nst the Spaniards frequently and in unexpected directions. His
raids were usually successful. It was relatively easy for him, with
a handful of followers, to dash out of the mountain fastnesses,
cross the Apurimac River either by swimming or on primitive rafts,
and reach the great road between Cuzco and Lima, the principal highway
of Peru. Officials and merchants whose business led them over this
route found it extremely precarious. Manco cheered his followers by
making them realize that in these raids they were taking sweet revenge
on the Spaniards for what they had done to Peru. It is interesting
to note that Cieza de Leon justifies Manco in his attitude, for the
Spaniards had indeed "seized his inheritance, forcing him to leave
his native land, and to live in banishment."

Manco's success in securing such a place of refuge, and in using
it as a base from which he could frequently annoy his enemies, led
many of the Orejones of Cuzco to follow him. The Inca chiefs were
called Orejones, "big ears," by the Spaniards because the lobes of
their ears had been enlarged artificially to receive the great gold
earrings which they were fond of wearing. Three years after Manco's
retirement to the wilds of Uilcapampa there was born in Cuzco in the
year 1539, Garcilasso Inca de la Vega, the son of an Inca princess
and one of the conquistadores. As a small child Garcilasso heard
of the activities of his royal relative. He left Peru as a boy and
spent the rest of his life in Spain. After forty years in Europe
he wrote, partly from memory, his "Royal Commentaries," an account
of the country of his Indian ancestors. Of the Inca Manco, of whom
he must frequently have heard uncomplimentary reports as a child,
he speaks apologetically. He says: "In the time of Manco Inca,
several robberies were committed on the road by his subjects; but
still they had that respect for the Spanish Merchants that they let
them go free and never pillaged them of their wares and merchandise,
which were in no manner useful to them; howsoever they robbed the
Indians of their cattle [llamas and alpacas], bred in the countrey
.... The Inca lived in the Mountains, which afforded no tame Cattel;
and only produced Tigers and Lions and Serpents of twenty-five and
thirty feet long, with other venomous insects." (I am quoting from Sir
Paul Rycaut's translation, published in London in 1688.) Garcilasso
says Manco's soldiers took only "such food as they found in the hand