Note 395 — Chapter LXXVII

The valley of Caxamarca (Ccasa, “frost,” and marca, “tower” or “house” in Quichua) is about five leagues long and three broad. It is intersected with green hedges enclosing hundreds of small plots bearing luxuriant crops, and a river winds from one extremity to the other. Humboldt believed this valley to be the bottom of an ancient lake. The soil is extremely fertile, and the plain is full of gardens and fields, traversed by avenues of daturas, willows, and the beautiful queñuar tree (Polylepis villosa). In the northern part of the plain, small porphyritic domes break through the sandstone strata, and probably once formed islands in the ancient lake, before its waters had flowed off.

Atahualpa had a palace at the warm sulphur baths of Pultamarca, in this plain, some slight remains of which can still be traced. The large deep basin, forming the baths, appears to have been artificially excavated in the sandstone rock above one of the fissures through which the spring issues. There are also slight remains of the fort and palace of Atahualpa in the town. The palace was situated on a hill of porphyry. The most considerable ruins still visible are only from thirteen to fifteen feet high, and consist of fine cut blocks of stone two or three feet long, and placed upon each other without cement. The cacique Astopilco, a descendant of Atahualpa, resided in a part of these ruins at the time when Humboldt and Stevenson visited Caxamarca. The room was shown them, where the unhappy Atahualpa was kept a prisoner for nine months in 1532-33. Humboldt’s Aspects. Stevenson, ii, cap. v.

Prescott gives the amount of gold collected for Atahualpa’s ransom at Caxamarca at 1,326,539 pesos de oro, besides 51,610 marcs of silver. (From Xeres, in Barcia’s Coll., iii, p. 232. Xeres was Pizarro’s secretary.) The peso or castellano de oro was equal, in commercial value, to £2:12:6; so that the gold alone, of this ransom, was worth £3,500,00. Prescott, i, p. 425.