At dusk we all returned to Espiritu Pampa.  Our faces, hands, and clothes had been torn by the jungle; our feet were weary and sore.  Nevertheless the day’s work had been very satisfactory and we prepared to enjoy a good night’s rest.  Alas, we were doomed to disappointment.  During the day some one had brought to the hut eight tame but noisy macaws.  Furthermore, our savage helpers determined to make the night hideous with cries, tom-toms, and drums, either to discourage the visits of hostile Indians or jaguars, or for the purpose of exorcising the demons brought by the white men, or else to cheer up their families, who were undoubtedly hiding in the jungle near by.

The next day the savages and our carriers continued to clear away as much as possible of the tangled growth near the best ruins.  In this process, to the intense surprise not only of ourselves, but also of the savages, they discovered, just below the “bathhouse” where we had stood the day before, the well-preserved ruins of two buildings of superior construction, well fitted with stone-pegs and numerous niches, very symmetrically arranged.  These houses stood by themselves on a little artificial terrace.  Fragments of characteristic Inca pottery were found on the floor, including pieces of a large aryballus.

Nothing gives a better idea of the density of the jungle than the fact that the savages themselves had often been within five feet of these fine walls without being aware of their existence.

Encouraged by this important discovery of the most characteristic Inca ruins found in the valley, we continued the search, but all that any one was able to find was a carefully built stone bridge over a brook.  Saavedra’s son questioned the savages carefully.  They said they knew of no other antiquities.  Who built the stone buildings of Espiritu Pampa and Eromboni Pampa?  Was this the “Vilcabamba Viejo” of Father Calancha, that “University of Idolatry where lived the teachers who were wizards and masters of abomination,” the place to which Friar Marcos and Friar Diego went with so much suffering?  Was there formerly on this trail a place called Ungacacha where the monks had to wade, and amused Titu Cusi by the way they handled their monastic robes in the water?  They called it a “three days’ journey over rough country.”  Another reference in Father Calancha speaks of Puquiura as being “two long days’ journey from Vilcabamba.”  It took us five days to go from Espiritu Pampa to Pucyura, although Indians, unencumbered by burdens, and spurred on by necessity, might do it in three.  It is possible to fit some other details of the story into this locality, although there is no place on the road called Ungacacha.  Nevertheless it does not seem to me reasonable to suppose that the priests and Virgins of the Sun (the personnel of the “University of Idolatry”) who fled from cold Cuzco with Manco and were established by him somewhere in the fastnesses of Uilcapampa would have cared to live in the hot