lent start;
not one of those meant-to-be-early but really late-in-the-morning
departures so customary in the Andes.

We passed through a region which originally had been heavily forested,
had long since been cleared, and was now covered with bushes and
second growth. Near the roadside I noticed a considerable number of
land shells grouped on the under-side of overhanging rocks. As a boy
in the Hawaiian Islands I had spent too many Saturdays collecting
those beautiful and fascinating mollusks, which usually prefer the
trees of upland valleys, to enable me to resist the temptation of
gathering a large number of such as could easily be secured. None of
the snails were moving. The dry season appears to be their resting
period. Some weeks later Professor Foote and I passed through Maras
and were interested to notice thousands of land shells, mostly white in
color, on small bushes, where they seemed to be quietly sleeping. They
were fairly "glued to their resting places"; clustered so closely in
some cases as to give the stems of the bushes a ghostly appearance.

Our present objective was the valley of the river Vilcabamba. So
far as we have been able to learn, only one other explorer had
preceded us--the distinguished scientist Raimondi. His map of the
Vilcabamba is fairly accurate. He reports the presence here of
mines and minerals, but with the exception of an "abandoned tampu"
at Maracnyoc ("the place which possesses a millstone"), he makes no
mention of any ruins. Accordingly, although it seemed from the story
of Baltasar de Ocampo and Captain Garcia's other contemporaries that
we were now entering the valley of Uiticos, it was with feel-hags of
considerable uncertainty that we proceeded on our quest. It may seem
strange that we should have been in any doubt. Yet before our visit
nearly all the Peruvian historians and geographers except Don Carlos
Romero still believed that when the Inca Manco fled from Pizarro he
took up his residence at Choqquequirau in the Apurimac Valley. The
word choqquequirau means "cradle of gold" and this lent color to the
legend that Manco had carried off with him from Cuzco great quantities
of gold utensils and much treasure, which he deposited in his new
capital. Raimondi, knowing that Manco had "retired to Uilcapampa,"
visited both the present villages of Vilcabamba and Pucyura and
saw nothing of any ruins. He was satisfied that Choqquequirau was
Manco's refuge because it was far enough fro