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Admitting that he had heard there were Inca ruins near Saavedra's station, Señor Pancorbo still begged us not to risk our lives by going to look for them. By this time our curiosity was thoroughly aroused. We were familiar with the current stories regarding the habits of savage tribes who lived in the montaña and whose services were in great demand as rubber gatherers.
We reached Paltaybamba about dusk. The owner, Señor José S. Pancorbo, was absent, attending to the affairs of a rubber estate in the jungles of the river San Miguel. The plantation of Paltaybamba occupies the best lands in the lower Vilcabamba Valley, but lying, as it does, well off the main highway, visitors are rare and our arrival was the occasion for considerable excitement.
We had even heard that Indians did not particularly like to work for Señor Pancorbo, who was an energetic, ambitious man, anxious to achieve many things, results which required more laborers than could easily be obtained. We could readily believe there might possibly be Indians at Conservidayoc who had escaped from the rubber estate of San Miguel.
In the seventeenth century they had four principal points of rendezvous: one in Spain the pass of Pancorbo; one in Germany the glade called the Wicked Woman, near Diekirsch, where there are two enigmatic bas-reliefs, representing a woman with a head and a man without one; one in France the hill where was the colossal statue of Massue-la-Promesse in the old sacred wood of Borvo Tomona, near Bourbonne les Bains; one in England behind the garden wall of William Challoner, Squire of Gisborough in Cleveland, Yorkshire, behind the square tower and the great wing which is entered by an arched door.
We were not unexpected, however. It was Señor Pancorbo who had assured us in Cuzco that we should find ruins near Pucyura and he had told his major-domo to be on the look-out for us. We had a long talk with the manager of the plantation and his friends that evening.
Another, Señor Pancorbo, whose plantation was in the Vilcabamba Valley, said that he had heard vague rumors of ruins in the valley above his plantation, particularly near Pucyura. If his story should prove to be correct, then it was likely that this might be the very Puquiura where Friar Marcos had established the first church in the "province of Uilcapampa."
Several days later, while Professor Foote and I were studying the ruins near Rosaspata, Señor Pancorbo, returning from his rubber estate in the San Miguel Valley and learning at Lucma of our presence near by, took great pains to find us and see how we were progressing. When he learned of our intention to search for the ruins of Conservidayoc, he asked us to desist from the attempt.
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.
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