Lost City of the Incas (Phoenix Press) by Hiram Bingham Read Free Book Online Page A

owe to the ancient Peruvians. Very few appreciate that they gave us the white potato, many varieties of Indian corn, and such useful drugs as quinine and cocaine. Their civilization, which took thousands of years to develop, was marked by inventive genius, artistic ability, and a knowledge of agriculture which has never been surpassed. In the making of beautiful pottery and the weaving of fine textiles they equalled the best that Egypt or Greece could offer. Although the Incas governed their millions of subjects with firmness and justice under a benevolent despotism that allowed no one to be hungry or cold, they had no written language, not even hieroglyphics. Accordingly our knowledge of them has had to depend on what we can see of what they left, aided by the chroniclers of the sixteenth century, contemporaries of Pizarro and the conquistadors, most of whom looked upon their history and politics through European eyes. Even the Inca Garcilasso de la Vega had been in Spain forty years when he wrote his famous account of his ancestors.
    Some four hundred years ago, the last of the Incas were living in one of the most inaccessible parts of the Andes, the region lying between the Apurímac River and the Urubamba, two important affluents of the Amazon. Here they were shut off from that part of Peru which was under the sway of Pizarro and the conquistadors by mighty precipices, passes three miles high, granite canyons more than a mile in depth, glaciers and tropical jungles, as well as by dangerous rapids. For thirty-five years they enjoyed virtual independence, as their ancestors had done forcenturies. They had two capitals: Vitcos, a hastily constructed military headquarters where they occasionally received refugees, Spanish emissaries, and Augustinian missionaries, and Vilcapampa, their principal residence, a magnificently built sanctuary to which no Spaniards ever penetrated.
    With the death of the last Inca in 1571, Vitcos was abandoned. It was a fortress on top of a mountain and inconvenient as a dwelling-place. Its name was forgotten and its location obscure until we found it. The royal city of Vilcapampa was completely lost. It was a sacred shrine hidden on top of great precipices in a stupendous canyon where the secret of its existence was safely buried for three centuries under the shadow of Machu Picchu mountain. Its ruins have taken the name of the mountain because when we found them no one knew what else to call them.
    This marvellous Inca sanctuary, which was lost for three hundred years, has at last become a veritable Mecca for ambitious tourists. Everyone who goes to South America wants to see it. It used to be two or three hard days’ journey from Cuzco, on mule-back and on foot, but now it can be reached by train and car in one day. A fair motor road has been built there. Furthermore, Cuzco, which used to be a week away from Lima, can now be reached by aeroplane in a few hours! Pilgrims come from Buenos Aires and Santiago as well as from New York and Washington. They all agree with the late Frank Chapman of beloved memory that ‘in the sublimity of its surroundings, the marvel of its site, the character and the mystery of its construction, the Western Hemisphere holds nothing comparable’.
    After I found it in 1911, Yale University and the National Geographic Society made it possible for me to explore the region in 1912 and 1915 and to publish the results of our studies. Those reports have long since been out of print. Meanwhile, various documents have come to light and professional archaeologists have advanced our knowledge of the Incas to the point where it has seemed worthwhile to collect all that is known about Machu Picchu, its origin, how it came to be lost, and how it was finally discovered, and present it here in popular form forthe benefit of those who may be curious about the Incas and the sacred city that they successfully hid from the Spanish conquerors.
    In the heart of their country, about 50