“On the east end of Sacsahuaman, crowning a steep cliff immediately above the palace of Manco Capac, there are three terraces, one above the other, built of a light-colored stone. The first wall, fourteen feet high, extends in a semicircular form around the hill for one hundred and eighty paces, and between the first and second terraces there is a space eight feet wide. The second wall is twelve feet high and the third is ninety paces around its whole extent.... This was the citadel of the fortress, and in its palmy days was crowned by three towers connected by subterranean passages, now quite demolished.... From the citadel to its eastern extremity the length of the table-land of Sacsahuaman is three hundred and fifty-three paces and its breadth in the broadest part one hundred and thirty paces. On the south side the position is so strong and impregnable that it required no artificial defense. The position is defended on part of its north side by a steep ravine through which flows the river Rodadero and which extends for one hundred and seventy-four paces from the citadel in a westerly direction. Here, therefore, the position required only a single breastwork, which is still in a good state of preservation; but from this point to the western extremity of the table-land, a distance of four hundred paces, nature has left it entirely undefended, a small plain extending in front of it to the rocky heights of the Rodadero. “From this point, therefore, the Incas constructed a cyclopean line of fortifications, a work which fills the mind with astonishment at the grandeur of the conception and the perfect manner of its execution. It consists of three walls, the first averaging a height of eighteen feet, the second of sixteen and the third of fourteen, the first terrace being ten feet broad and the second eight. The walls are built with salient and retiring angles, twenty-one in number and corresponding with each other in each wall, so that no one point could be attacked without being commanded by others.... But the most marvelous part of this fortification is the huge masses of rock of which it is constructed (one of them being sixteen feet in height and several more varying from ten to twelve feet), yet made to fit exactly one into the other and forming a piece of masonry almost unparalleled in solidity, beauty, and peculiarity of its construction in any other part of the world. The immense masses at Stonehenge, the great block in the tomb of Agamemnon at Argos, and those in the cyclopean walls of Volterra and Agrigentum are wonderful monuments of the perseverance and knowledge of the people who raised them, but they fall immeasurably short in beauty of execution of the fortress of Cuzco.”