Such were the people among whom Tupac Amaru took refuge when he fled from Vilcabamba.  Whether he partook of such a delicacy as monkey meat, which all Amazonian Indians relish, but which is not eaten by the highlanders, may be doubted.  Garcilasso speaks of Tupac Amaru’s preferring to entrust himself to the hands of the Spaniards “rather than to perish of famine.”  His Indian allies lived perfectly well in a region where monkeys abound.  It is doubtful whether they would ever have permitted Captain Garcia to capture the Inca had they been able to furnish Tupac with such food as he was accustomed to.

At all events our investigations seem to point to the probability of this valley having been an important part of the domain of the last Incas.  It would have been pleasant to prolong our studies, but the carriers were anxious to return to Pampaconas.  Although they did not have to eat monkey meat, they were afraid of the savages and nervous as to what use the latter might some day make of the powerful bows and long arrows.

At Conservidayoc Saavedra kindly took the trouble to make some sugar for us.  He poured the syrup in oblong moulds cut in a row along the side of a big log of hard wood.  In some of the moulds his son placed handfuls of nicely roasted peanuts.  The result was a confection or “emergency ration” which we greatly enjoyed on our return journey.

At San Fernando we met the pack mules.  The next day, in the midst of continuing torrential tropical downpours, we climbed out of the hot valley to the cold heights of Pampaconas.  We were soaked with perspiration and drenched with rain.  Snow had been falling above the village; our teeth chattered like castanets.  Professor Foote immediately commandeered Mrs. Guzman’s fire and filled our tea kettle.  It may be doubted whether a more wretched, cold, wet, and bedraggled party ever arrived at Guzman’s hut; certainly nothing ever tasted better than that steaming hot sweet tea.

CHAPTER XVI

The Story of Tampu-tocco, a Lost City of the First Incas

It will be remembered that while on the search for the capital of the last Incas we had found several groups of ruins which we could not fit entirely into the story of Manco and his sons.  The most important of these was Machu Picchu.  Many of its buildings are far older than the ruins of Rosaspata and Espiritu Pampa.  To understand just what we may have found at Machu Picchu it is now necessary to tell the story of a celebrated city, whose name, Tampu-tocco, was not used even at the time of the Spanish Conquest as the cognomen of any of the Inca towns then in existence.  I must draw the reader’s attention far away from the period when Pizarro and Manco, Toledo and Tupac Amaru were the protagonists, back to events which occurred nearly seven hundred years before their day.  The last Incas ruled in Uiticos between 1536 and 1572.  The last Amautas flourished about 800 A.D.