This relic was regarded with great reverence,
and at first His Majesty declined to reveal its character; but after
I had won his confidence by gifts of beads and mirrors, he became
more communicative. One day, in a burst of pride, he told me that the
gourd contained the ashes of his ancestors, who were the ancient
kings. Though the Spaniards sought to carefully rout out and destroy
all direct descendants of the royal family of the Incas, their
historians tell us that some remote connections escaped. The Indians
of Peru have legends to the effect that at the time of the Spanish
invasion an Inca chieftain led an emigration of his people down the
mountains. Humboldt, writing in the 18th century, said: "It is
interesting to inquire whether any other princes of the family of
Manco Capac have remained in the forests; and if there still exist
any of the Incas of Peru in other places." Had I discovered some
descendants of this vanished race? The Montreal Journal, commenting
on my discovery, said: "The question is of extreme interest to the
scientific enquirer, even if they are not what Mr. Ray thinks them."
The royal family consisted of the parents, a son and his wife, a
daughter and her husband, and two younger girls. I was invited to
sleep in the inner room, which the parents occupied, and the two
married couples remained in the common room. All slept in fibre
hammocks, made greasy and black by the smoke from the fire burning on
the floor in the centre of the room. No chimney, window, door, or
article of furniture graced the house.
"The court of the Incas rivalled that of Rome, Jerusalem, or any of
the old Oriental countries, in riches and show, the palaces being
decorated with a great profusion of gold, silver, fine cloth and
precious stones." [Footnote: Rev. Thomas Wood, LL.D., Lima, Peru, In
"Protestant Missions in South America."]
An ancient Spanish writer who measured some of the stones of the
Incan palace at Cuzco tells us there were stones so nicely adjusted
that it was impossible to introduce even the blade of a knife between
them, and that some of those stones were thirty-eight feet long, by
eighteen feet broad, and six feet thick. What a descent for the
"Children of the Sun"! "How are the mighty fallen!" Thoughts of the
past and the mean present passed through my mind as I lay down in the
dust of the earthen floor that first night of my stay with the king.
Owing to the thousands of fleas in the dust of the room it was hard
for me to rest much, and that night a storm brewing made sleep almost
impossible. As the thunder pealed forth all the Indians of the houses
hastily got out of their hammocks and grasped gourd rattles and
beautifully woven cotton banners. The rattles were shaken
and the banners waved, while a droning chant was struck up by the
high priest, and the louder the thunder rolled the louder their
voices rose and the more lustily they shook the seeds in their
calabashes. They were trying to appease the dread deity of Thunder,
as did their Inca ancestors. The voice of the old priest led the
worship, and for four hours there was no cessation of the
monotonous song, except when he performed some mystic ceremony which
I understood not.
Just as the old priest had awakened me the first morning to ask for
his present, so the king came tapping me gently the second. In his
hand he had a large sweet potato, and in my half-dreamy state I heard
him saying, "Give me your coat. Eat a potato?" The change I thought
was greatly to his advantage, but I was anxious to please him. I
possessed two coats, while he was, as he said, a poor old man, and
had no coat. The barter was concluded; I ate the potato, and he, with
strange grimaces, donned a coat for the first time in his life. Think
of this for an alleged descendant of the great Atahuallpa, whose
robes and jewels were priceless!
I offered to give the queen a feminine garment of white cotton if she
would wear it, but this I could not prevail upon her to do; it was
"ugly." As a loin-cloth, she would use it, but put it on - no! In the
latter savage style the shaped garment was thereafter worn. Women
have fashions all over the globe.
The few inches of clothing worn by the Caingwa women are never
washed, and the only attempt at cleansing the body I saw when among
them was that of a woman who filled her mouth with water and squirted
it back on her hands, which she then wiped on her loin-cloth!
Prescott, writing of the Incas, says: "They loved to indulge in the
luxury of their baths, replenished by streams of crystal water which
were conducted through subterraneous silver channels into basins of
gold."
The shapely little mouth of the queen was spoilt by the habit she had
of smoking a heavy pipe made of red clay. I was struck with the
weight and shape of this, for it exactly resembled those made by the
old cliff-dwellers, unknown centuries ago. One will weigh at least a
quarter of a pound. For a mouth-piece they use a bird's quill. The
tobacco they grow themselves.
Near the royal abode were the kitchen gardens. A tract of forest had
been fired, and this clearing planted with bananas, mandioca, sweet
potatoes, etc. The blackened trunks of the trees rose up like so many
evil spirits above the green foliage. The garden implements used were
of the most primitive description; a crooked stick served for hoe,
and long, heavy, sharpened iron-wood clubs were used instead of the
steel plough of civilization.
