ba, is also applied repeatedly to a town. Titu Cusi
says he lived there many years during his youth. Calancha says it
was "two days' journey from Puquiura." Raimondi thought it must be
Choqquequirau. Captain Garcia's soldiers, however, speak of it as
being down in the warm valleys of the montana, the present rubber
country. On the other hand the only place which bears this name on
the maps of Peru is near the source of the Vilcabamba River, not more
than three or four leagues from Pucyura. We determined to visit it.

We found the town to lie on the edge of bleak upland pastures, 11,750
feet above the sea. Instead of Inca walls or ruins Vilcabamba has
threescore solidly built Spanish houses. At the time of our visit they
were mostly empty, although their roofs, of unusually heavy thatch,
seemed to be in good repair. We stayed at the house of the gobernador,
Manuel Condore. The nights were bitterly cold and we should have been
most uncomfortable in a tent.

The gobernador said that the reason the town was deserted was that most
of the people were now attending to their chacras, or little farms,
and looking after their herds of sheep and cattle in the neighboring
valleys. He said that only at special festival times, such as the
annual visit of the priest, who celebrates mass in the church here,
once a year, are the buildings fully occupied. In the latter part
of the sixteenth century, gold mines were discovered in the adjacent
mountains and the capital of the Spanish province of Vilcabamba was
transferred from Hoyara to this place. Its official name, Condore
said, is still San Francisco de la Victoria de Vilcabamba, and as
such it occurs on most of the early maps of Peru. The solidity of
the stone houses was due to the prosperity of the gold diggers. The
present air of desolation and absence of population is probably due
to the decay of that industry.

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FIGURE

Nusta Isppana
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The church is large. Near it, and slightly apart from the building,
is a picturesque stone belfry with three old Spanish bells. Condore
said that the church was built at least three hundred years ago. It
is probably the very structure whose construction was carefully
supervised by Ocampo. In the negotiations for permission to move
the municipality of San Francisco de la Victoria from Hoyara to the
neighborhood of the mines, Ocampo, then one of the chief settlers,
went to Cuzco as agent of the interested parties, to take the ma