On the morning of our departure from Lampa the ground was covered with snow, which was slowly melting under the sun's rays. Immediately after leaving the town the path winds up a steep mountain range called Chacun-chaca, the sides of the precipitous slopes being well clothed with _queñua_-trees (_Polylepis tomentella_, Wedd.), which are gnarled and stunted, with dark-green leaves, and the bark of the trunk peeling like that of a yew. Their sombre foliage contrasted with the light-green tufts of _stipa_, and the patches of snow. The pass was long and dangerous, with little torrents pouring down every rut; and on its summit was the usual _pacheta_, or cairn, which the Indians erect on every conspicuous point. The path descends on the other side into a long narrow plain, with the hacienda of Chacun-chaca on the opposite side. The buildings are surrounded by queñua-trees, and in their rear two remarkable peaked hills rise up abruptly, clothed with the same trees, with ridges of rock cropping out at intervals. Their sides were dotted with cattle, tended by pretty little cow-girls, armed with slings, and some of them playing the _pincullu_, or Indian flute. The plain was covered with long grass, in a saturated and spongy state, and groves of queñua-trees grew thickly in the gullies of the mountains on either side. After a ride of several leagues over the plain, latterly along the banks of the river Pucara, I turned a point of the road, and suddenly came in sight of the almost perpendicular mountain, closely resembling the northern end of the rock of Gibraltar, which rises abruptly from the plain, with the little town of Pucara nestling at its feet. The precipice is composed of a reddish sandstone, upwards of twelve hundred feet above the plain, the crevices and summit clothed with long grass and shrubby queñuas. Birds were whirling in circles at a great height above the rock, which, in the Spanish times, was famous for a fine breed of falcons, which were carefully guarded and regularly supplied with meat. They tell a story at Pucara that one of these birds was sent to the King of Spain, and that it returned of its own accord, being known by the collar.
Pucara means a fortress in Quichua; and here Francisco Hernandez Giron, the rebel who led an insurrection to oppose the abolition of personal service amongst the Indians, was finally defeated in 1554. The town is a little larger than Juliaca, with a handsome church in the same style, and a fountain in the plaza. I dined and passed the evening with the aged cura, Dr. José Faustino Dava, who is famous for his knowledge of the Quichua language, in its purest and most classical form. The fame of Dr. Dava's learning, in all questions connected with the antiquities of the Incas and the Quichua language, had reached me in England, and I was glad to obtain his valuable assistance in looking over a dictionary of the rich and expressive language of the Incas, on which I had been working for some time.