liiram Bingham 



ANOTHER VIEW OF THE STOXE HOUSE: RUMIHUASI 



Showing the cell where some people suppose a hermit passed his time, while his life was 

 devoted to painfully decorating this boulder bj- the means of such rude stone implements as 

 he had at hand. 



trance gate on its north side. This will 

 be more readily understood by consulting 

 the plan on page 559. 



The characteristics of the buildings 

 are distinctly Inca and resemble in many 

 ways those fotmd at Choqqneqtiirau in 

 1909. The stronghold was made of 

 blocks of stone laid in mud, the buildings 

 of symmetrical pattern, with doors nar- 

 rower at the to]) than at the bottom ; no 

 windows, but interior ornaments of niches 

 and projecting cylinders alternating be- 

 tween the niches. Whenever the wind 

 did not. blow, the gnats were very bad, 

 which made the work of measuring and 

 mapping the ruins extremely annoying. 



DESERTED BY THE INDIAN GUIDES 



I should like to have continued the 

 journey the next day, but the Indians 

 objected, saying that it was Sunday and 

 that they needed the rest. This "rest" 

 gave them an opportunity for concocting 

 a plan of escape, and on Monday morn- 

 ing, when I was ready to start for the 

 third group of ruins, there were no guides 

 or carriers in sight. 



Neither Luis nor 1 had ever been in 



the region before. We could of course 

 have gone back on foot over the trail on 

 which we had come, but it was very 

 doubtful whether we could have stic- 

 ceeded in getting our mules over that 

 trail, even though we had abandoned our 

 outfit, and we knew that a loaded mule 

 could not possibly go over the trail with- 

 out constant assistance and a number of 

 helping hands. 



To aid us in our dilemma there came 

 a little Indian who inhabited one of the 

 huts near the ruins. He offered for a 

 consideration to guide us out of the valley 

 by another road, and said that it went 

 near the other ruins. He also said that 

 it might not be possible to use this road 

 "if the jjass had much snow in it." 



We talked to him with difficulty, for, 

 like most mountain Indians, he had no 

 knowledge of Spanish, and our own 

 knowledge of Quichua was somewhat 

 limited. However, there was nothing 

 for it but to follow our new guide, and 

 by distributing the cargo on the three 

 mules make it as easy as possible for the 

 poor beasts to use the foot-])ath, or goat 

 trail, which was indicated as our "road." 



537 



