PLATEAU OF CAXAMARCA. 273 



tude, and which is placed, according to Pentland's map of 

 Bolivia, 10676 Paris or 11378 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 Con- 

 quista, the Spaniards used only horses instead of the care- 

 fully treading mule, who in the difficult parts of the moun- 

 tains 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 t ' Ee- 

 lacion" which long lay umead, buried in the Library of the 

 Escorial, "how a nation unacquainted with the use of 

 iron could have completed such grand works in so high and 

 rocky a region (" Caminos 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." 

 VOL. ii, T 



