Note 282 — Chapter XLII

This account of the great Ynca road from Quito to Cuzco is quoted at length by Garcilasso de la Vega (i, lib. ix, cap. 13).

Zarate, the Accountant, was equally impressed with the grandeur of this work. He says that “the road was made over the mountains for a distance of five hundred leagues. It was broad and level, rocks were broken up and levelled where it was necessary, and ravines were filled up. When the road was finished it was so level that carts might have passed along it. The difficulty of this road will be understood when it is considered how great the cost and labour has been in levelling two leagues of hilly country in Spain, between Espinar de Segovia and Guadarramar, which has never yet been completely done, although it is the route by which the Kings of Castille continually pass, with their households and their court, every time they go to or come from Andalusia.” Zarate was Comptroller of Accounts for Castille from 1528 to 1543, and in 1544 he went to Peru to hold the same office. He was an educated man and an eye-witness, so that his testimony is valuable. Historia del Peru, lib. i, cap. 10.

Velasco, who was a native of Riobamba, near Quito, measured the breadth of the great road of the Yncas, and found it to be about six yards in one place, and seven in another. He says that the parts cut through the living rock were covered with a cement to make the surface smooth, while the loose places were paved with stones and covered with the same cement, in which he observed very small stones, not much larger than grains of sand. To cross ravines the road was raised with great pieces of rock united together by cement; and he adds that this cement was so strong that, where torrents had worked their way through the embankments, the road still spanned the ravines in the form of bridges. Hist. de Quito, i, p. 59.