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
In the market-place of Sicuani, the largest town in the valley, and
the border-line between the potato-growing uplands and lowland maize
fields, we attended the famous Sunday market. Many native "druggists"
were present. Their stock usually consisted of "medicines," whose
efficacy was learned by the Incas. There were forty or fifty kinds
of simples and curiosities, cure-alls, and specifics. Fully half
were reported to me as being "useful against fresh air" or the evil
effects of drafts. The "medicines" included such minerals as iron
ore and sulphur; such vegetables as dried seeds, roots, and the
leaves of plants domesticated hundreds of years ago by the Incas or
gathered in the tropical jungles of the lower Urubamba Valley; and
such animals as starfish brought from the Pacific Ocean. Some of them
were really useful herbs, while others have only a psychopathic effect
on the patient. Each medicine was in an attractive little particolored
woolen bag. The bags, differing in design and color, woven on miniature
hand looms, were arranged side by side on the ground, the upper parts
turned over and rolled down so as to disclose the contents.
Not many miles below Sicuani, at a place called Racche, are the
remarkable ruins of the so-called Temple of Viracocha, described by
Squier. At first sight Racche looks as though there were here a row
of nine or ten lofty adobe piers, forty or fifty feet high! Closer
inspection, however, shows them all to be parts of the central wall of
a great temple. The wall is pierced with large doors and the spaces
between the doors are broken by niches, narrower at the top than at
the bottom. There are small holes in the doorposts for bar-holds. The
base of the great wall is about five feet thick and is of stone. The
ashlars are beautifully cut and, while not rectangular, are roughly
squared and fitted together with most exquisite care, so as to insure
their making a very firm foundation. Their surface is most attractive,
but, strange to say, there is unmistakable evidence that the builders
did not wish the stonework to show. This surface was at one time
plastered with clay, a very significant fact. The builders wanted the
wall to seem to be built entirely of adobe, yet, had the great clay
wall rested on the ground, floods and erosion might have succeeded
in undermining it. Instead, it rests securely on a beautifully built
foundation of solid masonry. Even so, the great wall does not stand
absolutely true, but leans slightly to the westward. The wall also
seems to be less weathered on the west side. Probably the prevailing
or strongest wind is from the east.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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