It is difficult to describe our feelings as we accepted Saavedra’s invitation to make ourselves at home, and sat down to an abundant meal of boiled chicken, rice, and sweet cassava (manioc).  Saavedra gave us to understand that we were not only most welcome to anything he had, but that he would do everything to enable us to see the ruins, which were, it seemed, at Espiritu Pampa, some distance farther down the valley, to be reached only by a hard trail passable for barefooted savages, but scarcely available for us unless we chose to go a good part of the distance on hands and knees.  The next day, while our carriers were engaged in clearing this trail, Professor Foote collected a large number of insects, including eight new species of moths and butterflies.

I inspected Saavedra’s plantation.  The soil having lain fallow for centuries, and being rich in humus, had produced more sugar cane than he could grind.  In addition to this, he had bananas, coffee trees, sweet potatoes, tobacco, and peanuts.  Instead of being “a very powerful chief having many Indians under his control”—­a kind of “Pooh-Bah”—­he was merely a pioneer.  In the utter wilderness, far from any neighbors, surrounded by dense forests and a few savages, he had established his home.  He was not an Indian potentate, but only a frontiersman, soft-spoken and energetic, an ingenious carpenter and mechanic, a modest Peruvian of the best type.

Owing to the scarcity of arable land he was obliged to cultivate such pampas as he could find—­one an alluvial fan near his house, another a natural terrace near the river.  Back of the house was a thatched shelter under which he had constructed a little sugar mill.  It had a pair of hardwood rollers, each capable of being turned, with much creaking and cracking, by a large, rustic wheel made of roughly hewn timbers fastened together with wooden pins and lashed with thongs, worked by hand and foot power.  Since Saavedra had been unable to coax any pack animals over the trail to Conservidayoc he was obliged to depend entirely on his own limited strength and that of his active son, aided by the uncertain and irregular services of such savages as wished to work for sugar, trinkets, or other trade articles.  Sometimes the savages seemed to enjoy the fun of climbing on the great creaking treadwheel, as though it were a game.  At other times they would disappear in the woods.

Near the mill were some interesting large pots which Saavedra was using in the process of boiling the juice and making crude sugar.  He said he had found the pots in the jungle not far away.  They had been made by the Incas.  Four of them were of the familiar aryballus type.  Another was of a closely related form, having a wide mouth, pointed base, single incised, conventionalized, animal-head nubbin attached to the shoulder, and band-shaped handles attached vertically below the median line.  Although capable of holding more than ten gallons, this huge