Each building had only three walls and was entirely open on the
side toward 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 neighbor, 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, to be described in a subsequent volume, 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