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'I asked not for hundreds or thousands, I said, right glad at heart to hear such good tidings. 'For the present I need but a score, so do you choose me twenty of the noblest blood and the best judgment, and an hour before midnight let them be with you on the plain behind the Sacsahuaman. Let them come well provided with torches or candles, and tools, levers, and hammers and spades.
The city was surrounded by walls and dominated by a great fortress called Sacsahuaman, which stood upon a steep and rocky hill overlooking the capital. On the side toward the city the fortress was practically impregnable on account of the precipitous slopes of the cliffs. Within the walls was a citadel of three tall towers. The whole constituted a most formidable position.
A little farther up the stream one passes through a massive megalithic gateway and finds one's self in the presence of the astounding gray-blue Cyclopean walls of Sacsahuaman, described in "Across South America." Here the ancient builders constructed three great terraces, which extend one above another for a third of a mile across the hill between two deep gulches.
I have never even dreamed of anything like it. Where are we, Vilcaroya? 'In the throne-room of the Incas, beneath what was once their palace and fortress on the hill of Sacsahuaman, I answered, 'and this is the throne of the great Yupanqui, the greatest earthly king and conqueror of my race.
It is not surprising that the Spanish conquerors, warriors themselves and descendants of twenty generations of a fighting race, accustomed as they were to the salients of European fortresses, should have looked upon Sacsahuaman as a fortress. To them the military use of its bastions was perfectly obvious.
This seems to me a more likely object for the gigantic labor involved in the construction of Sacsahuaman than its possible usefulness as a fortress. Equally strong defenses against an enemy attempting to attack the hilltop back of Cuzco might have been constructed of smaller stones in an infinitely shorter time, with far less labor and pains.
Will you lead my armies to battle against the oppressors of my people? Will you help me to free this land of my fathers from the yoke of its tyrants, and be the war-chieftain of my people, and stand by my throne in the days when the Rainbow Banner shall once more float over the battlements of the Sacsahuaman and the City of the Sun?
It remains for some fortunate future investigator to determine who were the inhabitants of Piquillacta, how they secured their water supply, and why the city was abandoned. Sacsahuaman: Detail of Lower Terrace Wall Ruins of the Aqueduct of Rumiccolca
On the other hand, the ancient Peruvians were religious rather than warlike, more inclined to worship the sun than to fight great battles. Was Sacsahuaman due to the desire to please, at whatever cost, the god that fructified the crops which grew on terraces?
In all the fighting the young Inca, in full war-gear of gold and silver, mounted on a captured horse, with a Spanish lance in his hand, had played a hero's dauntless part. At the commencement of the siege there had been a discussion as to whether they should occupy the great fortress of Sacsahuaman, or not.
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