Inca Land: Explorations in the Highlands of PeruBingham, Hiram
History
Inca Land: Explorations in the Highlands of Peru
Bingham, Hiram
Incas; Peru -- Antiquities; Peru -- Description and travel
One of the charms of Cuzco is the juxtaposition of old and new. Street
cars clanging over steel rails carry crowds of well-dressed Cuzceños
past Inca walls to greet their friends at the railroad station. The
driver is scarcely able by the most vigorous application of his
brakes to prevent his mules from crashing into a compact herd of
quiet, supercilious llamas sedately engaged in bringing small sacks of
potatoes to the Cuzco market. The modern convent of La Merced is built
of stones taken from ancient Inca structures. Fastened to ashlars which
left the Inca stonemason's hands six or seven centuries ago, one sees a
bill-board advertising Cuzco's largest moving-picture theater. On the
2d of July, 1915, the performance was for the benefit of the Belgian
Red Cross! Gazing in awe at this sign were Indian boys from some remote
Andean village where the custom is to wear ponchos with broad fringes,
brightly colored, and knitted caps richly decorated with tasseled
tops and elaborate ear-tabs, a costume whose design shows no trace
of European influence. Side by side with these picturesque visitors
was a barefooted Cuzco urchin clad in a striped jersey, cloth cap,
coat, and pants of English pattern.
One sees electric light wires fastened to the walls of houses
built four hundred years ago by the Spanish conquerors, walls which
themselves rest on massive stone foundations laid by Inca masons
centuries before the conquest. In one place telephone wires intercept
one's view of the beautiful stone facade of an old Jesuit Church, now
part of the University of Cuzco. It is built of reddish basalt from
the quarries of Huaccoto, near the twin peaks of Mt. Picol. Professor
Gregory says that this Huaccoto basalt has a softness and uniformity
of texture which renders it peculiarly suitable for that elaborately
carved stonework which was so greatly desired by ecclesiastical
architects of the sixteenth century. As compared with the dense
diorite which was extensively used by the Incas, the basalt weathers
far more rapidly. The rich red color of the weathered portions gives
to the Jesuit Church an atmosphere of extreme age. The courtyard of
the University, whose arcades echoed to the feet of learned Jesuit
teachers long before Yale was founded, has recently been paved with
concrete, transformed into a tennis court, and now echoes to the
shouts of students to whom Dr. Giesecke, the successful president, is
teaching the truth of the ancient axiom, "Mens sana in corpore sano."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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