Air Wonder Stories, July 1929 — page 65: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

MEN WITH WINGS 63 The news heartened our little party. We would most surely find them in Amazon country if it were possible to find them at all. Our plane was seady for the take off. We were to fly over the jungle lands in hope of discovering the settlement of the flying men. Then we would Jand our plane in some clearing and proceed on foot. In the mean- time we scouted in the city which was one of the oldest in Peru and filled with Indians. Many of the Indians told tales of flying men they had seen from time to time. However, they were very close- mouthed and did not seem anxious to speak of them, possibly believing them to be some new sort of gods. We heard a rumour that there lived an old Indian who claimed that he had once lived among the winged men! We sought him out! He dwelt below the city of Arequipa some two hundred miles south of Cuzco. We flew that day to that city that has for its background the majesty of El Misti. Early the next morning with a couple of hired arrievos (muleteers) we made our way to the tiny village where the old fellow was said to live. Peru at best is a wild country made up of pampas, deserts and mountain heights. It is a rugged place of irregular rivers that cut deep terrible canyons and tremendous water-ialls. It is a country of mys- tery, of ancient grandeur, of ghosts of the Inca, of poor ill-clad peons who are the descendants of that once great race. What cultivation there is, is done on a very intensive scale. Since large areas of the country is desert there is not a grain of fertile soil wasted. The fertile belts are usually on the river banks and the farms are set on series of terraces that had been built originally under Inca direction and are farmed in much the same way as they were hundreds of years ago. Nor is the climate of the country equable. In the val- leys is the hot fetid breath of the tropics and an over abundance of tropical vegetation and snakes, while the higher one climbs the cooler becomes the air, Mount Coropuna which is a matter of nineteen thousand feet above the sea is always covered with snow; and the Indians dwelling on the high alti- tudes of from twelve to fourteen thousand feet wear heavy clothing and find it difficult to keep the home fires burning up there above the tree line. In our trip to old Pedro Majes we experienced a variety of weather. Sometimes we climbed rather high and then dropped down into valleys. Most of our trip, however, was along the edge of a raging torrent and the path was rough, At places where the river’s gorge narrowed, stone steps had been cut out of living rock by the Incas, we were told. Sometimes a causeway constructed by the same builders took us across the wild waters or else our mules picked their way delicately along the crum- bling road-bed where every foot fall precipitated a rain of gravel to the river below. After almost a two day’s journey we came to the hovel of Senor Majes, a decrepit old chap whose lack of hair, teeth and cataracted eye-balls attested to his great age. Luckily I could understand a few words of his dialect so I did not need to depend en- tirely on our guides for interpretation. Old Pedro’s wrinkled face lighted up when we questioned him about the men with wings. The Story of Majes ip. See he cried, ‘I knew them well. Ay..they were men! Children of the Sun were they in- deed. They will come... truly ... they will come... and they will lead my poor people back again to the lands that rightfully are theirs, for know you . they are most surely the children of the Inca who came to us once.., from the Sun. Ay...ay... they will come. Never fear!” “Where did you know them?” I broke into his ravings, He waved his hand to the north-east, and then sat with his eyes turned to the distant horizon. When he spoke his voice was low. “Many, many years ago I was young, I was strong. A mighty man was I! Now there are none as strong as I was once. My people lose their strength even as they lose their hearts, Yet that will be different when They come again...ay...ay... “T was hunting in the jungles for I was a warrior then... And as I crept along tracking the deer a man appeared before me with a suddenness that is only possible to god-things. I fell upon my face for lo! he was different from other men; he had wings like the condor! “He bent and helped me to my feet and then I found that he had pressed a piece of silver into my hand. ‘I have paid for your labor,’ said he, ‘your labor belongs to me’. I nodded for that is our cus- tom. He named then a place where we should meet and with his great wings he rose straight into the sky.” “And did you meet him?” T asked The peon nodded. “Ay...ay .. had he not paid me for my labor? I bid good bye to my wife, my little ones atid my friends, and I went to the place where he had bidden me go. There were-others there, all fine strong men like me, He was there and with him many of his kind. With them they had a great hammock of woven bark shaped like a canoe and we were hidden to take our places therein. There were fifty of us. “We did not hesitate but sat in the hammock. Then the men with wings each took a hold of the air-boat, for such it was and together they bore us up and over the trees! For many hours we sailed more smoothly than a boat sails the river, and with the setting of the western sun we descended, We found ourselves on a vast plantation, and we were given food and drink and a place to lay our heads. “Ah, never before was there such a farm. This poor cultivation that you see here in these hills is not like that. How far it stretched there was no way of telling. There I worked in the fields with my fellow men for a year and again the flying men eame to bring us back here to our friends and our families.” You can imagine how I felt when I heard this. The winged men therefore had settlements, plan- tations and what not. “Were there many winged men?” I asked. Pedro shook his head. “I know not their number. They brought us and they took us away, but how many there were, I know not. They did not live near us, They but came and went as they pleased, Sometimes they came by night, sometimes by day, comnlicloooks. com