566 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. I02 



tuous, in which they displayed to the full their valor and puissance, 

 was the fortress (which they built for the safekeeping and the 

 majestic boast of their most opulent city, queen and mistress of so 

 many provinces and nations as were subject to her) on the Sacsahua- 

 man ridge to the N. of the city, at whose slopes the settlement com- 

 mences. At this point the ridge is very high, steep, and hard to 

 climb, for which reason the fortress is impregnable, and the city 

 is well protected and secure on this quarter. 



1526. The huge size of its stone blocks is incredible, were it not 

 that the fact is attested by the testimony of so many who have seen 

 them and of the historians who have not exaggerated in their accounts 

 of them ; and it is the more astounding when one considers that the 

 Indians had no iron or steel instruments with which to cut the stone, 

 nor contrivances or mechanisms to draw them along, and that in 

 addition most of the roads were rough and many of the great blocks 

 in the fortress hewn and transported from quarries 15 leagues from 

 the city, and at the least 5, crossing the Rio de Yucay, which at that 

 point is as wide as the Genii at &ija or the Jarama on the Aranjuez 

 highway. 



1527. The construction of the fortress was highly accurate, and 

 many of the stone blocks were so large that their incredible size made 

 the work of construction marvelous ; they seemed more like pieces 

 of a mountain than stone. Some of them were over 40 feet long, 

 20 wide, and 6 thick ; and though they were not of the same size, 

 they were so neatly joined and dovetailed one with another that it 

 was hardly possible to see or make out the line of union. And while 

 the ancients counted as the Seven Wonders of the World, the Egyptian 

 Pyramids, the Walls of Babylon, the Colossus of Rhodes, the 

 Mausoleum of Artemisia, the Cretan Labyrinth, etc., if the construc- 

 tion of this fortress had been in their day, and they had had knowl- 

 edge of it, they would have given it the first place among them. 

 In fact, it seemed more like the work of magic than of human 

 forces and industry, for they had no mechanism, no cranes or pulleys 

 to help them out, but everything was done by the exertions of human 

 beings, whom the kings summoned hither from all the adjoining 

 provinces. 



1528. These boulders described above were drawn along by a huge 

 force of men, who dragged them with thick cables over very rough 

 roads and grades ; it cost them enormous effort, and particularly in 

 the case of the Piedra Cansada (Accursed Stone), called Saycusca 

 by the Indians. This was a rough cube of immense size, surpassing 

 the largest in the fortress ; it has a hole at one corner passing com- 



