Passing Salapunco, we skirted granite cliffs and precipices and entered a most interesting region, where we were surprised and charmed by the extent of the ancient terraces, their length and height, the presence of many Inca ruins, the beauty of the deep, narrow valleys, and the grandeur of the snow-clad mountains which towered above them.  Across the river, near Qquente, on top of a series of terraces, we saw the extensive ruins of Patallacta (pata = height or terrace; llacta = town or city), an Inca town of great importance.  It was not known to Raimondi or Paz Soldan, but is indicated on Wiener’s map, although he does not appear to have visited it.  We have been unable to find any reference to it in the chronicles.  We spent several months here in 1915 excavating and determining the character of the ruins.  In another volume I hope to tell more of the antiquities of this region.  At present it must suffice to remark that our explorations near Patallacta disclosed no “white rock over a spring of water.”  None of the place names in this vicinity fit in with the accounts of Uiticos.  Their identity remains a puzzle, although the symmetry of the buildings, their architectural idiosyncrasies such as niches, stone roof-pegs, bar-holds, and eye-bonders, indicate an Inca origin.  At what date these towns and villages flourished, who built them, why they were deserted, we do not yet know; and the Indians who live hereabouts are ignorant, or silent, as to their history.

At Torontoy, the end of the cultivated temperate valley, we found another group of interesting ruins, possibly once the residence of an Inca chief.  In a cave near by we secured some mummies.  The ancient wrappings had been consumed by the natives in an effort to smoke out the vampire bats that lived in the cave.  On the opposite side of the river are extensive terraces and above them, on a hilltop, other ruins first visited by Messrs. Tucker and Hendriksen in 1911.  One of their Indian bearers, attempting to ford the rapids here with a large surveying instrument, was carried off his feet, swept away by the strong current, and drowned before help could reach him.

Near Torontoy is a densely wooded valley called the Pampa Ccahua.  In 1915 rumors of Andean or “spectacled” bears having been seen here and of damage having been done by them to some of the higher crops, led us to go and investigate.  We found no bears, but at an elevation of 12,000 feet were some very old trees, heavily covered with flowering moss not hitherto known to science.  Above them I was so fortunate as to find a wild potato plant, the source from which the early Peruvians first developed many varieties of what we incorrectly call the Irish potato.  The tubers were as large as peas.

Mr. Heller found here a strange little cousin of the kangaroo, a near relative of the coenolestes.  It turned out to be new to science.  To find a new genus of mammalian quadrupeds was an event which delighted Mr. Heller far more than shooting a dozen bears. [8]