At many
places where they landed they saw the great road of the Incas
which traversed the sea-coast, often, indeed, lost in the
volatile sands, where no road could be maintained, but rising
into a broad and substantial causeway, as it emerged on a firmer
soil. Such a provision for internal communication was in itself
no slight monument of power and civilization.
Still beating to the south, Pizarro passed the site of the future
flourishing city of Truxillo, founded by himself some years
later, and pressed on till he rode off the port of Santa. It
stood on the banks of a broad and beautiful stream; but the
surrounding country was so exceedingly arid that it was
frequently selected as a burial-place by the Peruvians, who found
the soil most favorable for the preservation of their mummies.
So numerous, indeed, were the Indian guacas, that the place might
rather be called the abode of the dead than of the living. *24
[Footnote 24: "Lo que mas me admiro, quando passe por este valle,
fue ver la muchedumbre que tienen de sepolturas: y que por todas
las sierras y secadales en los altos del valle: ay numero grande
de apartados, hechos a su usanca, todo cubiertas de huessos de
muertos. De manera que lo que ay en este valle mas que ver, es
las sepolturas de los muertos, y los campos que labraron siendo
vivos." Cieza de Leon, Cronica, cap. 70.]
Having reached this point, about the ninth degree of southern
latitude, Pizarro's followers besought him not to prosecute the
voyage farther.
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