nt of the days of Titu Cusi. It was explained to him
that this was a very solemn occasion and that an official inquiry
was in progress. He took off his hat--but not his knitted cap--and
endeavored to the best of his ability to answer our questions about
the surrounding country. It was he who said that the Inca Tupac
Amaru once lived at Rosaspata. He had never heard of Uilcapampa
Viejo, but he admitted that there were ruins in the montana near
Conservidayoc. Other Indians were questioned by Condore. Several had
heard of the ruins of Conservidayoc, but, apparently, none of them,
nor any one in the village, had actually seen the ruins or visited
their immediate vicinity. They all agreed that Saavedra's place was
"at least four days' hard journey on foot in the montana beyond
Pampaconas." No village of that name appeared on any map of Peru,
although it is frequently mentioned in the documents of the sixteenth
century. Rodriguez de Figueroa, who came to seek an audience with
Titu Cusi about 1565, says that he met Titu Cusi at a place called
Banbaconas. He says further that the Inca came there from somewhere
down in the dense forests of the montana and presented him with a
macaw and two hampers of peanuts--products of a warm region.

We had brought with us the large sheets of Raimondi's invaluable map
which covered this locality. We also had the new map of South Peru and
North Bolivia which had just been published by the Royal Geographical
Society and gave a summary of all available information. The
Indians said that Conservidayoc lay in a westerly direction from
Vilcabamba, yet on Raimondi's map all of the rivers which rise in
the mountains west of the town are short affluents of the Apurimac
and flow southwest. We wondered whether the stories about ruins at
Conservidayoc would turn out to be as barren of foundation as those
we had heard from the trustworthy foreman at Huadquina. One of our
informants said the Inca city was called Espiritu Pampa, or the "Pampa
of Ghosts." Would the ruins turn out to be "ghosts"? Would they vanish
on the arrival of white men with cameras and steel measuring tapes?

No one at Vilcabamba had seen the ruins, but they said that at
the village of Pampaconas, "about five leagues from here," there
were Indians who had actually been to Conservidayoc. Our supplies
were getting low. There were no shops nearer than Lucma; no food
was obtainable from the natives. Accordingly, notwithstanding the
protes