Page:Aspects of nature in different lands and different climates; with scientific elucidations (IA b29329668 0002).pdf/281

 *tude, and which is placed, according to Pentland's map of Bolivia, 10676 Paris or 11378 English feet above the level of the sea. As the Peruvians employed no wheel carriages, and the roads were consequently only designed for the march of troops, for men carrying burdens, and for lightly laden lamas, we find them occasionally interrupted, on account of the steepness of the mountains, by long flights of steps, provided with resting places at suitable intervals. Francisco Pizarro and Diego Almagro, who on their distant expeditions used the military roads of the Incas with so much advantage, found great difficulties for the Spanish Cavalry at the places where these steps occurred[6]. The impediment presented to their march on these occasions was so much the greater, because in the early times of the Conquista, the Spaniards used only horses instead of the carefully treading mule, who in the difficult parts of the mountains seems to deliberate on every step he takes. It was not until a later period that mules were employed.

Sarmiento, who saw the Roads of the Incas whilst they were still in a perfect state of preservation, asks in a "Relacion" which long lay unread, buried in the Library of the Escorial, "how a nation unacquainted with the use of iron could have completed such grand works in so high and rocky a region ("Caminos tan grandes y tan sovervios"), extending from Cuzco to Quito on the one hand, and to the coast of Chili on the other? The Emperor Charles," he adds, "with all his power could not accomplish even a part of what the well-ordered Government of the Incas effected through the obedient people over whom they ruled."