At the top of the pass we turned to look back and saw a long chain of snow-capped mountains towering above and behind the town of Vilcabamba.  We searched in vain for them on our maps.  Raimondi, followed by the Royal Geographical Society, did not leave room enough for such a range to exist between the rivers Apurimac and Urubamba.  Mr. Hendriksen determined our longitude to be 73 deg. west, and our latitude to be 13 deg. 8’ south.  Yet according to the latest map of this region, published in the preceding year, this was the very position of the river Apurimac itself, near its junction with the river Pampas.  We ought to have been swimming “the Great Speaker.”  Actually we were on top of a lofty mountain pass surrounded by high peaks and glaciers.  The mystery was finally solved by Mr. Bumstead in 1912, when he determined the Apurimac and the Urubamba to be thirty miles farther apart than any one had supposed.  His surveys opened an unexplored region, 1500 square miles in extent, whose very existence had not been guessed before 1911.  It proved to be one of the largest undescribed glaciated areas in South America.  Yet it is less than a hundred miles from Cuzco, the chief city in the Peruvian Andes, and the site of a university for more than three centuries.  That Uilcapampa could so long defy investigation and exploration shows better than anything else how wisely Manco had selected his refuge.  It is indeed a veritable labyrinth of snow-clad peaks, unknown glaciers, and trackless canyons.

Looking west, we saw in front of us a great wilderness of deep green valleys and forest-clad slopes.  We supposed from our maps that we were now looking down into the basin of the Apurimac.  As a matter of fact, we were on the rim of the valley of the hitherto uncharted Pampaconas, a branch of the Cosireni, one of the affluents of the Urubamba.  Instead of being the Apurimac Basin, what we saw was another unexplored region which drained into the Urubamba!

At the time, however, we did not know where we were, but understood from Condore that somewhere far down in the montana below us was Conservidayoc, the sequestered domain of Saavedra and his savage Indians.  It seemed less likely than ever that the Incas could have built a town so far away from the climate and food to which they were accustomed.  The “road” was now so bad that only with the greatest difficulty could we coax our sure-footed mules to follow it.  Once we had to dismount, as the path led down a long, steep, rocky stairway of ancient origin.  At last, rounding a hill, we came in sight of a lonesome little hut perched on a shoulder of the mountain.  In front of it, seated in the sun on mats, were two women shelling corn.  As soon as they saw the gobernador approaching, they stopped their work and began to prepare lunch.  It was about eleven o’clock and they did not need to be told that Senor Condore and his friends had not had anything but a cup of coffee since the night before.  In order to meet the emergency of unexpected guests they killed four or five squealing cuys (guinea pigs), usually to be found scurrying about the mud floor of the huts of mountain Indians.  Before long the savory odor of roast cuy, well basted, and cooked-to-a-turn on primitive spits, whetted our appetites.