Adventure Magazine Cover, October 1911 — page 91: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Through Perilous Peru the same time we can see that you are not entirely to blame. If you willireturn to the plaza and have the band brought back here to receive us properly, all will be for- given and we shall not be obliged to report you to the Prefect of the Department, as was our intention.” “Gracias! Mu gracias!’’ said the fat official, and breathed again. SOME PREHISTORIC IRRIGATION 2 pee KING of Ambo and its productive valley brings up remembrances of other wonderfully fertile spots in Peru. Yet so much of Peru is not valley at all, but hill- side—and very steep hillside at that—that one marvels at the persistence of the moun- tain people in trying to cultivate their pre- cipitous slopes. But whatever knowledge of agriculture the modern cholo of Peru has, poor fellow, he has to thank the Incas for, as usual. Somewhere between a thousand and ten . thousand years ago an Inca with an investi- gating turn of mind found that the way to hold the soil on the hillsides was to turn the slope into a series of mighty steps from three to four feet wide and high and to keep them permanent by masonry con- struction. In these modern days we point to our own clever masonry or concrete work with the knowing observation that it will last forever, but this Inca, who had been raised on a farm before he went down into the big city and was appointed Secre- tary of Agriculture, had neither leveler nor transit, nor even one barrel of good cement. What stones he used to make his steps he chose with infinite care, laying and testing and chinking, fitting his wall together with an ingenuity and prodigality of labor that was surpassed only by the eee of the Pyramids and making, in the end, some- thing which was to last almost as long— and all this without a particle of mortar! After his steps were finished and his soil prepared he irrigated. Authorities differ as to the beginnings of irrigation, most of them placing its start an Egypt (although the Rocky Ford people in Colorado who raise cantaloupes persist in clayning all the credit!) but I will make my fn ca the one best bet. He was a very wise chap, this copper- colored fellow of long ago, even though he had no Trautwein’s Pocket Book to help 1037 him out and did wear a “fringe”’ on state days, for he always located his hillside work on both sides of a little gulch where water ran the year round. Here he con- fined the flow in a scientific manner, and at each level where his steps had been laid out he made a stone gate. In each gate he suspended a V-shaped slab and fitted it so that if he wanted water on the tenth step from the top he raised the first nine gates and shut the tenth, whereupon the water flowed out on either side along the steps and made things grow. RR TO RETURN to our reception in Ws ) Ambo, the fat official and the come- dians from Cerro de Pasco. In an unguarded moment before our departure for Huanuco [I let slip the information that we were to be the guests of the Prefect of the Department at that place. Shortly afterward, during an interlude in the festivi- ties, the joyous ones from the big copper camp murmured strange ideas in my ears. “Sure we’re going with you!” they said. “‘Ain’t there a dinner on? Ain’t there goin’ to be bands, and speeches, and French cider? You wouldn’t have us miss all that, would you? Be a good fellow and tell the Prefect that we’re rodmen and stake-ar- tists. We'll all be good. We'll even make speeches for you if you say the word. And, say! If we go broke, there’s a lathe-hand in the crowd that’s got three walnut shells and a little pea!”’ The Huanaca affair, as may be suspected, was a great success. THE CANNIBALS BEGIN TO MAKE TROUBLE BU: once these pleasant preliminaries were over, our problems came thick and fast. We had contracted to surmount sev- eral high ranges, cross two wide rivers and one hundred and fifty miles of dangerous cannibal country. During this trip we must be able to protect ourselves and we must be fed. As to the first of these,“ we soon found that it would not be enough to arm only the Americans of the party, but that the cargadores, or packers, must also have weapons of some sort. In fact, this became more and more apparent as the difficulties of engaging packers increased. Every one knew that we were headed for the Cashibo country and, although we hunted high and C© MICLOOOKS CO