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Updated: June 7, 2025
This opinion made everybody laugh, and as Juan considered it his privilege to laugh five times louder than any one, a quasi engagement resulted from this sudden harmony of temper. Colonel Perez shrugged his shoulders: Marcoy, as literary man, took down the name of the new-comer.
Marcoy then asked him if he had never heard his father or his grandfather speak of the great city of San Gavan, built hereabouts formerly by the Spanish chevaliers, and which the Caranga and Suchimani Indians from the Inambari River had destroyed by fire.
Colonel Perez, Marcoy and the examinador retained their horses, and a couple of the mozos their mules, the remainder of the beasts being kept at livery in Marcapata, and the muleteers volunteering to accompany the troupe as far as Chile-Chile: at this point the bridle-path came to an end, and the gentlemen would have to dismount, accompanying thenceforth their peons on a literal "footing" of equality.
But Nature had thoroughly reclaimed her own, and the place, indicated again and again by the savages with absolute unanimity, showed nothing but mounds of fern and moss under canopies of forest trees. A day's rest and a sketch or two were consecrated by Marcoy to this historic spot, the grave of a civilization.
Marcoy, feeling unable to do justice to the case of the nephew, turned him over to Perez, whose undisguised dislike made the work of correction at once grateful and thorough. Marcoy himself confronted the stolid and sullen Pepe Garcia, insisting upon the example he owed to the Indian porters and the responsibility of his Caucasian blood.
They had already laid low several cocoa groves, torn up the sugar-canes, broken down the bananas, and sliced off the green pineapples. Indignant at such vandalism, Marcoy caught the first offender by the plaited tails at the back of the neck. "What are you doing?" he cried. "But my fellows and I don't want to be sent any more to work at Sausipata."
The latter, judging patience their best policy, sat in silence while the delicate fancy of the savages expended itself in arabesques and flourishes. Perez and Aragon had their eyes surrounded with red spectacles. The face of Marcoy, covered with a heavy beard, only allowed room for a "W" on the forehead, and Pepe Garcia was quit for a set of interfacings like a checkerboard.
It was curious, as it seemed to Marcoy when the argument was rehearsed to him presently, that the fellows made no complaint of being footsore, overcharged with burdens or conducted into paths too difficult for them. A lurking admiration for the vigor with which, after all, they played their crushing part of beasts of burden, procured them immunity from further punishment after their return.
The savages laughed at first, but finally informed the visitors that the constructions which puzzled them so had been made by people of their own race many years ago, for the purpose of gathering gold from the river which used to run along there, but which now flowed seven miles off. This information was dear to the historic instinct of Marcoy.
At the magic word siruta all these new-comers rushed in a mass upon the white men. Marcoy managed to slip his fine ivory-handled machete within his trowser leg, but every other cutting tool disappeared as if by magic from the possession of the explorers. The shooting-utensils the savages, believing them haunted, would not touch.
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