170
Salciedo, Garcia de, 147
Salla, 59, 124-126, 168
Salocchi, Senor, 54
San Andres, village, 88, 89
San Bias, Church of, in Cuzco, 171
Sancho, De La Hoz, Pedro, 130, 131
San Cristobal, church of, 158, 175,

187

San Isidro, suburb of Lima, 54
San Lorenzo, Island, 277
San Marcos, University of, 300
San Martfn

and Bolivar, 247-258

statue of, 54

stayed at Magdalexia, 78
San Sebastian, 19B
Santo Ana, Church of, 161-166, 181
Santo Marta, 27
Santo Rosa

image came from Rome, 213

life of, 201

Lima's patron saint, 200
Santo Toribio, 204
Santiago, 239
Santo Domingo, Church, in Lima,

199, 226, 233

Santo Domingo, monastery of, in
Cuzco, 161, 170

Sarasara, 120

say a, described, 261-263

Scadta airplane company , 21, 25

Serra, Senor Vivas, 102, 104-105

Shippee Johnson, expedition, 95

Sierra, of the Andes, 43, 48, 75,

184, 197, 218, 219, 225, 282,

292, 294

Smith, Dr. Archibald, 263, 270
quoted on esprit de corps of

women, 264
Solimani, 120
soroche, 123

South American Pilot, 18
Southern Railroad of Peru, 183
Spanish Main, 28
Squier, E. G*, description of mum-

mies of Pachacamac, 63-61
Staircase of Fountains, at Machu

Picchu, 190
Sucre* General Antonio Jo*c t and in-

dependence of Peru,

[310]

Talara

first landing in Peru, 39

loveliness of, 39
Tcllo, Elena, 73
Tello, Dr. Julio CX, 67

and Paracas Mummy Number 94

and Ricardo Pa j ma ? 76

discovered archaeological centers,
77

early life of, 72

education of, 75, 7&77

father of, 74

mother of, 72-74, 75
Temple of the Sun, in Cusco, 1 61,

171
textiles, 67

Paracas textile, 90, 92
Thorne, James, husband of Manue-
lita Saenz, 285

INDEX

Titicaca, Lake, 113, 124, 162
Tito, 59, 96, 98, 101, 117, 124, 168
Toledo, Viceroy Don Francisco de,

Tomas, Friar, raised from dead by

Martin, 204

Tnijillo, 88-89, 94, 95, 98, 259,
260, 261, 269, 272, 273, 284,
285, 294
landing at, 41
portrait vases found around, 68,

92

Tumaco, 32, 34, 35, 36
Tumbez, 111,154
Tupac Amaru, Inca prince, 157,

158, 159, 162, 169, 175, 191
Tupac Amaru II, 248

Urcos, village, 198
Urubamba River, 187, 188, 195

Valparaiso, 249, 257
Valverdc, priest, 16, 106, 118, 170
Vargas, Diego de, 147
Vega, Lope dc, La Perricholi gave
scenes from comedies of, 221

Vega Montoya, Francisco de, told
about Martin, 205

Venezuela, 27, 123, 235, 281, 284,
285

Vida Prodtgiosa, 206

Villcgas, Felix, brother of La Perri-
choli, 222, 230, 236

Villegas, Micaela
sec La Perricholi

Virgin of Rosario, Novcna for, 208

Viticos, 187, 192

Weiner, French explorer, 188
Wader, Thornton

The Bridge of San Luis Rey, 217
Wortley, Lady Emmelinc Stuart,
263-264

Xeres, Francisco de, 116, 130

Yuayos, Indian tribe, 72
Yucay, Valley of, 157, 170

zaguan, 58

zambo, at Manta, 35

Zirate, Angela de, Abbess, 207

[311]