ered unlucky?

Whatever the reason, it is a most extraordinary fact that we have
here the evidences of a very large town, possibly pre-Inca, long since
abandoned. There are scores of houses and numerous compounds laid out
in regular fashion, the streets crossing each other at right angles,
the whole covering an area considerably larger than the important town
of Ollantaytambo. Not a soul lives here. It is true that across the
Vilcanota to the east is a difficult, mountainous country culminating
in Mt. Ausangate, the highest peak in the department. Yet Piquillacta
is in the midst of a populous region. To the north lies the thickly
settled valley of Pisac and Yucay; to the south, the important
Vilcanota Valley with dozens of villages; to the west the densely
populated valley of the Huatanay and Cuzco itself, the largest city
in the highlands of Peru. Thousands of people live within a radius of
twenty miles of Piquillacta, and the population is on the increase. It
is perfectly easy of access and is less than a mile east of the
railroad. Yet it is "abandonado--desierto--despoblado"! Undoubtedly
here was once a large city of great importance. The reason for its
being abandoned appears to be the absence of running water. Although
Mt. Piquillacta is a large mass, nearly five miles long and two miles
wide, rising to a point of 2000 feet above the Huatanay and Vilcanota
rivers, it has no streams, brooks, or springs. It is an isolated,
extinct volcano surrounded by igneous rocks, lavas, andesites,
and basalts.

How came it that so large a city as Piquillacta could have been built
on the slopes of a mountain which has no running streams? Has the
climate changed so much since those days? If so, how is it that the
surrounding region is still the populous part of southern Peru? It is
inconceivable that so large a city could have been built and occupied
on a plateau four hundred feet above the nearest water unless there
was some way of providing it other than the arduous one of bringing
every drop up the hill on the backs of men and llamas. If there
were no places near here better provided with water than this site,
one could understand that perhaps its inhabitants were obliged to
depend entirely upon water carriers. On the contrary, within a radius
of six miles there are half a dozen unoccupied sites near running
streams. Until further studies can be made of this puzzling problem
I believe that the answer lies in the ruins of Rumic