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
Near the mill were some interesting large pots which Saavedra was using
in the process of boiling the juice and making crude sugar. He said he
had found the pots in the jungle not far away. They had been made by
the Incas. Four of them were of the familiar aryballus type. Another
was of a closely related form, having a wide mouth, pointed base,
single incised, conventionalized, animal-head nubbin attached to the
shoulder, and band-shaped handles attached vertically below the median
line. Although capable of holding more than ten gallons, this huge
pot was intended to be carried on the back and shoulders by means of a
rope passing through the handles and around the nubbin. Saavedra said
that he had found near his house several bottle-shaped cists lined
with stones, with a flat stone on top--evidently ancient graves. The
bones had entirely disappeared. The cover of one of the graves had
been pierced; the hole covered with a thin sheet of beaten silver. He
had also found a few stone implements and two or three small bronze
Inca axes.
On the pampa, below his house, Saavedra had constructed with infinite
labor another sugar mill. It seemed strange that he should have taken
the trouble to make two mills; but when one remembered that he had no
pack animals and was usually obliged to bring the cane to the mill on
his own back and the back of his son, one realized that it was easier,
while the cane was growing, to construct a new mill near the cane
field than to have to carry the heavy bundles of ripe cane up the
hill. He said his hardest task was to get money with which to send
his children to school in Cuzco and to pay his taxes. The only way in
which he could get any cash was by making chancaca, crude brown sugar,
and carrying it on his back, fifty pounds at a time, three hard days'
journey on foot up the mountain to Pampaconas or Vilcabamba, six or
seven thousand feet above his little plantation. He said he could
usually sell such a load for five soles, equivalent to two dollars
and a half! His was certainly a hard lot, but he did not complain,
although he smilingly admitted that it was very difficult to keep
the trail open, since the jungle grew so fast and the floods in the
river continually washed away his little rustic bridges. His chief
regret was that as the result of a recent revolution, with which he
had had nothing to do, the government had decreed that all firearms
should be turned in, and so he had lost the one thing he needed to
enable him to get fresh meat in the forest.
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FIGURE
Saavedra and his Inca Pottery
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FIGURE
Inca Gable at Espiritu Pampa
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In the clearing near the house we were interested to see a large
turkey-like bird, the pava de la montaña, glossy black, its most
striking feature a high, coral red comb. Although completely at
liberty, it seemed to be thoroughly domesticated. It would make an
attractive bird for introduction into our Southern States.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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