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Figure

Flashlight view of Interior of Cave, Machu Picchu
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Figure

Temple over Cave at Machu Picchu Suggested by the Author as the Probable Site of Tampu-Tocco ------

Under a carved rock the little boy showed me a cave beautifully lined with the finest cut stone.  It was evidently intended to be a Royal Mausoleum.  On top of this particular boulder a semicircular building had been constructed.  The wall followed the natural curvature of the rock and was keyed to it by one of the finest examples of masonry I have ever seen.  This beautiful wall, made of carefully matched ashlars of pure white granite, especially selected for its fine grain, was the work of a master artist.  The interior surface of the wall was broken by niches and square stone-pegs.  The exterior surface was perfectly simple and unadorned.  The lower courses, of particularly large ashlars, gave it a look of solidity.  The upper courses, diminishing in size toward the top, lent grace and delicacy to the structure.  The flowing lines, the symmetrical arrangement of the ashlars, and the gradual gradation of the courses, combined to produce a wonderful effect, softer and more pleasing than that of the marble temples of the Old World.  Owing to the absence of mortar, there are no ugly spaces between the rocks.  They might have grown together.

The elusive beauty of this chaste, undecorated surface seems to me to be due to the fact that the wall was built under the eye of a master mason who knew not the straight edge, the plumb rule, or the square.  He had no instruments of precision, so he had to depend on his eye.  He had a good eye, an artistic eye, an eye for symmetry and beauty of form.  His product received none of the harshness of mechanical and mathematical accuracy.  The apparently rectangular blocks are not really rectangular.  The apparently straight lines of the courses are not actually straight in the exact sense of that term.

To my astonishment I saw that this wall and its adjoining semicircular temple over the cave were as fine as the finest stonework in the far-famed Temple of the Sun in Cuzco.  Surprise followed surprise in bewildering succession.  I climbed a marvelous great stairway of large granite blocks, walked along a pampa where the Indians had a small vegetable garden, and came into a little clearing.  Here were the ruins of two of the finest structures I have ever seen in Peru.  Not only were they made of selected blocks of beautifully grained white granite; their walls contained ashlars of Cyclopean size, ten feet in length, and higher than a man.  The sight held me spellbound.

Each building had only three walls and was entirely open on the side toward the clearing.  The principal temple was lined with exquisitely made niches, five high up at each end, and seven on the back wall.  There were seven courses of ashlars in the end walls.  Under the seven rear niches was a rectangular block fourteen feet long, probably a sacrificial altar.  The building did not look as though it had ever had a roof.  The top course of beautifully smooth ashlars was not intended to be covered.