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At any rate, the romantic stories of a gigantic inland sea, vastly more extensive than the present lake and actually surrounding the ancient city of Tiahuanaco, must be treated with respectful skepticism. Tiahuanaco, at the southern end of Lake Titicaca, in Bolivia, is famous for the remains of a pre-Inca civilization.
There may be some hundreds, but from Huancabamba the northern frontier of the western Cordilleras, where the Maranon crosses the eastern range down to Lake Titicaca on the one side, and Tacna on the other, is nigh a thousand miles, and the two ranges cover more square leagues than can be reckoned, and even a thousand men scattered over these would be but so many grains of sand on a stretch of the sea-shore."
I cited the Titicaca image, and he knew all about that. He spoke of Quaternary man, and I was with him all the time. Each was more and more amazed at the fulness and the accuracy of the information of the other, until like a flash the explanation crossed my mind. "You are reading Samuel Laing's 'Human Origins'!" I cried.
The surface of the great lake of Titicaca the largest piece of fresh-water in South America is 12,795 feet above the Pacific; an elevation greater than that of the highest peaks of the Pyrenees. In the neighbourhood of this lake, remains exist which speak of the advanced state of civilisation of the inhabitants before the appearance of the Incas, with whose latter history alone we are acquainted.
The Inca civilisation of Peru yields up a myth akin to that of Icarus, which tells how the chieftain Ayar Utso grew wings and visited the sun it was from the sun, too, that the founders of the Peruvian Inca dynasty, Manco Capac and his wife Mama Huella Capac, flew to earth near Lake Titicaca, to make the only successful experiment in pure tyranny that the world has ever witnessed.
Those who make the river rise in Bolivia, and descend form the mountains of Titicaca, have to prove that the true Amazon is the Ucayali, which is formed by the junction of the Paro and the Apurimac an assertion which is now generally rejected.
For many centuries affairs had continued in the same state, and there appeared no presage of the coming of a better era, when, on the shores of Lake Titicaca, there appeared to the Indians a man and woman, who pretended that they were the Children of the Sun.
This theory is based on the assumption that Titicaca was once very much higher than it is now, a hypothesis which has not commended itself to modern geologists or geographers. Dr.
A day's run by an excellent railroad takes one to Puno, the chief port of Lake Titicaca, elevation 12,500 feet. Puno boasts a soldier's monument and a new theater, really a "movie palace." There is a good harbor, although dredging is necessary to provide for steamers like the Inca. Repairs to the lake boats are made on a marine or, rather, a lacustrine railway.
I shall never forget my first experience on Lake Titicaca, when the steamer encountered a rain squall. The resulting deluge actually came through the decks. Needless to say, such downpours tend to wash away the soil which the farmers have painfully gathered for field or garden. The sun in the daytime is extremely hot, yet the difference in temperature between sun and shade is excessive.
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