The Baths of Atahuallpa. 401 



where the Peruvians made their last but unavailing strug- 

 gle to save their chief. And into that very plaza, the 

 grand square of the city, rushed the cavaliers of Spain, 

 like so many hyenas, upon their unsuspecting victims, 

 shouting the war-cry of " St. Jago and at them !" And 

 there, with becoming treachery, did these Spanish knights 

 strangle Atahuallpa, and then follow him to his grave, 

 weeping with one eye, and keeping watch with the other 

 over the golden ransom that had come for his life. The 

 blackest page in the gloomy annals of Spanish conquest 

 was written at Cajamarca. 



The hot springs, even now used for baths, and for scald- 

 ing pigs and poultry, are copious, but not medicinal. I 

 found the temperature as they issue from the ground 162° 

 Fahr., or six degrees higher than Humboldt's. The story 

 goes that, when conquered by the Spaniards, the Peruvians 

 threw the throne of gold of their Inca into a crater, from 

 the sides of which came these thermal waters. The paved 

 via real, or military road, designed to connect Quito and 

 Cuzco, stopped unfinished a little beyond Cajamarca. Its 

 construction was interrupted by the landing of Pizarro at 

 Tumbez, who garroted Atahuallpa after receiving the ran- 

 som of "$16,000,000 gold and $175,000 in silver"— one 

 of the many fictions of history. 



Again I mounted my mule to scale the last cordillera 

 which separated me from the Pacific* This is the true 

 backbone of the continent, and the water -shed between 

 the two oceans. The range, as I crossed it westward, pre- 

 sented three main aspects : the eastern half was of quartz- 

 ite, and the mountains comparatively smooth and round- 



* It will be remembered that there are three cordilleras in Northern Peru : 

 coast, middle, and oriental. There are no nevados in sight from the Caja- 

 marca road, for none of the peaks reach the line of perpetual snow, which, in 

 this part of the Andes, is 15,700 feet. As a rnle, it is lower on the eastern 

 cordillera tlian on the western. 



2C 



