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Updated: June 8, 2025
And thus passed Vilcamapata, the last of the ancient Peruvian priests of the Sun, with two men only, and they of alien blood and alien religion, to perform the last sacred rites for him.
Since then `gramfer' Vilcamapata has been a wanderer and a fugitive, always fleeing from the Spaniards, who, it appears, are doing their utmost to extirpate the Peruvians under the pretence of converting or trying to convert them to the Christian faith.
Vilcamapata informed the Englishmen that these animals were known respectively as alpacas, llamas, and vicunas, and that the first were used by his countrymen for food, while their wool was woven into garments; the second were used as beasts of burden, and the third were valuable principally for their hair and hides.
When Dick returned from his hunting expedition, some two hours later, with a small deer and a brace of guinea fowl, he found that Vilcamapata was still asleep, while Phil was putting the finishing touches to the new paddles.
On the following morning the Indians escorted Phil, Dick, and Vilcamapata to the spot where, beyond the cataract and the upper rapids, their boat, with all its contents intact, rode safely in the placid waters of a little bay where the river widened out and navigation was once more possible.
Whereupon the headman of the village, through Vilcamapata, petitioned that a party might be permitted to accompany the palefaces two days' journey up the river, in order that they might transport their friends' boat past certain rapids and a cataract which would be met with at that distance above the village.
"We are all right, Dick," he exclaimed, joyously; "these fellows are evidently a surviving remnant of the original inhabitants of the country, of whose existence Vilcamapata told me, and whose language I speak. It will only be necessary for me to tell them who we are, and they will free us at once."
To hew and hollow a canoe out of a solid tree trunk is a sufficiently formidable task for two men to undertake when they possess no more suitable tools than their hangers the hanger being a weapon very similar to the more modern cutlass; and although the two Englishmen had already done a similar piece of work once before, and were therefore not altogether lacking in experience; and although Vilcamapata taught them how to hollow out the hull expeditiously, after it was properly shaped, by the use of fire, it cost Phil and Dick very nearly a month's strenuous labour to get their new craft to their liking.
For some time, however, they looked in vain, for the Englishmen had learned a few of the ways of the wild from Vilcamapata, and had succeeded in obliterating their tracks so completely that even the sharp eyes of the savages failed to detect them.
Six days later, having meanwhile traversed about a hundred miles of stifling tropical forest, travelling all the while in a due southerly direction, and having crossed two important streams running in an easterly direction, to say nothing of numberless rivulets, they came to the bank of a third stream, also running almost due east; and here Vilcamapata announced that it would be necessary to build a canoe, as he now proposed to take to the water again.
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