ks of a little
tributary of the Pampaconas. They called it Eromboni. Here we found
several old artificial terraces and the rough foundations of a long,
rectangular building 192 feet by 24 feet. It might have had twenty-four
doors, twelve in front and twelve in back, each three and a half
feet wide. No lintels were in evidence. The walls were only a foot
high. There was very little building material in sight. Apparently
the structure had never been completed. Near by was a typical Inca
fountain with three stone spouts, or conduits. Two hundred yards
beyond the water-carrier's rendezvous, hidden behind a curtain of
hanging vines and thickets so dense we could not see more than a few
feet in any direction, the savages showed us the ruins of a group of
stone houses whose walls were still standing in fine condition.

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FIGURE

Ruins in the Jungles of Espiritu Pampa
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One of the buildings was rounded at one end. Another, standing by
itself at the south end of a little pampa, had neither doors nor
windows. It was rectangular. Its four or five niches were arranged
with unique irregularity. Furthermore, they were two feet deep, an
unusual dimension. Probably this was a storehouse. On the east side
of the pampa was a structure, 120 feet long by 21 feet wide, divided
into five rooms of unequal size. The walls were of rough stones
laid in adobe. Like some of the Inca buildings at Ollantaytambo,
the lintels of the doors were made of three or four narrow uncut
ashlars. Some rooms had niches. On the north side of the pampa
was another rectangular building. On the west side was the edge of
a stone-faced terrace. Below it was a partly enclosed fountain or
bathhouse, with a stone spout and a stone-lined basin. The shapes of
the houses, their general arrangement, the niches, stone roof-pegs
and lintels, all point to Inca builders. In the buildings we picked
up several fragments of Inca pottery.

Equally interesting and very puzzling were half a dozen crude Spanish
roofing tiles, baked red. All the pieces and fragments we could find
would not have covered four square feet. They were of widely different
sizes, as though some one had been experimenting. Perhaps an Inca who
had seen the new red tiled roofs of Cuzco had tried to reproduce them
here in the jungle, but without success.

At dusk we all returned to Espiritu Pampa. Our faces, hands,
and clothes had been torn by the jungle; our feet were weary and
sore. Never