lar, one of those
boundaries of mud and stones, called _apachectas_, which Peruvian
masonry lavishes over the country of Manco Capac. A rude cross of sticks
surmounted this stone altar, on which some pious hand had laid a
nosegay, now dried--signifying, in the language of flowers proper to
masons and stone-cutters, that the work was finished and left. A little
water and spirits spared from the travelers' meal gave a slight air of
restoration to these mysterious offerings, and a couple of splendid
butterflies, whether attracted by the flowers or the alcoholic perfume,
commenced to waltz around the bouquet; but the corollas contained no
honey for their diminutive trunks, and after a slight examination they
danced contemptuously away.

At seven or eight miles' distance another streamlet was reached, named
the Mamabamba. It is a slender affluent of the Cconi, to be called a
rivulet in any country but South America, but here named a river with
the same proud effrontery which designates as a _city_ any collection of
a dozen huts thrown into the ravine of a mountain. The Mamabamba was
crossed by an extemporized bridge, constructed on the spot by the
ingenuity of Garcia and his men. Strange and incalculable was the
engineering of Pepe Garcia. Sometimes, across one of these
continually-occurring streams, he would throw a hastily-felled tree,
over which, glazed as it was by a night's rain or by the humidity of the
forest, he would invite the travelers to pass. Sometimes, to a couple of
logs rotting on the banks he would nail cross-strips like the rungs of a
ladder, and, while the torrent boiled at a distance below, pass jauntily
with his Indians, more sure-footed than goats. The wider the abyss the
more insecure the causeway; and the terrible rope-bridges of South
America, or the still more conjectural throw of a line of woven roots,
would meet the travelers wherever the cleft was so wide as to render
timbering an inconvenient trouble. Occasionally, on one of these damp
and moss-grown ladders, a peon's foot would slip, and down he would go,
the load strapped on his back catching him as he was passing through the
aperture: then, using his hands to hold on by, he would compose, on the
spur of the moment, a new and original language or telegraphy of the
legs, _kicking_ for assistance with all his might. Juan of Aragon was
usually the hero to extricate these poor estrays from the false step
they had taken, the other peons regarding t