PLATEAU OF CAXAMARCA. 417 



and rope bridges (Puentes de Hamaca or de Maroma), and there 

 were also aqueducts, or arrangements for bringing water to the Tam- 

 bos (hostelries or caravanserais), and to the fortresses. Both systems 

 of roads were directed to the central point, Ouzco, the seat of govern- 

 ment of the great empire, in 13 P 31' South latitude, and which is 

 placed, according to Pentland's map of Bolivia, 10,676 Paris or 

 11,378 English feet above the level of the sea. As the Peruvians 

 employed no wheel carriages, and the roads were consequently only 

 designed for the march of troops, for men carrying burdens, and for 

 lightly laden lamas, we find them occasionally interrupted, on account 

 of the steepness of the mountains, by long flights of steps, provided 

 with resting places at suitable intervals. Francisco Pizarro and 

 Diego Almagro, who on their distant expeditions used the military 

 roads of the Incas with so much advantage, found great difficulties 

 for the Spanish cavalry at the places where these steps occurred. ( 6 ) 

 The impediment presented to their march on these occasions was so 

 much the greater, because, in the early times of the Conquista, the 

 Spaniards used only horses instead of the carefully treading mule, 

 who in the difficult parts of the mountains seems to deliberate on 

 every step he takes. It was not until a later period that mules were 

 employed. 



Sarmiento, who saw the^ Roads of the Incas whilst they were still 

 in a perfect state of preservation, asks, in a "Relacion" which long 

 lay unread, buried in the Library of the Escurial, "how a nation 

 unacquainted with the use of iron could have completed such grand 

 works in so high and rocky a region ('Carninos tan grandes y tan 

 sovervios'), extending from Cuzco to Quito on the one hand, and to 

 the coast of Chili on the other ^ The Emperor Charles," he adds, 

 "with all his power, could not accomplish even a part of what the 

 well-ordered Government of the Incas effected through the obedient 

 people over whom they ruled." Hernando Pizarro, the most educated 

 and civilized of the three brothers, who for his misdeeds suffered a 

 twenty years' imprisonment at Medina del Campo, and died at last, 

 at a hundred years of age, "in the odor of sanctity," "en olor de 

 Santidad," exclaims: "In the whole of Christendom there are no- 

 where such fine roads as those which we here admire." The two 

 important capitals and seats of government of the Incas, Cuzco and 



