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Leaving modern Vilcabamba, we crossed the flat, marshy bottom of an old glaciated valley, in which one of our mules got thoroughly mired while searching for the succulent grasses which cover the treacherous bog. Fording the Vilcabamba River, which here is only a tiny brook, we climbed out of the valley and turned westward. On the mountains above us were vestiges of several abandoned mines.
In the latter part of the sixteenth century, gold mines were discovered in the adjacent mountains and the capital of the Spanish province of Vilcabamba was transferred from Hoyara to this place. Its official name, Condoré said, is still San Francisco de la Victoria de Vilcabamba, and as such it occurs on most of the early maps of Peru.
Salcantay and Veronica; but there was nothing to lead any one to visit the upper Vilcabamba Valley or to desire to make it a place of residence. And until Señor Pancorbo opened the road to Lucma, Pucyura was extremely difficult of access. Nine generations of Indians lived and died in the province of Uilcapampa between the time of Tupac Amaru and the arrival of the first modern explorers.
There are high mountains on either side, covered with dense jungle and dark green foliage, in pleasing contrast to the light green of the fields of waving sugar cane. The valley is steep, the road is very winding, and the torrent of the Vilcabamba roars loudly, even in July. What it must be like in February, the rainy season, we could only surmise.
Ocampo's new "Vilcabamba" was not in existence when Friar Marcos and Friar Diego lived in this province. If Calancha wrote his chronicles from their notes, the term "old" would not apply to Espiritu Pampa, but to an older Vilcabamba than either of the places known to Ocampo. The ruins are of late Inca pattern, not of a kind which would have required a long period to build.
No one at Vilcabamba had seen the ruins, but they said that at the village of Pampaconas, "about five leagues from here," there were Indians who had actually been to Conservidayoc. Our supplies were getting low. There were no shops nearer than Lucma; no food was obtainable from the natives.
It will be remembered that Father Calancha relates the trials of the first two missionaries in this region, who at the peril of their lives urged the Inca to let them visit the "University of Idolatry," at "Vilcabamba Viejo," "the largest city" in the province. Machu Picchu admirably answers its requirements.
In the morning the manager gave us a guide to the next house up the valley, with orders that the man at that house should relay us to the next, and so on. These people, all tenants of the plantation, obligingly carried out their orders, although at considerable inconvenience to themselves. The Vilcabamba Valley above Paltaybamba is very picturesque.
We also had the new map of South Peru and North Bolivia which had just been published by the Royal Geographical Society and gave a summary of all available information. The Indians said that Conservidayoc lay in a westerly direction from Vilcabamba, yet on Raimondi's map all of the rivers which rise in the mountains west of the town are short affluents of the Apurimac and flow southwest.
When Raimondi, the first scientist to penetrate Vilcabamba, reached Pucyura, no one thought to tell him that on the hilltop opposite the village once lived the last of the Incas and that the ruins of their palaces were still there, hidden underneath a thick growth of trees and vines.
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