A LOST CIVILISATION

Evening Star, Issue 18255, 20 April 1923, Page 10

A LOST CIVILISATION

IN TEE LAND OP THE INOAS. Archaeologists and explorers arc not as a rule less reticent than ordinary mortals regarding their failures and disappointments. It is to Mr Hiram Bingham s credit that ho does not disguise his diaillusionments in this record of explorations in what Prescott calls the remote fastnesses of tho Andes ” (states a ‘Times writer in reviewing ‘ Inca Land, Explications in the Highlands of Peru ). He had his full share of triumphs m the course of his four adventurous journeys aa Director of the Peruvian Expeditions of Yale University and the American National Geographical Society, and he has a happy knack of making a good story out of his failures. One of his deepest disappointments followed the discovery of human bone fragments buried under seventy-five feet of gravel in the Cuzco Basin. Ihcso were provisionally estimated by the geologist of the expedition at 20,000 to 30,000 years old. Reports of glacial man in America had previously been received from places as widely separated as California and Argentina, but careful investigations had always thrown doubt on any great age being certainly attributable to them. So it proved in Mr Bingham s case, the final scientific verdict being that “ geologic data do not require moro than a few hundreds of years as the ago of the human remains found in tho Cuzco_ gravels.” Tho last nail was hammered into the coffin of Mr Bingham’s prehistoric man with the subsequent information that tho scene of the discovery—“dead man’s gulch had been used as a burial place lor plague victims in Cuzco not moro than three generations ago. A “ BOTTOMLESS ” LAKE.

Equally disconcerting was the discovery of the depth of Parinacochas, the “ Flamingo Lake ” of the Incas, ihe late Sir Clements Markham had called attention to this unexplored expanse of water, which has no visinlu outlet, and suggested that a bathymetric survey of Parinacochas was one of the chief desiderata for futiue exploration in Peru. This was sufficient to decide the author to include this littleknown lake in Ids expedition of 1911 and to endeavor to solve the problem ot its depth, concerning which nothing apparently, was known. It might be anything up to thousands of feet, but as the expedition could not take unlimited supplies on a journey over bleak desert wildernesses of lava blocks and scoriacoons sand and through deep-walled canyons to mountainous heights, it had to risk Hs not being more than a thousand feet. Before the expedition set out many weary hours were spent in inserting one hundred and sixty-six white and red cloth markers in a heavy fish line of that depth, wound on a largo wooden reel, in order to determine the result in fathoms. Arrived at length on the, shores of remote Parinacochas, where countless thousands of flamingoes furnished a wonderful homer of light salmon-pink, Mr Bingham rowed out in his folding boat on waters which, according to tho natives, had never before been navigated by craft of any kind: I began to take soundings. Lake Titicaca is over nine hundred feet deep. It would be aggravating if Lake Parinacochas should prove to be over a thousand, for I had brought no extra line. Even nine hundred feet would make sounding slow work, and tho lake covered an area of over seventy square miles. It was with mixed feelings of trepidation and expectation that I rowed out five miles from the shore and made a sounding. Holding the laigo reel firmly in both hands, I east the lead overboard. The reel gave a turn or two and stopped. Something was wrong. The line did not run out. Was the reel stuck? No, the apparatus was in perfect running order. Then what was the matter? The bottom was too near! Alas for all the pains that Mr Bassett had taken to put a thousand feet of the best strong twentv-four-thread line on one reel ! Alas for Air' Watkins and bis patient insertion of one hundred and sixty-six “ fathom-markers! ” Tho bottom of the lake was only four feet away from the bottom of rny boat ! After three or four days of strenuous rowing up and down the eighteen miles of tho lake s length, and back and forth across the seventeen miles of its width, I never succeeded in wetting Watkin’s first marker! This experience was tho sequel tn the expedition, to Coropuna tn see whether that virgin summit in the Peruvian coast range was, as declared by more than one authority, the culminating point in the Western Hemisphere —several hundred feet higher, it was said, than Aconcagua. After many hardships and miseries Mr Bingham and ids companions conquered Coropuna. only to find that, although it attained an altitude of 21,703 ft above sea level, it was still a thousand feet lower than Aconcagua. Of Mr Bingham's archaeological triumphs we have little room to speak. Numerous photographs testify to the remarkable nature and singular beauty of some of his discoveries. Among _ other things, be succeeded, apparently, in identifying Ulicos, the capital of the last Incas; as well as in discovering Tampu-Toccn, tlie long-lost city of the first Incas. Ihe history of the' Incas, as Mr Bingham shows’ is still involved in mystery and contradictions. Nature guards their secrets well. Living as they_ did in a land of violent contrasts, it is no easy matter to-day to identify some of the elusive places mentioned in the chronicles.