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
Most interesting of all is the structure which caught the attention
of Ocampo and remained fixed in his memory. Enough remains of this
building to give a good idea of its former grandeur. It was indeed a
fit residence for a royal Inca, an exile from Cuzco. It is 245 feet by
43 feet. There were no windows, but it was lighted by thirty doorways,
fifteen in front and the same in back. It contained ten large rooms,
besides three hallways running from front to rear. The walls were built
rather hastily and are not noteworthy, but the principal entrances,
namely, those leading to each hall, are particularly well made; not,
to be sure, of "marble" as Ocampo said--there is no marble in the
province--but of finely cut ashlars of white granite. The lintels
of the principal doorways, as well as of the ordinary ones, are
also of solid blocks of white granite, the largest being as much as
eight feet in length. The doorways are better than any other ruins in
Uilcapampa except those of Machu Picchu, thus justifying the mention
of them made by Ocampo, who lived near here and had time to become
thoroughly familiar with their appearance. Unfortunately, a very
small portion of the edifice was still standing. Most of the rear
doors had been filled up with ashlars, in order to make a continuous
fence. Other walls had been built from the ruins, to keep cattle out
of the cultivated pampa. Rosaspata is at an elevation which places it
on the borderland between the cold grazing country, with its root crops
and sublimated pigweeds, and the temperate zone where maize flourishes.
On the south side of the hilltop, opposite the long palace, is the ruin
of a single structure, 78 feet long and 35 feet wide, containing doors
on both sides, no niches and no evidence of careful workmanship. It
was probably a barracks for a company of soldiers.
The intervening "pampa" might have been the scene of those games
of bowls and quoits, which were played by the Spanish refugees who
fled from the wrath of Gonzalo Pizarro and found refuge with the Inca
Manco. Here may have occurred that fatal game when one of the players
lost his temper and killed his royal host.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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