le Site of Tampu-Tocco
------

Under a carved rock the little boy showed me a cave beautifully lined
with the finest cut stone. It was evidently intended to be a Royal
Mausoleum. On top of this particular boulder a semicircular building
had been constructed. The wall followed the natural curvature of the
rock and was keyed to it by one of the finest examples of masonry I
have ever seen. This beautiful wall, made of carefully matched ashlars
of pure white granite, especially selected for its fine grain, was the
work of a master artist. The interior surface of the wall was broken
by niches and square stone-pegs. The exterior surface was perfectly
simple and unadorned. The lower courses, of particularly large ashlars,
gave it a look of solidity. The upper courses, diminishing in size
toward the top, lent grace and delicacy to the structure. The flowing
lines, the symmetrical arrangement of the ashlars, and the gradual
gradation of the courses, combined to produce a wonderful effect,
softer and more pleasing than that of the marble temples of the
Old World. Owing to the absence of mortar, there are no ugly spaces
between the rocks. They might have grown together.

The elusive beauty of this chaste, undecorated surface seems to me
to be due to the fact that the wall was built under the eye of a
master mason who knew not the straight edge, the plumb rule, or the
square. He had no instruments of precision, so he had to depend on
his eye. He had a good eye, an artistic eye, an eye for symmetry
and beauty of form. His product received none of the harshness of
mechanical and mathematical accuracy. The apparently rectangular
blocks are not really rectangular. The apparently straight lines of
the courses are not actually straight in the exact sense of that term.

To my astonishment I saw that this wall and its adjoining semicircular
temple over the cave were as fine as the finest stonework in the
far-famed Temple of the Sun in Cuzco. Surprise followed surprise in
bewildering succession. I climbed a marvelous great stairway of large
granite blocks, walked along a pampa where the Indians had a small
vegetable garden, and came into a little clearing. Here were the ruins
of two of the finest structures I have ever seen in Peru. Not only were
they made of selected blocks of beautifully grained white granite;
their walls contained ashlars of Cyclopean size, ten feet in length,
and higher than a man. The sight held me spellbound.