ocal purchases
of mules and pack saddles, given us invaluable advice in overcoming
difficulties, and, in a word, placed himself wholly at our disposal,
just as though we were his most desirable and best-paying clients. As
a matter of fact, he never was willing to receive any compensation
for the many favors he showed us. So important a factor was he in
the success of our expeditions that he deserves to be gratefully
remembered by all friends of exploration.

Above his country house at Colcampata is the hill of Sacsahuaman. It
is possible to scramble up its face, but only by making more exertion
than is desirable at this altitude, 11,900 feet. The easiest way to
reach the famous "fortress" is by following the course of the little
Tullumayu, "Feeble Stream," the easternmost of the three canalized
streams which divide Cuzco into four parts. On its banks one first
passes a tannery and then, a short distance up a steep gorge, the
remains of an old mill. The stone flume and the adjoining ruins
are commonly ascribed by the people of Cuzco to-day to the Incas,
but do not look to me like Inca stonework. Since the Incas did not
understand the mechanical principle of the wheel, it is hardly likely
that they would have known how to make any use of water power. Finally,
careful examination of the flume discloses the presence of lead cement,
a substance unknown in Inca masonry.

A little farther up the stream one passes through a massive
megalithic gateway and finds one's self in the presence of the
astounding gray-blue Cyclopean walls of Sacsahuaman, described in
"Across South America." Here the ancient builders constructed three
great terraces, which extend one above another for a third of a mile
across the hill between two deep gulches. The lowest terrace of the
"fortress" is faced with colossal boulders, many of which weigh ten
tons and some weigh more than twenty tons, yet all are fitted together
with the utmost precision. I have visited Sacsahuaman repeatedly. Each
time it invariably overwhelms and astounds. To a superstitious Indian
who sees these walls for the first time, they must seem to have been
built by gods.

About a mile northeast of Sacsahuaman are several small artificial
hills, partly covered with vegetation, which seem to be composed
entirely of gray-blue rock chips--chips from the great limestone blocks
quarried here for the "fortress" and later conveyed with the utmost
pains down to Sacsahuaman. They represen