Torontoy is at the beginning of the Grand Canyon of the Urubamba, and such a canyon!  The river “road” runs recklessly up and down rock stairways, blasts its way beneath overhanging precipices, spans chasms on frail bridges propped on rustic brackets against granite cliffs.  Under dense forests, wherever the encroaching precipices permitted it, the land between them and the river was once terraced and cultivated.  We found ourselves unexpectedly in a veritable wonderland.  Emotions came thick and fast.  We marveled at the exquisite pains with which the ancient folk had rescued incredibly narrow strips of arable land from the tumbling rapids.  How could they ever have managed to build a retaining wall of heavy stones along the very edge of the dangerous river, which it is death to attempt to cross!  On one sightly bend near a foaming waterfall some Inca chief built a temple, whose walls tantalize the traveler.  He must pass by within pistol shot of the interesting ruins, unable to ford the intervening rapids.  High up on the side of the canyon, five thousand feet above this temple, are the ruins of Corihuayrachina (kori = “gold”; huayara = “wind”; huayrachina = “a threshing-floor where winnowing takes place.”  Possibly this was an ancient gold mine of the Incas.  Half a mile above us on another steep slope, some modern pioneer had recently cleared the jungle from a fine series of ancient artificial terraces.

On the afternoon of July 23d we reached a hut called “La Maquina,” where travelers frequently stop for the night.  The name comes from the presence here of some large iron wheels, parts of a “machine” destined never to overcome the difficulties of being transported all the way to a sugar estate in the lower valley, and years ago left here to rust in the jungle.  There was little fodder, and there was no good place for us to pitch our camp, so we pushed on over the very difficult road, which had been carved out of the face of a great granite cliff.  Part of the cliff had slid off into the river and the breach thus made in the road had been repaired by means of a frail-looking rustic bridge built on a bracket composed of rough logs, branches, and reeds, tied together and surmounted by a few inches of earth and pebbles to make it seem sufficiently safe to the cautious cargo mules who picked their way gingerly across it.  No wonder “the machine” rested where it did and gave its name to that part of the valley.

Dusk falls early in this deep canyon, the sides of which are considerably over a mile in height.  It was almost dark when we passed a little sandy plain two or three acres in extent, which in this land of steep mountains is called a pampa.  Were the dwellers on the pampas of Argentina—­where a railroad can go for 250 miles in a straight line, except for the curvature of the earth—­to see this little bit of flood-plain called Mandor Pampa, they would think some one had been joking or else grossly misusing a word which means to them illimitable space with not a hill in sight.  However, to the ancient dwellers in this valley, where level land was so scarce that it was worth while to build high stone-faced terraces so as to enable two rows of corn to grow where none grew before, any little natural breathing space in the bottom of the canyon is called a pampa.