Treasure Seekers: Lost Cities of the Inca Page #2

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meticulous calculations of

where Vilcabamba must be.

After months of research,

he was certain

the last refuge of the Incas

had been in a remote place now

called Espiritu Pampa.

Now all he had to do was

raise the money for the expedition.

He was too proud to be totally

bankrolled by his wife's family.

He went down to the Yale Club in

New York City, and he gave a speech.

A number of the people came forward.

When they saw the pictures of

his earlier travels,

they became very excited.

Last night a classmate,

of whom I have seen very little,

came over and talked with me.

When I told him about my plans and how

I needed $1800

to pay for a topographer

he smiled and said,

"Eighteen hundred dollars?

I'll give you that."

I could have shouted with joy.

The New York harbor

on June 8th, 1911,

Hiram Bingham stood on the deck

of a steamer

once again waving goodbye

to his wife.

This time it was harder.

They had just had another son,

Hiram IV.

I shall never forget how you looked

as you stood on the wharf with Harry,

so brave and courageous,

and yet so little and so appealing.

It did seem too cruel for words

that I should be

leaving you all alone.

But soon he was back in Peru doing

what he loved most.

In July 1911, he set off

from Cuzco northwards

on the long journey to

Espiritu Pampa.

Back in his element,

Hiram was overjoyed.

He was also extraordinarily lucky.

After less than three weeks easy

trekking down a newly opened road,

a local farmer told him about some old

stone terraces

on a mountain nearby.

Hiram asked the man

what the place was called.

He scribbled down the answer

in his notebook Machu Picchu.

He decided to have a quick look at it

the next day.

A young Indian boy led the party up

onto a plateau a few hours away.

Hardly had we rounded

the promontory

than we were confronted by

an unexpected sight:

a great flight of beautifully

constructed stone faced terraces,

perhaps a hundred of them.

I could scarcely believe my senses.

Would anyone believe

what I had found?

Fortunately, I had a good camera.

He knew he'd found an Inca ruin of

exceptional beauty,

but I think because of his

lack of experience,

he didn't fully appreciate

how unique the discovery was.

It was an entire city

which had lain untouched

since the Incas had abandoned it

almost 400 years before.

Not understanding what he had found,

Hiram left two of his team

to start clearing

and mapping the site

while he pressed on to his

real goal, Vilcabamba.

He forged on northwards

pushing his team through tangled...

jungle and perilous ravines

sure he was heading toward

greater discoveries

a fabulous lost city of

temples and palaces

that would put any other Inca ruin

to shame.

Finally, after weeks of

arduous trekking,

he approached the area where he knew

Vilcabamba must be.

For days his team hacked through

dense underbrush and tangled vines.

To their great astonishment,

they found nothing.

Espiritu Pampa was a desolate

upland plateau

with a few unimpressive stone

foundations and a lot of dense jungle.

It was a far cry from the magnificent

city Bingham had imagined.

He was disappointed and confused.

Could this be Vilcabamba?

Or had his calculations been wrong?

A perplexed Hiram turned back

the expedition.

The men were exhausted and supplies

were running out.

As his team trudged back to

civilization, morale hit rock bottom.

I often wonder why under the sun

I picked out a career

that would force me to spend so much

of my time away

from my dear ones.

The future is not clear to me.

As Hiram headed back to

the U.S. and Alfreda,

gloom and uncertainty hung over

his whole project.

Once back in the U.S.,

Hiram's spirits revived,

and with them his dreams of

Vilcabamba.

He rechecked his calculations of

its position.

If it was not Espiritu Pampa,

could it be Machu Picchu?

But Machu Picchu's position still

seemed wrong.

He decided to return to Peru

the following year

and investigate his find

more thoroughly.

When he arrived in Machu Picchu again

in the summer of 1912,

what the workmen had revealed was,

quite simply, stunning.

It clearly was some sort of city

its size, its spectacular location,

its magnificent terracing,

all made him sure it was a royal city.

No one but a king could have insisted

on having the lintels of his doorways

made of solid blocks of granite,

each weighing three tons.

What a prodigious amount of

patient work had to be employed.

Overcome with excitement,

Hiram immediately began to speculate

that this must be the last refuge

of the Inca kings.

Even if the location was wrong,

everything else was so right.

Here in this breathtaking hideout,

the Inca rulers had surely sheltered

the last remnants of their world.

Hiram devoted himself to his

spectacular find at Machu Picchu.

It was his passport to

worldwide fame.

National Geographic devoted an

entire magazine

issue to Bingham

and his work in Peru.

Suddenly, everybody knew about Machu

Picchu and the man who uncovered it.

At a special National Geographic

Society dinner he was honored

along with the world renowned

discoverers

of the North and South Poles.

Hiram had finally achieved the fame

he'd always wanted.

But his career as an excavator was

not to last much longer.

He returned to Peru in 1915 to a

storm of controversy.

For many Peruvians,

the apparent absence of

spectacular gold

among Bingham's finds

was deeply suspicious.

Rumors flew that Bingham

had found gold

and was smuggling it out of

the country.

Fed up, fearing arrest,

Hiram packed and left Peru.

On his return to the U.S.,

he decided to abandon his excavations.

The first World War was raging.

He signed up as an aviator.

World War I offered him a very

convenient way of extricating himself

from what had become an intractable

situation in Peru.

He could honorably say that

the world needed him

to become involved in the

military effort

that, as a patriot,

he should do that.

After a tour of duty in Europe,

Bingham had the perfect qualifications

for a political career.

Yale man, world famous explorer,

and now war hero.

He was elected in 1924 to the

U.S. Senate with little difficulty.

His political star rose steadily

through the 1920s,

but a bribery scandal and the Great

Depression brought it down fast.

The political tide turned against

Hiram and his buccaneering style.

He lost his Senate seat in 1932.

Before long, he lost Alfreda too,

and left taking a large part of

her family's money with him.

Remarried, eager to make up

for past mistakes,

he turned back to tend the one

reputation he knew was secure,

discoverer of Machu Picchu.

He believed to his dying day that

Machu Picchu was Vilcabamba.

As it turned out,

here too he was mistaken.

Later discoveries made it clear

the real Vilcabamba was exactly where

Hiram's first calculations had put it,

at Espiritu Pampa.

Beneath the tangled overgrowth of

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