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Updated: June 9, 2025
The sugar planters of the lower Urubamba Valley crossed the bridge of San Miguel annually for twenty years in blissful ignorance of what lay on top of the ridge above them. So the friars might easily have been lodged in huts at the foot of the mountain without their being aware of the extent and importance of the Inca "university."
The "medicines" included such minerals as iron ore and sulphur; such vegetables as dried seeds, roots, and the leaves of plants domesticated hundreds of years ago by the Incas or gathered in the tropical jungles of the lower Urubamba Valley; and such animals as starfish brought from the Pacific Ocean.
To find a new genus of mammalian quadrupeds was an event which delighted Mr. Heller far more than shooting a dozen bears. Torontoy is at the beginning of the Grand Canyon of the Urubamba, and such a canyon! The river "road" runs recklessly up and down rock stairways, blasts its way beneath overhanging precipices, spans chasms on frail bridges propped on rustic brackets against granite cliffs.
Commanding as it does the entrance to the valley of Torontoy, Salapunco may have been built by some ancient chief to enable him to levy tribute on all who passed. My first impression was that the fortress was placed here, at the end of the temperate zone, to defend the valleys of Urubamba and Ollantaytambo against savage enemies coming up from the forests of the Amazon.
When in 1536 Cuzco was relieved by Pizarro's comrade, Almagro, and Manco's last chance of regaining the ancient capital of his ancestors failed, the Inca retreated to Ollantaytambo. Here, on the banks of the river Urubamba, Manco made a determined stand, but Ollantaytambo was too easily reached by Pizarro's mounted cavaliers.
They descended the Lucumayo to its junction with the Urubamba and came to the bridge of Chuquichaca. The narrow suspension bridge, built of native fibers, sagged deeply in the middle and swayed so threateningly over the gorge of the Urubamba that only one man could pass it at a time. The rapid river was too deep to be forded. There were no canoes.
The desire to go and find that "something hidden" was now reënforced by the temptation to go and see whether Coropuna really was the highest mountain in America. There followed the organization of an expedition whose object was a geographical reconnaissance of Peru along the 73d meridian, from the head of canoe navigation on the Urubamba to tidewater on the Pacific.
I was fain to request her to permit us to take only as many as our pockets could hold; but she seemed so surprised and pained, we had to fill our saddle-bags as well. At the end of the day we crossed the Urubamba River on a fine steel bridge and found ourselves in the prosperous little town of Quillabamba, the provincial capital.
Furthermore, there is no "white rock over a spring of water" which Calancha says was "near Uiticos." There is no Pucyura in this neighborhood. In fact, the canyon of the Urubamba does not satisfy the geographical requirements of Uiticos. Although containing ruins of surpassing interest, Machu Picchu did not represent that last Inca capital for which we were searching.
Leaving the ruins of Machu Picchu for later investigation, we now pushed on down the Urubamba Valley, crossed the bridge of San Miguel, passed the house of Señor Lizarraga, first of modern Peruvians to write his name on the granite walls of Machu Picchu, and came to the sugar-cane fields of Huadquiña. We had now left the temperate zone and entered the tropics.
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