THE BORDER VALLEYS OF THE EASTERN ANDES 77 



were conserved by the practical abolition, through heavy taxation, 

 of the brandy that is the chief cause of the laborer's vicious habits. 

 This is the first step in securing the best return upon the capital 

 invested in a railway. Economic progress is here bound up with 

 a very practical morality. Colonization in the eastern valleys, of 

 which there have been but a few dismal attempts, will only extend 

 the field of influence, it will not solve the real problem of bringing 

 the people of the rich eastern territory of Peru into full and 

 honorable possession of their natural wealth. 



The value of the eastern valleys was known in Inca times, for 

 their stone-faced terraces and coca-drying patios may still be seen 

 at Echarati and on the border of the Chaupimayu Valley at 

 Sahuayaco. Tradition has it that here were the imperial coca 

 lands, that such of the forest Indians as were enslaved were 

 obliged to work upon them, and that the leaves were sent to Cuzco 

 over a paved road now covered with "montana" or forest. The 

 Indians still relate that at times a mysterious, wavering, white 

 light appears on the terraces and hills where old treasure lies 

 buried. Some of the Indians have gold and silver objects which 

 they say were dug from the floors of hill caves. There appears to 

 have been an early occupation of the best lands by the Spaniards, 

 for the long extensions down them of Quechua population upon 

 which the conquerors could depend no doubt combined with the 

 special products of the valley to draw white colonists thither. 5 



' The Spanish occupation of the eastern valleys was early and extensive. Im- 

 mediately after the capture of the young Inca Tupac Amaru and the final subjugation 

 of the province of Vilcapampa colonists started the cultivation of coca and cane. 

 Development of the main Urubamba Valley and tributary valleys proceeded at a good 

 rate: so also did their troubles. Baltasar de Ocampo writing in 1610 (Account of the 

 Province of Vilcapampa, Hakluyt Soc. Pubis., Ser. 2, Vol. 22, 1907, pp. 203-247 ) relates 

 the occurrence of a general uprising of the negroes employed on the sugar plantations 

 of the region. But the peace and prosperity of every place on the eastern frontier was 

 unstable and quite generally the later eighteenth and earlier nineteenth centuries saw 

 a retreat of the border of civilization. The native . rebellion of the mid-eighteenth 

 century in the montana of Chanchamayo caused entire abandonment of a previously 

 flourishing area. When Raimondi wrote in 1885 (La Montana de Chanchamayo, Lima, 

 1885) some of the ancient hacienda sites were still occupied by savages. In the 

 Paucartambo valleys, settlement began by the end of the sixteenth century and at the 

 beginning of the nineteenth before their complete desolation by the savages they were 

 highly prosperous. Paucartambo town, itself, once important for its commerce in coca 

 is now in a sadly decadent condition. 



