

Photograph by Hiram Pingham 



PLOWING IN PERU 



The picture shows a potato field being plowed by hand. The women turn the clods after 

 they are loosened by a pair of man-power plows. This appears to represent the aboriginal 

 method of cultivating the soil, but these spades are shod with iron or steel points. The han- 

 dles are tied to the spades with leathern thongs. It is an Indian custom to hearten labor by 

 working in common, and as many laborers as can be got together work on the same job at 

 the same time. The enthusiasm that comes from working together relieves the monotony of 

 the hard exertion in high altitudes. 



stated that they had to pass a place called 

 Ungacacha. Ever since our first journey 

 into this region in 191 1 I had been in- 

 quiring of Indians everywhere for a lo- 

 cality of that name, only to he met in- 

 variably with the reply that they knew of 

 no such place. 



It seems to me entirely probable that 

 the place referred to in the Spanish 

 chronicles was Yanaccocha, and that the 

 monk, who probably wrote it down some- 

 time afterward from memory, and who 

 very likely did not hear it any more 

 clearly than I did when I first inquired 

 the name of the place, spelled it Unga- 

 cacha, instead of Yanaccocha. They look 

 so different on paper that it is somewhat 

 difficult to realize how closely the Indian 



pronunciation of one approaches the 

 other. 



That night we camped near a glacier 

 at an elevation of about 15,000 feet and 

 found that our sleep was considerably 

 interfered with by the coldest weather 

 we had yet encountered. The next day 

 one of the mules overestimated the width 

 of the narrow path and fell, carrying his 

 rider with him. Both would probably 

 have been killed by rolling down the pre- 

 cipitous hillside had it not been for the 

 branches of a little tree which held them. 



At the junction of two little valleys we 

 found it necessary to turn away from the 

 old Inca trail, which continued up the 

 hillside in the direction of Machu Picchu 

 and led toward the ruins of Yuracrumi- 



452 



