The Mammoth Book of Travel in Dangerous Places

by John Keay

  To my astonishment I saw that this wall and its adjoining semicircular temple over the cave were as fine as the finest stonework in the far-famed Temple of the Sun in Cuzco. Surprise followed surprise in bewildering succession. I climbed a marvellous great stairway of large granite blocks, walked along a pampa where the Indians had a small vegetable garden, and came into a little clearing. Here were the ruins of two of the finest structures I have ever seen in Peru. Not only were they made of selected blocks of beautifully grained white granite; their walls contained ashlars of Cyclopean size, ten feet in length, and higher than a man. The sight held me spellbound.

  Each building had only three walls and was entirely open on the side towards the clearing. The principal temple was lined with exquisitely made niches, five high up at each end, and seven on the back wall. There were seven courses of ashlars in the end walls. Under the seven rear niches was a rectangular block fourteen feet long, probably a sacrificial altar. The building did not look as though it had ever had a roof. The top course of beautifully smooth ashlars was not intended to be covered.

  The other temple is on the east side of the pampa. I called it the Temple of the Three Windows. Like its neighbour, it is unique among Inca ruins. Its eastern wall, overlooking the citadel, is a massive stone framework for three conspicuously large windows, obviously too large to serve any useful purpose, yet most beautifully made with the greatest care and solidity. This was clearly a ceremonial edifice of peculiar significance. Nowhere else in Peru, so far as I know, is there a similar structure conspicuous as “a masonry wall with three windows”.

  These ruins have no other name than that of the mountain on the slopes of which they are located. Had this place been occupied uninterruptedly, like Cuzco and Ollantaytambo, Machu Picchu would have retained its ancient name, but during the centuries when it was abandoned, its name was lost. Examination showed that it was essentially a fortified place, a remote fastness protected by natural bulwarks, of which man took advantage to create the most impregnable stronghold in the Andes. Our subsequent excavations and the clearing made in 1912, has shown that this was the chief place in Uilcapampa.

  It did not take an expert to realize, from the glimpse of Machu Picchu on that rainy day in July, 1911, when Sergeant Carrasco and I first saw it, that here were most extraordinary and interesting ruins. Although the ridge had been partly cleared by the Indians for their fields of maize, so much of it was still underneath a thick jungle growth – some walls were actually supporting trees ten and twelve inches in diameter – that it was impossible to determine just what would be found here. As soon as I could get hold of Mr Tucker, who was assisting Mr Hendriksen, and Mr Lanius, who had gone down the Urubamba with Dr Bowman, I asked them to make a map of the ruins. I knew it would be a difficult undertaking and that it was essential for Mr Tucker to join me in Arequipa not later than the first of October for the ascent of Coropuna. With the hearty aid of Richarte and Alvarez, the surveyors did better than I expected. In the ten days while they were at the ruins they were able to secure data from which Mr Tucker afterwards prepared a map which told better than could any words of mine the importance of this site and the necessity for further investigation.

  With the possible exception of one mining prospector, no one in Cuzco had seen the ruins of Machu Picchu or appreciated their importance. No one had any realization of what an extraordinary place lay on top of the ridge. It had never been visited by any of the planters of the lower Urubamba Valley who annually passed over the road which winds through the canyon two thousand feet below.

  It seems incredible that this citadel, less than three days’ journey from Cuzco, should have remained so long undescribed by travellers and comparatively unknown even to the Peruvians themselves. If the conquistadores ever saw this wonderful place, some reference to it surely would have been made; yet nothing can be found which clearly refers to the ruins of Machu Picchu. Just when it was first seen by a Spanish-speaking person is uncertain. When the Count de Sartiges was at Huadquiña in 1834 he was looking for ruins; yet, although so near, he heard of none here. From a crude scrawl on the walls of one of the finest buildings, we learned that the ruins were visited in 1902 by Lizarraga, lessee of the lands immediately below the bridge of San Miguel. This is the earliest local record. Yet some one must have visited Machu Picchu long before that; because in 1875, as has been said, the French explorer Charles Wiener heard in Ollantaytambo of their being ruins at “Huaina-Picchu or Matcho-Picchu”. He tried to find them. That he failed was due to there being no road through the canyon of Torontoy and the necessity of making a wide detour through the pass of Panticalla and the Lucumayo Valley, a route which brought him to the Urubamba River at the bridge of Chuquichaca, twenty-five miles below Machu Picchu.

  It was not until 1890 that the Peruvian Government, recognizing the needs of the enterprising planters who were opening up the lower valley of the Urubamba, decided to construct a mule trail along the banks of the river through the grand canyon to enable the much-desired coca and aguardiente to be shipped from Huadquiña, Maranura, and Santa Ana to Cuzco more quickly and cheaply than formerly. This road avoids the necessity of carrying the precious cargoes over the dangerous snowy passes of Mt Veronica and Mt Salcantay, so vividly described by Raimondi, de Sartiges, and others. The road, however, was very expensive, took years to build, and still requires frequent repair. In fact, even today travel over it is often suspended for several days or weeks at a time, following some tremendous avalanche. Yet it was this new road which had led Melchor Arteaga to build his hut near the arable land at Mandor Pampa, where he could raise food for his family and offer rough shelter to passing travellers. It was this new road which brought Richarte, Alvarez, and their enterprising friends into this little-known region, gave them the opportunity of occupying the ancient terraces of Machu Picchu, which had lain fallow for centuries, encouraged them to keep open a passable trail over the precipices, and made it feasible for us to reach the ruins. It was this new road which offered us in 1911 a virgin field between Ollantaytambo and Huadquiña and enabled us to learn that the Incas, or their predecessors, had once lived here in the remote fastnesses of the Andes, and had left stone witnesses of the magnificence and beauty of their ancient civilization, more interesting and extensive than any which have been found since the days of the Spanish Conquest of Peru.

  FOUR YEARS IN THE ICE

  John Ross

  (1777–1856)

  Discredited for his report of an imaginary mountain range blocking the most likely access to the North West Passage, in 1829 a crusty Ross returned to Canada’s frozen archipelago to vindicate his reputation. He rounded the north of Baffin Island and entered what he named the Gulf of Boothia. Here the Victory, his eccentric paddle-steamer, became frozen into the ice. Through three tantalizingly brief summers the expedition tried to find a way out and through four long winters they endured the worst of Arctic conditions in a makeshift camp. In July 1832, with the ship long since abandoned, Ross made what must be their last bid to reach open water.

  July 7 The shooting of fifty dovekies [guillemots] yesterday gave the men a good Sunday’s dinner; and the last divine service we trusted ever to attend in this house, was performed. It was the commencement of a farewell which all hoped would be eternal; but every one must answer for the feelings under which he, for the expected last time, repeated the Lord’s prayer, and heard himself dismissed in those words which promise, to those who deserve it, that peace which passes all understanding. I trust there were few who did not recollect to return their own private thanksgiving for so long a preservation amid such dangers and privation and who did not put up their own prayers for help in the great undertaking now impending, on the success or failure of which must turn the event of life or death to all.

  On Monday, every thing was ready, and we too were as prepared as we were anxious to quit this dreary place, as we hoped, for ever. Yet, with those hopes, there were mingled many fears: enough to render it still but too d
oubtful in all our minds whether we might not yet be compelled to return; to return once more to despair, and perhaps, to return but to die. To have been able, confidently, to say, Adieu for ever, would have been indeed to render this a delightful parting; when even the shelter which we had received was insufficient to balance all the miseries which we had suffered; miseries to have extinguished every sense of regret that we could have felt in pronouncing those two words, which, it is said, have never yet, under any circumstances, been pronounced without pain. This may be true; I almost believe that it would have been true even in our case, though in parting from our miserable winter house of timber and snow, we left nothing behind us but misery and the recollection of misery; since, in the comparison with what might have been, it was, heaven knows, a shelter from evils far greater, from death itself; and, such home as it was, a Home; that strange entity from which man never parts, bad as it may be, without reluctance, and never leaves but with some strange longing to see it again. But true as may be the pain of an adieu, or the fancy of leaving for ever a home, or true as may be, reversely the pleasure of quitting for ever the scene of past miseries, neither the pleasure nor the pain was ours. Scarcely the feeling of a farewell, for hope or regret, for pain or for pleasure, was in any mind, when we coldly departed in the evening with our three sledges, to encounter such fate as Providence might have in store for us.

  Courtesy of the Mansell Collection.

  The sick, who formed our great difficulty, bore the first journey well, and we reached our first station before mid-day. It was a fine day, and the warmest that had yet occurred; the temperature being 48°. In the afternoon, at three, we proceeded again, with infinite toil, through nearly impassable ways, which were rendered more difficult to us by the care which the sick required and so hard was the labour, that even here, and at night we were obliged to work in our shirts. We gained but two miles by midnight and were glad to rest.

  July 10 We recommenced with all the baggage labouring through ways as bad, or worse, under a sun that was occasionally very hot and at nine, reached the third position at the cascade, which was now pouring down abundantly into a pool filled with kittiwakes where we procured some sorrel. We found that the bears had upset a cask full of skins which we had left here but they could not contrive to open it.

  On the next day we brought forward the sick whom we could not move together with the baggage, and then proceeded to the third position, after a very fatiguing journey backward and forwards, of twenty-four miles. We had lately obtained a good supply of dovekies, and could now afford every one a good breakfast; which was not less necessary than agreeable, emaciated as most of us were, and nevertheless compelled to endure this constant labour. In the afternoon, the road on the shore being better we contrived to take most of our stores, the sick included: but it was not, finally till after many difficulties in avoiding and traversing bad ice, that we reached the boats in Batty bay, at eight in the morning.

  We found that the bears and foxes had committed considerable depredations on our stores, by destroying a cask of bread, some oil, and some sugar, and also all the leather shoes and boots they could find. The weather was very fine, and the dovekies being numerous, we killed some for our provision. Even at midnight the thermometer was now 48°: it was a great revolution in the weather, and it had been a sudden one; unexpected, but not undue. Two light sledges today [July 13] brought up the few things which we had been obliged to leave at the last place, together with some sorrel for the sick; while we obtained thirty dovekies.

  July 14 Sunday was made a day of rest. They who walked found the land quite destitute of vegetation, and a considerable river running into the head of the bay. On the following day the ice was examined from the hills, but was not yet breaking in the offing: the weather being calm and fine, but sometimes foggy. The men were employed in repairing the boats, and in preparations for embarking. The ice moved on the sixteenth; but the large creek was still filled, and impassable. On the two next days it rained almost constantly, and we were prisoners. About a hundred dovekies were killed, so that our supply of fresh meat was respectable, if not great.

  On the twentieth, the weather became fine again; the ice continued to move, and the caulking of the boats was continued. An easterly wind made the thermometer fall to 38°. On Sunday the ice was reported to be broken up in the offing; but after three days, without any thing material to note, except the killing of fifty dovekies, it remained close packed on the shore, so that it was impossible for us to move. The weather, from this time, continued variable, with occasional rain and wind, together with fogs, till the thirtieth; as the only events worth noticing, were the improvement of the sick, and the killing of some more birds for our table.

  We had now seen the ice leave the shore at last, but had yesterday been prevented from embarking, by a heavy fog. This ending in rain and sleet, with an adverse east wind, on the last morning of the month, we did not load the boats till mid-day; but as it proved, in vain, since it came to blow and rain so heavily all the afternoon and evening, that it was impossible to embark. In every way it was desirable to quit this place; as the stones had now begun to fall from the cliffs, in consequence of which two men experienced severe contusions, and one narrowly escaped with his life. Thus ended July.

  Of that month, any summary is superseded by the preceding journal; it is almost sufficient to note that the mean temperature had been 36°, and the extremes 28° and 50° plus. It had not been an unfavourable one to our prospects, on the whole while we had no right to expect an open sea in these regions at so early a period, far less in a strait which had exhibited such perseverance in preserving its ice through the whole summer during the preceding years. That the sick had improved was a very consoling circumstance; while our situation was, at least, one of joint exertion and hope.

  Between the first and the fifteenth of the month of August, the changes of the wind and the vacillations in the nature of the weather were such as I have often recorded during the past two; while the general result is all that is here worthy of notice. The prevailing nature of the former was north-easterly: and the consequence was, to block up the shore with ice, and to keep us closely imprisoned to our beach and our boats. On the third, indeed, we made an attempt to move round the southern point of the bay: but being unable to effect this, and finding the blockade of this headland so heavy that the bay must open sooner, so as to give us notice where we might possibly pass it, we returned, as there was nothing to gain by this project.

  But even this fruitless labour was not without its use. The result of it was to do something: and, to do, even what was useless, was to keep up the spirits and hopes of the people, as it also interrupted that uniformity of idle wakefulness which led them to brood over their present condition, and to indulge in evil anticipations. The Highland squire who makes Boswell haul on the backstay in a gale of wind, displays more knowledge than a landsman has any right to possess.

  I know not what we should have done, what would have “become of us,” as the phrase is, had we not made work when we had ceased to find it. “The men,” as they are called, are not much given to thinking, it is certain; though seamen of the present day (and I am sorry to say it), think much more than they did in the days of my junior service, and, most assuredly and certainly, are “all the worse” for it. Let my fraternity in command say whether this be true or not; and they are the bold men who will so say, despite of the paltry, fantastical, and pretending, ultra philanthropy of these days of ruinous folly. But that is an over serious matter to discuss at present. “An idle man is a pillow for the devil,” says a Spanish or Italian proverb; it was no good that our men should have been pillowed in this manner: better was it that they should work themselves into utter weariness, that they should so hunger as to think only of their stomachs, fall asleep and dream of nothing but a better dinner, as they awoke to hope and labour for it, and that their sleep should be, not on the pillow of the proverb, but on a couch of snow, sufficient to impede all reflectio
ns but the wish for a better bed after a better supper and the gnawing desire of more and better on the following day.

  The shooting of waterfowl furnished indeed some occupation to those who were worthy of being trusted with powder and shot; but I believe the best occupation, to a set of such starved wretches as we were, was to eat the game, not to shoot it. Every morning now rose on the hopes of a good supper: if that came, it was more than welcome; and when it did not, why then there was the chance of one to-morrow. I do not say that the supper which was missed was equivalent to the one that was eaten; since hope or expectation will not, more than wishing, fill a man’s stomach; but it is certain that the sick recovered rapidly, and the well improved in strength; nor could I doubt that their present state of mind was, in this, scarcely less efficacious than the broiled ducks and the dovekie sea-pies.

  To look out from the top of the hill, for the state of the ice, was another occupation for any one that chose; and it was exercise, while it served to waste the time. It was not, like Behring’s unhappy men, to watch for the ship that was destined never to appear, and, when the day closed, to retire once more to darkness and despair. The day of relief might be delayed, but it was long yet before it would be time to fear that it was not to arrive; while, in every change of a breeze, in every shower of rain, and in every movement of the ice, however minute, there was sufficient to maintain hope, and to render all anxious for the to-morrow; as each, on retiring for the night, felt inclined to say, yet not under the same motives as the wretches in the Castle of Indolence, “Thank God, the day is done.”

  It was on the fourteenth that hope became anxiety, when a lane of water was for the first time seen, leading to the northward; and not many, I believe, slept, under the anticipations of what the next day might bring. On this, all were employed in cutting the ice which obstructed the shore, as early as four o’clock in the morning; and the tide having risen soon after, with a fine westerly breeze, we launched the boats, embarked the stores and the sick, and, at eight o’clock, were under way.