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
The Tejadas were not anxious to spend the night in town--probably
because, according to our contract, the cost of feeding the mules
devolved entirely upon them and fodder is always far more expensive
in town than in the country. It was just as well for us that this
was so, for I am sure that before morning the village gossips would
have persuaded the gobernador to arrest us. As it was, however, he was
pleasant and hospitable, and considerably amused at the embarrassment
of an Indian woman who was weaving at a hand loom in his courtyard
and whom we desired to photograph. She could not easily escape, for
she was sitting on the ground with one end of the loom fastened around
her waist, the other end tied to a eucalyptus tree. So she covered her
eyes and mouth with her hands, and almost wept with mortification at
our strange procedure. Peruvian Indian women are invariably extremely
shy, rarely like to be photographed, and are anxious only to escape
observation and notice. The ladies of the gobernador's own family,
however, of mixed Spanish and Indian ancestry, not only had no
objection to being photographed, but were moved to unseemly and
unsympathetic laughter at the predicament of their unfortunate sister.
After leaving Lampa we found ourselves on the best road that we
had seen in a long time. Its excellence was undoubtedly due to the
enterprise and energy of the people of this pleasant town. One might
expect that citizens who kept their town so clean and neat and were
engaged in the unusual act of constructing new irrigation works would
have a comfortable road in the direction toward which they usually
would wish to go, namely, toward the coast.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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