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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1209 ***
+
+(See also #1323, a slightly different version with footnotes)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+History Of The Conquest Of Peru
+
+by William Hickling Prescott
+
+
+
+
+"Congestae cumulantur opes, orbisque rapinas Accipit."
+
+Claudian, In Ruf., lib. i., v. 194.
+
+
+"So color de religion
+Van a buscar plata y oro
+Del encubierto tesoro."
+Lope De Vega, El Nuevo Mundo, Jorn. 1.
+
+
+
+Preface
+
+The most brilliant passages in the history of Spanish adventure in the
+New World are undoubtedly afforded by the conquests of Mexico and
+Peru--the two states which combined with the largest extent of empire a
+refined social polity, and considerable progress in the arts of civilization.
+Indeed, so prominently do they stand out on the great canvas of history,
+that the name of the one, notwithstanding the contrast they exhibit in
+their respective institutions, most naturally suggests that of the other; and
+when I sent to Spain to collect materials for an account of the Conquest
+of Mexico, I included in my researches those relating to the Conquest of
+Peru.
+
+The larger part of the documents, in both cases, was obtained from the
+same great repository,--the archives of the Royal Academy of History at
+Madrid; a body specially intrusted with the preservation of whatever may
+serve to illustrate the Spanish colonial annals.  The richest portion of its
+collection is probably that furnished by the papers of Munoz.  This
+eminent scholar, historiographer of the Indies, employed nearly fifty
+years of his life in amassing materials for a history of Spanish discovery
+and conquest in America.  For this, as he acted under the authority of the
+government, every facility was afforded him; and public offices and
+private depositories, in all the principal cities of the empire, both at home
+and throughout the wide extent of its colonial possessions, were freely
+opened to his inspection.  The result was a magnificent collection of
+manuscripts, many of which he patiently transscribed with his own hand.
+But he did not live to reap the fruits of his persevering industry.  The
+first volume, relative to the voyages of Columbus, were scarcely finished
+when he died; and his manuscripts, at least that portion of them which
+have reference to Mexico and Peru, were destined to serve the uses of
+another, an inhabitant of that New World to which they related.
+
+Another scholar, to whose literary stores I am largely indebted, is Don
+Martin Fernandez de Navarrette, late Director of the Royal Academy of
+History.  Through the greater part of his long life he was employed in
+assembling original documents to illustrate the colonial annals.  Many of
+these have been incorporated in his great work, "Coleccion de los Viages
+y Descubrimientos," which, although far from being completed after the
+original plan of its author, is of inestimable service to the historian.  In
+following down the track of discovery, Navarrete turned aside from the
+conquests of Mexico and Peru, to exhibit the voyages of his countrymen
+in the Indian seas.  His manuscripts, relating to the two former countries,
+he courteously allowed to be copied for me.  Some of them have since
+appeared in print, under the auspices of his learned coadjutors, Salva and
+Baranda, associated with him in the Academy; but the documents placed
+in my hands form a most important contribution to my materials for the
+present history.
+
+The death of this illustrious man, which occurred some time after the
+present work was begun, has left a void in his country not easy to be
+filled; for he was zealously devoted to letters, and few have done more to
+extend the knowledge of her colonial history.  Far from an exclusive
+solicitude for his own literary projects, he was ever ready to extend his
+sympathy and assistance to those of others.  His reputation as a scholar
+was enhanced by the higher qualities which he possessed as a man,--by
+his benevolence, his simplicity of manners, and unsullied moral worth.
+My own obligations to him are large; for from the publication of my first
+historical work, down to the last week of his life, I have constantly
+received proofs from him of his hearty and most efficient interest in the
+prosecution of my historical labors; and I now the more willingly pay
+this well-merited tribute to his deserts, that it must be exempt from all
+suspicion of flattery.
+
+In the list of those to whom I have been indebted for materials, I must,
+also, include the name of M. Ternaux-Compans, so well known by his
+faithful and elegant French versions of the Munoz manuscripts; and that
+of my friend Don Pascual de Gayangos, who, under the modest dress of
+translation, has furnished a most acute and learned commentary on
+Spanish Arabian history,--securing for himself the foremost rank in that
+difficult department of letters, which has been illumined by the labors of
+a Masdeu, a Casiri, and a Conde.
+
+To the materials derived from these sources, I have added some
+manuscripts of an important character from the library of the Escurial.
+These, which chiefly relate to the ancient institutions of Peru, formed
+part of the splendid collection of Lord Kingsborough, which has
+unfortunately shared the lot of most literary collections, and been
+dispersed since the death of its noble author.  For these I am indebted to
+that industrious bibliographer, Mr. O. Rich, now resident in London.
+Lastly, I must not omit to mention my obligations, in another way, to my
+friend Charles Folsom, Esq., the learned librarian of the Boston
+Athenaeum; whose minute acquaintance with the grammatical structure
+and the true idiom of our English tongue has enabled me to correct many
+inaccuracies into which I had fallen in the composition both of this and
+of my former works.
+
+From these different sources I have accumulated a large amount of
+manuscripts, of the most various character, and from the most authentic
+sources; royal grants and ordinances, instructions of the Court, letters of
+the Emperor to the great colonial officers, municipal records, personal
+diaries and memoranda, and a mass of private correspondence of the
+principal actors in this turbulent drama.  Perhaps it was the turbulent
+state of the country which led to a more frequent correspondence
+between the government at home and the colonial officers.  But,
+whatever be the cause, the collection of manuscript materials in reference
+to Peru is fuller and more complete than that which relates to Mexico; so
+that there is scarcely a nook or corner so obscure, in the path of the
+adventurer, that some light has not been thrown on it by the written
+correspondence of the period.  The historian has rather had occasion to
+complain of the embarras des richesses; for, in the multiplicity of
+contradictory testimony, it is not always easy to detect the truth, as the
+multiplicity of cross-lights is apt to dazzle and bewilder the eye of the
+spectator.
+
+The present History has been conducted on the same general plan with
+that of the Conquest of Mexico.  In an Introductory Book, I have
+endeavored to portray the institutions of the Incas, that the reader may be
+acquainted with the character and condition of that extraordinary race,
+before he enters on the story of their subjugation.  The remaining books
+are occupied with the narrative of the Conquest.  And here, the subject, it
+must be allowed, notwithstanding the opportunities it presents for the
+display of character, strange, romantic incident, and picturesque scenery,
+does not afford so obvious advantages to the historian, as the Conquest
+of Mexico.  Indeed, few subjects can present a parallel with that, for the
+purposes either of the historian or the poet.  The natural development of
+the story, there, is precisely what would be prescribed by the severest
+rules of art.  The conquest of the country is the great end always in the
+view of the reader.  From the first landing of the Spaniards on the soil,
+their subsequent adventures, their battles and negotiations, their ruinous
+retreat, their rally and final siege, all tend to this grand result, till the
+long series is closed by the downfall of the capital.  In the march of
+events, all moves steadily forward to this consummation.  It is a
+magnificent epic, in which the unity of interest is complete.
+
+In the "Conquest of Peru," the action, so far as it is founded on the
+subversion of the Incas, terminates long before the close of the narrative.
+The remaining portion is taken up with the fierce feuds of the
+Conquerors, which would seem, from their very nature, to be incapable
+of being gathered round a central point of interest.  To secure this, we
+must look beyond the immediate overthrow of the Indian empire.  The
+conquest of the natives is but the first step, to be followed by the
+conquest of the Spaniards,--the rebel Spaniards, themselves,--till the
+supremacy of the Crown is permanently established over the country.  It
+is not till this period, that the acquisition of this Transatlantic empire can
+be said to be completed; and, by fixing the eye on this remoter point, the
+successive steps of the narrative will be found leading to one great result,
+and that unity of interest preserved which is scarcely less essential to
+historic than dramatic composition.  How far this has been effected, in
+the present work, must be left to the judgment of the reader.
+
+No history of the conquest of Peru, founded on original documents, and
+aspiring to the credit of a classic composition, like the "Conquest of
+Mexico" by Solis, has been attempted, as far as I am aware, by the
+Spaniards.  The English possess one of high value, from the pen of
+Robertson, whose masterly sketch occupies its due space in his great
+work on America.  It has been my object to exhibit this same story, in all
+its romantic details; not merely to portray the characteristic features of
+the Conquest, but to fill up the outline with the coloring of life, so as to
+present a minute and faithful picture of the times.  For this purpose, I
+have, in the composition of the work, availed myself freely of my
+manuscript materials, allowed the actors to speak as much as possible for
+themselves, and especially made frequent use of their letters; for
+nowhere is the heart more likely to disclose itself, than in the freedom of
+private correspondence.  I have made liberal extracts from these
+authorities in the notes, both to sustain the text, and to put in a printed
+form those productions of the eminent captains and statesmen of the
+time, which are not very accessible to Spaniards themselves.
+
+M. Amedee Pichot, in the Preface to the French translation of the
+"Conquest of Mexico," infers from the plan of the composition, that I
+must have carefully studied the writings of his countryman, M. de
+Barante.  The acute critic does me but justice in supposing me familiar
+with the principles of that writer's historical theory, so ably developed in
+the Preface to his "Ducs de Bourgogne." And I have had occasion to
+admire the skilful manner in which he illustrates this theory himself, by
+constructing out of the rude materials of a distant time a monument of
+genius that transports us at once into the midst of the Feudal Ages,-and
+this without the incongruity which usually attaches to a modernantique.
+In like manner, I have attempted to seize the characteristic expression of
+a distant age, and to exhibit it in the freshness of life.  But in an essential
+particular, I have deviated from the plan of the French historian.  I have
+suffered the scaffolding to remain after the building has been completed.
+In other words, I have shown to the reader the steps of the process by
+which I have come to my conclusions.  Instead of requiring him to take
+my version of the story on trust, I have endeavored to give him a reason
+for my faith.  By copious citations from the original authorities, and by
+such critical notices of them as would explain to him the influences to
+which they were subjected, I have endeavored to put him in a position
+for judging for himself, and thus for revising, and, if need be, reversing,
+the judgments of the historian.  He will, at any rate, by this means, be
+enabled to estimate the difficulty of arriving at truth amidst the conflict
+of testimony; and he will learn to place little reliance on those writers
+who pronounce on the mysterious past with what Fontenelle calls "a
+frightful degree of certainty,"--a spirit the most opposite to that of the
+true philosophy of history.
+
+Yet it must be admitted, that the chronicler who records the events of an
+earlier age has some obvious advantages in the store of manuscript
+materials at his command,--the statements of friends, rivals, and enemies,
+furnishing a wholesome counterpoise to each other; and also, in the
+general course of events, as they actually occurred, affording the best
+commentary on the true motives of the parties.  The actor, engaged in the
+heat of the strife, finds his view bounded by the circle around him and
+his vision blinded by the smoke and dust of the conflict: while the
+spectator, whose eye ranges over the ground from a more distant and
+elevated point, though the individual objects may lose somewhat of their
+vividness, takes in at a glance all the operations of the field.  Paradoxical
+as it may appear, truth rounded on contemporary testimony would seem,
+after all, as likely to be attained by the writer of a later day, as by
+contemporaries themselves.
+
+Before closing these remarks, I may be permitted to add a few of a
+personal nature.  In several foreign notices of my writings, the author has
+been said to be blind; and more than once I have had the credit of having
+lost my sight in the composition of my first history.  When I have met
+with such erroneous accounts, I have hastened to correct them.  But the
+present occasion affords me the best means of doing so; and I am the
+more desirous of this, as I fear some of my own remarks, in the Prefaces
+to my former histories, have led to the mistake.
+
+While at the University, I received an injury in one of my eyes, which
+deprived me of the sight of it.  The other, soon after, was attacked by
+inflammation so severely, that, for some time, I lost the sight of that also;
+and though it was subsequently restored, the organ was so much
+disordered as to remain permanently debilitated, while twice in my life,
+since, I have been deprived of the use of it for all purposes of reading
+and writing, for several years together.  It was during one of these
+periods that I received from Madrid the materials for the "History of
+Ferdinand and Isabella," and in my disabled condition, with my
+Transatlantic treasures lying around me, I was like one pining from
+hunger in the midst of abundance.  In this state, I resolved to make the
+ear, if possible, do the work of the eye.  I procured the services of a
+secretary, who read to me the various authorities; and in time I became
+so far familiar with the sounds of the different foreign languages (to
+some of which, indeed, I had been previously accustomed by a residence
+abroad), that I could comprehend his reading without much difficulty.
+As the reader proceeded, I dictated copious notes; and, when these had
+swelled to a considerable amount, they were read to me repeatedly, till I
+had mastered their contents sufficiently for the purposes of composition.
+The same notes furnished an easy means of reference to sustain the text.
+
+Still another difficulty occurred, in the mechanical labor of writing,
+which I found a severe trial to the eye.  This was remedied by means of a
+writing-case, such as is used by the blind, which enabled me to commit
+my thoughts to paper without the aid of sight, serving me equally well in
+the dark as in the light.  The characters thus formed made a near
+approach to hieroglyphics; but my secretary became expert in the art of
+deciphering, and a fair copy--with a liberal allowance for unavoidable
+blunders--was transcribed for the 'use of the printer.  I have described the
+process with more minuteness, as some curiosity has been repeatedly
+expressed in reference to my modus operandi under my privations, and
+the knowledge of it may be of some assistance to others in similar
+circumstances.
+
+Though I was encouraged by the sensible progress of my work, it was
+necessarily slow.  But in time the tendency to inflammation diminished,
+and the strength of the eye was confirmed more and more.  It was at
+length so far restored, that I could read for several hours of the day
+though my labors in this way necessarily terminated with the daylight.
+Nor could I ever dispense with the services of a secretary, or with the
+writing-case; for, contrary to the usual experience, I have found writing a
+severer trial to the eye than reading,--a remark, however, which does not
+apply to the reading of manuscript; and to enable myself therefore, to
+revise my composition more carefully, I caused a copy of the "History of
+Ferdinand and Isabella" to be printed for my own inspection, before it
+was sent to the press for publication.  Such as I have described was the
+improved state of my health during the preparation of the "Conquest of
+Mexico"; and, satisfied with being raised so nearly to a level with the
+rest of my species, I scarcely envied the superior good fortune of those
+who could prolong their studies into the evening, and the later hours of
+the night.
+
+But a change has again taken place during the last two years.  The sight
+of my eye has become gradually dimmed, while the sensibility of the
+nerve has been so far increased, that for several weeks of the last year I
+have not opened a volume, and through the whole time I have not had the
+use of it, on an average, for more than an hour a day.  Nor can I cheer
+myself with the delusive expectation, that, impaired as the organ has
+become, from having been tasked, probably, beyond its strength, it can
+ever renew its youth, or be of much service to me hereafter in my literary
+researches.  Whether I shall have the heart to enter, as I had proposed, on
+a new and more extensive field of historical labor, with these
+impediments, I cannot say.  Perhaps long habit, and a natural desire to
+follow up the career which I have so long pursued, may make this, in a
+manner, necessary, as my past experience has already proved that it is
+practicable.
+
+From this statement--too long, I fear, for his patience--the reader, who
+feels any curiosity about the matter, will understand the real extent of my
+embarrassments in my historical pursuits.  That they have not been very
+light will be readily admitted, when it is considered that I have had but a
+limited use of my eye, in its best state, and that much of the time I have
+been debarred from the use of it altogether.  Yet the difficulties I have
+had to contend with are very far inferior to those which fall to the lot of a
+blind man.  I know of no historian, now alive, who can claim the glory of
+having overcome such obstacles, but the author of "La Conquete de
+l'Angleterre par les Normands"; who, to use his own touching and
+beautiful language, "has made himself the friend of darkness"; and who,
+to a profound philosophy that requires no light but that from within,
+unites a capacity for extensive and various research, that might well
+demand the severest application of the student.
+
+The remarks into which I have been led at such length will, I trust, not be
+set down by the reader to an unworthy egotism, but to their true source, a
+desire to correct a misapprehension to which I may have unintentionally
+given rise myself, and which has gained me the credit with some--far
+from grateful to my feelings, since undeserved--of having surmounted
+the incalculable obstacles which lie in the path of the blind man.
+
+Boston, April 2, 1847.
+
+
+
+History Of The Conquest Of Peru
+
+by William Hickling Prescott
+
+Book 1
+
+Introduction
+
+View Of The Civilization Of The Incas
+
+Chapter 1
+
+Physical Aspect Of The Country--Sources Of Peruvian Civilization--
+Empire Of The Incas--Royal Family--Nobility
+
+Of the numerous nations which occupied the great American continent at
+the time of its discovery by the Europeans, the two most advanced in
+power and refinement were undoubtedly those of Mexico and Peru.  But,
+though resembling one another in extent of civilization, they differed
+widely as to the nature of it; and the philosophical student of his species
+may feel a natural curiosity to trace the different steps by which these two
+nations strove to emerge from the state of barbarism, and place
+themselves on a higher point in the scale of humanity.--In a former work I
+have endeavored to exhibit the institutions and character of the ancient
+Mexicans, and the story of their conquest by the Spaniards.  The present
+will be devoted to the Peruvians; and, if their history shall be found to
+present less strange anomalies and striking contrasts than that of the
+Aztecs, it may interest us quite as much by the pleasing picture it offers of
+a well-regulated government and sober habits of industry under the
+patriarchal sway of the Incas.
+
+The empire of Peru, at the period of the Spanish invasion, stretched along
+the Pacific from about the second degree north to the thirty-seventh
+degree of south latitude; a line, also, which describes the western
+boundaries of the modern republics of Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and Chili.
+Its breadth cannot so easily be determined; for, though bounded
+everywhere by the great ocean on the west, towards the east it spread out,
+in many parts, considerably beyond the mountains, to the confines of
+barbarous states, whose exact position is undetermined, or whose names
+are effaced from the map of history.  It is certain, however, that its breadth
+was altogether disproportioned to its length.1
+
+The topographical aspect of the country is very remarkable.  A strip of
+land, rarely exceeding twenty leagues in width, runs along the coast, and
+is hemmed in through its whole extent by a colossal range of mountains,
+which, advancing from the Straits of Magellan, reaches its highest
+elevation-indeed, the highest on the American continent--about the
+seventeenth degree south, 2 and, after crossing the line, gradually subsides
+into hills of inconsiderable magnitude, as it enters the isthmus of Panama.
+This is the famous Cordillera of the Andes, or "copper mountains," 3 as
+termed by the natives, though they might with more reason have been
+called "mountains of gold." Arranged sometimes in a single line, though
+more frequently in two or three lines running parallel or obliquely to each
+other, they seem to the voyager on the ocean but one continuous chain;
+while the huge volcanoes, which to the inhabitants of the tableland look
+like solitary and independent masses, appear to aim only like so many
+peaks of the same vast and magnificent range.  So immense is the scale on
+which Nature works in these regions, that it is only when viewed from a
+great distance, that the spectator can, in any degree, comprehend the
+relation of the several parts to the stupendous whole.  Few of the works of
+Nature, indeed, are calculated to produce impressions of higher sublimity
+than the aspect of this coast, as it is gradually unfolded to the eye of the
+mariner sailing on the distant waters of the Pacific; where mountain is
+seen to rise above mountain, and Chimborazo, with its glorious canopy of
+snow, glittering far above the clouds, crowns the whole as with a celestial
+diadem.4
+
+The face of the country would appear to be peculiarly unfavorable to the
+purposes both of agriculture and of internal communication.  The sandy
+strip along the coast, where rain never falls, is fed only by a few scanty
+streams, that furnish a remarkable contrast to the vast volumes of water
+which roll down the eastern sides of the Cordilleras into the Atlantic.  The
+precipitous steeps of the sierra, with its splintered sides of porphyry and
+granite, and its higher regions wrapped in snows that never melt under the
+fierce sun of the equator, unless it be from the desolating action of its own
+volcanic fires, might seem equally unpropitious to the labors of the
+husbandman.  And all communication between the parts of the long-
+extended territory might be thought to be precluded by the savage
+character of the region, broken up by precipices, furious torrents, and
+impassable quebradas,--those hideous rents in the mountain chain, whose
+depths the eye of the terrified traveller, as he winds along his aerial
+pathway, vainly endeavors to fathom.5  Yet the industry, we might almost
+say, the genius, of the Indian was sufficient to overcome all these
+impediments of Nature.
+
+By a judicious system of canals and subterraneous aqueducts, the waste
+places on the coast were refreshed by copious streams, that clothed them
+in fertility and beauty.  Terraces were raised upon the steep sides of the
+Cordillera; and, as the different elevations had the effect of difference of
+latitude, they exhibited in regular gradation every variety of vegetable
+form, from the stimulated growth of the tropics, to the temperate products
+of a northern clime; while flocks of llamas--the Peruvian sheep--wandered
+with their shepherds over the broad, snow-covered wastes on the crests of
+the sierra, which rose beyond the limits of cultivation.  An industrious
+population settled along the lofty regions of the plateaus, and towns and
+hamlets, clustering amidst orchards and widespreading gardens, seemed
+suspended in the air far above the ordinary elevation of the clouds.  6
+Intercourse was maintained between these numerous settlements by means
+of great roads which traversed the mountain passes, and opened an easy
+communication between the capital and the remotest extremities of the
+empire.
+
+The source of this civilization is traced to the valley of Cuzco, the central
+region of Peru, as its name implies.7  The origin of the Peruvian empire,
+like the origin of all nations, except the very few which, like our own,
+have had the good fortune to date from a civilized period and people, is
+lost in the mists of fable, which, in fact, have settled as darkly round its
+history as round that of any nation, ancient or modern, in the Old World.
+According to the tradition most familiar to the European scholar, the time
+was, when the ancient races of the continent were all plunged in
+deplorable barbarism; when they worshipped nearly every object in nature
+indiscriminately; made war their pastime, and feasted on the flesh of their
+slaughtered captives.  The Sun, the great luminary and parent of mankind,
+taking compassion on their degraded condition, sent two of his children,
+Manco Capac and Mama Oello Huaco, to gather the natives into
+communities, and teach them the arts of civilized life.  The celestial pair,
+brother and sister, husband and wife, advanced along the high plains in
+the neighborhood of Lake Titicaca, to about the sixteenth degree south.
+They bore with them a golden wedge, and were directed to take up their
+residence on the spot where the sacred emblem should without effort sink
+into the ground.  They proceeded accordingly but a short distance, as far
+as the valley of Cuzco, the spot indicated by the performance of the
+miracle, since there the wedge speedily sank into the earth and
+disappeared for ever.  Here the children of the Sun established their
+residence, and soon entered upon their beneficent mission among the rude
+inhabitants of the country; Manco Capac teaching the men the arts of
+agriculture, and Mama Oello  8 initiating her own sex in the mysteries of
+weaving and spinning.  The simple people lent a willing ear to the
+messengers of Heaven, and, gathering together in considerable numbers,
+laid the foundations of the city of Cuzco.  The same wise and benevolent
+maxims, which regulated the conduct of the first Incas, 9 descended to
+their successors, and under their mild sceptre a community gradually
+extended itself along the broad surface of the table-land, which asserted
+its superiority over the surrounding tribes.  Such is the pleasing picture of
+the origin of the Peruvian monarchy, as portrayed by Garcilasso de la
+Vega, the descendant of the Incas, and through him made familiar to the
+European reader.10
+
+But this tradition is only one of several current among the Peruvian
+Indians, and probably not the one most generally received.  Another
+legend speaks of certain white and bearded men, who, advancing from the
+shores of Lake Titicaca, established an ascendancy over the natives, and
+imparted to them the blessings of civilization.  It may remind us of the
+tradition existing among the Aztecs in respect to Quetzalcoatl, the good
+deity, who with a similar garb and aspect came up the great plateau from
+the east on a like benevolent mission to the natives.  The analogy is the
+more remarkable, as there is no trace of any communication with, or even
+knowledge of, each other to be found in the two nations.11
+
+The date usually assigned for these extraordinary events was about four
+hundred years before the coming of the Spaniards, or early in the twelfth
+century.12  But, however pleasing to the imagination, and however
+popular, the legend of Manco Capac, it requires but little reflection to
+show its improbability, even when divested of supernatural
+accompaniments.  On the shores of Lake Titicaca extensive ruins exist at
+the present day, which the Peruvians themselves acknowledge to be of
+older date than the pretended advent of the Incas, and to have furnished
+them with the models of their architecture.13  The date of their
+appearance, indeed, is manifestly irreconcilable with their subsequent
+history.  No account assigns to the Inca dynasty more than thirteen princes
+before the Conquest.  But this number is altogether too small to have
+spread over four hundred years, and would not carry back the foundations
+of the monarchy, on any probable computation, beyond two centuries and
+a half,-an antiquity not incredible in itself, and which, it may be remarked,
+does not precede by more than half a century the alleged foundation of the
+capital of Mexico.  The fiction of Manco Capac and his sister-wife was
+devised, no doubt, at a later period, to gratify the vanity of the Peruvian
+monarchs, and to give additional sanction to their authority by deriving it
+from a celestial origin.
+
+We may reasonably conclude that there existed in the country a race
+advanced in civilization before the time of the Incas; and, in conformity
+with nearly every tradition, we may derive this race from the
+neighborhood of Lake Titicaca; 14 a conclusion strongly confirmed by the
+imposing architectural remains which still endure, after the lapse of so
+many years, on its borders.  Who this race were, and whence they came,
+may afford a tempting theme for inquiry to the speculative antiquarian.
+But it is a land of darkness that lies far beyond the domain of history.15
+
+The same mists that hang round the origin of the Incas continue to settle
+on their subsequent annals; and, so imperfect were the records employed
+by the Peruvians, and so confused and contradictory their traditions, that
+the historian finds no firm footing on which to stand till within a century
+of the Spanish conquest.16  At first, the progress of the Peruvians seems
+to have been slow, and almost imperceptible.  By their wise and temperate
+policy, they gradually won over the neighboring tribes to their dominion,
+as these latter became more and more convinced of the benefits of a just
+and well-regulated government.  As they grew stronger, they were enabled
+to rely more directly on force; but, still advancing under cover of the same
+beneficent pretexts employed by their predecessors, they proclaimed
+peace and civilization at the point of the sword.  The rude nations of the
+country, without any principle of cohesion among themselves, fell one
+after another before the victorious arm of the Incas.  Yet it was not till the
+middle of the fifteenth century that the famous Topa Inca Yupanqui,
+grandfather of the monarch who occupied the throne at the coming of the
+Spaniards, led his armies across the terrible desert of Atacama, and,
+penetrating to the southern region of Chili, fixed the permanent boundary
+of his dominions at the river Maule.  His son, Huayna Capac, possessed of
+ambition and military talent fully equal to his father's, marched along the
+Cordillera towards the north, and, pushing his conquests across the
+equator, added the powerful kingdom of Quito to the empire of Peru.17
+
+The ancient city of Cuzco, meanwhile, had been gradually advancing in
+wealth and population, till it had become the worthy metropolis of a great
+and flourishing monarchy.  It stood in a beautiful valley on an elevated
+region of the plateau, which, among the Alps, would have been buried in
+eternal snows, but which within the tropics enjoyed a genial and
+salubrious temperature.  Towards the north it was defended by a lofty
+eminence, a spur of the great Cordillera; and the city was traversed by a
+river, or rather a small stream, over which bridges of timber, covered with
+heavy slabs of stone, furnished an easy means of communication with the
+opposite banks.  The streets were long and narrow; the houses low, and
+those of the poorer sort built of clay and reeds.  But Cuzco was the royal
+residence, and was adorned with the ample dwellings of the great nobility;
+and the massy fragments still incorporated in many of the modern edifices
+bear testimony to the size and solidity of the ancient.18
+
+The health of the city was promoted by spacious openings and squares, in
+which a numerous population from the capital and the distant country
+assembled to celebrate the high festivals of their religion.  For Cuzco was
+the "Holy City"; 19 and the great temple of the Sun, to which pilgrims
+resorted from the furthest borders of the empire, was the most magnificent
+structure in the New World, and unsurpassed, probably, in the costliness
+of its decorations by any building in the Old.
+
+Towards the north, on the sierra or rugged eminence already noticed, rose
+a strong fortress, the remains of which at the present day, by their vast
+size, excite the admiration of the traveller.20 It was defended by a single
+wall of great thickness, and twelve hundred feet long on the side facing
+the city, where the precipitous character of the ground was of itself almost
+sufficient for its defence.  On the other quarter, where the approaches
+were less difficult, it was protected by two other semicircular walls of the
+same length as the preceding.  They were separated, a considerable
+distance from one another and from the fortress; and the intervening
+ground was raised so that the walls afforded a breastwork for the troops
+stationed there in times of assault.  The fortress consisted of three towers,
+detached from one another.  One was appropriated to the Inca, and was
+garnished with the sumptuous decorations befitting a royal residence,
+rather than a military post.  The other two were held by the garrison,
+drawn from the Peruvian nobles, and commanded by an officer of the
+blood royal; for the position was of too great importance to be intrusted to
+inferior hands.  The hill was excavated below the towers, and several
+subterraneous galleries communicated with the city and the palaces of the
+Inca.21
+
+The fortress, the walls, and the galleries were all built of stone, the heavy
+blocks of which were not laid in regular courses, but so disposed that the
+small ones might fill up the interstices between the great.  They formed a
+sort of rustic work, being rough-hewn except towards the edges, which
+were finely wrought; and, though no cement was used, the several blocks
+were adjusted with so much exactness and united so closely, that it was
+impossible to introduce even the blade of a knife between them.22  Many
+of these stones were of vast size; some of them being full thirty-eight feet
+long, by eighteen broad, and six feet thick.23
+
+We are filled with astonishment, when we consider, that these enormous
+masses were hewn from their native bed and fashioned into shape, by a
+people ignorant of the use of iron; that they were brought from quarries,
+from four to fifteen leagues distant, 24 without the aid of beasts of burden;
+were transported across rivers and ravines, raised to their elevated
+position on the sierra, and finally adjusted there with the nicest accuracy,
+without the knowledge of tools and machinery familiar to the European.
+Twenty thousand men are said to have been employed on this great
+structure, and fifty years consumed in the building.25  However this may
+be, we see in it the workings of a despotism which had the lives and
+fortunes of its vassals at its absolute disposal, and which, however mild in
+its general character, esteemed these vassals, when employed in its
+service, as lightly as the brute animals for which they served as a
+substitute.
+
+The fortress of Cuzco was but part of a system of fortifications established
+throughout their dominions by the Incas.  This system formed a prominent
+feature in their military policy; but before entering on this latter, it will
+be proper to give the reader some view of their civil institutions and
+scheme of government.
+
+The sceptre of the Incas, if we may credit their historian, descended in
+unbroken succession from father to son, through their whole dynasty.
+Whatever we may think of this, it appears probable that the right of
+inheritance might be claimed by the eldest son of the Coya, or lawful
+queen, as she was styled, to distinguish her from the host of concubines
+who shared the affections of the sovereign.26  The queen was further
+distinguished, at least in later reigns, by the circumstance of being
+selected from the sisters of the Inca, an arrangement which, however
+revolting to the ideas of civilized nations, was recommended to the
+Peruvians by its securing an heir to the crown of the pure heaven-born
+race, uncontaminated by any mixture of earthly mould.27
+
+In his early years, the royal offspring was intrusted to the care of the
+amautas, or "wise men," as the teachers of Peruvian science were called,
+who instructed him in such elements of knowledge as they possessed, and
+especially in the cumbrous ceremonial of their religion, in which he was
+to take a prominent part.  Great care was also bestowed on his military
+education, of the last importance in a state which, with its professions of
+peace and good-will, was ever at war for the acquisition of empire.
+
+In this military school he was educated with such of the Inca nobles as
+were nearly of his own age; for the sacred name of Inca--a fruitful source
+of obscurity in their annals--was applied indifferently to all who
+descended by the male line from the founder of the monarchy.28  At the
+age of sixteen the pupils underwent a public examination, previous to
+their admission to what may be called the order of chivalry.  This
+examination was conducted by some of the oldest and most illustrious
+Incas.  The candidates were required to show their prowess in the athletic
+exercises of the warrior; in wrestling and boxing, in running such long
+courses as fully tried their agility and strength, in severe fasts of several
+days' duration, and in mimic combats, which, although the weapons were
+blunted, were always attended with wounds, and sometimes with death.
+During this trial, which lasted thirty days, the royal neophyte fared no
+better than his comrades, sleeping on the bare ground, going unshod, and
+wearing a mean attire,--a mode of life, it was supposed, which might tend
+to inspire him with more sympathy with the destitute.  With all this show
+of impartiality, however, it will probably be doing no injustice to the
+judges to suppose that a politic discretion may have somewhat quickened
+their perceptions of the real merits of the heir-apparent.
+
+At the end of the appointed time, the candidates selected as worthy of the
+honors of their barbaric chivalry were presented to the sovereign, who
+condescended to take a principal part in the ceremony of inauguration.
+He began with a brief discourse, in which, after congratulating the young
+aspirants on the proficiency they had shown in martial exercises, he
+reminded them of the responsibilities attached to their birth and station;
+and, addressing them affectionately as "children of the Sun," he exhorted
+them to imitate their great progenitor in his glorious career of beneficence
+to mankind.  The novices then drew near, and, kneeling one by one before
+the Inca, he pierced their ears with a golden bodkin; and this was suffered
+to remain there till an opening had been made large enough for the
+enormous pendants which were peculiar to their order, and which gave
+them, with the Spaniards, the name of orejones.29  This ornament was so
+massy in the ears of the sovereign, that the cartilage was distended by it
+nearly to the shoulder, producing what seemed a monstrous deformity in
+the eyes of the Europeans, though, under the magical influence of fashion,
+it was regarded as a beauty by the natives.
+
+When this operation was performed, one of the most venerable of the
+nobles dressed the feet of the candidates in the sandals worn by the order,
+which may remind us of the ceremony of buckling on the spurs of the
+Christian knight.  They were then allowed to assume the girdle or sash
+around the loins, corresponding with the toga virilis of the Romans, and
+intimating that they had reached the season of manhood.  Their heads
+were adorned with garlands of flowers, which, by their various colors,
+were emblematic of the clemency and goodness that should grace the
+character of every true warrior; and the leaves of an evergreen plant were
+mingled with the flowers, to show that these virtues should endure without
+end.30  The prince's head was further ornamented by a fillet, or tasselled
+fringe, of a yellow color, made of the fine threads of the vicuna wool,
+which encircled the forehead as the peculiar insignia of the heir apparent.
+The great body of the Inca nobility next made their appearance, and,
+beginning with those nearest of kin, knelt down before the prince, and did
+him homage as successor to the crown.  The whole assembly then moved
+to the great square of the capital, where songs, and dances, and other
+public festivities closed the important ceremonial of the huaracu.31
+
+The reader will be less surprised by the resemblance which this
+ceremonial bears to the inauguration of a Christian knight in the feudal
+ages, if he reflects that a similar analogy may be traced in the institutions
+of other people more or less civilized; and that it is natural that nations,
+occupied with the one great business of war, should mark the period,
+when the preparatory education for it was ended, by similar characteristic
+ceremonies.
+Having thus honorably passed through his ordeal, the heir-apparent was
+deemed worthy to sit in the councils of his father, and was employed in
+offices of trust at home, or, more usually, sent on distant expeditions to
+practise in the field the lessons which he had hitherto studied only in the
+mimic theatre of war.  His first campaigns were conducted under the
+renowned commanders who had grown grey in the service of his father;
+until, advancing in years and experience, he was placed in command
+himself, and, like Huayna Capac, the last and most illustrious of his line,
+carried the banner of the rainbow, the armorial ensign of his house, far
+over the borders, among the remotest tribes of the plateau.
+
+The government of Peru was a despotism, mild in its character, but in its
+form a pure and unmitigated despotism.  The sovereign was placed at an
+immeasurable distance above his subjects.  Even the proudest of the Inca
+nobility, claiming a descent from the same divine original as himself,
+could not venture into the royal presence, unless barefoot, and bearing a
+light burden on his shoulders in token of homage.32  As the
+representative of the Sun, he stood at the head of the priesthood, and
+presided at the most important of the religious festivals.33  He raised
+armies, and usually commanded them in person.  He imposed taxes, made
+laws, and provided for their execution by the appointment of judges,
+whom he removed at pleasure.  He was the source from which every thing
+flowed, all dignity, all power, all emolument.  He was, in short, in the well-
+known phrase of the European despot, "himself the state." 34
+
+The Inca asserted his claims as a superior being by assuming a pomp in
+his manner of living well calculated to impose on his people.  His dress
+was of the finest wool of the vicuna, richly dyed, and ornamented with a
+profusion of gold and precious stones.  Round his head was wreathed a
+turban of many-colored folds, called the llautu; and a tasselled fringe, like
+that worn by the prince, but of a scarlet color, with two feathers of a rare
+and curious bird, called the coraquenque, placed upright in it, were the
+distinguishing insignia of royalty.  The birds from which these feathers
+were obtained were found in a desert country among the mountains; and it
+was death to destroy or to take them, as they were reserved for the
+exclusive purpose of supplying the royal head-gear.  Every succeeding
+monarch was provided with a new pair of these plumes, and his credulous
+subjects fondly believed that only two individuals of the species had ever
+existed to furnish the simple ornament for the diadem of the Incas.35
+
+Although the Peruvian monarch was raised so far above the highest of his
+subjects, he condescended to mingle occasionally with them, and took
+great pains personally to inspect the condition of the humbler classes.  He
+presided at some of the religious celebrations, and on these occasions
+entertained the great nobles at his table, when he complimented them,
+after the fashion of more civilized nations, by drinking the health of those
+whom he most delighted to honor.36
+
+But the most effectual means taken by the Incas for communicating with
+their people were their progresses through the empire.  These were
+conducted, at intervals of several years, with great state and magnificence.
+The sedan, or litter, in which they travelled, richly emblazoned with gold
+and emeralds, was guarded by a numerous escort.  The men who bore it
+on their shoulders were provided by two cities, specially appointed for the
+purpose.  It was a post to be coveted by no one, if, as is asserted, a fall
+was punished by death.37  They travelled with ease and expedition,
+halting at the tambos, or inns, erected by government along the route, and
+occasionally at the royal palaces, which in the great towns afforded ample
+accommodations to the whole of the monarch's retinue.  The noble roads
+which traversed the table-land were lined with people who swept away the
+stones and stubble from their surface, strewing them with sweet-scented
+flowers, and vying with each other in carrying forward the baggage from
+one village to another.  The monarch halted from time to time to listen to
+the grievances of his subjects, or to settle some points which had been
+referred to his decision by the regular tribunals.  As the princely train
+wound its way along the mountain passes, every place was thronged with
+spectators eager to catch a glimpse of their sovereign; and, when he raised
+the curtains of his litter, and showed himself to their eyes, the air was rent
+with acclamations as they invoked blessings on his head.38  Tradition
+long commemorated the spots at which he halted, and the simple people
+of the country held them in reverence as places consecrated by the
+presence of an Inca.39
+
+The royal palaces were on a magnificent scale, and, far from being
+confined to the capital or a few principal towns, were scattered over all
+the provinces of their vast empire.40  The buildings were low, but
+covered a wide extent of ground.  Some of the apartments were spacious,
+but they were generally small, and had no communication with one
+another, except that they opened into a common square or court.  The
+walls were made of blocks of stone of various sizes, like those described
+in the fortress of Cuzco, rough-hewn, but carefully wrought near the line
+of junction, which was scarcely visible to the eye.  The roofs were of
+wood or rushes, which have perished under the rude touch of time, that
+has shown more respect for the walls of the edifices.  The whole seems to
+have been characterized by solidity and strength, rather than by any
+attempt at architectural elegance.41
+
+But whatever want of elegance there may have been in the exterior of the
+imperial dwellings, it was amply compensated by the interior, in which all
+the opulence of the Peruvian princes was ostentatiously displayed.  The
+sides of the apartments were thickly studded with gold and silver
+ornaments.  Niches, prepared in the walls, were filled with images of
+animals and plants curiously wrought of the same costly materials; and
+even much of the domestic furniture, including the utensils devoted to the
+most ordinary menial services, displayed the like wanton magnificence!
+42  With these gorgeous decorations were mingled richly colored stuffs of
+the delicate manufacture of the Peruvian wool, which were of so beautiful
+a texture, that the Spanish sovereigns, with all the luxuries of Europe and
+Asia at their command, did not disdain to use them.43  The royal
+household consisted of a throng of menials, supplied by the neighboring
+towns and villages, which, as in Mexico, were bound to furnish the
+monarch with fuel and other necessaries for the consumption of the
+palace.
+
+But the favorite residence of the Incas was at Yucay, about four leagues
+distant from the capital.  In this delicious valley, locked up within the
+friendly arms of the sierra, which sheltered it from the rude breezes of the
+east, and refreshed by gushing fountains and streams of running water,
+they built the most beautiful of their palaces.  Here, when wearied with
+the dust and toil of the city, they loved to retreat, and solace themselves
+with the society of their favorite concubines, wandering amidst groves and
+airy gardens, that shed around their soft, intoxicating odors, and lulled the
+senses to voluptuous repose.  Here, too, they loved to indulge in the
+luxury of their baths, replenished by streams of crystal water which were
+conducted through subterraneous silver channels into basins of gold.  The
+spacious gardens were stocked with numerous varieties of plants and
+flowers that grew without effort in this temperate region of the tropics,
+while parterres of a more extraordinary kind were planted by their side,
+glowing with the various forms of vegetable life skilfully imitated in gold
+and silver! Among them the Indian corn, the most beautiful of American
+grains, is particularly commemorated, and the curious workmanship is
+noticed with which the golden ear was half disclosed amidst the broad
+leaves of silver, and the light tassel of the same material that floated
+gracefully from its top.44
+
+If this dazzling picture staggers the faith of the reader, he may reflect that
+the Peruvian mountains teemed with gold; that the natives understood the
+art of working the mines, to a considerable extent; that none of the ore, as
+we shall see hereafter, was converted into coin, and that the whole of it
+passed into the hands of the sovereign for his own exclusive benefit,
+whether for purposes of utility or ornament.  Certain it is that no fact is
+better attested by the Conquerors themselves, who had ample means of
+information, and no motive for misstatement.--The Italian poets, in their
+gorgeous pictures of the gardens of Alcina and Morgana, came nearer the
+truth than they imagined.
+
+Our surprise, however, may reasonably be excited, when we consider that
+the wealth displayed by the Peruvian princes was only that which each
+had amassed individually for himself.  He owed nothing to inheritance
+from his predecessors.  On the decease of an Inca, his palaces were
+abandoned, all his treasures, except what were employed in his obsequies,
+his furniture and apparel, were suffered to remain as he left them, and his
+mansions, save one, were closed up for ever.  The new sovereign was to
+provide himself with every thing new for his royal state.  The reason of
+this was the popular belief, that the soul of the departed monarch would
+return after a time to reanimate his body on earth; and they wished that he
+should find every thing to which he had been used in life prepared for his
+reception.45
+
+When an Inca died, or, to use his own language, "was called home to the
+mansions of his father, the Sun,"  46 his obsequies were celebrated with
+great pomp and solemnity.  The bowels were taken from the body, and
+deposited in the temple of Tampu, about five leagues from the capital.  A
+quantity of his plate and jewels was buried with them, and a number of his
+attendants and favorite concubines, amounting sometimes, it is said, to a
+thousand, were immolated on his tomb.47  Some of them showed the
+natural repugnance to the sacrifice occasionally manifested by the victims
+of a similar superstition in India.  But these were probably the menials
+and more humble attendants; since the women have been known, in more
+than one instance, to lay violent hands on themselves, when restrained
+from testifying their fidelity by this act of conjugal martyrdom.  This
+melancholy ceremony was followed by a general mourning throughout the
+empire.  At stated intervals, for a year, the people assembled to renew the
+expressions of their sorrow, processions were made, displaying the banner
+of the departed monarch; bards and minstrels were appointed to chronicle
+his achievements, and their songs continued to be rehearsed at high
+festivals in the presence of the reigning monarch,--thus stimulating the
+living by the glorious example of the dead.48
+
+The body of the deceased Inca was skilfully embalmed, and removed to
+the great temple of the Sun at Cuzco.  There the Peruvian sovereign, on
+entering the awful sanctuary, might behold the effigies of his royal
+ancestors, ranged in opposite files,--the men on the right, and their queens
+on the left, of the great luminary which blazed in refulgent gold on the
+walls of the temple.  The bodies, clothed in the princely attire which they
+had been accustomed to wear, were placed on chairs of gold, and sat with
+their heads inclined downward, their hands placidly crossed over their
+bosoms, their countenances exhibiting their natural dusky hue,--less liable
+to change than the fresher coloring of a European complexion,--and their
+hair of raven black, or silvered over with age, according to the period at
+which they died! It seemed like a company of solemn worshippers fixed in
+devotion,--so true were the forms and lineaments to life.  The Peruvians
+were as successful as the Egyptians in the miserable attempt to perpetuate
+the existence of the body beyond the limits assigned to it by nature.49
+
+They cherished a still stranger illusion in the attentions which they
+continued to pay to these insensible remains, as if they were instinct with
+life.  One of the houses belonging to a deceased Inca was kept open and
+occupied by his guard and attendants, with all the state appropriate to
+royalty.  On certain festivals, the revered bodies of the sovereigns were
+brought out with great ceremony into the public square of the capital.
+Invitations were sent by the captains of the guard of the respective Incas
+to the different nobles and officers of the court; and entertainments were
+provided in the names of their masters, which displayed all the profuse
+magnificence of their treasures,--and "such a display," says an ancient
+chronicler, "was there in the great square of Cuzco, on this occasion, of
+gold and silver plate and jewels, as no other city in the world ever
+witnessed." 50  The banquet was served by the menials of the respective
+households, and the guests partook of the melancholy cheer in the
+presence of the royal phantom with the same attention to the forms of
+courtly etiquette as if the living monarch had presided! 51
+
+The nobility of Peru consisted of two orders, the first and by far the most
+important of which was that of the Incas, who, boasting a common
+descent with their sovereign, lived, as it were, in the reflected light of his
+glory.  As the Peruvian monarchs availed themselves of the right of
+polygamy to a very liberal extent, leaving behind them families of one or
+even two hundred children, 52 the nobles of the blood royal, though
+comprehending only their descendants in the male line, came in the course
+of years to be very numerous.53  They were divided into different
+lineages, each of which traced its pedigree to a different member of the
+royal dynasty, though all terminated in the divine founder of the empire.
+
+They were distinguished by many exclusive and very important privileges;
+they wore a peculiar dress; spoke a dialect, if we may believe the
+chronicler, peculiar to themselves; 54 and had the choicest portion of the
+public domain assigned for their support.  They lived, most of them, at
+court, near the person of the prince, sharing in his counsels, dining at his
+board, or supplied from his table.  They alone were admissible to the great
+offices in the priesthood.  They were invested with the command of
+armies, and of distant garrisons, were placed over the provinces, and, in
+short, filled every station of high trust and emolument.55  Even the laws,
+severe in their general tenor, seem not to have been framed with reference
+to them; and the people, investing the whole order with a portion of the
+sacred character which belonged to the sovereign, held that an Inca noble
+was incapable of crime.56
+
+The other order of nobility was the Curacas, the caciques of the
+conquered nations, or their descendants.  They were usually continued by
+the government in their places, though they were required to visit the
+capital occasionally, and to allow their sons to be educated there as the
+pledges of their loyalty.  It is not easy to define the nature or extent of
+their privileges.  They were possessed of more or less power, according to
+the extent of their patrimony, and the number of their vassals.  Their
+authority was usually transmitted from father to son, though sometimes
+the successor was chosen by the people.57  They did not occupy the
+highest posts of state, or those nearest the person of the sovereign, like the
+nobles of the blood.  Their authority seems to have been usually local, and
+always in subordination to the territorial jurisdiction of the great
+provincial governors, who were taken from the Incas.58
+
+It was the Inca nobility, indeed, who constituted the real strength of the
+Peruvian monarchy.  Attached to their prince by ties of consanguinity,
+they had common sympathies and, to a considerable extent, common
+interests with him.  Distinguished by a peculiar dress and insignia, as well
+as by language and blood, from the rest of the community, they were
+never confounded with the other tribes and nations who were incorporated
+into the great Peruvian monarchy.  After the lapse of centuries, they still
+retained their individuality as a peculiar people.  They were to the
+conquered races of the country what the Romans were to the barbarous
+hordes of the Empire, or the Normans to the ancient inhabitants of the
+British Isles.  Clustering around the throne, they formed an invincible
+phalanx, to shield it alike from secret conspiracy and open insurrection.
+Though living chiefly in the capital, they were also distributed throughout
+the country in all its high stations and strong military posts, thus
+establishing lines of communication with the court, which enabled the
+sovereign to act simultaneously and with effect on the most distant
+quarters of his empire.  They possessed, moreover, an intellectual
+preeminence, which, no less than their station, gave them authority with
+the people.  Indeed, it may be said to have been the principal foundation
+of their authority.  The crania of the Inca race show a decided superiority
+over the other races of the land in intellectual power; 59 and it cannot be
+denied that it was the fountain of that peculiar civilization and social
+polity, which raised the Peruvian monarchy above every other state in
+South America.  Whence this remarkable race came, and what was its
+early history, are among those mysteries that meet us so frequently in the
+annals of the New World, and which time and the antiquary have as yet
+done little to explain.
+
+
+
+Book 1
+
+Chapter 2
+
+Orders Of The State--Provisions For Justice--Division Of Lands-
+Revenues And Registers--Great Roads And Posts-
+Military Tactics And Policy
+
+If we are surprised at the peculiar and original features of what may be
+called the Peruvian aristocracy, we shall be still more so as we descend
+to the lower orders of the community, and see the very artificial character
+of their institutions,--as artificial as those of ancient Sparta, and, though
+in a different way, quite as repugnant to the essential principles of our
+nature.  The institutions of Lycurgus, however, were designed for a petty
+state, while those of Peru, although originally intended for such, seemed,
+like the magic tent in the Arabian tale, to have an indefinite power of
+expansion, and were as well suited to the most flourishing condition of
+the empire as to its infant fortunes.  In this remarkable accommodation to
+change of circumstances we see the proofs of a contrivance that argues
+no slight advance in civilization.
+
+The name of Peru was not known to the natives.  It was given by the
+Spaniards, and originated, it is said, in a misapprehension of the Indian
+name of "river."1  However this may be, it is certain that the natives had
+no other epithet by which to designate the large collection of tribes and
+nations who were assembled under the sceptre of the Incas, than that of
+Tavantinsuyu, or "four quarters of the world."2  This will not surprise a
+citizen of the United States, who has no other name by which to class
+himself among nations than what is borrowed from a quarter of the
+globe.3  The kingdom, conformably to its name, was divided into four
+parts, distinguished each by a separate title, and to each of which ran one
+of the four great roads that diverged from Cuzco, the capital or navel of
+the Peruvian monarchy.  The city was in like manner divided into four
+quarters; and the various races, which gathered there from the distant
+parts of the empire, lived each in the quarter nearest to its respective
+province.  They all continued to wear their peculiar national costume, so
+that it was easy to determine their origin; and the same order and system
+of arrangement prevailed in the motley population of the capital, as in
+the great provinces of the empire.  The capital, in fact, was a miniature
+image of the empire.4
+
+The four great provinces were each placed under a viceroy or governor,
+who ruled over them with the assistance of one or more councils for the
+different departments.  These viceroys resided, some portion of their
+time, at least, in the capital, where they constituted a sort of council of
+state to the Inca.5  The nation at large was distributed into decades, or
+small bodies of ten; and every tenth man, or head of a decade, had
+supervision of the rest,---being required to see that they enjoyed the
+rights and immunities to which they were entitled, to solicit aid in their
+behalf from government, when necessary, and to bring offenders to
+justice.  To this last they were stimulated by a law that imposed on them,
+in case of neglect, the same penalty that would have been incurred by the
+guilty party.  With this law hanging over his head, the magistrate of Peru,
+we may well believe, did not often go to sleep on his post.6
+
+The people were still further divided into bodies of fifty, one hundred,
+five hundred, and a thousand, with each an officer having general
+supervision over those beneath, and the higher ones possessing, to a
+certain extent, authority in matters of police.  Lastly, the whole empire
+was distributed into sections or departments of ten thousand inhabitants,
+with a governor over each, from the Inca nobility, who had control over
+the curacas and other territorial officers in the district.  There were, also,
+regular tribunals of justice, consisting of magistrates in each of the towns
+or small communities, with jurisdiction over petty offences, while those
+of a graver character were carried before superior judges, usually the
+governors or rulers of the districts.  These judges all held their authority
+and received their support from the Crown, by which they were
+appointed and removed at pleasure.  They were obliged to determine
+every suit in five days from the time it was brought before them; and
+there was no appeal from one tribunal to another.  Yet there were
+important provisions for the security of justice.  A committee of visitors
+patrolled the kingdom at certain times to investigate the character and
+conduct of the magistrates; and any neglect or violation of duty was
+punished in the most exemplary manner.  The inferior courts were also
+required to make monthly returns of their proceedings to the higher ones,
+and these made reports in like manner to the viceroys; so that the
+monarch, seated in the centre of his dominions, could look abroad, as it
+were, to the most distant extremities, and review and rectify any abuses
+in the administration of the law.7
+
+The laws were few and exceedingly severe.  They related almost wholly
+to criminal matters.  Few other laws were needed by a people who had
+no money, little trade, and hardly any thing that could be called fixed
+property.  The crimes of theft, adultery, and murder were all capital;
+though it was wisely provided that some extenuating circumstances
+might be allowed to mitigate the punishment.8   Blasphemy against the
+Sun, and malediction of the Inca,--offences, indeed, of the same
+complexion were also punished with death.  Removing landmarks,
+turning the water away from a neighbor's land into one's own, burning a
+house, were all severely punished.  To burn a bridge was death.  The inca
+allowed no obstacle to those facilities of communication so essential to
+the maintenance of public order.  A rebellious city or province was laid
+waste, and its inhabitants exterminated.  Rebellion against the "Child of
+the Sun," was the greatest of all crimes.9
+
+The simplicity and severity of the Peruvian code may be thought to infer
+a state of society but little advanced; which had few of those complex
+interests and relations that grow up in a civilized community, and which
+had not proceeded far enough in the science of legislation to economize
+human suffering by proportioning penalties to crimes.  But the Peruvian
+institutions must be regarded from a different point of view from that in
+which we study those of other nations.  The laws emanated from the
+sovereign, and that sovereign held a divine commission, and was
+possessed of a divine nature.  To violate the law was not only to insult
+the majesty of the throne, but it was sacrilege.  The slightest offence,
+viewed in this light, merited death; and the gravest could incur no
+heavier penalty.10  Yet, in the infliction of their punishments, they
+showed no unnecessary cruelty; and the sufferings of the victim were not
+prolonged by the ingenious torments so frequent among barbarous
+nations.11
+
+These legislative provisions may strike us as very defective, even as
+compared with those of the semi-civilized races of Anahuac, where a
+gradation of courts, moreover, with the right of appeal, afforded a
+tolerable security for justice.  But in a country like Peru, where few but
+criminal causes were known, the right of appeal was of less consequence.
+The law was simple, its application easy; and, where the judge was
+honest, the case was as likely to be determined correctly on the first
+hearing as on the second.  The inspection of the board of visitors, and the
+monthly returns of the tribunals, afforded no slight guaranty for their
+integrity.  The law which required a decision within five days would
+seem little suited to the complex and embarrassing litigation of a modern
+tribunal.  But, in the simple questions submitted to the Peruvian judge,
+delay would have been useless; and the Spaniards, familiar with the evils
+growing out of long-protracted suits, where the successful litigant is too
+often a ruined man, are loud in their encomiums of this swift-handed and
+economical justice.12
+
+The fiscal regulations of the Incas, and the laws respecting property, are
+the most remarkable features in the Peruvian polity.  The whole territory
+of the empire was divided into three parts, one for the Sun, another for
+the Inca, and the last for the people.  Which of the three was the largest
+is doubtful.  The proportions differed materially in different provinces.
+The distribution, indeed, was made on the same general principle, as
+each new conquest was added to the monarchy; but the propertion varied
+according to the amount of population, and the greater or less amount of
+land consequently required for the support of the inhabitants.13
+
+The lands assigned to the Sun furnished a revenue to support the
+temples, and maintain the costly ceremonial of the Peruvian worship and
+the multitudinous priesthood.  Those reserved for the Inca went to
+support the royal state, as well as the numerous members of his
+household and his kindred, and supplied the various exigencies of
+government.  The remainder of the lands was divided, per capita, in
+equal shares among the people.  It was provided by law, as we shall see
+hereafter, that every Peruvian should marry at a certain age.  When this
+event took place, the community or district in which he lived furnished
+him with a dwelling, which, as it was constructed of humble materials,
+was done at little cost.  A lot of land was then assigned to him sufficient
+for his own maintenance and that of his wife.  An additional portion was
+granted for every child, the amount allowed for a son being the double of
+that for a daughter.  The division of the soil was renewed every year, and
+the possessions of the tenant were increased or diminished according to
+the numbers in his family.14  The same arrangement was observed with
+reference to the curacas, except only that a domain was assigned to them
+corresponding with the superior dignity of their stations.15
+
+A more thorough and effectual agrarian law than this cannot be
+imagined.  In other countries where such a law has been introduced, its
+operation, after a time, has given way to the natural order of events, and,
+under the superior intelligence and thrift of some and the prodigality of
+others, the usual vicissitudes of fortune have been allowed to take their
+course, and restore things to their natural inequality.  Even the iron law
+of Lycurgus ceased to operate after a time, and melted away before the
+spirit of luxury and avarice.  The nearest approach to the Peruvian
+constitution was probably in Judea, where, on the recurrence of the great
+national jubilee, at the close of every half-century, estates reverted to
+their original proprietors.  There was this important difference in Peru;
+that not only did the lease, if we may so call it, terminate with the year,
+but during that period the tenant had no power to alienate or to add to his
+possessions.  The end of the brief term found him in precisely the same
+condition that he was in at the beginning.  Such a state of things might be
+supposed to be fatal to any thing like attachment to the soil, or to that
+desire of improving it, which is natural to the permanent proprietor, and
+hardly less so to the holder of a long lease.  But the practical operation of
+the law seems to have been otherwise; and it is probable, that, under the
+influence of that love of order and aversion to change which marked the
+Peruvian institutions, each new partition of the soil usually confirmed the
+occupant in his possession, and the tenant for a year was converted into a
+proprietor for life.
+
+The territory was cultivated wholly by the people.  The lands belonging
+to the Sun were first attended to.  They next tilled the lands of the old, of
+the sick, of the widow and the orphan, and of soldiers engaged in actual
+service; in short, of all that part of the community who, from bodily
+infirmity or any other cause, were unable to attend to their own concerns.
+The people were then allowed to work on their own ground, each man
+for himself, but with the general obligation to assist his neighbor, when
+any circumstance--the burden of a young and numerous family, for
+example--might demand it.16  Lastly, they cultivated the lands of the
+Inca.  This was done, with great ceremony, by the whole population in a
+body.  At break of day, they were summoned together by proclamation
+from some neighboring tower or eminence, and all the inhabitants of the
+district, men, women, and children, appeared dressed in their gayest
+apparel, bedecked with their little store of finery and ornaments, as if for
+some great jubilee.  They went through the labors of the day with the
+same joyous spirit, chanting their popular ballads which commemorated
+the heroic deeds of the Incas, regulating their movements by the measure
+of the chant, and all mingling in the chorus, of which the word hailli, or
+"triumph," was usually the burden.  These national airs had something
+soft and pleasing in their character, that recommended them to the
+Spaniards; and many a Peruvian song was set to music by them after the
+Conquest, and was listened to by the unfortunate natives with
+melancholy satisfaction, as it called up recollections of the past, when
+their days glided peacefully away under the sceptre of the Incas.17
+
+A similar arrangement prevailed with respect to the different
+manufactures as to the agricultural products of the country.  The flocks
+of llamas, or Peruvian sheep, were appropriated exclusively to the Sun
+and to the Inca.18  Their number was immense.  They were scattered
+over the different provinces, chiefly in the colder regions of the country,
+where they were intrusted to the care of experienced shepherds, who
+conducted them to different pastures according to the change of season.
+A large number was every year sent to the capital for the consumption of
+the Court, and for the religious festivals and sacrifices.  But these were
+only the males, as no female was allowed to be killed.  The regulations
+for the care and breeding of these flocks were prescribed with the
+greatest minuteness, and with a sagacity which excited the admiration of
+the Spaniards, who were familiar with the management of the great
+migratory flocks of merinos in their own country.19
+
+At the appointed season, they were all sheared, and the wool was
+deposited in the public magazines.  It was then dealt out to each family in
+such quantities as sufficed for its wants, and was consigned to the female
+part of the household, who were well instructed in the business of
+spinning and weaving.  When this labor was accomplished, and the
+family was provided with a coarse but warm covering, suited to the cold
+climate of the mountains,--for, in the lower country, cotton, furnished in
+like manner by the Crown, took the place, to a certain extent, of wool,--
+the people were required to labor for the Inca.  The quantity of the cloth
+needed, as well as the peculiar kind and quality of the fabric, was first
+determined at Cuzco.  The work was then apportioned among the
+different provinces.  Officers, appointed for the purpose, superintended
+the distribution of the wool, so that the manufacture of the different
+articles should be intrusted to the most competent hands.20  They did not
+leave the matter here, but entered the dwellings, from time to time, and
+saw that the work was faithfully executed.  This domestic inquisition was
+not confined to the labors for the Inca.  It included, also, those for the
+several families; and care was taken that each household should employ
+the materials furnished for its own use in the manner that was intended,
+so that no one should be unprovided with necessary apparel.21  In this
+domestic labor all the female part of the establishment was expected to
+join.  Occupation was found for all, from the child five years old to the
+aged matron not too infirm to hold a distaff.  No one, at least none but
+the decrepit and the sick, was allowed to eat the bread of idleness in
+Peru.  Idleness was a crime in the eye of the law, and, as such, severely
+punished; while industry was publicly commended and stimulated by
+rewards.22
+
+The like course was pursued with reference to the other requisitions of
+the government.  All the mines in the kingdom belonged to the Inca.
+They were wrought exclusively for his benefit, by persons familiar with
+this service, and selected from the districts where the mines were
+situated.23  Every Peruvian of the lower class was a husbandman, and,
+with the exception of those already specified, was expected to provide
+for his own support by the cultivation of his land.  A small portion of the
+community, however, was instructed in mechanical arts; some of them of
+the more elegant kind, subservient to the purposes of luxury and
+ornament.  The demand for these was chiefly limited to the sovereign
+and his Court; but the labor of a larger number of hands was exacted for
+the execution of the great public works which covered the land.  The
+nature and amount of the services required were all determined at Cuzco
+by commissioners well instructed in the resources of the country, and in
+the character of the inhabitants of different provinces.24
+
+This information was obtained by an admirable regulation, which has
+scarcely a counterpart in the annals of a semi-civilized people.  A
+register was kept of all the births and deaths throughout the country, and
+exact returns of the actual population were made to government every
+year, by means of the quipus, a curious invention, which will be
+explained hereafter.25  At certain intervals, also, a general survey of the
+country was made, exhibiting a complete view of the character of the
+soil, its fertility, the nature of its products, both agricultural and mineral,-
+-in short, of all that constituted the physical resources of the empire.26
+Furnished with these statistical details, it was easy for the government,
+after determining the amount of requisitions, to distribute the work
+among the respective provinces best qualified to execute it.  The task of
+apportioning the labor was assigned to the local authorities, and great
+care was taken that it should be done in such a manner, that, while the
+most competent hands were selected, it should not fall disproportionately
+heavy on any.27
+
+The different provinces of the country furnished persons peculiarly
+suited to different employments, which, as we shall see hereafter, usually
+descended from father to son.  Thus, one district supplied those most
+skilled in working the mines, another the most curious workers in metals,
+or in wood, and so on.28  The artisan was provided by government with
+the materials; and no one was required to give more than a stipulated
+portion of his time to the public service.  He was then succeeded by
+another for the like term; and it should be observed, that all who were
+engaged in the employment of the government--and the remark applies
+equally to agricultural labor--were maintained, for the time, at the public
+expense.29  By this constant rotation of labor, it was intended that no
+one should be overburdened, and that each man should have time to
+provide for the demands of his own household.  It was impossible--in the
+judgment of a high Spanish authority--to improve on the system of
+distribution, so carefully was it accommodated to the condition and
+comfort of the artisan.30  The security of the working classes seems to
+have been ever kept in view in the regulations of the government; and
+these were so discreetly arranged, that the most wearing and
+unwholesome labors, as those of the mines, occasioned no detriment to
+the health of the laborer; a striking contrast to his subsequent condition
+under the Spanish rule.31
+
+A part of the agricultural produce and manufactures was transported to
+Cuzco, to minister to the immediate demands of the Inca and his Court.
+But far the greater part was stored in magazines scattered over the
+different provinces.  These spacious buildings, constructed of stone,
+were divided between the Sun and the Inca, though the greater share
+seems to have been appropriated by the monarch.  By a wise regulation,
+any deficiency in the contributions of the Inca might be supplied from
+the granaries of the Sun.32  But such a necessity could rarely have
+happened; and the providence of the government usually left a large
+surplus in the royal depositories, which was removed to a third class of
+magazines, whose design was to supply the people in seasons of scarcity,
+and, occasionally, to furnish relief to individuals, whom sickness or
+misfortune had reduced to poverty; thus, in a manner, justifying the
+assertion of a Castilian document, that a large portion of the revenues of
+the Inca found its way back again, through one channel or another, into
+the hands of the people.33  These magazines were found by the
+Spaniards, on their arrival, stored with all the various products and
+manufactures of the country,--with maize, coca, quinua, woolen and
+cotton stuffs of the finest quality, with vases and utensils of gold, silver,
+and copper, in short, with every article of luxury or use within the
+compass of Peruvian skill.34  The magazines of grain, in particular,
+would frequently have sufficed for the consumption of the adjoining
+district for several years.35  An inventory of the various products of the
+country, and the quarters whence they were obtained, was every year
+taken by the royal officers, and recorded by the quipucamayus on their
+registers, with surprising regularity and precision.  These registers were
+transmitted to the capital, and submitted to the Inca, who could thus at a
+glance, as it were, embrace the whole results of the national industry, and
+see how far they corresponded with the requisitions of government.36
+
+Such are some of the most remarkable features of the Peruvian
+institutions relating to property, as delineated by writers who, however
+contradictory in the details, have a general conformity of outline.  These
+institutions are certainly so remarkable, that it is hardly credible they
+should ever have been enforced throughout a great empire, and for a long
+period of years.  Yet we have the most unequivocal testimony to the fact
+from the Spaniards, who landed in Peru in time to witness their
+operation; some of whom, men of high judicial station and character,
+were commissioned by the government to make investigations into the
+state of the country under its ancient rulers.
+
+The impositions on the Peruvian people seem to have been sufficiently
+heavy.  On them rested the whole burden of maintaining, not only their
+own order, but every other order in the state.  The members of the royal
+house, the great nobles, even the public functionaries, and the numerous
+body of the priesthood, were all exempt from taxation.37  The whole
+duty of defraying the expenses of the government belonged to the
+people.  Yet this was not materially different from the condition of things
+formerly existing in most parts of Europe, where the various privileged
+classes claimed exemption--not always with success, indeed--from
+bearing part of the public burdens.  The great hardship in the case of the
+Peruvian was, that he could not better his condition.  His labors were for
+others, rather than for himself.  However industrious, he could not add a
+rood to his own possessions, nor advance himself one hair's breadth in
+the social scale.  The great and universal motive to honest industry, that
+of bettering one's lot, was lost upon him.  The great law of human
+progress was not for him.  As he was born, so he was to die.  Even his
+time he could not properly call his own.  Without money, with little
+property of any kind, he paid his taxes in labor.38  No wonder that the
+government should have dealt with sloth as a crime.  It was a crime
+against the state, and to be wasteful of time was, in a manner, to rob the
+exchequer.  The Peruvian, laboring all his life for others, might be
+compared to the convict in a treadmill, going the same dull round of
+incessant toil, with the consciousness, that, however profitable the results
+to the state, they were nothing to him.
+
+But this is the dark side of the picture.  If no man could become rich in
+Peru, no man could become poor.  No spendthrift could waste his
+substance in riotous luxury.  No adventurous schemer could impoverish
+his family by the spirit of speculation.  The law was constantly directed
+to enforce a steady industry and a sober management of his affairs.  No
+mendicant was tolerated in Peru.  When a man was reduced by poverty
+or misfortune, (it could hardly be by fault,) the arm of the law was
+stretched out to minister relief; not the stinted relief of private charity,
+nor that which is doled out, drop by drop, as it were, from the frozen
+reservoirs of "the parish," but in generous measure, bringing no
+humiliation to the object of it, and placing him on a level with the rest of
+his countrymen.39
+
+No man could be rich, no man could be poor, in Peru; but all might
+enjoy, and did enjoy, a competence.  Ambition, avarice, the love of
+change, the morbid spirit of discontent, those passions which most
+agitate the minds of men, found no place in the bosom of the Peruvian.
+The very condition of his being seemed to be at war with change.  He
+moved on in the same unbroken circle in which his fathers had moved
+before him, and in which his children were to follow.  It was the object
+of the Incas to infuse into their subjects a spirit of passive obedience and
+tranquillity,--a perfect acquiescence in the established order of things.  In
+this they fully succeeded.  The Spaniards who first visited the country are
+emphatic in their testimony, that no government could have been better
+suited to the genius of the people; and no people could have appeared
+more contented with their lot, or more devoted to their government.40
+
+Those who may distrust the accounts of Peruvian industry will find their
+doubts removed on a visit to the country.  The traveller still meets,
+especially in the central regions of the table-land, with memorials of the
+past, remains of temples, palaces, fortresses, terraced mountains, great
+military roads, aqueducts, and other public works, which, whatever
+degree of science they may display in their execution, astonish him by
+their number, the massive character of the materials, and the grandeur of
+the design.  Among them, perhaps the most remarkable are the great
+roads, the broken remains of which are still in sufficient preservation to
+attest their former magnificence.  There were many of these roads,
+traversing different parts of the kingdom; but the most considerable were
+the two which extended from Quito to Cuzco, and, again diverging from
+the capital, continued in a southern direction towards Chili.
+
+One of these roads passed over the grand plateau, and the other along the
+lowlands on the borders of the ocean.  The former was much the more
+difficult achievement, from the character of the country.  It was
+conducted over pathless sierras buried in snow; galleries were cut for
+leagues through the living rock; rivers were crossed by means of bridges
+that swung suspended in the air; precipices were scaled by stairways
+hewn out of the native bed; ravines of hideous depth were filled up with
+solid masonry; in short, all the difficulties that beset a wild and
+mountainous region, and which might appall the most courageous
+engineer of modern times, were encountered and successfully overcome.
+The length of the road, of which scattered fragments only remain, is
+variously estimated, from fifteen hundred to two thousand miles; and
+stone pillars, in the manner of European milestones, were erected at
+stated intervals of somewhat more than a league, all along the route.  Its
+breadth scarcely exceeded twenty feet.41  It was built of heavy flags of
+freestone, and in some parts, at least, covered with a bituminous cement,
+which time has made harder than the stone itself.  In some places, where
+the ravines had been filled up with masonry, the mountain torrents,
+wearing on it for ages, have gradually eaten a way through the base, and
+left the superincumbent mass--such is the cohesion of the materials--still
+spanning the valley like an arch ! 42
+
+Over some of the boldest streams it was necessary to construct
+suspension bridges, as they are termed, made of the tough fibres of the
+maguey, or of the osier of the country, which has an extraordinary degree
+of tenacity and strength.  These osiers were woven into cables of the
+thickness of a man's body.  The huge ropes, then stretched across the
+water, were conducted through rings or holes cut in immense buttresses
+of stone raised on the opposite banks of the river, and there secured to
+heavy pieces of timber.  Several of these enormous cables, bound
+together, formed a bridge, which, covered with planks, well secured and
+defended by a railing of the same osier materials on the sides, afforded a
+safe passage for the traveller.  The length of this aerial bridge, sometimes
+exceeding two hundred feet, caused it, confined, as it was, only at the
+extremities, to dip with an alarming inclination towards the centre, while
+the motion given to it by the passenger occasioned an oscillation still
+more frightful, as his eye wandered over the dark abyss of waters that
+foamed and tumbled many a fathom beneath.  Yet these light and fragile
+fabrics were crossed without fear by the Peruvians, and are still retained
+by the Spaniards over those streams which, from the depth or
+impetuosity of the current, would seem impracticable for the usual
+modes of conveyance.  The wider and more tranquil waters were crossed
+on balsas--a kind of raft still much used by the natives--to which sails
+were attached, furnishing the only instance of this higher kind of
+navigation among the American Indians.43
+
+The other great road of the Incas lay through the level country between
+the Andes and the ocean.  It was constructed in a different manner, as
+demanded by the nature of the ground, which was for the most part low,
+and much of it sandy.  The causeway was raised on a high embankment
+of earth, and defended on either side by a parapet or wall of clay; and
+trees and odoriferous shrubs were planted along the margin, regaling the
+sense of the traveller with their perfumes, and refreshing him by their
+shades, so grateful under the burning sky of the tropics.  In the strips of
+sandy waste, which occasionally intervened, where the light and volatile
+soil was incapable of sustaining a road, huge piles, many of them to be
+seen at this day, were driven into the ground to indicate the route to the
+traveller.44
+
+All along these highways, caravansaries, or tambos, as they were called,
+were erected, at the distance of ten or twelve miles from each other, for
+the accommodation, more particularly, of the Inca and his suite, and
+those who journeyed on the public business.  There were few other
+travellers in Peru.  Some of these buildings were on an extensive scale,
+consisting of a fortress, barracks, and other military works, surrounded
+by a parapet of stone, and covering a large tract of ground.  These were
+evidently destined for the accommodation of the imperial armies, when
+on their march across the country.  The care of the great roads was
+committed to the districts through which they passed, and a large number
+of hands was constantly employed under the Incas to keep them in repair.
+This was the more easily done in a country where the mode of travelling
+was altogether on foot; though the roads are said to have been so nicely
+constructed, that a carriage might have rolled over them as securely as on
+any of the great roads of Europe.45  Still, in a region where the elements
+of fire and water are both actively at work in the business of destruction,
+they must, without constant supervision, have gradually gone to decay.
+Such has been their fate under the Spanish conquerors, who took no care
+to enforce the admirable system for their preservation adopted by the
+Incas.  Yet the broken portions that still survive, here and there, like the
+fragments of the great Roman roads scattered over Europe, bear
+evidence to their primitive grandeur, and have drawn forth the eulogium
+from a discriminating traveller, usually not too profuse in his panegyric,
+that "the roads of the Incas were among the most useful and stupendous
+works ever executed by man." 46
+
+The system of communication through their dominions was still further
+improved by the Peruvian sovereigns, by the introduction of posts, in the
+same manner as was done by the Aztecs.  The Peruvian posts, however,
+established on all the great routes that conducted to the capital, were on a
+much more extended plan than those in Mexico.  All along these routes,
+small buildings were erected, at the distance of less than five miles
+asunder,47 in each of which a number of runners, or chasquis, as they
+were called, were stationed to carry forward the despatches of
+government.48  These despatches were either verbal, or conveyed by
+means of quipus, and sometimes accompanied by a thread of the crimson
+fringe worn round the temples of the Inca, which was regarded with the
+same implicit deference as the signet ring of an Oriental despot.49
+
+The chasquis were dressed in a peculiar livery, intimating their
+profession.  They were all trained to the employment, and selected for
+their speed and fidelity.  As the distance each courier had to perform was
+small, and as he had ample time to refresh himself at the stations, they
+dart over the ground with great swiftness, and messages were carried
+through the whole extent of the long routes, at the rate of a hundred and
+fifty miles a day.  The office of the chasquis was not limited to carrying
+despatches.  They frequently brought various articles for the use of the
+Court; and in this way, fish from the distant ocean, fruits, game, and
+different commodities from the hot regions on the coast, were taken to
+the capital in good condition, and served fresh at the royal table.50  It is
+remarkable that this important institution should have been known to
+both the Mexicans and the Peruvians without any correspondence with
+one another; and that it should have been found among two barbarian
+nations of the New World, long before it was introduced among the
+civilized nations of Europe.51
+
+By these wise contrivances of the Incas, the most distant parts of the
+long-extended empire of Peru were brought into intimate relations with
+each other.  And while the capitals of Christendom, but a few hundred
+miles apart, remained as far asunder as if seas had rolled between them,
+the great capitals Cuzco and Quito were placed by the high roads of the
+Incas in immediate correspondence.  Intelligence from the numerous
+provinces was transmitted on the wings of the wind to the Peruvian
+metropolis, the great focus to which all the lines of communication
+converged.  Not an insurrectionary movement could occur, not an
+invasion, on the remotest frontier, before the tidings were conveyed to
+the capital, and the imperial armies were on their march across the
+magnificent roads of the country to suppress it.  So admirable was the
+machinery contrived by the American despots for maintaining
+tranquillity throughout their dominions! It may remind us of the similar
+institutions of ancient Rome, when, under the Caesars, she was mistress
+of half the world.
+
+A principal design of the great roads was to serve the purposes of
+military communication.  It formed an important item of their military
+policy, which is quite as well worth studying as their municipal.
+
+Notwithstanding the pacific professions of the Incas, and the pacific
+tendency, indeed, of their domestic institutions, they were constantly at
+war.  It was by war that their paltry territory had been gradually enlarged
+to a powerful empire.  When this was achieved, the capital, safe in its
+central position, was no longer shaken by these military movements, and
+the country enjoyed, in a great degree, the blessings of tranquillity and
+order.  But, however tranquil at heart, there is not a reign upon record in
+which the nation was not engaged in war against the barbarous nations
+on the frontier.  Religion furnished a plausible pretext for incessant
+aggression, and disguised the lust of conquest in the Incas, probably,
+from their own eyes, as well as from those of their subjects.  Like the
+followers of Mahomet, bearing the sword in one hand and the Koran in
+the other, the Incas of Peru offered no alternative but the worship of the
+Sun or war.
+
+It is true, their fanaticism--or their policy--showed itself in a milder form
+than was found in the descendants of the Prophet.  Like the great
+luminary which they adored, they operated by gentleness more potent
+than violence.52  They sought to soften the hearts of the rude tribes
+around them, and melt them by acts of condescension and kindness.  Far
+from provoking hostilities, they allowed time for the salutary example of
+their own institutions to work its effect, trusting that their less civilized
+neighbors would submit to their sceptre, from a conviction of the
+blessings it would secure to them.  When this course failed, they
+employed other measures, but still of a pacific character; and endeavored
+by negotiation, by conciliatory treatment, and by presents to the leading
+men, to win them over to their dominion.  In short, they practised all the
+arts familiar to the most subtle politician of a civilized land to secure the
+acquisition of empire.  When all these expedients failed, they prepared
+for war.
+
+Their levies were drawn from all the different provinces; though from
+some, where the character of the people was particularly hardy, more
+than from others.53  It seems probable that every Peruvian, who had
+reached a certain age, might be called to bear arms.  But the rotation of
+military service, and the regular drills, which took place twice or thrice
+in a month, of the inhabitants of every village, raised the soldiers
+generally above the rank of a raw militia.  The Peruvian army, at first
+inconsiderable, came, with the increase of population, in the latter days
+of the empire, to be very large, so that their monarchs could bring into
+the field, as contemporaries assure us, a force amounting to two hundred
+thousand men.  They showed the same skill and respect for order in their
+military organization, as in other things.  The troops were divided into
+bodies corresponding with our battalions and companies, led by officers,
+that rose, in regular gradation, from the lowest subaltern to the Inca
+noble, who was intrusted with the general command.54
+
+Their arms consisted of the usual weapons employed by nations, whether
+civilized or uncivilized, before the invention of powder,--bows and
+arrows, lances, darts, a short kind of sword, a battle-axe or partisan, and
+slings, with which they were very expert.  Their spears and arrows were
+tipped with copper, or, more commonly, with bone, and the weapons of
+the Inca lords were frequently mounted with gold or silver.  Their heads
+were protected by casques made either of wood or of the skins of wild
+animals, and sometimes richly decorated with metal and with precious
+stones, surmounted by the brilliant plumage of the tropical birds.  These,
+of course, were the ornaments only of the higher orders.  The great mass
+of the soldiery were dressed in the peculiar costume of their provinces,
+and their heads were wreathed with a sort of turban or roll of different-
+colored cloths, that produced a gay and animating effect.  Their
+defensive armor consisted of a shield or buckler, and a close tunic of
+quilted cotton, in the same manner as with the Mexicans.  Each company
+had its particular banner, and the imperial standard, high above all,
+displayed the glittering device and the rainbow,--the armorial ensign of
+the Incas, intimating their claims as children of the skies.55
+
+By means of the thorough system of communication established in the
+country, a short time sufficed to draw the levies together from the most
+distant quarters.  The army was put under the direction of some
+experienced chief, of the blood royal, or, more frequently, headed by the
+Inca in person.  The march was rapidly performed, and with little fatigue
+to the soldier; for, all along the great routes, quarters were provided for
+him, at regular distances, where he could find ample accommodations.
+The country is still covered with the remains of military works,
+constructed of porphyry or granite, which tradition assures us were
+designed to lodge the Inca and his army.56
+
+At regular intervals, also, magazines were established, filled with grain,
+weapons, and the different munitions of war, with which the army was
+supplied on its march.  It was the especial care of the government to see
+that these magazines, which were furnished from the stores of the Incas,
+were always well filled.  When the Spaniards invaded the country, they
+supported their own armies for a long time on the provisions found in
+them.57  The Peruvian soldier was forbidden to commit any trespass on
+the property of the inhabitants whose territory lay in the line of march.
+Any violation of this order was punished with death.58  The soldier was
+clothed and fed by the industry of the people, and the Incas rightly re-
+solved that he should not repay this by violence.  Far from being a tax on
+the labors of the husbandman, or even a burden on his hospitality, the
+imperial armies traversed the country, from one extremity to the other,
+with as little inconvenience to the inhabitants, as would be created by a
+procession of peaceful burghers, or a muster of holiday soldiers for a
+review.
+
+From the moment war was proclaimed, the Peruvian monarch used all
+possible expedition in assembling his forces, that he might anticipate the
+movements of his enemies, and prevent a combination with their allies.
+It was, however, from the neglect of such a principle of combination, that
+the several nations of the country, who might have prevailed by
+confederated strength, fell one after another under the imperial yoke.
+Yet, once in the field the Inca did not usually show any disposition to
+push his advantages to the utmost, and urge his foe to extremity.  In
+every stage of the war, he was open to propositions for peace; and
+although he sought to reduce his enemies by carrying off their harvests
+and distressing them by famine, he allowed his troops to commit no
+unnecessary outrage on person or property.  "We must spare our
+enemies," one of the Peruvian princes is quoted as saying, "or it will be
+our loss, since they and all that belong to them must soon be ours." 59  It
+was a wise maxim, and, like most other wise maxims, founded equally on
+benevolence and prudence.  The Incas adopted the policy claimed for the
+Romans by their countryman, who tells us that they gained more by
+clemency to the vanquished than by their victories.60
+
+In the same considerate spirit, they were most careful to provide for the
+security and comfort of their own troops; and, when a war was long
+protracted, or the climate proved unhealthy, they took care to relieve
+their men by frequent reinforcements, allowing the earlier recruits to
+return to their homes.61  But while thus economical of life, both in their
+own followers and in the enemy, they did not shrink from sterner
+measures when provoked by the ferocious or obstinate character of the
+resistance; and the Peruvian annals contain more than one of those
+sanguinary pages which cannot be pondered at the present day without a
+shudder.  It should be added, that the beneficent policy, which I have
+been delineating as characteristic of the Incas, did not belong to all; and
+that there was more than one of the royal line who displayed a full
+measure of the bold and unscrupulous spirit of the vulgar conqueror.
+
+The first step of the government, after the reduction of a country, was to
+introduce there the worship of the Sun.  Temples were erected, and
+placed under the care of a numerous priesthood, who expounded to the
+conquered people the mysteries of their new faith, and dazzled them by
+the display of its rich and stately ceremonial.62  Yet the religion of the
+conquered was not treated with dishonor.  The Sun was to be worshipped
+above all; but the images of their gods were removed to Cuzco and
+established in one of the temples, to hold their rank among the inferior
+deities of the Peruvian Pantheon.  Here they remained as hostages, in
+some sort, for the conquered nation, which would be the less inclined to
+forsake its allegiance, when by doing so it must leave its own gods in the
+hands of its enemies.63
+
+The Incas provided for the settlement of their new conquests, by
+ordering a census to be taken of the population, and a careful survey to
+be made of the country, ascertaining its products, and the character and
+capacity of its soil.64  A division of the territory was then made on the
+same principle with that adopted throughout their own kingdom; and
+their respective portions were assigned to the Sun, the sovereign, and the
+people.  The amount of the last was regulated by the amount of the
+population, but the share of each individual was uniformly the same.  It
+may seem strange, that any people should patiently have acquiesced in an
+arrangement which involved such a total surrender of property.  But it
+was a conquered nation that did so, held in awe, on the least suspicion of
+meditating resistance, by armed garrisons, who were established at
+various commanding points throughout the country.65  It is probable,
+too, that the Incas made no greater changes than was essential to the new
+arrangement, and that they assigned estates, as far as possible, to their
+former proprietors.  The curacas, in particular, were confirmed in their
+ancient authority; or, when it was found expedient to depose the existing
+curaca, his rightful heir was allowed to succeed him.66  Every respect
+was shown to the ancient usages and laws of the land, as far as was
+compatible with the fundamental institutions of the Incas.  It must also be
+remembered, that the conquered tribes were, many of them, too little
+advanced in civilization to possess that attachment to the soil which
+belongs to a cultivated nation.67  But, to whatever it be referred, it seems
+probable that the extraordinary institutions of the Incas were established
+with little opposition in the conquered territories.68
+
+Yet the Peruvian sovereigns did not trust altogether to this show of
+obedience in their new vassals; and, to secure it more effectually, they
+adopted some expedients too remarkable to be passed by in silence.-
+Immediately after a recent conquest, the curacas and their families were
+removed for a time to Cuzco.  Here they learned the language of the
+capital, became familiar with the manners and usages of the court, as
+well as with the general policy of government, and experienced such
+marks of favor from the sovereign as would be most grateful to their
+feelings, and might attach them most warmly to his person.  Under the
+influence of these sentiments, they were again sent to rule over their
+vassals, but still leaving their eldest sons in the capital, to remain there as
+a guaranty for their own fidelity, as well as to grace the court of the
+Inca.69
+
+Another expedient was of a bolder and more original character.  This
+was nothing less than to revolutionize the language of the country.  South
+America, like North, was broken up into a great variety of dialects, or
+rather languages, having little affinity with one another.  This
+circumstance occasioned great embarrassment to the government in the
+administration of the different provinces, with whose idioms they were
+unacquainted.  It was determined, therefore, to substitute one universal
+language, the Quichua,--the language of the court, the capital, and the
+surrounding country,--the richest and most comprehensive of the South
+American dialects.  Teachers were provided in the towns and villages
+throughout the land, who were to give instruction to all, even the
+humblest classes; and it was intimated at the same time, that no one
+should be raised to any office of dignity or profit, who was unacquainted
+with this tongue.  The curacas and other chiefs, who attended at the
+capital became familiar with this dialect in their intercourse with the
+Court and, on their return home, set the example of conversing in it
+among themselves.  This example was imitated by their followers, and
+the Quichua gradually became the language of elegance and fashion, in
+the same manner as the Norman French was affected by all those who
+aspired to any consideration in England, after the Conquest.  By this
+means, while each province retained its peculiar tongue, a beautiful
+medium of communication was introduced, which enabled the
+inhabitants of one part of the country to hold intercourse with every
+other, and the Inca and his deputies to communicate with all.  This was
+the state of things on the arrival of the Spaniards.  It must be admitted,
+that history furnishes few examples of more absolute authority than such
+a revolution in the language of an empire, at the bidding of a master.70
+
+Yet little less remarkable was another device of the Incas for securing the
+loyalty of their subjects.  When any portion of the recent conquests
+showed a pertinacious spirit of disaffection, it was not uncommon to
+cause a part of the population, amounting, it might be, to ten thousand
+inhabitants or more, to remove to a distant quarter of the kingdom,
+occupied by ancient vassals of undoubted fidelity to the crown.  A like
+number of these last was transplanted to the territory left vacant by the
+emigrants.  By this exchange, the population was composed of two
+distinct races, who regarded each other with an eye of jealousy, that
+served as an effectual check on any mutinous proceeding.  In time, the
+influence of the well affected prevailed, supported, as they were, by
+royal authority, and by the silent working of the national institutions, to
+which the strange races became gradually accustomed.  A spirit of
+loyalty sprang up by degrees in their bosoms, and, before a generation
+had passed away, the different tribes mingled in harmony together as
+members of the same community.71  Yet the different races continued to
+be distinguished by difference of dress; since, by the law of the land,
+every citizen was required to wear the costume of his native province.72
+Neither could the colonist, who had been thus unceremoniously
+transplanted, return to his native district for, by another law, it was
+forbidden to any one to change his residence without license.73  He was
+settled for life.  The Peruvian government ascribed to every man his
+local habitation, his sphere of action, nay, the very nature and quality of
+that action.  He ceased to be a free agent; it might be almost said, that it
+relieved him of personal responsibility.
+
+In following out this singular arrangement, the Incas showed as much
+regard for the comfort and convenience of the colonist as was compatible
+with the execution of their design.  They were careful that the mitimaes,
+as these emigrants were styled, should be removed to climates most
+congenial with their own.  The inhabitants of the cold countries were not
+transplanted to the warm, nor the inhabitants of the warm countries to the
+cold.74  Even their habitual occupations were consulted, and the
+fisherman was settled in the neighborhood of the ocean, or the great
+lakes; while such lands were assigned to the husbandman as were best
+adapted to the culture with which he was most familiar.75  And, as
+migration by many, perhaps by most, would be regarded as a calamity,
+the government was careful to show particular marks of favor to the
+mitimaes, and, by various privileges and immunities, to ameliorate their
+condition, and thus to reconcile them, if possible, to their lot.76
+
+The Peruvian institutions, though they may have been modified and
+matured under successive sovereigns, all bear the stamp of the same
+original,--were all cast in the same mould.  The empire, strengthening
+and enlarging at every successive epoch of its history, was, in its latter
+days, but the development, on a great scale, of what it was in miniature at
+its commencement, as the infant germ is said to contain within itself all
+the ramifications of the future monarch of the forest.  Each succeeding
+Inca seemed desirous only to tread in the path, and carry out the plans, of
+his predecessor.  Great enterprises, commenced under one, were
+continued by another, and completed by a third.  Thus, while all acted on
+a regular plan, without any of the eccentric or retrograde movements
+which betray the agency of different individuals, the state seemed to be
+under the direction of a single hand, and steadily pursued, as if through
+one long reign, its great career of civilization and of conquest.
+
+The ultimate aim of its institutions was domestic quiet.  But it seemed as
+if this were to be obtained only by foreign war.  Tranquillity in the heart
+of the monarchy, and war on its borders, was the condition of Peru.  By
+this war it gave occupation to a part of its people, and, by the reduction
+and civilization of its barbarous neighbors, gave security to all.   Every
+Inca sovereign, however mild and benevolent in his domestic rule, was a
+warrior, and led his armies in person.  Each successive reign extended
+still wider the boundaries of the empire.  Year after year saw the
+victorious monarch return laden with spoils, and followed by a throng of
+tributary chieftains to his capital.  His reception there was a Roman
+triumph.  The whole of its numerous population poured out to welcome
+him, dressed in the gay and picturesque costumes of the different
+provinces, With banners waving above their heads, and strewing
+branches and flowers along the path of the conqueror.  The Inca, borne
+aloft in his golden chair on the shoulders of his nobles, moved in solemn
+procession, under the triumphal arches that were thrown across the way,
+to the great temple of the Sun.  There, without attendants,--for all but the
+monarch were excluded from the hallowed precincts,--the victorious
+prince, stripped of his royal insignia, barefooted, and with all humility,
+approached the awful shrine, and offered up sacrifice and thanksgiving
+to the glorious Deity who presided over the fortunes of the Incas.  This
+ceremony concluded, the whole population gave itself up to festivity;
+music, revelry, and dancing were heard in every quarter of the capital,
+and illuminations and bonfires commemorated the victorious campaign
+of the Inca, and the accession of a new territory to his empire.77
+
+In this celebration we see much of the character of a religious festival.
+Indeed, the character of religion was impressed on all the Peruvian wars.
+The life of an Inca was one long crusade against the infidel, to spread
+wide the worship of the Sun, to reclaim the benighted nations from their
+brutish superstitions, and impart to them the blessings of a well-regulated
+government.  This, in the favorite phrase of our day, was the "mission"
+of the Inca.  It was also the mission of the Christian conqueror who
+invaded the empire of this same Indian potentate.  Which of the two
+executed his mission most faithfully, history must decide.
+
+Yet the Peruvian monarchs did not show a childish impatience in the
+acquisition of empire.  They paused after a campaign, and allowed time
+for the settlement of one conquest before they undertook another; and, in
+this interval, occupied themselves with the quiet administration of their
+kingdom, and with the long progresses, which brought them into nearer
+intercourse with their people.  During this interval, also, their new
+vassals had begun to accommodate themselves to the strange institutions
+of their masters.  They learned to appreciate the value of a government
+which raised them above the physical evils of a state of barbarism,
+secured them protection of person, and a full participation in all the
+privileges enjoyed by their conquerors; and, as they became more
+familiar with the peculiar institutions of the country, habit, that second
+nature, attached them the more strongly to these institutions, from their
+very peculiarity.  Thus, by degrees, and without violence, arose the great
+fabric of the Peruvian empire, composed of numerous independent and
+even hostile tribes, yet, under the influence of a common religion,
+common language, and common government, knit together as one nation,
+animated by a spirit of love for its institutions and devoted loyalty to its
+sovereign.  What a contrast to the condition of the Aztec monarchy, on
+the neighboring continent, which, composed of the like heterogeneous
+materials, without any internal principle of cohesion, was only held
+together by the stern pressure, from without, of physical force !--Why the
+Peruvian monarchy should have fared no better than its rival, in its
+conflict with European civilization, will appear in the following pages.
+
+
+
+Book 1
+
+Chapter 3
+
+Peruvian Religion--Deities--Gorgeous Temples--Festivals-
+Virgins Of The Sun--Marriage
+
+It is a remarkable fact, that many, if not most, of the rude tribes
+inhabiting the vast American continent, however disfigured their creeds
+may have been in other respects by a childish superstition, had attained
+to the sublime conception of one Great Spirit, the Creator of the
+Universe, who, immaterial in his own nature, was not to be dishonored
+by an attempt at visible representation, and who, pervading all space,
+was not to be circumscribed within the walls of a temple.  Yet these
+elevated ideas, so far beyond the ordinary range of the untutored
+intellect, do not seem to have led to the practical consequences that
+might have been expected; and few of the American nations have shown
+much solicitude for the maintenance of a religious worship, or found in
+their faith a powerful spring of action.
+
+But, with progress in civilization, ideas more akin to those of civilized
+communities were gradually unfolded; a liberal provision was made, and
+a separate order instituted, for the services of religion, which were
+conducted with a minute and magnificent ceremonial, that challenged
+comparison, in some respects, with that of the most polished nations of
+Christendom.  This was the case with the nations inhabiting the table-
+land of North America, and with the natives of Bogota, Quito, Peru, and
+the other elevated regions on the great Southern continent.  It was, above
+all, the case with the Peruvians, who claimed a divine original for the
+founders of their empire, whose laws all rested on a divine sanction, and
+whose domestic institutions and foreign wars were alike directed to
+preserve and propagate their faith.  Religion was the basis of their polity,
+the very condition, as it were, of their social existence.  The government
+of the Incas, in its essential principles, was a theocracy.
+
+Yet, though religion entered so largely into the fabric and conduct of the
+political institutions of the people, their mythology, that is, the
+traditionary legends by which they affected to unfold the mysteries of the
+universe, was exceedingly mean and puerile.  Scarce one of their
+traditions--except the beautiful one respecting the founders of their royal
+dynasty--is worthy of note, or throws much light on their own antiquities,
+or the primitive history of man.  Among the traditions of importance is
+one of the deluge, which they held in common with so many of the
+nations in all parts of the globe, and which they related with some
+particulars that bear resemblance to a Mexican legend.1
+
+Their ideas in respect to a future state of being deserve more attention.
+They admitted the existence of a soul hereafter, and connected with this
+a belief in the resurrection of the body.  They assigned two distinct
+places for the residence of the good and of the wicked, the latter of
+which they fixed in the centre of the earth.  The good they supposed were
+to pass a luxurious life of tranquillity and ease, which comprehended
+their highest notions of happiness.  The wicked were to expiate their
+crimes by ages of wearisome labor.  They associated with these ideas a
+belief in an evil principle or spirit, bearing the name of Cupay, whom
+they did not attempt to propitiate by sacrifices, and who seems to have
+been only a shadowy personification of sin, that exercised little influence
+over their conduct.2
+
+It was this belief in the resurrection of the body, which led them to
+preserve the body with so much solicitude, by a simple process,
+however, that, unlike the elaborate embalming of the Egyptians,
+consisted in exposing it to the action of the cold, exceedingly dry, and
+highly rarefied atmosphere of the mountains.3  As they believed that the
+occupations in the future world would have great resemblance to those of
+the present, they buried with the deceased noble some of his apparel, his
+utensils, and, frequently, his treasures; and completed the gloomy
+ceremony by sacrificing his wives and favorite domestics, to bear him
+company and do him service in the happy regions beyond the clouds.4
+Vast mounds of an irregular, or, more frequently, oblong shape,
+penetrated by galleries running at right angles to each other, were raised
+over the dead, whose dried bodies or mummies have been found in
+considerable numbers, sometimes erect, but more often in the sitting
+posture, common to the Indian tribes of both continents.  Treasures of
+great value have also been occasionally drawn from these monumental
+deposits, and have stimulated, speculators to repeated excavations with
+the hope of similar good-fortune.  It was a lottery like that of searching
+after mines, but where the chances have proved still more against the
+adventurers.5
+
+The Peruvians, like so many other of the Indian races, acknowledged a
+Supreme Being, the Creator and Ruler of the Universe, whom they
+adored under the different names of Pachacamac and Viracocha.6  No
+temple was raised to this invisible Being, save one only in the valley
+which took its name from the deity himself, not far from the Spanish city
+of Lima.  Even this temple had existed there before the country came
+under the sway of the Incas, and was the great resort of Indian pilgrims
+from remote parts of the land; a circumstance which suggests the idea,
+that the worship of this Great Spirit, though countenanced, perhaps, by
+their accommodating policy, did not originate with the Peruvian
+princes.7
+
+The deity whose worship they especially inculcated, and which they
+never failed to establish wherever their banners were known to penetrate,
+was the Sun.  It was he, who, in a particular manner, presided over the
+destinies of man; gave light and warmth to the nations, and life to the
+vegetable world; whom they reverenced as the father of their royal
+dynasty, the founder of their empire; and whose temples rose in every
+city and almost every village throughout the land, while his altars
+smoked with burnt offerings,--a form of sacrifice peculiar to the
+Peruvians among the semi-civilized nations of the New World.8
+
+Besides the Sun, the Incas acknowledged various objects of worship in
+some way or other connected with this principal deity.  Such was the
+Moon, his sister-wife; the Stars, revered as part of her heavenly train,-
+though the fairest of them, Venus, known to the Peruvians by the name
+of Chasca, or the "youth with the long and curling locks," was adored as
+the page of the Sun, whom he attends so closely in his rising and in his
+setting.  They dedicated temples also to the Thunder and Lightning,9 in
+whom they recognized the Sun's dread ministers, and to the Rainbows
+whom they worshipped as a beautiful emanation of their glorious
+deity.10
+
+In addition to these, the subjects of the Incas enrolled among their
+inferior deities many objects in nature, as the elements, the winds, the
+earth, the air, great mountains and rivers, which impressed them with
+ideas of sublimity and power, or were supposed in some way or other to
+exercise a mysterious influence over the destinies of man.11  They
+adopted also a notion, not unlike that professed by some of the schools
+of ancient philosophy, that every thing on earth had its archetype or idea,
+its mother, as they emphatically styled it, which they held sacred, as, in
+some sort, its spiritual essence.12  But their system, far from being
+limited even to these multiplied objects of devotion, embraced within its
+ample folds the numerous deities of the conquered nations, whose
+images were transported to the capital, where the burdensome charges of
+their worship were defrayed by their respective provinces.  It was a rare
+stroke of policy in the Incas, who could thus accommodate their religion
+to their interests.13
+
+But the worship of the Sun constituted the peculiar care of the Incas, and
+was the object of their lavish expenditure.  The most ancient of the many
+temples dedicated to this divinity was in the Island of Titicaca, whence
+the royal founders of the Peruvian line were said to have proceeded.
+From this circumstance, this sanctuary was held in peculiar veneration.
+Every thing which belonged to it, even the broad fields of maize, which
+Surrounded the temple, and formed part of its domain, imbibed a portion
+of its sanctity.  The yearly produce was distributed among the different
+public magazines, in small quantities to each, as something that would
+sanctify the remainder of the store.  Happy was the man who could
+secure even an ear of the blessed harvest for his own granary! 14
+
+But the most renowned of the Peruvian temples, the pride of the capital,
+and the wonder of the empire, was at Cuzco, where, under the
+munificence of successive sovereigns, it had become so enriched, that it
+received the name of Coricancha, or "the Place of Gold." It consisted of
+a principal building and several chapels and inferior edifices, covering a
+large extent of ground in the heart of the city, and completely
+encompassed by a wall, which, with the edifices, was all constructed of
+stone.  The work was of the kind already described in the other public
+buildings of the country, and was so finely executed, that a Spaniard,
+who saw it in its glory, assures us, he could call to mind only two
+edifices in Spain, which, for their workmanship, were at all to be
+compared with it.15  Yet this substantial, and, in some respects,
+magnificent structure, was thatched with straw !
+
+The interior of the temple was the most worthy of admiration.  It was
+literally a mine of gold.  On the western wall was emblazoned a
+representation of the deity, consisting of a human countenance, looking
+forth from amidst innumerable rays of light, which emanated from it in
+every direction, in the same manner as the sun is often personified with
+us.  The figure was engraved on a massive plate of gold of enormous
+dimensions, thickly powdered with emeralds and precious stones.16  It
+was so situated in front of the great eastern portal, that the rays of the
+morning sun fell directly upon it at its rising, lighting up the whole
+apartment with an effulgence that seemed more than natural, and which
+was reflected back from the golden ornaments with which the walls and
+ceiling were everywhere in crusted.  Gold, in the figurative language of
+the people was "the tears wept by the sun," 17  and every part of the
+interior of the temple glowed with burnished plates and studs of the
+precious metal.  The cornices, which surrounded the walls of the
+sanctuary, were of the same costly material; and a broad belt or frieze of
+gold, let into the stonework, encompassed the whole exterior of the
+edifice.18
+
+Adjoining the principal structure were several chapels of smaller
+dimensions.  One of them was consecrated to the Moon, the deity held
+next in reverence, as the mother of the Incas.  Her effigy was delineated
+in the same manner as that of the Sun, on a vast plate that nearly covered
+one side of the apartment.  But this plate, as well as all the decorations of
+the building, was of silver, as suited to the pale, silvery light of the
+beautiful planet.  There were three other chapels, one of which was
+dedicated to the host of Stars, who formed the bright court of the Sister
+of the Sun; another was consecrated to his dread ministers of vengeance,
+the Thunder and the Lightning; and a third, to the Rainbow, whose
+many-colored arch spanned the walls of the edifice with hues almost as
+radiant as its own.  There were besides several other buildings, or
+insulated apartments, for the accommodation of the numerous priests
+who officiated in the services of the temple.19
+
+All the plate, the ornaments, the utensils of every description,
+appropriated to the uses of religion, were of gold or silver.  Twelve
+immense vases of the latter metal stood on the floor of the great saloon,
+filled with grain of the Indian corn;20  the censers for the perfumes, the
+ewers which held the water for sacrifice, the pipes which conducted it
+through subterraneous channels into the buildings, the reservoirs that
+received it, even the agricultural implements used in the gardens of the
+temple, were all of the same rich materials.  The gardens, like those
+described, belonging to the royal palaces, sparkled with flowers of gold
+and silver, and various imitations of the vegetable kingdom.  Animals,
+also, were to be found there,--among which the llama, with its golden
+fleece, was most conspicuous,--executed in the same style, and with a
+degree of skill, which, in this instance, probably, did not surpass the
+excellence of the material.21
+
+If the reader sees in this fairy picture only the romantic coloring of some
+fabulous El Dorado, he must recall what has been said before in
+reference to the palaces of the Incas, and consider that these "Houses of
+the Sun," as they were styled, were the common reservoir into which
+flowed all the streams of public and private benefaction throughout the
+empire.  Some of the statements, through credulity, and others, in the
+desire of exciting admiration, may be greatly exaggerated; but, in the
+coincidence of contemporary testimony, it is not easy to determine the
+exact line which should mark the measure of our skepticism.  Certain it
+is, that the glowing picture I have given is warranted by those who saw
+these buildings in their pride, or shortly after they had been despoiled by
+the cupidity of their countrymen.  Many of the costly articles were buried
+by the natives, or thrown into the waters of the rivers and the lakes; but
+enough remained to attest the unprecedented opulence of these religious
+establishments.  Such things as were in their nature portable were
+speedily removed, to gratify the craving of the Conquerors, who even
+tore away the solid cornices and frieze of gold from the great temple,
+filling the vacant places with the cheaper, but--since it affords no
+temptation to avarice--more durable, material of plaster.  Yet even thus
+shorn of their splendor, the venerable edifices still presented an
+attraction to the spoiler, who found in their dilapidated walls an
+inexhaustable quarry for the erection of other buildings.  On the very
+ground once crowned by the gorgeous Coricancha rose the stately church
+of St. Dominic, one of the most magnificent structures of the New
+World.  Fields of maize and lucerne now bloom on the spot which
+glowed with the golden gardens of the temple; and the friar chants his
+orisons within the consecrated precincts once occupied by the Children
+of the Sun.22
+
+Besides the great temple of the Sun, there was a large number of inferior
+temples and religious houses in the Peruvian capital and its environs,
+amounting, as is stated, to three or four hundred.23 For Cuzco was a
+sanctified spot, venerated not only as the abode of the Incas, but of all
+those deities who presided over the motley nations of the empire.  It was
+the city beloved of the Sun; where his worship was maintained in its
+splendor; "where every fountain, pathway, and wall," says an ancient
+chronicler, "was regarded as a holy mystery." 24  And unfortunate was
+the Indian noble who, at some period or other of his life, had not made
+his pilgrimage to the Peruvian Mecca.
+
+Other temples and religious dwellings were scattered over the provinces;
+and some of them constructed on a scale of magnificence, that almost
+rivalled that of the metropolis.  The attendants on these composed an
+army of themselves.  The whole number of functionaries, including those
+of the sacerdotal order, who officiated at the Coricancha alone, was no
+less than four thousand.25
+
+At the head of all, both here and throughout the land, stood the great
+High-Priest, or Villac Vmu, as he was called.  He was second only to the
+Inca in dignity, and was usually chosen from his brothers or nearest
+kindred.  He was appointed by the monarch, and held his office for life;
+and he, in turn, appointed to all the subordinate stations of his own order.
+This order was very numerous.  Those members of it who officiated in
+the House of the Sun, in Cuzco, were taken exclusively from the sacred
+race of the Incas.  The ministers in the provincial temples were drawn
+from the families of the curacas; but the office of high-priest in each
+district was reserved for one of the blood royal.  It was designed by this
+regulation to preserve the faith in its purity, and to guard against any
+departure from the stately ceremonial which it punctiliously
+prescribed.26
+
+The sacerdotal order, though numerous, was not distinguished by any
+peculiar badge or costume from the rest of the nation.  Neither was it the
+sole depository of the scanty science of the country, nor was it charged
+with the business of instruction, nor with those parochial duties, if they
+may so be called, which bring the priest in contact with the great body of
+the people,--as was the case in Mexico.  The cause of this peculiarity
+may probably be traced to the existence of a superior order, like that of
+the Inca nobles, whose sanctity of birth so far transcended all human
+appointments, that they in a manner engrossed whatever there was of
+religious veneration in the people.  They were, in fact, the holy order of
+the state.  Doubtless, any of them might, as very many of them did, take
+on themselves the sacerdotal functions; and their own insignia and
+peculiar privileges were too well understood to require any further badge
+to separate them from the people.
+
+The duties of the priest were confined to ministration in the temple.
+Even here his attendance was not constant, as he was relieved after a
+stated interval by other brethren of his order, who succeeded one another
+in regular rotation.  His science was limited to an acquaintance with the
+fasts and festivals of his religion, and the appropriate ceremonies which
+distinguished them.  This, however frivolous might be its character, was
+no easy acquisition; for the ritual of the Incas involved a routine of
+observances, as complex and elaborate as ever distinguished that of any
+nation, whether pagan or Christian.  Each month had its appropriate
+festival, or rather festivals.  The four principal had reference to the Sun,
+and commemorated the great periods of his annual progress, the solstices
+and equinoxes.  Perhaps the most magnificent of all the national
+solemnities was the feast of Raymi, held at the period of the summer
+solstice, when the Sun, having touched the southern extremity of his
+course, retraced his path, as if to gladden the hearts of his chosen people
+by his presence.  On this occasion, the Indian nobles from the different
+quarters of the country thronged to the capital to take part in the great
+religious celebration.
+
+For three days previous, there was a general fast, and no fire was allowed
+to be lighted in the dwellings.  When the appointed day arrived, the Inca
+and his court, followed by the whole population of the city, assembled at
+early dawn in the great square to greet the rising of the Sun.  They were
+dressed in their gayest apparel, and the Indian lords vied with each other
+in the display of costly ornaments and jewels on their persons, while
+canopies of gaudy feather-work and richly tinted stuffs, borne by the
+attendants over their heads, gave to the great square, and the streets that
+emptied into it, the appearance of being spread over with one vast and
+magnificent awning.  Eagerly they watched the coming of their deity,
+and, no sooner did his first yellow rays strike the turrets and loftiest
+buildings of the capital, than a shout of gratulation broke forth from the
+assembled multitude, accompanied by songs of triumph, and the wild
+melody of barbaric instruments, that swelled louder and louder as his
+bright orb, rising above the mountain range towards the east, shone in
+full splendor on his votaries.  After the usual ceremonies of adoration, a
+libation was offered to the great deity by the Inca, from a huge golden
+vase, filled with the fermented liquor of maize or of maguey, which,
+after the monarch had tasted it himself, he dispensed among his royal
+kindred.  These ceremonies completed, the vast assembly was arranged
+in order of procession, and took its way towards the Coricancha.27
+
+As they entered the street of the sacred edifice, all divested themselves of
+their sandals, except the Inca and his family, who did the same on
+passing through the portals of the temple, where none but these august
+personages were admitted.28  After a decent time spent in devotion, the
+sovereign, attended by his courtly train, again appeared, and preparations
+were made to commence the sacrifice.  This, with the Peruvians,
+consisted of animals, grain, flowers, and sweet-scented gums; sometimes
+of human beings, on which occasions a child or beautiful maiden was
+usually selected as the victim.  But such sacrifices were rare, being
+reserved to celebrate some great public event, as a coronation, the birth
+of a royal heir, or a great victory.  They were never followed by those
+cannibal repasts familiar to the Mexicans, and to many of the fierce
+tribes conquered by the Incas.  Indeed, the conquests of these princes
+might well be deemed a blessing to the Indian nations, if it were only
+from their suppression of cannibalism, and the diminution, under their
+rule, of human sacrifices.29
+
+At the feast of Raymi, the sacrifice usually offered was that of the llama;
+and the priest, after opening the body of his victim, sought in the
+appearances which it exhibited to read the lesson of the mysterious
+future.  If the auguries were unpropitious, a second victim was
+slaughtered, in the hope of receiving some more comfortable assurance.
+The Peruvian augur might have learned a good lesson of the Roman,--to
+consider every omen as favorable, which served the interests of his
+country.30
+
+A fire was then kindled by means of a concave mirror of polished metal,
+which, collecting the rays of the sun into a focus upon a quantity of dried
+cotton, speedily set it on fire.  It was the expedient used on the like
+occasions in ancient Rome, at least under the reign of the pious Numa.
+When the sky was overcast, and the face of the good deity was hidden
+from his worshippers, which was esteemed a bad omen, fire was
+obtained by means of friction.  The sacred flame was intrusted to the care
+of the Virgins of the Sun, and if, by any neglect, it was suffered to go out
+in the course of the year, the event was regarded as a calamity that boded
+some strange disaster to the monarchy.31  A burnt offering of the victims
+was then made on the altars of the deity.  This sacrifice was but the
+prelude to the slaughter of a great number of llamas, part of the flocks of
+the Sun, which furnished a banquet not only for the Inca and his Court,
+but for the people, who made amends at these festivals for the frugal fare
+to which they were usually condemned.  A fine bread or cake, kneaded
+of maize flour by the fair hands of the Virgins of the Sun, was also
+placed on the royal board, where the Inca, presiding over the feast,
+pledged his great nobles in generous goblets of the fermented liquor of
+the country, and the long revelry of the day was closed at night by music
+and dancing.  Dancing and drinking were the favorite pastimes of the
+Peruvians.  These amusements continued for several days, though the
+sacrifices terminated on the first.--Such was the great festival of Raymi;
+and the recurrence of this and similar festivities gave relief to the
+monotonous routine of toil prescribed to the lower orders of the
+community.32
+
+In the distribution of bread and wine at this high festival, the orthodox
+Spaniards, who first came into the country, saw a striking resemblance to
+the Christian communion; 33  as in the practice of confession and
+penance, which, in a most irregular form, indeed, seems to have been
+used by the Peruvians, they discerned a coincidence with another of the
+sacraments of the Church.34  The good fathers were fond of tracing such
+coincidences, which they considered as the contrivance of Satan, who
+thus endeavored to delude his victims by counterfeiting the blessed rites
+of Christianity.35  Others, in a different vein, imagined that they saw in
+such analogies the evidence, that some of the primitive teachers of the
+Gospel, perhaps an apostle himself, had paid a visit to these distant
+regions, and scattered over them the seeds of religious truth.36  But it
+seems hardly necessary to invoke the Prince of Darkness, or the
+intervention of the blessed saints, to account for coincidences which
+have existed in countries far removed from the light of Christianity, and
+in ages, indeed, when its light had not yet risen on the world.  It is much
+more reasonable to refer such casual points of resemblance to the general
+constitution of man, and the necessities of his moral nature.37
+
+Another singular analogy with Roman Catholic institutions is presented
+by the Virgins of the Sun, the "elect," as they were called,38 to whom I
+have already had occasion to refer.  These were young maidens,
+dedicated to the service of the deity, who, at a tender age, were taken
+from their homes, and introduced into convents, where they were placed
+under the care of certain elderly matrons, mamaconas, who had grown
+grey within their walls.39  Under these venerable guides, the holy virgins
+were instructed in the nature of their religious duties.  They were
+employed in spinning and embroidery, and, with the fine hair of the
+vicuna wove the hangings for the temples, and the apparel for the Inca
+and his household.40  It was their duty, above all, to watch over the
+sacred fire obtained at the festival of Raymi.  From the moment they
+entered the establishment, they were cut off from all connection with the
+world, even with their own family and friends.  No one but the Inca, and
+the Coya or queen, might enter the consecrated precincts.  The greatest
+attention was paid to their morals, and visitors were sent every year to
+inspect the institutions, and to report on the state of their discipline.41
+Woe to the unhappy maiden who was detected in an intrigue!  By the
+stern law of the Incas, she was to be buried alive, her lover was to be
+strangled, and the town or village to which he belonged was to be razed
+to the ground, and "sowed with stones," as if to efface every memorial of
+his existence.42  One is astonished to find so close a resemblance
+between the institutions of the American Indian, the ancient Roman, and
+the modern Catholic! Chastity and purity of life are virtues in woman,
+that would seem to be of equal estimation with the barbarian and with the
+civilized.--Yet the ultimate destination of the inmates of these religious
+houses was materially different.
+
+The great establishment at Cuzco consisted wholly of maidens of the
+royal blood, who amounted, it is said, to no less than fifteen hundred.
+The provincial convents were supplied from the daughters of the curacas
+and inferior nobles, and, occasionally, where a girl was recommended by
+great personal attractions, from the lower classes of the people.43  The
+"Houses of the Virgins of the Sun" consisted of low ranges of stone
+buildings, covering a large extent of ground, surrounded by high walls,
+which excluded those within entirely from observation.  They were
+provided with every accommodation for the fair inmates, and were
+embellished in the same sumptuous and costly manner as the palaces of
+the Incas, and the temples; for they received the particular care of
+government, as an important part of the religious establishment.44
+
+Yet the career of all the inhabitants of these cloisters was not confined
+within their narrow walls.  Though Virgins of the Sun, they were brides
+of the Inca, and, at a marriageable age, the most beautiful among them
+were selected for the honors of his bed, and transferred to the royal
+seraglio.  The full complement of this amounted in time not only to
+hundreds, but thousands, who all found accommodations in his different
+palaces throughout the country.  When the monarch was disposed to
+lessen the number of his establishment, the concubine with whose society
+he was willing to dispense returned, not to her former monastic
+residence, but to her own home; where, however humble might be her
+original condition, she was maintained in great state, and, far from being
+dishonored by the situation she had filled, was held in universal
+reverence as the Inca's bride.45
+
+The great nobles of Peru were allowed, like their sovereign, a plurality of
+wives.  The people, generally, whether by law, or by necessity stronger
+than law, were more happily limited to one.  Marriage was conducted in
+a manner that gave it quite as original a character as belonged to the
+other institutions of the country.  On an appointed day of the year, all
+those of a marriageable age--which, having reference to their ability to
+take charge of a family, in the males was fixed at not less than
+twentyfour years, and in the women at eighteen or twenty--were called
+together in the great squares of their respective towns and villages,
+throughout the empire.  The Inca presided in person over the assembly of
+his own kindred, and taking the hands of the different couples who were
+to be united, he placed them within each other, declaring the parties man
+and wife.  The same was done by the curacas towards all persons of their
+own or inferior degree in their several districts.  This was the simple
+form of marriage in Peru.  No one was allowed to select a wife beyond
+the community to which he belonged, which generally comprehended all
+his own kindred; 46 nor was any but the sovereign authorized to dispense
+with the law of nature--or at least, the usual law of nations--so far as to
+marry his own sister.47  No marriage was esteemed valid without the
+consent of the parents; and the preference of the parties, it is said, was
+also to be consulted; though, considering the barriers imposed by the
+prescribed age of the candidates, this must have been within rather
+narrow and whimsical limits.  A dwelling was got ready for the new-
+married pair at the charge of the district, and the prescribed portion of
+land assigned for their maintenance.  The law of Peru provided for the
+future, as well as for the present.  It left nothing to chance.--The simple
+ceremony of marriage was followed by general festivities among the
+friends of the parties, which lasted several days; and as every wedding
+took place on the same day, and as there were few families who had not
+someone of their members or their kindred personally interested, there
+was one universal bridal jubilee throughout the empire.48
+
+The extraordinary regulations respecting marriage under the Incas are,
+eminently characteristic of the genius of the government; which, far from
+limiting itself to matters of public concern, penetrated into the most
+private recesses of domestic life, allowing no man, however humble, to
+act for himself, even in those personal matters in which none but himself,
+or his family at most, might be supposed to be interested.  No Peruvian
+was too low for the fostering vigilance of government.  None was so high
+that he was not made to feel his dependence upon it in every act of his
+life.  His very existence as an individual was absorbed in that of the
+community.  His hopes and his fears, his joys and his sorrows, the
+tenderest sympathies of his nature, which would most naturally shrink
+from observation, were all to be regulated by law.  He was not allowed
+even to be happy in his own way.  The government of the Incas was the
+mildest, --but the most searching of despotisms.
+
+
+
+Book 1
+
+Chapter 4
+
+Education--Quipus-Astronomy-Agriculture--Aqueducts-Guano--
+Important Esculents
+
+"Science was not intended for the people; but for those of generous
+blood.  Persons of low degree are only puffed up by it, and rendered
+vain and arrogant.  Neither should such meddle with the affairs of
+government; for this would bring high offices into disrepute, and cause
+detriment to the state.1 Such was the favorite maxim, often repeated, of
+Tupac Inca Yupanqui, one of the most renowned of the Peruvian
+sovereigns.  It may seem strange that such a maxim should ever have
+been proclaimed in the New World, where popular institutions have been
+established on a more extensive scale than was ever before witnessed;
+where government rests wholly on the people; and education--at least, in
+the great northern division of the continent--is mainly directed to qualify
+the people for the duties of government.  Yet this maxim was strictly
+conformable to the genius of the Peruvian monarchy, and may serve as a
+key to its habitual policy; since, while it watched with unwearied
+solicitude over its subjects, provided for their physical necessities, was
+mindful of their morals, and showed, throughout, the affectionate
+concern of a parent for his children, it yet regarded them only as
+children, who were never to emerge from the state of pupilage, to act or
+to think for themselves, but whose whole duty was comprehended in the
+obligation of implicit obedience.
+
+Such was the humiliating condition of the people under the Incas: while
+the numerous families of the blood royal enjoyed the benefit of all the
+light of education, which the civilization of the country could afford;
+and, long after the Conquest, the spots continued to be pointed out where
+the seminaries had existed for their instruction.  These were placed
+under the care of the amautas, or "wise men," who engrossed the scanty
+stock of science--if science it could be called--possessed by the
+Peruvians, and who were the sole teachers of youth.  It was natural that
+the monarch should take a lively interest in the instruction of the young
+nobility, his own kindred.  Several of the Peruvian princes are said to
+have built their palaces in the neighborhood of the schools, in order that
+they might the more easily visit them and listen to the lectures of the
+amautas, which they occasionally reinforced by a homily of their own.2
+In these schools, the royal pupils were instructed in all the different kinds
+of knowledge in which their teachers were versed, with especial
+reference to the stations they were to occupy in after-life.  They studied
+the laws, and the principles of administering the government, in which
+many of them were to take part.  They were initiated in the peculiar rites
+of their religion, most necessary to those who were to assume the
+sacerdotal functions.  They learned also to emulate the achievements of
+their royal ancestors by listening to the chronicles compiled by the
+amautas.  They were taught to speak their own dialect with purity and
+elegance; and they became acquainted with the mysterious science of the
+quipus, which supplied the Peruvians with the means of communicating
+their ideas to one another, and of transmitting them to future
+generations.3
+
+The quipu was a cord about two feet long, composed of different colored
+threads tightly twisted together, from which a quantity of smaller threads
+were suspended in the manner of a fringe.  The threads were of different
+colors and were tied into knots.  The word quipu, indeed, signifies a
+knot.  The colors denoted sensible objects; as, for instance, white
+represented silver, and yellow, gold.  They sometimes also stood for
+abstract ideas.  Thus, white signified peace, and red, war.  But the
+quipus were chiefly used for arithmetical purposes.  The knots served
+instead of ciphers, and could be combined in such a manner as to
+represent numbers to any amount they required.  By means of these they
+went through their calculations with great rapidity, and the Spaniards
+who first visited the country bear testimony to their accuracy.4
+
+Officers were established in each of the districts, who, under the title of
+quipucamayus, Or "keepers of the quipus," were required to furnish the
+government with information on various important matters.  One had
+charge of the revenues, reported the quantity of raw material distributed
+among the laborers, the quality and quantity of the fabrics made from it,
+and the amount of stores, of various kinds, paid into the royal magazines.
+Another exhibited the register of births and deaths, the marriages, the
+number of those qualified to bear arms, and the like details in reference
+to the population of the kingdom.  These returns were annually
+forwarded to the capital, where they were submitted to the inspection of
+officers acquainted with the art of deciphering these mystic records.
+The government was thus provided with a valuable mass of statistical
+information, and the skeins of many-colored threads, collected and
+carefully preserved, constituted what might be called the national
+archives.5
+
+But, although the quipus sufficed for all the purposes of arithmetical
+computation demanded by the Peruvians, they were incompetent to
+represent the manifold ideas and images which are expressed by writing,
+Even here, however, the invention was not without its use.  For,
+independently of the direct representation of simple objects, and even of
+abstract ideas, to a very limited extent, as above noticed, it afforded great
+help to the memory by way of association.  The peculiar knot or color,
+in this way, suggested what it could not venture to represent; in the same
+manner-to borrow the homely illustration of an old writer--as the number
+of the Commandment calls to mind the Commandment itself.  The
+quipus, thus used, might be regarded as the Peruvian system of
+mnemonics.
+
+Annalists were appointed in each of the principal communities, whose
+business it was to record the most important events which occurred in
+them.  Other functionaries of a higher character, usually the amautas,
+were intrusted with the history of the empire, and were selected to
+chronicle the great deeds of the reigning Inca, or of his ancestors.6  The
+narrative, thus concocted, could be communicated only by oral tradition;
+but the quipus served the chronicler to arrange the incidents with
+method, and to refresh his memory.  The story, once treasured up in the
+mind, was indelibly impressed there by frequent repetition.  It was
+repeated by the amauta to his pupils, and in this way history, conveyed
+partly by oral tradition, and partly by arbitrary signs, was handed down
+from generation to generation, with sufficient discrepancy of details, but
+with a general conformity of outline to the truth.
+
+The Peruvian quipus were, doubtless, a wretched substitute for that
+beautiful contrivance, the alphabet, which, employing a few simple
+characters as the representatives of sounds, instead of ideas, is able to
+convey the most delicate shades of thought that ever passed through the
+mind of man.  The Peruvian invention, indeed, was far below that of the
+hieroglyphics, even below the rude picture-writing of the Aztecs; for the
+latter art, however incompetent to convey abstract ideas, could depict
+sensible objects with tolerable accuracy.  It is evidence of the total
+ignorance in which the two nations remained of each other, that the
+Peruvians should have borrowed nothing of the hieroglyphical system of
+the Mexicans, and this, notwithstanding that the existence of the maguey
+plant agave, in South America might have furnished them with the very
+material used by the Aztecs for the construction of their maps.7
+
+It is impossible to contemplate without interest the struggles made by
+different nations, as they emerge from barbarism, to supply themselves
+with some visible symbols of thought,--that mysterious agency by which
+the mind of the individual may be put in communication with the minds
+of a whole community.  The want of such a symbol is itself the greatest
+impediment to the progress of civilization.  For what is it but to
+imprison the thought, which has the elements of immortality, within the
+bosom of its author, or of the small circle who come in contact with him,
+instead of sending it abroad to give light to thousands, and to generations
+yet unborn! Not only is such a symbol an essential element of
+civilization, but it may be assumed as the very criterion of civilization;
+for the intellectual advancement of a people will keep pace pretty nearly
+with its facilities for intellectual communication.
+
+Yet we must be careful not to underrate the real value of the Peruvian
+system; nor to suppose that the quipus were as awkward an instrument, in
+the hand of a practised native, as they would be in ours.  We know the
+effect of habit in all mechanical operations, and the Spaniards bear
+constant testimony to the adroitness and accuracy of the Peruvians in
+this.  Their skill is not more surprising than the facility with which habit
+enables us to master the contents of a printed page, comprehending
+thousands of separate characters, by a single glance, as it were, though
+each character must require a distinct recognition by the eye, and that,
+too, without breaking the chain of thought in the reader's mind.  We
+must not hold the invention of the quipus too lightly, when we reflect
+that they supplied the means of calculation demanded for the affairs of a
+great nation, and that, however insufficient, they afforded no little help to
+what aspired to the credit of literary composition.
+
+The office of recording the national annals was not wholly confined to
+the amautas.  It was assumed in part by the haravecs, or poets, who
+selected the most brilliant incidents for their songs or ballads, which
+were chanted at the royal festivals and at the table of the Inca.8  In this
+manner, a body of traditional minstrelsy grew up, like the British and
+Spanish ballad poetry, by means of which the name of many a rude
+chieftain, that might have perished for want of a chronicler, has been
+borne down the tide of rustic melody to later generations.
+
+Yet history may be thought not to gain much by this alliance with poetry;
+for the domain of the poet extends over an ideal realm peopled with the
+shadowy forms of fancy, that bear little resemblance to the rude realities
+of life.  The Peruvian annals may be deemed to show somewhat of the
+effects of this union, since there is a tinge of the marvellous spread over
+them down to the very latest period, which, like a mist before the reader's
+eye, makes it difficult to distinguish between fact and fiction.
+
+The poet found a convenient instrument for his purposes in the beautiful
+Quichua dialect.  We have already seen the extraordinary measures
+taken by the Incas for propagating their language throughout their
+empire.  Thus naturalized in the remotest provinces, it became enriched
+by a variety of exotic words and idioms, which, under the influence of
+the Court and of poetic culture, if I may so express myself, was gradually
+blended, like some finished mosaic made up of coarse and disjointed
+materials, into one harmonious whole.  The Quichua became the most
+comprehensive and various, as well as the most elegant, of the South
+American dialects.9
+
+Besides the compositions already noticed, the Peruvians, it is said,
+showed some talent for theatrical exhibitions; not those barren
+pantomimes which, addressed simply to the eye, have formed the
+amusement of more than one rude nation.  The Peruvian pieces aspired
+to the rank of dramatic compositions, sustained by character and
+dialogue, founded sometimes on themes of tragic interest, and at others
+on such as, from their light and social character, belong to comedy.10
+Of the execution of these pieces we have now no means of judging.  It
+was probably rude enough, as befitted an unformed people.  But,
+whatever may have been the execution, the mere conception of such an
+amusement is a proof of refinement that honorably distinguishes the
+Peruvian from the other American races, whose pastime was war, or the
+ferocious sports that reflect the image of it.
+
+The intellectual character of the Peruvians, indeed, seems to have been
+marked rather by a tendency to refinement than by those hardier qualities
+which insure success in the severer walks of science.  In these they were
+behind several of the semi-civilized nations of the New World.  They
+had some acquaintance with geography, so far as related to their own
+empire, which was indeed extensive; and they constructed maps with
+lines raised on them to denote the boundaries and localities, on a similar
+principle with those formerly used by the blind.  In astronomy, they
+appear to have made but moderate proficiency.  They divided the year
+into twelve lunar months, each of which, having its own name, was
+distinguished by its appropriate festival.11  They had, also, weeks; but of
+what length, whether of seven, nine, or ten days, is uncertain.  As their
+lunar year would necessarily fall short of the true time, they rectified
+their calendar by solar observations made by means of a number of
+cylindrical columns raised on the high lands round Cuzco, which served
+them for taking azimuths; and, by measuring their shadows, they
+ascertained the exact times of the solstices.  The period of the equinoxes
+they determined by the help of a solitary pillar, or gnomon, placed in the
+centre of a circle, which was described in the area of the great temple,
+and traversed by a diameter that was drawn from east to west.  When the
+shadows were scarcely visible under the noontide rays of the sun, they
+said that "the god sat with all his light upon the column." 12  Quito
+which lay immediately under the equator, where the vertical rays of the
+sun threw no shadow at noon, was held in especial veneration as the
+favored abode of the great deity.  The period of the equinoxes was
+celebrated by public rejoicings.  The pillar was crowned by the golden
+chair of the Sun, and, both then and at the solstices, the columns were
+hung with garlands, and offerings of flowers and fruits were made, while
+high festival was kept throughout the empire.  By these periods the
+Peruvians regulated their religious rites and ceremonial, and prescribed
+the nature of their agricultural labors.  The year itself took its departure
+from the date of the winter solstice.13
+
+This meagre account embraces nearly all that has come down to us of
+Peruvian astronomy.  It may seem strange that a nation, which had
+proceeded thus far in its observations, should have gone no farther; and
+that, notwithstanding its general advance in civilization, it should in this
+science have fallen so far short, not only of the Mexicans, but of the
+Muyscas, inhabiting the same elevated regions of the great southern
+plateau with themselves.  These latter regulated their calendar on the
+same general plan of cycles and periodical series as the Aztecs,
+approaching yet nearer to the system pursued by the people of Asia.14
+
+It might have been expected that the Incas, the boasted children of the
+Sun, would have made a particular study of the phenomena of the
+heavens, and have constructed a calendar on principles as scientific as
+that of their semi-civilized neighbors.  One historian, indeed, assures us
+that they threw their years into cycles of ten, a hundred, and a thousand
+years, and that by these cycles they regulated their chronology.15  But
+this assertion--not improbable in itself--rests on a writer but little gifted
+with the spirit of criticism, and is counter-balanced by the silence of
+every higher and earlier authority, as well as by the absence of any
+monument, like those found among other American nations, to attest the
+existence of such a calendar.  The inferiority of the Peruvians may be,
+perhaps, in part explained by the fact of their priesthood being drawn
+exclusively from the body of the Incas, a privileged order of nobility,
+who had no need, by the assumption of superior learning, to fence
+themselves round from the approaches of the vulgar.  The little true
+science possessed by the Aztec priest supplied him with a key to unlock
+the mysteries of the heavens, and the false system of astrology which he
+built upon it gave him credit as a being who had something of divinity in
+his own nature.  But the Inca noble was divine by birth.  The illusory
+study of astrology, so captivating to the unenlightened mind, engaged no
+share of his attention.  The only persons in Peru, who claimed the power
+of reading the mysterious future, were the diviners, men who, combining
+with their pretensions some skill in the healing art, resembled the
+conjurors found among many of the Indian tribes.  But the office was
+held in little repute, except among the lower classes, and was abandoned
+to those whose age and infirmity disqualified them for the real business
+of life.16
+
+The Peruvians had knowledge of one or two constellations, and watched
+the motions of the planet Venus, to which, as we have seen, they
+dedicated altars.  But their ignorance of the first principles of
+astronomical science is shown by their ideas of eclipses, which, they
+supposed, denoted some great derangement of the planet; and when the
+moon labored under one of these mysterious infirmities, they sounded
+their instruments, and filled the air with shouts and lamentations, to rouse
+her from her lethargy.  Such puerile conceits as these form a striking
+contrast with the real knowledge of the Mexicans, as displayed in their
+hieroglyphical maps, in which the true cause of this phenomenon is
+plainly depicted.17
+
+But, if less successful in exploring the heavens, the Incas must be
+admitted to have surpassed every other American race in their dominion
+over the earth.  Husbandry was pursued by them on principles that may
+be truly called scientific.  It was the basis of their political institutions.
+Having no foreign commerce, it was agriculture that furnished them with
+the means of their internal exchanges, their subsistence, and their
+revenues.  We have seen their remarkable provisions for distributing the
+land in equal shares among the people, while they required every man,
+except the privileged orders, to assist in its cultivation.  The Inca himself
+did not disdain to set the example.  On one of the great annual festivals,
+he proceeded to the environs of Cuzco, attended by his Court, and, in the
+presence of all the people, turned up the earth with a golden plough,--or
+an instrument that served as such,--thus consecrating the occupation of
+the husbandman as one worthy to be followed by the Children of the
+Sun.18
+
+The patronage of the government did not stop with this cheap display of
+royal condescension, but was shown in the most efficient measures for
+facilitating the labors of the husbandman.  Much of the country along the
+sea-coast suffered from want of water, as little or no rain fell there, and
+the few streams, in their short and hurried course from the mountains,
+exerted only a very limited influence on the wide extent of territory.  The
+soil, it is true, was, for the most part, sandy and sterile; but many places
+were capable of being reclaimed, and, indeed, needed only to be
+properly irrigated to be susceptible of extraordinary production.  To
+these spots water was conveyed by means of canals and subterraneous
+aqueducts, executed on a noble scale.  They consisted of large slabs of
+freestone nicely fitted together without cement, and discharged a volume
+of water sufficient, by means of latent ducts or sluices, to moisten the
+lands in the lower level, through which they passed.  Some of these
+aqueducts were of great length.  One that traversed the district of
+Condesuyu measured between four and five hundred miles.  They were
+brought from some elevated lake or natural reservoir in the heart of the
+mountains, and were fed at intervals by other basins which lay in their
+route along the slopes of the sierra.  In this descent, a passage was
+sometimes to be opened through rocks,--and this without the aid of iron
+tools; impracticable mountains were to be turned; rivers and marshes to
+be crossed; in short, the same obstacles were to be encountered as in the
+construction of their mighty roads.  But the Peruvians seemed to take
+pleasure in wrestling with the difficulties of nature.  Near Caxamarca, a
+tunnel is still visible, which they excavated in the mountains, to give an
+outlet to the waters of a lake, when these rose to a height in the rainy
+season that threatened the country with inundation.19
+
+Most of these beneficent works of the Incas were suffered to go to decay
+by their Spanish conquerors.  In some spots, the waters are still left to
+flow in their silent, subterraneous channels, whose windings and whose
+sources have been alike unexplored.  Others, though partially
+dilapidated, and closed up with rubbish and the rank vegetation of the
+soil, still betray their course by occasional patches of fertility.  Such are
+the remains in the valley of Nasca, a fruitful spot that lies between long
+tracts of desert; where the ancient water-courses of the Incas, measuring
+four or five feet in depth by three in width, and formed of large blocks of
+uncemented masonry, are conducted from an unknown distance.
+
+The greatest care was taken that every occupant of the land through
+which these streams passed should enjoy the benefit of them.  The
+quantity of water alloted to each was prescribed by law; and royal
+overseers superintended the distribution, and saw that it was faithfully
+applied to the irrigation of the ground.20
+
+The Peruvians showed a similar spirit of enterprise in their schemes for
+introducing cultivation into the mountainous parts of their domain.
+Many of the hills, though covered with a strong soil, were too precipitous
+to be tilled.  These they cut into terraces, faced with rough stone,
+diminishing in regular gradation towards the summit; so that, while the
+lower strip, or anden, as it was called by the Spaniards, that belted round
+the base of the mountain, might comprehend hundreds of acres, the
+upper-most was only large enough to accommodate a few rows of Indian
+corn.21  Some of the eminences presented such a mess of solid rock,
+that, after being hewn into terraces, they were obliged to be covered deep
+with earth, before they could serve the purpose of the husbandman.  With
+such patient toil did the Peruvians combat the formidable obstacles
+presented by the face of their country! Without the use of tools or the
+machinery familiar to the European, each individual could have done
+little; but acting in large masses, and under a common direction, they
+were enabled by indefatigable perseverance to achieve results, to have
+attempted which might have filled even the European with dismay.22
+
+In the same spirit of economical husbandry which redeemed the rocky
+sierra from the curse of sterility, they dug below the arid soil of the
+valleys, and sought for a stratum where some natural moisture might be
+found.  These excavations, called by the Spaniards hoyas, or "pits," were
+made on a great scale, comprehending frequently more than an acre,
+sunk to the depth of fifteen or twenty feet, and fenced round within by a
+wall of adobes, or bricks baked in the sun.  The bottom of the
+excavation, well prepared by a rich manure of the sardines,--a small fish
+obtained in vast quantities along the coast,--was planted with some kind
+or grain or vegetable.23
+
+The Peruvian farmers were well acquainted with the different kinds of
+manures, and made large use of them; a circumstance rare in the rich
+lands of the tropics, and probably not elsewhere practised by the rude
+tribes of America.  They made great use of guano, the valuable deposit
+of sea-fowl, that has attracted so much attention, of late, from the
+agriculturists both of Europe and of our own country, and the stimulating
+and nutritious properties of which the Indians perfectly appreciated.
+This was found in such immense quantities on many of the little islands
+along the coast, as to have the appeaarnce of lofty hills, which, covered
+with a white saline incrustation, led the Conquerors to give them the
+name of the sierra nevada, or "snowy mountains."
+
+The Incas took their usual precautions for securing the benefits of this
+important article to the husbandman.  They assigned the small islands on
+the coast to the use of the respective districts which lay adjacent to them.
+When the island was large, it was distributed among several districts, and
+the boundaries for each were clearly defined.  All encroachment on the
+rights of another was severely punished.  And they secured the
+preservation of the fowl by penalties as stern as those by which the
+Norman tyrants of England protected their own game.  No one was
+allowed to set foot on the island during the season for breeding, under
+pain of death; and to kill the birds at any time was punished in the like
+manner.24
+
+With this advancement in agricultural science, the Peruvians might be
+supposed to have had some knowledge of the plough, in such general use
+among the primitive nations of the eastern continent.  But they had
+neither the iron ploughshare of the Old World, nor had they animals for
+draught, which, indeed, were nowhere found in the New.  The
+instrument which they used was a strong, sharp-pointed stake, traversed
+by a horizontal piece, ten or twelve inches from the point, on which the
+ploughman might set his foot and force it into the ground.  Six or eight
+strong men were attached by ropes to the stake, and dragged it forcibly
+along, --pulling together, and keeping time as they moved by chanting
+their national songs, in which they were accompanied by the women who
+followed in their-train, to break up the sods with their rakes.  The mellow
+soil offered slight resistance; and the laborer., by long practice, acquired
+a dexterity which enabled him to turn up the ground to the requisite
+depth with astonishing facility.  This substitute for the plough was but a
+clumsy contrivance; yet it is curious as the only specimen of the kind
+among the American aborigines, and was perhaps not much inferior to
+the wooden instrument introduced in its stead by the European
+conquerors .25
+
+It was frequently the policy of the Incas, after providing a deserted tract
+with the means for irrigation, and thus fitting it for the labors of the
+husbandman, to transplant there a colony of mitimaes, who brought it
+under cultivation by raising the crops best suited to the soil.  While the
+peculiar character and capacity of the lands were thus consulted, a means
+of exchange of the different products was afforded to the neighboring
+provinces, which, from the formation of the country, varied much more
+than usual within the same limits.  To facilitate these agricultural
+exchanges, fairs were instituted, which took place three times a month in
+some of the most populous places, where, as money was unknown, a
+rude kind of commerce was kept up by the barter of their respective
+products.  These fairs afforded so many holidays for the relaxation of the
+industrious laborer.26
+
+Such were the expedients adopted by the Incas for the improvement of
+their territory; and, although imperfect, they must be allowed to show an
+acquaintance with the principles of agricultural science, that gives them
+some claim to the rank of a civilized people.  Under their patient and
+discriminating culture, every inch of good soil was tasked to its greatest
+power of production; while the most-unpromising spots were compelled
+to contribute something to the subsistence of the people.  Everywhere the
+land teemed with evidence of agricultural wealth, from the smiling
+valleys along the coast to the terraced steeps of the sierra, which, rising
+into pyramids of verdure, glowed with all the splendors of tropical
+vegetation.
+
+The formation of the country was particularly favorable, as already
+remarked, to an infinite variety of products, not so much from its extent
+as from its various elevations, which, more remarkable, even, than those
+in Mexico, comprehend every degree of latitude from the equator to the
+polar regions.  Yet, though the temperature changes in this region with
+the degree of elevation, it remains nearly the same in the same spots
+throughout the year; and the inhabitant feels none of those grateful
+vicissitudes of season which belong to the temperate latitudes of the
+globe.  Thus, while the summer lies in full power on the burning regions
+of the palm and the cocoa-tree that fringe the borders of the ocean, the
+broad surface of the table-land blooms with the freshness of perpetual
+spring, and the higher summits of the Cordilleras are white with
+everlasting winter.
+
+The Peruvians turned this fixed variety of climate, if I may so say, to the
+best account by cultivating the productions appropriate to each; and they
+particularly directed their attention to those which afforded the most
+nutriment to man.  Thus, in the lower level were to be found the
+cassavatree and the banana, that bountiful plant, which seems to have
+relieved man from the primeval curse--if it were not rather a blessing--of
+toiling for his sustenance.27  As the banana faded from the landscape, a
+good substitute was found in the maize, the great agricultural staple of
+both the northern and southern divisions of the American continent; and
+which, after its exportation to the Old World, spread so rapidly there, as
+to suggest the idea of its being indigenous to it.28  The Peruvians were
+well acquainted with the different modes of preparing this useful
+vegetable, though it seems they did not use it for bread, except at
+festivals; and they extracted a sort of honey from the stalk, and made an
+intoxicating liquor from the fermented grain, to which, like the Aztecs,
+they were immoderately addicted.29
+
+The temperate climate of the table-land furnished them with the maguey,
+agave Americana, many of the extraordinary qualities of which they
+comprehended, though not its most important one of affording a material
+for paper.  Tobacco, too, was among the products of this elevated region.
+Yet the Peruvians differed from every other Indian nation to whom it was
+known, by using it only for medicinal purposes, in the form of snuff.30
+They may have found a substitute for its narcotic qualities in the coco
+(Erythroxylum Peruvianurn), or cuca, as called by the natives.  This is a
+shrub which grows to the height of a man.  The leaves when gathered are
+dried in the sun, and, being mixed with a little lime, form a preparation
+for chewing, much like the betel-leaf of the East.31  With a small supply
+of this cuca in his pouch, and a handful of roasted maize, the Peruvian
+Indian of our time performs his wearisome journeys, day ,after day,
+without fatigue, or, at least, without complaint.  Even food the most
+invigorating is less grateful to him than his loved narcotic.  Under the
+Incas, it is said to have been exclusively reserved for the noble orders.  If
+so, the people gained one luxury by the Conquest; and, after that period,
+it was so extensively used by them, that this article constituted a most
+important item of the colonial revenue of Spain.32  Yet, with the
+soothing charms of an opiate, this weed so much vaunted by the natives,
+when used to excess, is said to be attended with all the mischievous
+effects of habitual intoxication.33
+
+Higher up on the slopes of the Cordilleras, beyond the limits of the maize
+and of the quinoa,--a grain bearing some resemblance to rice, and largely
+cultivated by the Indians,--was to be found the potato, the introduction of
+which into Europe has made an era in the history of agriculture.
+Whether indigenous to Peru, or imported from the neighboring country
+of Chili, it formed the great staple of the more elevated plains, under the
+Incas, and its culture was continued to a height in the equatorial regions
+which reached many thousand feet above the limits of perpetual snow in
+the temperate latitudes of Europe.34  Wild specimens of the vegetable
+might be seen still higher, springing up spontaneously amidst the stunted
+shrubs that clothed the lofty sides of the Cordilleras till these gradually
+subsided into the mosses and the short yellow grass: pajonal, which, like
+a golden carpet, was unrolled around the base of the mighty cones, that
+rose far into the regions of eternal silence, covered with the snows of
+centuries.35
+
+
+
+Book 1
+
+Chapter 5
+
+Peruvian Sheep--Great Hunts--Manufactures--Mechanical Skill--
+Architecture--Concluding Reflections
+
+A Nation which had made such progress in agriculture might be
+reasonably expected to have made, also, some proficiency in the
+mechanical arts--especially when, as in the case of the Peruvians, their
+agricultural economy demanded in itself no inconsiderable degree of
+mechanical skill.  Among most nations, progress in manufactures has
+been found to have an intimate connection with the progress of
+husbandry.  Both arts are directed to the same great object of supplying
+the necessaries, the comforts, or, in a more refined condition of society,
+the luxuries of life; and when the one is brought to a perfection that
+infers a certain advance in civilization, the other must naturally find a
+corresponding development under the increasing demands and capacities
+of such a state.  The subjects of the Incas, in their patient and tranquil
+devotion to the more humble occupations of industry which bound them
+to their native soil, bore greater resemblance to the Oriental nations, as
+the Hindoos and Chinese, than they bore to the members of the great
+Anglo-Saxon family whose hardy temper has driven them to seek their
+fortunes on the stormy ocean, and to open a commerce with the most
+distant regions of the globe.  The Peruvians, though lining a long extent
+of sea-coast, had no foreign commerce.
+
+They had peculiar advantages for domestic manufacture in a material
+incomparably superior to anything possessed by the other races of the
+Western continent.  They found a good substitute for linen in a fabric
+which, like the Aztecs, they knew how to weave from the tough thread of
+the maguey.  Cotton grew luxuriantly on the low, sultry level of the
+coast, and furnished them with a clothing suitable to the milder latitudes
+of the country.  But from the llama and the kindred species of Peruvian
+sheep they obtained a fleece adapted to the colder climate of the
+tableland, "more estimable," to quote the language of a well-informed
+writer, "than the down of the Canadian beaver, the fleece of the brebis
+des Calmoucks, or of the Syrian goat." 1
+
+Of the four varieties of the Peruvian sheep, the llama, the one most
+familiarly known, is the least valuable on account of its wool.  It is
+chiefly employed as a beast of burden, for which, although it is
+somewhat larger than any of the other varieties, its diminutive size and
+strength would seem to disqualify it.  It carries a load of little more than
+a hundred pounds, and cannot travel above three or four leagues in a day.
+But all this is compensated by the little care and cost required for its
+management and its maintenance.  It picks up an easy subsistence from
+the moss and stunted herbage that grow scantily along the withered sides
+and the steeps of the Cordilleras.  The structure of its stomach, like that
+of the camel, is such as to enable it to dispense with any supply of water
+for weeks, nay, months together.  Its spongy hoof, armed with a claw or
+pointed talon to enable it to take secure hold on the ice, never requires to
+be shod; and the load laid upon its back rests securely in its bed of wool,
+without the aid of girth or saddle.  The llamas move in troops of five
+hundred or even a thousand, and thus, though each individual carries but
+little, the aggregate is considerable.  The whole caravan travels on at its
+regular pace, passing the night in the open air without suffering from the
+coldest temperature, and marching in perfect order, and in obedience to
+the voice of the driver.  It is only when overloaded that the spirited little
+animal refuses to stir, and neither blows nor caresses can induce him to
+rise from the ground.  He is as sturdy in asserting his rights on this
+occasion, as he is usually docile and unresisting.2
+
+The employment of domestic animals distinguished the Peruvians from
+the other races of the New World.  This economy of human labor by the
+substitution of the brute is an important element of civilization, interior
+only to what is gained by the substitution of machinery for both.  Yet the
+ancient Peruvians seem to have made much less account of it than their
+Spanish conquerors, and to have valued the llama, in common with the
+other animals of that genus, chiefly for its fleece.  Immense herds of
+these "large cattle," as they were called, and of the "smaller cattle," 3 or
+alpacas, were held by the government, as already noticed, and placed
+under the direction of shepherds, who conducted them from one quarter
+of the country to another, according to the changes of the season.  These
+migrations were regulated with all the precision with which the code of
+the mesta determined the migrations of the vast merino flocks in Spain;
+and the Conquerors, when they landed in Peru, were amazed at finding a
+race of animals so similar to their own in properties and habits, and
+under the control of a system of legislation which might seem to have
+been imported from their native land.4
+
+But the richest store of wool was obtained, not from these domesticated
+animals, but from the two other species, the huanacos and the vicunas,
+which roamed in native freedom over the frozen ranges of the
+Cordilleras; where not unfrequently they might be seen scaling the snow-
+covered peaks which no living thing inhabits save the condor, the huge
+bird of the Andes, whose broad pinions bear him up in the atmosphere to
+the height of more than twenty thousand feet above the level of the sea.5
+In these rugged pastures, "the flock without a fold" finds sufficient
+sustenance in the ychu, a species of grass which is found scattered all
+along the great ridge of the Cordilleras, from the equator to the southern
+limits of Patagonia.  And as these limits define the territory traversed by
+the Peruvian sheep, which rarely, if ever, venture north of the line, it
+seems not improbable that this mysterious little plant is so important to
+their existence, that the absence of it is the principal reason why they
+have not penetrated to the northern latitudes of Quito and New
+Granada.6
+
+But, although thus roaming without a master over the boundless wastes
+of the Cordilleras, the Peruvian peasant was never allowed to hunt these
+wild animals, which were protected by laws as severe as were the sleek
+herds that grazed on the more cultivated slopes of the plateau.  The wild
+game of the forest and the mountain was as much the property of the
+government, as if it had been inclosed within a park, or penned within a
+fold.7  It was only on stated occasions, at the great hunts, which took
+place once a year, under the personal superintendence of the Inca or his
+principal officers, that the game was allowed to be taken.  These hunts.
+were not repeated in the same quarter of the country oftener than once.
+in four years, that time might be allowed for the waste occasioned by
+them to be replenished.  At the appointed time, all those living in the
+district and its neighborhood, to the number, it might be, of fifty or sixty
+thousand men,8 were distributed round, so as to form a cordon of
+immense extent, that should embrace the whole country which was to be
+hunted over.  The men were armed with long poles and spears, with
+which they beat up game of every description lurking in the woods, the
+valleys, and the mountains, killing the beasts of prey without mercy, and
+driving the others, consisting chiefly of the deer of the country, and the
+huanacos and vicunas, towards the centre of the wide-extended circle;
+until, as this gradually contracted, the timid inhabitants of the forest were
+concentrated on some spacious plain, where the eye of the hunter might
+range freely over his victims, who found no place for shelter or escape.
+
+The male deer and some of the coarser kind of the Peruvian sheep were
+slaughtered; their skins were reserved for the various useful
+manufactures to which they are ordinarily applied, and their flesh, cut
+into thin slices, was distributed among the people, who converted it into
+charqui, the dried meat of the country, which constituted then the sole, as
+it has since the principal, animal food of the lower classes of Peru.9
+
+But nearly the whole of the sheep, amounting usually to thirty or forty
+thousand, or even a larger number, after being carefully sheared, were
+suffered to escape and regain their solitary haunts among the mountains.
+The wool thus collected was deposited in the royal magazines, whence,
+in due time, it was dealt out to the people.  The coarser quality was
+worked up into garments for their own use, and the finer for the Inca; for
+none but an Inca noble could wear the fine fabric of the vicuna.10
+
+The Peruvians showed great skill in the manufacture of different articles
+for the royal household from this delicate material, which, under the
+name of vigonia wool, is now familiar to the looms of Europe.  It was
+wrought into shawls, robes, and other articles of dress for the monarch,
+and into carpets, coverlets, and hangings for the imperial palaces and the
+temples.  The cloth was finished on both sides alike; 11 the delicacy of
+the texture was such as to give it the lustre of silk; and the brilliancy of
+the dyes excited the admiration and the envy of the European artisan.12
+The Peruvians produced also an article of great strength and durability
+by mixing the hair of animals with wool; and they were expert in the
+beautiful feather-work, which they held of less account than the
+Mexicans from the superior quality of the materials for other fabrics,
+which they had at their command.13
+
+The natives showed a skill in other mechanical arts similar to that
+displayed by their manufactures of cloth.  Every man in Peru was
+expected to be acquainted with the various handicrafts essential to
+domestic comfort.  No long apprenticeship was required for this, where
+the wants were so few as among the simple peasantry of the Incas.  But,
+if this were all, it would imply but a very moderate advancement in the
+arts.  There were certain individuals, however, carefully trained to those
+occupations which minister to the demands of the more opulent classes
+of society.  These occupations, like every other calling and office in
+Peru, always descended from father to son.14  The division of castes, in
+this particular, was as precise as that which existed in Egypt or
+Hindostan.  If this arrangement be unfavorable to originality, or to the
+development of the peculiar talent of the individual, it at least conduces
+to an easy and finished execution by familiarizing the artist with the
+practice of his art from childhood.15
+
+The royal magazines and the huacas or tombs of the Incas have been
+found to contain many specimens of curious and elaborate workmanship.
+Among these are vases of gold and silver, bracelets, collars, and other
+ornaments for the person; utensils of every description, some of fine
+clay, and many more of copper; mirrors of a hard, polished stone, or
+burnished silver, with a great variety of other articles made frequently on
+a whimsical pattern, evincing quite as much ingenuity as taste or
+inventive talent.16  The character of the Peruvian mind led to imitation,
+in fact, rather than invention, to delicacy and minuteness of finish, rather
+than to boldness or beauty of design.
+
+That they should have accomplished these difficult works with such tools
+as they possessed, is truly wonderful.  It was comparativeIy easy to cast
+and even sculpture metallic substances, both of which they did with
+consummate skill.  But that they should have shown the like facility in
+cutting the hardest substances, as emeralds and other precious stones, is
+not easy to explain.  Emeralds they obtained in considerable quantity
+from the barren district of Atacames, and this inflexible material seems
+to have been almost as ductile in the hands of the Peruvian artist as if it
+had been made of clay.17  Yet the natives were unacquainted with the
+use of iron, though the soil was largely impregnated with it.18  The tools
+used were of stone, or more frequently of copper.  But the material on
+which they relied for the execution of their most difficult tasks was
+formed by combining a very small portion of tin with copper.19  This
+composition gave a hardness to the metal which seems to have been little
+inferior to that of steel.  With the aid of it, not only did the Peruvian
+artisan hew into shape porphyry and granite, but by his patient industry
+accomplished works which the European would not have ventured to
+undertake.  Among the remains of the monuments of Cannar may be seen
+movable rings in the muzzles of animals, all nicely sculptured of one
+entire block of granite.20  It is worthy of remark, that the Egyptians, the
+Mexicans, and the Peruvians, in their progress towards civilization,
+should never have detected the use of iron, which lay around them in
+abundance; and that they should each, without any knowledge of the
+other, have found a substitute for it in such a curious composition of
+metals as gave to their tools almost the temper of steel; 21 a secret that
+has been lost--or, to speak more correctly, has never been discovered-by
+the civilized European.
+
+I have already spoken of the large quantity of gold and silver wrought
+into various articles of elegance and utility for the Incas; though the
+amount was inconsiderable, in comparison with what could have been
+afforded by the mineral riches of the land, and with what has since been
+obtained by the more sagacious and unscrupulous cupidity of the white
+man.  Gold was gathered by the Incas from the deposits of the streams.
+They extracted the ore also in considerable quantities from the valley of
+Curimayo, northeast of Caxamarca, as well as from other places; and the
+silver mines of Porco, in particular, yielded them considerable returns.
+Yet they did not attempt to penetrate into the bowels of the earth 'by
+sinking a shaft, but simply excavated a cavern in the steep sides of the
+mountain, or, at most, opened a horizonal vein of moderate depth.  They
+were equally deficient in the knowledge of the best means of detaching
+the precious metal from the dross with which it was united, and had no
+idea of the virtues of quicksilver,--a mineral not rare in Peru, as an
+amalgam to effect this decomposition.22  Their method of smelting the
+ore was by means of furnaces built in elevated and exposed situations,
+where they might be fanned by the strong breezes of the mountains.  The
+subjects of the Incas, in short, with all their patient perseverance, did
+little more than penetrate below the crust, the outer rind, as it were,
+formed over those golden caverns which lie hidden in the dark depths of
+the Andes.  Yet what they gleaned from the surface was more than
+adequate for all their demands.  For they were not a commercial people,
+and had no knowledge of money.23  In this they differed from the
+ancient Mexicans, who had an established currency of a determinate
+value.  In one respect, however, they were superior to their American
+rivals, since they made use of weights to determine the quantity of their
+commodities, a thing wholly unknown to the Aztecs.  This fact is
+ascertained by the discovery of silver balances, adjusted with perfect
+accuracy, in some of the tombs of the Incas.24
+
+But the surest test of the civilization of a people--at least, as sure as any--
+afforded by mechanical art is to be found in their architecture, which
+presents so noble a field for the display of the grand and the beautiful,
+and which, at the same time, is so intimately connected with the essential
+comforts of life.  There is no object on which the resources of the
+wealthy are more freely lavished, or which calls out more effectually the
+inventive talent of the artist.  The painter and the sculptor may display
+their individual genius in creations of surpassing excellence, but it is the
+great monuments of architectural taste and magnificence that are
+stamped in a peculiar manner by the genius of the nation.  The Greek, the
+Egyptian, the Saracen, the Gothic,--what a key do their respective styles
+afford to the character and condition of the people! The monuments of
+China, of Hindostan, and of Central America are all indicative of an
+immature period, in which the imagination has not been disciplined by
+study, and which, therefore, in its best results, betrays only the
+illregulated aspirations after the beautiful, that belong to a semi-civilized
+people.
+
+The Peruvian architecture, bearing also the general characteristics of an
+imperfect state of refinement, had still its peculiar character; and so
+uniform was that character, that the edifices throughout the country seem
+to have been all cast in the same mould.25  They were usually built of
+porphyry or granite; not unfrequently of brick.  This, which was formed
+into blocks or squares of much larger dimensions than our brick, was
+made of a tenacious earth mixed up with reeds or tough grass, and
+acquired a degree of hardness with age that made it insensible alike to
+the storms and the more trying sun of the tropics.26  The walls were of
+great thickness, but low, seldom reaching to more than twelve or
+fourteen feet in height.  It is rare to meet with accounts of a building that
+rose to a  second story.27
+
+The apartments had no communication with one another, but usually
+opened into a court; and, as they were unprovided with windows, or
+apertures that served for them, the only light from without must have
+been admitted by the doorways.  These were made with the sides
+approaching each other towards the top, so that the lintel was
+considerably narrower than the threshold, a peculiarity, also, in Egyptian
+architecture.  The roofs have for the most part disappeared with time.
+Some few survive in the less ambitious edifices, of a singular bell-shape,
+and made of a composition of earth and pebbles.  They are supposed,
+however, to have been generally formed of more perishable materials, of
+wood or straw.  It is certain that some of the most considerable stone-
+buildings were thatched with straw.  Many seem to have been
+constructed without the aid of cement; and writers have contended that
+the Peruvians were unacquainted with the use of mortar, or cement of
+any kind.28  But a close, tenacious mould, mixed with lime, may be
+discovered filling up the interstices of the granite in some buildings; and
+in others, where the wellfitted blocks leave no room for this coarser
+material, the eye of the antiquary has detected a fine bituminous glue, as
+hard as the rock itself.29
+
+The greatest simplicity is observed in the construction of the buildings.
+which are usually free from outward ornament; though in some the huge
+stones are shaped into a convex form with great regularity, and adjusted
+with such nice precision to one another, that it would be impossible, but
+for the flutings, to determine the line of junction.  In others, the stone is
+rough, as it was taken from the quarry, in the most irregular forms, with
+the edges nicely wrought and fitted to each other.  There is no
+appearance of columns or of arches; though there is some contradiction
+as to the latter point.  But it is not to be doubted, that, although they may
+have made some approach to this mode of construction by the greater or
+less inclination of the walls, the Peruvian architects were wholly
+unacquainted with the true principle of the circular arch reposing on its
+key-stone.30
+
+The architecture of the Incas is characterized, says an eminent traveller,
+"by simplicity, symmetry, and solidity."31  It may seem unphilosophical
+to condemn the peculiar fashion of a nation as indicating want of taste,
+because its standard of taste differs from our own.  Yet there is an
+incongruity in the composition of the Peruvian buildings which argues a
+very imperfect acquaintance with the first principles of architecture.
+While they put together their bulky masses of porphyry and granite with
+the nicest art, they were incapable of mortising their timbers, and, in their
+ignorance of iron, knew no better way of holding the beams together that
+tying them with thongs of maguey.  In the same incongruous spirit, the
+building that was thatched with straw, and unilluminated by a window,
+was glowing with tapestries of gold and silver! These are the
+inconsistencies of a rude people, among whom the arts are but partially
+developed.  It might not be difficult to find examples of like
+inconsistency in the architecture and domestic arrangements of our
+Anglo-Saxon, and, at a still later period of our Norman ancestors.
+
+Yet the buildings of the Incas were accommodated to the character of the
+climate, and were well fitted to resist those terrible convulsions which
+belong to the land of volcanoes.  The wisdom of their plan is attested by
+the number which still survive, while the more modern constructions of
+the Conquerors have been buried in ruins.  The hand of the Conquerors,
+indeed, has fallen heavily on these venerable monuments, and, in their
+blind and superstitious search for hidden treasure, has caused infinitely
+more ruin than time or the earthquake.32  Yet enough of these
+monuments still remain to invite the researches of the antiquary.  Those
+only in the most conspicuous situations have been hitherto examined.
+But, by the testimony of travellers, many more are to be found in the less
+frequented parts of the country; and we may hope they will one day call
+forth a kindred spirit of enterprise to that which has so successfully
+explored the mysterious recesses of Central America and Yucatan.
+
+I cannot close this analysis of the Peruvian institutions without a few
+reflections on their general character and tendency, which, if they
+involve some repetition of previous remarks, may, I trust, be excused,
+from my desire to leave a correct and consistent impression on the
+reader.  In this survey, we cannot but be struck with the total
+dissimilarity between these institutions and those of the Aztecs,--the
+other great nation who led in the march of civilization on this western
+continent, and whose empire in the northern portion of it was as
+conspicuous as that of the Incas in the south.  Both nations came on the
+plateau, and commenced their career of conquest, at dates, it may be, not
+far removed from each other.33  And it is worthy of notice, that, in
+America, the elevated region along the crests of the great mountain
+ranges should have been the chosen seat of civilization in both
+hemispheres.
+
+Very different was the policy pursued by the two races in their military
+career.  The Aztecs, animated by the most ferocious spirit, carried on a
+war of extermination, signalizing their triumphs by the sacrifice of
+hecatombs of captives; while the Incas, although they pursued the game
+of conquest with equal pertinacity, preferred a milder policy, substituting
+negotiation and intrigue for violence, and dealt with their antagonists so
+that their future resources should not be crippled, and that they should
+come as friends, not as foes, into the bosom of the empire.
+
+Their policy toward the conquered forms a contrast no less striking to
+that pursued by the Aztecs.  The Mexican vassals were ground by
+excessive imposts and military conscriptions.  No regard was had to their
+welfare, and the only limit to oppression was the power of endurance.
+They were over-awed by fortresses and armed garrisons, and were made
+to feel every hour that they were not part and parcel of the nation, but
+held only in subjugation as a conquered people.  The Incas, on the other
+hand, admitted their new subjects at once to all the rights enjoyed by the
+rest of the community; and, though they made them conform to the
+established laws and usages of the empire, they watched over their
+personal security and comfort with a sort of parental solicitude.  The
+motley population, thus bound together by common interest, was
+animated by a common feeling of loyality, which gave greater strength
+and stability to the empire, as it became more and more widely extended;
+while the various tribes who successively came under the Mexican
+sceptre, being held together only by the pressure of external force, were
+ready to fall asunder the moment that that force was withdrawn.  The
+policy of the two nations displayed the principle of fear as contrasted
+with the principle of love.
+
+The characteristic features of their religious systems had as little
+resemblance to each other.  The whole Aztec pantheon partook more or
+less of the sanguinary spirit of the terrible war-god who presided over it,
+and their frivolous ceremonial almost always terminated with human
+sacrifice and cannibal orgies.  But the rites of the Peruvians were of a
+more innocent cast, as they tended to a more spiritual worship.  For the
+worship of the Creator is most nearly approached by that of the heavenly
+bodies, which, as they revolve in their bright orbits, seem to be the most
+glorious symbols of his beneficence and power.
+
+In the minuter mechanical arts, both showed considerable skill; but in the
+construction of important public works, of roads, aqueducts, canals, and
+in agriculture in all its details, the Peruvians were much superior.
+Strange that they should have fallen so far below their rivals in their
+efforts after a higher intellectual culture, in astronomical science, more
+especially, and in the art of communicating thought by visible symbols.
+When we consider the greater refinement of the Incas, their inferiority to
+the Aztecs in these particulars can be explained only by the fact, that the
+latter in all probability were indebted for their science to the race who
+preceded them in the land,--that shadowy race whose origin and whose
+end are alike veiled from the eye of the inquirer, but who possibly may
+have sought a refuge from their ferocious invaders in those regions of
+Central America the architectural remains of which now supply us with
+the most pleasing monuments of Indian civilization.  It is with this more
+polished race, to whom the Peruvians seem to have borne some
+resemblance in their mental and moral organization, that they should be
+compared.  Had the empire of the Incas been permitted to extend itself
+with the rapid strides with which it was advancing at the period of the
+Spanish conquest, the two races might have come into conflict, or,
+perhaps, into alliance with one another.
+
+The Mexicans and Peruvians, so different in the character of their
+peculiar civilization, were, it seems probable, ignorant of each other's
+existence; and it may appear singular, that, during the simultaneous
+continuance of their empires, some of the seeds of science and of art,
+which pass so imperceptibly from one people to another, should not have
+found their way across the interval which separated the two nations.
+They furnish an interesting example of the opposite directions which the
+human mind may take in its struggle to emerge from darkness into the
+light of civilization,
+
+A closer resemblance--as I have more than once taken occasion to
+notice--may be found between the Peruvian institutions and some of the
+despotic governments of Eastern Asia; those governments where
+despotism appears in its more mitigated form, and the whole people,
+under the patriarchal sway of its sovereign, seem to be gathered together
+like the members of one vast family.  Such were the Chinese, for
+example, whom the Peruvians resembled in their implicit obedience to
+authority, their mild yet somewhat stubborn temper, their solicitude for
+forms, their reverence for ancient usage, their skill in the minuter
+manufactures, their imitative rather than inventive cast of mind, and their
+invincible patience, which serves instead of a more adventurous spirit for
+the execution of difficult undertakings.34
+
+A still closer analogy may be found with the natives of Hindostan in their
+division into castes, their worship of the heavenly bodies and the
+elements of nature, and their acquaintance with the scientific principles
+of husbandry.  To the ancient Egyptians, also, they bore considerable
+resemblance in the same particulars, as well as in those ideas of a future
+existence which led them to attach so much importance to the permanent
+preservation of the body.
+
+But we shall look in vain in the history of the East for a parallel to the
+absolute control exercised by the Incas over their subjects.  In the East,
+this was rounded on physical power,--on the external resources of the
+government.  The authority of the Inca might be compared with that of
+the Pope in the day of his might, when Christendom trembled at the
+thunders of the Vatican, and the successor of St.  Peter set his foot on the
+necks of princes.  But the authority of the Pope was founded on opinion.
+His temporal power was nothing.  The empire of the Incas rested on
+both.  It was a theocracy more potent in its operation than that of the
+Jews; for, though the sanction of the law might be as great among the
+latter, the law was expounded by a human lawgiver, the servant and
+representative of Divinity.  But the Inca was both the lawgiver and the
+law.  He was not merely the representative of Divinity, or, like the Pope,
+its vicegerent, but he was Divinity itself.  The violation of his ordinance
+was sacrilege.  Never was there a scheme of government enforced by
+such terrible sanctions, or which bore so oppressively on the subjects of
+it.  For it reached not only to the visible acts, but to the private conduct,
+the words, the very thoughts, of its vassals.
+
+It added not a little to the efficacy of the government, that, below the
+sovereign, there was an order of hereditary nobles of the same divine
+original with himself, who, placed far below himself, were still
+immeasurably above the rest of the community, not merely by descent,
+but, as it would seem, by their intellectual nature.  These were the
+exclusive depositaries of power, and, as their long hereditary training
+made them familiar with their vocation, and secured them implicit
+deference from the multitude, they became the prompt and well-practised
+agents for carrying out the executive measures of the administration.  All
+that occurred throughout the wide extent of his empire---such was the
+perfect system of communication--passed in review, as it were, before
+the eyes of the monarch, and a thousand hands, armed with irresistible
+authority, stood ready in every quarter to do his bidding.  Was it not, as
+we have said, the most oppressive, though the mildest, of despotisms?
+
+It was the mildest, from the very circumstance, that the transcendent rank
+of the sovereign, and the humble, nay, superstitious, devotion to his will
+make it superfluous to assert this will be acts of violence or rigor.  The
+great mass of the people may have appeared to his eyes as but little
+removed above the condition of the brute, formed to minister to his
+pleasures.  But, from their very helplessness, he regarded them with
+feelings of commiseration, like those which a kind master might feel for
+the poor animals committed to his charge, or--to do justice to the
+beneficent character attributed to many of the Incas--that a parent might
+feel for his young and impotent offspring.  The laws were carefully
+directed to their preservation and personal comfort.  The people were not
+allowed to be employed on works pernicious to their health, nor to pine--
+a sad contrast to their subsequent destiny--under the imposition of tasks
+too heavy for their powers.  They were never made the victims of public
+or private extortion; and a benevolent forecast watched carefully over
+their necessities, and provided for their relief in seasons of infirmity, and
+for their sustenance in health.  The government of the Incas, however
+arbitrary in form, was in its spirit truly patriarchal.
+
+Yet in this there was nothing cheering to the dignity of human nature.
+What the people had was conceded as a boon, not as a right.  When a
+nation was brought under the sceptre of the Incas, it resigned every
+personal right, even the rights dearest to humanity.  Under this
+extraordinary polity, a people advanced in many of the social
+refinements, well skilled in manufactures and agriculture, were
+unacquainted, as we have seen, with money.  They had nothing that
+deserved to be called property.  They could follow no craft, could
+engage in no labor, no amusement, but such as was specially provided by
+law.  They could not change their residence or their dress without a
+license from the government.  They could not even exercise the freedom
+which is conceded to the most abject in other countries, that of selecting
+their own wives.  The imperative spirit of despotism would not allow
+them to be happy or miserable in any way but that established by law.
+The power of free agency--the inestimable and inborn right of every
+human being--was annihilated in Peru.
+
+The astonishing mechanism of the Peruvian polity could have resulted
+only from the combined authority of opinion and positive power in the
+ruler to an extent unprecedented in the history of man.  Yet that it should
+have so successfully gone into operation, and so long endured, in
+opposition to the taste, the prejudices, and the very principles of our
+nature, is a strong proof of a generally wise and temperate administration
+of the government.
+
+The policy habitually pursued by the Incas for the prevention of evils
+that might have disturbed the order of things is well exemplified in their
+provisions against poverty and idleness.  In these they rightly discerned
+the two great causes of disaffection in a populous community.  The
+industry of the people was secured not only by their compulsory
+occupations at home, but by their employment on those great public
+works which covered every part of the country, and which still bear
+testimony in their decay to their primitive grandeur.  Yet it may well
+astonish us to find, that the natural difficulty of these undertakings,
+sufficiently great in itself, considering the imperfection of their tools and
+machinery, was inconceivably enhanced by the politic contrivance of
+government.  The royal edifices of Quito, we are assured by the Spanish
+conquerors, were constructed of huge masses of stone, many of which
+were carried all the way along the mountain roads from Cuzco, a
+distance of several hundred leagues.35  The great square of the capital
+was filled to a considerable depth with mould brought with incredible
+labor up the steep slopes of the Cordilleras from the distant shores of the
+Pacific Ocean.36  Labor was regarded not only as a means, but as an
+end, by the Peruvian law.
+
+With their manifold provisions against poverty the reader has already
+been made acquainted.  They were so perfect, that, in their wide extent of
+territory,--much of it smitten with the curse of barrenness,--no man,
+however humble, suffered from the want of food and clothing.  Famine,
+so common a scourge in every other American nation, so common at that
+period in every country of civilized Europe, was an evil unknown in the
+dominions of the Incas.
+
+The most enlightened of the Spaniards who first visited Peru, struck with
+the general appearance of plenty and prosperity, and with the astonishing
+order with which every thing throughout the country was regulated, are
+loud in their expressions of admiration.  No better government, in their
+opinion, could have been devised for the people.  Contented with their
+condition, and free from vice, to borrow the language of an eminent
+authority of that early day, the mild and docile character of the Peruvians
+would have well fitted them to receive the teachings of Christianity, had
+the love of conversion, instead of gold, animated the breasts of the
+Conquerors.37  And a philosopher of a later time, warmed by the
+contemplation of the picture--which his own fancy had colored---of
+public prosperity and private happiness under the rule of the Incas,
+pronounces "the moral man in Peru far superior to the European." 38
+
+Yet such results are scarcely reconcilable with the theory of the
+government I have attempted to analyze.  Where there is no free agency,
+there can be no morality.  Where there is no temptation, there can be
+little claim to virtue.  Where the routine is rigorously prescribed by law,
+the law, and not the man, must have the credit of the conduct.  if that
+government is the best, which is felt the least, which encroaches on the
+natural liberty of the subject only so far as is essential to civil
+subordination, then of all governments devised by man the Peruvian has
+the least real claim to our admiration.
+
+It is not easy to comprehend the genius and the full import of institutions
+so opposite to those of our own free republic, where every man, however
+humble his condition, may aspire to the highest honors of the state,--may
+select his own career, and carve out his fortune in his own way; where
+the light of knowledge, instead of being concentrated on a chosen few, is
+shed abroad like the light of day, and suffered to fall equally on the poor
+and the rich; where the collision of man with man wakens a generous
+emulation that calls out latent talent and tasks the energies to the utmost;
+where consciousness of independence gives a feeling of self-reliance
+unknown to the timid subjects of a despotism; where, in short, the
+government is made for man,--not as in Peru, where man seemed to be
+made only for the government.  The New World is the theatre in which
+these two political systems, so opposite in their character, have been
+carried into operation.  The empire of the Incas has passed away and left
+no trace.  The other great experiment is still going on,--the experiment
+which is to solve the problem, so long contested in the Old World, of the
+capacity of man for self-government.  Alas for humanity, if it should fail!
+
+The testimony of the Spanish conquerors is not uniform in respect to the
+favorable influence exerted by the Peruvian institutions on the character
+of the people.  Drinking and dancing are said to have been the pleassures
+to which they were immoderately addicted.  Like the slaves and serfs in
+other lands, whose position excluded them from more serious and
+ennobling occupations, they found a substitute in frivolous or sensual
+indulgence.  Lazy, luxurious, and licentious, are the epithets bestowed on
+them by one of those who saw them at the Conquest, but whose pen was
+not too friendly to the Indian.39  Yet the spirit of independence could
+hardly be strong in a people who had no interest in the soil, no personal
+rights to defend; and the facility with which they yielded to the Spanish
+invader--after every allowance for their comparative inferiority--argues a
+deplorable destitution of that patriotic feeling which holds life as little in
+comparison with freedom.
+
+But we must not judge too hardly of the unfortunate native, because he
+quailed before the civilization of the European.  We must not be
+insensible to the really great results that were achieved by the
+government of the Incas.  We must not forget, that, under their rule, the
+meanest of the people enjoyed a far greater degree of personal comfort,
+at least, a greater exemption from physical suffering, than was possessed
+by similar classes in other nations on the American continent,--greater,
+probably, than was possessed by these classes in most of the countries of
+feudal Europe.  Under their sceptre, the higher orders of the state had
+made advances in many of the arts that belong to a cultivated
+community.  The foundations of a regular government were laid, which,
+in an age of rapine, secured to its subjects the inestimable blessings of
+tranquillity and safety.  By the well-sustained policy of the Incas, the
+rude tribes of the forest were gradually drawn from their fastnesses, and
+gathered within the folds of civilization; and of these materials was
+constructed a flourishing and populous empire, such as was to be found
+in no other quarter of the American continent.  The defects of this
+government were those of overrefinement in legislation,--the last defects
+to have been looked for, certainly, in the American aborigines.
+
+
+Note.   I have not thought it necessary to swell this Introduction by an
+inquiry into the origin of the Peruvian civilization, like that appended to
+the history of the Mexican.   The Peruvian history doubtless suggests
+analogies with more than one nation in the East, some of which have
+been briefly adverted to in the preceding pages; although these analogies
+are adduced there not as evidence of a common origin, but as showing
+the coincidences which might naturally spring up among different
+nations under the same phase of civilization.  Such coincidences are
+neither so numerous nor so striking as those afforded by the Aztec
+history.  The correspondence presented by the astronomical science of
+the Mexicans is alone of more importance than all the rest, Yet the light
+of analogy, afforded by the institutions of the Incas, seems to point, as
+far as it goes, towards the same direction; and as the investigation could
+present but little substantially to confirm, and still less to confute, the
+views taken in the former disquisition, I have not thought it best to
+fatigue the reader with it.
+
+
+Two of the prominent authorities on whom I have relied in this
+Introductory portion of the work, are Juan de Sarmiento and the
+Licentiate Ondegardo.  Of the former I have been able to collect no
+information beyond what is afforded by his own writings.  In the title
+prefixed to his manuscript, he is styled President of the Council of the
+Indies, a post of high authority, which infers a weight of character in the
+party, and means of information, that entitle his opinions on colonial
+topics to great deference.
+
+These means of information were much enlarged by Sarmiento's visit to
+the colonies, during the administration of Gasca.  Having conceived the
+design of compiling a history of the ancient Peruvian institutions, he
+visited Cuzco, as he tells us, in 1550, and there drew from the natives
+themselves the materials for his narrative.  His position gave him access
+to the most authentic sources of knowledge, and from the lips of the Inca
+nobles, the best instructed of the conquered race, he gathered the
+traditions of their national history and institutions.  The quipus formed,
+as we have seen, an imperfect system of mnemonics, requiring constant
+attention, and much inferior to the Mexican hieroglyphics.  It was only
+by diligent instruction that they were made available to historical
+purposes; and this instruction was so far neglected after the Conquest,
+that the ancient annals of the country would have perished with the
+generation which was the sole depositary of them, had it not been for the
+efforts of a few intelligent scholars, like Sarmiento, who saw the
+importance, at this critical period, of cultivating an intercourse with the
+natives, and drawing from them their hidden stores of information.
+
+To give still further authenticity to his work, Sarmiento travelled over the
+country, examined the principal objects of interest with his own eyes,
+and thus verified the accounts of the natives as far as possible by
+personal observation.  The result of these labors was his work entitled,
+"Relacion de la sucesion y govierno de las Yngas Senores naturales que
+fueron de las Provincias del Peru y otras cosas tocantes a aquel Reyno,
+para el Iltmo.  Senor Dn Juan Sarmiento, Presidente del Consejo Rl de
+Indias."
+
+It is divided into chapters, and embraces about four hundred folio pages
+in manuscript.  The introductory portion of the work is occupied with the
+traditionary tales of the origin and early period of the Incas; teeming, as
+usual, in the antiquities of a barbarous people, with legendary fables of
+the most wild and monstrous character.  Yet these puerile conceptions
+afford an inexhaustible mine for the labors of the antiquarian, who
+endeavors to unravel the allegorical web which a cunning priesthood had
+devised as symbolical of those mysteries of creation that it was beyond
+their power to comprehend.  But Sarmiento happily confines himself to
+the mere statement of traditional fables, without the chimerical ambition
+to explain them.
+
+From this region of romance, Sarmiento passes to the institutions of the
+Peruvians, describes their ancient polity, their religion, their progress in
+the arts, especially agriculture; and presents, in short, an elaborate
+picture of the civilization which they reached under the Inca dynasty.
+This part of his work, resting, as it does, on the best authority, confirmed
+in many instances by his own observation, is of unquestionable value,
+and is written with an apparent respect for truth, that engages the
+confidence of the reader.  The concluding portion of the manuscript is
+occupied with the civil history of the country.  The reigns of the early
+Incas, which lie beyond the sober province of history, he despatches
+with commendable brevity.  But on the three last reigns, and fortunately
+of the greatest princes who occupied the Peruvian throne, he is more
+diffuse.  This was comparatively firm ground for the chronicler, for the
+events were too recent to be obscured by the vulgar legends that gather
+like moss round every incident of the older time.  His account stops with
+the Spanish invasion: for this story, Sarmiento felt, might be safely left to
+his contemporaries who acted a part in it, but whose taste and education
+had qualified them but indifferently for exploring the antiquities and
+social institutions of the natives.
+
+Sarmiento's work is composed in a simple, perspicuous style, without
+that ambition of rhetorical display too common with his countrymen.  He
+writes with honest candor, and while he does ample justice to the merits
+and capacity of the conquered races, he notices with indignation the
+atrocities of the Spaniards and the demoralizing tendency of the
+Conquest.  It may be thought, indeed, that he forms too high an estimate
+of the attainments of the nation under the Incas.  And it is not
+improbable, that, astonished by the vestiges it afforded of an original
+civilization, he became enamoured of his subject, and thus exhibited it in
+colors somewhat too glowing to the eye of the European.  But this was
+an amiable failing, not too largely shared by the stern Conquerors, who
+subverted the institutions of the country, and saw little to admire in it,
+save its gold.  It must be further admitted, that Sarmiento has no design
+to impose on his reader, and that he is careful to distinguish between
+what he reports on hearsay, and what on personal experience.  The
+Father of History himself does not discriminate between these two things
+more carefully.
+
+Neither is the Spanish historian to be altogether vindicated from the
+superstition which belongs to his time; and we often find him referring to
+the immediate interposition of Satan those effects which might quite as
+well be charged on the perverseness of man.  But this was common to the
+age, and to the wisest men in it; and it is too much to demand of a man to
+be wiser than his generation.  It is sufficient praise of Sarmiento, that, in
+an age when superstition was too often allied with fanaticism, he seems
+to have had no tincture of bigotry in his nature.  His heart opens with
+benevolent fulness to the unfortunate native; and his language, while it is
+not kindled into the religious glow of the missionary, is warmed by a
+generous ray of philanthropy that embraces the conquered, no less than
+the conquerors, as his brethren.
+
+Notwithstanding the great value of Sarmiento's work for the information
+it affords of Peru under the Incas, it is but little known, has been rarely
+consulted by historians, and still remains among the unpublished
+manuscripts which lie, like uncoined bullion, in the secret chambers of
+the Escurial.
+
+The other authority to whom I have alluded, the Licentiate Polo de
+Ondegardo, was a highly respectable jurist, whose name appears
+frequently in the affairs of Peru.  I find no account of the period when he
+first came into the country.  But he was there on the arrival of Gasca, and
+resided at Lima under the usurpation of Gonzalo Pizarro.  When the
+artful Cepeda endeavored to secure the signatures of the inhabitants to
+the instrument proclaiming the sovereignty of his chief, we find
+Ondegardo taking the lead among those of his profession in resisting it.
+On Gasca's arrival, he consented to take a commission in his army.  At
+the close of the rebellion he was made corregidor of La Plata, and
+subsequently of Cuzco, in which honorable station he seems to have
+remained several years.  In the exercise of his magisterial functions, he
+was brought into familiar intercourse with the natives, and had ample
+opportunity for studying their laws and ancient customs.  He conducted
+himself with such prudence and moderation, that he seems to have won
+the confidence not only of his countrymen but of the Indians; while the
+administration was careful to profit by his large experience in devising
+measures for the better government of the colony.
+
+The Relaciones, so often cited in this History, were prepared at the
+suggestion of the viceroys, the first being addressed to the Marques de
+Canete, in 1561, and the second, ten years later, to the Conde de Nieva.
+The two cover about as much ground as Sarmiento's manuscript; and the
+second memorial, written so long after the first, may be thought to
+intimate the advancing age of the author, in the greater carelessness and
+diffuseness of the composition.
+
+As these documents are in the nature of answers to the interrogatories
+propounded by government- the range of topics might seem to be limited
+within narrower bounds than the modern historian would desire.  These
+queries, indeed, had particular reference to the revenues, tributes,--the
+financial administration, in short, of the Incas; and on these obscure
+topics the communication of Ondegardo is particularly full.  But the
+enlightened curiosity of government embraced a far wider range; and the
+answers necessarily implied an acquaintance with the domestic policy of
+the Incas, with their laws, social habits, their religion, science, and arts,
+in short, with all that make up the elements of civilization.  Ondegardo's
+memoirs, therefore, cover the whole ground of inquiry for the
+philosophic historian.
+
+In the management of these various subjects, Ondegardo displays both
+acuteness and erudition.  He never shrinks from the discussion, however
+difficult; and while he gives his conclusions with an air of modesty, it is
+evident that he feels conscious of having derived his information through
+the most authentic channels.  He rejects the fabulous with disdain;
+decides on the probabilities of such facts as he relates, and candidly
+exposes the deficiency of evidence.  Far from displaying the simple
+enthusiasm of the well-meaning but credulous missionary, he proceeds
+with the cool and cautious step of a lawyer accustomed to the conflict of
+testimony and the uncertainty of oral tradition.  This circumspect manner
+of proceeding, and the temperate character of his judgments, entitle
+Ondegardo to much higher consideration as an authority than most of his
+countrymen who have treated of Indian antiquities.
+
+There runs through his writings a vein of humanity, shown particularly in
+his tenderness to the unfortunate natives, to whose ancient civilization he
+does entire, but not extravagant, justice; while, like Sarmiento, he
+fearlessly denounces the excesses of his own countrymen, and admits the
+dark reproach they had brought on the honor of the nation.  But while
+this censure forms the strongest ground for condemnation of the
+Conquerors, since it comes from the lips of a Spaniard like themselves, it
+proves, also, that Spain in this age of violence could send forth from her
+bosom wise and good men who refused to make common cause with the
+licentious rabble around them.  Indeed, proof enough is given in these
+very memorials of the unceasing efforts of the colonial government, from
+the good viceroy Mendoza downwards, to secure protection and the
+benefit of a mild legislation to the unfortunate natives.  But the iron
+Conquerors, and the colonist whose heart softened only to the touch of
+gold, presented a formidable barrier to improvement.
+
+Ondegardo's writings are honorably distinguished by freedom from that
+superstition which is the debasing characteristic of the times; a
+superstition shown in the easy credit given to the marvellous, and this
+equally whether in heathen or in Christian story; for in the former the eye
+of credulity could discern as readily the direct interposition of Satan, as
+in the latter the hand of the Almighty.  It is this ready belief in a spiritual
+agency, whether for good or for evil, which forms one of the most
+prominent features in the writings of the sixteenth century.  Nothing
+could be more repugnant to the true spirit of philosophical inquiry or
+more irreconcilable with rational criticism.  Far from betraying such
+weakness, Ondegardo writes in a direct and business-like manner,
+estimating things for what they are worth by the plain rule of common-
+sense.  He keeps the main object of his argument ever in view, without
+allowing himself, like the garrulous chroniclers of the period, to be led
+astray into a thousand rambling episodes that bewilder the reader and
+lead to nothing.
+
+Ondegardo's memoirs deal not only with the antiquities of the nation, but
+with its actual condition, and with the best means for redressing the
+manifold evils to which it was subjected under the stern rule of its
+conquerors.  His suggestions are replete with wisdom, and a merciful
+policy, that would reconcile the interests of government with the
+prosperity and happiness of its humblest vassal.  Thus, while his
+contemporaries gathered light from his suggestions as to the present
+condition of affairs, the historian of later times is no less indebted to him
+for information in respect to the past.  His manuscript was freely
+consulted by Herrera and the reader, as he peruses the pages of the
+learned historian of the Indies, is unconsciously enjoying the benefit of
+the researches of Ondegardo.  His valuable Relaciones thus had their
+uses for future generations, though they have never been admitted to the
+honors of the press.  The copy in my possession, like that of Sarmiento's
+manuscript, for which I am indebted to that industrious bibliographer,
+Mr.  Rich formed part of the magnificent collection of Lord
+Kingsborough,--a name ever to be held in honor by the scholar for his
+indefatigable efforts to illustrate the antiquities of America.
+
+Ondegardo's manuscripts, it should be remarked, do not bear his
+signature.  But they contain allusions to several actions of the writer's
+life, which identify them, beyond any reasonable doubt, as his
+production.  In the archives of Simancas is a duplicate copy of the first
+memorial, Relacion Primera, though, like the one in the Escurial, without
+its author's name.  Munoz assigns it to the pen of Gabriel de Rojas, a
+distinguished cavalier of the Conquest.  This is clearly an error; for the
+author of the manuscript identifies himself with Ondegardo, by
+declaring, in his reply to the fifth interrogatory, that he was the person
+who discovered the mummies of the Incas in Cuzco; an act expressly
+referred both by Acosta and Garcilasso, to the Licentiate Polo de
+Ondegardo, when corregidor of that city.--Should the savans of Madrid
+hereafter embrace among the publications of valuable manuscripts these
+Relaciones, they should be careful not to be led into an error here, by the
+authority of a critic like Munoz whose criticism is rarely at fault.
+
+
+
+History of the Conquest of Peru
+
+by William Hickling Prescott
+
+Book 2
+
+Discovery of Peru
+
+Chapter 1
+
+Ancient And Modern Science--Art Of Navigation--Maritime Discovery--
+Spirit Of The Spaniards--Possessions In The New World-
+Rumors Concerning Peru
+
+Whatever difference of opinion may exist as to the comparative merits of
+the ancients and the moderns in the arts, in poetry, eloquence, and all
+that depends on imagination, there can be no doubt that in science the
+moderns have eminently the advantage.  It could not be otherwise.  In the
+early ages of the world, as in the early period of life, there was the
+freshness of a morning existence, when the gloss of novelty was on every
+thing that met the eye; when the senses, not blunted by familiarity, were
+more keenly alive to the beautiful, and the mind, under the influence of a
+healthy and natural taste, was not perverted by philosophical theory;
+when the simple was necessarily connected with the beautiful, and the
+epicurean intellect, sated by repetition, had not begun to seek for
+stimulants in the fantastic and capricious.  The realms of fancy were all
+untravelled, and its fairest flowers had not been gathered, nor its beauties
+despoiled, by the rude touch of those who affected to cultivate them.
+The wing of genius was not bound to the earth by the cold and
+conventional rules of criticism, but was permitted to take its flight far
+and wide over the broad expanse of creation.
+
+But with science it was otherwise.  No genius could suffice for the
+creation of facts,--hardly for their detection.  They were to be gathered in
+by painful industry; to be collected from careful observation and
+experiment.  Genius, indeed, might arrange and combine these facts into
+new forms, and elicit from their combinations new and important
+inferences; and in this process might almost rival in originality the
+creations of the poet and the artist.  But if the processes of science are
+necessarily slow, they are sure.  There is no retrograde movement in her
+domain.  Arts may fade, the Muse become dumb, a moral lethargy may
+lock up the faculties of a nation, the nation itself may pass away and
+leave only the memory of its existence but the stores of science it has
+garnered up will endure for ever.  As other nations come upon the stage,
+and new forms of civilization arise.  the monuments of art and of
+imagination, productions of an older time, will lie as an obstacle in the
+path of improvement.  They cannot be built upon; they occupy the
+ground which the new aspirant for immortality would cover.  The whole
+work is to be gone over again, and other forms of beauty--whether higher
+or lower in the scale of merit, but unlike the past--must arise to take a
+place by their side.  But, in science, every stone that has been laid
+remains as the foundation for another.  The coming generation takes up
+the work where the preceding left it.  There is no retrograde movement.
+The individual nation may recede, but science still advances.  Every step
+that has been gained makes the ascent easier for those who come after.
+Every step carries the patient inquirer after truth higher and higher
+towards heaven, and unfolds to him, as he rises, a wider horizon, and
+new and more magnificent views of the universe.
+
+Geography partook of the embarrassments which belonged to every other
+department of science in the primitive ages of the world.  The knowledge
+of the earth could come only from an extended commerce; and
+commerce is founded on artificial wants or an enlightened curiosity,
+hardly compatible with the earlier condition of society.  In the infancy of
+nations, the different tribes, occupied with their domestic feuds, found
+few occasions to wander beyond the mountain chain or broad stream that
+formed the natural boundary of their domains.  The Phoenicians, it is
+true, are said to have sailed beyond the Pillars of Hercules, and to have
+launched out on the great western ocean.  But the adventures of these
+ancient voyagers belong to the mythic legends of antiquity, and ascend
+far beyond the domain of authentic record.
+
+The Greeks, quick and adventurous.  skilled in mechanical art, had many
+of the qualities of successful navigators, and within the limits of their
+little inland sea ranged fearlessly and freely.  But the conquests of
+Alexander did more to extend the limits of geographical science, and
+opened an acquaintance with the remote countries of the East.  Yet the
+march of the conqueror is slow in comparison with the movements of the
+unencumbered traveller.  The Romans were still less enterprising than
+the Greeks, were less commercial in their character.  The contributions to
+geographical knowledge grew with the slow acquisitions of empire.  But
+their system was centralizing in its tendency; and instead of taking an
+outward direction and looking abroad for discovery, every part of the
+vast imperial domain turned towards the capital at its head and central
+point of attraction.  The Roman conqueror pursued his path by land, not
+by sea.  But the water is the great highway between nations, the true
+element for the discoverer.  The Romans were not a maritime people.  At
+the close of their empire, geographical science could hardly be said to
+extend farther than to an acquaintance with Europe,--and this not its
+more northern division,--together with a portion of Asia and Africa;
+while they had no other conception of a world beyond the western waters
+than was to be gathered from the fortunate prediction of the poet.1
+
+Then followed the Middle Ages; the dark ages, as they are called, though
+in their darkness were matured those seeds of knowledge, which, in
+fulness of time, were to spring up into new and more glorious forms of
+civilization.  The organization of society became more favorable to
+geographical science.  Instead of one overgrown, lethargic empire,
+oppressing every thing by its colossal weight, Europe was broken up into
+various independent communities, many of which, adopting liberal forms
+of government, felt all the impulses natural to freemen; and the petty
+republics on the Mediterranean and the Baltic sent forth their swarms of
+seamen in a profitable commerce, that knit together the different
+countries scattered along the great European waters.
+
+But the improvements which took place in the art of navigation, the more
+accurate measurement of time, and, above all, the discovery of the
+polarity of the magnet, greatly advanced the cause of geographical
+knowledge.  Instead of creeping timidly along the coast, or limiting his
+expeditions to the narrow basins of inland waters, the voyager might now
+spread his sails boldly on the deep, secure of a guide to direct his bark
+unerringly across the illimitable waste.  The consciousness of this power
+led thought to travel in a new direction; and the mariner began to look
+with earnestness for another path to the Indian Spice-islands than that by
+which the Eastern caravans had traversed the continent of Asia.  The
+nations on whom the spirit of enterprise, at this crisis, naturally
+descended, were Spain and Portugal, placed, as they were, on the
+outposts of the European continent, commanding the great theatre of
+future discovery.
+
+Both countries felt the responsibility of their new position.  The crown of
+Portugal was constant in its efforts, through the fifteenth century, to find
+a passage round the southern point of Africa into the Indian Ocean;
+though so timid was the navigation, that every fresh headland became a
+formidable barrier; and it was not till the latter part of the century that
+the adventurous Diaz passed quite round the Stormy Cape, as he termed
+it, but which John the Second, with happier augury, called the Cape of
+Good Hope.  But, before Vasco de Gama had availed himself of this
+discovery to spread his sails in the Indian seas, Spain entered on her
+glorious career, and sent Columbus across the western waters.
+
+The object of the great navigator was still the discovery of a route to
+India, but by the west instead of the east.  He had no expectation of
+meeting with a continent in his way, and, after repeated voyages, he
+remained in his original error, dying, as is well known, in the conviction
+that it was the eastern shore of Asia which he had reached.  It was the
+same object which directed the nautical enterprises of those who
+followed in the Admiral's track; and the discovery of a strait into the
+Indian Ocean was the burden of every order from the government, and
+the design of many an expedition to different points of the new continent,
+which seemed to stretch its leviathan length along from one pole to the
+other.  The discovery of an Indian passage is the true key to the maritime
+movements of the fifteenth and the first half of the sixteenth centuries.  It
+was the great leading idea that gave the character to the enterprise of the
+age.
+
+It is not easy at this time to comprehend the impulse given to Europe by
+the discovery of America.  It was not the gradual acquisition of some
+border territory, a province or a kingdom that had been gained, but a
+New World that was now thrown open to the Europeans.  The races of
+animals, the mineral treasures, the vegetable forms, and the varied
+aspects of nature, man in the different phases of civilization, filled the
+mind with entirely new sets of ideas, that changed the habitual current of
+thought and stimulated it to indefinite conjecture.  The eagerness to
+explore the wonderful secrets of the new hemisphere became so active,
+that the principal cities of Spain were, in a manner, depopulated, as
+emigrants thronged one after another to take their chance upon the
+deep.2  It was a world of romance that was thrown open; for, whatever
+might be the luck of the adventurer, his reports on his return were tinged
+with a coloring of romance that stimulated still higher the sensitive
+fancies of his countrymen, and nourished the chimerical sentiments of an
+age of chivalry.  They listened with attentive ears to tales of Amazons
+which seemed to realize the classic legends of antiquity, to stories of
+Patagonian giants, to flaming pictures of an El Dorado, where the sands
+sparkled with gems, and golden pebbles as large as birds' eggs were
+dragged in nets out of the rivers.
+
+Yet that the adventurers were no impostors, but dupes, too easy dupes of
+their own credulous fancies, is shown by the extravagant character of
+their enterprises; by expeditions in search of the magical Fountain of
+Health, of the golden Temple of Doboyba, of the golden sepulchres of
+Zenu; for gold was ever floating before their distempered vision, and the
+name of Castilla del Oro, Golden Castile, the most unhealthy and
+unprofitable region of the Isthmus, held out a bright promise to the
+unfortunate settler, who too frequently, instead of gold, found there only
+his grave.
+
+In this realm of enchantment, all the accessories served to maintain the
+illusion.  The simple natives, with their defenceless bodies and rude
+weapons, were no match for the European warrior armed to the teeth in
+mail.  The odds were as great as those found in any legend of chivalry,
+where the lance of the good knight overturned hundreds at a touch.  The
+perils that lay in the discoverer's path, and the sufferings he had to
+sustain, were scarcely inferior to those that beset the knight-errant.
+Hunger and thirst and fatigue, the deadly effluvia of the morass with its
+swarms of venomous insects, the cold of mountain snows, and the
+scorching sun of the tropics, these were the lot of every cavalier who
+came to seek his fortunes in the New World.  It was the reality of
+romance.  The life of the Spanish adventurer was one chapter more--and
+not the least remarkable --in the chronicles of knight-errantry.
+
+The character of the warrior took somewhat of the exaggerated coloring
+shed over his exploits.  Proud and vainglorious, swelled with lofty
+anticipations of his destiny, and an invincible confidence in his own
+resources, no danger could appall and no toil could tire him.  The greater
+the danger, indeed, the higher the charm; for his soul revelled in
+excitement, and the enterprise without peril wanted that spur of romance
+which was necessary to rouse his energies into action.  Yet in the motives
+of action meaner influences were strangely mingled with the loftier, the
+temporal with the spiritual.  Gold was the incentive and the recompense,
+and in the pursuit of it his inflexible nature rarely hesitated as to the
+means.  His courage was sullied with cruelty, the cruelty that flowed
+equally--strange as it may seem--from his avarice and his religion;
+religion as it was understood in that age,--the religion of the Crusader.  It
+was the convenient cloak for a multitude of sins, which covered them
+even from himself.  The Castilian, too proud for hypocrisy, committed
+more cruelties in the name of religion than were ever practised by the
+pagan idolater or the fanatical Moslem.  The burning of the infidel was a
+sacrifice acceptable to Heaven, and the conversion of those who survived
+amply atoned for the foulest offences.  It is a melancholy and mortifying
+consideration, that the most uncompromising spirit of intolerance--the
+spirit of the Inquisitor at home, and of the Crusader abroad-should have
+emanated from a religion which preached peace upon earth and good-
+will towards man!
+
+What a contrast did these children of Southern Europe present to the
+Anglo-Saxon races who scattered themselves along the great northern
+division of the western hemisphere! For the principle of action with these
+latter was not avarice, nor the more specious pretext of proselytism; but
+independence---independence religious and political.  To secure this,
+they were content to earn a bare subsistence by a life of frugality and toil.
+They asked nothing from the soil, but the reasonable returns of their own
+labor.  No golden visions threw a deceitful halo around their path and
+beckoned them onwards through seas of blood to the subversion of an
+unoffending dynasty.  They were content with the slow but steady
+progress of their social polity.  They patiently endured the privations of
+the wilderness, watering the tree of liberty with their tears and with the
+sweat of their brow, till it took deep root in the land and sent up its
+branches high towards the heavens; while the communities of the
+neighboring continent, shooting up into the sudden splendors of a
+tropical vegetation, exhibited, even in their prime, the sure symptoms of
+decay.
+
+It would seem to have been especially ordered by Providence that the
+discovery of the two great divisions of the American hemisphere should
+fall to the two races best fitted to conquer and colonize them.  Thus the
+northern section was consigned to the Anglo-Saxon race, whose orderly,
+industrious habits found an ample field for development under its colder
+skies and on its more rugged soil; while the southern portion, with its
+rich tropical products and treasures of mineral wealth, held out the most
+attractive bait to invite the enterprise of the Spaniard.  How different
+might have been the result, if the bark of Columbus had taken a more
+northerly direction, as he at one time meditated, and landed its band of
+adventurers on the shores of what is now Protestant America!
+
+Under the pressure of that spirit of nautical enterprise which filled the
+maritime communities of Europe in the sixteenth century, the whole
+extent of the mighty continent, from Labrador to Terra del Fuego, was
+explored in less than thirty years after its discovery; and in 1521, the
+Portuguese Maghellan, sailing under the Spanish flag, solved the
+problem of the strait, and found a westerly way to the long sought Spice-
+islands of India,--greatly to the astonishment of the Portuguese, who,
+sailing from the opposite direction, there met their rivals, face to face, at
+the antipodes.  But while the whole eastern coast of the American
+continent had been explored, and the central portion of it colonized,--
+even after the brilliant achievement of the Mexican conquest,---the veil
+was not yet raised that hung over the golden shores of the Pacific.
+
+Floating rumors had reached the Spaniards, from time to time, of
+countries in the far west, teeming with the metal they so much coveted;
+but the first distinct notice of Peru was about the year 1511, when Vasco
+Nunez de Balboa, the discoverer of the Southern Sea, was weighing
+some gold which he had collected from the natives.  A young barbarian
+chieftain, who was present, struck the scales with his fist, and, scattering
+the glittering metal around the apartment, exclaimed,---"If this is what
+you prize so much that you are willing to leave your distant homes, and
+risk even life itself for it, I can tell you of a land where they eat and drink
+out of golden vessels, and gold is as cheap as iron is with you." It was
+not long after this startling intelligence that Balboa achieved the
+formidable adventure of scaling the mountain rampart of the Isthmus
+which divides the two mighty oceans from each other; when, armed with
+sword and buckler, he rushed into the waters of the Pacific, and cried
+out, in the true chivalrous vein, that "he claimed this unknown sea with
+all that it contained for the king of Castile, and that he would make good
+the claim against all, Christian or infidel, who dared to gainsay it!"3  All
+the broad continent and sunny isles washed by the waters of the Southern
+Ocean! Little did the bold cavalier comprehend the full import of his
+magnificent vaunt.
+
+On this spot he received more explicit tidings of the Peruvian empire,
+heard proofs recounted of its civilization, and was shown drawings of the
+llama, which, to the European eye, seemed a species of the Arabian
+camel.  But, although he steered his caravel for these golden realms, and
+even pushed his discoveries some twenty leagues south of the Gulf of St.
+Michael, the adventure was not reserved for him.  The illustrious
+discoverer was doomed to fall a victim to that miserable jealousy with
+which a little spirit regards the achievements of a great one.
+
+The Spanish colonial domain was broken up into a number of petty
+governments, which were dispensed sometimes to court favorites,
+though, as the duties of the post, at this early period, were of an arduous
+nature, they were more frequently reserved for men of some practical
+talent and enterprise.  Columbus, by virtue of his original contract with
+the Crown, had jurisdiction over the territories discovered by himself,
+embracing some of the principal islands, and a few places on the
+continent.  This jurisdiction differed from that of other functionaries,
+inasmuch as it was hereditary; a privilege found in the end too
+considerable for a subject, and commuted, therefore, for a title and a
+pension.  These colonial governments were multiplied with the increase
+of empire, and by the year 1524, the period at which our narrative
+properly commences, were scattered over the islands, along the Isthmus
+of Darien, the broad tract of Terra Firma, and the recent conquests of
+Mexico.  Some of these governments were of no great extent.  Others,
+like that of Mexico, were of the dimensions of a kingdom; and most had
+an indefinite range for discovery assigned to them in their immediate
+neighborhood, by which each of the petty potentates might enlarge his
+territorial sway, and enrich his followers and himself.  This politic
+arrangement best served the ends of the Crown, by affording a perpetual
+incentive to the spirit of enterprise.  Thus living on their own little
+domains at a long distance from the mother country, these military rulers
+held a sort of vice-regal sway, and too frequently exercised it in the most
+oppressive and tyrannical manner; oppressive to the native, and
+tyrannical towards their own followers.  It was the natural consequence,
+when men, originally low in station, and unprepared by education for
+office, were suddenly called to the possession of a brief, but in its nature
+irresponsible, authority.  It was not till after some sad experience of these
+results, that measures were taken to hold these petty tyrants in check by
+means of regular tribunals, or Royal Audiences, as they were termed,
+which, composed of men of character and learning, might interpose the
+arm of the law, or, at least, the voice of remonstrance, for the protection
+of both colonist and native.
+
+Among the colonial governors, who were indebted for their situation to
+their rank at home, was Don Pedro Arias de Avila, or Pedrarias, as
+usually called.  He was married to a daughter of Dona Beatriz de
+Bobadilla, the celebrated Marchioness of Moya, best known as the friend
+of Isabella the Catholic.  He was a man of some military experience and
+considerable energy of character.  But, as it proved, he was of a
+malignant temper; and the base qualities, which might have passed
+unnoticed in the obscurity of private life, were made conspicuous, and
+perhaps created in some measure, by sudden elevation to power; as the
+sunshine, which operates kindly on a generous soil, and stimulates it to
+production, calls forth from the unwholesome marsh only foul and
+pestilent vapors.  This man was placed over the territory of Castilla del
+Oro, the ground selected by Nunez de Balboa for the theatre of his
+discoveries.  Success drew on this latter the jealousy of his superior, for
+it was crime enough in the eyes of Pedrarias to deserve too well.  The
+tragical history of this cavalier belongs to a period somewhat earlier than
+that with which we are to be occupied.  It has been traced by abler hands
+than mine, and, though brief, forms one of the most brilliant passages in
+the annals of the American conquerors.4
+
+But though Pedrarias was willing to cut short the glorious career of his
+rival, he was not insensible to the important consequences of his
+discoveries.  He saw at once the unsuitableness of Darien for prosecuting
+expeditions on the Pacific, and, conformably to the original suggestion of
+Balboa, in 1519, he caused his rising capital to be transferred from the
+shores of the Atlantic to the ancient site of Panama, some distance east of
+the present city of that name.5  This most unhealthy spot, the cemetery of
+many an unfortunate colonist, was favorably situated for the great object
+of maritime enterprise; and the port, from its central position, afforded
+the best point of departure for expeditions, whether to the north or south,
+along the wide range of undiscovered coast that lined the Southern
+Ocean.  Yet in this new and more favorable position, several years were
+suffered to elapse before the course of discovery took the direction of
+Peru.  This was turned exclusively towards the north, or rather west, in'
+obedience to the orders of government, which had ever at heart the
+detection of a strait that, as was supposed, must intersect some part or
+other of the long-extended Isthmus.  Armament after armament was
+fitted out with this chimerical object; and Pedrarias saw his domain
+extending every year farther and farther without deriving any
+considerable advantage from his acquisitions.  Veragua, Costa Rica,
+Nicaragua, were successively occupied; and his brave cavaliers forced a
+way across forest and mountain and warlike tribes of savages, till, at
+Honduras, they came in collision with the companions of Cortes, the
+Conquerors of Mexico, who had descended from the great northern
+plateau on the regions of Central America, and thus completed the
+survey of this wild and mysterious land.
+
+It was not till 1522 that a regular expedition was despatched in the
+direction south of Panama, under the conduct of Pascual de Andagoya, a
+cavalier of much distinction in the colony.  But that officer penetrated
+only to the Puerto de Pinas, the limit of Balboa's discoveries, when the
+bad state of his health compelled him to reembark and abandon his
+enterprise at its commencement.6
+
+Yet the floating rumors of the wealth and civilization of a mighty nation
+at the South were continually reaching the ears and kindling the dreamy
+imaginations of the colonists; and it may seem astonishing that an
+expedition in that direction should have been so long deferred.  But the
+exact position and distance of this fairy realm were matter of conjecture.
+The long tract of intervening country was occupied by rude and warlike
+races; and the little experience which the Spanish navigators had already
+had of the neighboring coast and its inhabitants, and still more, the
+tempestuous character of the seas--for their expeditions had taken place
+at the most unpropitious seasons of the year--enhanced the apparent
+difficulties of the undertaking, and made even their stout hearts shrink
+from it.
+
+Such was the state of feeling in the little community of Panama for
+several years after its foundation.  Meanwhile, the dazzling conquest of
+Mexico gave a new impulse to the ardor of discovery, and, in 1524, three
+men were found in the colony, in whom the spirit of adventure triumphed
+over every consideration of difficulty and danger that obstructed the
+prosecution of the enterprise.  One among them was selected as fitted by
+his character to conduct it to a successful issue.  That man was Francisco
+Pizarro; and as he held the same conspicuous post in the Conquest of
+Peru that was occupied by Cortes in that of Mexico it will be necessary
+to take a brief review of his early history.
+
+
+
+Book 2
+
+Chapter 2
+
+Francisco Pizarro--His Early History--First Expedition To The South--
+Distresses Of The Voyagers--Sharp Encounters--Return To Panama--
+Almagro's Expedition
+
+1524-1525
+
+Francisco Pizarro was born at Truxillo, a city of Estremadura, in Spain.
+The period of his birth is uncertain; but probably it was not far from
+1471.1  He was an illegitimate child, and that his parents should not have
+taken pains to perpetuate the date of his birth is not surprising.  Few care
+to make a particular record of their transgressions.  His father, Gonzalo
+Pizarro, was a colonel of infantry, and served with some distinction in
+the Italian campaigns under the Great Captain, and afterwards in the
+wars of Navarre.  His mother, named Francisca Gonzales, was a person
+of humble condition in the town of Truxillo.2
+
+But little is told of Francisco's early years, and that little not always
+deserving of credit.  According to some, he was deserted by both his
+parents, and left as a foundling at the door of one of the principal
+churches of the city.  It is even said that he would have perished, had he
+not been nursed by a sow.3  This is a more discreditable fountain of
+supply than that assigned to the infant Romulus.  The early history of
+men who have made their names famous by deeds in after-life, like the
+early history of nations, affords a fruitful field for invention.
+
+It seems certain that the young Pizarro received little care from either of
+his parents, and was suffered to grow up as nature dictated.  He was
+neither taught to read nor write, and his principal occupation was that of
+a swineherd.  But this torpid way of life did not suit the stirring spirit of
+Pizarro, as he grew older, and listened to the tales, widely circulated and
+so captivating to a youthful fancy, of the New World.  He shared in the
+popular enthusiasm, and availed himself of a favorable moment to
+abandon his ignoble charge, and escape to Seville, the port where the
+Spanish adventurers embarked to seek their fortunes in the West.  Few of
+them could have turned their backs on their native land with less cause
+for regret than Pizarro.4
+
+In what year this important change in his destiny took place we are not
+informed.  The first we hear of him in the New World is at the island of
+Hispaniola, in 1510, where he took part in the expedition to Uraba in
+Terra Firma, under Alonzo de Ojeda, a cavalier whose character and
+achievements find no parallel but in the pages of Cervantes.  Hernando
+Cortes, whose mother was a Pizarro, and related, it is said, to the father
+of Francis, was then in St.  Domingo, and prepared to accompany
+Ojeda's expedition, but was prevented by a temporary lameness.  Had he
+gone, the fall of the Aztec empire might have been postponed for some
+time longer, and the sceptre of Montezuma have descended in peace to
+his posterity.  Pizarro shared in the disastrous fortunes of Ojeda's colony,
+and, by his discretion, obtained so far the confidence of his commander,
+as to be left in charge of the settlement, when the latter returned for
+supplies to the islands.  The lieutenant continued at his perilous post for
+nearly two months, waiting deliberately until death should have thinned
+off the colony sufficiently to allow the miserable remnant to be
+embarked in the single small vessel that remained to it.5
+
+After this, we find him associated with Balboa, the discoverer of the
+Pacific, and cooperating with him in establishing the settlement at
+Darien.  He had the glory of accompanying this gallant cavalier in his
+terrible march across the mountains, and of being among the first
+Europeans, therefore, whose eyes were greeted with the long-promised
+vision of the Southern Ocean.
+
+After the untimely death of his commander, Pizarro attached himself to
+the fortunes of Pedrarias, and was employed by that governor in several
+military expeditions, which, if they afforded nothing else, gave him the
+requisite training for the perils and privations that lay in the path of the
+future Conqueror of Peru.
+
+In 1515, he was selected, with another cavalier named Morales, to cross
+the Isthmus and traffic with the natives on the shores of the Pacific.  And
+there, while engaged in collecting his booty of gold and pearls from the
+neighbouring islands, as his eye ranged along the shadowy line of coast
+till it faded in the distance, his imagination may have been first fired with
+the idea of, one day, attempting the conquest of the mysterious regions
+beyond the mountains.  On the removal of the seat of government across
+the Isthmus to Panama, Pizarro accompanied Pedrarias, and his name
+became conspicuous among the cavaliers who extended the line of
+conquest to the north over the martial tribes of Veragua.  But all these
+expeditions, whatever glory they may have brought him, were productive
+of very little gold; and, at the age of fifty, the captain Pizarro found
+himself in possession only of a tract of unhealthy land in the
+neighborhood of the capital, and of such repartimientos of the natives as
+were deemed suited to his military services.6  The New World was a
+lottery, where the great prizes were so few that the odds were much
+against the player; yet in the game he was content to stake health,
+fortune, and, too often, his fair fame.
+
+Such was Pizarro's situation when, in 1522, Andagoya returned from his
+unfinished enterprise to the south of Panama, bringing back with him
+more copious accounts than any hitherto received of the opulence and
+grandeur of the countries that lay beyond.7  It was at this time, too, that
+the splendid achievements of Cortes made their impression on the public
+mind, and gave a new impulse to the spirit of adventure.  The southern
+expeditions became a common topic of speculation among the colonists
+of Panama.  But the region of gold, as it lay behind the mighty curtain of
+the Cordilleras, was still veiled in obscurity.  No idea could be formed of
+its actual distance; and the hardships and difficulties encountered by the
+few navigators who had sailed in that direction gave a gloomy character
+to the undertaking, which had hitherto deterred the most daring from
+embarking in it.  There is no evidence that Pizarro showed any particular
+alacrity in the cause.  Nor were his own funds such as to warrant any
+expectation of success without great assistance from others.  He found
+this in two individuals of the colony, who took too important a part in the
+subsequent transactions not to be particularly noticed.
+
+One of them, Diego de Almagro, was a soldier of fortune somewhat
+older, it seems probable, than Pizarro; though little is known of his birth,
+and even the place of it is disputed.  It is supposed to have been the town
+of Almagro in New Castile, whence his own name, for want of a better
+source was derived; for, like Pizarro, he was a foundling.8  Few
+particulars are known of him till the present period of our history; for he
+was one of those whom the working of turbulent times first throws upon
+the surface,--less fortunate, perhaps, than if left in their original
+obscurity.  In his military career, Almagro had earned the reputation of a
+gallant soldier.  He was frank and liberal in his disposition, somewhat
+hasty and ungovernable in his passions, but, like men of a sanguine
+temperament, after the first sallies had passed away, not difficult to be
+appeased.  He had, in short, the good qualities and the defects incident to
+an honest nature, not improved by the discipline of early education or
+self-control.
+
+The other member of the confederacy was Hernando de Luque, a
+Spanish ecclesiastic, who exercised the functions of vicar at Panama, and
+had formerly filled the office of schoolmaster in the Cathedral of Darien.
+He seems to have been a man of singular prudence and knowledge of the
+world; and by his respectable qualities had acquired considerable
+influence in the little community to which he belonged, as well as the
+control of funds, which made his cooperation essential to the success of
+the present enterprise.
+
+It was arranged among the three associates, that the two cavaliers should
+contribute their little stock towards defraying the expenses of the
+armament, but by far the greater part of the funds was to be furnished by
+Luque.  Pizarro was to take command of the expedition, and the business
+of victualling and equipping the vessels was assigned to Almagro.  The
+associates found no difficulty in obtaining the consent of the governor to
+their undertaking.  After the return of Andagoya, he had projected
+another expedition, but the officer to whom it was to be intrusted died.
+Why he did not prosecute his original purpose, and commit the affair to
+an experienced captain like Pizarro, does not appear.  He was probably
+not displeased that the burden of the enterprise should be borne by
+others, so long as a good share of the profits went into his own coffers.
+This he did not overlook in his stipulations.9
+
+Thus fortified with the funds of Luque, and the consent of the governor,
+Almagro was not slow to make preparations for the voyage.  Two small
+vessels were purchased, the larger of which had been originally built by
+Balboa, for himself, with a view to this same expedition.  Since his
+death, it had lain dismantled in the harbor of Panama.  It was now
+refitted as well as circumstances would permit, and put in order for sea,
+while the stores and provisions were got on board with an alacrity which
+did more credit, as the event proved, to Almagro's zeal than to his
+forecast.
+
+There was more difficulty in obtaining the necessary complement of
+hands; for a general feeling of distrust had gathered round expeditions in
+this direction, which could not readily be overcome.  But there were
+many idle hangers-on in the colony, who had come out to mend their
+fortunes, and were willing to take their chance of doing so, however
+desperate.  From such materials as these, Almagro assembled a body of
+somewhat more than a hundred men;10 and every thing being ready,
+Pizarro assumed the command, and, weighing anchor, took his departure
+from the little port of Panama, about the middle of November, 1524..
+Almagro was to follow in a second vessel of inferior size, as soon as it
+could be fitted out.11
+
+The time of year was the most unsuitable that could have been selected
+for the voyage; for it was the rainy season, when the navigation to the
+south, impeded by contrary winds, is made doubly dangerous by the
+tempests that sweep over the coast.  But this was not understood by the
+adventurers.  After touching at the Isle of Pearls, the frequent resort of
+navigators, at a few leagues' distance from Panama, Pizarro held his way
+across the Gulf of St.  Michael, and steered almost due south for the
+Puerto de Pinas, a headland in the province of Biruquete, which marked
+the limit of Andagoya's voyage.  Before his departure, Pizarro had
+obtained all the information which he could derive from that officer in
+respect to the country, and the route he was to follow.  But the cavalier's
+own experience had been too limited to enable him to be of much
+assistance.
+
+Doubling the Puerto de Pinas, the little vessel entered the river Biru, the
+misapplication of which name is supposed by some to have given rise to
+that of the empire of the Incas.12  After sailing up this stream for a
+couple of leagues, Pizarro came to anchor, and disembarking his whole
+force except the sailors, proceeded at the head of it to explore the
+country.  The land spread out into a vast swamp, where the heavy rains
+had settled in pools of stagnant water, and the muddy soil afforded no
+footing to the traveller.  This dismal morass was fringed with woods,
+through whose thick and tangled undergrowth they found it difficult to
+penetrate and emerging from them, they came out on a hilly country, so
+rough and rocky in its character, that their feet were cut to the bone, and
+the weary soldier, encumbered with his heavy mail or thick-padded
+doublet of cotton, found it difficult to drag one foot after the other.  The
+heat at times was oppressive; and, fainting with toil and famished for
+want of food, they sank down on the earth from mere exhaustion.  Such
+was the ominous commencement of the expedition to Peru.
+
+Pizarro, however, did not lose heart.  He endeavored to revive the spirits
+of his men, and besought them not to be discouraged by difficulties
+which a brave heart would be sure to overcome, reminding them of the
+golden prize which awaited those who persevered.  Yet it was obvious
+that nothing was to be gained by remaining longer in this desolate region.
+Returning to their vessel, therefore, it was suffered to drop down the
+river and proceed along its southern course on the great ocean.
+
+After coasting a few leagues, Pizarro anchored off a place not very
+inviting in its appearance, where he took in a supply of wood and water.
+Then, stretching more towards the open sea, he held on in the same
+direction towards the south.  But in this he was baffled by a succession of
+heavy tempests, accompanied with such tremendous peals of thunder and
+floods of rain as are found only in the terrible storms of the tropics.  The
+sea was lashed into fury, and, swelling into mountain billows, threatened
+every moment to overwhelm the crazy little bark, which opened at every
+seam.  For ten days the unfortunate voyagers were tossed about by the
+pitiless elements, and it was only by incessant exertions--the exertions of
+despair--that they preserved the ship from foundering.  To add to their
+calamities, their provisions began to fail, and they were short of water, of
+which they had been furnished only with a small number of casks; for
+Almagro had counted on their recruiting their scanty supplies, from time
+to time, from the shore.  Their meat was wholly consumed, and they
+were reduced to the wretched allowance of two ears of Indian corn a day
+for each man.
+
+Thus harassed by hunger and the elements, the battered voyagers were
+too happy to retrace their course and regain the port where they had last
+taken in supplies of wood and water.  Yet nothing could be more
+unpromising than the aspect of the country.  It had the same character of
+low, swampy soil, that distinguished the former landing-place; while
+thick-matted forests, of a depth which the eye could not penetrate,
+stretched along the coast to an interminable length.  It was in vain that
+the wearied Spaniards endeavored to thread the mazes of this tangled
+thicket, where the creepers and flowering vines, that shoot up luxuriant
+in a hot and humid atmosphere, had twined themselves round the huge
+trunks of the forest-trees, and made a network that could be opened only
+with the axe.  The rain, in the mean time, rarely slackened, and the
+ground, strewed with leaves and saturated with moisture, seemed to slip
+away beneath their feet.
+
+Nothing could be more dreary and disheartening than the aspect of these
+funereal forests; where the exhalations from the overcharged surface of
+the ground poisoned the air, and seemed to allow no life, except that,
+indeed, of myriads of insects, whose enamelled wings glanced to and fro,
+like sparks of fire, in every opening of the woods.  Even the brute
+creation appeared instinctively to have shunned the fatal spot, and
+neither beast nor bird of any description was seen by the wanderers.
+Silence reigned unbroken in the heart of these dismal solitudes; at least,
+the only sounds that could be heard were the plashing of the rain-drops
+on the leaves, and the tread of the forlorn adventurers.13
+
+Entirely discouraged by the aspect of the country, the Spaniards began to
+comprehend that they had gained nothing by changing their quarters
+from sea to shore, and they felt the most serious apprehensions of
+perishing from famine in a region which afforded nothing but such
+unwholesome berries as they could pick up here and there in the woods.
+They loudly complained of their hard lot, accusing their commander as
+the author of all their troubles, and as deluding them with promises of a
+fairy land, which seemed to recede in proportion as they advanced.  It
+was of no use, they said, to contend against fate, and it was better to take
+their chance of regaining the port of Panama in time to save their lives,
+than to wait where they were to die of hunger.
+
+But Pizarro was prepared to encounter much greater evils than these,
+before returning to Panama, bankrupt in credit, an object of derision as a
+vainglorious dreamer, who had persuaded others to embark in an
+adventure which he had not the courage to carry through himself.  The
+present was his only chance.  To return would be ruin.  He used every
+argument, therefore, that mortified pride or avarice could suggest to turn
+his followers from their purpose; represented to them that these were the
+troubles that necessarily lay in the path of the discoverer; and called to
+mind the brilliant successes of their countrymen in other quarters, and
+the repeated reports, which they had themselves received, of the rich
+regions along the coast, of which it required only courage and constancy
+on their part to become the masters.  Yet, as their present exigencies
+were pressing, he resolved to send back the vessel to the Isle of Pearls, to
+lay in a fresh stock of provisions for his company, which might enable
+them to go forward with renewed confidence.  The distance was not
+great, and in a few days they would all be relieved from their perilous
+position.  The officer detached on this service was named Montenegro;
+and taking with him nearly half the company, after receiving Pizarro's
+directions, he instantly weighed anchor, and steered for the Isle of Pearls.
+
+On the departure of his vessel, the Spanish commander made an attempt
+to explore the country, and see if some Indian settlement might not be
+found, where he could procure refreshments for his followers.  But his
+efforts were vain, and no trace was visible of a human dwelling; though,
+in the dense and impenetrable foliage of the equatorial regions, the
+distance of a few rods might suffice to screen a city from observation.
+The only means of nourishment left to the unfortunate adventurers were
+such shell-fish as they occasionally picked up on the shore, or the bitter
+buds of the palm-tree, and such berries and unsavory herbs as grew wild
+in the woods.  Some of these were so poisonous, that the bodies of those
+who ate them swelled up and were tormented with racking pains.  Others,
+preferring famine to this miserable diet, pined away from weakness and
+actually died of starvation.  Yet their resolute leader strove to maintain
+his own cheerfulness and to keep up the drooping spirits of his men.  He
+freely shared with them his scanty stock of provisions, was unwearied in
+his endeavors to procure them sustenance, tended the sick, and ordered
+barracks to be constructed for their accommodation, which might, at
+least, shelter them from the drenching storms of the season.  By this
+ready sympathy with his followers in their sufferings, he obtained an
+ascendency over their rough natures, which the assertion of authority, at
+least in the present extremity, could never have secured to him.
+
+Day after day, week after week, had now passed away, and no tidings
+were heard of the vessel that was to bring relief to the wanderers.  In vain
+did they strain their eyes over the distant waters to catch a glimpse of
+their coming friends.  Not a speck was to be seen in the blue distance,
+where the canoe of the savage dared not venture, and the sail of the white
+man was not yet spread.  Those who had borne up bravely at first now
+gave way to despondency, as they felt themselves abandoned by their
+countrymen on this desolate shore.  They pined under that sad feeling
+which "maketh the heart sick." More than twenty of the little band had
+already died, and the survivors seemed to be rapidly following.14
+
+At this crisis reports were brought to Pizarro of a light having been seen
+through a distant opening in the woods.  He hailed the tidings with
+eagerness, as intimating the existence of some settlement in the
+neighborhood; and, putting himself at the head of a small party, went in
+the direction pointed out, to reconnoitre.  He was not disappointed, and,
+after extricating himself from a dense wilderness of underbrush and
+foliage, he emerged into an open space, where a small Indian village was
+planted.  The timid inhabitants, on the sudden apparition of the strangers,
+quitted their huts in dismay; and the famished Spaniards, rushing in,
+eagerly made themselves masters of their contents.  These consisted of
+different articles of food, chiefly maize and cocoanuts.  The supply,
+though small, was too seasonable not to fill them with rapture.
+
+The astonished natives made no attempt at resistance.  But, gathering
+more confidence as no violence was offered to their persons, they drew
+nearer the white men, and inquired, "Why they did not stay at home and
+till their own lands, instead of roaming about to rob others who had
+never harmed them?"15  Whatever may have been their opinion as to
+the question of right, the Spaniards, no doubt, felt then that it would have
+been wiser to do so.  But the savages wore about their persons gold
+ornaments of some size, though of clumsy workmanship.  This furnished
+the best reply to their demand.  It was the golden bait which lured the
+Spanish adventurer to forsake his pleasant home for the trials of the
+wilderness.  From the Indians Pizarro gathered a confirmation of the
+reports he had so often received of a rich country lying farther south; and
+at the distance of ten days' journey across the mountains, they told him,
+there dwelt a mighty monarch whose dominions had been invaded by
+another still more powerful, the Child of the Sun.16  It may have been
+the invasion of Quito that was meant, by the valiant Inca Huayna Capac,
+which took place some years previous to Pizarro's expedition.
+
+At length, after the expiration of more than six weeks, the Spaniards
+beheld with delight the return of the wandering bark that had borne away
+their comrades, and Montenegro sailed into port with an ample supply of
+provisions for his famishing countrymen.  Great was his horror at the
+aspect presented by the latter, their wild and haggard countenances and
+wasted frames,--so wasted by hunger and disease, that their old
+companions found it difficult to recognize them.  Montenegro accounted
+for his delay by incessant head winds and bad weather; and he himself
+had also a doleful tale to tell of the distress to which he and his crew had
+been reduced by hunger, on their passage to the Isle of Pearls.--It is
+minute incidents like these with which we have been occupied, that
+enable one to comprehend the extremity of suffering to which the
+Spanish adventurer was subjected in the prosecution of his great work of
+discovery.
+
+Revived by the substantial nourishment to which they had so long been
+strangers, the Spanish cavaliers, with the buoyancy that belongs to men
+of a hazardous and roving life, forgot their past distresses in their
+eagerness to prosecute their enterprise.  Reembarking therefore on board
+his vessel, Pizarro bade adieu to the scene of so much suffering, which
+he branded with the appropriate name of Puerto de la Hambre, the Port
+of Famine, and again opened his sails to a favorable breeze that bore him
+onwards towards the south.
+
+Had he struck boldly out into the deep, instead of hugging the
+inhospitable shore, where he had hitherto found so little to recompense
+him, he might have spared himself the repetition of wearisome and
+unprofitable adventures, and reached by a shorter route the point of his
+destination.  But the Spanish mariner groped his way along these
+unknown coasts, landing at every convenient headland, as if fearful lest
+some fruitful region or precious mine might be overlooked, should a
+single break occur in the line of survey.  Yet it should be remembered,
+that, though the true point of Pizarro's destination is obvious to us,
+familiar with the topography of these countries, he was wandering in the
+dark, feeling his way along, inch by inch, as it were, without chart to
+guide him, without knowledge of the seas or of the bearings of the coast,
+and even with no better defined idea of the object at which he aimed than
+that of a land teeming with gold, that lay somewhere at the south! It was
+a hunt after an El Dorado; on information scarcely more circumstantial
+or authentic than that which furnished the basis of so many chimerical
+enterprises in this land of wonders.  Success only, the best argument with
+the multitude, redeemed the expeditions of Pizarro from a similar
+imputation of extravagance.
+
+Holding on his southerly course under the lee of the shore, Pizarro, after
+a short run, found himself abreast of an open reach of country, or at least
+one less encumbered with wood, which rose by a gradual swell, as it
+receded from the coast.  He landed with a small body of men, and,
+advancing a short distance into the interior, fell in with an Indian hamlet.
+It was abandoned by the inhabitants, who, on the approach of the
+invaders, had betaken themselves to the mountains; and the Spaniards,
+entering their deserted dwellings, found there a good store of maize and
+other articles of food, and rude ornaments of gold of considerable value.
+Food was not more necessary for their bodies than was the sight of gold,
+from time to time, to stimulate their appetite for adventure.  One
+spectacle, however, chilled their blood with horror.  This was the sight of
+human flesh, which they found roasting before the fire, as the barbarians
+had left it, preparatory to their obscene repast.  The Spaniards,
+conceiving that they had fallen in with a tribe of Caribs, the only race in
+that part of the New World known to be cannibals, retreated precipitately
+to their vessel.17  They were not steeled by sad familiarity with the
+spectacle, like the Conquerors of Mexico.
+
+The weather, which had been favorable, now set in tempestuous, with
+heavy squalls, accompanied by incessant thunder and lightning, and the
+rain, as usual in these tropical tempests, descended not so much in drops
+as in unbroken sheets of water.  The Spaniards, however, preferred to
+take their chance on the raging element rather than remain in the scene of
+such brutal abominations.  But the fury of the storm gradually subsided,
+and the little vessel held on her way along the coast, till, coming abreast
+of a bold point of land named by Pizarro Punta Quemada, he gave orders
+to anchor.  The margin of the shore was fringed with a deep belt of
+mangrove-trees, the long roots of which, interlacing one another, formed
+a kind of submarine lattice-work that made the place difficult of
+approach.  Several avenues, opening through this tangled thicket, led
+Pizarro to conclude that the country must be inhabited, and he
+disembarked, with the greater part of his force, to explore the interior.
+
+He had not penetrated more than a league, when he found his conjecture
+verified by the sight of an Indian town of larger size than those he had
+hitherto seen, occupying the brow of an eminence, and well defended by
+palisades.  The inhabitants, as usual, had fled; but left in their dwellings a
+good supply of provisions and some gold trinkets, which the Spaniards
+made no difficulty of appropriating to themselves.  Pizarro's flimsy bark
+had been strained by the heavy gales it had of late encountered, so that it
+was unsafe to prosecute the voyage further without more thorough
+repairs than could be given to her on this desolate coast.  He accordingly
+determined to send her back with a few hands to be careened at Panama,
+and meanwhile to establish his quarters in his present position, which
+was so favorable for defence.  But first he despatched a small party
+under Montenegro to reconnoitre the country, and, if possible, to open a
+communication with the natives.
+
+The latter were a warlike race.  They had left their habitations in order to
+place their wives and children in safety.  But they had kept an eye on the
+movements of the invaders, and, when they saw their forces divided, they
+resolved to fall upon each body singly before it could communicate with
+the other.  So soon, therefore, as Montenegro had penetrated through the
+defiles of the lofty hills, which shoot out like spurs of the Cordilleras
+along this part of the coast, the Indian warriors, springing from their
+ambush, sent off a cloud of arrows and other missiles that darkened the
+air, while they made the forest ring with their shrill warwhoop.  The
+Spaniards, astonished at the appearance of the savages, with their naked
+bodies gaudily painted, and brandishing their weapons as they glanced
+among the trees and straggling underbrush that choked up the defile,
+were taken by surprise and thrown for a moment into disarray.  Three of
+their number were killed and several wounded.  Yet, speedily rallying,
+they returned the discharge of the assailants with their cross-bows,--for
+Pizarro's troops do not seem to have been provided with muskets on this
+expedition,--and then gallantly charging the enemy, sword in hand,
+succeeded in driving them back into the fastnesses of the mountains.  But
+it only led them to shift their operations to another quarter, and make an
+assault on Pizarro before he could be relieved by his lieutenant.
+
+Availing themselves of their superior knowledge of the passes, they
+reached that commander's quarters long before Montenegro, who had
+commenced a countermarch in the same direction.  And issuing from the
+woods, the bold savages saluted the Spanish garrison with a tempest of
+darts and arrows, some of which found their way through the joints of the
+harness and the quilted mail of the cavaliers.  But Pizarro was too well
+practised a soldier to be off his guard.  Calling his men about him, he
+resolved not to abide the assault tamely in the works, but to sally out, and
+meet the enemy on their own ground.  The barbarians, who had advanced
+near the defences, fell back as the Spaniards burst forth with their valiant
+leader at their head.  But, soon returning with admirable ferocity to the
+charge, they singled out Pizarro, whom, by his bold bearing and air of
+authority, they easily recognized as the chief; and, hurling at him a storm
+of missiles, wounded him, in spite of his armour, in no less than seven
+places.18
+
+Driven back by the fury of the assault directed against his own person,
+the Spanish commander retreated down the slope of the hill, still
+defending himself as he could with sword and buckler, when his foot
+slipped and he fell.  The enemy set up a fierce yell of triumph, and some
+of the boldest sprang forward to despatch him.  But Pizarro was on his
+feet in an instant, and, striking down two of the foremost with his strong
+arm, held the rest at bay till his soldiers could come to the rescue.  The
+barbarians, struck with admiration at his valor, began to falter, when
+Montenegro luckily coming on the ground at the moment, and falling on
+their rear, completed their confusion; and, abandoning the field, they
+made the best of their way into the recesses of the mountains.  The
+ground was covered with their slain; but the victory was dearly
+purchased by the death of two more Spaniards and a long list of
+wounded.
+
+A council of war was then called.  The position had lost its charm in the
+eyes of the Spaniards, who had met here with the first resistance they had
+yet experienced on their expedition.  It was necessary to place the
+wounded in some secure spot, where their injuries could be attended to.
+Yet it was not safe to proceed farther, in the crippled state of their vessel.
+On the whole, it was decided to return and report their proceedings to the
+governor; and, though the magnificent hopes of the adventurers had not
+been realized, Pizarro trusted that enough had been done to vindicate the
+importance of the enterprise, and to secure the countenance of Pedrarias
+for the further prosecution of it.19
+
+Yet Pizarro could not make up his mind to present himself, in the present
+state of the undertaking, before the governor.  He determined, therefore,
+to be set on shore with the principal part of his company at Chicama, a
+place on the main land, at a short distance west of Panama From this
+place, which he reached without any further accident, he despatched the
+vessel, and in it his treasurer, Nicolas de Ribera, with the gold he had
+collected, and with instructions to lay before the governor in full account
+of his discoveries, and the result of the expedition.
+
+While these events were passing, Pizarro's associate, Almagro, had been
+busily employed in fitting out another vessel for the expedition at the
+port of Panama.  It was not till long after his friend's departure that he
+was prepared to follow him.  With the assistance of Luque, he at length
+succeeded in equipping a small caravel and embarking a body of
+between sixty and seventy adventurers, mostly of the lowest order of the
+colonists.  He steered in the track of his comrade, with the intention of
+overtaking him as soon as possible.  By a signal previously concerted of
+notching the trees, he was able to identify the spots visited by Pizarro,--
+Puerto de Pinas, Puerto de la Hambre, Pueblo Quemado--touching
+successively at every point of the coast explored by his countrymen,
+though in a much shorter time.  At the last-mentioned place he was
+received by the fierce natives with the same hostile demonstrations as
+Pizarro, though in the present encounter the Indians did not venture
+beyond their defences.  But the hot blood of Almagro was so exasperated
+by this check, that he assaulted the place and carried it sword in hand,
+setting fire to the outworks and dwellings, and driving the wretched
+inhabitants into the forests.
+
+His victory cost him dear.  A wound from a javelin on the head caused
+an inflammation in one of his eyes, which, after great anguish, ended in
+the loss of it.  Yet the intrepid adventurer did not hesitate to pursue his
+voyage, and, after touching at several places on the coast, some of which
+rewarded him with a considerable booty in gold, he reached the mouth of
+the Rio de San Juan, about the fourth degree of north latitude.  He was
+struck with the beauty of the stream, and with the cultivation on its
+borders, which were sprinkled with Indian cottages showing some skill in
+their construction, and altogether intimating a higher civilization than
+any thing he had yet seen.
+
+Still his mind was filled with anxiety for the fate of Pizarro and his
+followers.  No trace of them had been found on the coast for a long time,
+and it was evident they must have foundered at sea, or made their way
+back to Panama.  This last he deemed most probable; as the vessel might
+have passed him unnoticed under the cover of the night, or of the dense
+fogs that sometimes hang over the coast.
+
+Impressed with this belief, he felt no heart to continue his voyage of
+discovery, for which, indeed, his single bark, with its small complement
+of men, was altogether inadequate.  He proposed, therefore, to return
+without delay.  On his way, he touched at the Isle of Pearls, and there
+learned the result of his friend's expedition, and the place of his present
+residence.  Directing his course, at once, to Chicama, the two cavaliers
+soon had the satisfaction of embracing each other, and recounting their
+several exploits and escapes.  Almagro returned even better freighted
+with gold than his confederate, and at every step of his progress he had
+collected fresh confirmation of the existence of some great and opulent
+empire in the South.  The confidence of the two friends was much
+strengthened by their discoveries; and they unhesitatingly pledged
+themselves to one another to die rather than abandon the enterprise.20
+
+The best means of obtaining the levies requisite for so formidable an
+undertaking--more formidable, as it now appeared to them, than before --
+were made the subject of long and serious discussion.  It was at length
+decided that Pizarro should remain in his present quarters, inconvenient
+and even unwholesome as they were rendered by the humidity of the
+climate, and the pestilent swarms of insects that filled the atmosphere.
+Almagro would pass over to Panama, lay the case before the governor,
+and secure, if possible, his good-will towards the prosecution of the
+enterprise.  If no obstacle were thrown in their way from this quarter,
+they might hope, with the assistance of Luque, to raise the necessary
+supplies; while the results of the recent expedition were sufficiently
+encouraging to draw adventurers to their standard in a community which
+had a craving for excitement that gave even danger a charm, and which
+held life cheap in comparison with gold.
+
+
+
+Book 2
+
+Chapter 3
+
+The Famous Contract-Second Expedition--Ruiz Explores The Coast--
+Pizarro's Sufferings In The Forests--Arrival Of New Recruits-
+Fresh Discoveries And Disasters--Pizarro On The Isle Of Gallo
+
+1526--1527
+
+On his arrival at Panama, Almagro found that events had taken a turn
+less favorable to his views than he had anticipated.  Pedrarias, the
+governor, was preparing to lead an expedition in person against a
+rebellious officer in Nicaragua; and his temper, naturally not the most
+amiable, was still further soured by this defection of his lieutenant, and
+the necessity it imposed on him of a long and perilous march.  When,
+therefore, Almagro appeared before him with the request that he might
+be permitted to raise further levies to prosecute his enterprise, the
+governor received him with obvious dissatisfaction, listened coldly to the
+narrative of his losses, turned an incredulous ear to his magnificent
+promises for the future, and bluntly demanded an account of the lives,
+which had been sacrificed by Pizarro's obstinacy, but which, had they
+been spared, might have stood him in good stead in his present
+expedition to Nicaragua.  He positively declined to countenance the rash
+schemes of the two adventurers any longer, and the conquest of Peru
+would have been crushed in the bud, but for the efficient interposition of
+the remaining associate, Fernando de Luque.
+
+This sagacious ecclesiastic had received a very different impression from
+Almagro's narrative, from that which had been made on the mind of the
+irritable governor.  The actual results of the enterprise in gold and silver,
+thus far, indeed, had been small,--forming a mortifying contrast to the
+magnitude of their expectations.  But, in another point of view, they were
+of the last importance; since the intelligence which the adventurers had
+gained in every successive stage of their progress confirmed, in the
+strongest manner, the previous accounts, received from Andogoya and
+others, of a rich Indian empire at the south, which might repay the
+trouble of conquering it as well as Mexico had repaid the enterprise of
+Cortes.  Fully entering, therefore, into the feelings of his military
+associates, he used all his influence with the governor to incline him to a
+more favorable view of Almagro's petition; and no one in the little
+community of Panama exercised greater influence over the councils of
+the executive than Father Luque, for which he was indebted no less to his
+discretion and acknowledged sagacity than to his professional station.
+
+But while Pedrarias, overcome by the arguments or importunity of the
+churchman, yielded a reluctant assent to the application, he took care to
+testify his displeasure with Pizarro, on whom he particularly charged the
+loss of his followers, by naming Almagro as his equal in command in the
+proposed expedition.  This mortification sunk deep into Pizarro's mind.
+He suspected his comrade, with what reason does not appear, of
+soliciting this boon from the governor.  A temporary coldness arose
+between them, which subsided, in outward show, at least, on Pizarro's
+reflecting that it was better to have this authority conferred on a friend
+than on a stranger, perhaps an enemy.  But the seeds of permanent
+distrust were left in his bosom, and lay waiting for the due season to
+ripen into a fruitful harvest of discord.1
+
+Pedrarias had been originally interested in the enterprise, at least, so far
+as to stipulate for a share of the gains, though he had not contributed, as
+it appears, a single ducat towards the expenses.  He was at length,
+however, induced to relinquish all right to a share of the contingent
+profits.  But, in his manner of doing so, he showed a mercenary spirit,
+better becoming a petty trader than a high officer of the Crown.  He
+stipulated that the associates should secure to him the sum of one
+thousand pesos de oro in requital of his good-will, and they eagerly
+closed with his proposal, rather than be encumbered with his pretensions.
+For so paltry a consideration did he resign his portion of the rich spoil of
+the Incas! 2  But the governor was not gifted with the eye of a prophet.
+His avarice was of that short-sighted kind which defeats itself.  He had
+sacrificed the chivalrous Balboa just as that officer was opening to him
+the conquest of Peru, and he would now have quenched the spirit of
+enterprise, that was taking the same direction, in Pizarro and his
+associates.
+
+Not long after this, in the following year, he was succeeded in his
+government by Don Pedro de los Rios, a cavalier of Cordova.  It was the
+policy of the Castilian Crown to allow no one of the great colonial
+officers to occupy the same station so long as to render himself
+formidable by his authority.3  It had, moreover, many particular causes
+of disgust with Pedrarias.  The functionary they sent out to succeed him
+was fortified with ample instructions for the good of the colony, and
+especially of the natives, whose religious conversion was urged as a
+capital object, and whose personal freedom was unequivocally asserted,
+as loyal vassals of the Crown.  It is but justice to the Spanish government
+to admit that its provisions were generally guided by a humane and
+considerate policy, which was as regularly frustrated by the cupidity of
+the colonist, and the capricious cruelty of the conqueror.  The few
+remaining years of Pedrarias were spent in petty squabbles, both of a
+personal and official nature; for he was still continued in office, though
+in one of less consideration than that which he had hitherto filled.  He
+survived but a few years, leaving behind him a reputation not to be
+envied, of one who united a pusillanimous spirit with uncontrollable
+passions; who displayed, notwithstanding, a certain energy of character,
+or, to speak more correctly, an impetuosity of purpose, which might have
+led to good results had it taken a right direction.  Unfortunately, his lack
+of discretion was such, that the direction he took was rarely of service to
+his country or to himself.
+
+Having settled their difficulties with the governor, and obtained his
+sanction to their enterprise, the confederates lost no time in making the
+requisite preparations for it.  Their first step was to execute the
+memorable contract which served as the basis of their future
+arrangements; and, as Pizarro's name appears in this, it seems probable
+that that chief had crossed over to Panama so soon as the favorable
+disposition of Pedrarias had been secured.4  The instrument, after
+invoking in the most solemn manner the names of the Holy Trinity and
+Our Lady the Blessed Virgin, sets forth, that, whereas the parties have
+full authority to discover and subdue the countries and provinces lying
+south of the Gulf, belonging to the empire of Peru, and as Fernando de
+Luque had advanced the funds for the enterprise in bars of gold of the
+value of twenty thousand pesos, they mutually bind themselves to divide
+equally among them the whole of the conquered territory.  This
+stipulation is reiterated over and over again, particularly with reference
+to Luque, who, it is declared, is to be entitled to one third of all lands,
+repartimientos, treasures of every kind, gold, silver, and precious stones,-
+-to one third even of all vassals, rents, and emoluments arising from such
+grants as may be conferred by the Crown on either of his military
+associates, to be held for his own use, or for that of his heirs, assigns, or
+legal representative.
+
+The two captains solemnly engage to devote themselves exclusively to
+the present undertaking until it is accomplished; and, in case of failure in
+their part of the covenant, they pledge themselves to reimburse Luque for
+his advances, for which all the property they possess shall be held
+responsible, and this declaration is to be a sufficient warrant for the
+execution of judgment against them, in the same manner as if it had
+proceeded from the decree of a court of justice.
+
+The commanders, Pizarro and Almagro, made oath, in the name of God
+and the Holy Evangelists, sacredly to keep this covenant, swearing it on
+the missal, on which they traced with their own hands the sacred emblem
+of the cross.  To give still greater efficacy to the compact, Father Luque
+administered the sacrament to the parties, dividing the consecrated wafer
+into three portions, of which each one of them partook; while the
+bystanders, says an historian, were affected to tears by this spectacle of
+the solemn ceremonial with which these men voluntarily devoted
+themselves to a sacrifice that seemed little short of insanity.5
+
+The instrument, which was dated March 10, 1526, was subscribed by
+Luque, and attested by three respectable citizens of Panama, one of
+whom signed on behalf of Pizarro, and the other for Almagro; since
+neither of these parties, according to the avowal of the instrument, was
+able to subscribe his own name.6
+
+Such was the singular compact by which three obscure individuals coolly
+carved out and partitioned among themselves, an empire of whose
+extent, power, and resources, of whose situation, of whose existence,
+even, they had no sure or precise knowledge.  The positive and
+unhesitating manner in which they speak of the grandeur of this empire,
+of its stores of wealth, so conformable to the event, but of which they
+could have really known so little, forms a striking contrast with the
+general skepticism and indifference manifested by nearly every other
+person, high and low, in the community of Panama.7
+
+The religious tone of the instrument is not the least remarkable feature in
+it, especially when we contrast this with the relentless policy, pursued by
+the very men who were parties to it, in their conquest of the country.  "In
+the name of the Prince of Peace," says the illustrious historian of
+America, "they ratified a contract of which plunder and bloodshed were
+the objects."8  The reflection seems reasonable.  Yet, in criticizing what
+is done, as well as what is written, we must take into account the spirit of
+the times.9  The invocation of Heaven was natural, where the object of
+the undertaking was, in part, a religious one.  Religion entered, more or
+less, into the theory, at least, of the Spanish conquests in the New World.
+That motives of a baser sort mingled largely with these higher ones, and
+in different proportions according to the character of the individual, no
+one will deny.  And few are they that have proposed to themselves a long
+career of action without the intermixture of some vulgar personal motive,
+--fame, honors, or emolument.  Yet that religion furnishes a key to the
+American crusades, however rudely they may have been conducted, is
+evident from the history of their origin; from the sanction openly given to
+them by the Head of the Church; from the throng of self-devoted
+missionaries, who followed in the track of the conquerors to garner up
+the rich harvest of souls; from the reiterated instructions of the Crown,
+the great object of which was the conversion of the natives; from those
+superstitious acts of the iron-hearted soldiery themselves, which,
+however they may be set down to fanaticism, were clearly too much in
+earnest to leave any ground for the charge of hypocrisy.  It was indeed a
+fiery cross that was borne over the devoted land, scathing and consuming
+it in its terrible progress; but it was still the cross, the sign of man's
+salvation, the only sign by which generations and generations yet unborn
+were to be rescued from eternal perdition.
+
+It is a remarkable fact, which has hitherto escaped the notice of the
+historian, that Luque was not the real party to this contract.  He
+represented another, who placed in his hands the funds required for the
+undertaking.  This appears from an instrument signed by Luque himself
+and certified before the same notary that prepared the original contract.
+The instrument declares that the whole sum of twenty thousand pesos
+advanced for the expedition was furnished by the Licentiate Gaspar de
+Espinosa, then at Panama; that the vicar acted only as his agent and by
+his authority; and that, in consequence, the said Espinosa and no other
+was entitled to a third of all the profits and acquisitions resulting from
+the conquest of Peru.  This instrument, attested by three persons, one of
+them the same who had witnessed the original contract, was dated on the
+6th of August, 1531.10  The Licentiate Espinosa was a respectable
+functionary, who had filled the office of principal alcalde in Darien, and
+since taken a conspicuous part in the conquest and settlement of Tierra
+Firme.  He enjoyed much consideration for his personal character and
+station; and it is remarkable that so little should be known of the manner
+in which the covenant, so solemnly made, was executed in reference to
+him.  As in the case of Columbus, it is probable that the unexpected
+magnitude of the results was such as to prevent a faithful adherence to
+the original stipulation; and yet, from the same consideration, one can
+hardly doubt that the twenty thousand pesos of the bold speculator must
+have brought him a magnificent return.  Nor did the worthy vicar of
+Panama, as the history will show hereafter, go without his reward.
+
+Having completed these preliminary arrangements, the three associates
+lost no time in making preparations for the voyage.  Two vessels were
+purchased, larger and every way better than those employed on the
+former occasion.  Stores were laid in, as experience dictated, on a larger
+scale than before, and proclamation was made of "an expedition to
+Peru." But the call was not readily answered by the skeptical citizens of
+Panama.  Of nearly two hundred men who had embarked on the former
+cruise, not more than three fourths now remained.11 This dismal
+mortality, and the emaciated, poverty-stricken aspect of the survivors,
+spoke more eloquently than the braggart promises and magnificent
+prospects held out by the adventurers.  Still there were men in the
+community of such desperate circumstances, that any change seemed like
+a chance of bettering their condition.  Most of the former company also,
+strange to say, felt more pleased to follow up the adventure to the end
+than to abandon it, as they saw the light of a better day dawning upon
+them.  From these sources the two captains succeeded in mustering about
+one hundred and sixty men, making altogether a very inadequate force
+for the conquest of an empire.  A few horses were also purchased, and a
+better supply of ammunition and military stores than before, though still
+on a very limited scale.  Considering their funds, the only way of
+accounting for this must be by the difficulty of obtaining supplies at
+Panama, which, recently founded, and on the remote coast of the Pacific,
+could be approached only by crossing the rugged barrier of mountains,
+which made the transportation of bulky articles extremely difficult.  Even
+such scanty stock of materials as it possessed was probably laid under
+heavy contribution, at the present juncture, by the governor's
+preparations for his own expedition to the north.
+
+Thus indifferently provided, the two captains, each in his own vessel,
+again took their departure from Panama, under the direction of
+Bartholomew Ruiz, a sagacious and resolute pilot, well experienced in
+the navigation of the Southern Ocean.  He was a native of Moguer, in
+Andalusia, that little nursery of nautical enterprise, which furnished so
+many seamen for the first voyages of Columbus.  Without touching at the
+intervening points of the coast, which offered no attraction to the
+voyagers, they stood farther out to sea, steering direct for the Rio de San
+Juan, the utmost limit reached by Almagro.  The season was better
+selected than on the former occasion, and they were borne along by
+favorable breezes to the place of their destination, which they reached
+without accident in a few days.  Entering the mouth of the river, they saw
+the banks well lined with Indian habitations; and Pizarro, disembarking,
+at the head of a party of soldiers, succeeded in surprising a small village
+and carrying off a considerable booty of gold ornaments found in the
+dwellings, together with a few of the natives.12
+
+Flushed with their success, the two chiefs were confident that the sight of
+the rich spoil so speedily obtained could not fall to draw adventurers to
+their standard in Panama; and, as they felt more than ever the necessity
+of a stronger force to cope with the thickening population of the country
+which they were now to penetrate, it was decided that Almagro should
+return with the treasure and beat up for reinforcements, while the pilot
+Ruiz, in the other vessel, should reconnoitre the country towards the
+south, and obtain such information as might determine their future
+movements.  Pizarro, with the rest of the force, would remain in the
+neighborhood of the river, as he was assured by the Indian prisoners, that
+not far in the interior was an open reach of country, where he and his
+men could find comfortable quarters.  This arrangement was instantly put
+in execution.  We will first accompany the intrepid pilot in his cruise
+towards the south.
+
+Coasting along the great continent, with his canvas still spread to
+favorable winds, the first place at which Ruiz cast anchor was off the
+little island of Gallo, about two degrees north.  The inhabitants, who
+were not numerous, were prepared to give him a hostile reception,--for
+tidings of the invaders had preceded them along the country, and even
+reached this insulated spot.  As the object of Ruiz was to explore, not
+conquer, he did not care to entangle himself in hostilities with the
+natives; so, changing his purpose of landing, he weighed anchor, and ran
+down the coast as far as what is now called the Bay of St. Matthew.  The
+country, which, as he advanced, continued to exhibit evidence of a better
+culture as well as of a more dense population than the parts hitherto seen,
+was crowded, along the shores, with spectators, who gave no signs of
+fear or hostility.  They stood gazing on the vessel of the white men as it
+glided smoothly into the crystal waters of the bay, fancying it, says an
+old writer, some mysterious being descended from the skies.
+
+Without staying long enough on this friendly coast to undeceive the
+simple people, Ruiz, standing off shore, struck out into the deep sea; but
+he had not sailed far in that direction, when he was surprised by the sight
+of a vessel, seeming in the distance like a caravel of considerable size,
+traversed by a large sail that carried it sluggishly over the waters.  The
+old navigator was not a little perplexed by this phenomenon, as he was
+confident no European bark could have been before him in these
+latitudes, and no Indian nation, yet discovered, not even the civilized
+Mexican, was acquainted with the use of sails in navigation.  As he drew
+near, he found it was a large vessel, or rather raft, called balsa by the
+natives, consisting of a number of huge timbers of a light, porous wood,
+tightly lashed together, with a frail flooring of reeds raised on them by
+way of deck.  Two masts or sturdy poles, erected in the middle of the
+vessel, sustained a large square-sail of cotton, while a rude kind of
+rudder and a movable keel, made of plank inserted between the logs,
+enabled the mariner to give a direction to the floating fabric, which held
+on its course without the aid of oar or paddle.13  The simple architecture
+of this craft was sufficient for the purposes of the natives, and indeed has
+continued to answer them to the present day; for the balsa, surmounted
+by small thatched huts or cabins, still supplies the most commodious
+means for the transportation of passengers and luggage on the streams
+and along the shores of this part of the South American continent.
+
+On coming alongside, Ruiz found several Indians, both men and women,
+on board, some with rich ornaments on their persons, besides several
+articles wrought with considerable skill in gold and silver, which they
+were carrying for purposes of traffic to the different places along the
+coast.  But what most attracted his attention was the woollen cloth of
+which some of their dresses were made.  It was of a fine texture,
+delicately embroidered with figures of birds and flowers, and dyed in
+brilliant colors.  He also observed in the boat a pair of balances made to
+weigh the precious metals.14  His astonishment at these proofs of
+ingenuity and civilization, so much higher than anything he had ever
+seen in the country, was heightened by the intelligence which he
+collected from some of these Indians.  Two of them had come from
+Tumbez, a Peruvian port, some degrees to the south; and they gave him
+to understand, that in their neighborhood the fields were covered with
+large flocks of the animals from which the wool was obtained, and that
+gold and silver were almost as common as wood in the palaces of their
+monarch.  The Spaniards listened greedily to reports which harmonized
+so well with their fond desires.  Though half distrusting the exaggeration,
+Ruiz resolved to detain some of the Indians, including the natives of
+Tumbez, that they might repeat the wondrous tale to his commander, and
+at the same time, by learning the Castilian, might hereafter serve as
+interpreters with their countrymen.  The rest of the party he suffered to
+proceed without further interruption on their voyage.  Then holding on
+his course, the prudent pilot, without touching at any other point of the
+coast, advanced as far as the Punta de Pasado, about half a degree south,
+having the glory of being the first European who, sailing in this direction
+on the Pacific, had crossed the equinoctial line.  This was the limit' of his
+discoveries; on reaching which he tacked about, and standing away to the
+north, succeeded, after an absence of several weeks, in regaining the spot
+where he had left Pizarro and his comrades.15
+
+It was high time; for the spirits of that little band had been sorely tried by
+the perils they had encountered.  On the departure of his vessels, Pizarro
+marched into the interior, in the hope of finding the pleasant champaign
+country which had been promised him by the natives.  But at every step
+the forests seemed to grow denser and darker, and the trees towered to a
+height such as he had never seen, even in these fruitful regions, where
+Nature works on so gigantic a scale.16  Hill continued to rise above hill,
+as he advanced, rolling onward, as it were, by successive waves to join
+that colossal barrier of the Andes, whose frosty sides, far away above the
+clouds, spread out like a curtain of burnished silver, that seemed to
+connect the heavens with the earth.
+
+On crossing these woody eminences, the forlorn adventurers would
+plunge into ravines of frightful depth, where the exhalations of a humid
+soil steamed up amidst the incense of sweet-scented flowers, which
+shone through the deep glooms in every conceivable variety of color.
+Birds, especially of the parrot tribe, mocked this fantastic variety of
+nature with tints as brilliant as those of the vegetable world.  Monkeys
+chattered in crowds above their heads, and made grimaces like the
+fiendish spirits of these solitudes; while hideous reptiles, engendered in
+the slimy depths of the pools, gathered round the footsteps of the
+wanderers.  Here was seen the gigantic boa, coiling his unwieldy folds
+about the trees, so as hardly to be distinguished from their trunks, till he
+was ready to dart upon his prey; and alligators lay basking on the borders
+of the streams, or, gliding under the waters, seized their incautious victim
+before he was aware of their approach.17  Many of the Spaniards
+perished miserably in this way, and others were waylaid by the natives,
+who kept a jealous eye on their movements, and availed themselves of
+every opportunity to take them at advantage.  Fourteen of Pizarro's men
+were cut off at once in a canoe which had stranded on the bank of a
+stream.18
+
+Famine came in addition to other troubles, and it was with difficulty that
+they found the means of sustaining life on the scanty fare of the forest,--
+occasionally the potato, as it grew without cultivation, or the wild cocoa-
+nut, or, on the shore, the salt and bitter fruit of the mangrove; though the
+shore was less tolerable than the forest, from the swarms of mosquitos
+which compelled the wretched adventurers to bury their bodies up to
+their very faces in the sand.  In this extremity of suffering, they thought
+only of return; and all schemes of avarice and ambition--except with
+Pizarro and a few dauntless spirits--were exchanged for the one craving
+desire to return to Panama.
+
+It was at this crisis that the pilot Ruiz returned with the report of his
+brilliant discoveries; and, not long after, Almagro sailed into port with
+his vessel laden with refreshments, and a considerable reinforcement of
+volunteers.  The voyage of that commander had been prosperous.  When
+he arrived at Panama, he found the government in the hands of Don
+Pedro de los Rios; and he came to anchor in the harbor, unwilling to trust
+himself on shore, till he had obtained from Father Luque some account
+of the dispositions of the executive.  These were sufficiently favorable;
+for the new governor had particular instructions fully to carry out the
+arrangements made by his predecessor with the associates.  On learning
+Almagro's arrival, he came down to the port to welcome him, professing
+his willingness to afford every facility for the execution of his designs.
+Fortunately, just before this period, a small body of military adventurers
+had come to Panama from the mother country, burning with desire to
+make their fortunes in the New World.  They caught much more eagerly
+than the old and wary colonists at the golden bait held out to them; and
+with their addition, and that of a few supernumerary stragglers who hung
+about the town, Almagro found himself at the head of a reinforcement of
+at least eighty men, with which, having laid in a fresh supply of stores, he
+again set sail for the Rio de San Juan.
+
+The arrival of the new recruits all eager to follow up the expedition, the
+comfortable change in their circumstances produced by an ample supply
+of refreshments, and the glowing pictures of the wealth that awaited them
+in the south, all had their effect on the dejected spirits of Pizarro's
+followers.  Their late toils and privations were speedily forgotten, and,
+with the buoyant and variable feelings incident to a freebooter's life, they
+now called as eagerly on their commander to go forward in the voyage,
+as they had before called on him to abandon it.  Availing themselves of
+the renewed spirit of enterprise, the captains embarked on board their
+vessels, and, under the guidance of the veteran pilot, steered in the same
+track he had lately pursued.
+
+But the favorable season for a southern course, which in these latitudes
+lasts but a few months in the year, had been suffered to escape.  The
+breezes blew steadily towards the north, and a strong current, not far
+from shore, set in the same direction.  The winds frequently rose into
+tempests, and the unfortunate voyagers were tossed about, for many
+days, in the boiling surges, amidst the most awful storms of thunder and
+lightning, until, at length, they found a secure haven in the island of
+Gallo, already visited by Ruiz.  As they were now too strong in numbers
+to apprehend an assault, the crews landed, and, experiencing no
+molestation from the natives, they continued on the island for a fortnight,
+refitting their damaged vessels, and recruiting themselves after the
+fatigues of the ocean.  Then, resuming their voyage, the captains stood
+towards the south until they reached the Bay of St. Matthew.  As they
+advanced along the coast, they were struck, as Ruiz had been before,
+with the evidences of a higher civilization constantly exhibited in the
+general aspect of the country and its inhabitants.  The hand of cultivation
+was visible in every quarter.  The natural appearance of the coast, too,
+had something in it more inviting; for, instead of the eternal labyrinth of
+mangrove-trees, with their complicated roots snarled into formidable
+coils under the water, as if to waylay and entangle the voyager, the low
+margin of the sea was covered with a stately growth of ebony, and with a
+species of mahogany, and other hard woods that take the most brilliant
+and variegated polish.  The sandal-wood, and many balsamic trees of
+unknown names, scattered their sweet odors far and wide, not in an
+atmosphere tainted with vegetable corruption, but on the pure breezes of
+the ocean, bearing health as well as fragrance on their wings.  Broad
+patches of cultivated land intervened, disclosing hill-sides covered with
+the yellow maize and the potato, or checkered, in the lower levels, with
+blooming plantations of cacao.19
+
+The villages became more numerous; and, as the vessels rode at anchor
+off the port of Tacamez, the Spaniards saw before them a town of two
+thousand houses or more, laid out into streets, with a numerous
+population clustering around it in the suburbs.20  The men and women
+displayed many ornaments of gold and precious stones about their
+persons, which may seem strange, considering that the Peruvian Incas
+claimed a monopoly of jewels for themselves and the nobles on whom
+they condescended to bestow them.  But, although the Spaniards had
+now reached the outer limits of the Peruvian empire, it was not Peru, but
+Quito, and that portion of it but recently brought under the sceptre of the
+Incas, where the ancient usages of the people could hardly have been
+effaced under the oppressive system of the American despots.  The
+adjacent country was, moreover, particularly rich in gold, which,
+collected from the washings of the streams, still forms one of the staple
+products of Barbacoas.  Here, too, was the fair River of Emeralds, so
+called from the quarries of the beautiful gem on its borders, from which
+the Indian monarchs enriched their treasury.21
+
+The Spaniards gazed with delight on these undeniable evidences of
+wealth, and saw in the careful cultivation of the soil a comfortable
+assurance that they had at length reached the land which had so long
+been seen in brilliant, though distant, perspective before them.  But here
+again they were doomed to be disappointed by the warlike spirit of the
+people, who, conscious of their own strength, showed no disposition to
+quail before the invaders.  On the contrary, several of their canoes shot
+out, loaded with warriors, who, displaying a gold mask as their ensign,
+hovered round the vessels with looks of defiance, and, when pursued,
+easily took shelter under the lee of the land.22
+
+A more formidable body mustered along the shore, to the number,
+according to the Spanish accounts, of at least ten thousand warriors,
+eager, apparently, to come to close action with the invaders.  Nor could
+Pizarro, who had landed with a party of his men in the hope of a
+conference with the natives, wholly prevent hostilities; and it might have
+gone hard with the Spaniards, hotly pressed by their resolute enemy so
+superior in numbers, but for a ludicrous accident reported by the
+historians as happening to one of the cavaliers.  This was a fall from his
+horse, which so astonished the barbarians, who were not prepared for
+this division of what seemed one and the same being into two, that, filled
+with consternation, they fell back, and left a way open for the Christians
+to regain their vessels! 23
+
+A council of war was now called.  It was evident that the forces of the
+Spaniards were unequal to a contest with so numerous and well-
+appointed a body of natives; and, even if they should prevail here, they
+could have no hope of stemming the torrent which must rise against them
+in their progress--for the country was becoming more and more thickly
+settled, and towns and hamlets started into view at every new headland
+which they doubled.  It was better, in the opinion of some,--the faint-
+hearted,-to abandon the enterprise at once, as beyond their strength.  But
+Almagro took a different view of the affair.  "To go home," he said,
+"with nothing done, would be ruin, as well as disgrace.  There was
+scarcely one but had left creditors at Panama, who looked for payment to
+the fruits of this expedition.  To go home now would be to deliver
+themselves at once into their hands.  It would be to go to prison.  Better
+to roam a freeman, though in the wilderness, than to lie bound with
+fetters in the dungeons of Panama.24  The only course for them," he
+concluded, "was the one lately pursued.  Pizarro might find some more
+commodious place where he could remain with part of the force while he
+himself went back for recruits to Panama.  The story they had now to tell
+of the riches of the land, as they had seen them with their own eyes,
+would put their expedition in a very different light, and could not fail to
+draw to their banner as many volunteers as they needed."
+
+But this recommendation, however judicious, was not altogether to the
+taste of the latter commander, who did not relish the part, which
+constantly fell to him, of remaining behind in the swamps and forests of
+this wild country.  "It is all very well," he said to Almagro, "for you, who
+pass your time pleasantly enough, careering to and fro in your vessel, or
+snugly sheltered in a land of plenty at Panama; but it is quite another
+matter for those who stay behind to droop and die of hunger in the
+wilderness.25  To this Almagro retorted with some heat, professing his
+own willingness to take charge of the brave men who would remain with
+him, if Pizarro declined it.  The controversy assuming a more angry and
+menacing tone, from words they would have soon come to blows, as
+both, laying their hands on their swords, were preparing to rush on each
+other, when the treasurer Ribera, aided by the pilot Ruiz, succeeded in
+pacifying them.  It required but little effort on the part of these cooler
+counsellors to convince the cavaliers of the folly of a conduct which
+must at once terminate the expedition in a manner little creditable to its
+projectors.  A reconciliation consequently took place, sufficient, at least
+in outward show, to allow the two commanders to act together in
+concert.  Almagro's plan was then adopted; and it only remained to find
+out the most secure and convenient spot for Pizarro's quarters.
+
+Several days were passed in touching at different parts of the coast, as
+they retraced their course; but everywhere the natives appeared to have
+caught the alarm, and assumed a menacing, and from their numbers a
+formidable, aspect.  The more northerly region, with its unwholesome
+fens and forests, where nature wages a war even more relentless than
+man, was not to be thought of.  In this perplexity, they decided on the
+little island of Gallo, as being, on the whole, from its distance from the
+shore, and from the scantiness of its population, the most eligible spot
+for them in their forlorn and destitute condition.26
+
+But no sooner was the resolution of the two captains made known, than a
+feeling of discontent broke forth among their followers, especially those
+who were to remain with Pizarro on the island, "What!" they exclaimed,
+"were they to be dragged to that obscure spot to die by hunger? The
+whole expedition had been a cheat and a failure, from beginning to end.
+The golden countries, so much vaunted, had seemed to fly before them
+as they advanced; and the little gold they had been fortunate enough to
+glean had all been sent back to Panama to entice other fools to follow
+their example.  What had they got in return for all their sufferings? The
+only treasures they could boast were their bows and arrows, and they
+were now to be left to die on this dreary island, without so much as a
+rood of consecrated ground to lay their bones in!27
+
+In this exasperated state of feeling, several of the soldiers wrote back to
+their friends, informing them of their deplorable condition, and
+complaining of the cold-blooded manner in which they were to be
+sacrificed to the obstinate cupidity of their leaders.  But the latter were
+wary enough to anticipate this movement, and Almagro defeated it by
+seizing all the letters in the vessels, and thus cutting off at once the
+means of communication with their friends at home.  Yet this act of
+unscrupulous violence, like most other similar acts, fell short of its
+purpose; for a soldier named Sarabia had the ingenuity to evade it by
+introducing a letter into a ball of cotton, which was to be taken to
+Panama as a specimen of the products of the country, and presented to
+the governor's lady.28
+
+The letter, which was signed by several of the disaffected soldiery
+besides the writer, painted in gloomy colors the miseries of their
+condition, accused the two commanders of being the authors of this, and
+called on the authorities of Panama to interfere by sending a vessel to
+take them from the desolate spot, while some of them might still be
+found surviving the horrors of their confinement.  The epistle concluded
+with a stanza, in which the two leaders were stigmatized as partners in a
+slaughter-house; one being employed to drive in the cattle for the other
+to butcher.  The verses, which had a currency in their day among the
+colonists to which they were certainly not entitled by their poetical
+merits, may be thus rendered into corresponding doggerel:
+
+"Look out, Senor Governor,
+For the drover while he's near;
+Since he goes home to get the sheep
+For the butcher who stays here." 29
+
+
+
+Book 2
+
+Chapter 4
+
+Indignation Of The Governor--Stern Resolution Of Pizarro-
+Prosecution Of The Voyage--Brilliant Aspect Of Tumbez-
+Discoveries Along The Coast--Return To Panama-
+Pizarro Embarks For Spain
+
+1527--1528
+
+Not long after Almagro's departure, Pizarro sent off the remaining vessel,
+under the pretext of its being put in repair at Panama.  It probably
+relieved him of a part of his followers, whose mutinous spirit made them
+an obstacle rather than a help in his forlorn condition, and with whom he
+was the more willing to part from the difficulty of finding subsistence on
+the barren spot which he now occupied.
+
+Great was the dismay occasioned by the return of Almagro and his
+followers, in the little community of Panama; for the letter,
+surreptitiously conveyed in the ball of cotton, fell into the hands for
+which it was intended, and the contents soon got abroad with usual
+quantity of exaggeration.  The haggard and dejected mien of the
+adventurers, of itself, told a tale sufficiently disheartening, and it was
+soon generally believed that the few ill-fated survivors of the expedition
+were detained against their will by Pizarro, to end their days with their
+disappointed leader on his desolate island.
+
+Pedro de los Rios, the governor, was so much incensed at the result of
+the expedition, and the waste of life it had occasioned to the colony, that
+he turned a deaf ear to all the applications of Luque and Almagro for
+further countenance in the affair; he derided their sanguine anticipations
+of the future, and finally resolved to send an officer to the isle of Gallo,
+with orders to bring back every Spaniard whom he should find still living
+in that dreary abode.  Two vessels were immediately despatched for the
+purpose, and placed under charge of a cavalier named Tafur, a native of
+Cordova.
+
+Meanwhile Pizarro and his followers were experiencing all the miseries
+which might have been expected from the character of the barren spot on
+which they were imprisoned.  They were, indeed, relieved from all
+apprehensions of the natives, since these had quitted the island on its
+occupation by the white men; but they had to endure the pains of hunger
+even in a greater degree than they had formerly experienced in the wild
+woods of the neighboring continent.  Their principal food was crabs and
+such shell-fish as they could scantily pick up along the shores.  Incessant
+storms of thunder and lightning, for it was the rainy season, swept over
+the devoted island, and drenched them with a perpetual flood.  Thus,
+halfnaked, and pining with famine, there were few in that little company
+who did not feel the spirit of enterprise quenched within them, or who
+looked for any happier termination of their difficulties than that afforded
+by a return to Panama.  The appearance of Tafur, therefore, with his two
+vessels, well stored with provisions, was greeted with all the rapture that
+the crew of a sinking wreck might feel on the arrival of some unexpected
+succour; and the only thought, after satisfying the immediate cravings of
+hunger, was to embark and leave the detested isle forever.
+
+But by the same vessel letters came to Pizarro from his two confederates,
+Luque and Almagro, beseeching him not to despair in his present
+extremity, but to hold fast to his original purpose.  To return under the
+present circumstances would be to seal the fate of the expedition; and
+they solemnly engaged, if he would remain firm at his post, to furnish
+him in a short time with the necessary means for going forward.1
+
+A ray of hope was enough for the courageous spirit of Pizarro.  It does
+not appear that he himself had entertained, at any time, thoughts of
+returning.  If he had, these words of encouragement entirely banished
+them from his bosom, and he prepared to stand the fortune of the cast on
+which he had so desperately ventured.  He knew, however, that
+solicitations or remonstrances would avail little with the companions of
+his enterprise; and he probably did not care to win over the more timid
+spirits who, by perpetually looking back, would only be a clog on his
+future movements.  He announced his own purpose, however, in a
+laconic but decided manner, characteristic of a man more accustomed to
+act than to talk, and well calculated to make an impression on his rough
+followers.
+
+Drawing his sword, he traced a line with it on the sand from east to west.
+Then turning towards the south, "Friend and comrades!" he said, "on that
+side are toil, hunger, nakedness, the drenching storm, desertion, and
+death; on this side, ease and pleasure.  There lies Peru with its riches;
+here, Panama, and its poverty.  Choose, each man, what best becomes a
+brave Castilian.  For my part, I go to the south." So saying, he stepped
+across the line.2  He was followed by the brave pilot Ruiz; next by Pedro
+de Candia, a cavalier, born, as his name imports, in one of the isles of
+Greece.  Eleven others successively crossed the line, thus intimating their
+willingness to abide the fortunes of their leader, for good or for evil.3
+Fame, to quote the enthusiastic language of an ancient chronicler, has
+commemorated the names of this little band, "who thus, in the face or
+difficulties unexampled in history, with death rather than riches for their
+reward, preferred it all to abandoning their honor, and stood firm by their
+leader as an example of loyalty to future ages." 4
+
+But the act excited no such admiration in the mind of Tafur, who looked
+on it as one of gross disobedience to the commands of the governor, and
+as little better than madness, involving the certain destruction of the
+parties engaged in it.  He refused to give any sanction to it himself by
+leaving one of his vessels with the adventurers to prosecute their voyage,
+and it was with great difficulty that he could be persuaded even to allow
+them a part of the stores which he had brought for their support.  This
+had no influence on their determination, and the little party, bidding
+adieu to their returning comrades, remained unshaken in their purpose of
+abiding the fortunes of their commander.5
+
+There is something striking to the imagination in the spectacle of these
+few brave spirits, thus consecrating themselves to a daring enterprise,
+which seemed as far above their strength as any recorded in the fabulous
+annals of knight-errantry.  A handful of men, without food, without
+clothing, almost without arms, without knowledge of the land to which
+they were bound, without vessel to transport them, were here left on a
+lonely rock in the ocean with the avowed purpose of carrying on a
+crusade against a powerful empire, staking their lives on its success.
+What is there in the legends of chivalry that surpasses it? This was the
+crisis of Pizarro's fate.  There are moments in the lives of men, which, as
+they are seized or neglected, decide their future destiny.6  Had Pizarro
+faltered from his strong purpose, and yielded to the occasion, now so
+temptingly presented, for extricating himself and his broken band from
+their desperate position, his name would have been buried with his
+fortunes, and the conquest of Peru would have been left for other and
+more successful adventurers.  But his constancy was equal to the
+occasion, and his conduct here proved him competent to the perilous
+post he had assumed, and inspired others with a confidence in him which
+was the best assurance of success.
+
+In the vessel that bore back Tafur and those who seceded from the
+expedition the pilot Ruiz was also permitted to return, in order to
+cooperate with Luque and Almagro in their application for further
+succour.
+
+Not long after the departure of the ships, it was decided by Pizarro to
+abandon his present quarters, which had little to recommend them, and
+which, he reflected, might now be exposed to annoyance from the
+original inhabitants, should they take courage and return, on learning the
+diminished number of the white men.  The Spaniards, therefore, by his
+orders, constructed a rude boat or raft, on which they succeeded in
+transporting themselves to the little island of Gorgona, twenty-five
+leagues to the north of their present residence.  It lay about five leagues
+from the continent, and was uninhabited.  It had some advantages over
+the isle of Gallo; for it stood higher above the sea, and was partially
+covered with wood, which afforded shelter to a species of pheasant, and
+the hare or rabbit of the country, so that the Spaniards, with their cross-
+bows, were enabled to procure a tolerable supply of game.  Cool streams
+that issued from the living rock furnished abundance of water, though the
+drenching rains that fell, without intermission, left them in no danger of
+perishing by thirst.  From this annoyance they found some protection in
+the rude huts which they constructed; though here, as in their former
+residence, they suffered from the no less intolerable annoyance of
+venomous insects, which multiplied and swarmed in the exhalations of
+the rank and stimulated soil.  In this dreary abode Pizarro omitted no
+means by which to sustain the drooping spirits of his men.  Morning
+prayers were duly said, and the evening hymn to the Virgin was regularly
+chanted; the festivals of the church were carefully commemorated, and
+every means taken by their commander to give a kind of religious
+character to his enterprise, and to inspire his rough followers with a
+confidence in the protection of Heaven, that might support them in their
+perilous circumstances.7
+
+In these uncomfortable quarters, their chief employment was to keep
+watch on the melancholy ocean, that they might hail the first signal of the
+anticipated succour.  But many a tedious month passed away, and no
+sign of it appeared.  All around was the same wide waste of waters,
+except to the eastward, where the frozen crest of the Andes, touched with
+the ardent sun of the equator, glowed like a ridge of fire along the whole
+extent of the great continent.  Every speck in the distant horizon was
+carefully noticed, and the drifting timber or masses of sea-weed, heaving
+to and fro on the bosom of the waters, was converted by their
+imaginations into the promised vessel; till, sinking under successive
+disappointments, hope gradually gave way to doubt, and doubt settled
+into despair.8
+
+Meanwhile the vessel of Tafur had reached the port of Panama.  The
+tidings which she brought of the inflexible obstinacy of Pizarro and his
+followers filled the governor with indignation.  He could look on it in no
+other light than as an act of suicide, and steadily refused to send further
+assistance to men who were obstinately bent on their own destruction.
+Yet Luque and Almagro were true to their engagements.  They
+represented to the governor, that, if the conduct of their comrade was
+rash, it was at least in the service of the Crown, and in prosecuting the
+great work of discovery.  Rios had been instructed, on his taking the
+government, to aid Pizarro in the enterprise; and to desert him now
+would be to throw away the remaining chance of success, and to incur
+the responsibility of his death and that of the brave men who adhered to
+him.  These remonstrances, at length, so far operated on the mind of that
+functionary, that he reluctantly consented that a vessel should be sent to
+the island of Gorgona, but with no more hands than were necessary to
+work her, and with positive instructions to Pizarro to return in six months
+and report himself at Panama, whatever might be the future results of his
+expedition.
+
+Having thus secured the sanction of the executive, the two associates lost
+no time in fitting out a small vessel with stores and a supply of arms and
+ammunition, and despatched it to the island.  The unfortunate tenants of
+this little wilderness, who had now occupied it for seven months,9 hardly
+dared to trust their senses when they descried the white sails of the
+friendly bark coming over the waters.  And although, when the vessel
+anchored off the shore, Pizarro was disappointed to find that it brought
+no additional recruits for the enterprise, yet he greeted it with joy, as
+affording the means of solving the great problem of the existence of the
+rich southern empire, and of thus opening the way for its future conquest.
+Two of his men were so ill, that it was determined to leave them in the
+care of some of the friendly Indians who had continued with him through
+the whole of his sojourn, and to call for them on his return.  Taking with
+him the rest of his hardy followers and the natives of Tumbez, he
+embarked, and, speedily weighing anchor, bade adieu to the "Hell," as it
+was called by the Spaniards, which had been the scene of so much
+suffering and such undaunted resolution.10
+
+Every heart was now elated with hope, as they found themselves once
+more on the waters, under the guidance of the good pilot Ruiz, who,
+obeying the directions of the Indians, proposed to steer for the land of
+Tumbez, which would bring them at once into the golden empire of the
+Incas, --the El Dorado, of which they had been so long in pursuit.
+Passing by the dreary isle of Gallo, which they had such good cause to
+remember, they stood farther out to sea until they made point Tacumez,
+near which they had landed on their previous voyage.  They did not
+touch at any part of the coast, but steadily held on their way, though
+considerably impeded by the currents, as well as by the wind, which
+blew with little variation from the south.  Fortunately, the wind was light,
+and, as the weather was favorable, their voyage, though slow, was not
+uncomfortable.  In a few days, they came in sight of Point Pasado, the
+limit of the pilot's former navigation; and, crossing the line, the little bark
+entered upon those unknown seas which had never been ploughed by
+European keel before.  The coast, they observed, gradually declined
+from its former bold and rugged character, gently sloping towards the
+shore, and spreading out into sandy plains, relieved here and there by
+patches of uncommon richness and beauty; while the white cottages of
+the natives glistening along the margin of the sea, and the smoke that
+rose among the distant hills, intimated the increasing population of the
+country.
+
+At length, after the lapse of twenty days from their departure from the
+island, the adventurous vessel rounded the point of St. Helena, and
+glided smoothly into the waters of the beautiful gulf of Guayaquil.  The
+country was here studded along the shore with towns and villages,
+though the mighty chain of the Cordilleras, sweeping up abruptly from
+the coast, left but a narrow strip of emerald verdure, through which
+numerous rivulets, spreading fertility around them, wound their way into
+the sea.
+
+The voyagers were now abreast of some of the most stupendous heights
+of this magnificent range; Chimborazo, with its broad round summit,
+towering like the dome of the Andes, and Cotopaxi, with its dazzling
+cone of silvery white, that knows no change except from the action of its
+own volcanic fires; for this mountain is the most terrible of the American
+volcanoes, and was in formidable activity at no great distance from the
+period of our narrative.  Well pleased with the signs of civilization that
+opened on them at every league of their progress, the Spaniards, at
+length, came to anchor, off the island of Santa Clara, lying at the
+entrance of the bay of Tumbez.11
+
+The place was uninhabited, but was recognized by the Indians on board,
+as occasionally resorted to by the warlike people of the neighboring isle
+of Puna, for purposes of sacrifice and worship.  The Spaniards found on
+the spot a few bits of gold rudely wrought into various shapes, and
+probably designed as offerings to the Indian deity.  Their hearts were
+cheered, as the natives assured them they would see abundance of the
+same precious metal in their own city of Tumbez.
+
+The following morning they stood across the bay for this place.  As they
+drew near, they beheld a town of considerable size, with many of the
+buildings apparently of stone and plaster, situated in the bosom of a
+fruitful meadow, which seemed to have been redeemed from the sterility
+of the surrounding country by careful and minute irrigation.  When at
+some distance from shore, Pizarro saw standing towards him several
+large balsas, which were found to be filled with warriors going on an
+expedition against the island of Puna.  Running alongside of the Indian
+flotilla, he invited some of the chiefs to come on board of his vessel.
+The Peruvians gazed with wonder on every object which met their eyes,
+and especially on their own countrymen, whom they had little expected
+to meet there.  The latter informed them in what manner they had fallen
+into the hands of the strangers, whom they described as a wonderful race
+of beings, that had come thither for no harm, but solely to be made
+acquainted with the country and its inhabitants.  This account was
+confirmed by the Spanish commander, who persuaded the Indians to
+return in their balsas and report what they had learned to their townsmen,
+requesting them at the same time to provide his vessel with refreshments,
+as it was his desire to enter into a friendly intercourse with the natives.
+
+The people of Tumbez were gathered along the shore, and were gazing
+with unutterable amazement on the floating castle, which, now having
+dropped anchor, rode lazily at its moorings in their bay.  They eagerly
+listened to the accounts of their countrymen, and instantly reported the
+affair to the curaca or ruler of the district, who, conceiving that the
+strangers must be beings of a superior order, prepared at once to comply
+with their request.  It was not long before several balsas were seen
+steering for the vessel laden with bananas, plantains, yuca, Indian corn,
+sweet potatoes, pine-apples, cocoa-nuts, and other rich products of the
+bountiful vale of Tumbez.  Game and fish, also, were added, with a
+number of llamas, of which Pizarro had seen the rude drawings
+belonging to Balboa, but of which till now he had met with no living
+specimen.  He examined this curious animal, the Peruvian sheep,--or, as
+the Spaniards called it, the "little camel" of the Indians,--with much
+interest, greatly admiring the mixture of wool and hair which supplied
+the natives with the materials for their fabrics.
+
+At that time there happened to be at Tumbez an Inca noble, or orejon, --
+for so, as I have already noticed, men of his rank were called by the
+Spaniards, from the huge ornaments of gold attached to their ears.  He
+expressed great curiosity to see the wonderful strangers, and had,
+accordingly, come out with the balsas for the purpose.  It was easy to
+perceive from the superior quality of his dress, as well as from the
+deference paid to him by the others, that he was a person of
+consideration, and Pizarro received him with marked distinction.  He
+showed him the different parts of the ship, explaining to him the uses of
+whatever engaged his attention, and answering his numerous queries, as
+well as he could, by means of the Indian interpreters.  The Peruvian chief
+was especially desirous of knowing whence and why Pizarro and his
+followers had come to these shores.  The Spanish captain replied, that he
+was the vassal of a great prince, the greatest and most powerful in the
+world, and that he had come to this country to assert his master's lawful
+supremacy over it.  He had further come to rescue the inhabitants from
+the darkness of unbelief in which they were now wandering.  They
+worshipped an evil spirit, who would sink their souls into everlasting
+perdition; and he would give them the knowledge of the true and only
+God, Jesus Christ, since to believe in him was eternal salvation.12
+
+The Indian prince listened with deep attention and apparent wonder; but
+answered nothing.  It may be, that neither he nor his interpreters had any
+very distinct ideas of the doctrines thus abruptly revealed to them.  It
+may be that he did not believe there was any other potentate on earth
+greater than the Inca; none, at least, who had a better right to rule over
+his dominions.  And it is very possible he was not disposed to admit that
+the great luminary whom he worshipped was inferior to the God of the
+Spaniards.  But whatever may have passed in the untutored mind of the
+barbarian, he did not give vent to it, but maintained a discreet silence,
+without any attempt to controvert or to convince his Christian antagonist.
+
+He remained on board the vessel till the hour of dinner, of which he
+partook with the Spaniards, expressing his satisfaction at the strange
+dishes, and especially pleased with the wine, which he pronounced far
+superior to the fermented liquors of his own country.  On taking leave, he
+courteously pressed the Spaniards to visit Tumbez, and Pizarro
+dismissed him with the present, among other things, of an iron hatchet,
+which had greatly excited his admiration; for the use of iron, as we have
+seen, was as little known to the Peruvians as to the Mexicans.
+
+On the day following, the Spanish captain sent one of his own men,
+named Alonso de Molina, on shore, accompanied by a negro who had
+come in the vessel from Panama, together with a present for the curaca
+of some swine and poultry, neither of which were indigenous to the New
+World.  Towards evening his emissary returned with a fresh supply of
+fruits and vegetables, that the friendly people sent to the vessel.  Molina
+had a wondrous tale to tell.  On landing, he was surrounded by the
+natives, who expressed the greatest astonishment at his dress, his fair
+complexion, and his long beard.  The women, especially, manifested
+great curiosity in respect to him, and Molina seemed to be entirely won
+by their charms and captivating manners.  He probably intimated his
+satisfaction by his demeanor, since they urged him to stay among them,
+promising in that case to provide him with a beautiful wife.
+
+Their surprise was equally great at the complexion of his sable
+companion.  They could not believe it was natural, and tried to rub off
+the imaginary dye with their hands.  As the African bore all this with
+characteristic good-humor, displaying at the same time his rows of ivory
+teeth, they were prodigiously delighted.13  The animals were no less
+above their comprehension; and, when the cock crew, the simple people
+clapped their hands, and inquired what he was saying.14  Their intellects
+were so bewildered by sights so novel, that they seemed incapable of
+distinguishing between man and brute.
+
+Molina was then escorted to the residence of the curaca, whom he found
+living in much state, with porters stationed at his doors, and with a
+quantity of gold and silver vessels, from which he was served.  He was
+then taken to different parts of the Indian city, saw a fortress built of
+rough stone, and, though low, spreading over a large extent of ground.15
+Near this was a temple; and the Spaniard's description of its decorations.
+blazing with gold and silver, seemed so extravagant, that Pizarro,
+distrusting his whole account, resolved to send a more discreet and
+trustworthy emissary on the following day.16
+
+The person selected was Pedro de Candia, the Greek cavalier mentioned
+as one of the first who intimated his intention to share the fortunes of his
+commander.  He was sent on shore, dressed in complete mail as became
+a good knight, with his sword by his side, and his arquebuse on his
+shoulder.  The Indians were even more dazzled by his appearance than
+by Molina's, as the sun fell brightly on his polished armour, and glanced
+from his military weapons.  They had heard much of the formidable
+arquebuse from their townsmen who had come in the vessel, and they
+besought Candia "to let it speak to them." He accordingly set up a
+wooden board as a target, and, taking deliberate aim, fired off the
+musket.  The flash of the powder and the startling report of the piece, as
+the board, struck by the ball, was shivered into splinters, filled the
+natives with dismay.  Some fell on the ground, covering their faces with
+their hands, and others approached the cavalier with feelings of awe,
+which were gradually dispelled by the assurance they received from the
+smiling expression of his countenance.17
+
+They then showed him the same hospitable attentions which they had
+paid to Molina; and his description of the marvels of the place, on his
+return, fell nothing short of his predecessor's.  The fortress, which was
+surrounded by a triple row of wall, was strongly garrisoned.  The temple
+he described as literally tapestried with plates of gold and silver.
+Adjoining this structure was a sort of convent appropriated to the Inca's
+destined brides, who manifested great curiosity to see him.  Whether this
+was gratified is not clear; but Candia described the gardens of the
+convent, which he entered, as glowing with imitations of fruits and
+vegetables all in pure gold and silver!18  He had seen a number of
+artisans at work, whose sole business seemed to be to furnish these
+gorgeous decorations for the religious houses.
+
+The reports of the cavalier may have been somewhat over-colored.19  It
+was natural that men coming from the dreary wilderness, in which they
+had been buried the last six months, should have been vividly impressed
+by the tokens of civilization which met them on the Peruvian coast.  But
+Tumbez was a favorite city of the Peruvian princes.  It was the most
+important place on the northern borders of the empire, contiguous to the
+recent acquisition of Quito.  The great Tupac Yupanqui had established a
+strong fortress there, and peopled it with a colony of mitimaes.  The
+temple, and the house occupied by the Virgins of the Sun, had been
+erected by Huayna Capac, and were liberally endowed by that Inca, after
+the sumptuous fashion of the religious establishments of Peru.  The town
+was well supplied with water by numerous aqueducts, and the fruitful
+valley in which it was embosomed, and the ocean which bathed its
+shores, supplied ample means of subsistence to a considerable
+population.  But the cupidity of the Spaniards, after the Conquest, was
+not slow in despoiling the place of its glories; and the site of its proud
+towers and temples, in less than half a century after that fatal period, was
+to be traced only by the huge mass of ruins that encumbered the
+ground.20
+
+The Spaniards were nearly mad with joy, says an old writer, at receiving
+these brilliant tidings of the Peruvian city.  All their fond dreams were
+now to be realized, and they had at length reached the realm which had
+so long flitted in visionary splendor before them.  Pizarro expressed his
+gratitude to Heaven for having crowned his labors with so glorious a
+result; but he bitterly lamented the hard fate which, by depriving him of
+his followers, denied him, at such a moment, the means of availing
+himself of his success.  Yet he had no cause for lamentation; and the
+devout Catholic saw in this very circumstance a providential
+interposition which prevented the attempt at conquest, while such
+attempts would have been premature.  Peru was not yet torn asunder by
+the dissensions of rival candidates for the throne; and, united and strong
+under the sceptre of a warlike monarch, she might well have bid defiance
+to all the forces that Pizarro could muster.  "It was manifestly the work
+of Heaven," exclaims a devout son of the Church, "that the natives of the
+country should have received him in so kind and loving a spirit, as best
+fitted to facilitate the conquest; for it was the Lord's hand which led him
+and his followers to this remote region for the extension of the holy faith,
+and for the salvation of souls." 21
+
+Having now collected all the information essential to his object, Pizarro,
+after taking leave of the natives of Tumbez, and promising a speedy
+return, weighed anchor, and again turned his prow towards the south.
+Still keeping as near as possible to the coast, that no place of importance
+might escape his observation, he passed Cape Blanco, and, after sailing
+about a degree and a half, made the port of Payta.  The inhabitants, who
+had notice of his approach, came out in their balsas to get sight of the
+wonderful strangers, bringing with them stores of fruits, fish, and
+vegetables, with the same hospitable spirit shown by their countrymen at
+Tumbez.
+
+After staying here a short time, and interchanging presents of trifling
+value with the natives, Pizarro continued his cruise; and, sailing by the
+sandy plains of Sechura for an extent of near a hundred miles, he
+doubled the Punta de Aguja, and swept down the coast as it fell off
+towards the east, still carried forward by light and somewhat variable
+breezes.  The weather now became unfavorable, and the voyagers
+encountered a succession of heavy gales, which drove them some
+distance out to sea, and tossed them about for many days.  But they did
+not lose sight of the mighty ranges of the Andes, which, as they
+proceeded towards the south, were still seen, at nearly the same distance
+from the shore, rolling onwards, peak after peak, with their stupendous
+surges of ice, like some vast ocean, that had been suddenly arrested and
+frozen up in the midst of its wild and tumultuous career.  With this
+landmark always in view, the navigator had little need of star or compass
+to guide his bark on her course.
+
+As soon as the tempest had subsided, Pizarro stood in again for the
+continent, touching at the principal points as he coasted along.
+Everywhere he was received with the same spirit of generous hospitality;
+the natives coming out in their balsas to welcome him, laden with their
+little cargoes of fruits and vegetables, of all the luscious varieties that
+grow in the tierra caliente.  All were eager to have a glimpse of the
+strangers, the "Children of the Sun," as the Spaniards began already to be
+called, from their fair complexions, brilliant armour, and the
+thunderbolts which they bore in their hands.22  The most favorable
+reports, too, had preceded them, of the urbanity and gentleness of their
+manners, thus unlocking the hearts of the simple natives, and disposing
+them to confidence and kindness.  The iron-hearted soldier had not yet
+disclosed the darker side of his character.  He was too weak to do so.
+The hour of Conquest had not yet come.
+
+In every place Pizarro received the same accounts of a powerful monarch
+who ruled over the land, and held his court on the mountain plains of the
+interior, where his capital was depicted as blazing with gold and silver,
+and displaying all the profusion of an Oriental satrap.  The Spaniards,
+except at Tumbez, seem to have met with little of the precious metals
+among the natives on the coast.  More than one writer asserts that they
+did not covet them, or, at least, by Pizarro's orders, affected not to do so.
+He would not have them betray their appetite for gold, and actually
+refused gifts when they were proffered!23  It is more probable that they
+saw little display of wealth, except in the embellishments of the temples
+and other sacred buildings, which they did not dare to violate.  The
+precious metals, reserved for the uses of religion and for persons of high
+degree, were not likely to abound in the remote towns and hamlets on the
+coast.
+
+Yet the Spaniards met with sufficient evidence of general civilization
+and power to convince them that there was much foundation for the
+reports of the natives.  Repeatedly they saw structures of stone and
+plaster, and occasionally showing architectural skill in the execution, if
+not elegance of design.  Wherever they cast anchor, they beheld green
+patches of cultivated country redeemed from the sterility of nature, and
+blooming with the variegated vegetation of the tropics; while a refined
+system of irrigation, by means of aqueducts and canals, seemed to be
+spread like a net-work over the surface of the country, making even the
+desert to blossom as the rose.  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
+
+Having reached this point, about the ninth degree of southern latitude,
+Pizarro's followers besought him not to prosecute the voyage farther.
+Enough and more than enough had been done, they said, to prove the
+existence and actual position of the great Indian empire of which they
+had so long been in search.  Yet, with their slender force, they had no
+power to profit by the discovery.  All that remained, therefore, was to
+return and report the success of their enterprise to the governor at
+Panama.  Pizarro acquiesced in the reasonableness of this demand.  He
+had now penetrated nine degrees farther than any former navigator in
+these southern seas, and, instead of the blight which, up to this hour, had
+seemed to hang over his fortunes, he could now return in triumph to his
+countrymen.  Without hesitation, therefore, he prepared to retrace his
+course, and stood again towards the north.
+
+On his way, he touched at several places where he had before landed.  At
+one of these, called by the Spaniards Santa Cruz, he had been invited on
+shore by an Indian woman of rank, and had promised to visit her on his
+return.  No sooner did his vessel cast anchor off the village where she
+lived, than she came on board, followed by a numerous train of
+attendants.  Pizarro received her with every mark of respect, and on her
+departure presented her with some trinkets which had a real value in the
+eyes of an Indian princess.  She urged the Spanish commander and his
+companions to return the visit, engaging to send a number of hostages on
+board, as security for their good treatment.  Pizarro assured her that the
+frank confidence she had shown towards them proved that this was
+unnecessary.  Yet, no sooner did he put off in his boat, the following day,
+to go on shore, than several of the principal persons in the place came
+alongside of the ship to be received as hostages during the absence of the
+Spaniards,--a singular proof of consideration for the sensitive
+apprehensions of her guests.
+
+Pizarro found that preparations had been made for his reception in a style
+of simple hospitality that evinced some degree of taste.  Arbours were
+formed of luxuriant and wide-spreading branches, interwoven with
+fragrant flowers and shrubs that diffused a delicious perfume through the
+air.  A banquet was provided, teeming with viands prepared in the style
+of the Peruvian cookery, and with fruits and vegetables of tempting hue
+and luscious to the taste, though their names and nature were unknown to
+the Spaniards.  After the collation was ended, the guests were entertained
+with music and dancing by a troop of young men and maidens simply
+attired, who exhibited in their favorite national amusement all the agility
+and grace which the supple limbs of the Peruvian Indians so well
+qualified them to display.  Before his departure, Pizarro stated to his
+kind host the motives of his visit to the country, in the same manner as he
+had done on other occasions, and he concluded by unfurling the royal
+banner of Castile, which he had brought on shore, requesting her and her
+attendants to raise it in token of their allegiance to his sovereign.  This
+they did with great good-humor, laughing all the while, says the
+chronicler, and making it clear that they had a very imperfect conception
+of the serious nature of the ceremony.  Pizarro was contented with this
+outward display of loyalty, and returned to his vessel well satisfied with
+the entertainment he had received, and meditating, it may be, on the best
+mode of repaying it, hereafter, by the subjugation and conversion of the
+country.
+
+The Spanish commander did not omit to touch also at Tumbez, on his
+homeward voyage.  Here some of his followers, won by the comfortable
+aspect of the place and the manners of the people, intimated a wish to
+remain, conceiving, no doubt, that it would be better to live where they
+would be persons of consequence than to return to an obscure condition
+in the community of Panama.  One of these men was Alonso de Molina,
+the same who had first gone on shore at this place, and been captivated
+by the charms of the Indian beauties.  Pizarro complied with their
+wishes, thinking it would not be amiss to find, on his return, some of his
+own followers who would be instructed in the language and usages of the
+natives.  He was also allowed to carry back in his vessel two or three
+Peruvians, for the similar purpose of instructing them in the Castilian.
+One of them, a youth named by the Spaniards Felipillo, plays a part of
+some importance in the history of subsequent events.
+
+On leaving Tumbez, the adventurers steered directly for Panama,
+touching only, on their way, at the ill-fated island of Gorgona to take on
+board their two companions who were left there too ill to proceed with
+them.  One had died, and, receiving the other, Pizarro and his gallant
+little band continued their voyage; and, after an absence of at least
+eighteen months, found themselves once more safely riding at anchor in
+the harbor of Panama.25
+
+The sensation caused by their arrival was great, as might have been
+expected.  For there were few, even among the most sanguine of their
+friends, who did not imagine that they had long since paid for their
+temerity, and fallen victims to the climate or the natives, or miserably
+perished in a watery grave.  Their joy was proportionably great,
+therefore, as they saw the wanderers now returned, not only in health and
+safety, but with certain tidings of the fair countries which had so long
+eluded their grasp.  It was a moment of proud satisfaction to the three
+associates, who, in spite of obloquy, derision, and every impediment
+which the distrust of friends or the coldness of government could throw
+in their way, had persevered in their great enterprise until they had
+established the truth of what had been so generally denounced as a
+chimera.  It is the misfortune of those daring spirits who conceive an idea
+too vast for their own generation to comprehend, or, at least, to attempt
+to carry out, that they pass for visionary dreamers.  Such had been the
+fate of Luque and his associates.  The existence of a rich Indian empire
+at the south, which, in their minds, dwelling long on the same idea and
+alive to all the arguments in its favor, had risen to the certainty of
+conviction, had been derided by the rest of their countrymen as a mere
+mirage of the fancy, which, on nearer approach, would melt into air;
+while the projectors, who staked their fortunes on the adventure, were
+denounced as madmen.  But their hour of triumph, their slow and
+hardearned triumph, had now arrived.
+
+Yet the governor, Pedro de los Rios, did not seem, even at this moment,
+to be possessed with a conviction of the magnitude of the discovery,--or,
+perhaps, he was discouraged by its very magnitude.  When the
+associates, now with more confidence, applied to him for patronage in an
+undertaking too vast for their individual resources, he coldly replied, "He
+had no desire to build up other states at the expense of his own; nor
+would he be led to throw away more lives than had already been
+sacrificed by the cheap display of gold and silver toys and a few Indian
+sheep!" 26
+
+Sorely disheartened by this repulse from the only quarter whence
+effectual aid could be expected, the confederates, without funds, and
+with credit nearly exhausted by their past efforts, were perplexed in the
+extreme.  Yet to stop now,--what was it but to abandon the rich mine
+which their own industry and perseverance had laid open, for others to
+work at pleasure?  In this extremity the fruitful mind of Luque suggested
+the only expedient by which they could hope for success.  This was to
+apply to the Crown itself.  No one was so much interested in the result of
+the expedition.  It was for the government, indeed, that discoveries were
+to be made, that the country was to be conquered.  The government alone
+was competent to provide the requisite means, and was likely to take a
+much broader and more liberal view of the matter than a petty colonial
+officer.
+
+But who was there qualified to take charge of this delicate mission?
+Luque was chained by his professional duties to Panama; and his
+associates, unlettered soldiers, were much better fitted for the business of
+the camp than of the court.  Almagro, blunt, though somewhat swelling
+and ostentatious in his address, with a diminutive stature and a
+countenance naturally plain, now much disfigured by the loss of an eye,
+was not so well qualified for the mission as his companion in arms, who,
+possessing a good person and altogether a commanding presence, was
+plausible, and, with all his defects of education, could, where deeply
+interested, be even eloquent in discourse.  The ecclesiastic, however,
+suggested that the negotiation should be committed to the Licentiate
+Corral, a respectable functionary, then about to return on some public
+business to the mother country.  But to this Almagro strongly objected.
+No one, he said, could conduct the affair so well as the party interested
+in it.  He had a high opinion of Pizarro's prudence, his discernment of
+character, and his cool, deliberate policy.27  He knew enough of his
+comrade to have confidence that his presence of mind would not desert
+him, even in the new, and therefore embarrassing, circumstances in
+which he would be placed at court.  No one, he said, could tell the story
+of their adventures with such effect, as the man who had been the chief
+actor in them.  No one could so well paint the unparalleled sufferings and
+sacrifices which they had encountered; no other could tell so forcibly
+what had been done, what yet remained to do, and what assistance would
+be necessary to carry it into execution.  He concluded, with characteristic
+frankness, by strongly urging his confederate to undertake the mission.
+
+Pizarro felt the force of Almagro's reasoning, and, though with
+undisguised reluctance, acquiesced in a measure which was less to his
+taste than an expedition to the wilderness.  But Luque came into the
+arrangement with more difficulty.  "God grant, my children," exclaimed
+the ecclesiastic, "that one of you may not defraud the other of his
+blessing!" 28  Pizarro engaged to consult the interests of his associates
+equally with his own.  But Luque, it is clear, did not trust Pizarro.
+
+There was some difficulty in raising the funds necessary for putting the
+envoy in condition to make a suitable appearance at court; so low had the
+credit of the confederates fallen, and so little confidence was yet placed
+in the result of their splendid discoveries.  Fifteen hundred ducats were at
+length raised; and Pizarro, in the spring of 1528, bade adieu to Panama,
+accompanied by Pedro de Candia.29  He took with him, also, some of
+the natives, as well as two or three llamas, various nice fabrics of cloth,
+with many ornaments and vases of gold and silver, as specimens of the
+civilization of the country, and vouchers for his wonderful story.
+
+Of all the writers on ancient Peruvian history, no one has acquired so
+wide celebrity, or been so largely referred to by later compilers, as the
+Inca Garcilasso de la Vega.  He was born at Cuzco, in 1540; and was a
+mestizo, that is of mixed descent, his father being European, and his
+mother Indian.  His father, Garcilasso de la Vega, was one of that
+illustrious family whose achievements, both in arms and letters, shed
+such lustre over the proudest period of the Castilian annals.  He came to
+Peru, in the suite of Pedro de Alvarado, soon after the country had been
+gained by Pizarro.  Garcilasso attached himself to the fortunes of this
+chief, and, after his death, to those of his brother Gonzalo,--remaining.
+constant to the latter, through his rebellion, up to the hour of his rout at
+Xaquixaguana, when Garcilasso took the same course with most of his
+faction, and passed over to the enemy.  But this demonstration of loyalty,
+though it saved his life, was too late to redeem his credit with the
+victorious party; and the obloquy which he incurred by his share in the
+rebellion threw a cloud over his subsequent fortunes, and even over
+those of his son, as it appears, in after years.
+
+The historian's mother was of the Peruvian blood royal.  She was niece
+of Huayna Capac, and granddaughter of the renowned Tupac Inca
+Yupanqui.  Garcilasso, while he betrays obvious satisfaction that the
+blood of the civilized European flows in his veins shows himself not a
+little proud of his descent from the royal dynasty of Peru; and this he
+intimated by combining with his patronymic the distinguishing title of
+the Peruvian princes,---subscribing himself always Garcilasso Inca de la
+Vega.
+
+His early years were passed in his native land, where he was reared in the
+Roman Catholic faith, and received the benefit of as good an education
+as could be obtained, amidst the incessant din of arms and civil
+commotion.  In 1560, when twenty years of age, he left America, and
+from that time took up his residence in Spain.  Here he entered the
+military service, and held a captain's commission in the war against the
+Moriscos, and, afterwards, under Don John of Austria.  Though he
+acquitted himself honorably in his adventurous career, he does not seem
+to have been satisfied with the manner in which his services were
+requited by the government.  The old reproach of the father's disloyalty
+still clung to the son and Garcilasso assures us that this circumstance
+defeated all his efforts to recover the large inheritance of landed property
+belonging to his mother, which had escheated to the Crown.  "Such were
+the prejudices against me," says he, "that I could not urge my ancient
+claims or expectations; and I left the army so poor and so much in debt,
+that I did not care to show myself again at court; but was obliged to
+withdraw into an obscure solitudes where I lead a tranquil life for the
+brief space that remains to me, no longer deluded by the world or its
+vanities."
+
+The scene of this obscure retreat was not, however, as the reader might
+imagine from this tone of philosophic resignation, in the depths of some
+rural wilderness, but in Cordova, once the gay capital of Moslem
+science, and still the busy haunt of men.  Here our philosopher occupied
+himself with literary labors, the more sweet and soothing to his wounded
+spirit, that they tended to illustrate the faded glories of his native land,
+and exhibit them in their primitive splendor to the eyes of his adopted
+countrymen.  "And I have no reason to regret," he says in his Preface to
+his account of Florida, "that Fortune has not smiled on me, since this
+circumstance has opened a literary career which, I trust, will secure to
+me a wider and more enduring fame than could flow from any worldly
+prosperity."
+
+In 1609, he gave to the world the First Part of his great work, the
+Commentarios Reales, devoted to the history of the country under the
+Incas; and in 1616, a few months before his death, he finished the
+Second Part, embracing the story of the Conquest, which was published
+at Cordova the following year.  The chronicler, who thus closed his
+labors with his life, died at the ripe old age of seventy-six.  He left a
+considerabe sum for the purchase of masses for his soul, showing that the
+complaints of his poverty are not to be taken literally.  His remains were
+interred in the cathedral church of Cordova, in a chapel which bears the
+name of Garcilasso; and an inscription was placed on his monument,
+intimating the high respect in which the historian was held both for his
+moral worth and his literary attainments.
+
+The First Part of the Commentarios Reales is occupied, as already
+noticed, with the ancient history of the country, presenting a complete
+picture of its civilization under the Incas,--far more complete than has
+been given by any other writer.  Garcilasso's mother was but ten years
+old at the time of her cousin Atahuallpa's accession, or rather usurpation,
+as it is called by the party of Cuzco.  She had the good fortune to escape
+the massacre which, according to the chroniclers befell most of her
+kindred, and with her brother continued to reside in their ancient capital
+after the Conquest.  Their conversations naturally turned to the good old
+times of the Inca rule, which, colored by their fond regrets, may be
+presumed to have lost nothing as seen through the magnifying medium of
+the past.  The young Garcilasso Listened greedily to the stories which
+recounted the magnificence and prowess of his royal ancestors, and
+though he made no use of them at the time, they sunk deep into his
+memory, to be treasured up for a future occasion.  When he prepared,
+after the lapse of many years, in his retirement at Cordova, to compose
+the history of his country, he wrote to his old companions and
+schoolfellows, of the Inca family, to obtain fuller information than he
+could get in Spain on various matters of historical interest.  He had
+witnessed in his youth the ancient ceremonies and usages of his
+countrymen, understood the science of their quipus, and mastered many
+of their primitive traditions.  With the assistance he now obtained from
+his Peruvian kindred, he acquired a familiarity with the history of the
+great Inca race, and of their national institutions, to an extent that no
+person could have possessed, unless educated in the midst of them,
+speaking the same language, and with the same Indian blood flowing in
+his veins.  Garcilasso, in short, was the representative of the conquered
+race; and we might expect to find the lights and shadows of the picture
+disposed under his pencil so as to produce an effect very different from
+that which they had hitherto exhibited under the hands of the
+Conquerors.
+
+Such, to a certain extent, is the fact; and this circumstance affords a
+means of comparison which would alone render his works of great value
+in arriving at just historic conclusions.  But Garcilasso wrote late in life,
+after the story had been often told by Castilian writers.  He naturally
+deferred much to men, some of whom enjoyed high credit on the score
+both of their scholarship and their social position.  His object, he
+professes, was not so much to add any thing new of his own, as to correct
+their errors and the misconceptions into which they had been brought by
+their ignorance of the Indian languages and the usages of his people.  He
+does, in fact, however, go far beyond this; and the stores of information
+which he has collected have made his work a large repository, whence
+later laborers in the same field have drawn copious materials.  He writes
+from the fulness of his heart, and illuminates every topic that he touches
+with a variety and richness of illustration, that leave little to be desired
+by the most importunate curiosity.  The difference between reading his
+Commentaries and the accounts of European writers is the difference that
+exists between reading a work in the original and in a bald translation.
+Garcilasso's writings are an emanation from the Indian mind.
+
+Yet his Commentaries are open to a grave objection,--and one naturally
+suggested by his position.  Addressing himself to the cultivated
+European, he was most desirous to display the ancient glories of his
+people, and still more of the Inca race, in their most imposing form.
+This, doubtless, was the great spur to his literary labors, for which
+previous education, however good for the evil time on which he was
+cast, had far from qualified him.  Garcilasso, therefore, wrote to effect a
+particular object.  He stood forth as counsel for his unfortunate
+countrymen, pleading the cause of that degraded race before the tribunal
+of posterity.  The exaggerated tone of panegyric consequent on this
+becomes apparent in every page of his work.  He pictures forth a state of
+society such as an Utopian philosopher would hardly venture to depict.
+His royal ancestors became the types of every imaginery excellence, and
+the golden age is revived for a nation, which, while the war of
+proselytism is raging on its borders, enjoys within all the blessings of
+tranquillity and peace.  Even the material splendors of the monarchy,
+sufficiently great in this land of gold, become heightened, under the
+glowing imagination of the Inca chronicler, into the gorgeous illusions of
+a fairy tale.
+
+Yet there is truth at the bottom of his wildest conceptions, and it would
+be unfair to the Indian historian to suppose that he did not himself
+believe most of the magic marvels which he describes.  There is no
+credulity like that of a Christian convert,---one newly converted to the
+faith.  From long dwelling in the darkness of paganism, his eyes, when
+first opened to the light of truth, have not acquired the power of
+discriminating the just proportions of objects, of distinguishing between
+the real and the imaginary.  Garcilasso was not a convert indeed, for he
+was bred from infancy in the Roman Catholic faith.  But he was
+surrounded by converts and neophytes,--by those of his own blood, who,
+after practising all their lives the rites of paganism, were now first
+admitted into the Christian fold.  He listened to the teachings of the
+missionary, learned from him to give implicit credit to the marvellous
+legends of the Saints, and the no less marvellous accounts of his own
+victories in his spiritual warfare for the propagation of the faith.  Thus
+early accustomed to such large drafts on his credulity, his reason lost its
+heavenly power of distinguishing truth from error, and he became so
+familiar with the miraculous, that the miraculous was no longer a
+miracle.
+
+Yet, while large deductions are to be made on this account from the
+chronicler's reports, there is always a germ of truth which it is not
+difficult to detect, and even to disengage from the fanciful covering
+which envelopes it; and after every allowance for the exaggerations of
+national vanity, we shall find an abundance of genuine information in
+respect to the antiquities of his country, for which we shall look in vain
+in any European writer.
+
+Garcilasso's work is the reflection of the age in which he lived.  It is
+addressed to the imagination, more than to sober reason.  We are dazzled
+by the gorgeous spectacle it perpetually exhibits, and delighted by the
+variety of amusing details and animated gossip sprinkled over its pages.
+The story of the action is perpetually varied by discussions on topics
+illustrating its progress, so as to break up the monotony of the narrative,
+and afford an agreeable relief to the reader.  This is true of the First Part
+of his great work.  In the Second there was no longer room for such
+discussion.  But he has supplied the place by garrulous reminiscences,
+personal anecdotes, incidental adventures, and a host of trivial details,--
+trivial in the eyes of the pedant,--which historians have been too willing
+to discard, as below the dignity of history.  We have the actors in this
+great drama in their private dress, become acquainted with their personal
+habits, listen to their familiar sayings, and, in short gather up those
+minutiae which in the aggregate make up so much of life and not less of
+character.
+
+It is this confusion of the great and the little, thus artlessly blended
+together, that constitutes one of the charms of the old romantic
+chronicle,--not the less true that, in this respect, it approaches nearer to
+the usual tone of romance.  It is in such writings that we may look to find
+the form and pressure of the age.  The wormeaten state-papers, official
+correspondence, public records, are all serviceable, indispensable, to
+history.  They are the framework on which it is to repose; the skeleton of
+facts which gives it its strength and proportions.  But they are as
+worthless as the dry bones of the skeleton, unless clothed with the
+beautiful form and garb of humanity, and instinct with the spirit of the
+age.--Our debt is large to the antiquarian, who with conscientious
+precision lays broad and deep the foundations of historic truth; and no
+less to the philosophic annalist who exhibits man in the dress of public
+life,--man in masquerade; but our gratitude must surely not be withheld
+from those, who, like Garcilasso de la Vega, and many a romancer of the
+Middle Ages, have held up the mirror--distorted though it may somewhat
+be-to the interior of life, reflecting every object, the great and the mean
+the beautiful and the deformed, with their natural prominence and their
+vivacity of coloring, to the eye of the spectator.  As a work of art, such a
+production may be thought to be below criticism.  But, although it defy
+the rules of art in its composition, it does not necessarily violate the
+principles of taste; for it conforms in its spirit to the spirit of the age in
+which it was written.  And the critic, who coldly condemns it on the
+severe principles of art, will find a charm in its very simplicity, that will
+make him recur again and again to its pages, while more correct and
+classical compositions are laid aside and forgotten.
+
+I cannot dismiss this notice of Garcilasso, though already long
+protracted, without some allusion to the English translation of his
+Commentaries.  It appeared in James the Second's reign, and is the work
+of Sir Paul Rycaut, Knight.  It was printed at London in 1688, in folio,
+with considerable pretension in its outward dress, well garnished with
+wood-cuts, and a frontispiece displaying the gaunt and rather sardonic
+features, not of the author, but his translator.  The version keeps pace
+with the march of the original, corresponding precisely in books and
+chapters, and seldom, though sometimes, using the freedom, so common
+in these ancient versions, of abridgment and omission.  Where it does
+depart from the original, it is rather from ignorance than intention.
+Indeed, as far as the plea of ignorance will avail him, the worthy knight
+may urge it stoutly in his defence.  No one who reads the book will doubt
+his limited acquaintance with his own tongue, and no one who compares
+it with the original will deny his ignorance of the Castilian.  It contains as
+many blunders as paragraphs, and most of them such as might shame a
+schoolboy.  Yet such are the rude charms of the original, that this ruder
+version of it has found considerable favor with readers; and Sir Paul
+Rycaut's translation, old as it is, may still be met with in many a private,
+as well as public library.
+
+
+
+History of the Conquest of Peru
+
+by William Hickling Prescott
+
+Book 3
+
+Chapter 1
+
+Pizarro's Reception At Court--His Capitulation With The Crown -
+He Visits His Birthplace--Returns To The New World-
+Difficulties With Almagro--His Third Expedition-
+Adventures On The Coast--Battles In The Isle Of Puna
+
+1528--1531
+
+Pizarro and his officer, having crossed the Isthmus, embarked at Nombre
+de Dios for the old country, and, after a good passage, reached Seville
+early in the summer of 1528.  There happened to be at that time in port a
+person well known in the history of Spanish adventure as the Bachelor
+Enciso.  He had taken an active part in the colonization of Tierra Firme,
+and had a pecuniary claim against the early colonists of Darien, of whom
+Pizarro was one.  Immediately on the landing of the latter, he was seized
+by Enciso's orders, and held in custody for the debt.  Pizarro, who had
+fled from his native land as a forlorn and houseless adventurer, after an
+absence of more than twenty years, passed, most of them, in
+unprecedented toil and suffering, now found himself on his return the
+inmate of a prison.  Such was the commencement of those brilliant
+fortunes which, as he had trusted, awaited him at home.  The
+circumstance excited general indignation; and no sooner was the Court
+advised of his arrival in the country, and the great purpose of his
+mission, than orders were sent for his release, with permission to proceed
+at once on his journey.
+
+Pizarro found the emperor at Toledo, which he was soon to quit, in order
+to embark for Italy.  Spain was not the favorite residence of Charles the
+Fifth, in the earlier part of his reign.  He was now at that period of it
+when he was enjoying the full flush of his triumphs over his gallant rival
+of France, whom he had defeated and taken prisoner at the great battle of
+Pavia; and the victor was at this moment preparing to pass into Italy to
+receive the imperial crown from the hands of the Roman Pontiff.  Elated
+by his successes and his elevation to the German throne, Charles made
+little account of his hereditary kingdom, as his ambition found so
+splendid a career thrown open to it on the wide field of European
+politics.
+
+He had hitherto received too inconsiderable returns from his transatlantic
+possessions to give them the attention they deserved.  But, as the recent
+acquisition of Mexico and the brilliant anticipations in respect to the
+southern continent were pressed upon his notice, he felt their importance
+as likely to afford him the means of prosecuting his ambitious and most
+expensive enterprises.
+
+Pizarro, therefore, who had now come to satisfy the royal eyes, by visible
+proofs, of the truth of the golden rumors which, from time to time, had
+reached Castile, was graciously received by the emperor.  Charles
+examined the various objects which his officer exhibited to him with
+great attention.  He was particularly interested by the appearance of the
+llama, so remarkable as the only beast of burden yet known on the new
+continent; and the fine fabrics of woollen cloth, which were made from
+its shaggy sides, gave it a much higher value, in the eyes of the sagacious
+monarch, than what it possessed as an animal for domestic labor.  But
+the specimens of gold and silver manufacture, and the wonderful tale
+which Pizarro had to tell of the abundance of the precious metals, must
+have satisfied even the cravings of royal cupidity.
+
+Pizarro, far from being embarrassed by the novelty of his situation,
+maintained his usual self-possession, and showed that decorum and even
+dignity in his address which belong to the Castilian.  He spoke in a
+simple and respectful style, but with the earnestness and natural
+eloquence of one who had been an actor in the scenes he described, and
+who was conscious that the impression he made on his audience was to
+decide his future destiny.  All listened with eagerness to the account of
+his strange adventures by sea and land, his wanderings in the forests, or
+in the dismal and pestilent swamps on the sea-coast, without food, almost
+without raiment, with feet torn and bleeding at every step, with his few
+companions becoming still fewer by disease and death, and yet pressing
+on with unconquerable spirit to extend the empire of Castile, and the
+name and power of her sovereign; but when he painted his lonely
+condition on the desolate island, abandoned by the government at home,
+deserted by all but a handful of devoted followers, his royal auditor,
+though not easily moved, was affected to tears.  On his departure from
+Toledo, Charles commended the affairs of his vassal in the most
+favorable terms to the consideration of the Council of the Indies.1
+
+There was at this time another man at court, who had come there on a
+similar errand from the New World, but whose splendid achievements
+had already won for him a name that threw the rising reputation of
+Pizarro comparatively into the shade.  This man was Hernando Cortes,
+the Conqueror of Mexico.  He had come home to lay an empire at the
+feet of his sovereign, and to demand in return the redress of his wrongs,
+and the recompense of his great services.  He was at the close of his
+career, as Pizarro was at the commencement of his; the Conqueror of the
+North and of the South; the two men appointed by Providence to
+overturn the most potent of the Indian dynasties, and to open the golden
+gates by which the treasures of the New World were to pass into the
+coffers of Spain.
+
+Notwithstanding the emperor's recommendation, the business of Pizarro
+went forward at the tardy pace with which affairs are usually conducted
+in the court of Castile.  He found his limited means gradually sinking
+under the expenses incurred by his present situation, and he represented,
+that, unless some measures were speedily taken in reference to his suit,
+however favorable they might be in the end, he should be in no condition
+to profit by them.  The queen, accordingly, who had charge of the
+business, on her husband's departure, expedited the affair, and on the
+twenty sixth of July, 1529, she executed the memorable Capitulation,
+which defined the powers and privileges of Pizarro.
+
+The instrument secured to that chief the right of discovery and conquest
+in the province of Peru, or New Castile,--as the country was then
+called, in the same manner as Mexico had received the name of New
+Spain,--for the distance of two hundred leagues south of Santiago.  He
+was to receive the titles and rank of Governor and Captain-General of
+the province, together with those of Adelantado, and Alguacil Mayor, for
+life; and he was to have a salary of seven hundred and twenty-five
+thousand maravedis, with the obligation of maintaining certain officers
+and military retainers, corresponding with the dignity of his station.  He
+was to have the right to erect certain fortresses, with the absolute
+government of them; to assign encomiendas of Indians, under the
+limitations prescribed by law; and, in fine, to exercise nearly all the
+prerogatives incident to the authority of a viceroy.
+
+His associate, Almagro, was declared commander of the fortress of
+Tumbez, with an annual rent of three hundred thousand maravedis, and
+with the further rank and privileges of an hidalgo.  The reverend Father
+Luque received the reward of his services in the Bishopric of Tumbez,
+and he was also declared Protector of the Indians of Peru.  He was to
+enjoy the yearly stipend of a thousand ducats,--to be derived, like the
+other salaries and gratuities in this instrument, from the revenues of the
+conquered territory.
+
+Nor were the subordinate actors in the expedition forgotten.  Ruiz
+received the title of Grand Pilot of the Southern Ocean, with a liberal
+provision; Candia was placed at the head of the artillery; and the
+remaining eleven companions on the desolate island were created
+hidalgos and cavalleros, and raised to certain municipal dignities,--in
+prospect.
+
+Several provisions of a liberal tenor were also made, to encourage
+emigration to the country.  The new settlers were to be exempted from
+some of the most onerous, but customary taxes, as the alcabala, or to be
+subject to them only in a mitigated form.  The tax on the precious metals
+drawn from mines was to be reduced, at first, to one tenth, instead of the
+fifth imposed on the same metals when obtained by barter or by rapine.
+
+It was expressly enjoined on Pizarro to observe the existing regulations
+for the good government and protection of the natives; and he was
+required to carry out with him a specified number of ecclesiastics, with
+whom he was to take counsel in the conquest of the country, and whose
+efforts were to be dedicated to the service and conversion of the Indians;
+while lawyers and attorneys, on the other hand, whose presence was
+considered as boding ill to the harmony of the new settlements, were
+strictly prohibited from setting foot in them.
+
+Pizarro, on his part, was bound, in six months from the date of the
+instrument, to raise a force, well equipped for the service, of two
+hundred and fifty men, of whom one hundred might be drawn from the
+colonies; and the government engaged to furnish some trifling assistance
+in the purchase of artillery and military stores.  Finally, he was to be
+prepared, in six months after his return to Panama, to leave that port and
+embark on his expedition.2
+
+Such are some of the principal provisions of this Capitulation, by which
+the Castilian government, with the sagacious policy which it usually
+pursued on the like occasions, stimulated the ambitious hopes of the
+adventurer by high-sounding titles, and liberal promises of reward
+contingent on his success, but took care to stake nothing itself on the
+issue of the enterprise.  It was careful to reap the fruits of his toil, but not
+to pay the cost of them.
+
+A circumstance, that could not fail to be remarked in these provisions,
+was the manner in which the high and lucrative posts were accumulated
+on Pizarro, to the exclusion of Almagro, who, if he had not taken as
+conspicuous a part in personal toil and exposure, had, at least, divided
+with him the original burden of the enterprise, and, by his labors in
+another direction, had contributed quite as essentially to its success.
+Almagro had willingly conceded the post of honor to his confederate; but
+it had been stipulated, on Pizarro's departure for Spain, that, while he
+solicited the office of Governor and Captain-General for himself, he
+should secure that of Adelantado for his companion.  In like manner, he
+had engaged to apply for the see of Tumbez for the vicar of Panama, and
+the office of Alguacil Mayor for the pilot Ruiz.  The bishopric took the
+direction that was concerted, for the soldier could scarcely claim the
+mitre of the prelate; but the other offices, instead of their appropriate
+distribution, were all concentred in himself.  Yet it was in reference to
+his application for his friends, that Pizarro had promised on his departure
+to deal fairly and honorably by them all.3
+
+It is stated by the military chronicler, Pedro Pizarro, that his kinsman did,
+in fact, urge the suit strongly in behalf of Almagro; but that he was
+refused by the government, on the ground that offices of such paramount
+importance could not be committed to different individuals.  The ill
+effects of such an arrangement had been long since felt in more than one
+of the Indian colonies, where it had led to rivalry and fatal collision.4
+Pizarro, therefore, finding his remonstrances unheeded, had no
+alternative but to combine the offices in his own person, or to see the
+expedition fall to the ground.  This explanation of the affair has not
+received the sanction of other contemporary historians.  The
+apprehensions expressed by Luque, at the time of Pizarro's assuming the
+mission, of some such result as actually occurred, founded, doubtless, on
+a knowledge of his associate's character, may warrant us in distrusting
+the alleged vindication of his conduct, and our distrust will not be
+diminished by familiarity with his subsequent career.  Pizarro's virtue
+was not of a kind to withstand temptation,--though of a much weaker sort
+than that now thrown in his path.
+
+The fortunate cavalier was also honored with the habit of St. Jago;5 and
+he was authorized to make an important innovation in his family
+escutcheon,--for by the father's side he might claim his armorial bearings.
+The black eagle and the two pillars emblazoned on the royal arms were
+incorporated with those of the Pizarros; and an Indian city, with a vessel
+in the distance on the waters, and the llama of Peru, revealed the theatre
+and the character of his exploits; while the legend announced, that
+"under the auspices of Charles, and by the industry, the genius, and the
+resources of Pizarro, the country had been discovered and reduced to
+tranquillity,"---thus modestly intimating both the past and prospective
+services of the Conqueror.6
+
+These arrangements having been thus completed to Pizarro's satisfaction,
+he left Toledo for Truxillo, his native place, in Estremadura, where he
+thought he should be most likely to meet with adherents for his new
+enterprise, and where it doubtless gratified his vanity to display himself
+in the palmy, or at least promising, state of his present circumstances.  If
+vanity be ever pardonable, it is certainly in a man who, born in an
+obscure station in life, without family, interest, or friends to back him,
+has carved out his own fortunes in the world, and, by his own resources,
+triumphed over all the obstacles which nature and accident had thrown in
+his way.  Such was the condition of Pizarro, as he now revisited the place
+of his nativity, where he had hitherto been known only as a poor outcast,
+without a home to shelter, a father to own him, or a friend to lean upon.
+But he now found both friends and followers, and some who were eager
+to claim kindred with him, and take part in his future fortunes.  Among
+these were four brothers.  Three of them, like himself, were illegitimate;
+one of whom, named Francisco Martin de Alcantara, was related to him
+by the mother's side; the other two, named Gonzalo and Juan Pizarro,
+were descended from the father.  "They were all poor, and proud as they
+were poor," says Oviedo, who had seen them; "and their eagerness for
+gain was in proportion to their poverty." 7
+
+The remaining and eldest brother, named Hernando, was a legitimate
+son,--'legitimate," continues the same caustic authority, "by his pride, as
+well as by his birth." His features were plain, even disagreeably so; but
+his figure was good.  He was large of stature, and, like his brother
+Francis, had on the whole an imposing presence.8  In his character, he
+combined some of the worst defects incident to the Castilian.  He was
+jealous in the extreme; impatient not merely of affront, but of the least
+slight, and implacable in his resentment.  He was decisive in his
+measures, and unscrupulous in their execution.  No touch of pity had
+power to arrest his arm.  His arrogance was such, that he was constantly
+wounding the self-love of those with whom he acted; thus begetting an
+ill-will which unnecessarily multiplied obstacles in his path.  In this he
+differed from his brother Francis, whose plausible manners smoothed
+away difficulties, and conciliated confidence and cooperation in his
+enterprises.  Unfortunately, the evil counsels of Hernando exercised an
+influence over his brother which more than compensated the advantages
+derived from his singular capacity for business.
+
+Notwithstanding the general interest which Pizarro's adventures excited
+in his country, that chief did not find it easy to comply with the
+provisions of the Capitulation in respect to the amount of his levies.
+Those who were most astonished by his narrative were not always most
+inclined to take part in his fortunes.  They shrunk from the unparalleled
+hardships which lay in the path of the adventurer in that direction; and
+they listened with visible distrust to the gorgeous pictures of the golden
+temples and gardens of Tumbez, which they looked upon as indebted in
+some degree, at least, to the coloring of his fancy, with the obvious
+purpose of attracting followers to his banner.  It is even said that Pizarro
+would have found it difficult to raise the necessary funds, but for the
+seasonable aid of Cortes, a native of Estremadura like himself, his
+companion in arms in early days, and, according to report, his kinsman.9
+No one was in a better condition to hold out a helping hand to a brother
+adventurer, and, probably, no one felt greater sympathy in Pizarro's
+fortunes, or greater confidence in his eventual success, than the man who
+had so lately trod the same career with renown.
+
+The six months allowed by the Capitulation had elapsed, and Pizarro had
+assembled somewhat less than his stipulated complement of men, with
+which he was preparing to embark in a little squadron of three vessels at
+Seville; but, before they were wholly ready, he received intelligence that
+the officers of the Council of the Indies proposed to inquire into the
+condition of the vessels, and ascertain how far the requisitions had been
+complied with.
+
+Without loss of time therefore, Pizarro afraid, if the facts were known,
+that his enterprise might be nipped in the bud, slipped his cables, and
+crossing the bar of San Lucar, in January, 1530, stood for the isle of
+Gomera,--one of the Canaries,--where he ordered his brother Hernando,
+who had charge of the remaining vessels, to meet him.
+
+Scarcely had he gone, before the officers arrived to institute the search.
+But when they objected the deficiency of men, they were easily--perhaps
+willingly--deceived by the pretext that the remainder had gone forward in
+the vessel with Pizarro.  At all events, no further obstacles were thrown
+in Hernando's way, and he was permitted, with the rest of the squadron,
+to join his brother, according to agreement, at Gomera.
+
+After a prosperous voyage, the adventurers reached the northern coast of
+the great southern continent, and anchored off the port of Santa Marta.
+Here they received such discouraging reports of the countries to which
+they were bound, of forests teeming with insects and venomous serpents,
+of huge alligators that swarmed on the banks of the streams, and of
+hardships and perils such as their own fears had never painted, that
+several of Pizarro's men deserted; and their leader, thinking it no longer
+safe to abide in such treacherous quarters, set sail at once for Nombre de
+Dios.
+
+Soon after his arrival there, he was met by his two associates, Luque and
+Almagro, who had crossed the mountains for the purpose of hearing
+from his own lips the precise import of the capitulation with the Crown.
+Great, as might have been expected, was Almagro's discontent at
+learning the result of what he regarded as the perfidious machinations of
+his associate.  "Is it thus," he exclaimed, "that you have dealt with the
+friend who shared equally with you in the trials, the dangers, and the cost
+of the enterprise; and this, notwithstanding your solemn engagements on
+your departure to provide for his interests as faithfully as your own?
+How could you allow me to be thus dishonored in the eyes of the world
+by so paltry a compensation, which seems to estimate my services as
+nothing in comparison with your own?" 10
+
+Pizarro, in reply, assured his companion that he had faithfully urged his
+suit, but that the government refused to confide powers which intrenched
+so closely on one another to different hands.  He had no alternative, but
+to accept all himself or to decline all; and he endeavored to mitigate
+Almagro's displeasure by representing that the country was large enough
+for the ambition of both, and that the powers conferred on himself were,
+in fact, conferred on Almagro, since all that he had would ever be at his
+friend's disposal, as if it were his own.  But these honeyed words did not
+satisfy the injured party; and the two captains soon after returned to
+Panama with feelings of estrangement, if not hostility, towards one
+another, which did not augur well for their enterprise.
+
+Still, Almagro was of a generous temper, and might have been appeased
+by the politic concessions of his rival, but for the interference of
+Hernando Pizarro, who, from the first hour of their meeting, showed
+little respect for the veteran, which, indeed, the diminutive person of the
+latter was not calculated to inspire, and who now regarded him with
+particular aversion as an impediment to the career of his brother.
+
+Almagro's friends--and his frank and liberal manners had secured him
+many--were no less disgusted than himself with the overbearing conduct
+of this new ally.  They loudly complained that it was quite enough to
+suffer from the perfidy of Pizarro, without being exposed to the insults of
+his family, who had now come over with him to fatten on the spoils of
+conquest which belonged to their leader.  The rupture soon proceeded to
+such a length, that Almagro avowed his intention to prosecute the
+expedition without further cooperation with his partner, and actually
+entered into negotiations for the purchase of vessels for that object.  But
+Luque, and the Licentiate Espinosa, who had fortunately come over at
+that time from St. Domingo, now interposed to repair a breach which
+must end in the ruin of the enterprise, and the probable destruction of
+those most interested in its success.  By their mediation, a show of
+reconciliation was at length effected between the parties, on Pizarro's
+assurance that he would relinquish the dignity of Adelantado in favor of
+his rival, and petition the emperor to confirm him in the possession of it;-
+-an assurance, it may be remarked, not easy to reconcile with his former
+assertion in respect to the avowed policy of the Crown in bestowing this
+office.  He was, moreover, to apply for a distinct government for his
+associate, so soon as he had become master of the country assigned to
+himself; and was to solicit no office for either of his own brothers, until
+Almagro had been first provided for.  Lastly, the former contract in
+regard to the division of the spoil into three equal shares between the
+three original associates was confirmed in the most explicit manner.  The
+reconciliation thus effected among the parties answered the temporary
+purpose of enabling them to go forward in concert in the expedition.  But
+it was only a thin scar that had healed ever the wound, which, deep and
+rankling within, waited only fresh cause of irritation to break out with a
+virulence more fatal than ever.11
+
+No time was now lost in preparing for the voyage.  It found little
+encouragement, however, among the colonists of Panama, who were too
+familiar with the sufferings on the former expeditions to care to
+undertake another, even with the rich bribe that was held out to allure
+them.  A few of the old company were content to follow out the
+adventure to its close; and some additional stragglers were collected
+from the province of Nicaragua,--a shoot, it may be remarked, from the
+colony of Panama.  But Pizarro made slender additions to the force
+brought over with him from Spain, though this body was in better
+condition, and, in respect to arms, ammunition, and equipment generally,
+was on a much better footing than his former levies.  The whole number
+did not exceed one hundred and eighty men, with twenty-seven horses
+for the cavalry.  He had provided himself with three vessels, two of them
+of a good size, to take the place of those which he had been compelled to
+leave on the opposite side of the isthmus at Nombre de Dios; an
+armament small for the conquest of an empire, and far short of that
+prescribed by the capitulation with the Crown.  With this the intrepid
+chief proposed to commence operations, trusting to his own successes,
+and the exertions of Almagro, who was to remain behind, for the present,
+to muster reinforcements.12
+
+On St. John the Evangelist's day, the banners of the company and the
+royal standard were consecrated in the cathedral church of Panama; a
+sermon was preached before the little army by Fray Juan de Vargas, one
+of the Dominicans selected by the government for the Peruvian mission;
+and mass was performed, and the sacrament administered to every
+soldier previous to his engaging in the crusade against the infidel.13
+Having thus solemnly invoked the blessing of Heaven on the enterprise,
+Pizarro and his followers went on board their vessels, which rode at
+anchor in the Bay of Panama, and early in January, 1531, sallied forth on
+his third and last expedition for the conquest of Peru.
+
+It was his intention to steer direct for Tumbez, which held out so
+magnificent a show of treasure on his former voyage.  But head winds
+and currents, as usual, baffled his purpose, and after a run of thirteen
+days, much shorter than the period formerly required for the same
+distance, his little squadron came to anchor in the Bay of St. Matthew,
+about one degree north; and Pizarro, after consulting with his officers,
+resolved to disembark his forces and advance along the coast, while the
+vessels, held their course at a convenient distance from the shore.
+
+The march of the troops was severe and painful in the extreme; for the
+road was constantly intersected by streams, which, swollen by the winter
+rains, widened at their mouths into spacious estuaries.  Pizarro, who had
+some previous knowledge of the country, acted as guide as well as
+commander of the expedition.  He was ever ready to give aid where it
+was needed, encouraging his followers to ford or swim the torrents as
+they best could, and cheering the desponding by his own buoyant and
+courageous spirit.
+
+At length they reached a thick-settled hamlet, or rather town, in the
+province of Coaque.  The Spaniards rushed on the place, and the
+inhabitants, without offering resistance, fled in terror to the neighboring
+forests, leaving their effects--of much greater value than had been
+anticipated--in the hands of the invaders.  "We fell on them, sword in
+hand," says one of the Conquerors, with some naivete; "for, if we had
+advised the Indians of our approach, we should never have found there
+such store of gold and precious stones." 14  The natives, however,
+according to another authority, stayed voluntarily; "for, as they had done
+no harm to the white men, they flattered themselves none would be
+offered to them, but that there would be only an interchange of good
+offices with the strangers," 15---an expectation founded, it may be, on
+the good character which the Spaniards had established for themselves
+on their preceding visit, but in which the simple people now found
+themselves most unpleasantly deceived.
+
+Rushing into the deserted dwellings, the invaders found there, besides
+stuffs of various kinds, and food most welcome in their famished
+condition, a large quantity of gold and silver wrought into clumsy
+ornaments, together with many precious stones; for this was the region of
+the esmeraldas, or emeralds, where that valuable gem was most
+abundant.  One of these jewels that fell into the hands of Pizarro, in this
+neighborhood, was as large as a pigeon's egg.  Unluckily, his rude
+followers did not know the value of their prize; and they broke many of
+them in pieces by pounding them with hammers.16  They were led to this
+extraordinary proceeding, it is said, by one of the Dominican
+missionaries, Fray Reginaldo de Pedraza, who assured them that this was
+the way to prove the true emerald, which could not be broken.  It was
+observed that the good father did not subject his own jewels to this wise
+experiment; but, as the stones, in consequence of it, fell in value, being
+regarded merely as colored glass, he carried back a considerable store of
+them to Panama.17
+
+The gold and silver ornaments rifled from the dwellings were brought
+together and deposited in a common heap; when a fifth was deducted for
+the Crown, and Pizarro distributed the remainder in due proportions
+among the officers and privates of his company.  This was the usage
+invariably observed on the like occasions throughout the Conquest.  The
+invaders had embarked in a common adventure.  Their interest was
+common, and to have allowed every one to plunder on his own account
+would only have led to insubordination and perpetual broils.  All were
+required, therefore, on pain of death, to contribute whatever they
+obtained, whether by bargain or by rapine, to the general stock; and all
+were too much interested in the execution of the penalty to allow the
+unhappy culprit, who violated the law, any chance of escape.18
+
+Pizarro, with his usual policy, sent back to Panama a large quantity of
+the gold, no less than twenty thousand castellanos in value, in the belief
+that the sight of so much treasure, thus speedily acquired, would settle
+the doubt of the wavering, and decide them on joining his banner.19  He
+judged right.  As one of the Conquerors piously expresses it, "It pleased
+the Lord that we should fall in with the town of Coaque, that the riches of
+the land might find credit with the people, and that they should flock to
+it." 20
+
+Pizarro, having refreshed his men, continued his march along the coast,
+but no longer accompanied by the vessels, which had returned for
+recruits to Panama.  The road, as he advanced, was checkered with strips
+of sandy waste, which, drifted about by the winds, blinded the soldiers,
+and afforded only treacherous footing for man and beast.  The glare was
+intense; and the rays of a vertical sun beat fiercely on the iron mail and
+the thick quilted doublets of cotton, till the fainting troops were almost
+suffocated with the heat.  To add to their distresses, a strange epidemic
+broke out in the little army.  It took the form of ulcers, or rather hideous
+warts of great size, which covered the body, and when lanced, as was the
+case with some, discharged such a quantity of blood as proved fatal to
+the sufferer.  Several died of this frightful disorder, which was so sudden
+in its attack, and attended with such prostration of strength, that those
+who lay down well at night were unable to lift their hands to their heads
+in the morning.21  The epidemic, which made its first appearance during
+this invasion, and which did not long survive it, spread over the country,
+sparing neither native nor white man.22  It was one of those plagues
+from the vial of wrath, which the destroying angel, who follows in the
+path of the conqueror, pours out on the devoted nations.
+
+The Spaniards rarely experienced on their march either resistance or
+annoyance from the inhabitants, who, instructed by the example of
+Coaque, fled with their effects into the woods and neighboring
+mountains.  No one came out to welcome the strangers and offer the rites
+of hospitality, as on their last visit to the land.  For the white men were
+no longer regarded as good beings that had come from heaven, but as
+ruthless destroyers, who, invulnerable to the assaults of the Indians, were
+borne along on the backs of fierce animals, swifter than the wind, with
+weapons in their hands, that scattered fire and desolation as they went.
+Such were the stories now circulated of the invaders, which, preceding
+them everywhere on their march, closed the hearts, if not the doors, of
+the natives against them.  Exhausted by the fatigue of travel and by
+disease, and grievously disappointed at the poverty of the land, which
+now offered no compensation for their toils, the soldiers of Pizarro
+cursed the hour in which they had enlisted under his standard, and the
+men of Nicaragua, in particular, says the old chronicler, calling to mind
+their pleasant quarters in their luxurious land, sighed only to return to
+their Mahometan paradise.23
+
+At this juncture the army was gladdened by the sight of a vessel from
+Panama, which brought some supplies, together with the royal treasurer,
+the veedor or inspector, the comptroller, and other high officers
+appointed by the Crown to attend the expedition.  They had been left in
+Spain by Pizarro, in consequence of his abrupt departure from the
+country; and the Council of the Indies, on learning the circumstance, had
+sent instructions to Panama to prevent the sailing of his squadron from
+that port.  But the Spanish government, with more wisdom,
+countermanded the order, only requiring the functionaries to quicken
+their own departure, and take their place without loss of time in the
+expedition.
+
+The Spaniards in their march along the coast had now advanced as far as
+Puerto Viejo.  Here they were soon after joined by another small
+reinforcement of about thirty men, under an officer named Belalcazar,
+who subsequently rose to high distinction in this service.  Many of the
+followers of Pizarro would now have halted at this spot and established a
+colony there.  But that chief thought more of conquering than of
+colonizing, at least for the present; and he proposed, as his first step, to
+get possession of Tumbez, which he regarded as the gate of the Peruvian
+empire.  Continuing his march, therefore, to the shores of what is now
+called the Gulf of Guayaquil, he arrived off the little island of Puna,
+lying at no great distance from the Bay of Tumbez.  This island, he
+thought, would afford him a convenient place to encamp until he was
+prepared to make his descent on the Indian city.
+
+The dispositions of the islanders seemed to favor his purpose.  He had
+not been long in their neighborhood, before a deputation of the natives,
+with their cacique at their head, crossed over in their balsas to the main
+land to welcome the Spaniards to their residence.  But the Indian
+interpreters of Tumbez, who had returned with Pizarro from Spain, and
+continued with the camp, put their master on his guard against the
+meditated treachery of the islanders, whom they accused of designing to
+destroy the Spaniards by cutting the ropes that held together the floats,
+and leaving those upon them to perish in the waters.  Yet the cacique,
+when charged by Pizarro with this perfidious scheme, denied it with such
+an air of conscious innocence, that the Spanish commander trusted
+himself and his followers, without further hesitation, to his conveyance,
+and was transported in safety to the shores of Puna.
+
+Here he was received in a hospitable manner, and his troops were
+provided with comfortable quarters.  Well satisfied with his present
+position, Pizarro resolved to occupy it until the violence of the rainy
+season was passed, when the arrival of the reinforcements he expected
+would put him in better condition for marching into the country of the
+Inca.
+
+The island, which lies in the mouth of the river of Guayaquil, and is
+about eight leagues in length by four in breadth, at the widest part, was at
+that time partially covered with a noble growth of timber.  But a large
+portion of it was subjected to cultivation, and bloomed with plantations
+of cacao, of the sweet potato, and the different products of a tropical
+climes evincing agricultural knowledge as well as industry in the
+population.  They were a warlike race; but had received from their
+Peruvian foes the appellation of "perfidious." It was the brand fastened
+by the Roman historians on their Carthaginian enemies,--with perhaps no
+better reason.  The bold and independent islanders opposed a stubborn
+resistance to the arms of the Incas; and, though they had finally yielded,
+they had been ever since at feud, and often in deadly hostility, with their
+neighbors of Tumbez.
+
+The latter no sooner heard of Pizarro's arrival on the island than, trusting,
+probably, to their former friendly relations with him, they came over in
+some number to the Spanish quarters.  The presence of their detested
+rivals was by no means grateful to the jealous inhabitants of Puna, and
+the prolonged residence of the white men on their island could not be
+otherwise than burdensome.  In their outward demeanor they still
+maintained the same show of amity; but Pizarro's interpreters again put
+him on his guard against the proverbial perfidy of their hosts.  With his
+suspicions thus roused, the Spanish commander was informed that a
+number of the chiefs had met together to deliberate on a plan of
+insurrection.  Not caring to wait for the springing of the mine, he
+surrounded the place of meeting with his soldiers and made prisoners of
+the suspected chieftains.  According to one authority, they confessed
+their guilt.24  This is by no means certain.  Nor is it certain that they
+meditated an insurrection.  Yet the fact is not improbable, in itself;
+though it derives little additional probability from the assertion of the
+hostile interpreters.  It is certain, however, that Pizarro was satisfied of
+the existence of a conspiracy; and, without further hesitation, he
+abandoned his wretched prisoners, ten or twelve in number, to the tender
+mercies of their rivals of Tumbez, who instantly massacred them before
+his eyes.25
+
+Maddened by this outrage, the people of Puna sprang to arms, and threw
+themselves at once, with fearful yells and the wildest menaces of despair,
+on the Spanish camp.  The odds of numbers were greatly in their favor,
+for they mustered several thousand warriors.  But the more decisive odds
+of arms and discipline were on the side of their antagonists; and, as the
+Indians rushed forward in a confused mass to the assault, the Castilians
+coolly received them on their long pikes, or swept them down by the
+volleys of their musketry.  Their ill-protected bodies were easily cut to
+pieces by the sharp sword of the Spaniard; and Hernando Pizarro, putting
+himself at the head of the cavalry, charged boldly into the midst, and
+scattered them far and wide over the field, until, panic-struck by the
+terrible array of steel-clad horsemen, and the stunning reports and the
+flash of fire-arms, the fugitives sought shelter in the depths of their
+forests.  Yet the victory was owing, in some degree, at least,--if we may
+credit the Conquerors,--to the interposition of Heaven; for St. Michael
+and his legions were seen high in the air above the combatants,
+contending with the arch-enemy of man, and cheering on the Christians
+by their example! 26
+
+Not more than three or four Spaniards fell in the fight; but many were
+wounded, and among them Hernando Pizarro, who received a severe
+injury in the leg from a javelin.  Nor did the war end here; for the
+implacable islanders, taking advantage of the cover of night, or of any
+remissness on the part of the invaders, were ever ready to steal out of
+their fastnesses and spring on their enemy's camp, while, by cutting off
+his straggling parties, and destroying his provisions, they kept him in
+perpetual alarm.
+
+In this uncomfortable situation, the Spanish commander was gladdened
+by the appearance of two vessels off the island.  They brought a
+reinforcement consisting of a hundred volunteers besides horses for the
+cavalry.  It was commanded by Hernando de Soto, a captain afterwards
+famous as the discoverer of the Mississippi, which still rolls its majestic
+current over the place of his burial,--a fitting monument for his remains,
+as it is of his renown.27
+
+The reinforcement was most welcome to Pizarro, who had been long
+discontented with his position on an island, where he found nothing to
+compensate the life of unintermitting hostility which he was compelled to
+lead.  With these recruits, he felt himself in sufficient strength to cross
+over to the continent, and resume military operations in the proper
+theatre for discovery and conquest.  From the Indians of Tumbez he
+learned that the country had been for some time distracted by a civil war
+between two sons of the late monarch, competitors for the throne.  This
+intelligence he regarded as of the utmost importance, for he remembered
+the use which Cortes had made of similar dissensions among the tribes of
+Anahuac.  Indeed, Pizarro seems to have had the example of his great
+predecessor before his eyes on more occasions than this.  But he fell far
+short of his model; for, notwithstanding the restraint he sometimes put
+upon himself, his coarser nature and more ferocious temper often
+betrayed him into acts most repugnant to sound policy, which would
+never have been countenanced by the Conqueror of Mexico.
+
+
+
+Book 3
+
+Chapter 2
+
+Peru At The Time Of The Conquest--Reign Of Huayna Capac-
+The Inca Brothers--Conquest For The Empire-
+Triumph And Cruelties Of Atahuallpa
+
+Before accompanying the march of Pizarro and his followers into the
+country of the Incas, it is necessary to make the reader acquainted with
+the critical situation of the kingdom at that time.  For the Spaniards
+arrived just at the consummation of an important revolution,--at a crisis
+most favorable to their views of conquest, and but for which, indeed, the
+conquest, with such a handful of soldiers, could never have been
+achieved.
+
+In the latter part of the fifteenth century died Tupac Inca Yupanqui, one
+of the most renowned of the "Children of the Sun," who, carrying the
+Peruvian arms across the burning sands of Atacama, penetrated to the
+remote borders of Chili, while in the opposite direction he enlarged the
+limits of the empire by the acquisition of the southern provinces of
+Quito.  The war in this quarter was conducted by his son Huayna Capac,
+who succeeded his father on the throne, and fully equalled him in
+military daring and in capacity for government.
+
+Under this prince, the whole of the powerful state of Quito, which
+rivalled that of Peru itself in wealth and refinement, was brought under
+the sceptre of the Incas; whose empire received, by this conquest, the
+most important accession yet made to it since the foundation of the
+dynasty of Manco Capac.  The remaining days of the victorious monarch
+were passed in reducing the independent tribes on the remote limits of
+his territory, and, still more, in cementing his conquests by the
+introduction of the Peruvian polity.  He was actively engaged in
+completing the great works of his father, especially the high-roads which
+led from Quito to the capital.  He perfected the establishment of posts,
+took great pains to introduce the Quichua dialect throughout the empire,
+promoted a better system of agriculture, and, in fine, encouraged the
+different branches of domestic industry and the various enlightened plans
+of his predecessors for the improvement of his people.  Under his sway,
+the Peruvian monarchy reached its most palmy state; and under both him
+and his illustrious father it was advancing with such rapid strides in the
+march of civilization as would soon have carried it to a level with the
+more refined despotisms of Asia, furnishing the world, perhaps, with
+higher evidence of the capabilities of the American Indian than is
+elsewhere to be found on the great western continent.--But other and
+gloomier destinies were in reserve for the Indian races.
+
+The first arrival of the white men on the South American shores of the
+Pacific was about ten years before the death of Huayna Capac, when
+Balboa crossed the Gulf of St. Michael, and obtained the first clear
+report of the empire of the Incas.  Whether tidings of these adventurers
+reached the Indian monarch's ears is doubtful.  There is no doubt,
+however, that he obtained the news of the first expedition under Pizarro
+and Almagro, when the latter commander penetrated as far as the Rio de
+San Juan, about the fourth degree north.  The accounts which he received
+made a strong impression on the mind of Huayna Capac.  He discerned
+in the formidable prowess and weapons of the invaders proofs of a
+civilization far superior to that of his own people.  He intimated his
+apprehension that they would return, and that at some day, not far
+distant, perhaps, the throne of the Incas might be shaken by these
+strangers, endowed with such incomprehensible powers.1  To the vulgar
+eye, it was a little speck on the verge of the horizon; but that of the
+sagacious monarch seemed to descry in it the dark thunder-cloud, that
+was to spread wider and wider till it burst in fury on his nation!
+
+There is some ground for believing thus much.  But other accounts,
+which have obtained a popular currency, not content with this, connect
+the first tidings of the white men with predictions long extant in the
+country, and with supernatural appearances, which filled the hearts of the
+whole nation with dismay.  Comets were seen flaming athwart the
+heavens.  Earthquakes shook the land; the moon was girdled with rings
+of fire of many colors; a thunderbolt fell on one of the royal palaces and
+consumed it to ashes; and an eagle, chased by several hawks, was seen,
+screaming in the air, to hover above the great square of Cuzco, when,
+pierced by the talons of his tormentors, the king of birds fell lifeless in
+the presence of many of the Inca nobles, who read in this an augury of
+their own destruction!  Huayna Capac himself, calling his great officers
+around him, as he found he was drawing near his end, announced the
+subversion of his empire by the race of white and bearded strangers, as
+the consummation predicted by the oracles after the reign of the twelfth
+Inca, and he enjoined it on his vassals not to resist the decrees of
+Heaven, but to yield obedience to its messengers.2
+
+Such is the report of the impressions made by the appearance of the
+Spaniards in the country, reminding one of the similar feelings of
+superstitious terror occasioned by their appearance in Mexico.  But the
+traditions of the latter land rest on much higher authority than those of
+the Peruvians, which, unsupported by contemporary testimony, rest
+almost wholly on the naked assertion of one of their own nation, who
+thought to find, doubtless, in the inevitable decrees of Heaven, the best
+apology for the supineness of his countrymen.
+
+It is not improbable that rumors of the advent of a strange and
+mysterious race should have spread gradually among the Indian tribes
+along the great table-land of the Cordilleras, and should have shaken the
+hearts of the stoutest warriors with feelings of undefined dread, as of
+some impending calamity.  In this state of mind, it was natural that
+physical convulsions, to which that volcanic country is peculiarly
+subject, should have made an unwonted impression on their minds; and
+that the phenomena, which might have been regarded only as
+extraordinary, in the usual seasons of political security, should now be
+interpreted by the superstitious soothsayer as the handwriting on the
+heavens, by which the God of the Incas proclaimed the approaching
+downfall of their empire.
+
+Huayna Capac had, as usual with the Peruvian princes, a multitude of
+concubines, by whom he left a numerous posterity.  The heir to the
+crown, the son of his lawful wife and sister, was named Huascar.3  At the
+period of the history at which we are now arrived, he was about thirty
+years of age.  Next to the heir-apparent, by another wife, a cousin of the
+monarch's, came Manco Capac, a young prince who will occupy an
+important place in our subsequent story.  But the best-beloved of the
+Inca's children was Atahuallpa.  His mother was the daughter of the last
+Scyri of Quito, who had died of grief, it was said, not long after the
+subversion of his kingdom by Huayna Capac.  The princess was
+beautiful, and the Inca, whether to gratify his passion, or, as the
+Peruvians say, willing to make amends for the ruin of her parents,
+received her among his concubines.  The historians of Quito assert that
+she was his lawful wife; but this dignity, according to the usages of the
+empire, was reserved for maidens of the Inca blood.
+
+The latter years of Huayna Capac were passed in his new kingdom of
+Quito.  Atahuallpa was accordingly brought up under his own eye,
+accompanied him, while in his tender years, in his campaigns, slept in
+the same tent with his royal father, and ate from the same plate.4  The
+vivacity of the boy, his courage and generous nature, won the affections
+of the old monarch to such a degree, that he resolved to depart from the
+established usages of the realm, and divide his empire between him and
+his elder brother Huascar.  On his death-bed, he called the great officers
+of the crown around him, and declared it to be his will that the ancient
+kingdom of Quito should pass to Atahuallpa, who might be considered as
+having a natural claim on it, as the dominion of his ancestors.  The rest
+of the empire he settled on Huascar; and he enjoined it on the two
+brothers to acquiesce in this arrangement, and to live in amity with each
+other.  This was the last act of the heroic monarch; doubtless, the most
+impolitic of his whole life.  With his dying breath he subverted the
+fundamental laws of the empire; and, while he recommended harmony
+between the successors to his authority, he left in this very division of it
+the seeds of inevitable discord.5
+
+His death took place, as seems probable, at the close of 1525, not quite
+seven years before Pizarro's arrival at Puna.6  The tidings of his decease
+spread sorrow and consternation throughout the land; for, though stern
+and even inexorable to the rebel and the long-resisting foe, he was a
+brave and magnanimous monarch, and legislated with the enlarged views
+of a prince who regarded every part of his dominions as equally his
+concern.  The people of Quito, flattered by the proofs which he had
+given of preference for them by his permanent residence in that country,
+and his embellishment of their capital, manifested unfeigned sorrow at
+his loss; and his subjects at Cuzco, proud of the glory which his arms and
+his abilities had secured for his native land, held him in no less
+admiration;7 while the more thoughtful and the more timid, in both
+countries, looked with apprehension to the future, when the sceptre of
+the vast empire, instead of being swayed by an old and experienced
+hand, was to be consigned to rival princes, naturally jealous of one
+another, and, from their age, necessarily exposed to the unwholesome
+influence of crafty and ambitious counsellors.  The people testified their
+regret by the unwonted honors paid to the memory of the deceased Inca.
+His heart was retained in Quito, and his body, embalmed after the
+fashion of the country, was transported to Cuzco, to take its place in the
+great temple of the Sun, by the side of the remains of his royal ancestors.
+His obsequies were celebrated with sanguinary splendor in both the
+capitals of his far-extended empire; and several thousand of the imperial
+concubines, with numerous pages and officers of the palace, are said to
+have proved their sorrow, or their superstition, by offering up their own
+lives, that they might accompany their departed lord to the bright
+mansions of the Sun.8
+
+For nearly five years after the death of Huayna Capac, the royal brothers
+reigned, each over his allotted portion of the empire, without distrust of
+one another, or, at least, without collision.  It seemed as if the wish of
+their father was to be completely realized, and that the two states were to
+maintain their respective integrity and independence as much as if they
+had never been united into one.  But, with the manifold causes for
+jealousy and discontent, and the swarms of courtly sycophants, who
+would find their account in fomenting these feelings, it was easy to see
+that this tranquil state of things could not long endure.  Nor would it
+have endured so long, but for the more gentle temper of Huascar, the
+only party who had ground for complaint.  He was four or five years
+older than his brother, and was possessed of courage not to be doubted;
+but he was a prince of a generous and easy nature, and perhaps, if left to
+himself, might have acquiesced in an arrangement which, however
+unpalatable, was the will of his deified father.  But Atahuallpa was of a
+different temper.  Warlike, ambitious, and daring, he was constantly
+engaged in enterprises for the enlargement of his own territory, though
+his crafty policy was scrupulous not to aim at extending his acquisitions
+in the direction of his royal brother.  His restless spirit, however, excited
+some alarm at the court of Cuzco, and Huascar, at length, sent an envoy
+to Atahuallpa, to remonstrate with him on his ambitious enterprises, and
+to require him to render him homage for his kingdom of Quito.
+
+This is one statement.  Other accounts pretend that the immediate cause
+of rupture was a claim instituted by Huascar for the territory of
+Tumebamba, held by his brother as part of his patrimonial inheritance.  It
+matters little what was the ostensible ground of collision between
+persons placed by circumstances in so false a position in regard to one
+another, that collision must, at some time or other, inevitably occur.
+
+The commencement, and, indeed, the whole course, of hostilities which
+soon broke out between the rival brothers are stated with irreconcilable,
+and, considering the period was so near to that of the Spanish invasion,
+with unaccountable discrepancy.  By some it is said, that, in Atahuallpa's
+first encounter with the troops of Cuzco, he was defeated and made
+prisoner near Tumebamba, a favorite residence of his father in the
+ancient territory of Quito, and in the district of Canaris.  From this
+disaster he recovered by a fortunate escape from confinement, when,
+regaining his capital, he soon found himself at the head of a numerous
+army, led by the most able and experienced captains in the empire.  The
+liberal manners of the young Atahuallpa had endeared him to the
+soldiers, with whom, as we have seen, he served more than one campaign
+in his father's lifetime.  These troops were the flower of the great army of
+the Inca, and some of them had grown gray in his long military career,
+which had left them at the north, where they readily transferred their
+allegiance to the young sovereign of Quito.  They were commanded by
+two officers of great consideration, both possessed of large experience in
+military affairs, and high in the confidence of the late Inca.  One of them
+was named Quizquiz; the other, who was the maternal uncle of
+Atahuallpa, was called Chalicuchima.
+
+With these practised warriors to guide him, the young monarch put
+himself at the head of his martial array, and directed his march towards
+the south.  He had not advanced farther than Ambato, about sixty miles
+distant from his capital, when he fell in with a numerous host, which had
+been sent against him by his brother, under the command of a
+distinguished chieftain, of the Inca family.  A bloody battle followed,
+which lasted the greater part of the day; and the theatre of combat was
+the skirts of the mighty Chimborazo.9
+
+The battle ended favorably for Atahuallpa, and the Peruvians were
+routed with great slaughter, and the loss of their commander.  The prince
+of Quito availed himself of his advantage to push forward his march until
+he arrived before the gates of Tumebamba, which city, as well as the
+whole district of Canaris, though an ancient dependency of Quito, had
+sided with his rival in the contest.  Entering the captive city like a
+conqueror, he put the inhabitants to the sword, and razed it with all its
+stately edifices, some of which had been reared by his own father, to the
+ground.  He carried on the same war of extermination, as he marched
+through the offending district of Canaris.  In some places, it is said, the
+women and children came out, with green branches in their hands, in
+melancholy procession, to deprecate his wrath; but the vindictive
+conqueror, deaf to their entreaties, laid the country waste with fire and
+sword, sparing no man capable of bearing arms who fell into his
+hands.10
+
+The fate of Canaris struck terror into the hearts of his enemies, and one
+place after another opened its gates to the victor, who held on his
+triumphant march towards the Peruvian capital.  His arms experienced a
+temporary check before the island of Puna, whose bold warriors
+maintained the cause of his brother.  After some days lost before this
+place, Atahuallpa left the contest to their old enemies, the people of
+Tumbez, who had early given in their adhesion to him, while he resumed
+his march and advanced as far as Caxamalca, about seven degrees south.
+Here he halted with a detachment of the army, sending forward the main
+body under the command of his two generals, with orders to move
+straight upon Cuzco.  He preferred not to trust himself farther in the
+enemy's country, where a defeat might be fatal.  By establishing his
+quarters at Caxamalca, he would be able to support his generals, in case
+of a reverse, or, at worst, to secure his retreat on Quito, until he was
+again in condition to renew hostilities.
+
+The two commanders, advancing by rapid marches, at length crossed the
+Apurimac river, and arrived within a short distance of the Peruvian
+capital.--Meanwhile, Huascar had not been idle.  On receiving tidings of
+the discomfiture of his army at Ambato, he made every exertion to raise
+levies throughout the country.  By the advice, it is said, of his priests--the
+most incompetent advisers in times of danger--he chose to await the
+approach of the enemy in his own capital; and it was not till the latter had
+arrived within a few leagues of Cuzco, that the Inca, taking counsel of
+the same ghostly monitors, sallied forth to give him battle.
+
+The two armies met on the plains of Quipaypan, in the neighborhood of
+the Indian metropolis.  Their numbers are stated with the usual
+discrepancy; but Atahuallpa's troops had considerably the advantage in
+discipline and experience, for many of Huascar's levies had been drawn
+hastily together from the surrounding country.  Both fought, however,
+with the desperation of men who felt that every thing was at stake.  It was
+no longer a contest for a province, but for the possession of an empire.
+Atahuallpa's troops, flushed with recent success, fought with the
+confidence of those who relied on their superior prowess; while the loyal
+vassals of the Inca displayed all the self-devotion of men who held their
+own lives cheap in the service of their master.
+
+The fight raged with the greatest obstinacy from sunrise to sunset; and
+the ground was covered with heaps of the dying and the dead, whose
+bones lay bleaching on the battle-field long after the conquest by the
+Spaniards.  At length, fortune declared in favor of Atahuallpa; or rather,
+the usual result of superior discipline and military practice followed.
+The ranks of the Inca were thrown into irretrievable disorder, and gave
+way in all directions.  The conquerors followed close on the heels of the
+flying.  Huascar himself, among the latter, endeavored to make his
+escape with about a thousand men who remained round his person.  But
+the royal fugitive was discovered before he had left the field; his little
+party was enveloped by clouds of the enemy, and nearly every one of the
+devoted band perished in defence of their Inca.  Huascar was made
+prisoner, and the victorious chiefs marched at once on his capital, which
+they occupied in the name of their sovereign.11
+
+These events occurred in the spring of 1532, a few months before the
+landing of the Spaniards.  The tidings of the success of his arms and the
+capture of his unfortunate brother reached Atahuallpa at Caxamalca.  He
+instantly gave orders that Huascar should be treated with the respect due
+to his rank, but that he should be removed to the strong fortress of
+Xauxa, and held there in strict confinement.  His orders did not stop
+here,--if we are to receive the accounts of Garcilasso de la Vega, himself
+of the Inca race, and by his mother's side nephew of the great Huayna
+Capac.
+
+According to this authority, Atahuallpa invited the Inca nobles
+throughout the country to assemble at Cuzco in order to deliberate on the
+best means of partitioning the empire between him and his brother.
+When they had met in the capital, they were surrounded by the soldiery
+of Quito, and butchered without mercy.  The motive for this perfidious
+act was to exterminate the whole of the royal family, who might each one
+of them show a better title to the crown than the illegitimate Atahuallpa.
+But the massacre did not end here.  The illegitimate offspring, like
+himself, half-brothers of the monster, all, in short, who had any of the
+Inca blood in their veins, were involved in it; and with an appetite for
+carnage unparalleled in the annals of the Roman Empire or of the French
+Republic, Atahuallpa ordered all the females of the blood royal, his
+aunts, nieces, and cousins, to be put to death, and that, too, with the most
+refined and lingering tortures.  To give greater zest to his revenge, many
+of the executions took place in the presence of Huascar himself, who was
+thus compelled to witness the butchery of his own wives and sisters,
+while, in the extremity of anguish, they in vain called on him to protect
+them! 12
+
+Such is the tale told by the historian of the Incas, and received by him, as
+he assures us, from his mother and uncle, who, being children at the
+time, were so fortunate as to be among the few that escaped the massacre
+of their house.13  And such is the account repeated by many a Castilian
+writer since, without any symptom of distrust.  But a tissue of
+unprovoked atrocities like these is too repugnant to the principles of
+human nature,--and, indeed, to common sense, to warrant our belief in
+them on ordinary testimony.
+
+The annals of semi-civilized nations unhappily show that there have been
+instances of similar attempts to extinguish the whole of a noxious race,
+which had become the object of a tyrant's jealousy; though such an
+attempt is about as chimerical as it would be to extirpate any particular
+species of plant, the seeds of which had been borne on every wind over
+the country.  But, if the attempt to exterminate the Inca race was actually
+made by Atahuallpa, how comes it that so many of the pure descendants
+of the blood royal--nearly six hundred in number--are admitted by the
+historian to have been in existence seventy years after the imputed
+massacre?14  Why was the massacre, instead of being limited to the
+legitimate members of the royal stock, who could show a better title to
+the crown than the usurper, extended to all, however remotely, or in
+whatever way, connected with the race?  Why were aged women and
+young maidens involved in the proscription, and why were they
+subjected to such refined and superfluous tortures, when it is obvious
+that beings so impotent could have done nothing to provoke the jealousy
+of the tyrant?  Why, when so many were sacrificed from some vague
+apprehension of distant danger, was his rival Huascar, together with his
+younger brother Manco Capac, the two men from whom the conqueror
+had most to fear, suffered to live?  Why, in short, is the wonderful tale
+not recorded by others before the time of Garcilasso, and nearer by half a
+century to the events themselves?15
+
+That Atahuallpa may have been guilty of excesses, and abused the rights
+of conquest by some gratuitous acts of cruelty, may be readily believed;
+for no one, who calls to mind his treatment of the Canaris,-which his own
+apologists do not affect to deny,16--will doubt that he had a full measure
+of the vindictive temper which belongs to
+
+"Those souls of fire, and Children of the Sun,
+With whom revenge was virtue."
+
+But there is a wide difference between this and the monstrous and most
+unprovoked atrocities imputed to him; implying a diabolical nature not to
+be admitted on the evidence of an Indian partisan, the sworn foe of his
+house, and repeated by Castilian chroniclers, who may naturally seek, by
+blazoning the enormities of Atahuallpa, to find some apology for the
+cruelty of their countrymen towards him.
+
+The news of the great victory was borne on the wings of the wind to
+Caxamalca; and loud and long was the rejoicing, not only in the camp of
+Atahuallpa, but in the town and surrounding country; for all now came
+in, eager to offer their congratulations to the victor, and do him homage.
+The prince of Quito no longer hesitated to assume the scarlet borla, the
+diadem of the Incas.  His triumph was complete.  He had beaten his
+enemies on their own ground; had taken their capital; had set his foot on
+the neck of his rival, and won for himself the ancient sceptre of the
+Children of the Sun.  But the hour of triumph was destined to be that of
+his deepest humiliation.  Atahuallpa was not one of those to whom, in the
+language of the Grecian bard, "the Gods are willing to reveal
+themselves." 17  He had not read the handwriting on the heavens.  The
+small speck, which the clear-sighted eye of his father had discerned on
+the distant verge of the horizon, though little noticed by Atahuallpa,
+intent on the deadly strife with his brother, had now risen high towards
+the zenith, spreading wider and wider, till it wrapped the skies in
+darkness, and was ready to burst in thunders on the devoted nation.
+
+
+
+Book3
+
+Chapter 3
+
+The Spaniards Land At Tumbez--Pizarro Reconnoitres The Country--
+Foundation Of San Miguel--March Into The Interior-
+Embassy From The Inca--Adventures On The March-
+Reach The Foot Of The Andes
+
+1532
+
+We left the Spaniards at the island of Puna, preparing to make their
+descent on the neighboring continent at Tumbez.  This port was but a
+few leagues distant, and Pizarro, with the greater part of his followers,
+passed over in the ships, while a few others were to transport the
+commander's baggage and the military stores on some of the Indian
+balsas.  One of the latter vessels which first touched the shore was
+surrounded, and three persons who were on the raft were carried off by
+the natives to the adjacent woods and there massacred.  The Indians then
+got possession of another of the balsas containing Pizarro's wardrobe;
+but, as the men who defended it raised loud cries for help, they reached
+the ears of Hernando Pizarro, who, with a small body of horse, had
+effected a landing some way farther down the shore.  A broad tract of
+miry ground, overflowed at high water, lay between him and the party
+thus rudely assailed by the natives.  The tide was out, and the bottom was
+soft and dangerous.  With little regard to the danger, however, the bold
+cavalier spurred his horse into the slimy depths, and followed by his
+men, with the mud up to their saddle-girths, they plunged forward until
+they came into the midst of the marauders, who, terrified by the strange
+apparition of the horsemen, fled precipitately, without show of fight, to
+the neighboring forests.
+
+This conduct of the natives of Tumbez is not easy to be explained;
+considering the friendly relations maintained with the Spaniards on their
+preceding visit, and lately renewed in the island of Puna.  But Pizarro
+was still more astonished, on entering their town, to find it not only
+deserted, but, with the exception of a few buildings, entirely demolished.
+Four or five of the most substantial private dwellings, the great temple,
+and the fortress--and these greatly damaged, and wholly despoiled of
+their interior decorations--alone survived to mark the site of the city, and
+attest its former splendor.1  The scene of desolation filled the conquerors
+with dismay; for even the raw recruits, who had never visited the coast
+before, had heard the marvellous stories of the golden treasures of
+Tumbez, and they had confidently looked forward to them as an easy
+spoil after all their fatigues.  But the gold of Peru seemed only like a
+deceitful phantom, which, after beckoning them on through toil and
+danger, vanished the moment they attempted to grasp it.
+
+Pizarro despatched a small body of troops in pursuit of the fugitives;
+and, after some slight skirmishing, they got possession of several of the
+natives, and among them, as it chanced, the curaca of the place.  When
+brought before the Spanish commander, he exonerated himself from any
+share in the violence offered to the white men, saying that it was done by
+a lawless party of his people, without his knowledge at the time; and he
+expressed his willingness to deliver them up to punishment, if they could
+be detected.  He explained the dilapidated condition of the town by the
+long wars carried on with the fierce tribes of Puna, who had at length
+succeeded in getting possession of the place, and driving the inhabitants
+into the neighboring woods and mountains.  The Inca, to whose cause
+they were attached, was too much occupied with his own feuds to protect
+them against their enemies.
+
+Whether Pizarro gave any credit to the cacique's exculpation of himself
+may be doubted.  He dissembled his suspicions, however, and, as the
+Indian lord promised obedience in his own name, and that of his vassals,
+the Spanish general consented to take no further notice of the affair.  He
+seems now to have felt for the first time, in its full force, that it was his
+policy to gain the good-will of the people among whom he had thrown
+himself in the face of such tremendous odds.  It was, perhaps, the
+excesses of which his men had been guilty in the earlier stages of the
+expedition that had shaken the confidence of the people of Tumbez, and
+incited them to this treacherous retaliation.
+
+Pizarro inquired of the natives who now, under promise of impunity,
+came into the camp, what had become of his two followers that remained
+with them in the former expedition.  The answers they gave were obscure
+and contradictory.  Some said, they had died of an epidemic; others, that
+they had perished in the war with Puna; and others intimated, that they
+had lost their lives in consequence of some outrage attempted on the
+Indian women.  It was impossible to arrive at the truth.  The last account
+was not the least probable.  But, whatever might be the cause, there was
+no doubt they had both perished.
+
+This intelligence spread an additional gloom over the Spaniards; which
+was not dispelled by the flaming pictures now given by the natives of the
+riches of the land, and of the state and magnificence of the monarch in
+his distant capital among the mountains.  Nor did they credit the
+authenticity of a scroll of paper, which Pizzaro had obtained from an
+Indian, to whom it had been delivered by one of the white men left in the
+country.  "Know, whoever you may be," said the writing, "that may
+chance to set foot in this country, that it contains more gold and silver
+than there is iron in Biscay." This paper, when shown to the soldiers,
+excited only their ridicule, as a device of their captain to keep alive their
+chimerical hopes.2
+
+Pizarro now saw that it was not politic to protract his stay in his present
+quarters, where a spirit of disaffection would soon creep into the ranks of
+his followers, unless their spirits were stimulated by novelty or a life of
+incessant action.  Yet he felt deeply anxious to obtain more particulars
+than he had hitherto gathered of the actual condition of the Peruvian
+empire, of its strength and resources, of the monarch who ruled over it,
+and of his present situation.  He was also desirous, before taking any
+decisive step for penetrating the country, to seek out some commodious
+place for a settlement, which might afford him the means of a regular
+communication with the colonies, and a place of strength, on which he
+himself might retreat in case of disaster.
+
+He decided, therefore, to leave part of his company at Tumbez, including
+those who, from the state of their health, were least able to take the field,
+and with the remainder to make an excursion into the interior, and
+reconnoitre the land, before deciding on any plan of operations.  He set
+out early in May, 1532; and, keeping along the more level regions
+himself, sent a small detachment under the command of Hernando de
+Soto to explore the skirts of the vast sierra.
+
+He maintained a rigid discipline on the march, commanding his soldiers
+to abstain from all acts of violence, and punishing disobedience in the
+most prompt and resolute manner.3  The natives rarely offered
+resistance.  When they did so, they were soon reduced, and Pizarro, far
+from vindictive measures, was open to the first demonstrations of
+submission.  By this lenient and liberal policy, he soon acquired a name
+among the inhabitants which effaced the unfavorable impressions made
+of him in the earlier part of the campaign.  The natives, as he marched
+through the thick-settled hamlets which sprinkled the level region
+between the Cordilleras and the ocean, welcomed him with rustic
+hospitality, providing good quarters for his troops, and abundant
+supplies, which cost but little in the prolific soil of the tierra caliente.
+Everywhere Pizarro made proclamation that he came in the name of the
+Holy Vicar of God and of the sovereign of Spain, requiring the
+obedience of the inhabitants as true children of the Church, and vassals
+of his lord and master.  And as the simple people made no opposition to
+a formula, of which they could not comprehend a syllable, they were
+admitted as good subjects of the Crown of Castile, and their act of
+homage--or what was readily interpreted as such--was duly recorded and
+attested by the notary.4
+
+At the expiration of some three or four weeks spent in reconnoitring the
+country, Pizarro came to the conclusion that the most eligible site for his
+new settlement was in the rich valley of Tangarala, thirty leagues south
+of Tumbez, traversed by more than one stream that opens a
+communication with the ocean.  To this spot, accordingly, he ordered the
+men left at Tumbez to repair at once in their vessels; and no sooner had
+they arrived, than busy preparations were made for building up the town
+in a manner suited to the wants of the colony.  Timber was procured
+from the neighboring woods.  Stones were dragged from their quarries,
+and edifices gradually rose, some of which made pretensions to strength,
+if not to elegance.  Among them were a church, a magazine for public
+stores, a hall of justice, and a fortress.  A municipal government was
+organized, consisting of regidores, alcaldes, and the usual civic
+functionaries.  The adjacent territory was parcelled out among the
+residents, and each colonist had a certain number of the natives allotted
+to assist him in his labors; for, as Pizarro's secretary remarks, "it being
+evident that the colonists could not support themselves without the
+services of the Indians, the ecclesiastics and the leaders of the expedition
+all agreed that a repartimiento of the natives would serve the cause of
+religion, and tend greatly to their spiritual welfare, since they would thus
+have the opportunity of being initiated in the true faith." 5
+
+Having made these arrangements with such conscientious regard to the
+welfare of the benighted heathen, Pizarro gave his infant city the name of
+San Miguel, in acknowledgment of the service rendered him by that saint
+in his battles with the Indians of Puna.  The site originally occupied by
+the settlement was afterward found to be so unhealthy, that it was
+abandoned for another on the banks of the beautiful Piura.  The town is
+still of some note for its manufactures, though dwindled from its ancient
+importance; but the name of San Miguel de Piura, which it bears, still
+commemorates the foundation of the first European colony in the empire
+of the Incas.
+
+Before quitting the new settlement, Pizarro caused the gold and silver
+ornaments which he had obtained in different parts of the country to be
+melted down into one mass, and a fifth to be deducted for the Crown.
+The remainder, which belonged to the troops, he persuaded them to
+relinquish for the present; under the assurance of being repaid from the
+first spoils that fell into their hands.6  With these funds, and other
+articles collected in the course of the campaign, he sent back the vessels
+to Panama.  The gold was applied to paying off the ship-owners, and
+those who had furnished the stores for the expedition.  That he should so
+easily have persuaded his men to resign present possession for a future
+contingency is proof that the spirit of enterprise was renewed in their
+bosoms in all its former vigor, and that they looked forward with the
+same buoyant confidence to the results.
+
+In his late tour of observation, the Spanish commander had gathered
+much important intelligence in regard to the state of the kingdom.  He
+had ascertained the result of the struggle between the Inca brothers, and
+that the victor now lay with his army encamped at the distance of only
+ten or twelve days' journey from San Miguel.  The accounts he heard of
+the opulence and power of that monarch, and of his great southern
+capital, perfectly corresponded with the general rumors before received;
+and contained, therefore, something to stagger the confidence, as well as
+to stimulate the cupidity, of the invaders.
+
+Pizarro would gladly have seen his little army strengthened by
+reinforcements, however small the amount; and on that account
+postponed his departure for several weeks.  But no reinforcement
+arrived; and, as he received no further tidings from his associates, he
+judged that longer delay would, probably, be attended with evils greater
+than those to be encountered on the march; that discontents would
+inevitably spring up in a life of inaction, and the strength and spirits of
+the soldier sink under the enervating influence of a tropical climate.  Yet
+the force at his command, amounting to less than two hundred soldiers in
+all, after reserving fifty for the protection of the new settlement, seemed
+but a small one for the conquest of an empire.  He might, indeed, instead
+of marching against the Inca, take a southerly direction towards the rich
+capital of Cuzco.  But this would only be to postpone the hour of
+reckoning.  For in what quarter of the empire could he hope to set his
+foot, where the arm of its master would not reach him? By such a course,
+moreover, he would show his own distrust of himself.  He would shake
+that opinion of his invincible prowess, which he had hitherto endeavored
+to impress on the natives, and which constituted a great secret of his
+strength; which, in short, held sterner sway over the mind than the
+display of numbers and mere physical force.  Worse than all, such a
+course would impair the confidence of his troops in themselves and their
+reliance on himself.  This would be to palsy the arm of enterprise at
+once.  It was not to be thought of.
+
+But while Pizarro decided to march into the interior, it is doubtful
+whether he had formed any more definite plan of action.  We have no
+means of knowing his intentions, at this distance of time, otherwise than
+as they are shown by his actions.  Unfortunately, he could not write, and
+he has left no record, like the inestimable Commentaries of Cortes, to
+enlighten us as to his motives.  His secretary, and some of his
+companions in arms, have recited his actions in detail; but the motives
+which led to them they were not always so competent to disclose.
+
+It is possible that the Spanish general, even so early as the period of his
+residence at San Miguel, may have meditated some daring stroke, some
+effective coup-de-main, which, like that of Cortes, when he carried off
+the Aztec monarch to his quarters, might strike terror into the hearts of
+the people, and at once decide the fortunes of the day.  It is more
+probable, however, that he now only proposed to present himself before
+the Inca, as the peaceful representative of a brother monarch, and, by
+these friendly demonstrations, disarm any feeling of hostility, or even of
+suspicion.  When once in communication with the Indian prince, he
+could regulate his future course by circumstances.
+
+On the 24th of September, 1532, five months after landing at Tumbez,
+Pizarro marched out at the head of his little body of adventurers from the
+gates of San Miguel, having enjoined it on the colonists to treat their
+Indian vassals with humanity, and to conduct themselves in such a
+manner as would secure the good-will of the surrounding tribes.  Their
+own existence, and with it the safety of the army and the success of the
+undertaking, depended on this course.  In the place were to remain the
+royal treasurer, the veedor, or inspector of metals, and other officers of
+the crown; and the command of the garrison was intrusted to the
+contador, Antonio Nayafro.7  Then putting himself at the head of his
+troops, the chief struck boldly into the heart of the country in the
+direction where, as he was informed, lay the camp of the Inca.  It was a
+daring enterprise, thus to venture with a handful of followers into the
+heart of a powerful empire, to present himself, face to face, before the
+Indian monarch in his own camp, encompassed by the flower of his
+victorious army!  Pizarro had already experienced more than once the
+difficulty of maintaining his ground against the rude tribes of the north,
+so much inferior in strength and numbers to the warlike legions of Peru.
+But the hazard of the game, as I have already more than once had
+occasion to remark, constituted its great charm with the Spaniard.  The
+brilliant achievements of his countrymen, on the like occasions, with
+means so inadequate, inspired him with confidence in his own good star;
+and this confidence was one source of his success.  Had he faltered for a
+moment, had he stopped to calculate chances, he must inevitably have
+failed; for the odds were too great to be combated by sober reason.  They
+were only to be met triumphantly by the spirit of the knight-errant.
+
+After crossing the smooth waters of the Piura, the little army continued
+to advance over a level district intersected by streams that descended
+from the neighboring Cordilleras.  The face of the country was shagged
+over with forests of gigantic growth, and occasionally traversed by ridges
+of barren land, that seemed like shoots of the adjacent Andes breaking up
+the surface of the region into little sequestered valleys of singular
+loveliness.  The soil, though rarely watered by the rains of heaven, was
+naturally rich, and wherever it was refreshed with moisture, as on the
+margins of the streams, it was enamelled with the brightest verdure.  The
+industry of the inhabitants, moreover, had turned these streams to the
+best account, and canals and aqueducts were seen crossing the low lands
+in all directions, and spreading over the country, like a vast network,
+diffusing fertility and beauty around them.  The air was scented with the
+sweet odors of flowers, and everywhere the eye was refreshed by the
+sight of orchards laden with unknown fruits, and of fields waving with
+yellow grain and rich in luscious vegetables of every description that
+teem in the sunny clime of the equator.  The Spaniards were among a
+people who had carried the refinements of husbandry to a greater extent
+than any yet found on the American continent; and, as they journeyed
+through this paradise of plenty, their condition formed a pleasing
+contrast to what they had before endured in the dreary wilderness of the
+mangroves.
+
+Everywhere, too, they were received with confiding hospitality by the
+simple people; for which they were no doubt indebted, in a great
+measure, to their own inoffensive deportment.  Every Spaniard seemed
+to be aware, that his only chance of success lay in conciliating the good
+opinion of the inhabitants, among whom he had so recklessly cast his
+fortunes.  In most of the hamlets, and in every place of considerable size,
+some fortress was to be found, or royal caravansary, destined for the Inca
+on his progresses, the ample halls of which furnished abundant
+accommodations for the Spaniards; who were thus provided with
+quarters along their route at the charge of the very government which
+they were preparing to overturn.8
+
+On the fifth day after leaving San Miguel, Pizarro halted in one of these
+delicious valleys, to give his troops repose, and to make a more complete
+inspection of them.  Their number amounted in all to one hundred and
+seventy-seven, of which sixty-seven were cavalry.  He mustered only
+three arquebusiers in his whole company, and a few crossbow-men,
+altogether not exceeding twenty.9  The troops were tolerably well
+equipped, and in good condition.  But the watchful eye of their
+commander noticed with uneasiness, that, notwithstanding the general
+heartiness, in the cause manifested by his followers, there were some
+among them whose countenances lowered with discontent, and who,
+although they did not give vent to it in open murmurs, were far from
+moving with their wonted alacrity.
+
+He was aware, that, if this spirit became contagious, it would be the ruin
+of the enterprise; and he thought it best to exterminate the gangrene; at
+once, and at whatever cost, than to wait until it had infected the whole
+system.  He came to an extraordinary resolution.
+
+Calling his men together, he told them that "a crisis had now arrived in
+their affairs, which it demanded all their courage to meet.  No man
+should think of going forward in the expedition, who could not do so
+with his whole heart, or who had the least misgiving as to its success.  If
+any repented of his share in it, it was not too late to turn back.  San
+Miguel was but poorly garrisoned, and he should be glad to see it in
+greater strength.  Those who chose might return to this place, and they
+should be entitled to the same proportion of lands and Indian vassals as
+the present residents.  With the rest, were they few or many, who chose
+to take their chance with him, he should pursue the adventure to the
+end."10
+
+It was certainly a remarkable proposal for a commander, who was
+ignorant of the amount of disaffection in his ranks, and who could not
+safely spare a single man from his force, already far too feeble for the
+undertaking.  Yet, by insisting on the wants of the little colony of San
+Miguel, he afforded a decent pretext for the secession of the
+malecontents, and swept away the barrier of shame which might have
+still held them in the camp.  Notwithstanding the fair opening thus
+afforded, there were but few, nine in all, who availed themselves of the
+general's permission.  Four of these belonged to the infantry, and five to
+the horse.  The rest loudly declared their resolve to go forward with their
+brave leader; and, if there were some whose voices were faint amidst the
+general acclamation, they, at least, relinquished the right of complaining
+hereafter, since they had voluntarily rejected the permission to return.11
+This stroke of policy in their sagacious captain was attended with the
+best effects.  He had winnowed out the few grains of discontent, which,
+if left to themselves, might have fermented in secret till the whole mass
+had swelled into mutiny.  Cortes had compelled his men to go forward
+heartily in his enterprise, by burning their vessels, and thus cutting off
+the only means of retreat.  Pizarro, on the other hand, threw open the
+gates to the disaffected and facilitated their departure.  Both judged right,
+under their peculiar circumstances, and both were perfectly successful.
+
+Feeling himself strengthened, instead of weakened, by his loss, Pizarro
+now resumed his march, and, on the second day, arrived before a place
+called Zaran, situated in a fruitful valley among the mountains.  Some of
+the inhabitants had been drawn off to swell the levies of Atahuallpa.  The
+Spaniards had repeated experience on their march of the oppressive
+exactions of the Inca, who had almost depopulated some of the valleys to
+obtain reinforcements for his army.  The curaca of the Indian town where
+Pizarro now arrived, received him with kindness and hospitality, and the
+troops were quartered as usual in one of the royal tambos or
+caravansaries, which were found in all the principal places.12
+
+Yet the Spaniards saw no signs of their approach to the royal
+encampment, though more time had already elapsed than was originally
+allowed for reaching it.  Shortly before entering Zaran, Pizarro had heard
+that a Peruvian garrison was established in a place called Caxas, lying
+among the hills, at no great distance from his present quarters.  He
+immediately despatched a small party under Hernando de Soto in that
+direction, to reconnoitre the ground, and bring him intelligence of the
+actual state of things, at Zaran, where he would halt until his officer's
+return.
+
+Day after day passed on, and a week had elapsed before tidings were
+received of his companions, and Pizarro was becoming seriously alarmed
+for their fate, when on the eighth morning Soto appeared, bringing with
+him an envoy from the Inca himself.  He was a person of rank, and was
+attended by several followers of inferior condition.  He had met the
+Spaniards at Caxas, and now accompanied them on their return, to
+deliver his sovereign's message, with a present to the Spanish
+commander.  The present consisted of two fountains, made of stone, in
+the form of fortresses; some fine stuffs of woollen embroidered with gold
+and silver; and a quantity of goose-flesh, dried and seasoned in a peculiar
+manner, and much used as a perfume, in a pulverized state, by the
+Peruvian nobles.13  The Indian ambassador came charged also with his
+master's greeting to the strangers, whom Atahuallpa welcomed to his
+country, and invited to visit him in his camp among the mountains.14
+
+Pizarro well understood that the Inca's object in this diplomatic visit was
+less to do him courtesy, than to inform himself of the strength and
+condition of the invaders.  But he was well pleased with the embassy,
+and dissembled his consciousness of its real purpose.  He caused the
+Peruvian to be entertained in the best manner the camp could afford, and
+paid him the respect, says one of the Conquerors, due to the ambassador
+of so great a monarch.15  Pizarro urged him to prolong his visit for some
+days, which the Indian envoy declined, but made the most of his time
+while there, by gleaning all the information he could in respect to the
+uses of every strange article which he saw, as well as the object of the
+white men's visit to the land, and the quarter whence they came.
+
+The Spanish captain satisfied his curiosity in all these particulars.  The
+intercourse with the natives, it may be here remarked, was maintained by
+means of two of the youths who had accompanied the Conquerors on
+their return home from their preceding voyage.  They had been taken by
+Pizarro to Spain, and, as much pains had been bestowed on teaching
+them the Castilian, they now filled the office of interpreters, and opened
+an easy communication with their countrymen.  It was of inestimable
+service; and well did the Spanish commander reap the fruits of his
+forecast.16
+
+On the departure of the Peruvian messenger, Pizarro presented him with
+a cap of crimson cloth, some cheap but showy ornaments of glass, and
+other toys, which he had brought for the purpose from Castile.  He
+charged the envoy to tell his master, that the Spaniards came from a
+powerful prince, who dwelt far beyond the waters; that they had heard
+much of the fame of Atahuallpa's victories, and were come to pay their
+respects to him, and to offer their services by aiding him with their arms
+against his enemies; and he might be assured, they would not halt on the
+road, longer than was necessary, before presenting themselves before
+him.
+
+Pizarro now received from Soto a full account of his late expedition.
+That chief, on entering Caxas, found the inhabitants mustered in hostile
+array, as if to dispute his passage.  But the cavalier soon convinced them
+of his pacific intentions, and, laying aside their menacing attitude, they
+received the Spaniards with the same courtesy which had been shown
+them in most places on their march.
+
+Here Soto found one of the royal officers, employed in collecting the
+tribute for the government.  From this functionary he learned that the
+Inca was quartered with a large army at Caxamalca, a place of
+considerable size on the other side of the Cordillera, where he was
+enjoying the luxury of the warm baths, supplied by natural springs, for
+which it was then famous, as it is at the present day.  The cavalier
+gathered, also, much important information in regard to the resources
+and the general policy of government, the state maintained by the Inca,
+and the stern severity with which obedience to the law was everywhere
+enforced.  He had some opportunity of observing this for himself, as, on
+entering the village, he saw several Indians hanging dead by their heels,
+having been executed for some violence offered to the Virgins of the
+Sun, of whom there was a convent in the neighborhood.17
+
+From Caxas, De Soto had passed to the adjacent town of Guancabamba,
+much larger, more populous, and better built than the preceding.  The
+houses, instead of being made of clay baked in the sun, were many of
+them constructed of solid stone, so nicely put together, that it was
+impossible to detect the line of junction.  A river, which passed through
+the town, was traversed by a bridge, and the high road of the Incas,
+which crossed this district, was far superior to that which the Spaniards
+had seen on the sea-board.  It was raised in many places, like a
+causeway, paved with heavy stone flags, and bordered by trees that
+afforded a grateful shade to the passenger, while streams of water were
+conducted through aqueducts along the sides to slake his thirst. At
+certain distances, also, they noticed small houses, which, they were told,
+were for the accommodation of the traveller, who might thus pass,
+without inconvenience, from one end of the kingdom to the other.18  In
+another quarter they beheld one of those magazines destined for the
+army, filled with grain, and with articles of clothing; and at the entrance
+of the town was a stone building, occupied by a public officer, whose
+business it was to collect the toils or duties on various commodities
+brought into the place, or carried out of it.19  These accounts of De Soto
+not only confirmed all that the Spaniards had heard of the Indian empire,
+but greatly raised their ideas of its resources and domestic policy.  They
+might well have shaken the confidence of hearts less courageous.
+
+Pizarro, before leaving his present quarters, despatched a messenger to
+San Miguel with particulars of his movements, sending, at the same time,
+the articles received from the Inca, as well as those obtained at different
+places on the route.  The skill shown in the execution of some of these
+fabrics excited great admiration, when sent to Castile.  The fine woollen
+cloths, especially, with their rich embroidery, were pronounced equal to
+silk, from which it was not easy to distinguish them.  It was probably the
+delicate wool of the vicuna, none of which had then been seen in
+Europe.20
+
+Pizarro, having now acquainted himself with the most direct route to
+Caxamalca,--the Caxamarca of the present day,--resumed his march,
+taking a direction nearly south.  The first place of any size at which he
+halted was Motupe, pleasantly situated in a fruitful valley, among hills of
+no great elevation, which cluster round the base of the Cordilleras.  The
+place was deserted by its curaca, who, with three hundred of its warriors,
+had gone to join the standard of their Inca.  Here the general,
+notwithstanding his avowed purpose to push forward without delay,
+halted four days.  The tardiness of his movements can be explained only
+by the hope, which he may have still entertained of being joined by
+further reinforcements before crossing the Cordilleras.  None such
+appeared, however; and advancing across a country in which tracts of
+sandy plain were occasionally relieved by a broad expanse of verdant
+meadow, watered by natural streams and still more abundantly by those
+brought through artificial channels, the troops at length arrived at the
+borders of a river.  It was broad and deep, and the rapidity of the current
+opposed more than ordinary difficulty to the passage.  Pizarro,
+apprehensive lest this might be disputed by the natives on the opposite
+bank, ordered his brother Hernando to cross over with a small
+detachement under cover of night, and secure a safe landing for the rest
+of the troops.  At break of day Pizarro made preparations for his own
+passage, by hewing timber in the neighboring woods, and constructing a
+sort of floating bridge, on which before nightfall the whole company
+passed in safety, the horses swimming, being led by the bridle.  It was a
+day of severe labor, and Pizarro took his own share in it freely, like a
+common soldier, having ever a word of encouragement to say to his
+followers.
+
+On reaching the opposite side, they learned from their comrades that the
+people of the country, instead of offering resistance, had fled in dismay.
+One of them, having been taken and brought before Hernando Pizarro,
+refused to answer the questions put to him respecting the Inca and his
+army; till, being put to the torture, he stated that Atahuallpa was
+encamped, with his whole force, in three separate divisions, occupying
+the high grounds and plains of Caxamalca.  He further stated, that the
+Inca was aware of the approach of the white men and of their small
+number, and that he was purposely decoying them into his own quarters,
+that he might have them more completely in his power.
+
+This account, when reported by Hernando to his brother, caused the
+latter much anxiety.  As the timidity of the peasantry, however, gradually
+wore off, some of them mingled with the troops, and among them the
+curaca or principal person of the village.  He had himself visited the
+royal camp, and he informed the general that Atahuallpa lay at the strong
+town of Guamachucho, twenty leagues or more south of Caxamalca, with
+an army of at least fifty thousand men.
+
+These contradictory statements greatly perplexed the chieftain; and he
+proposed to one of the Indians who had borne him company during a
+great part of the march, to go as a spy into the Inca's quarters, and bring
+him intelligence of his actual position, and, as far as he could learn them,
+of his intentions towards the Spaniards.  But the man positively declined
+this dangerous service, though he professed his willingness to go as an
+authorized messenger of the Spanish commander.
+
+Pizarro acquiesced in this proposal, and instructed his envoy to assure
+the Inca that he was advancing with all convenient speed to meet him.
+He was to acquaint the monarch with the uniformly considerate conduct
+of the Spaniards towards his subjects, in their progress through the land,
+and to assure him that they were now coming in full confidence of
+finding in him the same amicable feelings towards themselves.  The
+emissary was particularly instructed to observe if the strong passes on the
+road were defended, or if any preparations of a hostile character were to
+be discerned.  This last intelligence he was to communicate to the
+general by means of two or three nimble-footed attendants, who were to
+accompany him on his mission.21
+
+Having taken this precaution, the wary commander again resumed his
+march, and at the end of three days reached the base of the mountain
+rampart, behind which lay the ancient town of Caxamalca.  Before him
+rose the stupendous Andes, rock piled upon rock, their skirts below dark
+with evergreen forests, varied here and there by terraced patches of
+cultivated garden, with the peasant's cottage clinging to their shaggy
+sides, and their crests of snow glittering high in the heavens,--presenting
+altogether such a wild chaos of magnificence and beauty as no other
+mountain scenery in the world can show.  Across this tremendous
+rampart, through a labyrinth of passes, easily capable of defence by a
+handful of men against an army, the troops were now to march.  To the
+right ran a broad and level road, with its border of friendly shades, and
+wide enough for two carriages to pass abreast. It was one of the great
+routes leading to Cuzco, and seemed by its pleasant and easy access to
+invite the wayworn soldier to choose it in preference to the dangerous
+mountain defiles.  Many were accordingly of opinion that the army
+should take this course, and abandon the original destination to
+Caxamalca.  But such was not the decision of Pizarro.
+
+The Spaniards had everywhere proclaimed their purpose, he said, to visit
+the Inca in his camp.  This purpose had been communicated to the Inca
+himself.  To take an opposite direction now would only be to draw on
+them the imputation of cowardice, and to incur Atahuallpa's contempt.
+No alternative remained but to march straight across the sierra to his
+quarters "Let every one of you," said the bold cavalier, "take heart and
+go forward like a good soldier, nothing daunted by the smallness of your
+numbers.  For in the greatest extremity God ever fights for his own; and
+doubt not he will humble the pride of the heathen, and bring him to the
+knowledge of the true faith, the great end and object of the Conquest."
+22
+
+Pizarro, like Cortes, possessed a good share of that frank and manly
+eloquence which touches the heart of the soldier more than the parade of
+rhetoric or the finest flow of elocution.  He was a soldier himself, and
+partook in all the feelings of the soldier, his joys, his hopes, and his
+disappointments.  He was not raised by rank and education above
+sympathy with the humblest of his followers.  Every chord in their
+bosoms vibrated with the same pulsations as his own, and the conviction
+of this gave him a mastery over them.  "Lead on," they shouted, as he
+finished his brief but animating address, "lead on wherever you think
+best. We will follow with good-will, and you shall see that we can do our
+duty in the cause of God and the King!" 23  There was no longer
+hesitation.  All thoughts were now bent on the instant passage of the
+Cordilleras.
+
+
+
+Book 3
+
+Chapter 4
+
+Severe Passage Of The Andes--Embassies From Atahuallpa--
+The Spaniards Reach Caxamalca--Embassy To The Inca--
+Interview With The Inca--Despondency Of The Spaniards
+
+1532
+
+That night Pizarro held a council of his principal officers, and it was
+determined that he should lead the advance, consisting of forty horse and
+sixty foot, and reconnoitre the ground; while the rest of the company,
+under his brother Hernando, should occupy their present position till they
+received further orders.
+
+At early dawn the Spanish general and his detachment were under arms,
+and prepared to breast the difficulties of the sierra.  These proved even
+greater than had been foreseen.  The path had been conducted in the
+most judicious manner round the rugged and precipitous sides of the
+mountains, so as best to avoid the natural impediments presented by the
+ground.  But it was necessarily so steep, in many places, that the cavalry
+were obliged to dismount, and, scrambling up as they could, to lead their
+horses by the bridle.  In many places, too, where some huge crag or
+eminence overhung the road, this was driven to the very verge of the
+precipice; and the traveller was compelled to wind along the narrow
+ledge of rock, scarcely wide enough for his single steed, where a misstep
+would precipitate him hundreds, nay, thousands, of feet into the dreadful
+abyss!  The wild passes of the sierra, practicable for the half-naked
+Indian, and even for the sure and circumspect mule,--an animal that
+seems to have been created for the roads of the Cordilleras,--were
+formidable to the man-at-arms encumbered with his panoply of mail.
+The tremendous fissures or quebradas, so frightful in this mountain
+chain, yawned open, as if the Andes had been split asunder by some
+terrible convulsion, showing a broad expanse of the primitive rock on
+their sides, partially mantled over with the spontaneous vegetation of
+ages; while their obscure depths furnished a channel for the torrents, that,
+rising in the heart of the sierra, worked their way gradually into light, and
+spread over the savannas and green valleys of the tierra caliente on their
+way to the great ocean.
+
+Many of these passes afforded obvious points of defence; and the
+Spaniards, as they entered the rocky defiles, looked with apprehension
+lest they might rouse some foe from his ambush.  This apprehension was
+heightened, as, at the summit of a steep and narrow gorge, in which they
+were engaged, they beheld a strong work, rising like a fortress, and
+frowning, as it were, in gloomy defiance on the invaders.  As they drew
+near this building, which was of solid stone, commanding an angle of the
+road, they almost expected to see the dusky forms of the warriors rise
+over the battlements, and to receive their tempest of missiles on their
+bucklers; for it was in so strong a position, that a few resolute men might
+easily have held there an army at bay.  But they had the satisfaction to
+find the place untenanted, and their spirits were greatly raised by the
+conviction that the Indian monarch did not intend to dispute their
+passage, when it would have been easy to do so with success.
+
+Pizarro now sent orders to his brother to follow without delay; and, after
+refreshing his men, continued his toilsome ascent, and before nightfall
+reached an eminence crowned by another fortress, of even greater
+strength than the preceding.  It was built of solid masonry, the lower part
+excavated from the living rock, and the whole work executed with skill
+not inferior to that of the European architect.1
+
+Here Pizarro took up his quarters for the night.  Without waiting for the
+arrival of the rear, on the following morning he resumed his march,
+leading still deeper into the intricate gorges of the sierra.  The climate
+had gradually changed, and the men and horses, especially the latter,
+suffered severely from the cold, so long accustomed as they had been to
+the sultry climate of the tropics.2  The vegetation also had changed its
+character; and the magnificent timber which covered the lower level of
+the country had gradually given way to the funereal forest of pine, and,
+as they rose still higher, to the stunted growth of numberless Alpine
+plants, whose hardy natures found a congenial temperature in the icy
+atmosphere of the more elevated regions.  These dreary solitudes seemed
+to be nearly abandoned by the brute creation as well as by man.  The
+light-footed vicuna, roaming in its native state, might be sometimes seen
+looking down from some airy cliff, where the foot of the hunter dared not
+venture.  But instead of the feathered tribes whose gay plumage sparkled
+in the deep glooms of the tropical forests, the adventurers now beheld
+only the great bird of the Andes, the loathsome condor, who, sailing high
+above the clouds, followed with doleful cries in the track of the army, as
+if guided by instinct in the path of blood and carnage.
+
+At length they reached the crest of the Cordillera, where it spreads out
+into a bold and bleak expanse, with scarce the vestige of vegetation,
+except what is afforded by the pajonal, a dried yellow grass, which, as it
+is seen from below, encircling the base of the snow-covered peaks,
+looks, with its brilliant straw-color lighted up in the rays of an ardent
+sun, like a setting of gold round pinnacles of burnished silver.  The land
+was sterile, as usual in mining districts, and they were drawing near the
+once famous gold quarries on the way to Caxamalca;
+
+"Rocks rich in gems, and mountains big with mines,
+That on the high equator ridgy rise."
+
+Here Pizarro halted for the coming up of the rear.  The air was sharp and
+frosty; and the soldiers, spreading their tents, lighted fires, and, huddling
+round them, endeavored to find some repose after their laborious
+march.3
+
+They had not been long in these quarters, when a messenger arrived, one
+of those who had accompanied the Indian envoy sent by Pizarro to
+Atahuallpa.  He informed the general that the road was free from
+enemies, and that an embassy from the Inca was on its way to the
+Castilian camp.  Pizarro now sent back to quicken the march of the rear,
+as he was unwilling that the Peruvian envoy should find him with his
+present diminished numbers.  The rest of the army were not far distant,
+and not long after reached the encampment.
+
+In a short time the Indian embassy also arrived, which consisted of one
+of the Inca nobles and several attendants, bringing a welcome present of
+llamas to the Spanish commander.  The Peruvian bore, also, the
+greetings of his master, who wished to know when the Spaniards would
+arrive at Caxamalca, that he might provide suitable refreshments for
+them.  Pizarro learned that the Inca had left Guamachucho, and was now
+lying with a small force in the neighborhood of Caxamalca, at a place
+celebrated for its natural springs of warm water.  The Peruvian was an
+intelligent person, and the Spanish commander gathered from him many
+particulars respecting the late contests which had distracted the empire.
+
+As the envoy vaunted in lofty terms the military prowess and resources
+of his sovereign, Pizarro thought it politic to show that it had no power to
+overawe him.  He expressed his satisfaction at the triumphs of
+Atahuallpa, who, he acknowledged, had raised himself high in the rank
+of Indian warriors.  But he was as inferior, he added with more policy
+than politeness, to the monarch who ruled over the white men, as the
+petty curacas of the country were inferior to him.  This was evident from
+the ease with which a few Spaniards had overrun this great continent,
+subduing one nation after another, that had offered resistance to their
+arms.  He had been led by the fame of Atahuallpa to visit his dominions,
+and to offer him his services in his wars; and, if he were received by the
+Inca in the same friendly spirit with which he came, he was willing, for
+the aid he could render him, to postpone awhile his passage across the
+country to the opposite seas.  The Indian, according to the Castilian
+accounts, listened with awe to this strain of glorification from the
+Spanish commander.  Yet it is possible that the envoy was a better
+diplomatist than they imagined; and that he understood it was only the
+game of brag at which he was playing with his more civilized
+antagonist.4
+
+On the succeeding morning, at an early hour, the troops were again on
+their march, and for two days were occupied in threading the airy defiles
+of the Cordilleras.  Soon after beginning their descent on the eastern
+side, another emissary arrived from the Inca, bearing a message of
+similar import to the preceding, and a present, in like manner, of
+Peruvian sheep.  This was the same noble that had visited Pizarro in the
+valley.  He now came in more state, quaffing chicha--the fermented juice
+of the maize-from golden goblets borne by his attendants, which sparkled
+in the eyes of the rapacious adventurers.5
+
+While he was in the camp, the Indian messenger, originally sent by
+Pizarro to the Inca, returned, and no sooner did he behold the Peruvian,
+and the honorable reception which he met with from the Spaniards, than
+he was filled with wrath, which would have vented itself in personal
+violence, but for the interposition of the by-standers.  It was hard, he
+said, that this Peruvian dog should be thus courteously treated, when he
+himself had nearly lost his life on a similar mission among his
+countrymen.  On reaching the Inca's camp, he had been refused
+admission to his presence, on the ground that he was keeping a fast and
+could not be seen.  They had paid no respect to his assertion that he came
+as an envoy from the white men, and would, probably, not have suffered
+him to escape with life, if he had not assured them that any violence
+offered to him would be retaliated in full measure on the persons of the
+Peruvian envoys, now in the Spanish quarters.  There was no doubt, he
+continued of the hostile intentions of Atahuallpa; for he was surrounded
+with a powerful army, strongly encamped about a league from
+Caxamalca, while that city was entirely evacuated by its inhabitants.
+
+To all this the Inca's envoy coolly replied, that Pizarro's messenger might
+have reckoned on such a reception as he had found, since he seemed to
+have taken with him no credentials of his mission.  As to the Inca's fast,
+that was true; and, although he would doubtless have seen the messenger,
+had he known there was one from the strangers, yet it was not safe to
+disturb him at these solemn seasons, when engaged in his religious
+duties.  The troops by whom he was surrounded were not numerous,
+considering that the Inca was at that time carrying on an important war;
+and as to Caxamalca, it was abandoned by the inhabitants in order to
+make room for the white men, who were so soon to occupy it.6
+
+This explanation, however plausible, did not altogether satisfy the
+general; for he had too deep a conviction of the cunning of Atahuallpa,
+whose intentions towards the Spaniards he had long greatly distrusted. As
+he proposed, however, to keep on friendly relations with the monarch for
+the present, it was obviously not his cue to manifest suspicion.
+Affecting, therefore, to give full credit to the explanation of the envoy,
+he dismissed him with reiterated assurances of speedily presenting
+himself before the Inca.
+
+The descent of the sierra, though the Andes are less precipitous on their
+eastern side than towards the west, was attended with difficulties almost
+equal to those of the upward march; and the Spaniards felt no little
+satisfaction, when, on the seventh day, they arrived in view of the valley
+of Caxamalca, which, enamelled with all the beauties of cultivation, lay
+unrolled like a rich and variegated carpet of verdure, in strong contrast
+with the dark forms of the Andes, that rose up everywhere around it.
+The valley is of an oval shape, extending about five leagues in length by
+three in breadth.  It was inhabited by a population of a superior character
+to any which the Spaniards had met on the other side of the mountains,
+as was argued by the superior style of their attire, and the greater
+cleanliness and comfort visible both in their persons and dwellings.7  As
+far as the eye could reach, the level tract exhibited the show of a diligent
+and thrifty husbandry.  A broad river rolled through the meadows,
+supplying facilities for copious irrigation by means of the usual canals
+and subterraneous aqueducts.  The land, intersected by verdant hedge-
+rows, was checkered with patches of various cultivation; for the soil was
+rich, and the climate, if less stimulating than that of the sultry regions of
+the coast, was more favorable to the hardy products of the temperate
+latitudes.  Below the adventurers, with its white houses glittering in the
+sun, lay the little city of Caxamalca, like a sparkling gem on the dark
+skirts of the sierra.  At the distance of about a league farther, across the
+valley, might be seen columns of vapor rising up towards the heavens,
+indicating the place of the famous hot baths, much frequented by the
+Peruvian princes.  And here, too, was a spectacle less grateful to the eyes
+of the Spaniards; for along the slope of the hills a white cloud of
+pavilions was seen covering the ground, as thick as snow-flakes, for the
+space, apparently, of several miles.  "It filled us all with amazement,"
+exclaims one of the Conquerors, "to behold the Indians occupying so
+proud a position!  So many tents, so well appointed, as were never seen
+in the Indies till now!  The spectacle caused something like confusion
+and even fear in the stoutest bosom.  But it was too late to turn back, or
+to betray the least sign of weakness, since the natives in our own
+company would, in such case, have been the first to rise upon us.  So,
+with as bold a countenance as we could, after coolly surveying the
+ground, we prepared for our entrance into Caxamalca."8
+
+What were the feelings of the Peruvian monarch we are not informed,
+when he gazed on the martial cavalcade of the Christians, as, with
+banners streaming, and bright panoplies glistening in the rays of the
+evening sun, it emerged from the dark depths of the sierra, and advanced
+in hostile array over the fair domain, which, to this period, had never
+been trodden by other foot than that of the red man.  It might be, as
+several of the reports had stated, that the Inca had purposely decoyed the
+adventurers into the heart of his populous empire, that he might envelope
+them with his legions, and the more easily become master of their
+property and persons.9  Or was it from a natural feeling of curiosity, and
+relying on their professions of friendship, that he had thus allowed them,
+without any attempt at resistance, to come into his presence?  At all
+events, he could hardly have felt such confidence in himself, as not to
+look with apprehension, mingled with awe, on the mysterious strangers,
+who, coming from an unknown world, and possessed of such wonderful
+gifts, had made their way across mountain and valley, in spite of every
+obstacle which man and nature had opposed to them.
+
+Pizarro, meanwhile, forming his little corps into three divisions, now
+moved forward, at a more measured pace, and in order of battle, down
+the slopes that led towards the Indian city.  As he drew near, no one
+came out to welcome him; and he rode through the streets without
+meeting with a living thing, or hearing a sound, except the echoes, sent
+back from the deserted dwellings, of the tramp of the soldiery.
+
+It was a place of considerable size, containing about ten thousand
+inhabitants, somewhat more, probably, than the population assembled at
+this day within the walls of the modern city of Caxamalca.10  The
+houses, for the most part, were built of clay, hardened in the sun; the
+roofs thatched, or of timber.  Some of the more ambitious dwellings were
+of hewn stone; and there was a convent in the place, occupied by the
+Virgins of the Sun, and a temple dedicated to the same tutelar deity,
+which last was hidden in the deep embowering shades of a grove on the
+skirts of the city.  On the quarter towards the Indian camp was a square--
+if square it might be called, which was almost triangular in form---of an
+immense size, surrounded by low buildings.  These consisted of
+capacious halls, with wide doors or openings communicating with the
+square.  They were probably intended as a sort of barracks for the Inca's
+soldiers.11  At the end of the plaza, looking towards the country, was a
+fortress of stones with a stairway leading from the city, and a private
+entrance from the adjoining suburbs.  There was still another fortress on
+the rising ground which commanded the town, built of hewn stone, and
+encompassed by three circular walls,--or rather one and the same wall,
+which wound up spirally around it.  It was a place of great strength, and
+the workmanship showed a better knowledge of masonry, and gave a
+higher impression of the architectural science of the people, than
+anything the Spaniards had yet seen.12
+
+It was late in the afternoon of the fifteenth of November, 1532, when the
+Conquerors entered the city of Caxamalca.  The weather, which had been
+fair during the day, now threatened a storm, and some rain mingled with
+hail--for it was unusually cold--began to fall.13  Pizarro, however, was
+so anxious to ascertain the dispositions of the Inca, that he determined to
+send an embassy, at once, to his quarters.  He selected for this, Hernando
+de Soto with fifteen horse, and, after his departure, conceiving that the
+number was too small, in case of any unfriendly demonstrations by the
+Indians, he ordered his brother Hernando to follow with twenty
+additional troopers.  This captain and one other of his party have left us
+an account of the excursion.14
+
+Between the city and the imperial camp was a causeway, built in a
+substantial manner across the meadow land that intervened.  Over this
+the cavalry galloped at a rapid pace, and, before they had gone a league,
+they came in front of the Peruvian encampment, where it spread along
+the gentle slope of the mountains.  The lances of the warriors were fixed
+in the ground before their tents, and the Indian soldiers were loitering
+without, gazing with silent astonishment at the Christian cavalcade, as
+with clangor of arms and shrill blast of trumpet it swept by, like some
+fearful apparition, on the wings of the wind.
+
+The party soon came to a broad but shallow stream, which, winding
+through the meadow, formed a defence for the Inca's position.  Across it
+was a wooden bridge; but the cavaliers, distrusting its strength, preferred
+to dash through the waters, and without difficulty gained the opposite
+bank.  A battalion of Indian warriors was drawn up under arms on the
+farther side of the bridge, but they offered no molestation to the
+Spaniards; and these latter had strict orders from Pizarro--scarcely
+necessary in their present circumstances--to treat the natives with
+courtesy.  One of the Indians pointed out the quarter occupied by the
+Inca.15
+
+It was an open court-yard, with a light building or pleasure-house in the
+centre, having galleries running around it, and opening in the rear on a
+garden.  The walls were covered with a shining plaster, both white and
+colored, and in the area before the edifice was seen a spacious tank or
+reservoir of stone, fed by aqueducts that supplied it with both warm and
+cold water.16  A basin of hewn stone--it may be of a more recent
+construction--still bears, on the spot, the name of the "Inca's bath." 17
+The court was filled with Indian nobles, dressed in gayly ornamented
+attire, in attendance on the monarch, and with women of the royal
+household.  Amidst this assembly it was not difficult to distinguish the
+person of Atahuallpa, though his dress was simpler than that of his
+attendants.  But he wore on his head the crimson borla or fringe, which,
+surrounding the forehead, hung down as low as the eyebrow.  This was
+the well-known badge of Peruvian sovereignty, and had been assumed by
+the monarch only since the defeat of his brother Huascar.  He was seated
+on a low stool or cushion, somewhat after the Morisco or Turkish
+fashion, and his nobles and principal officers stood around him, with
+great ceremony, holding the stations suited to their rank.18
+
+The Spaniards gazed with much interest on the prince, of whose cruelty
+and cunning they had heard so much, and whose valor had secured to
+him the possession of the empire.  But his countenance exhibited
+neither the fierce passions nor the sagacity which had been ascribed to
+him; and, though in his bearing he showed a gravity and a calm
+consciousness of authority well becoming a king, he seemed to discharge
+all expression from his features, and to discover only the apathy so
+characteristic of the American races.  On the present occasion, this must
+have been in part, at least, assumed.  For it is impossible that the Indian
+prince should not have contemplated with curious interest a spectacle so
+strange, and, in some respects, appalling, as that of these mysterious
+strangers, for which no previous description could have prepared him.
+
+Hernando Pizarro and Soto, with two or three only of their followers,
+slowly rode up in front of the Inca; and the former, making a respectful
+obeisance, but without dismounting, informed Atahuallpa that he came
+as an ambassador from his brother, the commander of the white men, to
+acquaint the monarch with their arrival in his city of Caxamalca.  They
+were the subjects of a mighty prince across the waters, and had come, he
+said, drawn thither by the report of his great victories, to offer their
+services, and to impart to him the doctrines of the true faith which they
+professed; and he brought an invitation from the general to Atahuallpa
+that the latter would be pleased to visit the Spaniards in their present
+quarters.
+
+To all this the Inca answered not a word; nor did he make even a sign of
+acknowledgment that he comprehended it; though it was translated for
+him by Felipillo, one of the interpreters already noticed.  He remained
+silent, with his eyes fastened on the ground; but one of his nobles,
+standing by his side, answered, "It is well." 19  This was an embarrassing
+situation for the Spaniards, who seemed to be as wide from ascertaining
+the real disposition of the Peruvian monarch towards themselves, as
+when the mountains were between them.
+
+In a courteous and respectful manner, Hernando Pizarro again broke the
+silence by requesting the Inca to speak to them himself, and to inform
+them what was his pleasure.20  To this Atahuallpa condescended to
+reply, while a faint smile passed over his features,--"Tell your captain
+that I am keeping a fast, which will end tomorrow morning.  I will then
+visit him, with my chieftains.  In the meantime, let him occupy the public
+buildings on the square, and no other, till I come, when I will order what
+shall be done." 21
+
+Soto, one of the party present at this interview, as before noticed, was the
+best mounted and perhaps the best rider in Pizarro's troop.  Observing
+that Atahuallpa looked with some interest on the fiery steed that stood
+before him, champing the bit and pawing the ground with the natural
+impatience of a war-horse, the Spaniard gave him the rein, and, striking
+his iron heel into his side, dashed furiously over the plain; then, wheeling
+him round and round, displayed all the beautiful movements of his
+charger, and his own excellent horsemanship.  Suddenly checking him in
+full career, he brought the animal almost on his haunches, so near the
+person of the Inca, that some of the foam that flecked his horse's sides
+was thrown on the royal garments.  But Atahuallpa maintained the same
+marble composure as before, though several of his soldiers, whom De
+Soto passed in the course, were so much disconcerted by it, that they
+drew back in manifest terror; an act of timidity for which they paid
+dearly, if, as the Spaniards assert, Atahuallpa caused them to be put to
+death that same evening for betraying such unworthy weakness to the
+strangers.22
+
+Refreshments were now offered by the royal attendants to the Spaniards,
+which they declined, being unwilling to dismount.  They did not refuse,
+however, to quaff the sparkling chicha from golden vases of
+extraordinary size, presented to them by the dark-eyed beauties of the
+harem.23  Taking then a respectful leave of the Inca, the cavaliers rode
+back to Caxamalca, with many moody speculations on what they had
+seen; on the state and opulence of the Indian monarch; on the strength of
+his military array, their excellent appointments, and the apparent
+discipline in their ranks,--all arguing a much higher degree of
+civilization, and consequently of power, than anything they had
+witnessed in the lower regions of the country.  As they contrasted all
+this with their own diminutive force, too far advanced, as they now were,
+for succour to reach them, they felt they had done rashly in throwing
+themselves into the midst of so formidable an empire, and were filled
+with gloomy forebodings of the result.24  Their comrades in the camp
+soon caught the infectious spirit of despondency, which was not lessened
+as night came on, and they beheld the watch-fires of the Peruvians
+lighting up the sides of the mountains, and glittering in the darkness, "as
+thick," says one who saw them, "as the stars of heaven." 25
+
+Yet there was one bosom in that little host which was not touched with
+the feeling either of fear or dejection.  That was Pizarro's, who secretly
+rejoiced that he had now brought matters to the issue for which he had so
+long panted.  He saw the necessity of kindling a similar feeling in his
+followers, or all would be lost.  Without unfolding his plans, he went
+round among his men, beseeching them not to show faint hearts at this
+crisis, when they stood face to face with the foe whom they had been so
+long seeking.  "They were to rely on themselves, and on that Providence
+which had carried them safe through so many fearful trials.  It would not
+now desert them; and if numbers, however great, were on the side of
+their enemy, it mattered little when the arm of Heaven was on theirs." 26
+The Spanish cavalier acted under the combined influence of chivalrous
+adventure and religious zeal.  The latter was the most effective in the
+hour of peril; and Pizarro, who understood well the characters he had to
+deal with, by presenting the enterprise as a crusade, kindled the dying
+embers of enthusiasm in the bosoms of his followers, and restored their
+faltering courage.
+
+He then summoned a council of his officers, to consider the plan of
+operations, or rather to propose to them the extraordinary plan on which
+he had himself decided.  This was to lay an ambuscade for the Inca, and
+take him prisoner in the face of his whole army!  It was a project full of
+peril,--bordering, as it might well seem, on desperation.  But the
+circumstances of the Spaniards were desperate.  Whichever way they
+turned, they were menaced by the most appalling dangers; and better was
+it bravely to confront the danger, than weakly to shrink from it, when
+there was no avenue for escape.
+
+To fly was now too late.  Whither could they fly? At the first signal of
+retreat, the whole army of the Inca would be upon them.  Their
+movements would be anticipated by a foe far better acquainted with the
+intricacies of the sierra than themselves; the passes would be occupied,
+and they would be hemmed in on all sides; while the mere fact of this
+retrograde movement would diminish the confidence and with it the
+effective strength of his own men, while it doubled that of his enemy.
+
+Yet to remain long inactive in his present position seemed almost equally
+perilous.  Even supposing that Atahuallpa should entertain friendly
+feelings towards the Christians, they could not confide in the continuance
+of such feelings.  Familiarity with the white men would soon destroy the
+idea of anything supernatural, or even superior, in their natures.  He
+would feel contempt for their diminutive numbers.  Their horses, their
+arms and showy appointments, would be an attractive bait in the eye of
+the barbaric monarch, and when conscious that he had the power to crush
+their possessors, he would not be slow in finding a pretext for it.  A
+sufficient one had already occurred in the high-handed measures of the
+Conquerors, on their march through his dominions.
+
+But what reason had they to flatter themselves that the Inca cherished
+such a disposition towards them? He was a crafty and unscrupulous
+prince, and, if the accounts they had repeatedly received on their march
+were true, had ever regarded the coming of the Spaniards with an evil
+eye.  It was scarcely possible he should do otherwise.  His soft messages
+had only been intended to decoy them across the mountains, where, with
+the aid of his warriors, he might readily overpower them.  They were
+entangled in the toils which the cunning monarch had spread for them.
+
+Their only remedy, then, was to turn the Inca's arts against himself; to
+take him, if possible, in his own snare.  There was no time to be lost; for
+any day might bring back the victorious legions who had recently won
+his battles at the south, and thus make the odds against the Spaniards far
+greater than now.
+
+Yet to encounter Atahuallpa in the open field would be attended with
+great hazard; and even if victorious, there would be little probability that
+the person of the Inca, of so much importance, would fall into the hands
+of the victors.  The invitation he had so unsuspiciously accepted to visit
+them in their quarters afforded the best means for securing this desirable
+prize.  Nor was the enterprise so desperate, considering the great
+advantages afforded by the character and weapons of the invaders, and
+the unexpectedness of the assault.  The mere circumstance of acting on a
+concerted plan would alone make a small number more than a match for
+a much larger one.  But it was not necessary to admit the whole of the
+Indian force into the city before the attack; and the person of the Inca
+once secured, his followers, astounded by so strange an event, were they
+few or many, would have no heart for further resistance;--and with the
+Inca once in his power, Pizarro might dictate laws to the empire.
+
+In this daring project of the Spanish chief, it was easy to see that he had
+the brilliant exploit of Cortes in his mind, when he carried off the Aztec
+monarch in his capital.  But that was not by violence,--at least not by
+open violence,--and it received the sanction, compulsory though it were,
+of the monarch himself.  It was also true that the results in that case did
+not altogether justify a repetition of the experiment; since the people rose
+in a body to sacrifice both the prince and his kidnappers.  Yet this was
+owing, in part, at least, to the indiscretion of the latter.  The experiment
+in the outset was perfectly successful; and, could Pizarro once become
+master of the person of Atahuallpa, he trusted to his own discretion for
+the rest.  It would, at least, extricate him from his present critical
+position, by placing in his power an inestimable guaranty for his safety;
+and if he could not make his own terms with the Inca at once, the arrival
+of reinforcements from home would, in all probability, soon enable him
+to do so.
+
+Pizarro having concerted his plans for the following day, the council
+broke up, and the chief occupied himself with providing for the security
+of the camp during the night.  The approaches to the town were
+defended; sentinels were posted at different points, especially on the
+summit of the fortress, where they were to observe the position of the
+enemy, and to report any movement that menaced the tranquillity of the
+night.  After these precautions, the Spanish commander and his followers
+withdrew to their appointed quarters,--but not to sleep.  At least, sleep
+must have come late to those who were aware of the decisive plan for the
+morrow; that morrow which was to be the crisis of their fate,--to crown
+their ambitious schemes with full success, or consign them to
+irretrievable ruin!
+
+
+
+Book 3
+
+Chapter 5
+
+Desperate Plan Of Pizarro--Atahuallpa Visits The Spaniards--
+Horrible Massacre--The Inca A Prisoner--Conduct Of The Conquerors--
+Splendid Promises Of The Inca--Death Of Huascar
+
+1532
+
+The clouds of the evening had passed away, and the sun rose bright on
+the following morning, the most memorable epoch in the annals of Peru.
+It was Saturday, the sixteenth of November, 1532.  The loud cry of the
+trumpet called the Spaniards to arms with the first streak of dawn; and
+Pizarro, briefly acquainting them with the plan of the assault, made the
+necessary dispositions.
+
+The plaza, as mentioned in the preceding chapter, was defended on its
+three sides by low ranges of buildings, consisting of spacious halls with
+wide doors or vomitories opening into the square.  In these halls he
+stationed his cavalry in two divisions, one under his brother Hernando,
+the other under De Soto.  The infantry he placed in another of the
+buildings, reserving twenty chosen men to act with himself as occasion
+might require.  Pedro de Candia, with a few soldiers and the artillery,--
+comprehending under this imposing name two small pieces of ordnance,
+called falconers,---he established in the fortress.  All received orders to
+wait at their posts till the arrival of the Inca.  After his entrance into the
+great square, they were still to remain under cover, withdrawn from
+observation, till the signal was given by the discharge of a gun, when
+they were to cry their war-cries, to rush out in a body from their covert,
+and, putting the Peruvians to the sword, bear off the person of the Inca.
+The arrangement of the immense halls, opening on a level with the plaza,
+seemed to be contrived on purpose for a coup de theatre.  Pizarro
+particularly inculcated order and implicit obedience, that in the hurry of
+the moment there should be no confusion.  Everything depended on their
+acting with concert, coolness, and celerity.1
+
+The chief next saw that their arms were in good order; and that the
+breastplates of their horses were garnished with bells, to add by their
+noise to the consternation of the Indians.  Refreshments were, also,
+liberally provided, that the troops should be in condition for the conflict.
+These arrangements being completed, mass was performed with great
+solemnity by the ecclesiastics who attended the expedition; the God of
+battles was invoked to spread his shield over the soldiers who were
+fighting to extend the empire of the Cross; and all joined with enthusiasm
+in the chant, "Exsurge, Domine," "Rise, O Lord! and judge thine own
+cause."2  One might have supposed them a company of martyrs, about to
+lay down their lives in defence of their faith, instead of a licentious band
+of adventurers, meditating one of the most atrocious acts of perfidy on
+the record of history!  Yet, whatever were the vices of the Castilian
+cavalier, hypocrisy was not among the number.  He felt that he was
+battling for the Cross, and under this conviction, exalted as it was at such
+a moment as this into the predominant impulse, he was blind to the baser
+motives which mingled with the enterprise.  With feelings thus kindled to
+a flame of religious ardor, the soldiers of Pizarro looked forward with
+renovated spirits to the coming conflict; and the chieftain saw with
+satisfaction, that in the hour of trial his men would be true to their leader
+and themselves.
+
+It was late in the day before any movement was visible in the Peruvian
+camp, where much preparation was making to approach the Christian
+quarters with due state and ceremony.  A message was received from
+Atahuallpa, informing the Spanish commander that he should come with
+his warriors fully armed, in the same manner as the Spaniards had come
+to his quarters the night preceding.  This was not an agreeable intimation
+to Pizarro, though he had no reason, probably, to expect the contrary.
+But to object might imply distrust, or, perhaps, disclose, in some
+measure, his own designs.  He expressed his satisfaction, therefore, at the
+intelligence, assuring the Inca, that, come as he would, he would be
+received by him as a friend and brother.3
+
+It was noon before the Indian procession was on its march, when it was
+seen occupying the great causeway for a long extent.  In front came a
+large body of attendants, whose office seemed to be to sweep away every
+particle of rubbish from the road.  High above the crowd appeared the
+Inca, borne on the shoulders of his principal nobles, while others of the
+same rank marched by the sides of his litter, displaying such a dazzling
+show of ornaments on their persons, that, in the language of one of the
+Conquerors, "they blazed like the sun." 4  But the greater part of the
+Inca's forces mustered along the fields that lined the road, and were
+spread over the broad meadows as far as the eye could reach.5
+
+When the royal procession had arrived within half a mile of the city, it
+came to a halt; and Pizarro saw with surprise that Atahuallpa was
+preparing to pitch his tents, as if to encamp there.  A messenger soon
+after arrived, informing the Spaniards that the Inca would occupy his
+present station the ensuing night, and enter the city on the following
+morning.
+
+This intelligence greatly disturbed Pizarro, who had shared in the general
+impatience of his men at the tardy movements of the Peruvians.  The
+troops had been under arms since daylight, the cavalry mounted, and the
+infantry at their post, waiting in silence the coming of the Inca.  A
+profound stillness reigned throughout the town, broken only at intervals by
+the cry of the sentinel from the summit of the fortress, as he proclaimed
+the movements of the Indian army.  Nothing, Pizarro well knew, was so
+trying to the soldier as prolonged suspense, in a critical situation like the
+present; and he feared lest his ardor might evaporate, and be succeeded
+by that nervous feeling natural to the bravest soul at such a crisis, and
+which, if not fear, is near akin to it.6  He returned an answer, therefore,
+to Atahuallpa, deprecating his change of purpose; and adding that he had
+provided everything for his entertainment, and expected him that night to
+sup with him.7
+
+This message turned the Inca from his purpose; and, striking his tents
+again, he resumed his march, first advising the general that he should
+leave the greater part of his warriors behind, and enter the place with
+only a few of them, and without arms,8 as he preferred to pass the night
+at Caxamalca.  At the same time he ordered accommodations to be
+provided for himself, and his retinue in one of the large stone buildings,
+called, from a serpent sculptured on the walls, "the House of the
+Serpent."9 --No tidings could have been more grateful to the Spaniards.
+It seemed as if the Indian monarch was eager to rush into the snare that
+had been spread for him! The fanatical cavalier could not fail to discern
+in it the immediate finger of Providence.
+
+It is difficult to account for this wavering conduct of Atahuallpa, so
+different from the bold and decided character which history ascribes to
+him.  There is no doubt that he made his visit to the white men in perfect
+good faith; though Pizarro was probably right in conjecturing that this
+amiable disposition stood on a very precarious footing.  There is as little
+reason to suppose that he distrusted the sincerity of the strangers; or he
+would not thus unnecessarily have proposed to visit them unarmed.  His
+original purpose of coming with all his force was doubtless to display his
+royal state, and perhaps, also, to show greater respect for the Spaniards;
+but when he consented to accept their hospitality, and pass the night in
+their quarters, he was willing to dispense with a great part of his armed
+soldiery, and visit them in a manner that implied entire confidence in
+their good faith.  He was too absolute in his own empire easily to
+suspect; and he probably could not comprehend the audacity with which
+a few men, like those now assembled in Caxamalca, meditated an assault
+on a powerful monarch in the midst of his victorious army.  He did not
+know the character of the Spaniard.
+
+It was not long before sunset, when the van of the royal procession
+entered the gates of the city.  First came some hundreds of the menials,
+employed to clear the path from every obstacle, and singing songs of
+triumph as they came, "which, in our ears," says one of the Conquerors,
+"sounded like the songs of hell!" 10  Then followed other bodies of
+different ranks, and dressed in different liveries.  Some wore a showy
+stuff, checkered white and red, like the squares of a chess-board.11
+Others were clad in pure white, bearing hammers or maces of silver or
+copper; 12 and the guards, together with those in immediate attendance
+on the prince, were distinguished by a rich azure livery, and a profusion
+of gay ornaments, while the large pendants attached to the ears indicated
+the Peruvian noble.
+
+Elevated high above his vassals came the Inca Atahuallpa, borne on a
+sedan or open litter, on which was a sort of throne made of massive gold
+of inestimable value.13  The palanquin was lined with the richly colored
+plumes of tropical birds, and studded with shining plates of gold and
+silver.14  The monarch's attire was much richer than on the preceding
+evening.  Round his neck was suspended a collar of emeralds of
+uncommon size and brilliancy.15  His short hair was decorated with
+golden ornaments, and the imperial borla encircled his temples.  The
+bearing of the Inca was sedate and dignified; and from his lofty station
+he looked down on the multitudes below with an air of composure, like
+one accustomed to command.
+
+As the leading files of the procession entered the great square, larger,
+says an old chronicler, than any square in Spain, they opened to the right
+and left for the royal retinue to pass.  Everything was conducted with
+admirable order.  The monarch was permitted to traverse the plaza in
+silence, and not a Spaniard was to be seen.  When some five or six
+thousand of his people had entered the place, Atahuallpa halted, and,
+turning round with an inquiring look, demanded, "Where are the
+strangers?"
+
+At this moment Fray Vicente de Valverde, a Dominican friar, Pizarro's
+chaplain, and afterward Bishop of Cuzco, came forward with his
+brevidry, or, as other accounts say, a Bible, in one hand, and a crucifix in
+the other, and, approaching the Inca, told him, that he came by order of
+his commander to expound to him the doctrines of the true faith, for
+which purpose the Spaniards had come from a great distance to his
+country.  The friar then explained, as clearly as he could, the mysterious
+doctrine of the Trinity, and, ascending high in his account, began with
+the creation of man, thence passed to his fall, to his subsequent
+redemption by Jesus Christ, to the crucifixion, and the ascension, when
+the Saviour left the Apostle Peter as his Vicegerent upon earth.  This
+power had been transmitted to the successors of the Apostle, good and
+wise men, who, under the title of Popes, held authority over all powers
+and potentates on earth.  One of the last of these Popes had
+commissioned the Spanish emperor, the most mighty monarch in the
+world, to conquer and convert the natives in this western hemisphere;
+and his general, Francisco Pizarro, had now come to execute this
+important mission.  The friar concluded with beseeching the Peruvian
+monarch to receive him kindly; to abjure the errors of his own faith, and
+embrace that of the Christians now proffered to him, the only one by
+which he could hope for salvation; and, furthermore, to acknowledge
+himself a tributary of the Emperor Charles the Fifth, who, in that event,
+would aid and protect him as his loyal vassal.16
+
+Whether Atahuallpa possessed himself of every link in the curious chain
+of argument by which the monk connected Pizarro with St. Peter, may be
+doubted.  It is certain, however, that he must have had very incorrect
+notions of the Trinity, if, as Garcilasso states, the interpreter Felipillo
+explained it by saying, that "the Christians believed in three Gods and
+one God, and that made four." 17  But there is no doubt he perfectly
+comprehended that the drift of the discourse was to persuade him to
+resign his sceptre and acknowledge the supremacy of another.
+
+The eyes of the Indian monarch flashed fire, and his dark brow grew
+darker as he replied,--"I will be no man's tributary.  I am greater than any
+prince upon earth.  Your emperor may be a great prince; I do not doubt
+it, when I see that he has sent his subjects so far across the waters; and I
+am willing to hold him as a brother.  As for the Pope of whom you
+speak, he must be crazy to talk of giving away countries which do not
+belong to him.  For my faith," he continued, "I will not change it.  Your
+own God, as you say, was put to death by the very men whom he created.
+But mine," he concluded, pointing to his Deity,--then, alas! sinking in
+glory behind the mountains,--"my God still lives in the heavens, and
+looks down on his children." 18
+
+He then demanded of Valverde by what authority he had said these
+things.  The friar pointed to the book which he held, as his authority.
+Atahuallpa, taking it, turned over the pages a moment, then, as the insuit
+he had received probably flashed across his mind, he threw it down with
+vehemence, and exclaimed,--"Tell your comrades that they shall give me
+an account of their doings in my land.  I will not go from here, till they
+have made me full satisfaction for all the wrongs they have committed."
+19
+
+The friar, greatly scandalized by the indignity offered to the sacred
+volume, stayed only to pick it up, and, hastening to Pizarro, informed
+him of what had been done, exclaiming, at the same time,--"Do you not
+see, that, while we stand here wasting our breath in talking with this dog,
+full of pride as he is, the fields are filling with Indians? Set on, at once; I
+absolve you." 20  Pizarro saw that the hour had come.  He waved a white
+scarf in the air, the appointed signal.  The fatal gun was fired from the
+fortress.  Then, springing into the square, the Spanish captain and his
+followers shouted the old war-cry of "St. Jago and at them." It was
+answered by the battle-cry of every Spaniard in the city, as, rushing from
+the avenues of the great halls in which they were concealed, they poured
+into the plaza, horse and foot, each in his own dark column, and threw
+themselves into the midst of the Indian crowd.  The latter, taken by
+surprise, stunned by the report of artillery and muskets, the echoes of
+which reverberated like thunder from the surrounding buildings, and
+blinded by the smoke which rolled in sulphurous volumes along the
+square, were seized with a panic.  They knew not whither to fly for
+refuge from the coming ruin.  Nobles and commoners,--all were trampled
+down under the fierce charge of the cavalry, who dealt their blows, right
+and left, without sparing; while their swords, flashing through.  the thick
+gloom, carried dismay into the hearts of the wretched natives, who now,
+for the first time, saw the horse and his rider in all their terrors.  They
+made no resistance,--as, indeed, they had no weapons with which to
+make it.  Every avenue to escape was closed, for the entrance to the
+square was choked up with the dead bodies of men who had perished in
+vain efforts to fly; and, such was the agony of the survivors under the
+terrible pressure of their assailants, that a large body of Indians, by their
+convulsive struggles, burst through the wall of stone and dried clay
+which formed part of the boundary of the plaza!  It fell, leaving an
+opening of more than a hundred paces, through which multitudes now
+found their way into the country, still hotly pursued by the cavalry, who,
+leaping the fallen rubbish, hung on the rear of the fugitives, striking them
+down in all directions.21
+
+Meanwhile the fight, or rather massacre, continued hot around the Inca,
+whose person was the great object of the assault.  His faithful nobles,
+rallying about him, threw themselves in the way of the assailants, and
+strove, by tearing them from their saddles, or, at least, by offering their
+own bosoms as a mark for their vengeance, to shield their beloved
+master.  It is said by some authorities, that they carried weapons
+concealed under their clothes.  If so, it availed them little, as it is not
+pretended that they used them.  But the most timid animal will defend
+itself when at bay.  That they did not so in the present instance is proof
+that they had no weapons to use.22  Yet they still continued to force back
+the cavaliers, clinging to their horses with dying grasp, and, as one was
+cut down, another taking the place of his fallen comrade with a loyalty
+truly affecting.
+
+The Indian monarch, stunned and bewildered, saw his faithful subjects
+falling round him without fully comprehending his situation.  The litter
+on which he rode heaved to and fro, as the mighty press swayed
+backwards and forwards; and he gazed on the overwhelming ruin, like
+some forlorn mariner, who, tossed about in his bark by the furious
+elements, sees the lightning's flash and hears the thunder bursting around
+him with the consciousness that he can do nothing to avert his fate.  At
+length, weary with the work of destruction, the Spaniards, as the shades
+of evening grew deeper, felt afraid that the royal prize might, after all,
+elude them; and some of the cavaliers made a desperate attempt to end
+the affray at once by taking Atahuallpa's life.  But Pizarro, who was
+nearest his person, called out with stentorian voice, "Let no one, who
+values his life, strike at the Inca"; 23 and, stretching out his arm to shield
+him, received a wound on the hand from one of his own men,--the only
+wound received by a Spaniard in the action.24
+
+The struggle now became fiercer than ever round the royal litter.  It
+reeled more and more, and at length, several of the nobles who supported
+it having been slain, it was overturned, and the Indian prince would have
+come with violence to the ground, had not his fall been broken by the
+efforts of Pizarro and some other of the cavaliers, who caught him in
+their arms.  The imperial borla was instantly snatched from his temples
+by a soldier named Estete,25 and the unhappy monarch, strongly
+secured, was removed to a neighboring building, where he was carefully
+guarded.
+
+All attempt at resistance now ceased.  The fate of the Inca soon spread
+over town and country.  The charm which might have held the Peruvians
+together was dissolved.  Every man thought only of his own safety.  Even
+the soldiery encamped on the adjacent fields took the alarm, and,
+learning the fatal tidings, were seen flying in every direction before their
+pursuers, who in the heat of triumph showed no touch of mercy.  At
+length night, more pitiful than man, threw her friendly mantle over the
+fugitives, and the scattered troops of Pizarro rallied once more at the
+sound of the trumpet in the bloody square of Caxamalca.
+
+The number of slain is reported, as usual, with great discrepancy.
+Pizarro's secretary says two thousand natives fell.26  A descendant of the
+Incas--a safer authority than Garcilasso---swells the number to ten
+thousand.27  Truth is generally found somewhere between the extremes.
+The slaughter was incessant, for there was nothing to check it.  That
+there should have been no resistance will not appear strange, when we
+consider the fact, that the wretched victims were without arms, and that
+their senses must have been completely overwhelmed by the strange and
+appalling spectacle which burst on them so unexpectedly.  "What wonder
+was it," said an ancient Inca to a Spaniard, who repeats it, "what wonder
+that our countrymen lost their wits, seeing blood run like water, and the
+Inca, whose person we all of us adore, seized and carried off by a
+handful of men?" 28  Yet though the massacre was incessant, it was short
+in duration.  The whole time consumed by it, the brief twilight of the
+tropics, did not much exceed half an hour; a short period, indeed,---yet
+long enough to decide the fate of Peru, and to subvert the dynasty of the
+Incas.
+
+That night Pizarro kept his engagement with the Inca, since he had
+Atahuallpa to sup with him.  The banquet was served in one of the halls
+facing the great square, which a few hours before had been the scene of
+slaughter, and the pavement of which was still encumbered with the dead
+bodies of the Inca's subjects.  The captive monarch was placed next his
+conqueror.  He seemed like one who did not yet fully comprehend the
+extent of his calamity.  If he did, he showed an amazing fortitude.  "It is
+the fortune of war," he said; 29 and, if we may credit the Spaniards, he
+expressed his admiration of the adroitness with which they had contrived
+to entrap him in the midst of his own troops.30  He added, that he had
+been made acquainted with the progress of the white men from the hour
+of their landing; but that he had been led to undervalue their strength
+from the insignificance of their numbers.  He had no doubt he should be
+easily able to overpower them, on their arrival at Caxamalca, by his
+superior strength; and, as he wished to see for himself what manner of
+men they were, he had suffered them to cross the mountains, meaning to
+select such as he chose for his own service, and, getting possession of
+their wonderful arms and horses, put the rest to death.31
+
+That such may have been Atahuallpa's purpose is not improbable.  It
+explains his conduct in not occupying the mountain passes, which
+afforded such strong points of defence against invasion.  But that a
+prince so astute, as by the general testimony of the Conquerors he is
+represented to have been, should have made so impolitic a disclosure of
+his hidden motives is not so probable.  The intercourse with the Inca was
+carried on chiefly by means of the interpreter Felipillo, or little Philip, as
+he was called, from his assumed Christian name,---a malicious youth, as
+it appears, who bore no good-will to Atahuallpa, and whose
+interpretations were readily admitted by the Conquerors, eager to find
+some pretext for their bloody reprisals.
+
+Atahuallpa, as elsewhere noticed, was, at this time, about thirty years of
+age.  He was well made, and more robust than usual with his
+countrymen.  His head was large, and his countenance might have been
+called handsome, but that his eyes, which were bloodshot, gave a fierce
+expression to his features.  He was deliberate in speech, grave in manner,
+and towards his own people stern even to severity; though with the
+Spaniards he showed himself affable, sometimes even indulging in
+sallies of mirth.32
+
+Pizarro paid every attention to his royal captive, and endeavored to
+lighten, if he could not dispel, the gloom which, in spite of his assumed
+equanimity, hung over the monarch's brow.  He besought him not to be
+cast down by his reverses, for his lot had only been that of every prince
+who had resisted the white men.  They had come into the country to
+proclaim the gospel, the religion of Jesus Christ; and it was no wonder
+they had prevailed, when his shield was over them.  Heaven had
+permitted that Atahuallpa's pride should be humbled, because of his
+hostile intentions towards the Spaniards, and the insults he had offered to
+the sacred volume.  But he bade the Inca take courage and confide in
+him, for the Spaniards were a generous race, warring only against those
+who made war on them, and showing grace to all who submitted! 33--
+Atahuallpa may have thought the massacre of that day an indifferent
+commentary on this vaunted lenity.
+
+Before retiring for the night, Pizarro briefly addressed his troops on their
+present situation.  When he had ascertained that not a man was wounded,
+he bade them offer up thanksgivings to Providence for so great a miracle;
+without its care, they could never have prevailed so easily over the host
+of their enemies; and he trusted their lives had been reserved for still
+greater things.  But if they would succeed, they had much to do for
+themselves.  They were in the heart of a powerful kingdom,
+encompassed by foes deeply attached to their own sovereign.  They must
+be ever on their guard, therefore, and be prepared at any hour to be
+roused from their slumbers by the call of the trumpet.34--Having then
+posted his sentinels, placed a strong guard over the apartment of
+Atahuallpa, and taken all the precautions of a careful commander,
+Pizarro withdrew to repose; and, if he could really feel, that, in the
+bloody scenes of the past day, he had been fighting only the good fight of
+the Cross, he doubtless slept sounder than on the night preceding the
+seizure of the Inca.
+
+On the following morning, the first commands of the Spanish chief were
+to have the city cleansed of its impurities; and the prisoners, of whom
+there were many in the camp, were employed to remove the dead, and
+give them decent burial.  His next care was to despatch a body of about
+thirty horse to the quarters lately occupied by Atahuallpa at the baths, to
+take possession of the spoil, and disperse the remnant of the Peruvian
+forces which still hung about the place.
+
+Before noon, the party which he had detached on this service returned
+with a large troop of Indians, men and women, among the latter of whom
+were many of the wives and attendants of the Inca.  The Spaniards had
+met with no resistance; since the Peruvian warriors, though so superior in
+number, excellent in appointments, and consisting mostly of ablebodied
+young men,--for the greater part of the veteran forces were with the
+Inca's generals at the south,--lost all heart from the moment of their
+sovereign's captivity.  There was no leader to take his place; for they
+recognized no authority but that of the Child of the Sun, and they seemed
+to be held by a sort of invisible charm near the place of his confinement;
+while they gazed with superstitious awe on the white men, who could
+achieve so audacious an enterprise.35
+
+The number of Indian prisoners was so great, that some of the
+Conquerors were for putting them all to death, or, at least, cutting off
+their hands, to disable them from acts of violence, and to strike terror
+into their countrymen.36  The proposition, doubtless, came from the
+lowest and most ferocious of the soldiery.  But that it should have been
+made at all shows what materials entered into the composition of
+Pizarro's company.  The chief rejected it at once, as no less impolitic
+than inhuman, and dismissed the Indians to their several homes, with the
+assurance that none should be harmed who did not offer resistance to the
+white men.  A sufficient number, however, were retained to wait on the
+Conquerors who were so well provided, in this respect, that the most
+common soldier was attended by a retinue of menials that would have
+better suited the establishment of a noble.37
+
+The Spaniards had found immense droves of llamas under the care of
+their shepherds in the neighborhood of the baths, destined for the
+consumption of the Court.  Many of them were now suffered to roam
+abroad among their native mountains; though Pizarro caused a
+considerable number to be reserved for the use of the army.  And this
+was no small quantity, if, as one of the Conquerors says, a hundred and
+fifty of the Peruvian sheep were frequently slaughtered in a day.38
+Indeed, the Spaniards were so improvident in their destruction of these
+animals, that, in a few years, the superb flocks, nurtured with so much
+care by the Peruvian government, had almost disappeared from the
+land.39
+
+The party sent to pillage the Inca's pleasure-house brought back a rich
+booty in gold and silver, consisting chiefly of plate for the royal table,
+which greatly astonished the Spaniards by their size and weight.  These,
+as well as some large emeralds obtained there, together with the precious
+spoils found on the bodies of the Indian nobles who had perished in the
+massacre, were placed in safe custody, to be hereafter divided.  In the
+city of Caxamalca, the troops also found magazines stored with goods,
+both cotton and woollen, far superior to any they had seen, for fineness
+of texture, and the skill with which the various colors were blended.
+They were piled from the floors to the very roofs of the buildings, and in
+such quantity, that, after every soldier had provided himself with what he
+desired, it made no sensible diminution of the whole amount.40
+
+Pizarro would now gladly have directed his march on the Peruvian
+capital.  But the distance was great, and his force was small.  This must
+have been still further crippled by the guard required for the Inca, and
+the chief feared to involve himself deeper in a hostile empire so
+populous and powerful, with a prize so precious in his keeping.  With
+much anxiety, therefore, he looked for reinforcements from the colonies;
+and he despatched a courier to San Miguel, to inform the Spaniards there
+of his recent successes, and to ascertain if there had been any arrival
+from Panama.  Meanwhile he employed his men in making Caxamalca a
+more suitable residence for a Christian host, by erecting a church, or,
+perhaps, appropriating some Indian edifice to this use, in which mass
+was regularly performed by the Dominican fathers, with great solemnity.
+The dilapidated walls of the city were also restored in a more substantial
+manner than before, and every vestige was soon effaced of the hurricane
+that had so recently swept over it.
+
+It was not long before Atahuallpa discovered, amidst all the show of
+religious zeal in his Conquerors, a lurking appetite more potent in most
+of their bosoms than either religion or ambition.  This was the love of
+gold.  He determined to avail himself of it to procure his own freedom.
+The critical posture of his affairs made it important that this should not
+be long delayed.  His brother, Huascar, ever since his defeat, had been
+detained as a prisoner, subject to the victor's orders.  He was now at
+Andamarca, at no great distance from Caxamalca; and Atahuallpa feared,
+with good reason, that, when his own imprisonment was known, Huascar
+would find it easy to corrupt his guards, make his escape, and put himself
+at the head of the contested empire, without a rival to dispute it.
+
+In the hope, therefore, to effect his purpose by appealing to the avarice
+of his keepers, he one day told Pizarro, that, if he would set him free, he
+would engage to cover the floor of the apartment on which they stood
+with gold.  Those present listened with an incredulous smile; and, as the
+Inca received no answer, he said, with some emphasis, that "he would
+not merely cover the floor, but would fill the room with gold as high as
+he could reach"; and, standing on tiptoe, he stretched out his hand
+against the wall.  All stared with amazement; while they regarded it as
+the insane boast of a man too eager to procure his liberty to weigh the
+meaning of his words.  Yet Pizarro was sorely perplexed.  As he had
+advanced into the country, much that he had seen, and all that he had
+heard, had confirmed the dazzling reports first received of the riches of
+Peru.  Atahuallpa himself had given him the most glowing picture of the
+wealth of the capital, where the roofs of the temples were plated with
+gold, while the walls were hung with tapestry and the floors inlaid with
+tiles of the same precious metal.  There must be some foundation for all
+this.  At all events, it was safe to accede to the Inca's proposition; since,
+by so doing, he could collect, at once, all the gold at his disposal, and
+thus prevent its being purloined or secreted by the natives.  He therefore
+acquiesced in Atahuallpa's offer, and, drawing a red line along the wall at
+the height which the Inca had indicated, he caused the terms of the
+proposal to be duly recorded by the notary.  The apartment was about
+seventeen feet broad, by twenty-two feet long, and the line round the
+walls was nine feet from the floor.41  This space was to be filled with
+gold; but it was understood that the gold was not to be melted down into
+ingots, but to retain the original form of the articles into which it was
+manufactured, that the Inca might have the benefit of the space which
+they occupied.  He further agreed to fill an adjoining room of smaller
+dimensions twice full with silver, in like manner; and he demanded two
+months to accomplish all this.42
+
+No sooner was this arrangement made, than the Inca despatched couriers
+to Cuzco and the other principal places in the kingdom, with orders that
+the gold ornaments and utensils should be removed from the royal
+palaces, and from the temples and other public buildings, and transported
+without loss of time to Caxamalca.  Meanwhile he continued to live in
+the Spanish quarters, treated with the respect due to his rank, and
+enjoying all the freedom that was compatible with the security of his
+person.  Though not permitted to go abroad, his limbs were unshackled,
+and he had the range of his own apartments under the jealous
+surveillance of a guard, who knew too well the value of the royal captive
+to be remiss.  He was allowed the society of his favorite wives, and
+Pizarro took care that his domestic privacy should not be violated.  His
+subjects had free access to their sovereign, and every day he received
+visits from the Indian nobles, who came to bring presents, and offer
+condolence to their unfortunate master.  On such occasions, the most
+potent of these great vassals never ventured into his presence, without
+first stripping off their sandals, and bearing a load on their backs in token
+of reverence.  The Spaniards gazed with curious eyes on these acts of
+homage, or rather of slavish submission, on the one side, and on the air
+of perfect indifference with which they were received, as a matter of
+course, on the other; and they conceived high ideas of the character of a
+prince who, even in his present helpless condition, could inspire such
+feelings of awe in his subjects.  The royal levee was so well attended,
+and such devotion was shown by his vassals to the captive monarch, as
+did not fail, in the end, to excite some feelings of distrust in his
+keepers.43
+
+Pizarro did not neglect the opportunity afforded him of communicating
+the truths of revelation to his prisoner, and both he and his chaplain,
+Father Valverde, labored in the same good work.  Atahuallpa listened
+with composure and apparent attention.  But nothing seemed to move
+him so much as the argument with which the military polemic closed his
+discourse,--that it could not be the true God whom Atahuallpa
+worshipped, since he had suffered him to fall into the hands of his
+enemies.  The unhappy monarch assented to the force of this,
+acknowledging that his Deity had indeed deserted him in his utmost
+need.44
+
+Yet his conduct towards his brother Huascar, at this time, too clearly
+proves, that, whatever respect he may have shown for the teachers, the
+doctrines of Christianity had made little impression on his heart.  No
+sooner had Huascar been informed of the capture of his rival, and of the
+large ransom he had offered for his deliverance, than, as the latter had
+foreseen, he made every effort to regain his liberty, and sent, or
+attempted to send, a message to the Spanish commander, that he would
+pay a much larger ransom than that promised by Atahuallpa, who, never
+having dwelt in Cuzco, was ignorant of the quantity of treasure there, and
+where it was deposited.
+
+Intelligence of all this was secretly communicated to Atahuallpa by the
+persons who had his brother in charge; and his jealousy, thus roused, was
+further heightened by Pizarro's declaration, that he intended to have
+Huascar brought to Caxamalca, where he would himself examine into the
+controversy, and determine which of the two had best title to the sceptre
+of the Incas.  Pizarro perceived, from the first, the advantages of a
+competition which would enable him, by throwing his sword into the
+scale he preferred, to give it a preponderance.  The party who held the
+sceptre by his nomination would henceforth be a tool in his hands, with
+which to work his pleasure more effectually than he could well do in his
+own name.  It was the game, as every reader knows, played by Edward
+the First in the affairs of Scotland, and by many a monarch, both before
+and since,--and though their examples may not have been familiar to the
+unlettered soldier, Pizarro was too quick in his perceptions to require, in
+this matter, at least, the teachings of history.
+
+Atahuallpa was much alarmed by the Spanish commander's
+determination to have the suit between the rival candidates brought
+before him; for he feared, that, independently of the merits of the case,
+the decision would be likely to go in favor of Huascar, whose mild and
+ductile temper would make him a convenient instrument in the hands of
+his conquerors.  Without further hesitation, he determined to remove this
+cause of jealousy for ever, by the death of his brother.
+
+His orders were immediately executed, and the unhappy prince was
+drowned, as was commonly reported, in the river of Andamarca,
+declaring with his dying breath that the white men would avenge his
+murder, and that his rival would not long survive him.45--Thus perished
+the unfortunate Huascar, the legitimate heir of the throne of the Incas, in
+the very morning of life, and the commencement of his reign; a reign,
+however, which had been long enough to call forth the display of many
+excellent and amiable qualities, though his nature was too gentle to cope
+with the bold and fiercer temper of his brother.  Such is the portrait we
+have of him from the Indian and Castilian chroniclers, though the former,
+it should be added, were the kinsmen of Huascar, and the latter certainly
+bore no good-will to Atahuallpa.46
+
+That prince received the tidings of Huascar's death with every mark of
+surprise and indignation.  He immediately sent for Pizarro, and
+communicated the event to him with expressions of the deepest sorrow.
+The Spanish commander refused, at first, to credit the unwelcome news,
+and bluntly told the Inca, that his brother could not be dead, and that he
+should be answerable for his life.47  To this Atahuallpa replied by
+renewed assurances of the fact, adding that the deed had been
+perpetrated, without his privity, by Huascar's keepers, fearful that he
+might take advantage of the troubles of the country to make his escape.
+Pizarro, on making further inquiries, found that the report of his death
+was but too true.  That it should have been brought about by Atahuallpa's
+officers, without his express command, would only show, that, by so
+doing, they had probably anticipated their master's wishes.  The crime,
+which assumes in our eyes a deeper dye from the relation of the parties,
+had not the same estimation among the Incas, in whose multitudinous
+families the bonds of brotherhood must have sat loosely,--much too
+loosely to restrain the arm of the despot from sweeping away any
+obstacle that lay in his path.
+
+
+
+Book 3
+
+Chapter 6
+
+Gold Arrives For The Ransom--Visit To Pachacamac--
+Demolition Of The Idol-- The Inca's Favorite General--
+The Inca's Life In Confinement--Envoys' Conduct In Cuzco--
+Arrival Of Almagro
+
+1533
+
+Several weeks had now passed since Atahuallpa's emissaries had been
+despatched for the gold and silver that were to furnish his ransom to the
+Spaniards.  But the distances were great, and the returns came in slowly.
+They consisted, for the most part, of massive pieces of plate, some of
+which weighed two or three arrobas,--a Spanish weight of twenty-five
+pounds.  On some days, articles of the value of thirty or forty thousand
+pesos de oro were brought in, and, occasionally, of the value of fifty or
+even sixty thousand pesos.  The greedy eyes of the Conquerors gloated
+on the shining heaps of treasure, which were transported on the shoulders
+of the Indian porters, and, after being carefully registered, were placed in
+safe deposit under a strong guard.  They now began to believe that the
+magnificent promises of the Inca would be fulfilled.  But, as their avarice
+was sharpened by the ravishing display of wealth, such as they had
+hardly dared to imagine, they became more craving and impatient.  They
+made no allowance for the distance and the difficulties of the way, and
+loudly inveighed against the tardiness with which the royal commands
+were executed.  They even suspected Atahuallpa of devising this scheme
+only to gain a pretext for communicating with his subjects in distant
+places, and of proceeding as dilatorily as possible, in order to secure
+time for the execution of his plans.  Rumors of a rising among the
+Peruvians were circulated, and the Spaniards were in apprehension of
+some general and sudden assault on their quarters.  Their new
+acquisitions gave them additional cause for solicitude; like a miser, they
+trembled in the midst of their treasures.1
+
+Pizarro reported to his captive the rumors that were in circulation among
+the soldiers, naming, as one of the places pointed out for the rendezvous
+of the Indians, the neighboring city of Guamachucho.  Atahuallpa
+listened with undisguised astonishment, and indignantly repelled the
+charge, as false from beginning to end.  "No one of my subjects," said
+he, "would dare to appear in arms, or to raise his finger, without my
+orders.  You have me," he continued, "in your power.  Is not my life at
+your disposal?  And what better security can you have for my fidelity?"
+He then represented to the Spanish commander that the distances of
+many of the places were very great; that to Cuzco, the capital, although a
+message might be sent by post, through a succession of couriers, in five
+days from Caxamalca, it would require weeks for a porter to travel over
+the same ground, with a heavy load on his back.  "But that you may be
+satisfied I am proceeding in good faith," he added, "I desire you will
+send some of your own people to Cuzco.  I will give them a safe-
+conduct, and, when there, they can superintend the execution of the
+commission, and see with their own eyes that no hostile movements are
+intended."  It was a fair offer, and Pizarro, anxious to get more precise
+and authentic information of the state of the country, gladly availed
+himself of it.2
+
+Before the departure of these emissaries, the general had despatched his
+brother Hernando with about twenty horse and a small body of infantry
+to the neighboring town of Guamachucho, in order to reconnoitre the
+country, and ascertain if there was any truth in the report of an armed
+force having assembled there.  Hernando found every thing quiet, and
+met with a kind reception from the natives.  But before leaving the place,
+he received further orders from his brother to continue his march to
+Pachacamac, a town situated on the coast, at least a hundred leagues
+distant from Caxamalca.  It was consecrated at the seat of the great
+temple of the deity of that name, whom the Peruvians worshipped as the
+Creator of the world.  It is said that they found there altars raised to this
+god, on their first occupation of the country; and, such was the
+veneration in which he was held by the natives, that the Incas, instead of
+attempting to abolish his worship, deemed it more prudent to sanction it
+conjointly with that of their own deity, the Sun.  Side by side, the two
+temples rose on the heights that overlooked the city of Pachacamac, and
+prospered in the offerings of their respective votaries.  "It was a cunning
+arrangement," says an ancient writer, "by which the great enemy of man
+secured to himself a double harvest of souls." 3
+
+But the temple of Pachacamac continued to maintain its ascendency; and
+the oracles, delivered from its dark and mysterious shrine, were held in
+no less repute among the natives of Tavantinsuyu, (or "the four quarters
+of the world," as Peru under the Incas was called,) than the oracles of
+Delphi obtained among the Greeks.  Pilgrimages were made to the
+hallowed spot from the most distant regions, and the city of Pachacamac
+became among the Peruvians what Mecca was among the Mahometans,
+or Cholula with the people of Anahuac.  The shrine of the deity, enriched
+by the tributes of the pilgrims, gradually became one of the most opulent
+in the land; and Atahuallpa, anxious to collect his ransom as speedily as
+possible, urged Pizarro to send a detachment in that direction, to secure
+the treasures before they could be secreted by the priests of the temple.
+
+It was a journey of considerable difficulty.  Two thirds of the route lay
+along the table-land of the Cordilleras, intersected occasionally by crests
+of the mountain range, that imposed no slight impediment to their
+progress.  Fortunately, much of the way, they had the benefit of the great
+road to Cuzco, and "nothing in Christendom," exclaims Hernando
+Pizarro, "equals the magnificence of this road across the sierra."4  In
+some places, the rocky ridges were so precipitous, that steps were cut in
+them for the travellers; and though the sides were protected by heavy
+stone balustrades or parapets, it was with the greatest difficulty that the
+horses were enabled to scale them.  The road was frequently crossed by
+streams, over which bridges of wood and sometimes of stone were
+thrown; though occasionally, along the declivities of the mountains, the
+waters swept down in such furious torrents, that the only method of
+passing them was by the swinging bridges of osier, of which, till now, the
+Spaniards had had little experience.  They were secured on either bank to
+heavy buttresses of stone.  But as they were originally designed for
+nothing heavier than the foot-passenger and the llama, and, as they had
+something exceedingly fragile in their appearance, the Spaniards
+hesitated to venture on them with their horses.  Experience, however,
+soon showed they were capable of bearing a much greater weight; and
+though the traveller, made giddy by the vibration of the long avenue,
+looked with a reeling brain into the torrent that was tumbling at the depth
+of a hundred feet or more below him, the whole of the cavalry effected
+their passage without an accident.  At these bridges, it may be remarked,
+they found persons stationed whose business it was to collect toll for the
+government from all travellers.5
+
+The Spaniards were amazed by the number as well as magnitude of the
+flocks of llamas which they saw browsing on the stunted herbage that
+grows in the elevated regions of the Andes.  Sometimes they were
+gathered in inclosures, but more usually were roaming at large under the
+conduct of their Indian shepherds; and the Conquerors now learned, for
+the first time, that these animals were tended with as much care, and their
+migrations as nicely regulated, as those of the vast flocks of merinos in
+their own country.6
+
+The table-land and its declivities were thickly sprinkled with hamlets and
+towns, some of them of considerable size; and the country in every
+direction bore the marks of a thrifty husbandry.  Fields of Indian corn
+were to be seen in all its different stages, from the green and tender ear
+to the yellow ripeness of harvest time.  As they descended into the
+valleys and deep ravines that divided the crests of the Cordilleras, they
+were surrounded by the vegetation of a warmer climate, which delighted
+the eye with the gay livery of a thousand bright colors, and intoxicated
+the senses with its perfumes.  Everywhere the natural capacities of the
+soil were stimulated by a minute system of irrigation, which drew the
+fertilizing moisture from every stream and rivulet that rolled down the
+declivities of the Andes; while the terraced sides of the mountains were
+clothed with gardens and orchards that teemed with fruits of various
+latitudes.  The Spaniards could not sufficiently admire the industry with
+which the natives had availed themselves of the bounty of Nature, or had
+supplied the deficiency where she had dealt with a more parsimonious
+hand.
+
+Whether from the commands of the Inca, or from the awe which their
+achievements had spread throughout the land, the Conquerors were
+received, in every place through which they passed, with hospitable
+kindness.  Lodgings were provided for them, with ample refreshments
+from the well-stored magazines, distributed at intervals along the route.
+In many of the towns the inhabitants came out to welcome them with
+singing and dancing; and, when they resumed their march, a number of
+ablebodied porters were furnished to carry forward their baggage.7
+
+At length, after some weeks of travel, severe even with all these
+appliances, Hernando Pizarro arrived before the city of Pachacamac.  It
+was a place of considerable population, and the edifices were, many of
+them, substantially built.  The temple of the tutelar deity consisted of a
+vast stone building, or rather pile of buildings, which, clustering around a
+conical hill, had the air of a fortress rather than a religious establishment.
+But, though the walls were of stone, the roof was composed of a light
+thatch, as usual in countries where rain seldom or never falls, and where
+defence, consequently, is wanted chiefly against the rays of the sun.
+
+Presenting himself at the lower entrance of the temple, Hernando Pizarro
+was refused admittance by the guardians of the portal.  But, exclaiming
+that "he had come too far to be stayed by the arm of an Indian priest," he
+forced his way into the passage, and, followed by his men, wound up the
+gallery which led to an area on the summit of the mount, at one end of
+which stood a sort of chapel.  This was the sanctuary of the dread deity.
+The door was garnished with ornaments of crystal, and with turquoises
+and bits of coral.8  Here again the Indians would have dissuaded Pizarro
+from violating the consecrated precincts, when, at that moment, the
+shock of an earthquake, that made the ancient walls tremble to their
+foundation, so alarmed the natives, both those of Pizarro's own company
+and the people of the place, that they fled in dismay, nothing doubting
+that their incensed deity would bury the invaders under the ruins, or
+consume them with his lightnings.  But no such terror found its way into
+the breast of the Conquerors, who felt that here, at least, they were
+fighting the good fight of the Faith.
+
+Tearing open the door, Pizarro and his party entered.  But instead of a
+hall blazing, as they had fondly imagined, with gold and precious stones,
+offerings of the worshippers of Pachacamac, they found themselves in a
+small and obscure apartment, or rather den, from the floor and sides of
+which steamed up the most offensive odors,--like those of a
+slaughterhouse.  It was the place of sacrifice.  A few pieces of gold and
+some emeralds were discovered on the ground, and, as their eyes became
+accommodated to the darkness, they discerned in the most retired corner
+of the room the figure of the deity.  It was an uncouth monster, made of
+wood, with the head resembling that of a man.  This was the god,
+through whose lips Satan had breathed forth the far-famed oracles which
+had deluded his Indian votaries! 9
+
+Tearing the idol from its recess, the indignant Spaniards dragged it into
+the open air, and there broke it into a hundred fragments.  The place was
+then purified, and a large cross, made of stone and plaster, was erected
+on the spot.  In a few years the walls of the temple were pulled down by
+the Spanish settlers, who found there a convenient quarry for their own
+edifices.  But the cross still remained spreading its broad arms over the
+ruins.  It stood where it was planted in the very heart of the stronghold of
+Heathendom; and, while all was in ruins around it, it proclaimed the
+permanent triumphs of the Faith.
+
+The simple natives, finding that Heaven had no bolts in store for the
+Conquerors, and that their god had no power to prevent the profanation
+of his shrine, came in gradually and tendered their homage to the
+strangers, whom they now regarded with feelings of superstitious awe.
+Pizarro profited by this temper to wean them, if possible, from their
+idolatry; and though no preacher himself, as he tells us, he delivered a
+discourse as edifying, doubtless, as could be expected from the mouth of
+a soldier;10 and, in conclusion, he taught them the sign of the cross, as
+an inestimable talisman to secure them against the future machinations of
+the Devil.11
+
+But the Spanish commander was not so absorbed in his spiritual labors
+as not to have an eye to those temporal concerns for which he came into
+this quarter.  He now found, to his chagrin, that he had come somewhat
+too late; and that the priests of Pachacamac, being advised of his
+mission, had secured much the greater part of the gold, and decamped
+with it before his arrival.  A quantity was afterwards discovered buried in
+the grounds adjoining.12  Still the amount obtained was considerable,
+falling little short of eighty thousand castellanos, a sum which once
+would have been deemed a compensation for greater fatigues than they
+had encountered.  But the Spaniards had become familiar with gold; and
+their imaginations, kindled by the romantic adventures in which they had
+of late been engaged, indulged in visions which all the gold of Peru
+would scarcely have realized.
+
+One prize, however, Hernando obtained by his expedition, which went
+far to console him for the loss of his treasure.  While at Pachacamac, he
+learned that the Indian commander Challcuchima lay with a large force
+in the neighborhood of Xauxa, a town of some strength at a considerable
+distance among the mountains.  This man, who was nearly related to
+Atahuallpa, was his most experienced general, and together with
+Quizquiz, now at Cuzco, had achieved those victories at the south which
+placed the Inca on the throne.  From his birth, his talents, and his large
+experience, he was accounted second to no subject in the kingdom.
+Pizarro was aware of the importance of securing his person.  Finding that
+the Indian noble declined to meet him on his return, he determined to
+march at once on Xauxa and take the chief in his own quarters.  Such a
+scheme, considering the enormous disparity of numbers, might seem
+desperate even for Spaniards.  But success had given them such
+confidence, that they hardly condescended to calculate chances.
+
+The road across the mountains presented greater difficulties than those
+on the former march.  To add to the troubles of the cavalry, the shoes of
+their horses were used up, and their hoofs suffered severely on the rough
+and stony ground.  There was no iron at hand, nothing but gold and
+silver.  In the present emergency they turned even these to account; and
+Pizarro caused the horses of the whole troop to be shod with silver The
+work was done by the Indian smiths, and it answered so well, that in this
+precious material they found a substitute for iron during the remainder of
+the march.13
+
+Xauxa was a large and populous place; though we shall hardly credit the
+assertion of the Conquerors, that a hundred thousand persons assembled
+habitually in the great square of the city.14  The Peruvian commander
+was encamped, it was said, with an army of five-and-thirty thousand men
+at only a few miles' distance from the town.  With some difficulty he was
+persuaded to an interview with Pizarro.  The latter addressed him
+courteously, and urged his return with him to the Castilian quarters in
+Caxamalca, representing it as the command of the Inca.  Ever since the
+capture of his master, Challcuchima had remained uncertain what course
+to take.  The capture of the Inca in this sudden and mysterious manner by
+a race of beings who seemed to have dropped from the clouds, and that
+too in the very hour of his triumph, had entirely bewildered the Peruvian
+chief.  He had concerted no plan for the rescue of Atahuallpa, nor,
+indeed, did he know whether any such movement would be acceptable to
+him.  He now acquiesced in his commands, and was willing, at all events,
+to have a personal interview with his sovereign.  Pizarro gained his end
+without being obliged to strike a single blow to effect it.  The barbarian,
+when brought into contact with the white man, would seem to have been
+rebuked by his superior genius, in the same manner as the wild animal of
+the forest is said to quail before the steady glance of the hunter.
+
+Challcuchima came attended by a numerous retinue.  He was borne in his
+sedan on the shoulders of his vassals; and, as he accompanied the
+Spaniards on their return through the country, received everywhere from
+the inhabitants the homage paid only to the favorite of a monarch.  Yet
+all this pomp vanished on his entering the presence of the Inca, whom he
+approached with his feet bare, while a light burden, which he had taken
+from one of the attendants, was laid on his back.  As he drew near, the
+old warrior, raising his hands to heaven, exclaimed,--"Would that I had
+been here!--this would not then have happened"; then, kneeling down, he
+kissed the hands and feet of his royal master, and bathed them with his
+tears.  Atahuallpa, on his part, betrayed not the least emotion, and
+showed no other sign of satisfaction at the presence of his favorite
+counsellor than by simply bidding him welcome.  The cold demeanor of
+the monarch contrasted strangely with the loyal sensibility of the
+subject.15
+
+The rank of the Inca placed him at an immeasurable distance above the
+proudest of his vassals; and the Spaniards had repeated occasion to
+admire the ascendency which, even in his present fallen fortunes, he
+maintained over his people, and the awe with which they approached
+him.  Pedro Pizarro records an interview, at which he was present,
+between Atahuallpa and one of his great nobles, who had obtained leave
+to visit some remote part of the country on condition of returning by a
+certain day.  He was detained somewhat beyond the appointed time, and,
+on entering the presence with a small propitiatory gift for his sovereign,
+his knees shook so violently, that it seemed, says the chronicler, as if he
+would have fallen to the ground.  His master, however, received him
+kindly, and dismissed him without a word of rebuke.16
+
+Atahuallpa in his confinement continued to receive the same respectful
+treatment from the Spaniards as hitherto.  They taught him to play with
+dice, and the more intricate game of chess, in which the royal captive
+became expert, and loved to beguile with it the tedious hours of his
+imprisonment.  Towards his own people he maintained as far as possible
+his wonted state and ceremonial.  He was attended by his wives and the
+girls of his harem, who, as was customary, waited on him at table and
+discharged the other menial offices about his person.  A body of Indian
+nobles were stationed in the antechamber, but never entered the presence
+unbidden; and when they did enter it, they submitted to the same
+humiliating ceremonies imposed on the greatest of his subjects.  The
+service of his table was gold and silver plate.  His dress, which he often
+changed, was composed of the wool of the vicuna wrought into mantles,
+so fine that it had the appearance of silk.  He sometimes exchanged these
+for a robe made of the skins of bats, as soft and sleek as velvet.  Round
+his head he wore the llautu, a woollen turban or shawl of the most,
+delicate texture, wreathed in folds of various bright colors; and he still
+continued to encircle his temples with the borla, the crimson threads of
+which, mingled with gold, descended so as partly to conceal his eyes.
+The image of royalty had charms for him, when its substance had
+departed.  No garment or utensil that had once belonged to the Peruvian
+sovereign could ever be used by another.  When he laid it aside, it was
+carefully deposited in a chest, kept for the purpose, and afterwards
+burned.  It would have been sacrilege to apply to vulgar uses that which
+had been consecrated by the touch of the Inca.17
+
+Not long after the arrival of the party from Pachacamac, in the latter part
+of May, the three emissaries returned from Cuzco.  They had been very
+successful in their mission.  Owing to the Inca's order, and the awe which
+the white men now inspired throughout the country, the Spaniards had
+everywhere met with a kind reception.  They had been carried on the
+shoulders of the natives in the hamacas, or sedans, of the country; and, as
+they had travelled all the way to the capital on the great imperial road,
+along which relays of Indian carriers were established at stated intervals,
+they performed this journey of more than six hundred miles, not only
+without inconvenience, but with the most luxurious ease.  They passed
+through many populous towns, and always found the simple natives
+disposed to venerate them as beings of a superior nature.  In Cuzco they
+were received with public festivities, were sumptuously lodged, and had
+every want anticipated by the obsequious devotion of the inhabitants.
+
+Their accounts of the capital confirmed all that Pizarro had before heard
+of the wealth and population of the city.  Though they had remained
+more than a week in this place, the emissaries had not seen the whole of
+it.  The great temple of the Sun they found literally covered with plates
+of gold.  They had entered the interior and beheld the royal mummies,
+seated each in his gold-embossed chair, and in robes profusely covered
+with ornaments.  The Spaniards had the grace to respect these, as they
+had been previously enjoined by the Inca; but they required that the
+plates which garnished the walls should be all removed.  The Peruvians
+most reluctantly acquiesced in the commands of their sovereign to
+desecrate the national temple, which every inhabitant of the city regarded
+with peculiar pride and veneration.  With less reluctance they assisted the
+Conquerors in stripping the ornaments from some of the other edifices,
+where the gold, however, being mixed with a large proportion of alloy,
+was of much less value.18
+
+The number of plates they tore from the temple of the Sun was seven
+hundred; and though of no great thickness, probably, they are compared
+in size to the lid of a chest, ten or twelve inches wide.19  A cornice of
+pure gold encircled the edifice, but so strongly set in the stone, that it
+fortunately defied the efforts of the spoilers.  The Spaniards complained
+of the want of alacrity shown by the Indians in the work of destruction,
+and said that there were other parts of the city containing buildings rich
+in gold and silver which they had not been allowed to see.  In truth, their
+mission, which, at best, was a most ungrateful one, had been rendered
+doubly annoying by the manner in which they had executed it.  The
+emissaries were men of a very low stamp, and, puffed up by the honors
+conceded to them by the natives, they looked on themselves as entitled to
+these, and condemned the poor Indians as a race immeasurably beneath
+the European.  They not only showed the most disgusting rapacity, but
+treated the highest nobles with wanton insolence.  They even went so far,
+it is said, as to violate the privacy of the convents, and to outrage the
+religious sentiments of the Peruvians by their scandalous amours with the
+Virgins of the Sun.  The people of Cuzco were so exasperated, that they
+would have laid violent hands on them, but for their habitual reverence
+for the Inca, in whose name the Spaniards had come there.  As it was, the
+Indians collected as much gold as was necessary to satisfy their unworthy
+visitors, and got rid of them as speedily as possible.20  It was a great
+mistake in Pizarro to send such men.  There were persons, even in his
+company, who, as other occasions showed, had some sense of self-
+respect, if not respect for the natives.
+
+The messengers brought with them, besides silver, full two hundred
+cargas or loads of gold.21  This was an important accession to the
+contributions of Atahuallpa; and, although the treasure was still
+considerably below the mark prescribed, the monarch saw with
+satisfaction the time drawing nearer for the completion of his ransom.
+
+Not long before this, an event had occurred which changed the condition
+of the Spaniards, and had an unfavorable influence on the fortunes of the
+Inca.  This was the arrival of Almagro at Caxamalca, with a strong
+reinforcement.  That chief had succeeded, after great efforts, in
+equipping three vessels, and assembling a body of one hundred and fifty
+men, with which he sailed from Panama, the latter part of the preceding
+year.  On his voyage, he was joined by a small additional force from
+Nicaragua, so that his whole strength amounted to one hundred and fifty
+foot and fifty horse, well provided with the munitions of war.  His
+vessels were steered by the old pilot Ruiz; but after making the Bay of
+St. Matthew, he crept slowly along the coast, baffled as usual by winds
+and currents, and experiencing all the hardships incident to that
+protracted navigation.  From some cause or other, he was not so
+fortunate as to obtain tidings of Pizarro; and so disheartened were his
+followers, most of whom were raw adventurers, that, when arrived at
+Puerto Viejo, they proposed to abandon the expedition, and return at
+once to Panama.  Fortunately, one of the little squadron which Almagro
+had sent forward to Tumbez brought intelligence of Pizarro and of the
+colony he had planted at San Miguel.  Cheered by the tidings, the
+cavalier resumed his voyage, and succeeded, at length, towards the close
+of December, 1532, in bringing his whole party safe to the Spanish
+settlement.
+
+He there received the account of Pizarro's march across the mountains,
+his seizure of the Inca, and, soon afterwards, of the enormous ransom
+offered for his liberation.  Almagro and his companions listened with
+undisguised amazement to this account of his associate, and of a change
+in his fortunes so rapid and wonderful that it seemed little less than
+magic.  At the same time, he received a caution from some of the
+colonists not to trust himself in the power of Pizarro, who was known to
+bear him no good-will.
+
+Not long after Almagro's arrival at San Miguel, advices were sent of it to
+Caxamalca, and a private note from his secretary Perez informed Pizarro
+that his associate had come with no purpose of cooperating with him, but
+with the intention to establish an independent government.  Both of the
+Spanish captains seem to have been surrounded by mean and turbulent
+spirits, who sought to embroil them with each other, trusting, doubtless,
+to find their own account in the rupture.  For once, however, their
+malicious machinations failed.
+
+Pizarro was overjoyed at the arrival of so considerable a reinforcement,
+which would enable him to push his fortunes as he had desired, and go
+forward with the conquest of the country.  He laid little stress on the
+secretary's communication, since, whatever might have been Almagro's
+original purpose, Pizarro knew that the richness of the vein he had now
+opened in the land would be certain to secure his cooperation in working
+it.  He had the magnanimity, therefore,--for there is something
+magnanimous in being able to stifle the suggestions of a petty rivalry in
+obedience to sound policy,--to send at once to his ancient comrade, and
+invite him, with many assurances of friendship, to Caxamalca.  Almagro,
+who was of a frank and careless nature, received the communication in
+the spirit in which it was made, and, after some necessary delay, directed
+his march into the interior.  But before leaving San Miguel, having
+become acquainted with the treacherous conduct of his secretary, he
+recompensed his treason by hanging him on the spot.22
+
+Almagro reached Caxamalca about the middle of February, 1533.  The
+soldiers of Pizarro came out to welcome their countrymen, and the two
+captains embraced each other with every mark of cordial satisfaction.
+All past differences were buried in oblivion, and they seemed only
+prepared to aid one another in following up the brilliant career now
+opened to them in the conquest of an empire.
+
+There was one person in Caxamalca on whom this arrival of the
+Spaniards produced a very different impression from that made on their
+own countrymen.  This was the Inca Atahuallpa.  He saw in the new-
+comers only a new swarm of locusts to devour his unhappy country; and
+he felt, that, with his enemies thus multiplying around him, the chances
+were diminished of recovering his freedom, or of maintaining it, if
+recovered.  A little circumstance, insignificant in itself, but magnified by
+superstition into something formidable, occurred at this time to cast an
+additional gloom over his situation.
+
+A remarkable appearance, somewhat of the nature of a meteor, or it may
+have been a comet, was seen in the heavens by some soldiers and pointed
+out to Atahuallpa.  He gazed on it with fixed attention for some minutes,
+and then exclaimed, with a dejected air, that "a similar sign had been
+seen in the skies a short time before the death of his father Huayna
+Capac." 23  From this day a sadness seemed to take possession of him,
+as he looked with doubt and undefined dread to the future.  Thus it is,
+that, in seasons of danger, the mind, like the senses, becomes morbidly
+acute in its perceptions; and the least departure from the regular course
+of nature, that would have passed unheeded in ordinary times, to the
+superstitious eye seems pregnant with meaning, as in some way or other
+connected with the destiny of the individual.
+
+
+
+Book 3
+
+Chapter 7
+
+Immense Amount Of Treasure--Its Division Among The Troops--
+Rumors Of A Rising--Trial Of The Inca--His Execution--Reflections
+
+1533
+
+The arrival of Almagro produced a considerable change in Pizarro's
+prospects, since it enabled him to resume active operations, and push
+forward his conquests in the interior.  The only obstacle in his way was
+the Inca's ransom, and the Spaniards had patiently waited, till the return
+of the emissaries from Cuzco swelled the treasure to a large amount,
+though still below the stipulated limit.  But now their avarice got the
+better of their forbearance, and they called loudly for the immediate
+division of the gold.  To wait longer would only be to invite the assault
+of their enemies, allured by a bait so attractive.  While the treasure
+remained uncounted, no man knew its value, nor what was to be his own
+portion.  It was better to distribute it at once, and let every one possess
+and defend his own.  Several, moreover, were now disposed to return
+home, and take their share of the gold with them, where they could place
+it in safety.  But these were few, while much the larger part were only
+anxious to leave their present quarters, and march at once to Cuzco.
+More gold, they thought, awaited them in that capital, than they could get
+here by prolonging their stay; while every hour was precious, to prevent
+the inhabitants from secreting their treasures, of which design they had
+already given indication.
+
+Pizarro was especially moved by the last consideration; and he felt, that,
+without the capital, he could not hope to become master of the empire.
+Without further delay, the division of the treasure was agreed upon.
+
+Yet, before making this, it was necessary to reduce the whole to ingots of
+a uniform standard, for the spoil was composed of an infinite variety of
+articles, in which the gold was of very different degrees of purity.  These
+articles consisted of goblets, ewers, salvers, vases of every shape and
+size, ornaments and utensils for the temples and the royal palaces, tiles
+and plates for the decoration of the public edifices, curious imitations of
+different plants and animals.  Among the plants, the most beautiful was
+the Indian corn, in which the golden ear was sheathed in its broad leaves
+of silver, from which hung a rich tassel of threads of the same precious
+metal.  A fountain was also much admired, which sent up a sparkling jet
+of gold, while birds and animals of the same material played in the
+waters at its base.  The delicacy of the workmanship of some of these,
+and the beauty and ingenuity of the design, attracted the admiration of
+better judges than the rude Conquerors of Peru.1
+
+Before breaking up these specimens of Indian art, it was determined to
+send a quantity, which should be deducted from the royal fifth, to the
+Emperor.  It would serve as a sample of the ingenuity of the natives, and
+would show him the value of his conquests.  A number of the most
+beautiful articles was selected, to the amount of a hundred thousand
+ducats, and Hernando Pizarro was appointed to be the bearer of them to
+Spain.  He was to obtain an audience of Charles, and, at the same time
+that he laid the treasures before him, he was to give an account of the
+proceedings of the Conquerors, and to seek a further augmentation of
+their powers and dignities.
+
+No man in the army was better qualified for this mission, by his address
+and knowledge of affairs, than Hernando Pizarro; no one would be so
+likely to urge his suit with effect at the haughty Castilian court.  But
+other reasons influenced the selection of him at the present juncture.
+
+His former jealousy of Almagro still rankled in his bosom, and he had
+beheld that chief's arrival at the camp with feelings of disgust, which he
+did not care to conceal.  He looked on him as coming to share the spoils
+of victory, and defraud his brother of his legitimate honors.  Instead of
+exchanging the cordial greeting proffered by Almagro at their first
+interview, the arrogant cavalier held back in sullen silence.  His brother
+Francis was greatly displeased at a conduct which threatened to renew
+their ancient feud, and he induced Hernando to accompany him to
+Almagro's quarters, and make some acknowledgment for his uncourteous
+behavior.2  But, notwithstanding this show of reconciliation, the general
+thought the present a favorable opportunity to remove his brother from
+the scene of operations, where his factious spirit more than
+counterbalanced his eminent services.3
+
+The business of melting down the plate was intrusted to the Indian
+goldsmiths, who were thus required to undo the work of their own hands,
+They toiled day and night, but such was the quantity to be recast, that it
+consumed a full month.  When the whole was reduced to bars of a
+uniform standard, they were nicely weighed, under the superintendence
+of the royal inspectors.  The total amount of the gold was found to be
+one million, three hundred and twenty-six thousand, five hundred and
+thirty nine pesos de oro, which, allowing for the greater value of money
+in the sixteenth century, would be equivalent, probably, at the present
+time, to near three millions and a half of pounds sterling, or somewhat
+less than fifteen millions and a half of dollars.4  The quantity of silver
+was estimated at fifty-one thousand six hundred and ten marks.  History
+affords no parallel of such a booty--and that, too, in the most convertible
+form, in ready money, as it were--having fallen to the lot of a little band
+of military adventurers, like the Conquerors of Peru.  The great object of
+the Spanish expeditions in the New World was gold.  It is remarkable
+that their success should have been so complete.  Had they taken the
+track of the English, the French, or the Dutch, on the shores of the
+northern continent, how different would have been the result!  It is
+equally worthy of remark, that the wealth thus suddenly acquired, by
+diverting them from the slow but surer and more permanent sources of
+national prosperity, has in the end glided from their grasp, and left them
+among the poorest of the nations of Christendom.
+
+A new difficulty now arose in respect to the division of the treasure.
+Almagro's followers claimed to be admitted to a share of it; which, as
+they equalled, and indeed, somewhat exceeded in number Pizarro's
+company, would reduce the gains of these last very materially.  "We
+were not here, it is true," said Almagro's soldiers to their comrades, "at
+the seizure of the Inca, but we have taken our turn in mounting guard
+over him since his capture, have helped you to defend your treasures, and
+now give you the means of going forward and securing your conquests.
+It is a common cause," they urged, "in which all are equally embarked,
+and the gains should be shared equally between us."
+
+But this way of viewing the matter was not at all palatable to Pizarro's
+company, who alleged that Atahuallpa's contract had been made
+exclusively with them; that they had seized the Inca, had secured the
+ransom, had incurred, in short, all the risk of the enterprise, and were not
+now disposed to share the fruits of it with every one who came after
+them.  There was much force, it could not be denied, in this reasoning,
+and it was finally settled between the leaders, that Almagro's followers
+should resign their pretensions for a stipulated sum of no great amount,
+and look to the career now opened to them for carving out their fortunes
+for themselves.
+
+This delicate affair being thus harmoniously adjusted, Pizarro prepared,
+with all solemnity, for a division of the imperial spoil.  The troops were
+called together in the great square, and the Spanish commander, "with
+the fear of God before his eyes," says the record, "invoked the assistance
+of Heaven to do the work before him conscientiously and justly."5  The
+appeal may seem somewhat out of place at the distribution of spoil so
+unrighteously acquired; yet, in truth, considering the magnitude of the
+treasure, and the power assumed by Pizarro to distribute it according to
+the respective deserts of the individuals, there were few acts of his life
+involving a heavier responsibility.  On his present decision might be said
+to hang the future fortunes of each one of his followers,--poverty or
+independence during the remainder of his days.
+
+The royal fifth was first deducted, including the remittance already sent
+to Spain.  The share appropriated by Pizarro amounted to fifty-seven
+thousand two hundred and twenty-two pesos of gold, and two thousand
+three hundred and fifty marks of silver.  He had besides this the great
+chair or throne of the Inca, of solid gold, and valued at twenty-five
+thousand pesos de oro.  To his brother Hernando were paid thirty-one
+thousand and eighty pesos of gold, and two thousand three hundred and
+fifty marks of silver.  De Soto received seventeen thousand seven
+hundred and forty pesos of gold, and seven hundred and twenty-four
+marks of silver.  Most of the remaining cavalry, sixty in number,
+received each eight thousand eight hundred and eighty pesos of gold, and
+three hundred and sixty-two marks of silver, though some had more, and
+a few considerably less.  The infantry mustered in all one hundred and
+five men.  Almost one fifth of them were allowed, each, four thousand
+four hundred and forty pesos of gold, and one hundred and eighty marks
+of silver, half of the compensation of the troopers.  The remainder
+received one fourth part less; though here again there were exceptions,
+and some were obliged to content themselves with a much smaller share
+of the spoil.6
+
+The new church of San Francisco, the first Christian temple in Peru, was
+endowed with two thousand two hundred and twenty pesos of gold.  The
+amount assigned to Almagro's company was not excessive, if it was not
+more than twenty thousand pesos; 7 and that reserved for the colonists of
+San Miguel, which amounted only to fifteen thousand pesos, was
+unaccountably small.8  There were among them certain soldiers, who at
+an early period of the expedition, as the reader may remember,
+abandoned the march, and returned to San Miguel.  These, certainly, had
+little claim to be remembered in the division of booty.  But the greater
+part of the colony consisted of invalids, men whose health had been
+broken by their previous hardships, but who still, with a stout and willing
+heart, did good service in their military post on the sea-coast.  On what
+grounds they had forfeited their claims to a more ample remuneration, it
+is not easy to explain.
+
+Nothing is said, in the partition, of Almagro himself, who, by the terms
+of the original contract, might claim an equal share of the spoil with his
+associate.  As little notice is taken of Luque, the remaining partner.
+Luque himself, was, indeed, no longer to be benefited by worldly
+treasure.  He had died a short time before Almagro's departure from
+Panama;9 too soon to learn the full success of the enterprise, which, but
+for his exertions, must have failed; too soon to become acquainted with
+the achievements and the crimes of Pizarro.  But the Licentiate Espinosa,
+whom he represented, and who, it appears, had advanced the funds for
+the expedition, was still living at St. Domingo, and Luque's pretensions
+were explicitly transferred to him.  Yet it is unsafe to pronounce, at this
+distance of time, on the authority of mere negative testimony; and it must
+be admitted to form a strong presumption in favor of Pizarro's general
+equity in the distribution, that no complaint of it has reached us from any
+of the parties present, nor from contemporary chroniclers.10
+
+The division of the ransom being completed by the Spaniards, there
+seemed to be no further obstacle to their resuming active operations, and
+commencing the march to Cuzco.  But what was to be done with
+Atahuallpa? In the determination of this question, whatever was
+expedient was just.11  To liberate him would be to set at large the very
+man who might prove their most dangerous enemy; one whose birth and
+royal station would rally round him the whole nation, place all the
+machinery of government at his control, and all its resources,--one, in
+short, whose bare word might concentrate all the energies of his people
+against the Spaniards, and thus delay for a long period, if not wholly
+defeat, the conquest of the country.  Yet to hold him in captivity was
+attended with scarcely less difficulty; since to guard so important a prize
+would require such a division of their force as must greatly cripple its
+strength, and how could they expect, by any vigilance, to secure their
+prisoner against rescue in the perilous passes of the mountains?
+
+The Inca himself now loudly demanded his freedom.  The proposed
+amount of the ransom had, indeed, not been fully paid.  It may be
+doubted whether it ever would have been, considering the
+embarrassments thrown in the way by the guardians of the temples, who
+seemed disposed to secrete the treasures, rather than despoil these sacred
+depositories to satisfy the cupidity of the strangers.  It was unlucky, too,
+for the Indian monarch, that much of the gold, and that of the best
+quality, consisted of flat plates or tiles, which, however valuable, lay in a
+compact form that did little towards swelling the heap.  But an immense
+amount had been already realized, and it would have been a still greater
+one, the Inca might allege, but for the impatience of the Spaniards.  At
+all events, it was a magnificent ransom, such as was never paid by prince
+or potentate before.
+
+These considerations Atahuallpa urged on several of the cavaliers, and
+especially on Hernando de Soto, who was on terms of more familiarity
+with him than Pizarro.  De Soto reported Atahuallpa's demands to his
+leader; but the latter evaded a direct reply.  He did not disclose the dark
+purposes over which his mind was brooding.12  Not long afterward he
+caused the notary to prepare an instrument, in which he fully acquitted
+the Inca of further obligation in respect to the ransom.  This he
+commanded to be publicly proclaimed in the camp, while at the same
+time he openly declared that the safety of the Spaniards required, that the
+Inca should be detained in confinement until they were strengthened by
+additional reinforcements.13
+
+Meanwhile the old rumors of a meditated attack by the natives began to
+be current among the soldiers.  They were repeated from one to another,
+gaining something by every repetition.  An immense army, it was
+reported, was mustering at Quito, the land of Atahuallpa's birth, and
+thirty thousand Caribs were on their way to support it.14  The Caribs
+were distributed by the early Spaniards rather indiscriminately over the
+different parts of America, being invested with peculiar horrors as a race
+of cannibals.
+
+It was not easy to trace the origin of these rumors.  There was in the
+camp a considerable number of Indians, who belonged to the party of
+Huascar, and who were, of course, hostile to Atahuallpa.  But his worst
+enemy was Felipillo, the interpreter from Tumbez, already mentioned in
+these pages.  This youth had conceived a passion, or, as some say, had
+been detected in an intrigue with, one of the royal concubines.15  The
+circumstance had reached the ears of Atahuallpa, who felt himself deeply
+outraged by it.  "That such an insult should have been offered by so base
+a person was an indignity," he said, "more difficult to bear than his
+imprisonment";16 and he told Pizarro, "that, by the Peruvian law, it
+could be expiated, not by the criminal's own death alone, but by that of
+his whole family and kindred." 17  But Felipillo was too important to the
+Spaniards to be dealt with so summarily; nor did they probably attach
+such consequence to an offence which, if report be true, they had
+countenanced by their own example.18  Felipillo, however, soon learned
+the state of the Inca's feelings towards himself, and from that moment he
+regarded him with deadly hatred.  Unfortunately, his malignant temper
+found ready means for its indulgence.
+
+The rumors of a rising among the natives pointed to Atahuallpa as the
+author of it.  Challcuchima was examined on the subject, but avowed his
+entire ignorance of any such design, which he pronounced a malicious
+slander.  Pizarro next laid the matter before the Inca himself, repeating to
+him the stories in circulation, with the air of one who believed them
+"What treason is this," said the general, "that you have meditated against
+me,--me, who have ever treated you with honor, confiding in your words,
+as in those of a brother?"  "You jest," replied the Inca, who, perhaps, did
+not feel the weight of this confidence; "you are always jesting with me.
+How could I or my people think of conspiring against men so valiant as
+the Spaniards? Do not jest with me thus, I beseech you."19  "This,"
+continues Pizarro's secretary, "he said in the most composed and natural
+manner, smiling all the while to dissemble his falsehood, so that we were
+all amazed to find such cunning in a barbarian." 20
+
+But it was not with cunning, but with the consciousness of innocence, as
+the event afterwards proved, that Atahuallpa thus spoke to Pizarro.  He
+readily discerned, however, the causes, perhaps the consequences, of the
+accusation.  He saw a dark gulf opening beneath his feet; and he was
+surrounded by strangers, on none of whom he could lean for counsel or
+protection.  The life of the captive monarch is usually short; and
+Atahuallpa might have learned the truth of this, when he thought of
+Huascar.  Bitterly did he now lament the absence of Hernando Pizarro,
+for, strange as it may seem, the haughty spirit of this cavalier had been
+touched by the condition of the royal prisoner, and he had treated him
+with a deference which won for him the peculiar regard and confidence
+of the Indian.  Yet the latter lost no time in endeavoring to efface the
+general's suspicions, and to establish his own innocence.  "Am I not,"
+said he to Pizarro, "a poor captive in your hands? How could I harbor the
+designs you impute to me, when I should be the first victim of the
+outbreak? And you little know my people, if you think that such a
+movement would be made without my orders; when the very birds in my
+dominions," said he, with somewhat of an hyperbole, "would scarcely
+venture to fly contrary to my will." 21
+
+But these protestations of innocence had little effect on the troops;
+among whom the story of a general rising of the natives continued to
+gain credit every hour.  A large force, it was said, was already gathered
+at Guamachucho, not a hundred miles from the camp, and their assault
+might be hourly expected.  The treasure which the Spaniards had
+acquired afforded a tempting prize, and their own alarm was increased
+by the apprehension of losing it.  The patroles were doubled.  The horses
+were kept saddled and bridled.  The soldiers slept on their arms; Pizarro
+went the rounds regularly to see that every sentinel was on his post.  The
+little army, in short, was in a state of preparation for instant attack.
+
+Men suffering from fear are not likely to be too scrupulous as to the
+means of removing the cause of it.  Murmurs, mingled with gloomy
+menaces, were now heard against the Inca, the author of these
+machinations.  Many began to demand his life as necessary to the safety
+of the army.  Among these, the most vehement were Almagro and his
+followers.  They had not witnessed the seizure of Atahuallpa.  They had
+no sympathy with him in his fallen state.  They regarded him only as an
+incumbrance, and their desire now was to push their fortunes in the
+country, since they had got so little of the gold of Caxamalca.  They were
+supported by Riquelme, the treasurer, and by the rest of the royal
+officers.  These men had been left at San Miguel by Pizarro, who did not
+care to have such official spies on his movements.  But they had come to
+the camp with Almagro, and they loudly demanded the Inca's death, as
+indispensable to the tranquillity of the country, and the interests of the
+Crown.22
+
+To these dark suggestions Pizarro turned--or seemed to turn--an
+unwilling ear, showing visible reluctance to proceed to extreme measures
+with his prisoner.23  There were some few, and among others Hernando
+de Soto, who supported him in these views, and who regarded such
+measures as not at all justified by the evidence of Atahuallpa's guilt.  In
+this state of things, the Spanish commander determined to send a small
+detachment to Guamachucho, to reconnoitre the country and ascertain
+what ground there was for the rumors of an insurrection.  De Soto was
+placed at the head of the expedition, which, as the distance was not great,
+would occupy but a few days.
+
+After that cavalier's departure, the agitation among the soldiers, instead
+of diminishing, increased to such a degree, that Pizarro, unable to resist
+their importunities, consented to bring Atahuallpa to instant trial.  It was
+but decent, and certainly safer, to have the forms of a trial.  A court was
+organized, over which the two captains, Pizarro and Almagro were to
+preside as judges.  An attorney-general was named to prosecute for the
+Crown, and counsel was assigned to the prisoner.
+
+The charges preferred against the Inca, drawn up in the form of
+interrogatories, were twelve in number.  The most important were, that
+he had usurped the crown and assassinated his brother Huascar; that he
+had squandered the public revenues since the conquest of the country by
+the Spaniards, and lavished them on his kindred and his minions; that he
+was guilty of idolatry, and of adulterous practices, indulging openly in a
+plurality of wives; finally, that he had attempted to excite an insurrection
+against the Spaniards.24
+
+These charges, most of which had reference to national usages, or to the
+personal relations of the Inca, over which the Spanish conquerors had
+clearly no jurisdiction, are so absurd, that they might well provoke a
+smile, did they not excite a deeper feeling.  The last of the charges was
+the only one of moment in such a trial; and the weakness of this may be
+inferred from the care taken to bolster it up with the others.  The mere
+specification of the articles must have been sufficient to show that the
+doom of the Inca was already sealed.
+
+A number of Indian witnesses were examined, and their testimony,
+filtrated through the interpretation of Felipillo, received, it is said, when
+necessary, a very different coloring from that of the original.  The
+examination was soon ended, and "a warm discussion," as we are assured
+by one of Pizarro's own secretaries, "took place in respect to the
+probable good or evil that would result from the death of Atahuallpa." 25
+It was a question of expediency.  He was found guilty,--whether of all the
+crimes alleged we are not informed,--and he was sentenced to be burnt
+alive in the great square of Caxamalca.  The sentence was to be carried
+into execution that very night.  They were not even to wait for the return
+of De Soto, when the information he would bring would go far to
+establish the truth or the falsehood of the reports respecting the
+insurrection of the natives.  It was desirable to obtain the countenance of
+Father Valverde to these proceedings, and a copy of the judgment was
+submitted to the friar for his signature, which he gave without hesitation,
+declaring, that, "in his opinion, the Inca, at all events, deserved death."
+26
+
+Yet there were some few in that martial conclave who resisted these
+high-handed measures.  They considered them as a poor requital of all
+the favors bestowed on them by the Inca, who hitherto had received at
+their hands nothing but wrong.  They objected to the evidence as wholly
+insufficient; and they denied the authority of such a tribunal to sit in
+judgment on a sovereign prince in the heart of his own dominions.  If he
+were to be tried, he should be sent to Spain, and his cause brought before
+the Emperor, who alone had power to determine it.
+
+But the great majority--and they were ten to one--overruled these
+objections, by declaring there was no doubt of Atahuallpa's guilt, and
+they were willing to assume the responsibility of his punishment.  A full
+account of the proceedings would be sent to Castile, and the Emperor
+should be informed who were the loyal servants of the Crown, and who
+were its enemies.  The dispute ran so high, that for a time it menaced an
+open and violent rupture; till, at length, convinced that resistance was
+fruitless, the weaker party, silenced, but not satisfied, contented
+themselves with entering a written protest against these proceedings,
+which would leave an indelible stain on the names of all concerned in
+them.27
+
+When the sentence was communicated to the Inca, he was greatly
+overcome by it.  He had, indeed, for some time, looked to such an issue
+as probable, and had been heard to intimate as much to those about him.
+But the probability of such an event is very different from its certainty, --
+and that, too, so sudden and speedy.  For a moment, the overwhelming
+conviction of it unmanned him, and he exclaimed, with tears in his eyes,-
+-"What have I done, or my children, that I should meet such a fate? And
+from your hands, too," said he, addressing Pizarro; "you, who have met
+with friendship and kindness from my people, with whom I have shared
+my treasures, who have received nothing but benefits from my hands!" In
+the most piteous tones, he then implored that his life might be spared,
+promising any guaranty that might be required for the safety of every
+Spaniard in the army,--promising double the ransom he had already paid,
+if time were only given him to obtain it.28
+
+An eyewitness assures us that Pizarro was visibly affected, as he turned
+away from the Inca, to whose appeal he had no power to listen, in
+opposition to the voice of the army, and to his own sense of what was
+due to the security of the country.29  Atahuallpa, finding he had no
+power to turn his Conqueror from his purpose, recovered his habitual
+self-possession, and from that moment submitted himself to his fate with
+the courage of an Indian warrior.
+
+The doom of the Inca was proclaimed by sound of trumpet in the great
+square of Caxamalca; and, two hours after sunset, the Spanish soldiery
+assembled by torch-light in the plaza to witness the execution of the
+sentence.  It was on the twenty-ninth of August, 1533- Atahuallpa was
+led out chained hand and foot,--for he had been kept in irons ever since
+the great excitement had prevailed in the army respecting an assault.
+Father Vicente de Valverde was at his side, striving to administer
+consolation, and, if possible, to persuade him at this last hour to abjure
+his superstition and embrace the religion of his Conquerors.  He was
+willing to save the soul of his victim from the terrible expiation in the
+next world, to which he had so cheerfully consigned his mortal part in
+this.
+
+During Atahuallpa's confinement, the friar had repeatedly expounded to
+him the Christian doctrines, and the Indian monarch discovered much
+acuteness in apprehending the discourse of his teacher.  But it had not
+carried conviction to his mind, and though he listened with patience, he
+had shown no disposition to renounce the faith of his fathers.  The
+Dominican made a last appeal to him in this solemn hour; and, when
+Atahuallpa was bound to the stake, with the fagots that were to kindle his
+funeral pile lying around him, Valverde, holding up the cross, besought
+him to embrace it and be baptized, promising that, by so doing, the
+painful death to which he had been sentenced should be commuted for
+the milder form of the garrote,--a mode of punishment by strangulation,
+used for criminals in Spain.30
+
+The unhappy monarch asked if this were really so, and, on its being
+confirmed by Pizarro, he consented to abjure his own religion, and
+receive baptism.  The ceremony was performed by Father Valverde, and
+the new convert received the name of Juan de Atahuallpa,--the name of
+Juan being conferred in honor of John the Baptist, on whose day the
+event took place.31
+
+Atahuallpa expressed a desire that his remains might be transported to
+Quito, the place of his birth, to be preserved with those of his maternal
+ancestors.  Then turning to Pizarro, as a last request, he implored him to
+take compassion on his young children, and receive them under his
+protection.  Was there no other one in that dark company who stood
+grimly around him, to whom he could look for the protection of his
+offspring?  Perhaps he thought there was no other so competent to afford
+it, and that the wishes so solemnly expressed in that hour might meet
+with respect even from his Conqueror.  Then, recovering his stoical
+bearing, which for a moment had been shaken, he submitted himself
+calmly to his fate,-while the Spaniards, gathering around, muttered their
+credos for the salvation of his soul!32  Thus by the death of a vile
+malefactor perished the last of the Incas!
+
+I have already spoken of the person and the qualities of Atahuallpa.  He
+had a handsome countenance, though with an expression somewhat too
+fierce to be pleasing.  His frame was muscular and well-proportioned; his
+air commanding; and his deportment in the Spanish quarters had a
+degree of refinement, the more interesting that it was touched with
+melancholy.  He is accused of having been cruel in his wars, and bloody
+in his revenge.33  It may be true, but the pencil of an enemy would be
+likely to overcharge the shadows of the portrait.  He is allowed to have
+been bold, high-minded, and liberal.34  All agree that he showed
+singular penetration and quickness of perception.  His exploits as a
+warrior had placed his valor beyond dispute.  The best homage to it is
+the reluctance shown by the Spaniards to restore him to freedom.  They
+dreaded him as an enemy, and they had done him too many wrongs to
+think that he could be their friend.  Yet his conduct towards them from
+the first had been most friendly; and they repaid it with imprisonment,
+robbery, and death.
+
+The body of the Inca remained on the place of execution through the
+night.  The following morning it was removed to the church of San
+Francisco, where his funeral obsequies were performed with great
+solemnity.  Pizarro and the principal cavaliers went into mourning, and
+the troops listened with devout attention to the service of the dead from
+the lips of Father Valverde.35  The ceremony was interrupted by the
+sound of loud cries and wailing, as of many voices at the doors of the
+church.  These were suddenly thrown open, and a number of Indian
+women, the wives and sisters of the deceased, rushing up the great aisle,
+surrounded the corpse.  This was not the way, they cried, to celebrate the
+funeral rites of an Inca; and they declared their intention to sacrifice
+themselves on his tomb, and bear him company to the land of spirits.
+The audience, outraged by this frantic behaviour, told the intruders that
+Atahuallpa had died in the faith of a Christian, and that the God of the
+Christians abhorred such sacrifices.  They then caused the women to be
+excluded from the church, and several, retiring to their own quarters, laid
+violent hands on themselves, in the vain hope of accompanying their
+beloved lord to the bright mansions of the Sun.36
+
+Atahuallpa's remains, notwithstanding his request, were laid in the
+cemetery of San Francisco.37  But from thence, as is reported, after the
+Spaniards left Caxamalca, they were secretly removed, and carried, as he
+had desired, to Quito.  The colonists of a later time supposed that some
+treasures might have been buried with the body.  But, on excavating the
+ground, neither treasure nor remains were to be discovered.38
+
+A day or two after these tragic events, Hernando de Soto returned from
+his excursion.  Great was his astonishment and indignation at learning
+what had been done in his absence.  He sought out Pizarro at once, and
+found him, says the chronicler, "with a great felt hat, by way of
+mourning, slouched over his eyes," and in his dress and demeanor
+exhibiting all the show of sorrow.39  "You have acted rashly," said De
+Soto to him bluntly; "Atahuallpa has been basely slandered.  There was
+no enemy at Guamachucho; no rising among the natives.  I have met with
+nothing on the road but demonstrations of good-will, and all is quiet.  If
+it was necessary to bring the Inca to trial, he should have been taken to
+Castile and judged by the Emperor.  I would have pledged myself to see
+him safe on board the vessel." 40  Pizarro confessed that he had been
+precipitate, and said that he had been deceived by Riquelme, Valverde,
+and the others.  These charges soon reached the ears of the treasurer and
+the Dominican, who, in their turn, exculpated themselves, and upbraided
+Pizarro to his face, as the only one responsible for the deed.  The dispute
+ran high; and the parties were heard by the by-slanders to give one
+another the lie! 41  This vulgar squabble among the leaders, so soon after
+the event, is the best commentary on the iniquity of their own
+proceedings and the innocence of the Inca.
+
+The treatment of Atahuallpa, from first to last, forms undoubtedly one of
+the darkest chapters in Spanish colonial history.  There may have been
+massacres perpetrated on a more extended scale, and executions
+accompanied with a greater refinement of cruelty.  But the blood-stained
+annals of the Conquest afford no such example of cold-hearted and
+systematic persecution, not of an enemy, but of one whose whole
+deportment had been that of a friend and a benefactor.
+
+From the hour that Pizarro and his followers had entered within the
+sphere of Atahuallpa's influence, the hand of friendship had been
+extended to them by the natives.  Their first act, on crossing the
+mountains, was to kidnap the monarch and massacre his people.  The
+seizure of his person might be vindicated, by those who considered the
+end as justifying the means, on the ground that it was indispensable to
+secure the triumphs of the Cross.  But no such apology can be urged for
+the massacre of the unarmed and helpless population,--as wanton as it
+was wicked.
+
+The long confinement of the Inca had been used by the Conquerors to
+wring from him his treasures with the hard gripe of avarice.  During the
+whole of this dismal period, he had conducted himself with singular
+generosity and good faith.  He had opened a free passage to the
+Spaniards through every part of his empire; and had furnished every
+facility for the execution of their plans.  When these were accomplished,
+and he remained an encumbrance on their hands, notwithstanding their
+engagement, expressed or implied, to release him,--and Pizarro, as we
+have seen, by a formal act, acquitted his captive of any further obligation
+on the score of the ransom,--he was arraigned before a mock tribunal,
+and, under pretences equally false and frivolous, was condemned to an
+excruciating death.  From first to last, the policy of the Spanish
+conquerors towards their unhappy victim is stamped with barbarity and
+fraud.
+
+It is not easy to acquit Pizarro of being in a great degree responsible for
+this policy.  His partisans have labored to show, that it was forced on him
+by the necessity of the case, and that in the death of the Inca, especially,
+he yielded reluctantly to the importunities of others.42  But weak as is
+this apology, the historian who has the means of comparing the various
+testimony of the period will come to a different conclusion.  To him it
+will appear, that Pizarro had probably long felt the removal of
+Atahuallpa as essential to the success of his enterprise.  He foresaw the
+odium that would be incurred by the death of his royal captive without
+sufficient grounds; while he labored to establish these, he still shrunk
+from the responsibility of the deed, and preferred to perpetrate it in
+obedience to the suggestions of others, rather than his own.  Like many
+an unprincipled politician, he wished to reap the benefit of a bad act, and
+let others take the blame of it.
+
+Almagro and his followers are reported by Pizarro's secretaries to have
+first insisted on the Inca's death.  They were loudly supported by the
+treasurer and the royal officers, who considered it as indispensable to the
+interests of the Crown; and, finally, the rumors of a conspiracy raised the
+same cry among the soldiers, and Pizarro, with all his tenderness for his
+prisoner, could not refuse to bring him to trial.--The form of a trial was
+necessary to give an appearance of fairness to the proceedings.  That it
+was only form is evident from the indecent haste with which it was
+conducted,--the examination of evidence, the sentence, and the
+execution, being all on the same day.  The multiplication of the charges,
+designed to place the guilt of the accused on the strongest ground, had,
+from their very number, the opposite effect, proving only the
+determination to convict him.  If Pizarro had felt the reluctance to his
+conviction which he pretended, why did he send De Soto, Atahuallpa's
+best friend, away, when the inquiry was to be instituted? Why was the
+sentence so summarily executed, as not to afford opportunity, by that
+cavalier's return, of disproving the truth of the principal charge,--the only
+one, in fact, with which the Spaniards had any concern? The solemn
+farce of mourning and deep sorrow affected by Pizarro, who by these
+honors to the dead would intimate the sincere regard he had entertained
+for the living, was too thin a veil to impose on the most credulous.
+
+It is not intended by these reflections to exculpate the rest of the army,
+and especially its officers, from their share in the infamy of the
+transaction.  But Pizarro, as commander of the army, was mainly
+responsible for its measures.  For he was not a man to allow his own
+authority to be wrested from his grasp, or to yield timidly to the impulses
+of others.  He did not even yield to his own.  His whole career shows
+him, whether for good or for evil, to have acted with a cool and
+calculating policy.
+
+A story has been often repeated, which refers the motives of Pizarro's
+conduct, in some degree at least, to personal resentment.  The Inca had
+requested one of the Spanish soldiers to write the name of God on his
+nail.  This the monarch showed to several of his guards successively,
+and, as they read it, and each pronounced the same word, the sagacious
+mind of the barbarian was delighted with what seemed to him little short
+of a miracle,--to which the science of his own nation afforded no
+analogy.  On showing the writing to Pizarro, that chief remained silent;
+and the Inca, finding he could not read, conceived a contempt for the
+commander who was even less informed than his soldiers.  This he did
+not wholly conceal, and Pizarro aware of the cause of it, neither forgot
+nor forgave it.43  The anecdote is reported not on the highest authority.
+It may be true; but it is unnecessary to look for the motives of Pizarro's
+conduct in personal pique, when so many proofs are to be discerned of a
+dark and deliberate policy.
+
+Yet the arts of the Spanish chieftain failed to reconcile his countrymen to
+the atrocity of his proceedings.  It is singular to observe the difference
+between the tone assumed by the first chroniclers of the transaction,
+while it was yet fresh, and that of those who wrote when the lapse of a
+few years had shown the tendency of public opinion.  The first boldly
+avow the deed as demanded by expediency, if not necessity; while they
+deal in no measured terms of reproach with the character of their
+unfortunate victim.44  The latter, on the other hand, while they extenuate
+the errors of the Inca, and do justice to his good faith, are unreserved in
+their condemnation of the Conquerors, on whose conduct, they say,
+Heaven set the seal of its own reprobation, by bringing them all to an
+untimely and miserable end.45  The sentence of contemporaries has been
+fully ratified by that of posterity;46 and the persecution of Atahuallpa is
+regarded with justice as having left a stain, never to be effaced, on the
+Spanish arms in the New World.
+
+
+
+Book 3
+
+Chapter 8
+
+Disorders In Peru--March To Cuzco--Encounter With The Natives--
+Challcuchima Burnt--Arrival In Cuzco--Description Of The City--
+Treasure Found There
+
+1533--1534
+
+The Inca of Peru was its sovereign in a peculiar sense.  He received an
+obedience from his vassals more implicit than that of any despot; for his
+authority reached to the most secret conduct,--to the thoughts of the
+individual.  He was reverenced as more than human.1  He was not
+merely the head of the state, but the point to which all its institutions
+converged, as to a common centre,--the keystone of the political fabric,
+which must fall to pieces by its own weight when that was withdrawn.
+So it fared on the death of Atahuallpa.2  His death not only left the
+throne vacant, without any certain successor, but the manner of it
+announced to the Peruvian people that a hand stronger than that of their
+Incas had now seized the sceptre, and that the dynasty of the Children of
+the Sun had passed away for ever.
+
+The natural consequences of such a conviction followed.  The beautiful
+order of the ancient institutions was broken up, as the authority which
+controlled it was withdrawn.  The Indians broke out into greater excesses
+from the uncommon restraint to which they had been before subjected.
+Villages were burnt, temples and palaces were plundered, and the gold
+they contained was scattered or secreted.  Gold and silver acquired an
+importance in the eyes of the Peruvian, when he saw the importance
+attached to them by his conquerors.  The precious metals, which before
+served only for purposes of state or religious decoration, were now
+hoarded up and buried in caves and forests.  The gold and silver
+concealed by the natives were affirmed greatly to exceed in quantity that
+which fell into the hands of the Spaniards.3  The remote provinces now
+shook off their allegiance to the Incas.  Their great captains, at the head
+of distant armies, set up for themselves.  Ruminavi, a commander on the
+borders of Quito, sought to detach that kingdom from the Peruvian
+empire, and to reassert its ancient independence.  The country, in short,
+was in that state, in which old things are passing away, and the new order
+of things has not yet been established.  It was in a state of revolution.
+
+The authors of the revolution, Pizarro and his followers, remained
+meanwhile at Caxamalca.  But the first step of the Spanish commander
+was to name a successor to Atahuallpa.  It would be easier to govern
+under the venerated authority to which the homage of the Indians had
+been so long paid; and it was not difficult to find a successor.  The true
+heir to the crown was a second son of Huayna Capac, named Manco, a
+legitimate brother of the unfortunate Huascar.  But Pizarro had too little
+knowledge of the dispositions of this prince; and he made no scruple to
+prefer a brother of Atahuallpa, and to present him to the Indian nobles as
+their future Inca.  We know nothing of the character of the young
+Toparca, who probably resigned himself without reluctance to a destiny
+which, however humiliating in some points of view, was more exalted
+than he could have hoped to obtain in the regular course of events.  The
+ceremonies attending a Peruvian coronation were observed, as well as
+time would allow; the brows of the young Inca were encircled with the
+imperial borla by the hands of his conqueror, and he received the
+homage of his Indian vassals.  They were the less reluctant to pay it, as
+most of those in the camp belonged to the faction of Quito.
+
+All thoughts were now eagerly turned towards Cuzco, of which the most
+glowing accounts were circulated among the soldiers, and whose temples
+and royal palaces were represented as blazing with gold and silver.  With
+imaginations thus excited, Pizarro and his entire company, amounting to
+almost five hundred men, of whom nearly a third, probably, were
+cavalry, took their departure early in September from Caxamalca,--a
+place ever memorable as the theatre of some of the most strange and
+sanguinary scenes recorded in history.  All set forward in high spirits,--
+the soldiers of Pizarro from the expectation of doubling their present
+riches, and Almagro's followers from the prospect of sharing equally in
+the spoil with "the first conquerors." 4  The young Inca and the old chief
+Challcuchima accompanied the march in their litters, attended by a
+numerous retinue of vassals, and moving in as much state and ceremony
+as if in the possession of real power.5
+
+Their course lay along the great road of the Incas, which stretched across
+the elevated regions of the Cordilleras, all the way to Cuzco.  It was of
+nearly a uniform breadth, though constructed with different degrees of
+care, according to the ground.6  Sometimes it crossed smooth and level
+valleys, which offered of themselves little impediment to the traveller; at
+other times, it followed the course of a mountain stream that wound
+round the base of some beetling cliff, leaving small space for the
+foothold; at others, again, where the sierra was so precipitous that it
+seemed to preclude all further progress, the road, accommodated to the
+natural sinuosities of the ground, wound round the heights which it
+would have been impossible to scale directly.7
+
+But although managed with great address, it was a formidable passage
+for the cavalry.  The mountain was hewn into steps, but the rocky ledges
+cut up the hoofs of the horses; and, though the troopers dismounted and
+led them by the bridle, they suffered severely in their efforts to keep their
+footing.8  The road was constructed for man and the light-fooled llama;
+and the only heavy beast of burden at all suited to it was the sagacious
+and sure-footed mule, with which the Spanish adventurers were not then
+provided.  It was a singular chance that Spain was the land of the mule;
+and thus the country was speedily supplied with the very animal which
+seems to have been created for the difficult passes of the Cordilleras.
+
+Another obstacle, often occurring, was the deep torrents that rushed
+down in fury from the Andes.  They were traversed by the hanging
+bridges of osier, whose frail materials were after a time broken up by the
+heavy tread of the cavalry, and the holes made in them added materially
+to the dangers of the passage.  On such occasions, the Spaniards
+contrived to work their way across the rivers on rafts, swimming their
+horses by the bridle.9
+
+All along the route, they found post-houses for the accommodation of the
+royal couriers, established at regular intervals; and magazines of grain
+and other commodities, provided in the principal towns for the Indian
+armies.  The Spaniards profited by the prudent forecast of the Peruvian
+government.
+
+Passing through several hamlets and towns of some note, the principal of
+which were Guamachucho and Guanuco, Pizarro, after a tedious march,
+came in sight of the rich valley of Xauxa.  The march, though tedious,
+had been attended with little suffering, except in crossing the bristling
+crests of the Cordilleras, which occasionally obstructed their path,--a
+rough setting to the beautiful valleys, that lay scattered like gems along
+this elevated region.  In the mountain passes they found some
+inconvenience from the cold; since, to move more quickly, they had
+disencumbered themselves of all superfluous baggage, and were even
+unprovided with tents.10  The bleak winds of the mountains penetrated
+the thick harness of the soldiers; but the poor Indians, more scantily
+clothed and accustomed to a tropical climate, suffered most severely.
+The Spaniard seemed to have a hardihood of body, as of soul, that
+rendered him almost indifferent to climate.
+
+On the march they had not been molested by enemies.  But more than
+once they had seen vestiges of them in smoking hamlets and ruined
+bridges.  Reports, from time to time, had reached Pizarro of warriors on
+his track; and small bodies of Indians were occasionally seen like dusky
+clouds on the verge of the horizon, which vanished as the Spaniards
+approached.  On reaching Xauxa, however, these clouds gathered into
+one dark mass of warriors, which formed on the opposite bank of the
+river that flowed through the valley.
+
+The Spaniards advanced to the stream, which, swollen by the melting of
+the snows, was now of considerable width, though not deep.  The bridge
+had been destroyed; but the Conquerors, without hesitation, dashing
+boldly in, advanced, swimming and wading, as they best could, to the
+opposite bank.  The Indians, disconcerted by this decided movement, as
+they had relied on their watery defences, took to flight, after letting off
+an impotent volley of missiles.  Fear gave wings to the fugitives; but the
+horse and his rider were swifter, and the victorious pursuers took bloody
+vengeance on their enemy for having dared even to meditate resistance.
+
+Xauxa was a considerable town.  It was the place already noticed as
+having been visited by Hernando Pizarro.  It was seated in the midst of a
+verdant valley, fertilized by a thousand little rills, which the thrifty
+Indian husbandman drew from the parent river that rolled sluggishly
+through the meadows.  There were several capacious buildings of rough
+stone in the town, and a temple of some note in the times of the Incas.
+But the strong arm of Father Valverde and his countrymen soon tumbled
+the heathen deities from their pride of place, and established, in their
+stead, the sacred effigies of the Virgin and Child.
+
+Here Pizarro proposed to halt for some days, and to found a Spanish
+colony.  It was a favorable position, he thought, for holding the Indian
+mountaineers in check, while, at the same time, it afforded an easy
+communication with the sea-coast.  Meanwhile he determined to send
+forward De Soto, with a detachment of sixty horse, to reconnoitre the
+country in advance, and to restore the bridges where demolished by the
+enemy.11
+
+That active cavalier set forward at once, but found considerable
+impediments to his progress.  The traces of an enemy became more
+frequent as he advanced.  The villages were burnt, the bridges destroyed,
+and heavy rocks and trees strewed in the path to impede the march of the
+cavalry.  As he drew near to Bilcas, once an important place, though now
+effaced from the map, he had a sharp encounter with the natives, in a
+mountain defile, which cost him the lives of two or three troopers.  The
+loss was light; but any loss was felt by the Spaniards, so little
+accustomed as they had been of late, to resistance.
+
+Still pressing forward, the Spanish captain crossed the river Abancay,
+and the broad waters of the Apurimac; and, as he drew near the sierra of
+Vilcaconga, he learned that a considerable body of Indians lay in wait for
+him in the dangerous passes of the mountains.  The sierra was several
+leagues from Cuzco; and the cavalier, desirous to reach the further side
+of it before nightfall, incautiously pushed on his wearied horses.  When
+he was fairly entangled in its rocky defiles, a multitude of armed
+warriors, springing, as it seemed, from every cavern and thicket of the
+sierra, filled the air with their war-cries, and rushed down, like one of
+their own mountain torrents, on the invaders, as they were painfully
+toiling up the steeps.  Men and horses were overturned in the fury of the
+assault, and the foremost files, rolling back on those below, spread ruin
+and consternation in their ranks.  De Soto in vain endeavored to restore
+order, and, if possible, to charge the assailants.  The horses were blinded
+and maddened by the missiles, while the desperate natives, clinging to
+their legs, strove to prevent their ascent up the rocky pathway.  De Soto
+saw, that, unless he gained a level ground which opened at some distance
+before him, all must be lost.  Cheering on his men with the old battle-cry,
+that always went to the heart of a Spaniard, he struck his spurs deep into
+the sides of his wearied charger, and, gallantly supported by his troop,
+broke through the dark array of warriors, and, shaking them off to the
+right and left, at length succeeded in placing himself on the broad level.
+
+Here both parties paused, as if by mutual consent, for a few moments.  A
+little stream ran through the plain, at which the Spaniards watered their
+horses;12 and the animals, having recovered wind, De Soto and his men
+made a desperate charge on their assailants.  The undaunted Indians
+sustained the shock with firmness; and the result of the combat was still
+doubtful, when the shades of evening, falling thicker around them,
+separated the combatants.
+
+Both parties then withdrew from the field, taking up their respective
+stations within bow-shot of each other, so that the voices of the warriors
+on either side could be distinctly heard in the stillness of the night.  But
+very different were the reflections of the two hosts.  The Indians,
+exulting in their temporary triumph, looked with confidence to the
+morrow to complete it.  The Spaniards, on the other hand, were
+proportionably discouraged.  They were not prepared for this spirit of
+resistance in an enemy hitherto so tame.  Several cavaliers had fallen;
+one of them by a blow from a Peruvian battle-axe, which clove his head
+to the chin, attesting the power of the weapon, and of the arm that used
+it.13  Several horses, too, had been killed; and the loss of these was
+almost as severely felt as that of their riders, considering the great cost
+and difficulty of transporting them to these distant regions.  Few either of
+the men or horses escaped without wounds, and the Indian allies suffered
+still more severely.
+
+It seemed probable, from the pertinacity and a certain order maintained
+in the assault, that it was directed by some leader of military experience;
+perhaps the Indian commander Quizquiz, who was said to be hanging
+round the environs of Cuzco with a considerable force.
+
+Notwithstanding the reasonable cause of apprehension for the morrow,
+De Soto, like a stout-hearted cavalier, as he was, strove to keep up the
+spirits of his followers.  If they had beaten off the enemy when their
+horses were jaded, and their own strength nearly exhausted, how much
+easier it would be to come off victorious when both were restored by a
+night's rest; and he told them to "trust in the Almighty, who would never
+desert his faithful followers in their extremity."  The event justified De
+Soto's confidence in this seasonable succour.
+
+From time to time, on his march, he had sent advices to Pizarro of the
+menacing state of the country, till his commander, becoming seriously
+alarmed, was apprehensive that the cavalier might be overpowered by the
+superior numbers of the enemy.  He accordingly detached Almagro with
+nearly all the remaining horse, to his support,--unencumbered by
+infantry, that he might move the lighter.  That efficient leader advanced
+by forced marches, stimulated by the tidings which met him on the road;
+and was so fortunate as to reach the foot of the sierra of Vilcaconga the
+very night of the engagement.
+
+There hearing of the encounter, he pushed forward without halting,
+though his horses were spent with travel.  The night was exceedingly
+dark, and Almagro, afraid of stumbling on the enemy's bivouac, and
+desirous to give De Soto information of his approach, commanded his
+trumpets to sound, till the notes, winding through the defiles of the
+mountains, broke the slumbers of his countrymen, sounding like blithest
+music in their ears.  They quickly replied with their own bugles, and
+soon had the satisfaction to embrace their deliverers.14
+
+Great was the dismay of the Peruvian host, when the morning light
+discovered the fresh reinforcement of the ranks of the Spaniards.  There
+was no use in contending with an enemy who gathered strength from the
+conflict, and who seemed to multiply his numbers at will.  Without
+further attempt to renew the fight, they availed themselves of a thick fog,
+which hung over the lower slopes of the hills, to effect their retreat, and
+left the passes open to the invaders.  The two cavaliers then continued
+their march until they extricated their forces from the sierra, when, taking
+up a secure position, they proposed to await there the arrival of
+Pizarro.15
+
+The commander-in-chief, meanwhile, lay at Xauxa, where he was greatly
+disturbed by the rumors which reached him of the state of the country.
+His enterprise, thus far, had gone forward so smoothly, that he was no
+better prepared than his lieutenant to meet with resistance from the
+natives.  He did not seem to comprehend that the mildest nature might at
+last be roused by oppression; and that the massacre of their Inca, whom
+they regarded with such awful veneration, would be likely, if any thing
+could do it, to wake them from their apathy.
+
+The tidings which he now received of the retreat of the Peruvians were
+most welcome; and he caused mass to be said, and thanksgivings to be
+offered up to Heaven, "which had shown itself thus favorable to the
+Christians throughout this mighty enterprise." The Spaniard was ever a
+Crusader.  He was, in the sixteenth century, what Coeur de Lion and his
+brave knights were in the twelfth, with this difference; the cavalier of that
+day fought for the Cross and for glory, while gold and the Cross were the
+watchwords of the Spaniard.  The spirit of chivalry had waned somewhat
+before the spirit of trade; but the fire of religious enthusiasm still burned
+as bright under the quilted mail of the American Conqueror, as it did of
+yore under the iron panoply of the soldier of Palestine.
+
+It seemed probable that some man of authority had organized, or at least
+countenanced, this resistance of the natives, and suspicion fell on the
+captive chief Challcuchima, who was accused of maintaining a secret
+correspondence with his confederate, Quizquiz.  Pizarro waited on the
+Indian noble, and, charging him with the conspiracy, reproached him, as
+he had formerly done his royal master, with ingratitude towards the
+Spaniards, who had dealt with him so liberally.  He concluded by the
+assurance, that, if he did not cause the Peruvians to lay down their arms,
+and tender their submission at once, he should be burnt alive, so soon as
+they reached Almagro's quarters.16
+
+The Indian chief listened to the terrible menace with the utmost
+composure.  He denied having had any communication with his countrymen,
+and said, that, in his present state of confinement, at least,
+he could have no power to bring them to submission.  He then remained
+doggedly silent, and Pizarro did not press the matter further.17  But he
+placed a strong guard over his prisoner, and caused him to be put in
+irons.  It was an ominous proceeding, and had been the precursor of the
+death of Atahuallpa.
+
+Before quitting Xauxa, a misfortune befell the Spaniards in the death of
+their creature, the young Inca Toparca.  Suspicion, of course, fell on
+Challcuchima, now selected as the scape-goat for all the offences of his
+nation.18  It was a disappointment to Pizarro, who hoped to find a
+convenient shelter for his future proceedings under this shadow of
+royalty.19
+
+The general considered it most prudent not to hazard the loss of his
+treasures by taking them on the march, and he accordingly left them at
+Xauxa, under a guard of forty soldiers, who remained there in garrison.
+No event of importance occurred on the road, and Pizarro, having
+effected a junction with Almagro, their united forces soon entered the
+vale of Xaquixaguana, about five leagues from Cuzco.  This was one of
+those bright spots, so often found embosomed amidst the Andes, the
+more beautiful from contrast with the savage character of the scenery
+around it.  A river flowed through the valley, affording the means of
+irrigating the soil, and clothing it in perpetual verdure; and the rich and
+flowering vegetation spread out like a cultivated garden.  The beauty of
+the place and its delicious coolness commended it as a residence for the
+Peruvian nobles, and the sides of the hills were dotted with their villas,
+which afforded them a grateful retreat in the heats of summer.20  Yet
+the centre of the valley was disfigured by a quagmire of some extent,
+occasioned by the frequent overflowing of the waters; but the industry of
+the Indian architects had constructed a solid causeway, faced with heavy
+stone, and connected with the great road, which traversed the whole
+breadth of the morass.21
+
+In this valley Pizarro halted for several days, while he refreshed his
+troops from the well-stored magazines of the Incas.  His first act was to
+bring Challcuchima to trial; if trial that could be called, where sentence
+may be said to have gone hand in hand with accusation.  We are not
+informed of the nature of the evidence.  It was sufficient to satisfy the
+Spanish captains of the chieftain's guilt.  Nor is it at all incredible that
+Challcuchima should have secretly encouraged a movement among the
+people, designed to secure his country's freedom and his own.  He was
+condemned to be burnt alive on the spot.  "Some thought it a hard
+measure," says Herrera; "but those who are governed by reasons of state
+policy are apt to shut their eyes against every thing else." 22  Why this
+cruel mode of execution was so often adopted by the Spanish
+Conquerors is not obvious; unless it was that the Indian was an infidel,
+and fire, from ancient date, seems to have been considered the fitting
+doom of the infidel, as the type of that inextinguishable flame which
+awaited him in the regions of the damned.
+
+Father Valverde accompanied the Peruvian chieftain to the stake.  He
+seems always to have been present at this dreary moment, anxious to
+profit by it, if possible, to work the conversion of the victim.  He painted
+in gloomy colors the dreadful doom of the unbeliever, to whom the
+waters of baptism could alone secure the ineffable glories of paradise.23
+It does not appear that he promised any commutation of punishment in
+this world.  But his arguments fell on a stony heart, and the chief coldly
+replied, he "did not understand the religion of the white men." 24  He
+might be pardoned for not comprehending the beauty of a faith which, as
+it would seem, had borne so bitter fruits to him.  In the midst of his
+tortures, he showed the characteristic courage of the American Indian,
+whose power of endurance triumphs over the power of persecution in his
+enemies, and he died with his last breath invoking the name of
+Pachacamac.  His own followers brought the fagots to feed the flames
+that consumed him .25
+
+Soon after this tragic event, Pizarro was surprised by a visit from a
+Peruvian noble, who came in great state, attended by a numerous and
+showy retinue.  It was the young prince Manco, brother of the
+unfortunate Huascar, and the rightful successor to the crown.  Being
+brought before the Spanish commander, he announced his pretensions to
+the throne, and claimed the protection of the strangers.  It is said he had
+meditated resisting them by arms, and had encouraged the assaults made
+on them on their march; but, finding resistance ineffectual, he had taken
+this politic course, greatly to the displeasure of his more resolute nobles.
+However this may be, Pizarro listened to his application with singular
+contentment, for he saw in this new scion of the true royal stock, a more
+effectual instrument for his purposes than he could have found in the
+family of Quito, with whom the Peruvians had but little sympathy.  He
+received the young man, therefore, with great cordiality, and did not
+hesitate to assure him that he had been sent into the country by his
+master, the Castilian sovereign, in order to vindicate the claims of
+Huascar to the crown, and to punish the usurpation of his rival.26
+
+Taking with him the Indian prince, Pizarro now resumed his march.  It
+was interrupted for a few hours by a party of the natives, who lay in wait
+for him in the neighboring sierra.  A sharp skirmish ensued, in which the
+Indians behaved with great spirit, and inflicted some little injury on the
+Spaniards; but the latter, at length, shaking them off, made good their
+passage through the defile, and the enemy did not care to follow them
+into the open country.
+
+It was late in the afternoon when the Conquerors came in sight of
+Cuzco.27  The descending sun was streaming his broad rays full on the
+imperial city, where many an altar was dedicated to his worship.  The
+low ranges of buildings, showing in his beams like so many lines of
+silvery light, filled up the bosom of the valley and the lower slopes of the
+mountains, whose shadowy forms hung darkly over the fair city, as if to
+shield it from the menaced profanation.  It was so late, that Pizarro
+resolved to defer his entrance till the following morning.
+
+That night vigilant guard was kept in the camp, and the soldiers slept on
+their arms.  But it passed away without annoyance from the enemy, and
+early on the following day, November 15, 1533, Pizarro prepared for his
+entrance into the Peruvian capital.28
+
+The little army was formed into three divisions, of which the centre, or
+"battle," as it was called, was led by the general.  The suburbs were
+thronged with a countless multitude of the natives, who had flocked from
+the city and the surrounding country to witness the showy, and, to them,
+startling pageant.  All looked with eager curiosity on the strangers, the
+fame of whose terrible exploits had spread to the remotest parts of the
+empire.  They gazed with astonishment on their dazzling arms and fair
+complexions, which seemed to proclaim them the true Children of the
+Sun; and they listened with feelings of mysterious dread, as the trumpet
+sent forth its prolonged notes through the streets of the capital, and the
+solid ground shook under the heavy tramp of the cavalry.
+
+The Spanish commander rode directly up the great square.  It was
+surrounded by low piles of buildings, among which were several palaces
+of the Incas.  One of these, erected by Huayna Capac, was surmounted
+by a tower, while the ground-floor was occupied by one or more
+immense halls, like those described in Caxamalca, where the Peruvian
+nobles held their fetes in stormy weather.  These buildings afforded
+convenient barracks for the troops, though, during the first few weeks,
+they remained under their tents in the open plaza, with their horses
+picketed by their side, ready to repulse any insurrection of the
+inhabitants.29
+
+The capital of the Incas, though falling short of the El Dorado which had
+engaged their credulous fancies, astonished the Spaniards by the beauty
+of its edifices, the length and regularity of its streets, and the good order
+and appearance of comfort, even luxury, visible in its numerous
+population.  It far surpassed all they had yet seen in the New World.  The
+population of the city is computed by one of the Conquerors at two
+hundred thousand inhabitants, and that of the suburbs at as many
+more.30  This account is not confirmed, as far as I have seen, by any
+other writer.  But however it may be exaggerated, it is certain that Cuzco
+was the metropolis of a great empire, the residence of the Court and the
+chief nobility; frequented by the most skilful mechanics and artisans of
+every description, who found a demand for their ingenuity in the royal
+precincts; while the place was garrisoned by a numerous soldiery, and
+was the resort, finally, of emigrants from the most distant provinces.  The
+quarters whence this motley population came were indicated by their
+peculiar dress, and especially their head-gear, so rarely found at all on
+the American Indian, which, with its variegated colors, gave a
+picturesque effect to the groups and masses in the streets.  The habitual
+order and decorum maintained in this multifarious assembly showed the
+excellent police of the capital, where the only sounds that disturbed the
+repose of the Spaniards were the noises of feasting and dancing, which
+the natives, with happy insensibility, constantly prolonged to a late hour
+of the night.31
+
+The edifices of the better sort--and they were very numerous--were of
+stone, or faced with stone.32  Among the principal were the royal
+residences; as each sovereign built a new palace for himself, covering,
+though low, a large extent of ground.  The walls were sometimes stained
+or painted with gaudy tints, and the gates, we are assured, were
+sometimes of colored marble.33  "In the delicacy of the stone-work,"
+says another of the Conquerors, "the natives far excelled the Spaniards,
+though the roofs of their dwellings, instead of tiles, were only of thatch,
+but put together with the nicest art." 34  The sunny climate of Cuzco did
+not require a very substantial material for defence against the weather.
+
+The most important building was the fortress, planted on a solid rock,
+that rose boldly above the city.  It was built of hewn stone, so finely
+wrought that it was impossible to detect the line of junction between the
+blocks; and the approaches to it were defended by three semicircular
+parapets, composed of such heavy masses of rock, that it bore
+resemblance to the kind of work known to architects as the Cyclopean.
+The fortress was raised to a height rare in Peruvian architecture; and
+from the summit of the tower the eye of the-spectator ranged over a
+magnificent prospect, in which the wild features of the mountain scenery,
+rocks, woods, and waterfalls, were mingled with the rich verdure of the
+valley, and the shining city filling up the foreground,--all blended in
+sweet harmony under the deep azure of a tropical sky.
+
+The streets were long and narrow.  They were arranged with perfect
+regularity, crossing one another at right angles; and from the great square
+diverged four principal streets connecting with the high roads of the
+empire.  The square itself, and many parts of the city, were paved with a
+fine pebble.35  Through the heart of the capital ran a river of pure water,
+if it might not be rather termed a canal, the banks or sides of which, for
+the distance of twenty leagues, were faced with stone.36  Across this
+stream, bridges, constructed of similar broad flags, were thrown, at
+intervals, so as to afford an easy communication between the different
+quarters of the capital.37
+
+The most sumptuous edifice in Cuzco, in the times of the Incas, was
+undoubtedly the great temple dedicated to the Sun, which, studded with
+gold plates, as already noticed, was surrounded by convents and
+dormitories for the priests, with their gardens and broad parterres
+sparkling with gold.  The exterior ornaments had been already removed
+by the Conquerors,--all but the frieze of gold, which, imbedded in the
+stones, still encircled the principal building.  It is probable that the tales
+of wealth, so greedily circulated among the Spaniards, greatly exceeded
+the truth.  If they did not, the natives must have been very successful in
+concealing their treasures from the invaders.  Yet much still remained,
+not only in the great House of the Sun, but in the inferior temples which
+swarmed in the capital.
+
+Pizarro, on entering Cuzco, had issued an order forbidding any soldier to
+offer violence to the dwellings of the inhabitants.38  But the palaces
+were numerous, and the troops lost no time in plundering them of their
+contents, as well as in despoiling the religious edifices.  The interior
+decorations supplied them with considerable booty.  They stripped off
+the jewels and rich ornaments that garnished the royal mummies in the
+temple of Coricancha.  Indignant at the concealment of their treasures,
+they put the inhabitants, in some instances, to the torture, and endeavored
+to extort from them a confession of their hiding-places.39  They invaded
+the repose of the sepulchres, in which the Peruvians often deposited their
+valuable effects, and compelled the grave to give up its dead.  No place
+was left unexplored by the rapacious Conquerors, and they occasionally
+stumbled on a mine of wealth that rewarded their labors.
+
+In a cavern near the city they found a number of vases of pure gold,
+richly embossed with the figures of serpents, locusts, and other animals.
+Among the spoil were four golden llamas and ten or twelve statues of
+women, some of gold, others of silver, "which merely to see," says one
+of the Conquerors, with some naivete, "was truly a great satisfaction."
+The gold was probably thin, for the figures were all as large as life; and
+several of them, being reserved for the royal fifth, were not recast, but
+sent in their original form to Spain.40  The magazines were stored with
+curious commodities; richly tinted robes of cotton and feather-work, gold
+sandals, and slippers of the same material, for the women, and dresses
+composed entirely of beads of gold.41  The grain and other articles of
+food, with which the magazines were filled, were held in contempt by the
+Conquerors, intent only on gratifying their lust for gold.42  The time
+came when the grain would have been of far more value.
+
+Yet the amount of treasure in the capital did not equal the sanguine
+expectations that had been formed by the Spaniards.  But the deficiency
+was supplied by the plunder which they had collected at various places
+on their march.  In one place, for example, they met with ten planks or
+bars of solid silver, each piece being twenty feet in length, one foot in
+breadth, and two or three inches thick.  They were intended to decorate
+the dwelling of an Inca noble.43
+
+The whole mass of treasure was brought into a common heap, as in
+Caxamalca; and after some of the finer specimens had been deducted for
+the Crown, the remainder was delivered to the Indian goldsmiths to be
+melted down into ingots of a uniform standard.  The division of the spoil
+was made on the same principle as before.  There were four hundred and
+eighty soldiers, including the garrison of Xauxa, who were each to
+receive a share, that of the cavalry being double that of the infantry.  The
+amount of booty is stated variously by those present at the division of it.
+According to some it considerably exceeded the ransom of Atahuallpa.
+Others state it as less.  Pedro Pizarro says that each horseman got six
+thousand pesos de oro, and each one of the infantry half that sum; 44
+though the same discrimination was made by Pizarro as before, in
+respect to the rank of the parties, and their relative services.  But Sancho,
+the royal notary, and secretary of the commander, estimates the whole
+amount as far less,--not exceeding five hundred and eighty thousand and
+two hundred pesos de oro, and two hundred and fifteen thousand marks
+of silver.45  In the absence of the official returns, it is impossible to
+determine which is correct.  But Sancho's narrative is countersigned, it
+may be remembered, by Pizarro and the royal treasurer Riquelme, and
+doubtless therefore, shows the actual amount for which the Conquerors
+accounted to the Crown.
+
+Whichever statement we receive, the sum, combined with that obtained
+at Caxamalca, might well have satisfied the cravings of the most
+avaricious.  The sudden influx of so much wealth, and that, too, in so
+transferable a form, among a party of reckless adventurers little
+accustomed to the possession of money, had its natural effect.  it
+supplied them with the means of gaming, so strong and common a
+passion with the Spaniards, that it may be considered a national vice.
+Fortunes were lost and won in a single day, sufficient to render the
+proprietors independent for life; and many a desperate gamester, by an
+unlucky throw of the dice or turn of the cards, saw himself stripped in a
+few hours of the fruits of years of toil, and obliged to begin over again
+the business of rapine.  Among these, one in the cavalry service is
+mentioned, named Leguizano, who had received as his share of the booty
+the image of the Sun, which, raised on a plate of burnished gold, spread
+over the walls in a recess of the great temple, and which, for some reason
+or other,--perhaps because of its superior fineness,--was not recast like
+the other ornaments.  This rich prize the spendthrift lost in a single night;
+whence it came to be a proverb in Spain, Juega el Sol antes que
+amanezca, "Play away the Sun before sunrise." 46
+
+The effect of such a surfeit of the precious metals was instantly felt on
+prices.  The most ordinary articles were only to be had for exorbitant
+sums.  A quire of paper sold for ten pesos de oro; a bottle of wine, for
+sixty; a sword, for forty or fifty; a cloak, for a hundred,--sometimes
+more; a pair of shoes cost thirty or forty pesos de oro, and a good horse
+could not be had for less than twenty-five hundred.47  Some brought a
+still higher price.  Every article rose in value, as gold and silver, the
+representatives of all, declined.  Gold and silver, in short, seemed to be
+the only things in Cuzco that were not wealth.  Yet there were some few
+wise enough to return contented with their present gains to their native
+country.  Here their riches brought them consideration and competence,
+and while they excited the envy of their countrymen, stimulated them to
+seek their own fortunes in the like path of adventure.
+
+
+
+Book 3
+
+Chapter 9
+
+New Inca Crowned--Municipal Regulations--Terrible March Of Alvarado--
+Interview With Pizarro--Foundation Of Lima--
+Hernando Pizarro Reaches Spain--Sensation At Court--
+Feuds Of Almagro And The Pizarros
+
+1534--1535
+
+The first care of the Spanish general, after the division of the booty, was
+to place Manco on the throne, and to obtain for him the recognition of
+his countrymen.  He, accordingly, presented the young prince to them as
+their future sovereign, the legitimate son of Huayna Capac, and the true
+heir of the Peruvian sceptre.  The annunciation was received with
+enthusiasm by the people, attached to the memory of his illustrious
+father, and pleased that they were still to have a monarch rule over them
+of the ancient line of Cuzco.
+
+Everything was done to maintain the illusion with the Indian population.
+The ceremonies of a coronation were studiously observed.  The young
+prince kept the prescribed fasts and vigils; and on the appointed day, the
+nobles and the people, with the whole Spanish soldiery, assembled in the
+great square of Cuzco to witness the concluding ceremony.  Mass was
+publicly performed by Father Valverde, and the Inca Manco received the
+fringed diadem of Peru, not from the hand of the high-priest of his
+nation, but from his Conqueror, Pizarro.  The Indian lords then tendered
+their obeisance in the customary form; after which the royal notary read
+aloud the instrument asserting the supremacy of the Castilian Crown, and
+requiring the homage of all present to its authority.  This address was
+explained by an interpreter, and the ceremony of homage was performed
+by each one of the parties waving the royal banner of Castile twice or
+thrice with his hands.  Manco then pledged the Spanish commander in a
+golden goblet of the sparkling chicha; and, the latter having cordially
+embraced the new monarch, the trumpets announced the conclusion of
+the ceremony.1  But it was not the note of triumph, but of humiliation;
+for it proclaimed that the armed foot of the stranger was in the halls of
+the Peruvian Incas; that the ceremony of coronation was a miserable
+pageant; that their prince himself was but a puppet in the hands of his
+Conquerors; and that the glory of the Children of the Sun had departed
+forever!
+
+Yet the people readily gave in to the illusion, and seemed willing to
+accept this image of their ancient independence.  The accession of the
+young monarch was greeted by all the usual fetes and rejoicings.  The
+mummies of his royal ancestors, with such ornaments as were still left to
+them, were paraded in the great square.  They were attended each by his
+own numerous retinue, who performed all the menial offices, as if the
+object of them were alive and could feel their import.  Each ghostly form
+took its seat at the banquet-table--now, alas!  stripped of the magnificent
+service with which it was wont to blaze at these high festivals--and the
+guests drank deep to the illustrious dead.  Dancing succeeded the
+carousal, and the festivities, prolonged to a late hour, were continued
+night after night by the giddy population, as if their conquerors had not
+been intrenched in the capital!2  --What a contrast to the Aztecs in the
+conquest of Mexico!
+
+Pizarro's next concern was to organize a municipal government for
+Cuzco, like those in the cities of the parent country.  Two alcaldes were
+appointed, and eight regidores, among which last functionaries were his
+brothers Gonzalo and Juan.  The oaths of office were administered with
+great solemnity, on the twenty-fourth of March, 1534, in presence both
+of Spaniards and Peruvians, in the public square; as if the general were
+willing by this ceremony to intimate to the latter, that, while they
+retained the semblance of their ancient institutions, the real power was
+henceforth vested in their conquerors.3  He invited Spaniards to settle in
+the place by liberal grants of land and houses, for which means were
+afforded by the numerous palaces and public buildings of the Incas; and
+many a cavalier, who had been too poor in his own country to find a
+place to rest in, now saw himself the proprietor of a spacious mansion
+that might have entertained the retinue of a prince.4  From this time, says
+an old chronicler, Pizarro, who had hitherto been distinguished by his
+military title of "Captain-General," was addressed by that of "Governor."
+5  Both had been bestowed on him by the royal grant.
+
+Nor did the chief neglect the interests of religion.  Father Valverde,
+whose nomination as Bishop of Cuzco not long afterwards received the
+Papal sanction, prepared to enter on the duties of his office.  A place was
+selected for the cathedral of his diocese, facing the plaza.  A spacious
+monastery subsequently rose on the ruins of the gorgeous House of the
+Sun; its walls were constructed of the ancient stones; the altar was raised
+on the spot where shone the bright image of the Peruvian deity, and the
+cloisters of the Indian temple were trodden by the friars of St. Dominic.6
+To make the metamorphosis more complete, the House of the Virgins of
+the Sun was replaced by a Roman Catholic nunnery.7  Christian churches
+and monasteries gradually supplanted the ancient edifices, and such of
+the latter as were suffered to remain, despoiled of their heathen insignia,
+were placed under the protection of the Cross.
+
+The Fathers of St. Dominic, the Brethren of the Order of Mercy, and
+other missionaries, now busied themselves in the good work of
+conversion.  We have seen that Pizarro was required by the Crown to
+bring out a certain number of these holy men in his own vessels; and
+every succeeding vessel brought an additional reinforcement of
+ecclesiastics.  They were not all like the Bishop of Cuzco, with hearts so
+seared by fanaticism as to be closed against sympathy with the
+unfortunate natives.8  They were, many of them, men of singular
+humility, who followed in the track of the conqueror to scatter the seeds
+of spiritual truth, and, with disinterested zeal, devoted themselves to the
+propagation of the Gospel.  Thus did their pious labors prove them the
+true soldiers of the Cross, and showed that the object so ostentatiously
+avowed of carrying its banner among the heathen nations was not an
+empty vaunt.
+
+The effort to Christianize the heathen is an honorable characteristic of
+the Spanish conquests.  The Puritan, with equal religious zeal, did
+comparatively little for the conversion of the Indian, content, as it would
+seem, with having secured to himself the inestimable privilege of
+worshipping God in his own way.  Other adventurers who have occupied
+the New World have often had too little regard for religion themselves,
+to be very solicitous about spreading it among the savages.  But the
+Spanish missionary, from first to last, has shown a keen interest in the
+spiritual welfare of the natives.  Under his auspices, churches on a
+magnificent scale have been erected, schools for elementary instruction
+founded, and every rational means taken to spread the knowledge of
+religious truth, while he has carried his solitary mission into remote and
+almost inaccessible regions, or gathered his Indian disciples into
+communities, like the good Las Casas in Cumana, or the Jesuits in
+California and Paraguay.  At all times, the courageous ecclesiastic has
+been ready to lift his voice against the cruelty of the conqueror, and the
+no less wasting cupidity of the colonist; and when his remonstrances, as
+was too often the case, have proved unavailing, he has still followed to
+bind up the broken-hearted, to teach the poor Indian resignation under
+his lot, and light up his dark intellect with the revelation of a holier and
+happier existence.--In reviewing the blood-stained records of Spanish
+colonial history, it is but fair, and at the same time cheering, to reflect,
+that the same nation which sent forth the hard-hearted conqueror from its
+bosom sent forth the missionary to do the work of beneficence, and
+spread the light of Christian civilization over the farthest regions of the
+New World.
+
+While the governor, as we are henceforth to style him, lay at Cuzco, he
+received repeated accounts of a considerable force in the neighborhood,
+under the command of Atahuallpa's officer, Quizquiz.  He accordingly
+detached Almagro, with a small body of horse and a large Indian force
+under the Inca Manco, to disperse the enemy, and, if possible, to capture
+their leader.  Manco was the more ready to take part in the expedition, as
+the enemy were soldiers of Quito, who, with their commander, bore no
+good-will to himself.
+
+Almagro, moving with his characteristic rapidity, was not long in coming
+up with the Indian chieftain.  Several sharp encounters followed, as the
+army of Quito fell back on Xauxa, near which a general engagement
+decided the fate of the war by the total discomfiture of the natives.
+Quizquiz fled to the elevated plains of Quito, where he still held out with
+undaunted spirit against a Spanish force in that quarter, till at length his
+own soldiers, wearied by these long and ineffectual hostilities, massacred
+their commander in cold blood.9  Thus fell the last of the two great
+officers of Atahuallpa, who, if their nation had been animated by a spirit
+equal to their own, might long have successfully maintained their soil
+against the invader.
+
+Some time before this occurrence, the Spanish governor, while in Cuzco,
+received tidings of an event much more alarming to him than any Indian
+hostilities.  This was the arrival on the coast of a strong Spanish force,
+under command of Don Pedro de Alvarado, the gallant officer who had
+served under Cortes with such renown in the war of Mexico.  That
+cavalier, after forming a brilliant alliance in Spain, to which he was
+entitled by his birth and military rank, had returned to his government of
+Guatemala, where his avarice had been roused by the magnificent reports
+he daily received of Pizarro's conquests.  These conquests, he learned,
+had been confined to Peru; while the northern kingdom of Quito, the
+ancient residence of Atahuallpa, and, no doubt, the principal depository
+of his treasures, yet remained untouched.  Affecting to consider this
+country as falling without the governor's jurisdiction, he immediately
+turned a large fleet, which he had intended for the Spice Islands, in the
+direction of South America; and in March, 1534, he landed in the bay of
+Caraques, with five hundred followers, of whom half were mounted, and
+all admirably provided with arms and ammunition.  It was the best
+equipped and the most formidable array that had yet appeared in the
+southern seas.10
+
+Although manifestly an invasion of the territory conceded to Pizarro by
+the Crown, the reckless cavalier determined to march at once on Quito.
+With the assistance of an Indian guide, he proposed to take the direct
+route across the mountains, a passage of exceeding difficulty, even at the
+most favorable season.
+
+After crossing the Rio Dable, Alvarado's guide deserted him, so that he
+was soon entangled in the intricate mazes of the sierra; and, as he rose
+higher and higher into the regions of winter, he became surrounded with
+ice and snow, for which his men, taken from the warm countries of
+Guatemala, were but ill prepared.  As the cold grew more intense, many
+of them were so benumbed, that it was with difficulty they could
+proceed.  The infantry, compelled to make exertions, fared best.  Many
+of the troopers were frozen stiff in their saddles.  The Indians, still more
+sensible to the cold, perished by hundreds.  As the Spaniards huddled
+round their wretched bivouacs, with such scanty fuel as they could glean,
+and almost without food, they waited in gloomy silence the approach of
+morning.  Yet the morning light, which gleamed coldly on the cheerless
+waste, brought no joy to them.  It only revealed more clearly the extent
+of their wretchedness.  Still struggling on through the winding Puertos
+Nevados, or Snowy Passes, their track was dismally marked by
+fragments of dress, broken harness, golden ornaments, and other
+valuables plundered on their march,--by the dead bodies of men, or by
+those less fortunate, who were left to die alone in the wilderness.  As for
+the horses, their carcasses were not suffered long to cumber the ground,
+as they were quickly seized and devoured half raw by the starving
+soldiers, who, like the famished condors, now hovering in troops above
+their heads, greedily banqueted on the most offensive offal to satisfy the
+gnawings of hunger.
+
+Alvarado, anxious to secure the booty which had fallen into his hands at
+an earlier part of his march, encouraged every man to take what gold he
+wanted from the common heap, reserving only the royal fifth.  But they
+only answered, with a ghastly smile of derision, "that food was the only
+gold for them." Yet in this extremity, which might seem to have
+dissolved the very ties of nature, there are some affecting instances
+recorded of self-devotion; of comrades who lost their lives in assisting
+others, and of parents and husbands (for some of the cavaliers were
+accompanied by their wives) who, instead of seeking their own safety,
+chose to remain and perish in the snows with the objects of their love.
+
+To add to their distress, the air was filled for several days with thick
+clouds of earthy particles and cinders, which blinded the men, and made
+respiration exceedingly difficult.11  This phenomenon, it seems
+probable, was caused by an eruption of the distant Cotopaxi, which,
+about twelve leagues southeast of Quito, rears up its colossal and
+perfectly symmetrical cone far above the limits of eternal snow,--the
+most beautiful and the most terrible of the American volcanoes.12  At
+the time of Alvarado's expedition, it was in a state of eruption, the
+earliest instance of the kind on record, though doubtless not the
+earliest.13  Since that period, it has been in frequent commotion, sending
+up its sheets of flame to the height of half a mile, spouting forth cataracts
+of lava that have overwhelmed towns and villages in their career, and
+shaking the earth with subterraneous thunders, that, at the distance of
+more than a hundred leagues, sounded like the reports of artillery!14
+Alvarado's followers, unacquainted with the cause of the phenomenon, as
+they wandered over tracts buried in snow,--the sight of which was
+strange to them,--in an atmosphere laden with ashes, became bewildered
+by this confusion of the elements, which Nature seemed to have
+contrived purposely for their destruction.  Some of these men were the
+soldiers of Cortes, steeled by many a painful march, and many a sharp
+encounter with the Aztecs.  But this war of the elements, they now
+confessed, was mightier than all.
+
+At length, Alvarado, after sufferings, which even the most hardy,
+probably, could have endured but a few days longer, emerged from the
+Snowy Pass, and came on the elevated table-land, which spreads out, at
+the height of more than nine thousand feet above the ocean, in the
+neighborhood of Riobamba.  But one fourth of his gallant army had been
+left to feed the condor in the wilderness, besides the greater part, at least
+two thousand, of his Indian auxiliaries.  A great number of his horses,
+too, had perished; and the men and horses that escaped were all of them
+more or less injured by the cold and the extremity of suffering.--Such
+was the terrible passage of the Puertos Nevados, which I have only
+briefly noticed as an episode to the Peruvian conquest, but the account of
+which, in all its details, though it occupied but a few weeks in duration,
+would give one a better idea of the difficulties encountered by the
+Spanish cavaliers, than volumes of ordinary narrative.15
+
+As Alvarado, after halting some time to restore his exhausted troops,
+began his march across the broad plateau, he was astonished by seeing
+the prints of horses' hoofs on the soil.  Spaniards, then, had been there
+before him, and, after all his toil and suffering, others had forestalled him
+in the enterprise against Quito!  It is necessary to say a few words in
+explanation of this.
+
+When Pizarro quitted Caxamalca, being sensible of the growing
+importance of San Miguel, the only port of entry then in the country, he
+despatched a person in whom he had great confidence to take charge of
+it.  This person was Sebastian Benalcazar, a cavalier who afterwards
+placed his name in the first rank of the South American conquerors, for
+courage, capacity,--and cruelty.  But this cavalier had hardly reached his
+government, when, like Alvarado, he received such accounts of the
+riches of Quito, that he determined, with the force at his command,
+though without orders, to undertake its reduction.
+
+At the head of about a hundred and forty soldiers, horse and foot, and a
+stout body of Indian auxiliaries, he marched up the broad range of the
+Andes, to where it spreads out into the table-land of Quito, by a road
+safer and more expeditious than that taken by Alvarado.  On the plains of
+Riobamba, he encountered the Indian general Ruminavi.  Several
+engagements followed, with doubtful success, when, in the end, science
+prevailed where courage was well matched, and the victorious
+Benalcazar planted the standard of Castile on the ancient towers of
+Atahuallpa.  The city, in honor of his general, Francis Pizarro, he named
+San Francisco del Quito.  But great was his mortification on finding that
+either the stories of its riches had been fabricated, or that these riches
+were secreted by the natives.  The city was all that he gained by his
+victories,--the shell without the pearl of price which gave it its value.
+While devouring his chagrin, as he best could, the Spanish captain
+received tidings of the approach of his superior, Almagro.16
+
+No sooner had the news of Alvarado's expedition reached Cuzco, than
+Almagro left the place with a small force for San Miguel, proposing to
+strengthen himself by a reinforcement from that quarter, and to march at
+once against the invaders.  Greatly was he astonished, on his arrival in
+that city, to learn the departure of its commander.  Doubting the loyalty
+of his motives, Almagro, with the buoyancy of spirit which belongs to
+youth, though in truth somewhat enfeebled by the infirmities of age, did
+not hesitate to follow Benalcazar at once across the mountains.
+
+With his wonted energy, the intrepid veteran, overcoming all the
+difficulties of his march, in a few weeks placed himself and his little
+company on the lofty plains which spread around the Indian city of
+Riobamba; though in his progress he had more than one hot encounter
+with the natives, whose courage and perseverance formed a contrast
+sufficiently striking to the apathy of the Peruvians.  But the fire only
+slumbered in the bosom of the Peruvian.  His hour had not yet come.
+
+At Riobamba, Almagro was soon joined by the commander of San
+Miguel, who disclaimed, perhaps sincerely, any disloyal intent in his
+unauthorized expedition.  Thus reinforced, the Spanish captain coolly
+awaited the coming of Alvarado.  The forces of the latter, though in a
+less serviceable condition, were much superior in number and
+appointments to those of his rival.  As they confronted each other on the
+broad plains of Riobamba, it seemed probable that a fierce struggle must
+immediately follow, and the natives of the country have the satisfaction
+to see their wrongs avenged by the very hands that inflicted them.  But it
+was Almagro's policy to avoid such an issue.
+
+Negotiations were set on foot, in which each party stated his claims to
+the country.  Meanwhile Alvarado's men mingled freely with their
+countrymen in the opposite army, and heard there such magnificent
+reports of the wealth and wonders of Cuzco, that many of them were
+inclined to change their present service for that of Pizarro.  Their own
+leader, too, satisfied that Quito held out no recompense worth the
+sacrifices he had made, and was like to make, by insisting on his claim,
+became now more sensible of the rashness of a course which must
+doubtless incur the censure of his sovereign.  In this temper, it was not
+difficult for them to effect an adjustment of difficulties; and it was
+agreed, as the basis of it, that the governor should pay one hundred
+thousand pesos de oro to Alvarado, in consideration of which the latter
+was to resign to him his fleet, his forces, and all his stores and munitions.
+His vessels, great and small, amounted to twelve in number, and the sum
+he received, though large, did not cover his expenses.  This treaty being
+settled, Alvarado proposed, before leaving the country, to have an
+interview with Pizarro.17
+
+The governor, meanwhile, had quitted the Peruvian capital for the
+seacoast, from his desire to repel any invasion that might be attempted in
+that direction by Alvarado, with whose real movements he was still
+unacquainted.  He left Cuzco in charge of his brother Juan, a cavalier
+whose manners were such as, he thought, would be likely to gain the
+good-will of the native population.  Pizarro also left ninety of his troops,
+as the garrison of the capital, and the nucleus of his future colony.  Then,
+taking the Inca Manco with him, he proceeded as far as Xauxa.  At this
+place he was entertained by the Indian prince with the exhibition of a
+great national hunt,--such as has been already described in these pages,--
+in which immense numbers of wild animals were slaughtered, and the
+vicunas, and other races of Peruvian sheep, which roam over the
+mountains, driven into inclosures and relieved of their delicate fleeces.18
+
+The Spanish governor then proceeded to Pachacamac, where he received
+the grateful intelligence of the accommodation with Alvarado; and not
+long afterward he was visited by that cavalier himself, previously to his
+embarkation.
+
+The meeting was conducted with courtesy and a show, at least, of
+goodwill, on both sides, as there was no longer real cause for jealousy
+between the parties; and each, as may be imagined, looked on the other
+with no little interest, as having achieved such distinction in the bold
+path of adventure.  In the comparison, Alvarado had somewhat the
+advantage; for Pizarro, though of commanding presence, had not the
+brilliant exterior, the free and joyous manner, which, no less than his
+fresh complexion and sunny locks, had won for the conqueror of
+Guatemala, in his campaigns against the Aztecs, the sobriquet of
+Tonatiuh, or "Child of the Sun."
+
+Blithe were the revels that now rang through the ancient city of
+Pachacamac; where, instead of songs, and of the sacrifices so often seen
+there in honor of the Indian deity, the walls echoed to the noise of
+tourneys and Moorish tilts of reeds, with which the martial adventurers
+loved to recall the sports of their native land.  When these were
+concluded, Alvarado reembarked for his government of Guatemala,
+where his restless spirit soon involved him in other enterprises that cut
+short his adventurous career.  His expedition to Peru was eminently
+characteristic of the man.  It was founded in injustice, conducted with
+rashness, and ended in disaster.19
+
+The reduction of Peru might now be considered as, in a manner,
+accomplished.  Some barbarous tribes in the interior, it is true, still held
+out, and Alonso de Alvarado, a prudent and able officer, was employed
+to bring them into subjection.  Benalcazar was still at Quito, of which he
+was subsequently appointed governor by the Crown.  There he was
+laying deeper the foundation of the Spanish power, while he advanced
+the line of conquest still higher towards the north.  But Cuzco, the
+ancient capital of the Indian monarchy, had submitted.  The armies of
+Atahuallpa had been beaten and scattered.  The empire of the Incas was
+dissolved; and the prince who now wore the Peruvian diadem was but
+the shadow of a king, who held his commission from his conqueror.
+
+The first act of the governor was to determine on the site of the future
+capital of this vast colonial empire.  Cuzco, withdrawn among the
+mountains, was altogether too far removed from the sea-coast for a
+commercial people.  The little settlement of San Miguel lay too far to the
+north.  It was desirable to select some more central position, which could
+be easily found in one of the fruitful valleys that bordered the Pacific.
+Such was that of Pachacamac, which Pizarro now occupied.  But, on
+further examination, he preferred the neighboring valley of Rimac, which
+lay to the north, and which took its name, signifying in the Quichua
+tongue "one who speaks," from a celebrated idol, whose shrine was
+much frequented by the Indians for the oracles it delivered.  Through the
+valley flowed a broad stream, which, like a great artery, was made, as
+usual by the natives, to supply a thousand finer veins that meandered
+through the beautiful meadows.
+
+On this river Pizarro fixed the site of his new capital, at somewhat less
+than two leagues' distance from its mouth, which expanded into a
+commodious haven for the commerce that the prophetic eye of the
+founder saw would one day--and no very distant one---float on its waters.
+The central situation of the spot recommended it as a suitable residence
+for the Peruvian viceroy, whence he might hold easy communication
+with the different parts of the country, and keep vigilant watch over his
+Indian vassals.  The climate was delightful, and, though only twelve
+degrees south of the line, was so far tempered by the cool breezes that
+generally blow from the Pacific, or from the opposite quarter down the
+frozen sides of the Cordilleras, that the heat was less than in
+corresponding latitudes on the continent.  It never rained on the coast;
+but this dryness was corrected by a vaporous cloud, which, through the
+summer months, hung like a curtain over the valley, sheltering it from the
+rays of a tropical sun, and imperceptibly distilling a refreshing moisture,
+that clothed the fields in the brightest verdure.
+
+The name bestowed on the infant capital was Ciudad de los Reyes, or
+City of the Kings, in honor of the day, being the sixth of January, 1535, -
+-the festival of Epiphany,--when it was said to have been founded, or
+more probably when its site was determined, as its actual foundation
+seems to have been twelve days later.20  But the Castilian name ceased
+to be used even within the first generation, and was supplanted by that of
+Lima, into which the original Indian name of Rimac was corrupted by the
+Spaniards.21
+
+The city was laid out on a very regular plan.  The streets were to be
+much wider than usual in Spanish towns, and perfectly straight, crossing
+one another at right angles, and so far asunder as to afford ample space
+for gardens to the dwellings, and for public squares.  It was arranged in a
+triangular form, having the river for its base, the waters of which were to
+be carried, by means of stone conduits, through all the principal streets,
+affording facilities for irrigating the grounds around the houses.
+
+No sooner had the governor decided on the site and on the plan of the
+city, than he commenced operations with his characteristic energy.  The
+Indians were collected from the distance of more than a hundred miles to
+aid in the work.  The Spaniards applied themselves with vigor to the
+task, under the eye of their chief.  The sword was exchanged for the tool
+of the artisan.  The camp was converted into a hive of diligent laborers;
+and the sounds of war were succeeded by the peaceful hum of a busy
+population.  The plaza, which was extensive, was to be surrounded by
+the cathedral, the palace of the viceroy, that of the municipality, and
+other public buildings; and their foundations were laid on a scale, and
+with a solidity, which defied the assaults of time, and, in some instances,
+even the more formidable shock of earthquakes, that, at different periods,
+have laid portions of the fair capital in ruins.22
+
+While these events were going on, Almagro, the Marshal, as he is usually
+termed by chroniclers of the time, had gone to Cuzco, whither he was
+sent by Pizarro to take command of that capital.  He received also
+instructions to undertake, either by himself or by his captains, the
+conquest of the countries towards the south, forming part of Chili.
+Almagro, since his arrival at Caxamalca, had seemed willing to smother
+his ancient feelings of resentment towards his associate, or, at least, to
+conceal the expression of them, and had consented to take command
+under him in obedience to the royal mandate.  He had even, in his
+despatches, the magnanimity to make honorable mention of Pizarro, as
+one anxious to promote the interests of government.  Yet he did not so
+far trust his companion, as to neglect the precaution of sending a
+confidential agent to represent his own services, when Hernando Pizarro
+undertook his mission to the mother-country.
+
+That cavalier, after touching at St. Domingo, had arrived without
+accident at Seville, in January, 1534.  Besides the royal fifth, he took
+with him gold, to the value of half a million of pesos, together with a
+large quantity of silver, the property of private adventurers, some of
+whom, satisfied with their gains, had returned to Spain in the same vessel
+with himself.  The custom-house was filled with solid ingots, and with
+vases of different forms, imitations of animals, flowers, fountains, and
+other objects, executed with more or less skill, and all of pure gold, to
+the astonishment of the spectators, who flocked from the neighboring
+country to gaze on these marvellous productions of Indian art.23  Most
+of the manufactured articles were the property of the Crown; and
+Hernando Pizarro, after a short stay at Seville, selected some of the most
+gorgeous specimens, and crossed the country to Calatayud, where the
+emperor was holding the cortes of Aragon.
+
+Hernando was instantly admitted to the royal presence, and obtained a
+gracious audience.  He was more conversant with courts than either of
+his brothers, and his manners, when in situations that imposed a restraint
+on the natural arrogance of his temper, were graceful and even attractive.
+In a respectful tone, he now recited the stirring adventures of his brother
+and his little troop of followers, the fatigues they had endured, the
+difficulties they had overcome, their capture of the Peruvian Inca, and
+his magnificent ransom.  He had not to tell of the massacre of the
+unfortunate prince, for that tragic event, which had occurred since his
+departure from the country, was still unknown to him.  The cavalier
+expatiated on the productiveness of the soil, and on the civilization of the
+people, evinced by their proficiency in various mechanic arts; in proof of
+which he displayed the manufactures of wool and cotton, and the rich
+ornaments of gold and silver.  The monarch's eyes sparkled with delight
+as he gazed on these last.  He was too sagacious not to appreciate the
+advantages of a conquest which secured to him a country so rich in
+agricultural resources.  But the returns from these must necessarily be
+gradual and long deferred; and he may be excused for listening with still
+greater satisfaction to Pizarro's tales of its mineral stores; for his
+ambitious projects had drained the imperial treasury, and he saw in the
+golden tide thus unexpectedly poured in upon him the immediate means
+of replenishing it.
+
+Charles made no difficulty, therefore, in granting the petitions of the
+fortunate adventurer.  All the previous grants to Francis Pizarro and his
+associates were confirmed in the fullest manner; and the boundaries of
+the governor's jurisdiction were extended seventy leagues further
+towards the south.  Nor did Almagro's services, this time, go unrequited.
+He was empowered to discover and occupy the country for the distance
+of two hundred leagues, beginning at the southern limit of Pizarro's
+territory.24  Charles, in proof, still further, of his satisfaction, was
+graciously pleased to address a letter to the two commanders, in which
+he complimented them on their prowess, and thanked them for their
+services.  This act of justice to Almagro would have been highly
+honorable to Hernando Pizarro, considering the unfriendly relations in
+which they stood to each other, had it not been made necessary by the
+presence of the marshal's own agents at court, who, as already noticed,
+stood ready to supply any deficiency in the statements of the emissary.
+
+In this display of the royal bounty, the envoy, as will readily be believed,
+did not go without his reward.  He was lodged as an attendant of the
+Court; was made a knight of Santiago, the most prized of the chivalric
+orders in Spain; was empowered to equip an armament, and to take
+command of it; and the royal officers at Seville were required to aid him
+in his views and facilitate his embarkation for the Indies.25
+
+The arrival of Hernando Pizarro in the country, and the reports spread by
+him and his followers, created a sensation among the Spaniards such as
+had not been felt since the first voyage of Columbus.  The discovery of
+the New World had filled the minds of men with indefinite expectations
+of wealth, of which almost every succeeding expedition had proved the
+fallacy.  The conquest of Mexico, though calling forth general
+admiration as a brilliant and wonderful exploit, had as yet failed to
+produce those golden results which had been so fondly anticipated.  The
+splendid promises held out by Francis Pizarro on his recent visit to the
+country had not revived the confidence of his countrymen, made
+incredulous by repeated disappointment.  All that they were assured of
+was the difficulties of the enterprise; and their distrust of its results was
+sufficiently shown by the small number of followers, and those only of
+the most desperate stamp, who were willing to take their chance in the
+adventure.
+
+But now these promises were realized.  It was no longer the golden
+reports that they were to trust; but the gold itself, which was displayed in
+such profusion before them.  All eyes were now turned towards the West.
+The broken spendthrift saw in it the quarter where he was to repair his
+fortunes as speedily as he had ruined them.  The merchant, instead of
+seeking the precious commodities of the East, looked in the opposite
+direction, and counted on far higher gains, where the most common
+articles of life commanded so exorbitant prices.  The cavalier, eager to
+win both gold and glory at the point of his lance, thought to find a fair
+field for his prowess on the mountain plains of the Andes.  Ferdinand
+Pizarro found that his brother had judged rightly in allowing as many of
+his company as chose to return home, confident that the display of their
+wealth would draw ten to his banner for every one that quitted it.
+
+In a short time that cavalier saw himself at the head of one of the most
+numerous and well-appointed armaments, probably, that had left the
+shores of Spain since the great fleet of Ovando, in the time of Ferdinand
+and Isabella.  It was scarcely more fortunate that this.  Hardly had
+Ferdinand put to sea, when a violent tempest fell on the squadron, and
+compelled him to return to port and refit.  At length he crossed the
+ocean, and reached the little harbor of Nombre de Dios in safety.  But no
+preparations had been made for his coming, and, as he was detained here
+some time before he could pass the mountains, his company suffered
+greatly from scarcity of food.  In their extremity, the most unwholesome
+articles were greedily devoured, and many a cavalier spent his little
+savings to procure himself a miserable subsistence.  Disease, as usual,
+trod closely in the track of famine, and numbers of the unfortunate
+adventurers, sinking under the unaccustomed heats of the climate,
+perished on the very threshold of discovery.
+
+It was the tale often repeated in the history of Spanish enterprise.  A few,
+more lucky than the rest, stumble on some unexpected prize, and
+hundreds, attracted by their success, press forward in the same path.  But
+the rich spoil which lay on the surface has been already swept away by
+the first comers, and those who follow are to win their treasure by long-
+protracted and painful exertion.--Broken in spirit and in fortune, many
+returned in disgust to their native shores, while others remained where
+they were, to die in despair.  They thought to dig for gold; but they dug
+only their graves.
+
+Yet it fared not thus with all Pizarro's company.  Many of them, crossing
+the Isthmus with him to Panama, came in time to Peru, where, in the
+desperate chances of its revolutionary struggles, some few arrived at
+posts of profit and distinction.  Among those who first reached the
+Peruvian shore was an emissary sent by Almagro's agents to inform him
+of the important grant made to him by the Crown.  The tidings reached
+him just as he was making his entry into Cuzco, where he was received
+with all respect by Juan and Gonzalo Pizarro, who, in obedience to their
+brother's commands, instantly resigned the government of the capital into
+the marshal's hands.  But Almagro was greatly elated on finding himself
+now placed by his sovereign in a command that made him independent
+of the man who had so deeply wronged him; and he intimated that in the
+exercise of his present authority he acknowledged no superior.  In this
+lordly humor he was confirmed by several of his followers, who insisted
+that Cuzco fell to the south of the territory ceded to Pizarro, and
+consequently came within that now granted to the marshal.  Among
+these followers were several of Alvarado's men, who, though of better
+condition than the soldiers of Pizarro, were under much worse discipline,
+and had acquired, indeed, a spirit of unbridled license under that
+unscrupulous chief.26  They now evinced little concern for the native
+population of Cuzco; and, not content with the public edifices, seized on
+the dwellings of individuals, where it suited their conveniences,
+appropriating their contents without ceremony,--showing as little respect,
+in short, for person or property, as if the place had been taken by
+storm.27
+
+While these events were passing in the ancient Peruvian capital, the
+governor was still at Lima, where he was greatly disturbed by the
+accounts he received of the new honors conferred on his associate.  He
+did not know that his own jurisdiction had been extended seventy
+leagues further to the south, and he entertained the same suspicion with
+Almagro, that the capital of the Incas did not rightly come within his
+present limits.  He saw all the mischief likely to result from this opulent
+city falling into the hands of his rival, who would thus have an almost in
+definite means of gratifying his own cupidity, and that of his followers.
+He felt, that, under the present circumstances, it was not safe to allow
+Almagro to anticipate the possession of power, to which, as yet, he had
+no legitimate right; for the despatches containing the warrant for it still
+remained with Hernando Pizarro, at Panama, and all that had reached
+Peru was a copy of a garbled extract.
+
+Without loss of time, therefore, he sent instructions to Cuzco for his
+brothers to resume the government, while he defended the measure to
+Almagro on the ground, that, when he should hereafter receive his
+credentials, it would be unbecoming to be found already in possession of
+the post.  He concluded by urging him to go forward without delay in his
+expedition to the south.
+
+But neither the marshal nor his friends were pleased with the idea of so
+soon relinquishing the authority which they now considered as his right.
+The Pizarros, on the other hand, were pertinacious in reclaiming it.  The
+dispute grew warmer and warmer.  Each party had its supporters; the city
+was split into factions; and the municipality, the soldiers, and even the
+Indian population, took sides in the struggle for power.  Matters were
+proceeding to extremity, menacing the capital with violence and
+bloodshed, when Pizarro himself appeared among them.28
+
+On receiving tidings of the fatal consequences of his mandates, he had
+posted in all haste to Cuzco, where he was greeted with undisguised joy
+by the natives, as well as by the more temperate Spaniards, anxious to
+avert the impending storm.  The governor's first interview was with
+Almagro, whom he embraced with a seeming cordiality in his manner;
+and, without any show of resentment, inquired into the cause of the
+present disturbances.  To this the marshal replied, by throwing the blame
+on Pizarro's brothers; but, although the governor reprimanded them with
+some asperity for their violence, it was soon evident that his sympathies
+were on their side, and the dangers of a feud between the two associates
+seemed greater than ever.  Happily, it was postponed by the intervention
+of some common friends, who showed more discretion than their leaders.
+With their aid a reconciliation was at length effected, on the grounds
+substantially of their ancient compact.
+
+It was agreed that their friendship should be maintained inviolate; and,
+by a stipulation that reflects no great credit on the parties, it was
+provided that neither should malign nor disparage the other, especially in
+their despatches to the emperor; and that neither should hold
+communication with the government without the knowledge of his
+confederate; lastly, that both the expenditures and the profits of future
+discovery should be shared equally by the associates.  The wrath of
+Heaven was invoked by the most solemn imprecations on the head of
+whichever should violate this compact, and the Almighty was implored
+to visit the offender with loss of property and of life in this world, and
+with eternal perdition in that to come! 29  The parties further bound
+themselves to the observance of this contract by a solemn oath taken on
+the sacrament, as it was held in the hands of Father Bartolome de
+Segovia, who concluded the ceremony by performing mass.  The whole
+proceeding, and the articles of agreement, were carefully recorded by the
+notary, in an instrument bearing date June 12, 1535, and attested by a
+long list of witnesses.30
+
+Thus did these two ancient comrades, after trampling on the ties of
+friendship and honor, hope to knit themselves to each other by the holy
+bands of religion.  That it should have been necessary to resort to so
+extraordinary a measure might have furnished them with the best proof
+of its inefficacy.
+
+Not long after this accommodation of their differences, the marshal
+raised his standard for Chili; and numbers, won by his popular manners,
+and by his liberal largesses,--liberal to prodigality,--eagerly joined in the
+enterprise, which they fondly trusted would lead even to greater riches
+than they had found in Peru.  Two Indians, Paullo Topa, a brother of the
+Inca Manco, and Villac Umu, the high-priest of the nation, were sent in
+advance, with three Spaniards, to prepare the way for the little army.  A
+detachment of a hundred and fifty men, under an officer named
+Saavedra, next followed.  Almagro remained behind to collect further
+recruits; but before his levies were completed, he began his march,
+feeling himself insecure, with his diminished strength, in the
+neighborhood of Pizarro!  31  The remainder of his forces, when
+mustered, were to follow him.
+
+Thus relieved of the presence of his rival, the governor returned without
+further delay to the coast, to resume his labors in the settlement of the
+country.  Besides the principal city of "The Kings," he established others
+along the Pacific, destined to become hereafter the flourishing marts of
+commerce.  The most important of these, in honor of his birthplace, he
+named Truxillo, planting it on a site already indicated by Almagro.32
+He made also numerous repartimientos both of lands and Indians among
+his followers, in the usual manner of the Spanish Conquerors; 33--though
+here the ignorance of the real resources of the country led to very
+different results from what he had intended, as the territory smallest in
+extent, not unfrequently, from the hidden treasures in its bosom, turned
+out greatest in value.34
+
+But nothing claimed so much of Pizarro's care as the rising metropolis of
+Lima; and, so eagerly did he press forward the work, and so well was he
+seconded by the multitude of laborers at his command, that he had the
+satisfaction to see his young capital, with its stately edifices and its pomp
+of gardens, rapidly advancing towards completion.  It is pleasing to
+contemplate the softer features in the character of the rude soldier, as he
+was thus occupied with healing up the ravages of war, and laying broad
+the foundations of an empire more civilized than that which he had
+overthrown.  This peaceful occupation formed a contrast to the life of
+incessant turmoil in which he had been hitherto engaged.  It seemed, too,
+better suited to his own advancing age, which naturally invited to repose.
+And, if we may trust his chroniclers, there was no part of his career in
+which he took greater satisfaction.  It is certain there is no part which has
+been viewed with greater satisfaction by posterity; and, amidst the woe
+and desolation which Pizarro and his followers brought on the devoted
+land of the Incas, Lima, the beautiful City of the Kings, still survives as
+the most glorious work of his creation, the fairest gem on the shores of
+the Pacific.
+
+
+
+Book 3
+
+Chapter 10
+
+Escape Of The Inca--Return Of Hernando Pizarro-
+Rising Of The Peruvians--Siege And Burning Of Cuzco-
+Distresses Of The Spaniards--Storming Of The Fortress-
+Pizarro's Dismay--The Inca Raises The Siege
+
+1535--1536
+
+While the absence of his rival Almagro relieved Pizarro from all
+immediate disquietude from that quarter, his authority was menaced in
+another, where he had least expected it.  This was from the native
+population of the country.  Hitherto the Peruvians had shown only a tame
+and submissive temper, that inspired their conquerors with too much
+contempt to leave room for apprehension.  They had passively
+acquiesced in the usurpation of the invaders; had seen one monarch
+butchered, another placed on the vacant throne, their temples despoiled
+of their treasures, their capital and country appropriated and parcelled
+out among the Spaniards; but, with the exception of an occasional
+skirmish in the mountain passes, not a blow had been struck in defence
+of their rights.  Yet this was the warlike nation which had spread its
+conquests over so large a part of the continent!
+
+In his career, Pizarro, though he scrupled at nothing to effect his object,
+had not usually countenanced such superfluous acts of cruelty as had too
+often stained the arms of his countrymen in other parts of the continent,
+and which, in the course of a few years, had exterminated nearly a whole
+population in Hispaniola.  He had struck one astounding blow, by the
+seizure of Atahuallpa; and he seemed willing to rely on this to strike
+terror into the natives.  He even affected some respect for the institutions
+of the country, and had replaced the monarch he had murdered by
+another of the legitimate line.  Yet this was but a pretext.  The kingdom
+had experienced a revolution of the most decisive kind.  Its ancient
+institutions were subverted.  Its heaven-descended aristocracy was
+levelled almost to the condition of the peasant.  The people became the
+serfs of the Conquerors.  Their dwellings in the capital---at least, after
+the arrival of Alvarado's officers--were seized and appropriated.  The
+temples were turned into stables; the royal residences into barracks for
+the troops.  The sanctity of the religious houses was violated.  Thousands
+of matrons and maidens, who, however erroneous their faith, lived in
+chaste seclusion in the conventual establishments, were now turned
+inroad, and became the prey of a licentious soldiery.1  A favorite wife of
+the young Inca was debauched by the Castilian officers.  The Inca,
+himself treated with contemptuous indifference, found that he was a poor
+dependant, if not a tool, in the hands of his conquerors.2
+
+Yet the Inca Manco was a man of a lofty spirit and a courageous heart;
+such a one as might have challenged comparison with the bravest of his
+ancestors in the prouder days of the empire.  Stung to the quick by the
+humiliations to which he was exposed, he repeatedly urged Pizarro to
+restore him to the real exercise of power, as well as to the show of it.
+But Pizarro evaded a request so incompatible with his own ambitious
+schemes, or, indeed, with the policy of Spain, and the young Inca and his
+nobles were left to brood over their injuries in secret, and await patiently
+the hour of vengeance.
+
+The dissensions among the Spaniards themselves seemed to afford a
+favorable opportunity for this.  The Peruvian chiefs held many
+conferences together on the subject, and the high-priest Villac Umu
+urged the necessity of a rising so soon as Almagro had withdrawn his
+forces from the city.  It would then be comparatively easy, by assaulting
+the invaders on their several posts, scattered as they were over the
+country, to overpower them by superior numbers, and shake off their
+detested yoke before the arrival of fresh reinforcements should rivet it
+forever on the necks of his countrymen.  A plan for a general rising was
+formed, and it was in conformity to it that the priest was selected by the
+Inca to bear Almagro company on the march, that he might secure the
+cooperation of the natives in the country, and then secretly return--as in
+fact he did--to take a part in the insurrection.
+
+To carry their plans into effect, it became necessary that the Inca Manco
+should leave the city and present himself among his people.  He found no
+difficulty in withdrawing from Cuzco, where his presence was scarcely
+heeded by the Spaniards, as his nominal power was held in little
+deference by the haughty and confident Conquerors.  But in the capital
+there was a body of Indian allies more jealous of his movements.  These
+were from the tribe of the Canares, a warlike race of the north, too
+recently reduced by the Incas to have much sympathy with them or their
+institutions.  There were about a thousand of this people in the place,
+and, as they had conceived some suspicion of the Inca's purposes, they
+kept an eye on his movements, and speedily reported his absence to Juan
+Pizarro.
+
+That cavalier, at the head of a small body of horse, instantly marched in
+pursuit of the fugitive, whom he was so fortunate as to discover in a
+thicket of reeds, in which he sought to conceal himself, at no great
+distance from the city.  Manco was arrested, brought back a prisoner to
+Cuzco, and placed under a strong guard in the fortress.  The conspiracy
+seemed now at an end; and nothing was left to the unfortunate Peruvians
+but to bewail their ruined hopes, and to give utterance to their
+disappointment in doleful ballads, which rehearsed the captivity of their
+Inca, and the downfall of his royal house.3
+
+While these things were in progress, Hernando Pizarro returned to
+Ciudad de los Reyes, bearing with him the royal commission for the
+extension of his brother's powers, as well as of those conceded to
+Almagro.  The envoy also brought the royal patent conferring on
+Francisco Pizarro the title of marques de los Atavillos,--a province in
+Peru.  Thus was the fortunate adventurer placed in the ranks of the proud
+aristocracy of Castile, few of whose members could boast--if they had
+the courage to boast --their elevation from so humble an origin, as still
+fewer could justify it by a show of greater services to the Crown.
+
+The new marquess resolved not to forward the commission, at present, to
+the marshal, whom he designed to engage still deeper in the conquest of
+Chili, that his attention might be diverted from Cuzco which, however,
+his brother assured him, now fell, without doubt, within the newly
+extended limits of his own territory.  To make more sure of this
+important prize, he despatched Hernando to take the government of the
+capital into his own hands, as the one of his brothers on whose talents
+and practical experience he placed greatest reliance.
+
+Hernando, notwithstanding his arrogant bearing towards his countrymen,
+had ever manifested a more than ordinary sympathy with the Indians.  He
+had been the friend of Atahuallpa; to such a degree, indeed, that it was
+said, if he had been in the camp at the time, the fate of that unhappy
+monarch would probably have been averted.  He now showed a similar
+friendly disposition towards his successor, Manco.  He caused the
+Peruvian prince to be liberated from confinement, and gradually
+admitted him into some intimacy with himself.  The crafty Indian availed
+himself of his freedom to mature his plans for the rising, but with so
+much caution, that no suspicion of them crossed the mind of Hernando.
+Secrecy and silence are characteristic of the American, almost as
+invariably as the peculiar color of his skin.  Manco disclosed to his
+conqueror the existence of several heaps of treasure, and the places
+where they had been secreted; and, when he had thus won his
+confidence, he stimulated his cupidity still further by an account of a
+statue of pure gold of his father Huayna Capac, which the wily Peruvian
+requested leave to bring from a secret cave in which it was deposited,
+among the neighboring Andes.  Hernando, blinded by his avarice,
+consented to the Inca's departure.
+
+He sent with him two Spanish soldiers, less as a guard than to aid him in
+the object of his expedition.  A week elapsed, and yet he did not return,
+nor were there any tidings to be gathered of him.  Hernando now saw his
+error, especially as his own suspicions were confirmed by the
+unfavorable reports of his Indian allies.  Without further delay, he
+despatched his brother Juan, at the head of sixty horse, in quest of the
+Peruvian prince, with orders to bring him back once more a prisoner to
+his capital.
+
+That cavalier, with his well-armed troops, soon traversed the environs of
+Cuzco without discovering any vestige of the fugitive.  The country was
+remarkably silent and deserted, until, as he approached the mountain
+range that hems in the valley of Yucay, about six leagues from the city,
+he was met by the two Spaniards who had accompanied Manco.  They
+informed Pizarro that it was only at the point of the sword he could
+recover the Inca, for the country was all in arms, and the Peruvian chief
+at its head was preparing to march on the capital.  Yet he had offered no
+violence to their persons, but had allowed them to return in safety.
+
+The Spanish captain found this story fully confirmed when he arrived at
+the river Yucay, on the opposite bank of which were drawn up the Indian
+battalions to the number of many thousand men, who, with their young
+monarch at their head, prepared to dispute his passage.  It seemed that
+they could not feel their position sufficiently strong, without placing a
+river, as usual, between them and their enemy.  The Spaniards were not
+checked by this obstacle.  The stream, though deep, was narrow; and
+plunging in, they swam their horses boldly across, amidst a tempest of
+stones and arrows that rattled thick as hail on their harness, finding
+occasionally some crevice or vulnerable point,--although the wounds
+thus received only goaded them to more desperate efforts.  The
+barbarians fell back as the cavaliers made good their landing; but,
+without allowing the latter time to form, they returned with a spirit which
+they had hitherto seldom displayed, and enveloped them on all sides with
+their greatly superior numbers.  The fight now raged fiercely.  Many of
+the Indians were armed with lances headed with copper tempered almost
+to the hardness of steel, and with huge maces and battle-axes of the same
+metal.  Their defensive armour, also, was in many respects excellent,
+consisting of stout doublets of quilted cotton.  shields covered with skins,
+and casques richly ornamented with gold and jewels, or sometimes made
+like those of the Mexicans, in the fantastic shape of the heads of wild
+animals, garnished with rows of teeth that grinned horribly above the
+visage of the warrior.4   The whole army wore an aspect of martial
+ferocity, under the control of much higher military discipline than the
+Spaniards had before seen in the country.
+
+The little band of cavaliers, shaken by the fury of the Indian assault, were
+thrown at first into some disorder, but at length, cheering on one another
+with the old war-cry of "St. Jago," they formed in solid column, and
+charged boldly into the thick of the enemy.  The latter, incapable of
+withstanding the shock, gave way, or were trampled down under the feet
+of the horses, or pierced by the lances of the riders.  Yet their flight was
+conducted with some order; and they turned at intervals, to let off a
+volley of arrows, or to deal furious blows with their pole-axes and
+warclubs.  They fought as if conscious that they were under the eye of
+their Inca.
+
+It was evening before they had entirely quitted the level ground, and
+withdrawn into the fastnesses of the lofty range of hills which belt round
+the beautiful valley of Yucay.  Juan Pizarro and his little troop encamped
+on the level at the base of the mountains.  He had gained a victory, as
+usual, over immense odds; but he had never seen a field so well disputed,
+and his victory had cost him the lives of several men and horses, while
+many more had been wounded, and were nearly disabled by the fatigues
+of the day.  But he trusted the severe lesson he had inflicted on the
+enemy, whose slaughter was great, would crush the spirit of resistance.
+He was deceived.
+
+The following morning, great was his dismay to see the passes of the
+mountains filled up with dark lines of warriors, stretching as far as the
+eye could penetrate into the depths of the sierra, while dense masses of
+the enemy were gathered like thunder-clouds along the slopes and
+sumrafts, as if ready to pour down in fury on the assailants.  The ground,
+altogether unfavorable to the manoeuvres of cavalry, gave every
+advantage to the Peruvians, who rolled down huge rocks from their
+elevated position, and sent off incessant showers of missiles on the heads
+of the Spaniards.  Juan Pizarro did not care to entangle himself further in
+the perilous defile; and, though he repeatedly charged the enemy, and
+drove them back with considerable loss, the second night found him with
+men and horses wearied and wounded, and as little advanced in the
+object of his expedition as on the preceding evening.  From this
+embarrassing position, after a day or two more spent in unprofitable
+hostilities, he was surprised by a summons from his brother to return
+with all expedition to Cuzco, which was now besieged by the enemy!
+
+Without delay, he began his retreat, recrossed the valley, the recent scene
+of slaughter, swam the river Yucay, and, by a rapid countermarch,
+closely followed by the victorious enemy, who celebrated their success
+with songs or rather yells of triumph, he arrived before nightfall in sight
+of the capital.
+
+But very different was the sight which there met his eye from what he
+had beheld on leaving it a few days before.  The extensive environs, as
+far as the eye could reach, were occupied by a mighty host, which an
+indefinite computation swelled to the number of two hundred thousand
+warriors.5  The dusky lines of the Indian battalions stretched out to the
+very verge of the mountains; while, all around, the eye saw only the
+crests and waving banners of chieftains, mingled with rich panoplies of
+feather-work, which reminded some few who had served under Cortes of
+the military costume of the Aztecs.  Above all rose a forest of long lances
+and battle-axes edged with copper, which, tossed to and fro in wild
+confusion, glittered in the rays of the setting sun, like light playing on the
+surface of a dark and troubled ocean.  It was the first time that the
+Spaniards had beheld an Indian army in all its terrors; such an army as
+the Incas led to battle, when the banner of the Sun was borne triumphant
+over the land.
+
+Yet the bold hearts of the cavaliers, if for a moment dismayed by the
+sight, soon gathered courage as they closed up their files, and prepared to
+open a way for themselves through the beleaguering host.  But the enemy
+seemed to shun the encounter; and, falling back at their approach, left a
+free entrance into the capital.  The Peruvians were, probably, not willing
+to draw as many victims as they could into the toils, conscious that, the
+greater the number, the sooner they would become sensible to the
+approaches of famine.6
+
+Hernando Pizarro greeted his brother with no little satisfaction; for he
+brought an important addition to his force, which now, when all were
+united, did not exceed two hundred, horse and foot,7 besides a thousand
+Indian auxiliaries; an insignificant number, in comparison with the
+countless multitudes that were swarming at the gates.  That night was
+passed by the Spaniards with feelings of the deepest anxiety, as they
+looked forward with natural apprehension to the morrow.  It was early in
+February, 1536, when the siege of Cuzco commenced; a siege
+memorable as calling out the most heroic displays of Indian and
+European valor, and bringing the two races in deadlier conflict with each
+other than had yet occurred in the conquest of Peru.
+
+The numbers of the enemy seemed no less formidable during the night
+than by the light of day; far and wide their watch-fires were to be seen
+gleaming over valley and hill-top, as thickly scattered, says an
+eyewitness, as "the stars of heaven in a cloudless summer night." 8
+Before these fires had become pale in the light of the morning, the
+Spaniards were roused by the hideous clamor of conch, trumpet, and
+atabal, mingled with the fierce war-cries of the barbarians, as they let off
+volleys of missiles of every description, most of which fell harmless
+within the city.  But others did more serious execution.  These were
+burning arrows, and redhot stones wrapped in cotton that had been
+steeped in some bituminous substance, which, scattered long trains of
+light through the air, fell on the roofs of the buildings, and speedily set
+them on fire.9  These roofs, even of the better sort of edifices, were
+uniformly of thatch, and were ignited as easily as tinder.  In a moment
+the flames burst forth from the most opposite quarters of the city.  They
+quickly communicated to the wood-work in the interior of the buildings,
+and broad sheets of flame mingled with smoke rose up towards the
+heavens, throwing a fearful glare over every object.  The rarefied
+atmosphere heightened the previous impetuosity of the wind, which,
+fanning the rising flames, they rapidly spread from dwelling to dwelling,
+till the whole fiery mass, swayed to and fro by the tempest, surged and
+roared with the fury of a volcano.  The heat became intense, and clouds
+of smoke, gathering like a dark pall over the city, produced a sense of
+suffocation and almost blindness in those quarters where it was driven by
+the winds.10
+
+The Spaniards were encamped in the great square, partly under awnings,
+and partly in the hall of the Inca Viracocha, on the ground since covered
+by the cathedral.  Three times in the course of that dreadful day, the roof
+of the building was on fire; but, although no efforts were made to
+extinguish it, the flames went out without doing much injury.  This
+miracle was ascribed to the Blessed Virgin, who was distinctly seen by
+several of the Christian combatants, hovering over the spot on which was
+to be raised the temple dedicated to her worship.11
+
+Fortunately, the open space around Hernando's little company separated
+them from the immediate scene of conflagration.  It afforded a means of
+preservation similar to that employed by the American hunter, who
+endeavors to surround himself with a belt of wasted land, when
+overtaken by a conflagration in the prairies.  All day the fire continued to
+rage, and at night the effect was even more appalling; for by the lurid
+flames the unfortunate Spaniards could read the consternation depicted
+in each others' ghastly countenances, while in the suburbs, along the
+slopes of the surrounding hills, might be seen the throng of besiegers,
+gazing with fiendish exultation on the work of destruction.  High above
+the town to the north, rose the gray fortress, which now showed ruddy in
+the glare, looking grimly down on the ruins of the fair city which it was
+no longer able to protect; and in the distance were to be discerned the
+shadowy forms of the Andes, soaring up in solitary grandeur into the
+regions of eternal silence, far beyond the wild tumult that raged so
+fearfully at their base.
+
+Such was the extent of the city, that it was several days before the fury of
+the fire was spent.  Tower and temple, hut, palace, and hall, went down
+before it.  Fortunately, among the buildings that escaped were the
+magnificent House of the Sun and the neighboring Convent of the
+Virgins.  Their insulated position afforded the means, of which the
+Indians from motives of piety were willing to avail themselves, for their
+preservation.12  Full one half of the capital, so long the chosen seat of
+Western civilization, the pride of the Incas, and the bright abode of their
+tutelar deity, was laid in ashes by the hands of his own children.  It was
+some consolation for them to reflect, that it burned over the heads of its
+conquerors,-their trophy and their tomb!
+
+During the long period of the conflagration, the Spaniards made no
+attempt to extinguish the flames.  Such an attempt would have availed
+nothing.  Yet they did not tamely submit to the assaults of the enemy,
+and they sallied forth from time to time to repel them.  But the fallen
+timbers and scattered rubbish of the houses presented serious
+impediments to the movements of horse; and, when these were partially
+cleared away by the efforts of the infantry and the Indian allies, the
+Peruvians planted stakes and threw barricades across the path, which
+proved equally embarrassing.13  To remove them was a work of time
+and no little danger, as the pioneers were exposed to the whole brunt of
+the enemy's archery, and the aim of the Peruvian was sure.  When at
+length the obstacles were cleared away, and a free course was opened to
+the cavalry, they rushed with irresistible impetuosity on their foes, who,
+falling back in confusion, were cut to pieces by the riders, or pierced
+through with their lances.  The slaughter on these occasions was great;
+but the Indians, nothing disheartened, usually returned with renewed
+courage to the attack, and, while fresh reinforcements met the Spaniards
+in front, others, lying in ambush among the ruins, threw the troops into
+disorder by assailing them on the flanks.  The Peruvians were expert
+both with bow and sling; and these encounters, notwithstanding the
+superiority of their arms, cost the Spaniards more lives than in their
+crippled condition they could afford to spare,--a loss poorly compensated
+by that of tenfold the number of the enemy.  One weapon, peculiar to
+South American warfare, was used with some effect by the Peruvians.
+This was the lasso, a long rope with a noose at the end, which they
+adroitly threw over the rider, or entangled with it the legs of his horse, so
+as to bring them both to the ground.  More than one Spaniard fell into the
+hands of the enemy by this expedient.14
+
+Thus harassed, sleeping on their arms, with their horses picketed by their
+side, ready for action at any and every hour, the Spaniards had no rest by
+night or by day.  To add to their troubles, the fortress which overlooked
+the city, and completely commanded the great square in which they were
+quartered, had been so feebly garrisoned in their false sense of security,
+that, on the approach of the Peruvians, it had been abandoned without a
+blow in its defence.  It was now occupied by a strong body of the enemy,
+who, from his elevated position, sent down showers of missiles, from
+time to time, which added greatly to the annoyance of the besieged.
+Bitterly did their captain now repent the improvident security which had
+led him to neglect a post so important.
+
+Their distresses were still further aggravated by the rumors, which
+continually reached their ears, of the state of the country.  The rising, it
+was said, was general throughout the land; the Spaniards living on their
+insulated plantations had all been massacred; Lima and Truxillo and the
+principal cities were besieged, and must soon fall into the enemy's hands;
+the Peruvians were in possession of the passes, and all communications
+were cut off, so that no relief was to be expected from their countrymen
+on the coast.  Such were the dismal stories, (which, however
+exaggerated, had too much foundation in fact,) that now found their way
+into the city from the camp of the besiegers.  And to give greater credit
+to the rumors, eight or ten human heads were rolled into the plaza, in
+whose blood-stained visages the Spaniards recognized with horror the
+lineaments of their companions, who they knew had been dwelling in
+solitude on their estates! 15
+
+Overcome by these horrors, many were for abandoning the place at once,
+as no longer tenable, and for opening a passage for themselves to the
+coast with their own good swords.  There was a daring in the enterprise
+which had a charm for the adventurous spirit of the Castilian.  Better,
+they said, to perish in a manly struggle for life, than to die thus
+ignominiously, pent up like foxes in their holes, to be suffocated by the
+hunter!
+
+But the Pizarros, De Rojas, and some other of the principal cavaliers,
+refused to acquiesce in a measure which, they said, must cover them with
+dishonor.16  Cuzco had been the great prize for which they had
+contended; it was the ancient seat of empire, and, though now in ashes,
+would again rise from its ruins as glorious as before.  All eyes would be
+turned on them, as its defenders, and their failure, by giving confidence
+to the enemy, might decide the fate of their countrymen throughout the
+land.  They were placed in that post as the post of honor, and better
+would it be to die there than to desert it.
+
+There seemed, indeed, no alternative; for every avenue to escape was cut
+off by an enemy who had perfect knowledge of the country, and
+possession of all its passes.  But this state of things could not last long.
+The Indian could not, in the long run, contend with the white man.  The
+spirit of insurrection would die out of itself.  Their great army would
+melt away, unaccustomed as the natives were to the privations incident to
+a protracted campaign.  Reinforcements would be daily coming in from
+the colonies; and, if the Castilians would be but true to themselves for a
+season, they would be relieved by their own countrymen, who would
+never suffer them to die like outcasts among the mountains.
+
+The cheering words and courageous bearing of the cavaliers went to the
+hearts of their followers; for the soul of the Spaniard readily responded
+to the call of honor, if not of humanity.  All now agreed to stand by their
+leader to the last.  But, if they would remain longer in their present
+position, it was absolutely necessary to dislodge the enemy from the
+fortress; and, before venturing on this dangerous service, Hernando
+Pizarro resolved to strike such a blow as should intimidate the besiegers
+from further attempt to molest his present quarters.
+
+He communicated his plan of attack to his officers; and, forming his little
+troop into three divisions, he placed them under command of his brother
+Gonzalo, of Gabriel de Rojas, an officer in whom he reposed great
+confidence, and Hernan Ponce de Leon.  The Indian pioneers were sent
+forward to clear away the rubbish, and the several divisions moved
+simultaneously up the principal avenues towards the camp of the
+besiegers.  Such stragglers as they met in their way were easily cut to
+pieces, and the three bodies, bursting impetuously on the disordered lines
+of the Peruvians, took them completely by surprise.  For some moments
+there was little resistance, and the slaughter was terrible.  But the Indians
+gradually rallied, and, coming into something like order, returned to the
+fight with the courage of men who had long been familiar with danger.
+They fought hand to hand with their copper-headed war-clubs and pole-
+axes, while a storm of darts, stones, and arrows rained on the well-
+defended bodies of the Christians.
+
+The barbarians showed more discipline than was to have been expected;
+for which, it is said, they were indebted to some Spanish prisoners, from
+several of whom, the Inca, having generously spared their lives, took
+occasional lessons in the art of war.  The Peruvians had, also, learned to
+manage with some degree of skill the weapons of their conquerors; and
+they were seen armed with bucklers, helmets, and swords of European
+workmanship, and even, in a few instances, mounted on the horses which
+they had taken from the white men.17  The young Inca, in particular,
+accoutred in the European fashion, rode a war-horse which he managed
+with considerable address, and, with a long lance in his hand led on his
+followers to the attack.--This readiness to adopt the superior arms and
+tactics of the Conquerors intimates a higher civilization than that which
+belonged to the Aztec, who, in his long collision with the Spaniards, was
+never so far divested of his terrors for the horse as to venture to mount
+him.
+
+But a few days or weeks of training were not enough to give familiarity
+with weapons, still less with tactics, so unlike those to which the
+Peruvians had been hitherto accustomed.  The fight, on the present
+occasion, though hotly contested, was not of long duration.  After a
+gallant struggle in which the natives threw themselves fearlessly on the
+horse men, endeavoring to tear them from their saddles, they were
+obliged to give way before the repeated shock of their chargers.  Many
+were trampled under foot, others cut down by the Spanish broadswords,
+while the arquebusiers, supporting the cavalry, kept up a running fire that
+did terrible execution on the flanks and rear of the fugitives.  At length,
+sated with slaughter, and trusting that the chastisement he had inflicted
+on the enemy would secure him from further annoyance for the present,
+the Castilian general drew back his forces to their quarters in the
+capital.18
+
+His next step was the recovery of the citadel.  It was an enterprise of
+danger.  The fortress, which overlooked the northern section of the city,
+stood high on a rocky eminence, so steep as to be inaccessible on this
+quarter, where it was defended only by a single wall.  Towards the open
+country, it was more easy of approach; but there it was protected by two
+semicircular walls, each about twelve hundred feet in length, and of great
+thickness.  They were built of massive stones, or rather rocks, put
+together without cement, so as to form a kind of rustic-work.  The level
+of the ground between these lines of defence was raised up so as to
+enable the garrison to discharge its arrows at the assailants, while their
+own persons were protected by the parapet.  Within the interior wall was
+the fortress, consisting of three strong towers, one of great height, which,
+with a smaller one, was now held by the enemy, under the command of
+an Inca noble, a warrior of well-tried valor, prepared to defend it to the
+last extremity.
+
+The perilous enterprise was intrusted by Hernando Pizarro to his brother
+Juan, a cavalier in whose bosom burned the adventurous spirit of a
+knight-errant of romance.  As the fortress was to be approached through
+the mountain passes, it became necessary to divert the enemy's attention
+to another quarter.  A little while before sunset Juan Pizarro left the city
+with a picked corps of horsemen, and took a direction opposite to that of
+the fortress, that the besieging army might suppose the object was a
+foraging expedition.  But secretly countermarching in the night, he
+fortunately found the passes unprotected, and arrived before the outer
+wall of the fortress, without giving the alarm to the garrison.19
+
+The entrance was through a narrow opening in the centre of the rampart;
+but this was now closed up with heavy stones, that seemed to form one
+solid work with the rest of the masonry.  It was an affair of time to
+dislodge these huge masses, in such a manner as not to rouse the
+garrison.  The Indian nations, who rarely attacked in the night, were not
+sufficiently acquainted with the art of war even to provide against
+surprise by posting sentinels.  When the task was accomplished, Juan
+Pizarro and his gallant troop rode through the gateway, and advanced
+towards the second parapet.
+
+But their movements had not been conducted so secretly as to escape
+notice, and they now found the interior court swarming with warriors,
+who- as the Spaniards drew near, let off clouds of missiles that
+compelled them to come to a halt.  Juan Pizarro, aware that no time was
+to be lost, ordered one half of his corps to dismount, and, putting himself
+at their head, prepared to make a breach as before in the fortifications.
+He had been wounded some days previously in the jaw, so that, finding
+his helmet caused him pain, he rashly dispensed with it, and trusted for
+protection to his buckler.20  Leading on his men, he encouraged them in
+the work of demolition, in the face of such a storm of stones, javelins,
+and arrows, as might have made the stoutest heart shrink from
+encountering it.  The good mail of the Spaniards did not always protect
+them; but others took the place of such as fell, until a-breach was made,
+and the cavalry, pouring in, rode down all who opposed them.
+
+The parapet was now abandoned, and the enemy, hurrying with
+disorderly flight across the inclosure, took refuge on a kind of platform
+or terrace, commanded by the principal tower.  Here rallying, they shot
+off fresh volleys of missiles against the Spaniards, while the garrison in
+the fortress hurled down fragments of rock and timber on their heads.
+Juan Pizarro, still among the foremost, sprang forward on the terrace,
+cheering on his men by his voice and example; but at this moment he
+was struck by a large stone on the head, not then protected by his
+buckler, and was stretched on the ground.  The dauntless chief still
+continued to animate his followers by his voice, till the terrace was
+carried, and its miserable defenders were put to the sword.  His
+sufferings were then too much for him, and he was removed to the town
+below, where, notwithstanding every exertion to save him, he survived
+the injury but a fortnight, and died in great agony.21--To say that he was
+a Pizarro is enough to attest his claim to valor.  But it is his praise, that
+his valor was tempered by courtesy.  His own nature appeared mild by
+contrast with the haughty temper of his brothers, and his manners made
+him a favorite of the army.  He had served in the conquest of Peru from
+the first, and no name on the roll of its conquerors is less tarnished by the
+reproach of cruelty, or stands higher in all the attributes of a true and
+valiant knight.22
+
+Though deeply sensible to his brother's disaster, Hernando Pizarro saw
+that no time was to be lost in profiting by the advantages already gained.
+Committing the charge of the town to Gonzalo, he put himself at the
+head of the assailants, and laid vigorous siege to the fortresses.
+
+One surrendered after a short resistance.  The other and more formidable
+of the two still held out under the brave Inca noble who commanded it.
+He was a man of an athletic frame, and might be seen striding along the
+battlements, armed with a Spanish buckler and cuirass, and in his hand
+wielding a formidable mace, garnished with points or knobs of copper.
+With this terrible weapon he struck down all who attempted to force a
+passage into the fortress.  Some of his own followers who proposed a
+surrender he is said to have slain with his own hand.  Hernando prepared
+to carry the place by escalade.  Ladders were planted against the walls,
+but no sooner did a Spaniard gain the topmost round, than he was hurled
+to the ground by the strong arm of the Indian warrior.  His activity was
+equal to his strength; and he seemed to be at every point the moment that
+his presence was needed.
+
+The Spanish commander was filled with admiration at this display of
+valor; for he could admire valor even in an enemy.  He gave orders that
+the chief should not be injured, but be taken alive, if possible.23  This
+was not easy.  At length, numerous ladders having been planted against
+the tower, the Spaniards scaled it on several quarters at the same time,
+and, leaping into the place, overpowered the few combatants who still
+made a show of resistance.  But the Inca chieftain was not to be taken;
+and, finding further resistance ineffectual, he sprang to the edge of the
+battlements, and, casting away his war-club, wrapped his mantle around
+him and threw himself headlong from the summit.24  He died like an
+ancient Roman.  He had struck his last stroke for the freedom of his
+country, and he scorned to survive her dishonor.--The Castilian
+commander left a small force in garrison to secure his conquest, and
+returned in triumph to his quarters.
+
+Week after week rolled away, and no relief came to the beleaguered
+Spaniards.  They had long since begun to feel the approaches of famine.
+Fortunately, they were provided with water from the streams which
+flowed through the city.  But, though they had well husbanded their
+resources, their provisions were exhausted, and they had for some time
+depended on such scanty supplies of grain as they could gather from the
+ruined magazines and dwellings, mostly consumed by the fire, or from
+the produce of some successful foray.25  This latter resource was
+attended with no little difficulty; for every expedition led to a fierce
+encounter with the enemy, which usually cost the lives of several
+Spaniards, and inflicted a much heavier injury on the Indian allies.  Yet it
+was at least one good result of such loss, that it left fewer to provide for.
+But the whole number of the besieged was so small, that any loss greatly
+increased the difficulties of defence by the remainder.
+
+As months passed away without bringing any tidings of their
+countrymen, their minds were haunted with still gloomier apprehensions
+as to their fate.  They well knew that the governor would make every
+effort to rescue them from their desperate condition.  That he had not
+succeeded in this made it probable, that his own situation was no better
+than theirs, or, perhaps, he and his followers had already fallen victims to
+the fury of the insurgents.  It was a dismal thought, that they alone were
+left in the land, far from all human succour, to perish miserably by the
+hands of the barbarians among the mountains.
+
+Yet the actual state of things, though gloomy in the extreme, was not
+quite so desperate as their imaginations had painted it.  The insurrection,
+it is true, had been general throughout the country, at least that portion of
+it occupied by the Spaniards.  It had been so well concerted, that it broke
+out almost simultaneously, and the Conquerors, who were living in
+careless security on their estates, had been massacred to the number of
+several hundreds.  An Indian force had sat down before Xauxa, and a
+considerable army had occupied the valley of Rimac and laid siege to
+Lima.  But the country around that capital was of an open, level
+character, very favorable to the action of cavalry.  Pizarro no sooner saw
+himself menaced by the hostile array, than he sent such a force against
+the Peruvians as speedily put them to flight; and, following up his
+advantage, he inflicted on them such a severe chastisement, that,
+although they still continued to hover in the distance and cut off his
+communications with the interior, they did not care to trust themselves
+on the other side of the Rimac.
+
+The accounts that the Spanish commander now received of the state of
+the country filled him with the most serious alarm.  He was particularly
+solicitous for the fate of the garrison at Cuzco, and he made repeated
+efforts to relieve that capital.  Four several detachments, amounting to
+more than four hundred men in all, half of them cavalry, were sent by
+him at different times, under some of his bravest officers.  But none of
+them reached their place of destination.  The wily natives permitted them
+to march into the interior of the country, until they were fairly entangled
+in the passes of the Cordilleras.  They then enveloped them with greatly
+superior numbers, and, occupying the heights, showered down their fatal
+missiles on the heads of the Spaniards, or crushed them under the weight
+of fragments of rock which they rolled on them from the mountains.  In
+some instances, the whole detachment was cut off to a man.  In others, a
+few stragglers only survived to return and tell the bloody tale to their
+countrymen at Lima.26
+
+Pizarro was now filled with consternation.  He had the most dismal
+forebodings of the fate of the Spaniards dispersed throughout the
+country, and even doubted the possibility of maintaining his own
+foothold in it without assistance from abroad.  He despatched a vessel to
+the neighboring colony at Truxillo, urging them to abandon the place,
+with all their effects, and to repair to him at Lima.  The measure was,
+fortunately, not adopted.  Many of his men were for availing themselves
+of the vessels which rode at anchor in the port to make their escape from
+the country at once, and take refuge in Panama.  Pizarro would not
+hearken to so dastardly a counsel, which involved the desertion of the
+brave men in the interior who still looked to him for protection.  He cut
+off the hopes of these timid spirits by despatching all the vessels then in
+port on a very different mission.  He sent letters by them to the governors
+of Panama, Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Mexico, representing the gloomy
+state of his affairs, and invoking their aid.  His epistle to Alvarado, then
+established at Guatemala, is preserved.  He conjures him by every
+sentiment of honor and patriotism to come to his assistance, and this
+before it was too late.  Without assistance, the Spaniards could no longer
+maintain their footing in Peru, and that great empire would be lost to the
+Castilian Crown.  He finally engages to share with him such conquests as
+they may make with their united arms.27--Such concessions, to the very
+man whose absence from the country, but a few months before, Pizarro
+would have been willing to secure at almost any price, are sufficient
+evidence of the extremity of his distress.  The succours thus earnestly
+solicited arrived in time, not to quell the Indian insurrection, but to aid
+him in a struggle quite as formidable with his own countrymen.
+
+It was now August.  More than five months had elapsed since the
+commencement of the siege of Cuzco, yet the Peruvian legions still lay
+encamped around the city.  The siege had been protracted much beyond
+what was usual in Indian warfare, and showed the resolution of the
+natives to exterminate the white men.  But the Peruvians themselves had
+for some time been straitened by the want of provisions.  It was no easy
+matter to feed so numerous a host; and the obvious resource of the
+magazines of grain, so providently prepared by the Incas, did them but
+little service, since their contents had been most prodigally used, and
+even dissipated, by the Spaniards, on their first occupation of the
+country.28  The season for planting had now arrived, and the Inca well
+knew, that, if his followers were to neglect it, they would be visited by a
+scourge even more formidable than their invaders.  Disbanding the
+greater part of his forces, therefore, he ordered them to withdraw to their
+homes, and, after the labors of the field were over, to return and resume
+the blockade of the capital.  The Inca reserved a considerable force to
+attend on his own person, with which he retired to Tambo, a strongly
+fortified place south of the valley of Yucay, the favorite residence of his
+ancestors.  He also posted a large body as a corps of observation in the
+environs of Cuzco, to watch the movements of the enemy, and to
+intercept supplies.
+
+The Spaniards beheld with joy the mighty host, which had so long
+encompassed the city, now melting away.  They were not slow in
+profiting by the circumstance, and Hernando Pizarro took advantage of
+the temporary absence to send out foraging parties to scour the country,
+and bring back supplies to his famishing soldiers.  In this he was so
+successful that on one occasion no less than two thousand head of cattle-
+-the Peruvian sheep--were swept away from the Indian plantations and
+brought safely to Cuzco.29 This placed the army above all apprehensions
+on the score of want for the present.
+
+Yet these forays were made at the point of the lance, and many a
+desperate contest ensued, in which the best blood of the Spanish chivalry
+was shed.  The contests, indeed, were not confined to large bodies of
+troops, but skirmishes took place between smaller parties, which
+sometimes took the form of personal combats.  Nor were the parties so
+unequally matched as might have been supposed in these single
+rencontres; and the Peruvian warrior, with his sling, his bow, and his
+lasso, proved no contemptible antagonist for the mailed horseman, whom
+he sometimes even ventured to encounter, hand to hand, with his
+formidable battle-axe.  The ground around Cuzco became a battle-field,
+like the vega of Granada, in which Christian and Pagan displayed the
+characteristics of their peculiar warfare; and many a deed of heroism was
+performed, which wanted only the song of the minstrel to shed around it
+a glory like that which rested on the last days of the Moslem of Spain.30
+
+But Hernando Pizarro was not content to act wholly on the defensive;
+and he meditated a bold stroke, by which at once to put an end to the
+war.  This was the capture of the Inca Manco, whom he hoped to surprise
+in his quarters at Tambo.
+
+For this service he selected about eighty of his best-mounted cavalry,
+with a small body of foot; and, making a large detour through the less
+frequented mountain defiles, he arrived before Tambo without alarm to
+the enemy.  He found the place more strongly fortified than he had
+imagined.  The palace, or rather fortress, of the Incas stood on a lofty
+eminence, the steep sides of which, on the quarter where the Spaniards
+approached, were cut into terraces, defended by strong walls of stone and
+sunburnt brick.31  The place was impregnable on this side.  On the
+opposite, it looked towards the Yucay, and the ground descended by a
+gradual declivity towards the plain through which rolled its deep but
+narrow current.32  This was the quarter on which to make the assault.
+
+Crossing the stream without much difficulty, the Spanish commander
+advanced up the smooth glacis with as little noise as possible.  The
+morning light had hardly broken on the mountains; and Pizarro, as he
+drew near the outer defences, which, as in the fortress of Cuzco,
+consisted of a stone parapet of great strength drawn round the inclosure,
+moved quickly forward, confident that the garrison were still buried in
+sleep.  But thousands of eyes were upon him; and as the Spaniards came
+within bowshot, a multitude of dark forms suddenly rose above the
+rampart, while the Inca, with his lance in hand, was seen on horseback in
+the inclosure, directing the operations of his troops.33  At the same
+moment the air was darkened with innumerable missiles, stones, javelins,
+and arrows, which fell like a hurricane on the troops, and the mountains
+rang to the wild war-whoop of the enemy.  The Spaniards, taken by
+surprise, and many of them sorely wounded, were staggered; and, though
+they quickly rallied, and made two attempts to renew the assault, they
+were at length obliged to fall back, unable to endure the violence of the
+storm.  To add to their confusion, the lower level in their rear was
+flooded by the waters, which the natives, by opening the sluices, had
+diverted from the bed of the river, so that their position was no longer
+tenable.34  A council of war was then held, and it was decided to
+abandon the attack as desperate, and to retreat in as good order as
+possible.
+
+The day had been consumed in these ineffectual operations; and
+Hernando, under cover of the friendly darkness, sent forward his infantry
+and baggage, taking command of the centre himself, and trusting the rear
+to his brother Gonzalo.  The river was happily recrossed without
+accident, although the enemy, now confident in their strength, rushed out
+of their defences, and followed up the retreating Spaniards, whom they
+annoyed with repeated discharges of arrows.  More than once they
+pressed so closely on the fugitives, that Gonzalo and his chivalry were
+compelled to turn and make one of those desperate charges that
+effectually punished their audacity, and stayed the tide of pursuit.  Yet
+the victorious foe still hung on the rear of the discomfited cavaliers, till
+they had emerged from the mountain passes, and come within sight of
+the blackened walls of the capital.  It was the last triumph of the Inca.35
+
+
+Among the manuscripts for which I am indebted to the liberality of that
+illustrious Spanish scholar, the lamented Navarrete, the most remarkable,
+in connection with this history, is the work of Pedro Pizarro; Relaciones
+del Descubrimiento y Conquista de los Reynos del Peru.  But a single
+copy of this important document appears to have been preserved, the
+existence of which was but little known till it came into the hands of
+Senior de Navarrete; though it did not escape the indefatigable
+researches of Herrera, as is evident from the mention of several
+incidents, some of them having personal relation to Pedro Pizarro
+himself, which the historian of the Indies could have derived through no
+other channel.  The manuscript has lately been given to the public as part
+of the inestimable collection of historical documents now in process of
+publication at Madrid, under auspices which, we may trust, will insure its
+success.  As the printed work did not reach me till my present labors
+were far advanced, I have preferred to rely on the manuscript copy for
+the brief remainder of my narrative, as I had been compelled to do for
+the previous portion of it.
+
+Nothing, that I am aware of, is known respecting the author, but what is
+to be gleaned from incidental notices of himself in his own history.  He
+was born at Toledo in Estremadura, the fruitful province of adventurers
+to the New World, whence the family of Francis Pizarro, to which Pedro
+was allied, also emigrated.  When that chief came over to undertake the
+conquest of Peru, after receiving his commission from the emperor in
+1529, Pedro Pizarro, then only fifteen years of age, accompanied him in
+quality of page.  For three years he remained attached to the house hold
+of his commander, and afterwards continued to follow his banner as a
+soldier of fortune.  He was present at most of the memorable events of
+the Conquest, and seems to have possessed in a great degree the
+confidence of his leader, who employed him on some difficult missions,
+in which he displayed coolness and gallantry.  It is true, we must take the
+author's own word for all this.  But he tells his exploits with an air of
+honesty, and without any extraordinary effort to set them off in undue
+relief.  He speaks of himself in the third person, and, as his manuscript
+was not intended solely for posterity, he would hardly have ventured
+on great misrepresentation, where fraud could so easily have been
+exposed.
+
+After the Conquest, our author still remained attached to the fortunes of
+his commander, and stood by him through all the troubles which ensued;
+and on the assassination of that chief, he withdrew to Arequipa, to enjoy
+in quiet the repartimiento of lands and Indians, which had been bestowed
+on him as the recompense of his services.  He was there on the breaking
+out of the great rebellion under Gonzalo Pizarro.  But he was true to his
+allegiance, and chose rather, as he tells us, to be false to his name and his
+lineage than to his loyalty.  Gonzalo, in retaliation, seized his estates, and
+would have proceeded to still further extremities against him, when
+Pedro Pizarro had fallen into his hands at Lima, but for the interposition
+of his lieutenant, the famous Francisco de Carbajal, to whom the
+chronicler had once the good fortune to render an important service.
+This, Carbajal requited by sparing his life on two occasions,--but on the
+second coolly remarked, "No man has a right to a brace of lives; and if
+you fall into my hands a third time, God only can grant you another."
+Happily, Pizarro did not find occasion to put this menace to the test.
+After the pacification of the country, he again retired to Arequipa; but,
+from the querulous tone of his remarks, it would seem he was not fully
+reinstated in the possessions he had sacrificed by his loyal devotion to
+government.  The last we hear of him is in 1571, the date which he
+assigns as that of the completion of his history.
+
+Pedro Pizarro's narrative covers the whole ground of the Conquest, from
+the date of the first expedition that sallied out from Panama, to the
+troubles that ensued on the departure of President Gasca.  The first part
+of the work was gathered from the testimony of others, and, of course,
+cannot claim the distinction of rising to the highest class of evidence.
+But all that follows the return of Francis Pizarro from Castile, all, in
+short, which constitutes the conquest of the country, may be said to be
+reported on his own observation, as an eyewitness and an actor.  This
+gives to his narrative a value to which it could have no pretensions on the
+score of its literary execution.  Pizarro was a soldier, with as little
+education, probably, as usually falls to those who have been trained from
+youth in this rough school,--the most unpropitious in the world to both
+mental and moral progress.  He had the good sense, moreover, not to
+aspire to an excellence which he could not reach.  There is no ambition
+of fine writing in his chronicle; there are none of those affectations of
+ornament which only make more glaring the beggarly condition of him
+who assumes them.  His object was simply to tell the story of the
+Conquest, as he had seen it.  He was to deal with facts, not with words,
+which he wisely left to those who came into the field after the laborers
+had quitted it, to garner up what they could at second hand.
+
+Pizarro's situation may be thought to have necessarily exposed him to
+party influences, and thus given an undue bias to his narrative.  It is not
+difficult, indeed, to determine under whose banner he had enlisted.  He
+writes like a partisan, and yet like an honest one, who is no further
+warped from a correct judgment of passing affairs than must necessarily
+come from preconceived opinions.  There is no management to work a
+conviction in his reader on this side or the other, still less any obvious
+perversion of fact.  He evidently believes what he says, and this is the
+great point to be desired.  We can make allowance for the natural
+influences of his position.  Were he more impartial than this, the critic of
+the present day, by making allowance for a greater amount of prejudice
+and partiality, might only be led into error.
+
+Pizarro is not only independent, but occasionally caustic in his
+condemnation of those under whom he acted.  This is particularly the
+case where their measures bear too unfavorably on his own interests, or
+those of the army.  As to the unfortunate natives, he no more regards
+their sufferings than the Jews of old did those of the Philistines, whom
+they considered as delivered up to their swords, and whose lands they
+regarded as their lawful heritage.  There is no mercy shown by the hard
+Conqueror in his treatment of the infidel.
+
+Pizarro was the representative of the age in which he lived.  Yet it is too
+much to cast such obloquy on the age.  He represented more truly the
+spirit of the fierce warriors who overturned the dynasty of the Incas.  He
+was not merely a crusader, fighting to extend the empire of the Cross
+over the darkened heathen.  Gold was his great object; the estimate by
+which he judged of the value of the Conquest; the recompense that he
+asked for a life of toil and danger.  It was with these golden visions, far
+more than with visions of glory, above all, of celestial glory, that the
+Peruvian adventurer fed his gross and worldly imagination.  Pizarro did
+not rise above his caste.  Neither did he rise above it in a mental view,
+any more than in a moral.  His history displays no great penetration, or
+vigor and comprehension of thought.  It is the work of a soldier, telling
+simply his tale of blood.  Its value is, that it is told by him who acted it.
+And this, to the modern compiler, renders it of higher worth than far
+abler productions at second hand.  It is the rude ore, which, submitted to
+the regular process of purification and refinement, may receive the
+current stamp that fits it for general circulation.
+
+Another authority, to whom I have occasionally referred, and whose
+writings still slumber in manuscript, is the Licentiate Fernando
+Montesinos.  He is, in every respect, the opposite of the military
+chronicler who has just come under our notice.  He flourished about a
+century after the Conquest.  Of course, the value of his writings as an
+authority for historical facts must depend on his superior opportunities
+for consulting original documents.  For this his advantages were great.
+He was twice sent in an official capacity to Peru, which required him to
+visit the different parts of the country.  These two missions occupied
+fifteen years; so that, while his position gave him access to the colonial
+archives and literary repositories, he was enabled to verify his
+researches, to some extent, by actual observation of the country.
+
+The result was his two historical works, Memorias Antiguas Historiales
+del Peru, and his Annales, sometimes cited in these pages.  The former is
+taken up with the early history of the country,--very early, it must be
+admitted, since it goes back to the deluge.  The first part of this treatise is
+chiefly occupied with an argument to show the identity of Peru with the
+golden Ophir of Solomon's time!  This hypothesis, by no means original
+with the author, may give no unfair notion of the character of his mind.
+In the progress of his work he follows down the line of Inca princes,
+whose exploits, and names even, by no means coincide with Garcilasso's
+catalogue; a circumstance, however, far from establishing their
+inaccuracy.  But one will have little doubt of the writer's title to this
+reproach, that reads the absurd legends told in the grave tone of reliance
+by Montesinos, who shared largely in the credulity and the love of the
+marvellous which belong to an earlier and less enlightened age.
+
+These same traits are visible in his Annals, which are devoted
+exclusively to the Conquest.  Here, indeed, the author, after his cloudy
+flight, has descended on firm ground, where gross violations of truth, or,
+at least, of probability, are not to be expected.  But any one who has
+occasion to compare his narrative with that of contemporary writers will
+find frequent cause to distrust it.  Yet Montesinos has one merit.  In his
+extensive researches, he became acquainted with original instruments,
+which he has occasionally transferred to his own pages, and which it
+would be now difficult to meet elsewhere.
+
+His writings have been commended by some of his learned countrymen,
+as showing diligent research and information.  My own experience
+would not assign them a high rank as historical vouchers.  They seem to
+me entitled to little praise, either for the accuracy of their statements, or
+the sagacity of their reflections.  The spirit of cold indifference which
+they manifest to the sufferings of the natives is an odious feature, for
+which there is less apology in a writer of the seventeenth century than in
+one of the primitive Conquerors, whose passions had been inflamed by
+longprotracted hostility.  M. Ternaux-Compans has translated the
+Memorias Antiguas with his usual elegance and precision, for his
+collection of original documents relating to the New World.  He speaks
+in the Preface of doing the same kind office to the Annales, at a future
+time.  I am not aware that he has done this; and I cannot but think that
+the excellent translator may find a better subject for his labors in some of
+the rich collection of the Munoz manuscripts in his possession.
+
+
+
+History of the Conquest of Peru
+
+by William Hickling Prescott
+
+Book 4
+
+Civil Wars Of The Conquerors
+
+Chapter 1
+
+Almagro's March To Chili--Suffering Of The Troops-
+He Returns And Seizes Cuzco--Action Of Abancay-
+Gaspar De Espinosa--Almagro Leaves Cuzco-
+Negotiations With Pizarro
+
+1535--1537
+
+While the events recorded in the preceding chapter were passing, the
+Marshal Almagro was engaged in his memorable expedition to Chili.  He
+had set out, as we have seen, with only part of his forces, leaving his
+lieutenant to follow him with the remainder.  During the first part of the
+way, he profited by the great military road of the Incas, which stretched
+across the table-land far towards the south.  But as he drew near to Chili,
+the Spanish commander became entangled in the defiles of the
+mountains, where no vestige of a road was to be discerned.  Here his
+progress was impeded by all the obstacles which belong to the wild
+scenery of the Cordilleras; deep and ragged ravines, round whose sides a
+slender sheep-path wound up to a dizzy height over the precipices below;
+rivers rushing in fury down the slopes of the mountains, and throwing
+themselves in stupendous cataracts into the yawning abyss; dark forests
+of pine that seemed to have no end, and then again long reaches of
+desolate tableland, without so much as a bush or shrub to shelter the
+shivering traveller from the blast that swept down from the frozen
+summits of the sierra.
+
+The cold was so intense, that many lost the nails of their fingers, their
+fingers themselves, and sometimes their limbs.  Others were blinded by
+the dazzling waste of snow, reflecting the rays of a sun made intolerably
+brilliant in the thin atmosphere of these elevated regions.  Hunger came,
+as usual, in the train of woes; for in these dismal solitudes no vegetation
+that would suffice for the food of man was visible, and no living thing,
+except only the great bird of the Andes, hovering over their heads in
+expectation of his banquet.  This was too frequently afforded by the
+number of wretched Indians, who, unable, from the scantiness of their
+clothing, to encounter the severity of the climate, perished by the way.
+Such was the pressure of hunger, that the miserable survivors fed on the
+dead bodies of their countrymen, and the Spaniards forced a similar
+sustenance from the carcasses of their horses, literally frozen to death in
+the mountain passes.1--Such were the terrible penalties which Nature
+imposed on those who rashly intruded on these her solitary and most
+savage haunts.
+
+Yet their own sufferings do not seem to have touched the hearts of the
+Spaniards with any feeling of compassion for the weaker natives.  Their
+path was everywhere marked by burnt and desolated hamlets, the
+inhabitants of which were compelled to do them service as beasts of
+burden.  They were chained together in gangs of ten or twelve, and no
+infirmity or feebleness of body excused the unfortunate captive from his
+full share of the common toil, till he sometimes dropped dead, in his very
+chains, from mere exhaustion! 2  Alvarado's company are accused of
+having been more cruel than Pizarro's; and many of Almagro's men, it
+may be remembered, were recruited from that source.  The commander
+looked with displeasure, it is said, on these enormities, and did what he
+could to repress them.  Yet he did not set a good example in his own
+conduct, if it be true that he caused no less than thirty Indian chiefs to be
+burnt alive, for the massacre of three of his followers! 3  The heart
+sickens at the recital of such atrocities perpetrated on an unoffending
+people, or, at least, guilty of no other crime than that of defending their
+own soil too well.
+
+There is something in the possession of superior strength most
+dangerous, in a moral view, to its possessor.  Brought in contact with
+semicivilized man, the European, with his endowments and effective
+force so immeasurably superior, holds him as little higher than the brute,
+and as born equally for his service.  He feels that he has a natural right,
+as it were, to his obedience, and that this obedience is to be measured,
+not by the powers of the barbarian, but by the will of his conqueror.
+Resistance becomes a crime to be washed out only in the blood of the
+victim.  The tale of such atrocities is not confined to the Spaniard.
+Wherever the civilized man and the savage have come in contact, in the
+East or in the West, the story has been too often written in blood.
+
+From the wild chaos of mountain scenery the Spaniards emerged on the
+green vale of Coquimbo, about the thirtieth degree of south latitude.
+Here they halted to refresh themselves in its abundant plains, after their
+unexampled sufferings and fatigues.  Meanwhile Almagro despatched an
+officer with a strong party in advance, to ascertain the character of the
+country towards the south.  Not long after, he was cheered by the arrival
+of the remainder of his forces under his lieutenant Rodrigo de Orgonez.
+This was a remarkable person, and intimately connected with the
+subsequent fortunes of Almagro.
+
+He was a native of Oropesa, had been trained in the Italian wars, and
+held the rank of ensign in the army of the Constable of Bourbon at the
+famous sack of Rome.  It was a good school in which to learn his iron
+trade, and to steel the heart against any too ready sensibility to human
+suffering.  Orgonez was an excellent soldier; true to his commander,
+prompt, fearless, and unflinching in the execution of his orders.  His
+services attracted the notice of the Crown, and, shortly after this period,
+he was raised to the rank of Marshal of New Toledo.  Yet it may be
+doubted whether his character did not qualify him for an executive and
+subordinate station rather than for one of higher responsibility.
+
+Almagro received also the royal warrant, conferring on him his new
+powers and territorial jurisdiction.  The instrument had been detained by
+the Pizarros to the very last moment.  His troops, long since disgusted
+with their toilsome and unprofitable march, were now clamorous to
+return.  Cuzco, they said, undoubtedly fell within the limits of his
+government, and it was better to take possession of its comfortable
+quarters than to wander like outcasts in this dreary wilderness.  They
+reminded their commander that thus only could he provide for the
+interests of his son Diego.  This was an illegitimate son of Almagro, on
+whom his father doated with extravagant fondness, justified more than
+usual by the promising character of the youth.
+
+After an absence of about two months, the officer sent on the exploring
+expedition returned, bringing unpromising accounts of the southern
+regions of Chili.  The only land of promise for the Castilian was one that
+teemed with gold.4  He had penetrated to the distance of a hundred
+leagues, to the limits, probably, of the conquests of the Incas on the river
+Maule.5  The Spaniards had fortunately stopped short of the land of
+Arauco, where the blood of their countrymen was soon after to be poured
+out like water, and which still maintains a proud independence amidst
+the general humiliation of the Indian races around it.
+
+Almagro now yielded, with little reluctance, to the renewed importunities
+of the soldiers, and turned his face towards the North.  It is unnecessary
+to follow his march in detail.  Disheartened by the difficulty of the
+mountain passage, he took the road along the coast, which led him across
+the great desert of Atacama.  In crossing this dreary waste, which
+stretches for nearly a hundred leagues to the northern borders of Chili,
+with hardly a green spot in its expanse to relieve the fainting traveller,
+Almagro and his men experienced as great sufferings, though not of the
+same kind, as those which they had encountered in the passes of the
+Cordilleras.  Indeed, the captain would not easily be found at this day,
+who would venture to lead his army across this dreary region.  But the
+Spaniard of the sixteenth century had a strength of limb and a buoyancy
+of spirit which raised him to a contempt of obstacles, almost justifying
+the boast of the historian, that "he contended indifferently, at the same
+time, with man, with the elements, and with famine!" 6
+
+After traversing the terrible desert, Almagro reached the ancient town of
+Arequipa, about sixty leagues from Cuzco.  Here he learned with
+astonishment the insurrection of the Peruvians, and further, that the
+young Inca Manco still lay with a formidable force at no great distance
+from the capital.  He had once been on friendly terms with the Peruvian
+prince, and he now resolved, before proceeding farther, to send an
+embassy to his camp, and arrange an interview with him in the
+neighborhood of Cuzco.
+
+Almagro's emissaries were well received by the Inca, who alleged his
+grounds of complaint against the Pizarros, and named the vale of Yucay
+as the place where he would confer with the marshal.  The Spanish
+commander accordingly resumed his march, and, taking one half of his
+force, whose whole number fell somewhat short of five hundred men, he
+repaired in person to the place of rendezvous; while the remainder of his
+army established their quarters at Urcos, about six leagues from the
+capital.7
+
+The Spaniards in Cuzco, startled by the appearance of this fresh body of
+troops in their neighborhood, doubted, when they learned the quarter
+whence they came, whether it betided them good or evil.  Hernando
+Pizarro marched out of the city with a small force, and, drawing near to
+Urcos, heard with no little uneasiness of Almagro's purpose to insist on
+his pretensions to Cuzco.  Though much inferior in strength to his rival,
+he determined to resist him.
+
+Meanwhile, the Peruvians, who had witnessed the conference between
+the soldiers of the opposite camps, suspected some secret understanding
+between the parties, which would compromise the safety of the Inca.
+They communicated their distrust to Manco, and the latter, adopting the
+same sentiments, or perhaps, from the first, meditating a surprise of the
+Spaniards, suddenly fell upon the latter in the valley of Yucay with a
+body of fifteen thousand men.  But the veterans of Chili were too
+familiar with Indian tactics to be taken by surprise.  And though a sharp
+engagement ensued, which lasted more than an hour, in which Orgonez
+had a horse killed under him, the natives were finally driven back with
+great slaughter, and the Inca was so far crippled by the blow, that he was
+not likely for the present to give further molestation.8
+
+Almagro, now joining the division left at Urcos, saw no further
+impediment to his operations on Cuzco.  He sent, at once, an embassy to
+the municipality of the place, requiring the recognition of him as its
+lawful governor, and presenting at the same time a copy of his
+credentials from the Crown.  But the question of jurisdiction was not one
+easy to be settled, depending, as it did, on a knowledge of the true
+parallels of latitude, not very likely to be possessed by the rude followers
+of Pizarro.  The royal grant had placed under his jurisdiction all the
+country extending two hundred and seventy leagues south of the river at
+Santiago, situated one degree and twenty minutes north of the equator.
+Two hundred and seventy leagues on the meridian, by our measurement,
+would fall more than a degree short of Cuzco, and, indeed, would barely
+include the city of Lima itself.  But the Spanish leagues, of only
+seventeen and a half to a degree,9 would remove the southern boundary
+to nearly half a degree beyond the capital of the Incas, which would thus
+fall within the jurisdiction of Pizarro.10  Yet the division-line ran so
+close to the disputed ground, that the true result might reasonably be
+doubted, where no careful scientific observations had been made to
+obtain it; and each party was prompt to assert, as they always are in such
+cases, that its own claim was clear and unquestionable.11
+
+Thus summoned by Almagro, the authorities of Cuzco, unwilling to give
+umbrage to either of the contending chiefs, decided that they must wait
+until they could take counsel--which they promised to do at once--with
+certain pilots better instructed than themselves in the position of the
+Santiago.  Meanwhile, a truce was arranged between the parties, each
+solemnly engaging to abstain from hostile measures, and to remain quiet
+in their present quarters.
+
+The weather now set in cold and rainy.  Almagro's soldiers, greatly
+discontented with their position, flooded as it was by the waters, were
+quick to discover that Hernando Pizarro was busily employed in
+strengthening himself in the city, contrary to agreement.  They also
+learned with dismay, that a large body of men, sent by the governor from
+Lima, under command of Alonso de Alvarado, was on the march to
+relieve Cuzco.  They exclaimed that they were betrayed, and that the
+truce had been only an artifice to secure their inactivity until the arrival
+of the expected succours.  In this state of excitement, it was not very
+difficult to persuade their commander--too ready to surrender his own
+judgment to the rash advisers around him--to violate the treaty, and take
+possession of the capital.12
+
+Under cover of a dark and stormy night (April 8th, 1537), he entered the
+place without opposition, made himself master of the principal church,
+established strong parties of cavalry at the head of the great avenues to
+prevent surprise, and detached Orgonez with a body of infantry to force
+the dwelling of Hernando Pizarro.  "That captain was lodged with his
+brother Gonzalo in one of the large halls built by the Incas for public
+diversions, with immense doors of entrance that opened on the plaza.  It
+was garrisoned by about twenty soldiers, who, as the gates were burst
+open, stood stoutly to the defence of their leader.  A smart struggle
+ensued, in which some lives were lost, till at length Orgonez, provoked
+by the obstinate resistance, set fire to the combustible roof of the
+building.  It was speedily in flames, and the burning rafters falling on the
+heads of the inmates, they forced their reluctant leader to an
+unconditional surrender.  Scarcely had the Spaniards left the building,
+when the whole roof fell in with a tremendous crash.13
+
+Almagro was now master of Cuzco.  He ordered the Pizarros, with
+fifteen or twenty of the principal cavaliers, to be secured and placed in
+confinement.  Except so far as required for securing his authority, he
+does not seem to have been guilty of acts of violence to the
+inhabitants,14 and he installed one of Pizarro's most able officers,
+Gabriel de Rojas, in the government of the city.  The municipality,
+whose eyes were now open to the validity of Almagro's pretensions,
+made no further scruple to recognize his title to Cuzco.
+
+The marshal's first step was to send a message to Alonso de Alvarado's
+camp, advising that officer of his occupation of the city, and requiring
+his obedience to him as its legitimate master.  Alvarado was lying, with a
+body of five hundred men, horse and foot, at Xauxa, about thirteen
+leagues from the capital.  He had been detached several months
+previously for the relief of Cuzco; but had, most unaccountably, and, as
+it proved, most unfortunately for the Peruvian capital, remained at Xauxa
+with the alleged motive of protecting that settlement and the surrounding
+country against the insurgents.15  He now showed himself loyal to his
+commander; and, when Almagro's ambassadors reached his camp, he put
+them in irons, and sent advice of what had been done to the governor at
+Lima.
+
+Almagro, offended by the detention of his emissaries, prepared at once to
+march against Alonso de Alvarado, and take more effectual means to
+bring him to submission.  His lieutenant, Orgonez, strongly urged him
+before his departure to strike off the heads of the Pizarros, alleging,
+"that, while they lived, his commander's life would never be safe"; and
+concluding with the Spanish proverb, "Dead men never bite." 16  But the
+marshal, though he detested Hernando in his heart, shrunk from so
+violent a measure; and, independently of other considerations, he had
+still an attachment for his old associate, Francis Pizarro, and was
+unwilling to sever the ties between them for ever.  Contenting himself,
+therefore, with placing his prisoners under strong guard in one of the
+stone buildings belonging to the House of the Sun, he put himself at the
+head of his forces, and left the capital in quest of Alvarado.
+
+That officer had now taken up a position on the farther side of the Rio de
+Abancay, where he lay, with the strength of his little army, in front of a
+bridge, by which its rapid waters are traversed, while a strong
+detachment occupied a spot commanding a ford lower down the river.
+But in this detachment was a cavalier of much consideration in the army,
+Pedro de Lerma, who, from some pique against his commander, had
+entered into treasonable correspondence with the opposite party.  By his
+advice, Almagro, on reaching the border of the river, established himself
+against the bridge in face of Alvarado, as if prepared to force a passage,
+thus concentrating his adversary's attention on that point.  But, when
+darkness had set in, he detached a large body under Orgonez to pass the
+ford, and operate in concert with Lerma.  Orgonez executed this
+commission with his usual promptness.  The ford was crossed, though
+the current ran so swiftly, that several of his men were swept away by it,
+and perished in the waters.  Their leader received a severe wound
+himself in the mouth, as he was gaining the opposite bank, but, nothing
+daunted, he cheered on his men, and fell with fury on the enemy.  He was
+speedily joined by Lerma, and such of the soldiers as he had gained over,
+and, unable to distinguish friend from foe, the enemy's confusion was
+complete.
+
+Meanwhile, Alvarado, roused by the noise of the attack on this quarter,
+hastened to the support of his officer, when Almagro, seizing the
+occasion, pushed across the bridge, dispersed the small body left to
+defend it, and, falling on Alvarado's rear, that general saw himself
+hemmed in on all sides.  The struggle did not last long; and the
+unfortunate chief, uncertain on whom he could rely, surrendered with all
+his force,--those only excepted who had already-deserted to the enemy.
+Such was the battle of Abancay, as it was called, from the river on whose
+banks it was fought, on the twelfth of July, 1537.- Never was a victory
+more complete, or achieved with less cost of life; and Almagro marched
+back, with an array of prisoners scarcely inferior to his own army in
+number, in triumph to Cuzco.17
+
+While the events related in the preceding pages were passing, Francisco
+Pizarro had remained at Lima, anxiously awaiting the arrival of the
+reinforcements which he had requested, to enable him to march to the
+relief of the beleaguered capital of the Incas.  His appeal had not been
+unanswered.  Among the rest was a corps of two hundred and fifty men,
+led by the Licentiate Gaspar de Espinosa, one of the three original
+associates, it may be remembered, who engaged in the conquest of Peru.
+He had now left his own residence at Panama, and came in person, for
+the first time, it would seem, to revive the drooping fortunes of his
+confederates.  Pizarro received also a vessel laden with provisions,
+military stores, and other necessary supplies, besides a rich wardrobe for
+himself, from Cortes, the Conqueror of Mexico, who generously
+stretched forth his hand to aid his kinsman in the hour of need.18
+
+With a force amounting to four hundred and fifty men, half of them
+cavalry, the governor quitted Lima, and began his march on the Inca
+capital.  He had not advanced far, when he received tidings of the return
+of Almagro, the seizure of Cuzco, and the imprisonment of his brothers;
+and, before he had time to recover from this astounding intelligence, he
+learned the total defeat and capture of Alvarado.  Filled with
+consternation at these rapid successes of his rival, he now returned in all
+haste to Lima, which he put in the best posture of defence, to secure it
+against the hostile movements, not unlikely, as he thought, to be directed
+against that capital itself.  Meanwhile, far from indulging in impotent
+sallies of resentment, or in complaints of his ancient comrade, he only
+lamented that Almagro should have resorted to these violent measures
+for the settlement of their dispute, and this less-if we may take his word
+for it--from personal considerations than from the prejudice it might do
+to the interests of the Crown.19
+
+But, while busily occupied with warlike preparations, he did not omit to
+try the effect of negotiation.  He sent an embassy to Cuzco, consisting of
+several persons in whose discretion he placed the greatest confidence,
+with Espinosa at their head, as the party most interested in an amicable
+arrangement.
+
+The licentiate, on his arrival, did not find Almagro in as favorable a
+mood for an accommodation as he could have wished.  Elated by his
+recent successes, he now aspired not only to the possession of Cuzco, but
+of Lima itself, as falling within the limits of his jurisdiction.  It was in
+vain that Espinosa urged the propriety, by every argument which
+prudence could suggest, of moderating his demands.  His claims upon
+Cuzco, at least, were not to be shaken, and he declared himself ready to
+peril his life in maintaining them.  The licentiate coolly replied by
+quoting the pithy Castilian proverb, El vencido vencido, y el vencidor
+perdido; "The vanquished vanquished, and the victor undone."
+
+What influence the temperate arguments of the licentiate might
+eventually have had on the heated imagination of the soldier is doubtful;
+but unfortunately for the negotiation, it was abruptly terminated by the
+death of Espinosa himself, which took place most unexpectedly, though,
+strange to say, in those times, without the imputation of poison.20  He
+was a great loss to the parties in the existing fermentation of their minds;
+for he had the weight of character which belongs to wise and moderate
+counsels, and a deeper interest than any other man in recommending
+them.
+
+The name of Espinosa is memorable in history from his early connection
+with the expedition to Peru, which, but for the seasonable, though secret,
+application of his funds, could not then have been compassed.  He had
+long been a resident in the Spanish colonies of Tierra Firme and Panama,
+where he had served in various capacities, sometimes as a legal
+functionary presiding in the courts of justice,21 and not unfrequently as
+an efficient leader in the early expeditions of conquest and discovery.  In
+these manifold vocations he acquired high reputation for probity,
+intelligence, and courage, and his death at the present crisis was
+undoubtedly the most unfortunate event that could befall the country.
+
+All attempt at negotiation was now abandoned; and Almagro announced
+his purpose to descend to the sea-coast, where he could plant a colony
+and establish a port for himself.  This would secure him the means, so
+essential, of communication with the mother-country, and here he would
+resume negotiations for the settlement of his dispute with Pizarro.
+Before quitting Cuzco, he sent Orgonez with a strong force against the
+Inca, not caring to leave the capital exposed in his absence to further
+annoyance from that quarter.
+
+But the Inca, discouraged by his late discomfiture, and unable, perhaps,
+to rally in sufficient strength for resistance, abandoned his stronghold at
+Tambo, and retreated across the mountains.  He was hotly pursued by
+Orgonez over hill and valley, till, deserted by his followers, and with
+only one of his wives to bear him company, the royal fugitive took
+shelter in the remote fastnesses of the Andes.22
+
+Before leaving the capital, Orgonez again urged his commander to strike
+off the heads of the Pizarros, and then march at once upon Lima.  By this
+decisive step he would bring the war to an issue, and forever secure
+himself from the insidious machinations of his enemies.  But, in the mean
+time, a new friend had risen up to the captive brothers.  This was Diego
+de Alvarado, brother of that Pedro, who, as mentioned in a preceding
+chapter, had conducted the unfortunate expedition to Quito.  After his
+brother's departure, Diego had attached himself to the fortunes of
+Almagro, had accompanied him to Chili, and, as he was a cavalier of
+birth, and possessed of some truly noble qualities, he had gained
+deserved ascendency over his commander.  Alvarado had frequently
+visited Hernando Pizarro in his confinement, where, to beguile the
+tediousness of captivity, he amused himself with gaming,--the passion of
+the Spaniard.  They played deep, and Alvarado lost the enormous sum of
+eighty thousand gold castellanos.  He was prompt in paying the debt, but
+Hernando Pizarro peremptorily declined to receive the money.  By this
+politic generosity, he secured an important advocate in the council of
+Almagro.  It stood him now in good stead.  Alvarado represented to the
+marshal, that such a measure as that urged by Orgonez would not only
+outrage the feelings of his followers, but would ruin his fortunes by the
+indignation it must excite at court.  When Almagro acquiesced in these
+views, as in truth most grateful to his own nature, Orgonez, chagrined at
+his determination, declared that the day would come when he would
+repent this mistaken lenity.  "A Pizarro," he said, "was never known to
+forget an injury; and that which they had already received from Almagro
+was too deep for them to forgive."  Prophetic words!
+
+On leaving Cuzco, the marshal gave orders that Gonzalo Pizarro and the
+other prisoners should be detained in strict custody.  Hernando he took
+with him, closely guarded, on his march.  Descending rapidly towards
+the coast, he reached the pleasant vale of Chincha in the latter part of
+August.  Here he occupied himself with laying the foundations of a town
+bearing his own name, which might serve as a counterpart to the City of
+the Kings,--thus bidding defiance, as it were, to his rival on his own
+borders.  While occupied in this manner, he received the unwelcome
+tidings, that Gonzalo Pizarro, Alonso de Alvarado, and the other
+prisoners, having tampered with their guards, had effected their escape
+from Cuzco, and he soon after heard of their safe arrival in the camp of
+Pizarro.
+
+Chafed by this intelligence, the marshal was not soothed by the
+insinuations of Orgonez, that it was owing to his ill-advised lenity; that it
+might have gone hard with Hernando, but that Almagro's attention was
+diverted by the negotiation which Francisco Pizarro now proposed to
+resume.
+
+After some correspondence between the parties, it was agreed to submit
+the arbitration of the dispute to a single individual, Fray Francisco de
+Bovadilla, a Brother of the Order of Mercy.  Though living in Lima, and,
+as might be supposed, under the influence of Pizarro, he had a reputation
+for integrity that disposed Almagro to confide the settlement of the
+question exclusively to him.  In this implicit confidence in the friar's
+impartiality, Orgonez, of a less sanguine temper than his chief, did not
+participate.23
+
+An interview was arranged between the rival chiefs.  It took place at
+Mala, November 13th, 1537; but very different was the deportment of
+the two commanders towards each other from that which they had
+exhibited at their former meetings.  Almagro, indeed, doffing his bonnet,
+advanced in his usual open manner to salute his ancient comrade; but
+Pizarro, hardly condescending to return the salute, haughtily demanded
+why the marshal had seized upon his city of Cuzco, and imprisoned his
+brothers.  This led to a recrimination on the part of his associate.  The
+discussion assumed the tone of an angry altercation, till Almagro, taking
+a hint--or what he conceived to be such--from an attendant, that some
+treachery was intended, abruptly quitted the apartment, mounted his
+horse, and galloped back to his quarters at Chincha.24  The conference
+closed, as might have been anticipated from the heated temper of their
+minds when they began it, by widening the breach it was intended to
+heal.  The friar, now left wholly to himself, after some deliberation, gave
+his award.  He decided that a vessel, with a skilful pilot on board, should
+be sent to determine the exact latitude of the river of Santiago, the
+northern boundary of Pizarro's territory, by which all the measurements
+were to be regulated.  In the mean time, Cuzco was to be delivered up by
+Almagro, and Hernando Pizarro to be set at liberty, on condition of his
+leaving the country in six weeks for Spain.  Both parties were to retire
+within their undisputed territories, and to abandon all further
+hostilities.25
+
+This award, as may be supposed, highly satisfactory to Pizarro, was
+received by Almagro's men with indignation and scorn.  They had been
+sold, they cried, by their general, broken, as he was, by age and
+infirmities.  Their enemies were to occupy Cuzco and its pleasant places,
+while they were to be turned over to the barren wilderness of Charcas.
+Little did they dream that under this poor exterior were hidden the rich
+treasures of Potosi.  They denounced the umpire as a hireling of the
+governor, and murmurs were heard among the troops, stimulated by
+Orgonez, demanding the head of Hernando.  Never was that cavalier in
+greater danger.  But his good genius in the form of Alvarado again
+interposed to protect him.  His life in captivity was a succession of
+reprieves.26
+
+Yet his brother, the governor, was not disposed to abandon him to his
+fate.  On the contrary, he was now prepared to make every concession to
+secure his freedom.  Confessions, that politic chief well knew, cost little
+to those who are not concerned to abide by them.  After some
+preliminary negotiation, another award, more equitable, or, at all events,
+more to the satisfaction of the discontented party, was given.  The
+principal articles of it were, that, until the arrival of some definitive
+instructions on the point from Castile, the city of Cuzco, with its
+territory, should remain in the hands of Almagro; and that Hernando
+Pizarro should be set at liberty, on the condition, above stipulated, of
+leaving the country in six weeks.--When the terms of this agreement
+were communicated to Orgonez, that officer intimated his opinion of
+them, by passing his finger across his throat, and exclaiming, "What has
+my fidelity to my commander cost me!" 27
+
+Almagro, in order to do greater honor to his prisoner, visited him in
+person, and announced to him that he was from that moment free.  He
+expressed a hope, at the same time, that "all past differences would be
+buried in oblivion, and that henceforth they should live only in the
+recollection of their ancient friendship." Hernando replied, with apparent
+cordiality, that "he desired nothing better for himself." He then swore in
+the most solemn manner, and pledged his knightly honor,--the latter,
+perhaps, a pledge of quite as much weight in his own mind as the
+former,--that he would faithfully comply with the terms stipulated in the
+treaty.  He was next conducted by the marshal to his quarters, where he
+partook of a collation in company with the principal officers; several of
+whom, together with Diego Almagro, the general's son, afterward
+escorted the cavalier to his brother's camp, which had been transferred to
+the neighboring town of Mala.  Here the party received a most cordial
+greeting from the governor, who entertained them with a courtly
+hospitality, and lavished many attentions, in particular, on the son of his
+ancient associate.  In short, such, on their return, was the account of their
+reception, that it left no doubt in the mind of Almagro that all was at
+length amicably settled.28--He did not know Pizarro.
+
+
+
+Book 4
+
+Chapter 2
+
+First Civil War--Almagro Retreats To Cuzco--Battle Of Las Salinas--
+Cruelty Of The Conquerors--Trial And Execution Of Almagro-
+His Character
+
+1537--1538
+
+Scarcely had Almagro's officers left the governor's quarters, when the
+latter, calling his little army together, briefly recapitulated the many
+wrongs which had been done him by his rival, the seizure of his capital,
+the imprisonment of his brothers, the assault and defeat of his troops; and
+he concluded with the declaration,--heartily echoed back by his military
+audience,--that the time had now come for revenge.  All the while that
+the negotiations were pending, Pizarro had been busily occupied with
+military preparations.  He had mustered a force considerably larger than
+that of his rival, drawn from various quarters, but most of them familiar
+with service.  He now declared, that, as he was too old to take charge of
+the campaign himself, he should devolve that duty on his brothers; and
+he released Hernando from all his engagements to Almagro, as a
+measure justified by necessity.  That cavalier, with graceful pertinacity,
+intimated his design to abide by the pledges he had given, but, at length,
+yielded a reluctant assent to the commands of his brother, as to a
+measure imperatively demanded by his duty to the Crown.1
+
+The governor's next step was to advise Almagro that the treaty was at an
+end.  At the same time, he warned him to relinquish his pretensions to
+Cuzco, and withdraw into his own territory, or the responsibility of the
+consequences would lie on his own head.
+
+Reposing in his false security, Almagro was now fully awakened to the
+consciousness of the error he had committed; and the warning voice of
+his lieutenant may have risen to his recollection.  The first part of the
+prediction was fulfilled.  And what should prevent the latter from being
+so?  To add to his distress, he was laboring at this time under a grievous
+malady, the result of early excesses, which shattered his constitution, and
+made him incapable alike of mental and bodily exertion.2
+
+In this forlorn condition, he confided the management of his affairs to
+Orgonez, on whose loyalty and courage he knew he might implicitly rely.
+The first step was to secure the passes of the Guaitara, a chain of hills
+that hemmed in the valley of Zangalla, where Almagro was at present
+established.  But, by some miscalculation, the passes were not secured in
+season; and the active enemy, threading the dangerous defiles, effected a
+passage across the sierra, where a much inferior force to his own might
+have taken him at advantage.  The fortunes of Almagro were on the
+wane.
+
+His thoughts were now turned towards Cuzco, and he was anxious to get
+possession of this capital before the arrival of the enemy.  Too feeble to
+sit on horseback, he was obliged to be carried in a litter; and, when he
+reached the ancient town of Bilcas, not far from Guamanga, his
+indisposition was so severe that he was compelled to halt and remain
+there three weeks before resuming his march.
+
+The governor and his brothers, in the mean time, after traversing the pass
+of Guaitara, descended into the valley of Ica, where Pizarro remained a
+considerable while, to get his troops in order and complete his
+preparations for the campaign.  Then, taking leave of the army, he
+returned to Lima, committing the prosecution of the war, as he had
+before announced, to his younger and more active brothers.  Hernando,
+soon after quitting Ica, kept along the coast as far as Nasca, proposing to
+penetrate the country by a circuitous route in order to elude the enemy,
+who might have greatly embarrassed him in some of the passes of the
+Cordilleras.  But unhappily for him, this plan of operations, which would
+have given him such manifest advantage, was not adopted by Almagro;
+and his adversary, without any other impediment than that arising from
+the natural difficulties of the march, arrived, in the latter part of April,
+1538, in the neighborhood of Cuzco.
+
+But Almagro was already in possession of that capital, which he had
+reached ten days before.  A council of war was held by him respecting
+the course to be pursued.  Some were for making good the defence of the
+city.  Almagro would have tried what could be done by negotiation.  But
+Orgonez bluntly replied,--"It is too late; you have liberated Hernando
+Pizarro, and nothing remains but to fight him."  The opinion of Orgonez
+finally prevailed, to march out and give the enemy battle on the plains.
+The marshal, still disabled by illness from taking the command, devolved
+it on his trusty lieutenant, who, mustering his forces, left the city, and
+took up a position at Las Salinas, less than a league distant from Cuzco.
+The place received its name from certain pits or vats in the ground, used
+for the preparation of salt, that was obtained from a natural spring in the
+neighborhood.  It was an injudicious choice of ground, since its broken
+character was most unfavorable to the free action of cavalry, in which the
+strength of Almagro's force consisted.  But, although repeatedly urged by
+the officers to advance into the open country, Orgonez persisted in his
+position, as the most favorable for defence, since the front was protected
+by a marsh, and by a little stream that flowed over the plain.  His forces
+amounted in all to about five hundred, more than half of them horse.  His
+infantry was deficient in firearms, the place of which was supplied by the
+long pike.  He had also six small cannon, or falconets, as they were
+called, which, with his cavalry, formed into two equal divisions, he
+disposed on the flanks of his infantry.  Thus prepared, he calmly awaited
+the approach of the enemy.
+
+It was not long before the bright arms and banners of the Spaniards
+under Hernando Pizarro were seen emerging from the mountain passes,
+The troops came forward in good order, and like men whose steady step
+showed that they had been spared in the march, and were now fresh for
+action.  They advanced slowly across the plain, and halted on the
+opposite border of the little stream which covered the front of Orgonez.
+Here Hernando, as the sun had set, took up his quarters for the night,
+proposing to defer the engagement till daylight.3
+
+The rumors of the approaching battle had spread far and wide over the
+country; and the mountains and rocky heights around were thronged with
+multitudes of natives, eager to feast their eyes on a spectacle, where,
+whichever side were victorious, the defeat would fall on their enemies.4
+The Castilian women and children, too, with still deeper anxiety, had
+thronged out from Cuzco to witness the deadly strife in which brethren
+and kindred were to contend for mastery.5  The whole number of the
+combatants was insignificant; though not as compared with those usually
+engaged in these American wars.  It is not, however, the number of the
+players, but the magnitude of the stake, that gives importance and
+interest to the game; and in this bloody game, they were to play for the
+possession of an empire.
+
+The night passed away in silence, unbroken by the vast assembly which
+covered the surrounding hill-tops.  Nor did the soldiers of the hostile
+camps, although keeping watch within hearing of one another, and with
+the same blood flowing in their veins, attempt any communication.  So
+deadly was the hate in their bosoms! 6
+
+The sun rose bright, as usual in this beautiful climate, on Saturday, the
+twenty-sixth day of April, 1538.7  But long before his beams were on the
+plain, the trumpet of Hernando Pizarro had called his men to arms.  His
+forces amounted in all to about seven hundred.  They were drawn from
+various quarters, the veterans of Pizarro, the followers of Alonso de
+Alvarado,--many of whom, since their defeat, had found their way back
+to Lima,--and the late reinforcement from the isles, most of them
+seasoned by many a toilsome march in the Indian campaigns, and many a
+hard-fought field.  His mounted troops were inferior to those of
+Almagro; but this was more than compensated by the strength of his
+infantry, comprehending a well-trained corps of arquebusiers, sent from
+St. Domingo, whose weapons were of the improved construction
+recently introduced from Flanders.  They were of a large calibre, and
+threw double-headed shot, consisting of bullets linked together by an
+iron chain.  It was doubtless a clumsy weapon compared with modern
+firearms, but, in hands accustomed to wield it, proved a destructive
+instrument.8
+
+Hernando Pizarro drew up his men in the same order of battle as that
+presented by the enemy,--throwing his infantry into the centre, and
+disposing his horse on the flanks; one corps of which he placed under
+command of Alonso de Alvarado, and took charge of the other himself.
+The infantry was headed by his brother Gonzalo, supported by Pedro de
+Valdivia, the future hero of Arauco, whose disastrous story forms the
+burden of romance as well as of chronicle.9
+
+Mass was said, as if the Spaniards were about to fight what they deemed
+the good fight of the faith, instead of imbruing their hands in the blood of
+their countrymen.  Hernando Pizarro then made a brief address to his
+soldiers.  He touched on the personal injuries he and his family had
+received from Almagro; reminded his brother's veterans that Cuzco had
+been wrested from their possession; called up the glow of shame on the
+brows of Alvarado's men as he talked of the rout of Abancay, and,
+pointing out the Inca metropolis that sparkled in the morning sunshine,
+he told them that there was the prize of the victor.  They answered his
+appeal with acclamations; and the signal being given, Gonzalo Pizarro,
+heading his battalion of infantry, led it straight across the river.  The
+water was neither broad nor deep, and the soldiers found no difficulty in
+gaining a landing, as the enemy's horse was prevented by the marshy
+ground from approaching the borders.  But, as they worked their way
+across the morass, the heavy guns of Orgonez played with effect on the
+leading files, and threw them into disorder.  Gonzalo and Valdivia threw
+themselves into the midst of their followers, menacing some,
+encouraging others, and at length led them gallantly forward to the firm
+ground.  Here the arquebusiers, detaching themselves from the rest of the
+infantry, gained a small eminence, whence, in their turn, they opened a
+galling fire on Orgonez, scattering his array of spearmen, and sorely
+annoying the cavalry on the flanks.
+
+Meanwhile, Hernando, forming his two squadrons of horse into one
+column, crossed under cover of this well-sustained fire, and, reaching the
+firm ground, rode at once against the enemy.  Orgonez, whose infantry
+was already much crippled, advancing his horse, formed the two
+squadrons into one body, like his antagonist, and spurred at full gallop
+against the assailants.  The shock was terrible; and it was hailed by the
+swarms of Indian spectators on the surrounding heights with a fiendish
+yell of triumph, that rose far above the din of battle, till it was lost in
+distant echoes among the mountains.10
+
+The struggle was desperate.  For it was not that of the white man against
+the defenceless Indian, but of Spaniard against Spaniard; both parties
+cheering on their comrades with their battlecries of "El Rey y Almagro,"
+or "El Rey y Pizarro,"--while they fought with a hate, to which national
+antipathy was as nothing; a hate strong in proportion to the strength of
+the ties that had been rent asunder.
+
+In this bloody field well did Orgonez do his duty, fighting like one to
+whom battle was the natural element.  Singling out a cavalier, whom,
+from the color of the sobre-vest on his armour, he erroneously supposed
+to be Hernando Pizarro, he charged him in full career, and overthrew
+him with his lance.  Another he ran through in like manner, and a third
+he struck down with his sword as he was prematurely shouting
+"Victory!"  But while thus doing the deeds of a paladin of romance, he
+was hit by a chain-shot from an arquebuse, which, penetrating the bars of
+his visor, grazed his forehead, and deprived him for a moment of reason.
+Before he had fully recovered, his horse was killed under him, and
+though the fallen cavalier succeeded in extricating himself from the
+stirrups, he was surrounded, and soon overpowered by numbers.  Still
+refusing to deliver up his sword, he asked "if there was no knight to
+whom he could surrender."  One Fuentes, a menial of Pizarro, presenting
+himself as such, Orgonez gave his sword into his hands,--and the dastard,
+drawing his dagger, stabbed his defenceless prisoner to the heart!  His
+head, then struck off, was stuck on a pike, and displayed, a bloody
+trophy, in the great square of Cuzco, as the head of a traitor.11  Thus
+perished as loyal a cavalier, as decided in council, and as bold in action,
+as ever crossed to the shores of America.
+
+The fight had now lasted more than an hour, and the fortune of the day
+was turning against the followers of Almagro.  Orgonez being down,
+their confusion increased.  The infantry, unable to endure the fire of the
+arquebusiers, scattered and took refuge behind the stone-walls, that here
+and there straggled across the country.  Pedro de Lerma, vainly striving
+to rally the cavalry, spurred his horse against Hernando Pizarro, with
+whom he had a personal feud.  Pizarro did not shrink from the encounter.
+The lances of both the knights took effect.  That of Hernando penetrated
+the thigh of his opponent, while Lerma's weapon, glancing by his
+adversary's saddle-bow, struck him with such force above the groin, that
+it pierced the joints of his mail, slightly wounding the cavalier, and
+forcing his horse back on his haunches.  But the press of the fight soon
+parted the combatants, and, in the turmoil that ensued, Lerma was
+unhorsed, and left on the field covered with wounds.12
+
+There was no longer order, and scarcely resistance, among the followers
+of Almagro.  They fled, making the best of their way to Cuzco, and
+happy was the man who obtained quarter when he asked it.  Almagro
+himself, too feeble to sit so long on his horse, reclined on a litter, and
+from a neighboring eminence surveyed the battle, watching its
+fluctuations with all the interest of one who felt that honor, fortune, life
+itself, hung on the issue.  With agony not to be described, he had seen
+his faithful followers, after their hard struggle, borne down by their
+opponents, till, convinced that all was lost, he succeeded in mounting a
+mule, and rode off for a temporary refuge to the fortress of Cuzco.
+Thither he was speedily followed, taken, and brought in triumph to the
+capital, where, ill as he was, he was thrown into irons, and confined in
+the same apartment of the stone building in which he had imprisoned the
+Pizarros.
+
+The action lasted not quite two hours.  The number of killed, variously
+stated, was probably not less than a hundred and fifty,--one of the
+combatants calls it two hundred,13--a great number, considering the
+shortness of the time, and the small amount of forces engaged.  No
+account is given of the wounded.  Wounds were the portion of the
+cavalier.  Pedro de Lerma is said to have received seventeen, and yet was
+taken alive from the field!  The loss fell chiefly on the followers of
+Almagro.  But the slaughter was not confined to the heat of the action.
+Such was the deadly animosity of the parties, that several were murdered
+in cold blood, like Orgonez, after they had surrendered.  Pedro de Lerma
+himself, while lying on his sick couch in the quarters of a friend in
+Cuzco, was visited by a soldier, named Samaniego, whom he had once
+struck for an act of disobedience.  This person entered the solitary
+chamber of the wounded man took his place by his bed-side, and then,
+upbraiding him for the insult, told him that he had come to wash it away
+in his blood!  Lerma in vain assured him, that, when restored to health,
+he would give him the satisfaction he desired.  The miscreant, exclaimed
+"Now is the hour!" plunged his sword into his bosom.  He lived several
+years to vaunt this atrocious exploit, which he proclaimed as a reparation
+to his honor.  It is some satisfaction to know that the insolence of this
+vaunt cost him his life.14 --Such anecdotes, revolting as they are,
+illustrate not merely the spirit of the times, but that peculiarly ferocious
+spirit which is engendered by civil wars,--the most unforgiving in their
+character of any, but wars of religion.
+
+In the hurry of the flight of one party, and the pursuit by the other, all
+pouring towards Cuzco, the field of battle had been deserted.  But it soon
+swarmed with plunderers, as the Indians, descending like vultures from
+the mountains, took possession of the bloody ground, and, despoiling the
+dead, even to the minutest article of dress, left their corpses naked on the
+plain.15  It has been thought strange that the natives should not have
+availed themselves of their superior numbers to fall on the victors after
+they had been exhausted by the battle.  But the scattered bodies of the
+Peruvians were without a leader; they were broken in spirits, moreover,
+by recent reverses, and the Castilians, although weakened for the
+moment by the struggle, were in far greater strength in Cuzco than they
+had ever been before.
+
+Indeed, the number of troops now assembled within its walls, amounting
+to full thirteen hundred, composed, as they were, of the most discordant
+materials, gave great uneasiness to Hernando Pizarro.  For there were
+enemies glaring on each other and on him with deadly though smothered
+rancor, and friends, if not so dangerous, not the less troublesome from
+their craving and unreasonable demands.  He had given the capital up to
+pillage, and his followers found good booty in the quarters of Almagro's
+officers.  But this did not suffice the more ambitious cavaliers; and they
+clamorously urged their services, and demanded to be placed in charge
+of some expedition, nothing doubting that it must prove a golden one.
+All were in quest of an El Dorado.  Hernando Pizarro acquiesced as far
+as possible in these desires, most willing to relieve himself of such
+importunate creditors.  The expeditions, it is true, usually ended in
+disaster; but the country was explored by them.  It was the lottery of
+adventure; the prizes were few, but they were splendid; and in the
+excitement of the game, few Spaniards paused to calculate the chances of
+success.
+
+Among those who left the capital was Diego, the son of Almagro.
+Hernando was mindful to send him, with a careful escort, to his brother
+the governor, desirous to remove him at this crisis from the
+neighborhood of his father.  Meanwhile the marshal himself was pining
+away in prison under the combined influence of bodily illness and
+distress of mind.  Before the battle of Salinas, it had been told to
+Hernando Pizarro that Almagro was like to die.  "Heaven forbid," he
+exclaimed, "that this should come to pass before he falls into my
+hands!"16  Yet the gods seemed now disposed to grant but half of this
+pious prayer, since his captive seemed about to escape him just as he had
+come into his power.  To console the unfortunate chief, Hernando paid
+him a visit in his prison, and cheered him with the assurance that he only
+waited for the governor's arrival to set him at liberty; adding, "that, if
+Pizarro did not come soon to the capital, he himself would assume the
+responsibility of releasing him, and would furnish him with a conveyance
+to his brother's quarters."  At the same time, with considerate attention to
+his comfort, he inquired of the marshal "what mode of conveyance
+would be best suited to his state of health."  After this he continued to
+send him delicacies from his own table to revive his faded appetite.
+Almagro, cheered by these kind attentions, and by the speedy prospect of
+freedom, gradually mended in health and spirits.17
+
+He little dreamed that all this while a process was industriously preparing
+against him.  It had been instituted immediately on his capture, and every
+one, however humble, who had any cause of complaint against the
+unfortunate prisoner, was invited to present it.  The summons was readily
+answered; and many an enemy now appeared in the hour of his fallen
+fortunes, like the base reptiles crawling into light amidst the ruins of
+some noble edifice; and more than one, who had received benefits from
+his hands, were willing to court the favor of his enemy by turning on
+their benefactor.  From these loathsome sources a mass of accusations
+was collected which spread over two thousand folio pages!  Yet Almagro
+was the idol of his soldiers! 18
+
+Having completed the process, (July 8th, 1538,) it was not difficult to
+obtain a verdict against the prisoner.  The principal charges on which he
+was pronounced guilty were those of levying war against the Crown, and
+thereby occasioning the death of many of his Majesty's subjects; of
+entering into conspiracy with the Inca; and finally, of dispossessing the
+royal governor of the city of Cuzco.  On these charges he was
+condemned to suffer death as a traitor, by being publicly beheaded in
+the great square of the city.  Who were the judges, or what was the
+tribunal that condemned him, we are not informed.  Indeed, the whole
+trial was a mockery; if that can be called a trial, where the accused
+himself is not even aware of the accusation.
+
+The sentence was communicated by a friar deputed for the purpose to
+Almagro.  The unhappy man, who all the while had been unconsciously
+slumbering on the brink of a precipice, could not at first comprehend the
+nature of his situation.  Recovering from the first shock, "It was
+impossible," he said, "that such wrong could be done him,--he would not
+believe it."  He then besought Hernando Pizarro to grant him an
+interview.  That cavalier, not unwilling, it would seem, to witness the
+agony of his captive, consented: and Almagro was so humbled by his
+misfortunes, that he condescended to beg for his life with the most
+piteous supplications.  He reminded Hernando of his ancient relations
+with his brother, and the good offices he had rendered him and his family
+in the earlier part of their career.  He touched on his acknowledged
+services to his country, and besought his enemy "to spare his gray hairs,
+and not to deprive him of the short remnant of an existence from which
+he had now nothing more to fear."--To this the other coldly replied, that
+"he was surprised to see Almagro demean himself in a manner so
+unbecoming a brave cavalier; that his fate was no worse than had
+befallen many a soldier before him; and that, since God had given him
+the grace to be a Christian, he should employ his remaining moments in
+making up his account with Heaven!"19
+
+But Almagro was not to be silenced.  He urged the service he had
+rendered Hernando himself.  "This was a hard requital," he said, "for
+having spared his life so recently under similar circumstances, and that,
+too, when he had been urged again and again by those around him to
+take it away."  And he concluded by menacing his enemy with the
+vengeance of the emperor, who would never suffer this outrage on one
+who had rendered such signal services to the Crown to go unrequited.  It
+was all in vain; and Hernando abruptly closed the conference by
+repeating, that "his doom was inevitable, and he must prepare to meet
+it."20
+
+Almagro, finding that no impression was to be made on his ironhearted
+conqueror, now seriously addressed himself to the settlement of his
+affairs.  By the terms of the royal grant he was empowered to name his
+successor.  He accordingly devolved his office on his son, appointing
+Diego de Alvarado, on whose integrity he had great reliance,
+administrator of the province during his minority.  All his property and
+possessions in Peru, of whatever kind, he devised to his master the
+emperor, assuring him that a large balance was still due to him in his
+unsettled accounts with Pizarro.  By this politic bequest, he hoped to
+secure the monarch's protection for his son, as well as a strict scrutiny
+into the affairs of his enemy.
+
+The knowledge of Almagro's sentence produced a deep sensation in the
+community of Cuzco.  All were amazed at the presumption with which
+one, armed with a little brief authority, ventured to sit in judgment on a
+person of Almagro's station.  There were few who did not call to mind
+some generous or good-natured act of the unfortunate veteran.  Even
+those who had furnished materials for the accusation, now startled by the
+tragic result to which it was to lead, were heard to denounce Hernando's
+conduct as that of a tyrant.  Some of the principal cavaliers, and among
+them Diego de Alvarado, to whose intercession, as we have seen,
+Hernando Pizarro, when a captive, had owed his own life, waited on that
+commander, and endeavored to dissuade him from so highhanded and
+atrocious a proceeding.  It was in vain.  But it had the effect of changing
+the mode of execution, which, instead of the public square, was now to
+take place in prison.21
+
+On the day appointed, a strong corps of arquebusiers was drawn up in
+the plaza.  The guards were doubled over the houses where dwelt the
+principal partisans of Almagro.  The executioner, attended by a priest,
+stealthily entered his prison; and the unhappy man, after confessing and
+receiving the sacrament, submitted without resistance to the garrote.
+Thus obscurely, in the gloomy silence of a dungeon, perished the hero of
+a hundred battles!  His corpse was removed to the great square of the
+city, where, in obedience to the sentence, the head was severed from the
+body.  A herald proclaimed aloud the nature of the crimes for which he
+had suffered; and his remains, rolled in their bloody shroud, were borne
+to the house of his friend Hernan Ponce de Leon, and the next day laid
+with all due solemnity in the church of Our Lady of Mercy.  The Pizarros
+appeared among the principal mourners.  It was remarked, that their
+brother had paid similar honors to the memory of Atahuallpa.22
+
+Almagro, at the time of his death, was probably not far from seventy
+years of age.  But this is somewhat uncertain; for Almagro was a
+foundling, and his early history is lost in obscurity.23  He had many
+excellent qualities by nature; and his defects, which were not few, may
+reasonably be palliated by the circumstances of his situation.  For what
+extenuation is not authorized by the position of a foundling,--without
+parents, or early friends, or teacher to direct him,--his little bark set adrift
+on the ocean of life, to take its chance among the rude billows and
+breakers, without one friendly hand stretched forth to steer or to save it!
+The name of "foundling" comprehends an apology for much, very much,
+that is wrong in after life.24
+
+He was a man of strong passions, and not too well used to control
+them.25  But he was neither vindictive nor habitually cruel.  I have
+mentioned one atrocious outrage which he committed on the natives.
+But insensibility to the rights of the Indian he shared with many a better
+instructed Spaniard.  Yet the Indians, after his conviction, bore testimony
+to his general humanity, by declaring that they had no such friend among
+the white men.26  Indeed, far from being vindictive, he was placable and
+easily yielded to others.  The facility with which he yielded, the result of
+good-natured credulity, made him too often the dupe of the crafty; and it
+showed, certainly, a want of that self-reliance which belongs to great
+strength of character.  Yet his facility of temper, and the generosity of his
+nature, made him popular with his followers.  No commander was ever
+more beloved by his soldiers.  His generosity was often carried to
+prodigality.  When he entered on the campaign of Chili, he lent a
+hundred thousand gold ducats to the poorer cavaliers to equip themselves
+and afterwards gave them up the debt.27  He was profuse to ostentation.
+But his extravagance did him no harm among the roving spirits of the
+camp, with whom prodigality is apt to gain more favor than a strict and
+well-regulated economy.
+
+He was a good soldier, careful and judicious in his plans, patient and
+intrepid in their execution.  His body was covered with the scars of his
+battles, till the natural plainness of his person was converted almost into
+deformity.  He must not be judged by his closing campaign, when,
+depressed by disease, he yielded to the superior genius of his rival; but
+by his numerous expeditions by land and by water for the conquest of
+Peru and the remote Chili.  Yet it may be doubted whether he possessed
+those uncommon qualities, either as a warrior or as a man, that, in
+ordinary circumstances, would have raised him to distinction.  He was
+one of the three, or, to speak more strictly, of the two associates, who
+had the good fortune and the glory to make one of the most splendid
+discoveries in the Western World.  He shares largely in the credit of this
+with Pizarro; for, when he did not accompany that leader in his perilous
+expeditions, he contributed no less to their success by his exertions in the
+colonies.
+
+Yet his connection with that chief can hardly be considered a fortunate
+circumstance in his career.  A partnership between individuals for
+discovery and conquest is not likely to be very scrupulously observed,
+especially by men more accustomed to govern others than to govern
+themselves.  If causes for discord do not arise before, they will be sure to
+spring up on division of the spoil.  But this association was particularly
+ill-assorted.  For the free, sanguine, and confiding temper of Almagro
+was no match for the cool and crafty policy of Pizarro; and he was
+invariably circumvented by his companion, whenever their respective
+interests came in collision.
+
+Still the final ruin of Almagro may be fairly imputed to himself.  He
+made two capital blunders.  The first was his appeal to arms by the
+seizure of Cuzco.  The determination of a boundary-line was not to be
+settled by arms.  It was a subject for arbitration; and, if arbitrators could
+not be trusted, it should have been referred to the decision of the Crown.
+But, having once appealed to arms, he should not then have resorted to
+negotiation,--above all, to negotiation with Pizarro.  This was his second
+and greatest error.  He had seen enough of Pizarro to know that he was
+not to be trusted.  Almagro did trust him, and he paid for it with his life.
+
+
+
+Book 4
+
+Chapter 3
+
+Pizarro Revisits Cuzco--Hernando Returns To Castile-
+His Long Imprisonment--Commissioner Sent To Peru-
+Hostilities With The Inca--Pizarro's Active Administration-
+Gonzalo Pizarro
+
+1539--1540
+
+On the departure of his brother in pursuit of Almagro, the Marquess
+Francisco Pizarro, as we have seen, returned to Lima.  There he
+anxiously awaited the result of the campaign; and on receiving the
+welcome tidings of the victory of Las Salinas, he instantly made
+preparations for his march to Cuzco.  At Xauxa, however, he was long
+detained by the distracted state of the country, and still longer, as it
+would seem, by a reluctance to enter the Peruvian capital while the trial
+of Almagro was pending.
+
+He was met at Xauxa by the marshal's son Diego, who had been sent to
+the coast by Hernando Pizarro.  The young man was filled with the most
+gloomy apprehensions respecting his father's fate, and he besought the
+governor not to allow his brother to do him any violence.  Pizarro, who
+received Diego with much apparent kindness, bade him take heart, as no
+harm should come to his father;1 adding, that he trusted their ancient
+friendship would soon be renewed.  The youth, comforted by these
+assurances, took his way to Lima, where, by Pizarro's orders, he was
+received into his house, and treated as a son.
+
+The same assurances respecting the marshal's safety were given by the
+governor to Bishop Valverde, and some of the principal cavaliers who
+interested themselves in behalf of the prisoner.2  Still Pizarro delayed his
+march to the capital; and when he resumed it, he had advanced no farther
+than the Rio de Abancay when he received tidings of the death of his
+rival.  He appeared greatly shocked by the intelligence, his whole frame
+was agitated, and he remained for some time with his eyes bent on the
+ground showing signs of strong emotion.3
+
+Such is the account given by his friends.  A more probable version of the
+matter represents him to have been perfectly aware of the state of things
+at Cuzco.  When the trial was concluded, it is said he received a message
+from Hernando, inquiring what was to be done with the prisoner.  He
+answered in a few words :--"Deal with him so that he shall give us no
+more trouble."4  It is also stated that Hernando, afterwards, when
+laboring under the obloquy caused by Almagro's death, shielded himself
+under instructions affirmed to have been received from the governor.5  It
+is quite certain, that, during his long residence at Xauxa, the latter was in
+constant communication with Cuzco; and that had he, as Valverde
+repeatedly urged him,6 quickened his march to that capital, he might
+easily have prevented the consummation of the tragedy.  As commander-
+in-chief, Almagro's fate was in his hands; and, whatever his own
+partisans may affirm of his innocence, the impartial judgment of history
+must hold him equally accountable with Hernando for the death of his
+associate.
+
+Neither did his subsequent conduct show any remorse for these
+proceedings.  He entered Cuzco, says one who was present there to
+witness it, amidst the flourish of clarions and trumpets, at the head of his
+martial cavalcade, and dressed in the rich suit presented him by Cortes,
+with the proud bearing and joyous mien of a conqueror.7  When Diego
+de Alvarado applied to him for the government of the southern
+provinces, in the name of the young Almagro, whom his father, as we
+have seen, had consigned to his protection, Pizarro answered, that "the
+marshal, by his rebellion, had forfeited all claims to the government."
+And, when he was still further urged by the cavalier, he bluntly broke off
+the conversation by declaring that "his own territory covered all on this
+side of Flanders"!8--intimating, no doubt, by this magnificent vaunt, that
+he would endure no rival on this side of the water.
+
+In the same spirit, he had recently sent to supersede Benalcazar, the
+conqueror of Quito, who, he was informed, aspired to an independent
+government.  Pizarro's emissary had orders to send the offending captain
+to Lima; but Benalcazar, after pushing his victorious career far into the
+north, had returned to Castile to solicit his guerdon from the emperor.
+
+To the complaints of the injured natives, who invoked his protection, he
+showed himself strangely insensible, while the followers of Almagro he
+treated with undisguised contempt.  The estates of the leaders were
+confiscated, and transferred without ceremony to his own partisans.
+Hernando had made attempts to conciliate some of the opposite faction
+by acts of liberality, but they had refused to accept anything from the
+man whose hands were stained with the blood of their commander.9  The
+governor held to them no such encouragement; and many were reduced
+to such abject poverty, that, too proud to expose their wretchedness to
+the eyes of their conquerors, they withdrew from the city, and sought a
+retreat among the neighboring mountains.10
+
+For his own brothers he provided by such ample repartimientos, as
+excited the murmurs of his adherents.  He appointed Gonzalo to the
+command of a strong force destined to act against the natives of Charcas,
+a hardy people occupying the territory assigned by the Crown to
+Almagro.  Gonzalo met with a sturdy resistance, but, after some severe
+fighting, succeeded in reducing the province to obedience.  He was
+recompensed, together with Hernando, who aided him in the conquest,
+by a large grant in the neighborhood of Porco, the productive mines of
+which had been partially wrought under the Incas.  The territory, thus
+situated, embraced part of those silver hills of Potosi which have since
+supplied Europe with such stores of the precious metals.  Hernando
+comprehended the capabilities of the ground, and he began working the
+mines on a more extensive scale than that hitherto adopted, though it
+does not appear that any attempt was then made to penetrate the rich
+crust of Potosi.11  A few years more were to elapse before the Spaniards
+were to bring to light the silver quarries that lay hidden in the bosom of
+its mountains.12
+
+It was now the great business of Hernando to collect a sufficient quantity
+of treasure to take with him to Castile.  Nearly a year had elapsed since
+Almagro's death; and it was full time that he should return and present
+himself at court, where Diego de Alvarado and other friends of the
+marshal, who had long since left Peru, were industriously maintaining
+the claims of the younger Almagro, as well as demanding redress for the
+wrongs done to his father.  But Hernando looked confidently to his gold
+to dispel the accusations against him.
+
+Before his departure, he counselled his brother to beware of the "men of
+Chili," as Almagro's followers were called; desperate men, who would
+stick at nothing, he said, for revenge.  He besought the governor not to
+allow them to consort together in any number within fifty miles of his
+person; if he did, it would be fatal to him.  And he concluded by
+recommending a strong body-guard; "for I," he added, "shall not be here
+to watch over you."  But the governor laughed at the idle fears, as he
+termed them, of his brother, bidding the latter take no thought of him, "as
+every hair in the heads of Almagro's followers was a guaranty for his
+safety.''13  He did not know the character of his enemies so well as
+Hernando.
+
+The latter soon after embarked at Lima in the summer of 1539.  He did
+not take the route of Panama, for he had heard that it was the intention of
+the authorities there to detain him.  He made a circuitous passage,
+therefore, by way of Mexico, landed in the Bay of Tecoantepec, and was
+making his way across the narrow strip that divides the great oceans,
+when he was arrested and taken to the capital.  But the Viceroy Mendoza
+did not consider that he had a right to detain him, and he was suffered to
+embark at Vera Cruz, and to proceed on his voyage.  Still he did not
+deem it safe to trust himself in Spain without further advices.  He
+accordingly put in at one of the Azores, where he remained until he
+could communicate with home.  He had some powerful friends at court,
+and by them he was encouraged to present himself before the emperor.
+He took their advice, and shortly after, reached the Spanish coast in
+safety.14
+
+The Court was at Valladolid; but Hernando, who made his entrance into
+that city, with great pomp and a display of his Indian riches, met with a
+reception colder than he had anticipated.15  For this he was mainly
+indebted to Diego de Alvarado, who was then residing there, and who, as
+a cavalier of honorable standing, and of high connections, had
+considerable influence.  He had formerly, as we have seen, by his timely
+interposition, more than once saved the life of Hernando; and he had
+consented to receive a pecuniary obligation from him to a large amount.
+But all were now forgotten in the recollection of the wrong done to his
+commander; and, true to the trust reposed in him by that chief in his
+dying hour, he had come to Spain to vindicate the claims of the young
+Almagro.
+
+But although coldly received at first, Hernando's presence, and his own
+version of the dispute with Almagro, aided by the golden arguments
+which he dealt with no stinted hand, checked the current of indignation,
+and the opinion of his judges seemed for a time suspended.  Alvarado, a
+cavalier more accustomed to the prompt and decisive action of a camp
+than to the tortuous intrigues of a court, chafed at the delay, and
+challenged Hernando to settle their quarrel by single combat.  But his
+prudent adversary had no desire to leave the issue to such an ordeal;
+and the affair was speedily terminated by the death of Alvarado himself,
+which happened five days after the challenge.  An event so opportune
+naturally suggested the suspicion of poison.16
+
+But his accusations had not wholly fallen to the ground; and Hernando
+Pizarro had carried measures with too high a hand, and too grossly
+outraged public sentiment, to be permitted to escape.  He received no
+formal sentence, but he was imprisoned in the strong fortress of Medina
+del Campo, where he was allowed to remain for twenty years when in
+1560, after a generation had nearly passed away, and time had, in some
+measure, thrown its softening veil over the past, he was suffered to
+regain his liberty.17  But he came forth an aged man, bent down with
+infirmities and broken in spirit,--an object of pity, rather than
+indignation.  Rarely has retributive justice been meted out in fuller
+measure to offenders so high in authority,--most rarely in Castile.18
+
+Yet Hernando bore this long imprisonment with an equanimity which,
+had it been rounded on principle, might command our respect.  He saw
+brothers and kindred, all on whom he leaned for support, cut off one
+after another; his fortune, in part, confiscated, while he was involved in
+expensive litigation for the remainder;19 his fame blighted, his career
+closed in an untimely hour, himself an exile in the heart of his own
+country;--yet he bore it all with the constancy of a courageous spirit.
+Though very old when released, he still survived several years, and
+continued to the extraordinary age of a hundred.20  He lived long
+enough to see friends, rivals, and foes all called away to their account
+before him.
+
+Hernando Pizarro was in many respects a remarkable character.  He was
+the eldest of the brothers, to whom he was related only by the father's
+side, for he was born in wedlock, of honorable parentage on both sides
+of his house.  In his early years, he received a good education,--good for
+the time.  He was taken by his father, while quite young, to Italy, and
+there learned the art of war under the Great Captain.  Little is known of
+his history after his return to Spain; but, when his brother had struck out
+for himself his brilliant career of discovery in Peru, Hernando consented
+to take part in his adventures.
+
+He was much deferred to by Francisco, not only as his elder brother, but
+from his superior education and his knowledge of affairs.  He was ready
+in his perceptions, fruitful in resources, and possessed of great vigor in
+action.  Though courageous, he was cautious; and his counsels, when not
+warped by passion, were wise and wary.  But he had other qualities,
+which more than counterbalanced the good resulting from excellent parts
+and attainments.  His ambition and avarice were insatiable.  He was
+supercilious even to his equals; and he had a vindictive temper, which
+nothing could appease.  Thus, instead of aiding his brother in the
+Conquest, he was the evil genius that blighted his path.  He conceived
+from the first an unwarrantable contempt for Almagro, whom he
+regarded as his brother's rival, instead of what he then was, the faithful
+partner of his fortunes.  He treated him with personal indignity, and, by
+his intrigues at court, had the means of doing him sensible injury.  He
+fell into Almagro's hands, and had nearly paid for these wrongs with his
+life.  This was not to be forgiven by Hernando, and he coolly waited for
+the hour of revenge.  Yet the execution of Almagro was a most impolitic
+act; for an evil passion can rarely be gratified with impunity.  Hernando
+thought to buy off justice with the gold of Peru.  He had studied human
+nature on its weak and wicked side, and he expected to profit by it.
+Fortunately, he was deceived.  He had, indeed, his revenge; but the hour
+of his revenge was that of his ruin.
+
+The disorderly state of Peru was such as to demand the immediate
+interposition of government.  In the general license that prevailed there,
+the rights of the Indian and of the Spaniard were equally trampled under
+foot.  Yet the subject was one of great difficulty; for Pizarro's authority
+was now firmly established over the country, which itself was too remote
+from Castile to be readily controlled at home.  Pizarro, moreover, was a
+man not easy to be approached, confident in his own strength, jealous of
+interference, and possessed of a fiery temper, which would kindle into a
+flame at the least distrust of the government.  It would not answer to send
+out a commission to suspend him from the exercise of his authority until
+his conduct could be investigated, as was done with Cortes, and other
+great colonial officers, on whose rooted loyalty the Crown could
+confidently rely.  Pizarro's loyalty sat, it was feared, too lightly on him to
+be a powerful restraint on his movements; and there were not wanting
+those among his reckless followers, who, in case of extremity, would be
+prompt to urge him to throw off his allegiance altogether, and set up an
+independent government for himself.
+
+Some one was to be sent out, therefore, who should possess, in some
+sort, a controlling, or, at least, concurrent power with the dangerous
+chief, while ostensibly he should act only in subordination to him.  The
+person selected for this delicate mission, was the Licentiate Vaca de
+Castro, a member of the Royal Audience of Valladolid.  He was a
+learned judge, a man of integrity and wisdom, and, though not bred to
+arms, had so much address, and such knowledge of character, as would
+enable him readily to turn the resources of others to his own account.
+
+His commission was guarded in a way which showed the embarrassment
+of the government.  He was to appear before Pizarro in the capacity of a
+royal judge; to consult with him on the redress of grievances, especially
+with reference to the unfortunate natives; to concert measures for the
+prevention of future evils; and above all, to possess himself faithfully of
+the condition of the country in all its details, and to transmit intelligence
+of it to the Court of Castile.  But, in case of Pizarro's death, he was to
+produce his warrant as royal governor, and as such to claim the
+obedience of the authorities throughout the land.--Events showed the
+wisdom of providing for this latter contingency.21
+
+The licentiate, thus commissioned, quitted his quiet residence at
+Valladolid, embarked at Seville, in the autumn of 1540, and, after a
+tedious voyage across the Atlantic, he traversed the Isthmus, and,
+encountering a succession of tempests on the Pacific, that had nearly sent
+his frail bark to the bottom, put in with her, a mere wreck, at the
+northerly port of Buenaventura.22  The affairs of the country were in a
+state to require his presence.
+
+The civil war which had lately distracted the land had left it in so
+unsettled a state, that the agitation continued long after the immediate
+cause had ceased.  This was especially the case among the natives.  In
+the violent transfer of repartimientos, the poor Indian hardly knew to
+whom he was to look as his master.  The fierce struggles between the
+rival chieftains left him equally in doubt whom he was to regard as the
+rulers of the land.  As to the authority of a common sovereign, across the
+waters, paramount over all, he held that in still greater distrust; for what
+was the authority which could not command the obedience even of its
+own vassals?23  The Inca Manco was not slow in taking advantage of
+this state of feeling.  He left his obscure fastnesses in the depths of the
+Andes, and established himself with a strong body of followers in the
+mountain country lying between Cuzco and the coast.  From this retreat,
+he made descents on the neighboring plantations, destroying the houses,
+sweeping off the cattle, and massacring the people.  He fell on travellers,
+as they were journeying singly or in caravans from the coast, and put
+them to death--it is told by his enemies--with cruel tortures.  Single
+detachments were sent against him, from time to time, but without effect.
+Some he eluded, others he defeated; and, on one occasion, cut off a party
+of thirty troopers, to a man.24
+
+At length, Pizarro found it necessary to send a considerable force under
+his brother Gonzalo against the Inca.  The hardy Indian encountered his
+enemy several times in the rough passes of the Cordilleras.  He was
+usually beaten, and sometimes with heavy loss, which he repaired with
+astonishing facility; for he always contrived to make his escape, and so
+true were his followers, that, in defiance of pursuit and ambuscade, he
+found a safe shelter in the secret haunts of the sierra.
+
+Thus baffled, Pizarro determined to try the effect of pacific overtures.
+He sent to the Inca, both in his own name, and in that of the Bishop of
+Cuzco, whom the Peruvian prince held in reverence, to invite him to
+enter into negotiation.25  Manco acquiesced, and indicated, as he had
+formerly done with Almagro, the valley of Yucay, as the scene of it.  The
+governor repaired thither, at the appointed time, well guarded, and, to
+propitiate the barbarian monarch, sent him a rich present by the hands of
+an African slave.  The slave was met on the route by a party of the Inca's
+men, who, whether with or without their master's orders, cruelly
+murdered him, and bore off the spoil to their quarters.  Pizarro resented
+this outrage by another yet more atrocious.
+
+Among the Indian prisoners was one of the Inca's wives, a young and
+beautiful woman, to whom he was said to be fondly attached.  The
+governor ordered her to be stripped naked, bound to a tree, and, in
+presence of the camp, to be scourged with rods, and then shot to death
+with arrows.  The wretched victim bore the execution of the sentence
+with surprising fortitude.  She did not beg for mercy, where none was to
+be found.  Not a complaint, scarcely a groan, escaped her under the
+infliction of these terrible torments.  The iron Conquerors were amazed
+at this power of endurance in a delicate woman, and they expressed their
+admiration, while they condemned the cruelty of their commander,--in
+their hearts.26  Yet constancy under the most excruciating tortures that
+human cruelty can inflict is almost the universal characteristic of the
+American Indian.
+
+Pizarro now prepared, as the most effectual means of checking these
+disorders among the natives, to establish settlements in the heart of the
+disaffected country.  These settlements, which received the dignified
+name of cities, might be regarded in the light of military colonies.  The
+houses were usually built of stone, to which were added the various
+public offices, and sometimes a fortress.  A municipal corporation was
+organized.  Settlers were invited by the distribution of large tracts of land
+in the neighborhood, with a stipulated number of Indian vassals to each.
+The soldiers then gathered there, sometimes accompanied by their wives
+and families; for the women of Castile seem to have disdained the
+impediments of sex, in the ardor of conjugal attachment, or, it may be, of
+romantic adventure.  A populous settlement rapidly grew up in the
+wilderness, affording protection to the surrounding territory, and
+furnishing a commercial depot for the country, and an armed force ready
+at all times to maintain public order.
+
+Such a settlement was that now made at Guamanga, midway between
+Cuzco and Lima, which effectually answered its purpose by guarding the
+communications with the coast.27  Another town was founded in the
+mining district of Charcas, under the appropriate name of the Villa de la
+Plato, the "City of Silver." And Pizarro, as he journeyed by a circuitous
+route along the shores of the southern sea towards Lima, planted there
+the city of Arequipa, since arisen to such commercial celebrity.
+
+Once more in his favorite capital of Lima, the governor found abundant
+occupation in attending to its municipal concerns, and in providing for
+the expansive growth of its population.  Nor was he unmindful of the
+other rising settlements on the Pacific.  He encouraged commerce with
+the remoter colonies north of Peru, and took measures for facilitating
+internal intercourse.  He stimulated industry in all its branches, paying
+great attention to husbandry, and importing seeds of the different
+European grains, which he had the satisfaction, in a short time, to see
+thriving luxuriantly in a country where the variety of soil and climate
+afforded a home for almost every product.28  Above all, he promoted the
+working of the mines, which already began to make such returns, that the
+most common articles of life rose to exorbitant prices, while the precious
+metals themselves seemed the only things of little value.  But they soon
+changed hands, and found their way to the mother-country, where they
+rose to their true level as they mingled with the general currency of
+Europe.  The Spaniards found that they had at length reached the land of
+which they had been so long in search,--the land of gold and silver.
+Emigrants came in greater numbers to the country, and, spreading over
+its surface, formed in the increasing population the most effectual barrier
+against the rightful owners of the soil.29
+
+Pizarro, strengthened by the arrival of fresh adventurers, now turned his
+attention to the remoter quarters of the country.  Pedro de Valdivia was
+sent on his memorable expedition to Chili; and to his own brother
+Gonzalo the governor assigned the territory of Quito, with instructions to
+explore the unknown country towards the east, where, as report said,
+grew the cinnamon.  As this chief, who had hitherto acted but a
+subordinate part in the Conquest, is henceforth to take the most
+conspicuous, it may be well to give some account of him.
+
+Little is known of his early life, for he sprang from the same obscure
+origin with Francisco, and seems to have been as little indebted as his
+eider brother to the fostering care of his parents.  He entered early on the
+career of a soldier; a career to which every man in that iron age, whether
+cavalier or vagabond, seems, if left to himself, to have most readily
+inclined.  Here he soon distinguished himself by his skill in martial
+exercises, was an excellent horseman, and, when he came to the New
+World, was esteemed the best lance in Peru.30
+
+In talent and in expansion of views, he was inferior to his brothers.
+Neither did he discover the same cool and crafty policy; but he was
+equally courageous, and in the execution of his measures quite as
+unscrupulous.  He lied a handsome person, with open, engaging features,
+a free, soldier-like address, and a confiding temper, which endeared him
+to his followers.  His spirit was high and adventurous, and, what was
+equally important, he could inspire others with the same spirit, and thus
+do much to insure the success of his enterprises.  He was an excellent
+captain in guerilla warfare, an admirable leader in doubtful and difficult
+expeditions; but he had not the enlarged capacity for a great military
+chief, still less for a civil ruler.  It was his misfortune to be called to fill
+both situations.
+
+
+
+Book 4
+
+Chapter 4
+
+Gonzalo Pizarro's Expedition--Passage Across The Mountains--
+Discovers The Napo--Incredible Sufferings-
+Orellana Sails Down The Amazon--Despair Of The Spaniards-
+The Survivors Return To Quito
+
+1540--1542
+
+Gonzalo Pizarro received the news of his appointment to the government
+of Quito with undisguised pleasure; not so much for the possession that it
+gave him of this ancient Indian province, as for the field that it opened
+for discovery towards the east,--the fabled land of Oriental spices, which
+had long captivated the imagination of the Conquerors.  He repaired to
+his government without delay, and found no difficulty in awakening a
+kindred enthusiasm to his own in the bosoms of his followers.  In a short
+time, he mustered three hundred and fifty Spaniards, and four thousand
+Indians.  One hundred and fifty of his company were mounted, and all
+were equipped in the most thorough manner for the undertaking.  He
+provided, moreover, against famine by a large stock of provisions, and
+an immense drove of swine which followed in the rear.1
+
+It was the beginning of 1540, when he set out on this celebrated
+expedition.  The first part of the journey was attended with
+comparatively little difficulty, while the Spaniards were yet in the land of
+the Incas; for the distractions of Peru had not been felt in this distant
+province, where the simple people still lived as under the primitive sway
+of the Children of the Sun.  But the scene changed as they entered the
+territory of Quixos, where the character of the inhabitants, as well as of
+the climate, seemed to be of another description.  The country was
+traversed by lofty ranges of the Andes, and the adventurers were soon
+entangled in their deep and intricate passes.  As they rose into the more
+elevated regions, the icy winds that swept down the sides of the
+Cordilleras benumbed their limbs, and many of the natives found a
+wintry grave in the wilderness.  While crossing this formidable barrier,
+they experienced one of those tremendous earthquakes which, in these
+volcanic regions, so often shake the mountains to their base.  In one
+place, the earth was rent asunder by the terrible throes of Nature, while
+streams of sulphurous vapor issued from the cavity, and a village with
+some hundreds of houses was precipitated into the frightful abyss! 2
+
+On descending the eastern slopes, the climate changed; and, as they came
+on the lower level, the fierce cold was succeeded by a suffocating heat,
+while tempests of thunder and lightning, rushing from out the gorges of
+the sierra, poured on their heads with scarcely any intermission day or
+night, as if the offended deities of the place were willing to take
+vengeance on the invaders of their mountain solitudes.  For more than six
+weeks the deluge continued unabated, and the forlorn wanderers, wet,
+and weary with incessant toil, were scarcely able to drag their limbs
+along the soil broken up and saturated with the moisture.  After some
+months of toilsome travel, in which they had to cross many a morass and
+mountain stream, they at length reached Canelas, the Land of
+Cinnamon.3  They saw the trees bearing the precious bark, spreading out
+into broad forests; yet, however valuable an article for commerce it
+might have proved in accessible situations, in these remote regions it was
+of little worth to them.  But, from the wandering tribes of savages whom
+they occasionally met in their path, they learned that at ten days' distance
+was a rich and fruitful land abounding with gold, and inhabited by
+populous nations.  Gonzalo Pizarro had already reached the limits
+originally proposed for the expedition.  But this intelligence renewed his
+hopes, and he resolved to push the adventure farther.  It would have been
+well for him and his followers, had they been content to return on their
+footsteps.
+
+Continuing their march, the country now spread out into broad savannas
+terminated by forests, which, as they drew near, seemed to stretch on
+every side to the very verge of the horizon.  Here they beheld trees of
+that stupendous growth seen only in the equinoctial regions.  Some were
+so large, that sixteen men could hardly encompass them with extended
+arms! 4  The wood was thickly matted with creepers and parasitical
+vines, which hung in gaudy-colored festoons from tree to tree, clothing
+them in a drapery beautiful to the eye, but forming an impenetrable
+network.  At every step of their way, they were obliged to hew open a
+passage with their axes, while their garments, rotting from the effects of
+the drenching rains to which they had been exposed, caught in every
+bush and bramble, and hung about them in shreds.5  Their provisions,
+spoiled by the weather, had long since failed, and the live stock which
+they had taken with them had either been consumed or made their escape
+in the woods and mountain passes.  They had set out with nearly a
+thousand dogs, many of them of the ferocious breed used in hunting
+down the unfortunate natives.  These they now gladly killed, but their
+miserable carcasses furnished a lean banquet for the famishing travellers;
+and, when these were gone, they had only such herbs and dangerous
+roots as they could gather in the forest.6
+
+At length the way-worn company came on a broad expanse of water
+formed by the Napo, one of the great tributaries of the Amazon, and
+which, though only a third or fourth rate river in America, would pass for
+one of the first magnitude in the Old World.  The sight gladdened their
+hearts, as, by winding along its banks, they hoped to find a safer and
+more practicable route.  After traversing its borders for a considerable
+distance, closely beset with thickets which it taxed their strength to the
+utmost to overcome, Gonzalo and his party came within hearing of a
+rushing noise that sounded like subterranean thunder.  The river, lashed
+into fury, tumbled along over rapids with frightful velocity, and
+conducted them to the brink of a magnificent cataract, which, to their
+wondering fancies, rushed down in one vast volume of foam to the depth
+of twelve hundred feet! 7  The appalling sounds which they had heard for
+the distance of six leagues were rendered yet more oppressive to the
+spirits by the gloomy stillness of the surrounding forests.  The rude
+warriors were filled with sentiments of awe.  Not a bark dimpled the
+waters.  No living thing was to be seen but the wild tenants of the
+wilderness, the unwieldy boa, and the loathsome alligator basking on the
+borders of the stream.  The trees towering in wide-spread magnificence
+towards the heavens, the river rolling on in its rocky bed as it had rolled
+for ages, the solitude and silence of the scene, broken only by the hoarse
+fall of waters, or the faint rustling of the woods,--all seemed to spread
+out around them in the same wild and primitive state as when they came
+from the hands of the Creator.
+
+For some distance above and below the falls, the bed of the river
+contracted so that its width did not exceed twenty feet.  Sorely pressed
+by hunger, the adventurers determined, at all hazards, to cross to the
+opposite side, in hopes of finding a country that might afford them
+sustenance.  A frail bridge was constructed by throwing the huge trunks
+of trees across the chasm, where the cliffs, as if split asunder by some
+convulsion of nature, descended sheer down a perpendicular depth of
+several hundred feet.  Over this airy causeway the men and horses
+succeeded in effecting their passage with the loss of a single Spaniard,
+who, made giddy by heedlessly looking down, lost his footing and fell
+into the boiling surges below.
+
+Yet they gained little by the exchange.  The country wore the same
+unpromising aspect, and the river-banks were studded with gigantic
+trees, or fringed with impenetrable thickets.  The tribes of Indians, whom
+they occasionally met in the pathless wilderness, were fierce and
+unfriendly, and they were engaged in perpetual skirmishes with them.
+From these they learned that a fruitful country was to be found down the
+river at the distance of only a few days' journey, and the Spaniards held
+on their weary way, still hoping and still deceived, as the promised land
+flitted before them, like the rainbow, receding as they advanced.
+
+At length, spent with toil and suffering, Gonzalo resolved to construct a
+bark large enough to transport the weaker part of his company and his
+baggage.  The forests furnished him with timber; the shoes of the horses
+which had died on the road or been slaughtered for food, were converted
+into nails; gum distilled from the trees took the place of pitch; and the
+tattered garments of the soldiers supplied a substitute for oakum.  It was
+a work of difficulty; but Gonzalo cheered his men in the task, and set an
+example by taking part in their labors.  At the end of two months a
+brigantine was completed, rudely put together, but strong and of
+sufficient burden to carry half the company,--the first European vessel
+that ever floated on these inland waters.
+
+Gonzalo gave the command to Francisco de Orellana, a cavalier from
+Truxillo, on whose courage and devotion to himself he thought he could
+rely.  The troops now moved forward, still following the descending
+course of the river, while the brigantine kept alongside; and when a bold
+promontory or more impracticable country intervened, it furnished
+timely aid by the transportation of the feebler soldiers.  In this way they
+journeyed, for many a wearisome week, through the dreary wilderness on
+the borders of the Napo.  Every scrap of provisions had been long since
+consumed.  The last of their horses had been devoured.  To appease the
+gnawings of hunger, they were fain to eat the leather of their saddles and
+belts.  The woods supplied them with scanty sustenance, and they
+greedily fed upon toads, serpents, and such other reptiles as they
+occasionally found.8
+
+They were now told of a rich district, inhabited by a populous nation,
+where the Napo emptied into a still greater river that flowed towards the
+east.  It was, as usual, at the distance of several days' journey; and
+Gonzalo Pizarro resolved to halt where he was and send Orellana down
+in his brigantine to the confluence of the waters to procure a stock of
+provisions, with which he might return and put them in condition to
+resume their march.  That cavalier, accordingly, taking with him fifty of
+the adventurers, pushed off into the middle of the river, where the stream
+ran swiftly, and his bark, taken by the current, shot forward with the
+speed of an arrow, and was soon out of sight.
+
+Days and weeks passed away, yet the vessel did not return; and no speck
+was to be seen on the waters, as the Spaniards strained their eyes to the
+farthest point, where the line of light faded away in the dark shadows of
+the foliage on the borders.  Detachments were sent out, and, though
+absent several days, came back without intelligence of their comrades.
+Unable longer to endure this suspense, or, indeed, to maintain
+themselves in their present quarters, Gonzalo and his famishing followers
+now determined to proceed towards the junction of the rivers.  Two
+months elapsed before they accomplished this terrible journey those of
+them who did not perish on the way,--although the distance probably' did
+not exceed two hundred leagues; and they at length reached the spot so
+long desired, where the Napo pours its tide into the Amazon, that mighty
+stream, which, fed by its thousand tributaries, rolls on towards the ocean,
+for many hundred miles, through the heart of the great continent,--the
+most majestic of American rivers.
+
+But the Spaniards gathered no tidings of Orellana, while the country,
+though more populous than the region they had left, was as little inviting
+in its aspect, and was tenanted by a race yet more ferocious.  They now
+abandoned the hope of recovering their comrades, who they supposed
+must have miserably perished by famine or by the hands of the natives.
+But their doubts were at length dispelled by the appearance of a white
+man wandering half-naked in the woods, in whose famine stricken
+countenance they recognized the features of one of their countrymen.  It
+was Sanchez de Vargas, a cavalier of good descent, and much esteemed
+in the army.  He had a dismal tale to tell.
+
+Orellana, borne swiftly down the current of the Napo, had reached the
+point of its confluence with the Amazon in less than three days;
+accomplishing in this brief space of time what had cost Pizarro and his
+company two months.  He had found the country altogether different
+from what had been represented; and, so far from supplies for his
+countrymen, he could barely obtain sustenance for himself.  Nor was it
+possible for him to return as he had come, and make head against the
+current of the river; while the attempt to journey by land was an alternative
+scarcely less formidable.  In this dilemma, an idea flashed across his
+mind.  It was to launch his bark at once on the bosom of the Amazon,
+and descend its waters to its mouth.  He would then visit the rich and
+populous nations that, as report said, lined its borders, sail out on the
+great ocean, cross to the neighboring isles, and return to Spain to claim
+the glory and the guerdon of discovery.  The suggestion was eagerly
+taken up by his reckless companions, welcoming any course that would
+rescue them from the wretchedness of their present existence, and fired
+with the prospect of new and stirring adventure,--for the love of
+adventure was the last feeling to become extinct in the bosom of the
+Castilian cavalier.  They heeded little their unfortunate comrades, whom
+they were to abandon in the wilderness! 9
+
+This is not the place to record the circumstances of Orellana's
+extraordinary expedition.  He succeeded in his enterprise.  But it is
+marvellous that he should have escaped shippwreck in the perilous and
+unknown navigation of that river.  Many times his vessel was nearly
+dashed to pieces on its rocks and in its furious rapids;10 and he was in
+still greater peril from the warlike tribes on its borders, who fell on his
+little troop whenever he attempted to land, and followed in his wake for
+miles in their canoes.  He at length emerged from the great river; and,
+once upon the sea, Orellana made for the isle of Cubagua; thence passing
+over to Spain, he repaired to court, and told the circumstances of his
+voyage,--of the nations of Amazons whom he had found on the banks of
+the river, the El Dorado which report assured him existed in the
+neighborhood, and other marvels,--the exaggeration rather than the
+coinage of a credulous fancy.  His audience listened with willing ears to
+the tales of the traveller; and in an age of wonders, when the mysteries of
+the East and West were hourly coming to light, they might be excused
+for not discerning the true line between romance and reality.11
+
+He found no difficulty in obtaining a commission to conquer and
+colonize the realms he had discovered.  He soon saw himself at the head
+of five hundred followers, prepared to share the perils and the profits of
+his expedition.  But neither he, nor his country, was destined to realize
+these profits.  He died on his outward passage, and the lands washed by
+the Amazon fell within the territories of Portugal.  The unfortunate
+navigator did not even enjoy the undivided honor of giving his name to
+the waters he had discovered.  He enjoyed only the barren glory of the
+discovery, surely not balanced by the iniquitous circumstances which
+attended it.12
+
+One of Orellana's party maintained a stout opposition to his proceedings,
+as repugnant both to humanity and honor.  This was Sanchez de Vargas;
+and the cruel commander was revenged on him by abandoning him to his
+fate in the desolate region where he was now found by his
+countrymen.13
+
+The Spaniards listened with horror to the recital of Vargas, and their
+blood almost froze in their veins as they saw themselves thus deserted in
+the heart of this remote wilderness, and deprived of their only means of
+escape from it.  They made an effort to prosecute their journey along the
+banks, but, after some toilsome days, strength and spirits failed, and they
+gave up in despair!
+
+Then it was that the qualities of Gonzalo Pizarro, as a fit leader in the
+hour of despondency and danger, shone out conspicuous.  To advance
+farther was hopeless.  To stay where they were, without food or raiment,
+without defence from the fierce animals of the forest and the fiercer
+natives, was impossible.  One only course remained; it was to return to
+Quito.  But this brought with it the recollection of the past, of sufferings
+which they could too well estimate,---hardly to be endured even in
+imagination.  They were now at least four hundred leagues from Quito,
+and more than a year had elapsed since they had set out on their painful
+pilgrimage.  How could they encounter these perils again! 14
+
+Yet there was no alternative.  Gonzalo endeavored to reassure his
+followers by dwelling on the invincible constancy they had hitherto
+displayed; adjuring them to show themselves still worthy of the name of
+Castilians.  He reminded them of the glory they would for ever acquire
+by their heroic achievement, when they should reach their own country.
+He would lead them back, he said, by another route, and it could not be
+but that they should meet somewhere with those abundant regions of
+which they had so often heard.  It was something, at least, that every step
+would take them nearer home; and as, at all events, it was clearly the
+only course now left, they should prepare to meet it like men.  The spirit
+would sustain the body; and difficulties encountered in the right spirit
+were half vanquished already!
+
+The soldiers listened eagerly to his words of promise and
+encouragement.  The confidence of their leader gave life to the
+desponding.  They felt the force of his reasoning, and, as they lent a
+willing ear to his assurances, the pride of the old Castilian honor revived
+in their bosoms, and every one caught somewhat of the generous
+enthusiasm of their commander.  He was, in truth, entitled to their
+devotion.  From the first hour of the expedition, he had freely borne his
+part in its privations.  Far from claiming the advantage of his position, he
+had taken his lot with the poorest soldier; ministering to the wants of the
+sick, cheering up the spirits of the desponding, sharing his stinted
+allowance with his famished followers, bearing his full part in the toil
+and burden of the march, ever showing himself their faithful comrade, no
+less than their captain.  He found the benefit of this conduct in a trying
+hour like the present.
+
+I will spare the reader the recapitulation of the sufferings endured by the
+Spaniards on their retrograde march to Quito.  They took a more
+northerly route than that by which they had approached the Amazon;
+and, if it was attended with fewer difficulties, they experienced yet
+greater distresses from their greater inability to overcome them.  Their
+only nourishment was such scanty fare as they could pick up in the
+forest, or happily meet with in some forsaken Indian settlement, or wring
+by violence from the natives.  Some sickened and sank down by the way,
+for there was none to help them.  Intense misery had made them selfish;
+and many a poor wretch was abandoned to his fate, to die alone in the
+wilderness, or, more probably, to be devoured, while living, by the wild
+animals which roamed over it.
+
+At length, in June, 1542, after somewhat more than a year consumed in
+their homeward march, the way-worn company came on the elevated
+plains in the neighborhood of Quito.  But how different their aspect from
+that which they had exhibited on issuing from the gates of the same
+capital, two years and a half before, with high romantic hope and in all
+the pride of military array!  Their horses gone, their arms broken and
+rusted, the skins of wild animals instead of clothes hanging loosely about
+their limbs, their long and matted locks streaming wildly down their
+shoulders, their faces burned and blackened by the tropical sun, their
+bodies wasted by famine and sorely disfigured by scars,--it seemed as if
+the charnel-house had given up its dead, as, with uncertain step, they
+glided slowly onwards like a troop of dismal spectres!  More than half of
+the four thousand Indians who had accompanied the expedition had
+perished, and of the Spaniards only eighty, and many of these
+irretrievably broken in constitution, returned to Quito.15
+
+The few Christian inhabitants of the place, with their wives and children,
+came out to welcome their countrymen.  They ministered to them all the
+relief and refreshment in their power; and, as they listened to the sad
+recital of their sufferings, they mingled their tears with those of the
+wanderers.  The whole company then entered the capital, where their
+first act--to their credit be it mentioned--was to go in a body to the
+church, and offer up thanksgivings to the Almighty for their miraculous
+preservation through their long and perilous pilgrimage.16  Such was the
+end of the expedition to the Amazon; an expedition which, for its
+dangers and hardships, the length of their duration, and the constancy
+with which they were endured, stands, perhaps, unmatched in the annals
+of American discovery.
+
+
+
+Book 4
+
+Chapter 5
+
+The Almagro Faction--Their Desperate Condition-
+Conspiracy Against Francisco Pizarro--Assassination Of Pizarro-
+Acts Of The Conspirators--Pizarro's Character
+
+1541
+
+When Gonzalo Pizarro reached Quito, he received tidings of an event
+which showed that his expedition to the Amazon had been even more
+fatal to his interests than he had imagined.  A revolution had taken place
+during his absence, which had changed the whole condition of things in
+Peru.
+
+In a preceding chapter we have seen, that, when Hernando Pizarro
+returned to Spain, his brother the marquess repaired to Lima, where he
+continued to occupy himself with building up his infant capital, and
+watching over the general interests of the country.  While thus employed,
+he gave little heed to a danger that hourly beset his path, and this, too, in
+despite of repeated warnings from more circumspect friends.
+
+After the execution of Almagro, his followers, to the number of several
+hundred, remained scattered through the country; but, however scattered,
+still united by a common sentiment of indignation against the Pizarros,
+the murderers, as they regarded them, of their leader.  The governor was
+less the object of these feelings than his brother Hernando, as having
+been less instrumental in the perpetration of the deed.  Under these
+circumstances, it was clearly Pizarro's policy to do one of two things; to
+treat the opposite faction either as friends, or as open enemies.  He might
+conciliate the most factious by acts of kindness, efface the remembrance
+of past injury, if he could, by present benefits; in short, prove to them
+that his quarrel had been with their leader, not with themselves, and that
+it was plainly for their interest to come again under his banner.  This
+would have been the most politic, as well as the most magnanimous
+course; and, by augmenting the number of his adherents, would have
+greatly strengthened his power in the land.  But, unhappily, he had not
+the magnanimity to pursue it.  It was not in the nature of a Pizarro to
+forgive an injury, or the man whom he had injured.  As he would not,
+therefore, try to conciliate Almagro's adherents, it was clearly the
+governor's policy to regard them as enemies, not the less so for being in
+disguise,--and to take such measures as should disqualify them for doing
+mischief.  He should have followed the counsel of his more prudent
+brother Hernando, and distributed them in different quarters, taking care
+that no great number should assemble at any one point, or, above all, in
+the neighborhood of his own residence.
+
+But the governor despised the broken followers of Almagro too heartily
+to stoop to precautionary measures.  He suffered the son of his rival to
+remain in Lima, where his quarters soon became the resort of the
+disaffected cavaliers.  The young man was well known to most of
+Almagro's soldiers, having been trained along with them in the camp
+under his father's eye, and, now that his parent was removed, they
+naturally transferred their allegiance to the son who survived him.
+
+That the young Almagro, however, might be less able to maintain this
+retinue of unprofitable followers, he was deprived by Pizarro of a great
+part of his Indians and lands, while he was excluded from the
+government of New Toledo, which had been settled on him by his
+father's testament.1  Stripped of all means of support, without office or
+employment of any kind, the men of Chili, for so Almagro's adherents
+continued to be called, were reduced to the utmost distress.  So poor
+were they, as is the story of the time, that twelve cavaliers, who lodged in
+the same house, could muster only one cloak among them all; and, with
+the usual feeling of pride that belongs to the poor hidalgo, unwilling to
+expose their poverty, they wore this cloak by turns, those who had no
+right to it remaining at home.2  Whether true or not, the anecdote well
+illustrates the extremity to which Almagro's faction was reduced.  And
+this distress was rendered yet more galling by the effrontery of their
+enemies, who, enriched by their forfeitures, displayed before their eyes
+all the insolent bravery of equipage and apparel that could annoy their
+feelings.
+
+Men thus goaded by insult and injury were too dangerous to be lightly
+regarded.  But, although Pizarro received various intimations intended to
+put him on his guard, he gave no heed to them.  "Poor devils!" he would
+exclaim, speaking with contemptuous pity of the men of Chili; "they
+have had bad luck enough.  We will not trouble them further."3  And so
+little did he consider them, that he went freely about, as usual, riding
+without attendants to all parts of the town and to its immediate
+environs.4
+
+News now reached the colony of the appointment of a judge by the
+Crown to take cognizance of the affairs of Peru.  Pizarro, although
+alarmed by the intelligence, sent orders to have him well entertained on
+his landing, and suitable accommodations prepared for him on the route.
+The spirits of Almagro's followers were greatly raised by the tidings.
+They confidently looked to this high functionary for the redress of their
+wrongs; and two of their body, clad in suits of mourning, were chosen to
+go to the north, where the judge was expected to land, and to lay their
+grievances before him.
+
+But months elapsed, and no tidings came of his arrival, till, at length, a
+vessel, coming into port, announced that most of the squadron had
+foundered in the heavy storms on the coast, and that the commissioner
+had probably perished with them.  This was disheartening intelligence to
+the men of Chili, whose "miseries," to use the words of their young
+leader, "had become too grievous to be borne."5  Symptoms of
+disaffection had already begun openly to manifest themselves.  The
+haughty cavaliers did not always doff their bonnets, on meeting the
+governor in the street; and on one occasion, three ropes were found
+suspended from the public gallows, with labels attached to them, bearing
+the names of Pizarro, Velasquez the judge, and Picado the governor's
+secretary.6  This last functionary was peculiarly odious to Almagro and
+his followers.  As his master knew neither how to read nor write, all his
+communications passed through Picado's hands; and, as the latter was of
+a hard and arrogant nature, greatly elated by the consequence which his
+position gave him, he exercised a mischievous influence on the
+governor's measures.  Almagro's poverty-stricken followers were the
+objects of his open ridicule, and he revenged the insult now offered him
+by riding before their young leader's residence, displaying a tawdry
+magnificence in his dress, sparkling with gold and silver, and with the
+inscription, "For the Men of Chili," set in his bonnet.  It was a foolish
+taunt; but the poor cavaliers who were the object of it, made morbidly
+sensitive by their sufferings, had not the philosophy to despise it.7
+
+At length, disheartened by the long protracted coming of Vaca de Castro,
+and still more by the recent reports of his loss, Almagro's faction,
+despairing of redress from a legitimate authority, determined to take it
+into their own hands.  They came to the desperate resolution of
+assassinating Pizarro.  The day named for this was Sunday, the twenty-
+sixth of June, 1541- The conspirators, eighteen or twenty in number,
+were to assemble in Almagro's house, which stood in the great square
+next to the cathedral, and, when the governor was returning from mass,
+they were to issue forth and fall on him in the street.  A white flag,
+unfurled at the same time from an upper window in the house, was to be
+the signal for the rest of their comrades to move to the support of those
+immediately engaged in the execution of the deed.8
+
+These arrangements could hardly have been concealed from Almagro,
+since his own quarters were to be the place of rendezvous.  Yet there is
+no good evidence of his having taken part in the conspiracy.9  He was,
+indeed, too young to make it probable that he took a leading part in it.
+He is represented by contemporary writers to have given promise of
+many good qualities, though, unhappily, he was not placed in a situation
+favorable for their development.  He was the son of an Indian woman of
+Panama; but from early years had followed the troubled fortunes of his
+father, to whom he bore much resemblance in his free and generous
+nature, as well as in the violence of his passions.  His youth and
+inexperience disqualified him from taking the lead in the perplexing
+circumstances in which he was placed, and made him little more than a
+puppet in the hands of others.10
+
+The most conspicuous of his advisers was Juan de Herrada, or Rada, as
+his name is more usually spelt,--a cavalier of respectable family, but
+who, having early enlisted as a common soldier, had gradually risen to
+the highest posts in the army by his military talents.  At this time he was
+well advanced in years; but the fires of youth were not quenched in his
+bosom, and he burned with desire to avenge the wrongs done to his
+ancient commander.  The attachment which he had ever felt for the elder
+Almagro he seems to have transferred in full measure to his son; and it
+was apparently with reference to him, even more than to himself, that he
+devised this audacious plot, and prepared to take the lead in the
+execution of it.
+
+There was one, however, in the band of conspirators who felt some
+compunctions of conscience at the part he was acting, and who relieved
+his bosom by revealing the whole plot to his confessor.  The latter lost no
+time in reporting it to Picado, by whom in turn it was communicated to
+Pizarro.  But, strange to say, it made little more impression on the
+governor's mind than the vague warnings he had so frequently received.
+"It is a device of the priest," said he; "he wants a mitre." 11  Yet he
+repeated the story to the judge Velasquez, who, instead of ordering the
+conspirators to be seized, and the proper steps taken for learning the
+truth of the accusation, seemed to be possessed with the same infatuation
+as Pizarro; and he bade the governor be under no apprehension, "for no
+harm should come to him, while the rod of justice," not a metaphorical
+badge of authority in Castile, "was in his hands." 12  Still, to obviate
+every possibility of danger, it was deemed prudent for Pizarro to abstain
+from going to mass on Sunday, and to remain at home on pretence of
+illness.
+
+On the day appointed, Rada and his companions met in Almagro's house,
+and waited with anxiety for the hour when the governor should issue
+from the church.  But great was their consternation, when they learned
+that he was not there, but was detained at home, as currently reported, by
+illness.  Little doubting that their design was discovered, they felt their
+own ruin to be the inevitable consequence, and that, too, without
+enjoying the melancholy consolation of having struck the blow for which
+they had incurred it.  Greatly perplexed, some were for disbanding, in the
+hope that Pizarro might, after all, be ignorant of their design.  But most
+were for carrying it into execution at once, by assaulting him in his own
+house.  The question was summarily decided by one of the party, who
+felt that in this latter course lay their only chance of safety.  Throwing
+open the doors, he rushed out, calling on his comrades "to follow him, or
+he would proclaim the purpose for which they had met."  There was no
+longer hesitation, and the cavaliers issued forth, with Rada at their head,
+shouting, as they went, "Long live the king!  Death to the tyrant!" 13
+
+It was the hour of dinner, which, in this primitive age of the Spanish
+colonies, was at noon.  Yet numbers, roused by the cries of the
+assailants, came out into the square to inquire the cause.  "They are
+going to kill the marquess," some said very coolly; others replied, "It is
+Picado."  No one stirred in their defence.  The power of Pizarro was not
+seated in the hearts of his people.
+
+As the conspirators traversed the plaza, one of the party made a circuit to
+avoid a little pool of water that lay in their path.  "What!" exclaimed
+Rada, "afraid of wetting your feet, when you are to wade up to your
+knees in blood!"  And he ordered the man to give up the enterprise and
+go home to his quarters.  The anecdote is characteristic.14
+
+The governor's palace stood on the opposite side of the square.  It was
+approached by two courtyards.  The entrance to the outer one was
+protected by a massive gate, capable of being made good against a
+hundred men or more.  But it was left open, and the assailants, hurrying
+through to the inner court, still shouting their fearful battle-cry, were met
+by two domestics loitering in the yard.  One of these they struck down.
+The other, flying in all haste towards the house, called out, "Help, help!
+the men of Chili are all coming to murder the marquess!"
+
+Pizarro at this time was at dinner, or, more probably, had just dined.  He
+was surrounded by a party of friends, who had dropped in, it seems, after
+mass, to inquire after the state of his health, some of whom had remained
+to partake of his repast.  Among these was Don Martinez do Alcantara,
+Pizarro's half-brother by the mother's side, the judge Velasquez, the
+bishop elect of Quito, and several of the principal cavaliers in the place,
+to the number of fifteen or twenty.  Some of them, alarmed by the uproar
+in the court-yard, left the saloon, and, running down to the first landing
+on the stairway, inquired into the cause of the disturbance.  No sooner
+were they informed of it by the cries of the servant, than they retreated
+with precipitation into the house; and, as they had no mind to abide the
+storm unarmed, or at best imperfectly armed, as most of them were, they
+made their way to a corridor that overlooked the gardens, into which
+they easily let themselves down without injury.  Velasquez, the judge,
+the better to have the use of his hands in the descent, held his rod of
+office in his mouth, thus taking care, says a caustic old chronicler, not to
+falsify his assurance, that "no harm should come to Pizarro while the rod
+of justice was in his hands"! 15
+
+Meanwhile, the marquess, learning the nature of the tumult, called out to
+Francisco de Chaves, an officer high in his confidence, and who was in
+the outer apartment opening on the staircase, to secure the door, while he
+and his brother Alcantara buckled on their armour.  Had this order,
+coolly given, been as coolly obeyed, it would have saved them all, since
+the entrance could easily have been maintained against a much larger
+force, till the report of the cavaliers who had fled had brought support to
+Pizarro.  But unfortunately, Chaves, disobeying his commander, half
+opened the door, and attempted to enter into a parley with the
+conspirators.  The latter had now reached the head of the stairs, and cut
+short the debate by running Chaves through the body, and tumbling his
+corpse down into the area below.  For a moment they were kept at bay by
+the attendants of the slaughtered cavalier, but these, too, were quickly
+despatched; and Rada and his companions, entering the apartment,
+hurried across it, shouting out, "Where is the marquess? Death to the
+tyrant!"
+
+Martinez de Alcantara, who in the adjoining room was assisting his
+brother to buckle on his mail, no sooner saw that the entrance to the
+antechamber had been gained, than he sprang to the doorway of the
+apartment, and, assisted by two young men, pages of Pizarro, and by one
+or two cavaliers in attendance, endeavored to resist the approach of the
+assailants.  A desperate struggle now ensued.  Blows were given on both
+sides, some of which proved fatal, and two of the conspirators were
+slain, while Alcantara and his brave companions were repeatedly
+wounded.
+
+At length, Pizarro, unable, in the hurry of the moment, to adjust the
+fastenings of his cuirass, threw it away, and, enveloping one arm in his
+cloak, with the other seized his sword, and sprang to his brother's
+assistance.  It was too late; for Alcantara was already staggering under
+the loss of blood, and soon fell to the ground.  Pizarro threw himself on
+his invaders, like a lion roused in his lair, and dealt his blows with as
+much rapidity and force, as if age had no power to stiffen his limbs.
+"What ho!" he cried, "traitors! have you come to kill me in my own
+house?"  The conspirators drew back for a moment, as two of their body
+fell under Pizarro's sword; but they quickly rallied, and, from their
+superior numbers, fought at great advantage by relieving one another in
+the assault.  Still the passage was narrow, and the struggle lasted for
+some minutes, till both of Pizarro's pages were stretched by his side,
+when Rada, impatient of the delay, called out, "Why are we so long
+about it? Down with the tyrant!" and taking one of his companions,
+Narvaez, in his arms, he thrust him against the marquess.  Pizarro,
+instantly grappling with his opponent, ran him through with his sword.
+But at that moment he received a wound in the throat, and reeling, he
+sank on the floor, while the swords of Rada and several of the
+conspirators were plunged into his body.  "Jesu!" exclaimed the dying
+man, and, tracing a cross with his finger on the bloody floor, he bent
+down his head to kiss it, when a stroke, more friendly than the rest, put
+an end to his existence.16
+
+The conspirators, having accomplished their bloody deed, rushed into
+the street, and, brandishing their dripping weapons, shouted out, "The
+tyrant is dead!  The laws are restored!  Long live our master the emperor,
+and his governor, Almagro!"  The men of Chili, roused by the cheering
+cry, now flocked in from every side to join the banner of Rada, who soon
+found himself at the head of nearly three hundred followers, all armed
+and prepared to support his authority.  A guard was placed over the
+houses of the principal partisans of the late governor, and their persons
+were taken into custody.  Pizarro's house, and that of his secretary
+Picado, were delivered up to pillage and a large booty in gold and silver
+was found in the former.  Picado himself took refuge in the dwelling of
+Riquelme, the treasurer; but his hiding-place was detected, --betrayed,
+according to some accounts, by the looks, though not the words, of the
+treasurer himself,--and he was dragged forth and committed to a secure
+prison.17  The whole city was thrown into consternation, as armed
+bodies hurried to and fro on their several errands, and all who were not
+in the faction of Almagro trembled lest they should be involved in the
+proscription of their enemies.  So great was the disorder, that the
+Brothers of Mercy, turning out in a body, paraded the streets in solemn
+procession, with the host elevated in the air, in hopes by the presence of
+the sacred symbol to calm the passions of the multitude.
+
+But no other violence was offered by Rada and his followers than to
+apprehend a few suspected persons, and to seize upon horses and arms
+wherever they were to be found.  The municipality was then summoned
+to recognize the authority of Almagro; the refractory were ejected
+without ceremony from their offices, and others of the Chili faction were
+substituted.  The claims of the new aspirant were fully recognized; and
+young Almagro, parading the streets on horseback, and escorted by a
+well-armed body of cavaliers, was proclaimed by sound of trumpet
+governor and captain-general of Peru.
+
+Meanwhile, the mangled bodies of Pizarro and his faithful adherents
+were left weltering in their blood.  Some were for dragging forth the
+governor's corpse to the market-place, and fixing his head upon a gibbet.
+But Almagro was secretly prevailed on to grant the entreaties of Pizarro's
+friends, and allow his interment.  This was stealthily and hastily
+performed, in the fear of momentary interruption.  A faithful attendant
+and his wife, with a few black domestics, wrapped the body in a cotton
+cloth and removed it to the cathedral.  A grave was hastily dug in an
+obscure corner, the services were hurried through, and, in secrecy, and in
+darkness dispelled only by the feeble glimmering of a few tapers
+furnished by these humble menials, the remains of Pizarro, rolled in their
+bloody shroud, were consigned to their kindred dust.  Such was the
+miserable end of the Conqueror of Peru,--of the man who but a few
+hours before had lorded it over the land with as absolute a sway as was
+possessed by its hereditary Incas.  Cut off in the broad light of day, in the
+heart of his own capital, in the very midst of those who had been his
+companions in arms and shared with him his triumphs and his spoils, he
+perished like a wretched outcast.  "There was none, even," in the
+expressive language of the chronicler, "to say, God forgive him!" 18
+
+A few years later, when tranquillity was restored to the country, Pizarro's
+remains were placed in a sumptuous coffin and deposited under a
+monument in a conspicuous part of the cathedral.  And in 1607, when
+time had thrown its friendly mantle over the past, and the memory of his
+errors and his crimes was merged in the consideration of the great
+services he had rendered to the Crown by the extension of her colonial
+empire, his bones were removed to the new cathedral, and allowed to
+repose side by side with those of Mendoza, the wise and good viceroy of
+Peru.19
+
+Pizarro was, probably, not far from sixty-five years of age at the time of
+his death; though this, it must be added, is but loose conjecture, since
+there exists no authentic record of the date of his birth.20  He was never
+married; but by an Indian princess of the Inca blood, daughter of
+Atahuallpa and granddaughter of the great Huayna Capac, he had two
+children, a son and a daughter.  Both survived him; but the son did not
+live to manhood.  Their mother, after Pizarro's death, wedded a Spanish
+cavalier, named Ampuero, and removed with him to Spain.  Her
+daughter Francisca accompanied her, and was there subsequently
+married to her uncle Hernando Pizarro, then a prisoner in the Mota del
+Medina.  Neither the title nor estates of the Marquess Francisco
+descended to his illegitimate offspring.  But in the third generation, in the
+reign of Philip the Fourth, the title was revived in favor of Don Juan
+Hernando Pizarro, who, out of gratitude for the services of his ancestor,
+was created Marquess of the Conquest, Marques de la Conquista, with a
+liberal pension from government.  His descendants, bearing the same
+title of nobility, are still to be found, it is said, at Truxillo, in the ancient
+province of Estremadura, the original birthplace of the Pizarros.21
+
+Pizarro's person has been already described.  He was tall in stature, well-
+proportioned, and with a countenance not unpleasing.  Bred in camps,
+with nothing of the polish of a court, he had a soldier-like bearing, and
+the air of one accustomed to command.  But though not polished, there
+was no embarrassment or rusticity in his address, which, where it served
+his purpose, could be plausible and even insinuating.  The proof of it is
+the favorable impression made by him, on presenting himself, after his
+second expedition--stranger as he was to all its forms and usages--at the
+punctilious court of Castile.
+
+Unlike many of his countrymen, he had no passion for ostentatious dress,
+which he regarded as an incumbrance.  The costume which he most
+affected on public occasions was a black cloak, with a white hat, and
+shoes of the same color; the last, it is said, being in imitation of the Great
+Captain, whose character he had early learned to admire in Italy, but to
+which his own, certainly, bore very faint resemblance.22
+
+He was temperate in eating, drank sparingly, and usually rose an hour
+before dawn.  He was punctual in attendance to business, and shrunk
+from no toil.  He had, indeed, great powers of patient endurance.  Like
+most of his nation, he was fond of play, and cared little for the quality of
+those with whom he played; though, when his antagonist could not afford
+to lose, he would allow himself, it is said, to be the loser; a mode of
+conferring an obligation much commended by a Castilian writer, for its
+delicacy.23
+
+Though avaricious, it was in order to spend and not to hoard.  His ample
+treasures, more ample than those, probably, that ever before fell to the
+lot of an adventurer,24 were mostly dissipated in his enterprises, his
+architectural works, and schemes of public improvement, which, in a
+country where gold and silver might be said to have lost their value from
+their abundance, absorbed an incredible amount of money.  While he
+regarded the whole country, in a manner, as his own, and distributed it
+freely among his captains, it is certain that the princely grant of a
+territory with twenty thousand vassals, made to him by the Crown, was
+never carried into effect; nor did his heirs ever reap the benefit of it.25
+
+To a man possessed of the active energies of Pizarro, sloth was the
+greatest evil.  The excitement of play was in a manner necessary to a
+spirit accustomed to the habitual stimulants of war and adventure.  His
+uneducated mind had no relish for more refined, intellectual recreation.
+The deserted foundling had neither been taught to read nor write.  This
+has been disputed by some, but it is attested by unexceptionable
+authorities.26  Montesinos says, indeed, that Pizarro, on his first voyage,
+tried to learn to read; but the impatience of his temper prevented it, and
+he contented himself with learning to sign his name.27  But Montesinos
+was not a contemporary historian.  Pedro Pizarro, his companion in
+arms, expressly tells us he could neither read nor write;28 and Zarate,
+another contemporary, well acquainted with the Conquerors, confirms
+this statement, and adds, that Pizarro could not so much as sign his
+name.29  This was done by his secretary--Picado, in his latter years-
+while the governor merely made the customary rubrica or flourish at the
+sides of his name.  This is the case with the instruments I have examined,
+in which his signature, written probably by his secretary, or his title of
+Marques, in later life substituted for his name, is garnished with a
+flourish at the ends, executed in as bungling a manner as if done by the
+hand of a ploughman.  Yet we must not estimate this deficiency as we
+should in this period of general illumination,--general, at least, in our
+own fortunate country.  Reading and writing, so universal now, in the
+beginning of the sixteenth century might be regarded in the light of
+accomplishments; and all who have occasion to consult the autograph
+memorials of that time will find the execution of them, even by persons
+of the highest rank, too often such as would do little credit to a
+schoolboy of the present day.
+
+Though bold in action and not easily turned from his purpose, Pizarro
+was slow in arriving at a decision.  This gave him an appearance of
+irresolution foreign to his character.30  Perhaps the consciousness of this
+led him to adopt the custom of saying "No," at first, to applicants for
+favor; and afterwards, at leisure, to revise his judgment, and grant what
+seemed to him expedient.  He took the opposite course from his comrade
+Almagro, who, it was observed, generally said "Yes," but too often failed
+to keep his promise.  This was characteristic of the careless and easy
+nature of the latter, governed by impulse rather than principle.31
+
+It is hardly necessary to speak of the courage of a man pledged to such a
+career as that of Pizarro.  Courage, indeed, was a cheap quality among
+the Spanish adventurers, for danger was their element.  But he possessed
+something higher than mere animal courage, in that constancy of purpose
+which was rooted too deeply in his nature to be shaken by the wildest
+storms of fortune.  It was this inflexible constancy which formed the key
+to his character, and constituted the secret of his success.  A remarkable
+evidence of it was given in his first expedition, among the mangroves
+and dreary marshes of Choco.  He saw his followers pining around him
+under the blighting malaria, wasting before an invisible enemy, and
+unable to strike a stroke in their own defence.  Yet his spirit did not
+yield, nor did he falter in his enterprise.
+
+There is something oppressive to the imagination in this war against
+nature.  In the struggle of man against man, the spirits are raised by a
+contest conducted on equal terms; but in a war with the elements, we
+feel, that, however bravely we may contend, we can have no power to
+control.  Nor are we cheered on by the prospect of glory in such a
+contest; for, in the capricious estimate of human glory, the silent
+endurance of privations, however painful, is little, in comparison with the
+ostentatious trophies of victory.  The laurel of the hero---alas for
+humanity that it should be so!--grows best on the battle-field.
+
+This inflexible spirit of Pizarro was shown still more strongly, when, in
+the little island of Gallo, he drew the line on the sand, which was to
+separate him and his handful of followers from their country and from
+civilized man.  He trusted that his own constancy would give strength to
+the feeble, and rally brave hearts around him for the prosecution of his
+enterprise.  He looked with confidence to the future, and he did not
+miscalculate.  This was heroic, and wanted only a nobler motive for its
+object to constitute the true moral sublime.
+
+Yet the same feature in his character was displayed in a manner scarcely
+less remarkable, when, landing on the coast, and ascertaining the real
+strength and civilization of the Incas, he persisted in marching into the
+interior at the head of a force of less than two hundred men.  In this he
+undoubtedly proposed to himself the example of Cortes, so contagious to
+the adventurous spirits of that day, and especially to Pizarro, engaged, as
+he was, in a similar enterprise.  Yet the hazard assumed by Pizarro was
+far greater than that of the Conqueror of Mexico, whose force was nearly
+three times as large, while the terrors of the Inca name--however justified
+by the result--were as widely spread as those of the Aztecs.
+
+It was doubtless in imitation of the same captivating model, that Pizarro
+planned the seizure of Atahuallpa.  But the situations of the two Spanish
+captains were as dissimilar as the manner in which their acts of violence
+were conducted.  The wanton massacre of the Peruvians resembled that
+perpetrated by Alvarado in Mexico, and might have been attended with
+consequences as disastrous, if the Peruvian character had been as fierce
+as that of the Aztecs.32  But the blow which roused the latter to madness
+broke the tamer spirits of the Peruvians.  It was a bold stroke, which left
+so much to chance, that it scarcely merits the name of policy.
+
+When Pizarro landed in the country, he found it distracted by a contest
+for the crown.  It would seem to have been for his interest to play off one
+party against the other, throwing his own weight into the scale that suited
+him.  Instead of this, he resorted to an act of audacious violence which
+crushed them both at a blow.  His subsequent career afforded no scope
+for the profound policy displayed by Cortes, when he gathered
+conflicting nations under his banner, and directed them against a
+common foe.  Still less did he have the opportunity of displaying the
+tactics and admirable strategy of his rival.  Cortes conducted his military
+operations on the scientific principles of a great captain at the head of a
+powerful host.  Pizarro appears only as an adventurer, a fortunate knight-
+errant.  By one bold stroke, he broke the spell which had so long held the
+land under the dominion of the Incas.  The spell was broken, and the airy
+fabric of their empire, built on the superstition of ages, vanished at a
+touch.  This was good fortune, rather than the result of policy.
+
+Pizarro was eminently perfidious, Yet nothing is more opposed to sound
+policy.  One act of perfidy fully established becomes the ruin of its
+author.  The man who relinquishes confidence in his good faith gives up
+the best basis for future operations.  Who will knowingly build on a
+quicksand?  By his perfidious treatment of Almagro, Pizarro alienated the
+minds of the Spaniards.  By his perfidious treatment of Atahuallpa, and
+subsequently of the Inca Manco, he disgusted the Peruvians.  The name
+of Pizarro became a by-word for perfidy.  Almagro took his revenge in a
+civil war; Manco in an insurrection which nearly cost Pizarro his
+dominion.  The civil war terminated in a conspiracy which cost him his
+life.  Such were the fruits of his policy.  Pizarro may be regarded as a
+cunning man; but not, as he has been often eulogized by his countrymen,
+as a politic one.
+
+When Pizarro obtained possession of Cuzco, he found a country well
+advanced in the arts of civilization; institutions under which the people
+lived in tranquillity and personal safety; the mountains and the uplands
+whitened with flocks; the valleys teeming with the fruits of a scientific
+husbandry; the granaries and warehouses filled to overflowing; the whole
+land rejoicing in its abundance; and the character of the nation, softened
+under the influence of the mildest and most innocent form of
+superstition, well prepared for the reception of a higher and a Christian
+civilization.  But, far from introducing this, Pizarro delivered up the
+conquered races to his brutal soldiery; the sacred cloisters were
+abandoned to their lust; the towns and villages were given up to pillage;
+the wretched natives were parcelled out like slaves, to toil for their
+conquerors in the mines; the flocks were scattered, and wantonly
+destroyed, the granaries were dissipated; the beautiful contrivances for
+the more perfect culture of the soil were suffered to fall into decay; the
+paradise was converted into a desert.  Instead of profiting by the ancient
+forms of civilization, Pizarro preferred to efface every vestige of them
+from the land, and on their ruin to erect the institutions of his own
+country.  Yet these institutions did little for the poor Indian, held in iron
+bondage.  It was little to him that the shores of the Pacific were studded
+with rising communities and cities, the marts of a flourishing commerce.
+He had no share in the goodly heritage.  He was an alien in the land of
+his fathers.
+
+The religion of the Peruvian, which directed him to the worship of that
+glorious luminary which is the best representative of the might and
+beneficence of the Creator, is perhaps the purest form of superstition that
+has existed among men.  Yet it was much, that, under the new order of
+things, and through the benevolent zeal of the missionaries, some
+glimmerings of a nobler faith were permitted to dawn on his darkened
+soul.  Pizarro, himself, cannot be charged with manifesting any
+overweening solicitude for the propagation of the Faith.  He was no
+bigot, like Cortes.  Bigotry is the perversion of the religious principle;
+but the principle itself was wanting in Pizarro.  The conversion of the
+heathen was a predominant motive with Cortes in his expedition.  It was
+not a vain boast.  He would have sacrificed his life for it at any time; and
+more than once, by his indiscreet seal, he actually did place his life and
+the success of his enterprise in jeopardy.  It was his great purpose to
+purify the land from the brutish abominations of the Aztecs, by
+substituting the religion of Jesus.  This gave to his expedition the
+character of a crusade.  It furnished the best apology for the Conquest,
+and does more than all other considerations towards enlisting our
+sympathies on the side of the conquerors.
+
+But Pizarro's ruling motives, so far as they can be scanned by human
+judgment, were avarice and ambition.  The good missionaries, indeed,
+followed in his train to scatter the seeds of spiritual truth, and the
+Spanish government, as usual, directed its beneficent legislation to the
+conversion of the natives.  But the moving power with Pizarro and his
+followers was the lust of gold.  This was the real stimulus to their toil,
+the price of perfidy, the true guerdon of their victories.  This gave a base
+and mercenary character to their enterprise; and when we contrast the
+ferocious cupidity of the conquerors with the mild and inoffensive
+manners of the conquered, our sympathies, the sympathies even of the
+Spaniard, are necessarily thrown into the scale of the Indian.33
+
+But as no picture is without its lights, we must not, in justice to Pizarro,
+dwell exclusively on the darker features of his portrait.  There was no
+one of her sons to whom Spain was under larger obligations for extent of
+empire; for his hand won for her the richest of the Indian jewels that
+once sparkled in her imperial diadem.  When we contemplate the perils
+he braved, the sufferings he patiently endured, the incredible obstacles
+he overcame, the magnificent results he effected with his single arm, as it
+were, unaided by the government,--though neither a good, nor a great
+man in the highest sense of that term, it is impossible not to regard him
+as a very extraordinary one.
+
+Nor can we fairly omit to notice, in extenuation of his errors, the
+circumstances of his early life; for, like Almagro, he was the son of sin
+and sorrow, early cast upon the world to seek his fortunes as he might.
+In his young and tender age he was to take the impression of those into
+whose society he was thrown.  And when was it the lot of the needy
+outcast to fall into that of the wise and the virtuous?  His lot was cast
+among the licentious inmates of a camp, the school of rapine, whose only
+law was the sword, and who looked on the wretched Indian and his
+heritage as their rightful spoil.
+
+Who does not shudder at the thought of what his own fate might have
+been, trained in such a school?  The amount of crime does not necessarily
+show the criminality of the agent.  History, indeed, is concerned with the
+former, that it may be recorded as a warning to mankind; but it is He
+alone who knoweth the heart, the strength of the temptations and the
+means of resisting it, that can determine the measure of the guilt.
+
+
+
+Book 4
+
+Chapter 6
+
+Movements Of The Conspirators--Advance Of Vaca De Castro--
+Proceedings Of Almagro--Progress Of The Governor-
+The Forces Approach Each Other--Bloody Plains Of Chupas-
+Conduct Of Vaca De Castro
+
+1541--1543
+
+The first step of the conspirators, after securing possession of the capital,
+was to send to the different cities, proclaiming the revolution which had
+taken place, and demanding the recognition of the young Almagro as
+governor of Peru.  Where the summons was accompanied by a military
+force, as at Truxillo and Arequipa, it was obeyed without much cavil.
+But in other cities a colder assent was given, and in some the requisition
+was treated with contempt.  In Cuzco, the place of most importance next
+to Lima, a considerable number of the Almagro faction secured the
+ascendency of their party; and such of the magistracy as resisted were
+ejected from their offices to make room for others of a more
+accommodating temper.  But the loyal inhabitants of the city, dissatisfied
+with this proceeding, privately sent to one of Pizarro's captains, named
+Alvarez de Holguin, who lay with a considerable force in the
+neighborhood; and that officer, entering the place, soon dispossessed the
+new dignitaries of their honors, and restored the ancient capital to its
+allegiance.
+
+The conspirators experienced a still more determined opposition from
+Alonso de Alvarado, one of the principal captains of Pizarro,-defeated,
+as the reader will remember, by the elder Almagro at the bridge of
+Abancay,--and now lying in the north with a corps of about two hundred
+men, as good troops as any in the land.  That officer, on receiving tidings
+of his general's assassination, instantly wrote to the Licentiate Vaca de
+Castro, advising him of the state of affairs in Peru, and urging him to
+quicken his march towards the south.1
+
+This functionary had been sent out by the Spanish Crown, as noticed in a
+preceding chapter, to cooperate with Pizarro in restoring tranquillity to
+the country, with authority to assume the government himself, in case of
+that commander's death.  After a long and tempestuous voyage, he had
+landed, in the spring of 1541, at the port of Buena Ventura, and,
+disgusted with the dangers of the sea, preferred to continue his
+wearisome journey by land.  But so enfeebled was he by the hardships he
+had undergone, that it was full three months before he reached Popayan
+where he received the astounding tidings of the death of Pizarro.  This
+was the contingency which had been provided for, with such judicious
+forecast, in his instructions.  Yet he was sorely perplexed by the
+difficulties of his situation.  He was a stranger in the land, with a very
+imperfect knowledge of the country, without an armed force to support
+him, without even the military science which might be supposed
+necessary to avail himself of it.  He knew nothing of the degree of
+Almagro's influence, or of the extent to which the insurrection had
+spread,--nothing, in short, of the dispositions of the people among whom
+he was cast.
+
+In such an emergency, a feebler spirit might have listened to the counsels
+of those who advised to return to Panama, and stay there until he had
+mustered a sufficient force to enable him to take the field against the
+insurgents with advantage.  But the courageous heart of Vaca de Castro
+shrunk from a step which would proclaim his incompetency to the task
+assigned him.  He had confidence in his own resources, and in the virtue
+of the commission under which he acted.  He relied, too, on the habitual
+loyalty of the Spaniards; and, after mature deliberation, he determined to
+go forward, and trust to events for accomplishing the objects of his
+mission.
+
+He was confirmed in this purpose by the advices he now received from
+Alvarado; and without longer delay, he continued his march towards
+Quito.  Here he was well received by Gonzalo Pizarro's lieutenant, who
+had charge of the place during his commander's absence on his
+expedition to the Amazon.  The licentiate was also joined by Benalcazar,
+the conqueror of Quito, who brought a small reinforcement, and offered
+personally to assist him in the prosecution of his enterprise.  He now
+displayed the royal commission, empowering him, on Pizarro's death, to
+assume the government.  That contingency had arrived, and Vaca de
+Castro declared his purpose to exercise the authority conferred on him.
+At the same time, he sent emissaries to the principal cities, requiring
+their obedience to him as the lawful representative of the Crown, --taking
+care to employ discreet persons on the mission, whose character would
+have weight with the citizens.  He then continued his march slowly
+towards the south.2
+
+He was willing by his deliberate movements to give time for his
+summons to take effect, and for the fermentation caused by the late
+extraordinary events to subside.  He reckoned confidently on the loyalty
+which made the Spaniard unwilling, unless in cases of the last extremity,
+to come into collision with the royal authority; and, however much this
+popular sentiment might be disturbed by temporary gusts of passion, he
+trusted to the habitual current of their feelings for giving the people a
+right direction.  In this he did not miscalculate; for so deeprooted was the
+principle of loyalty in the ancient Spaniard, that ages of oppression and
+misrule could alone have induced him to shake off his allegiance.  Sad it
+is, but not strange, that the length of time passed under a bad government
+has not qualified him for devising a good one.
+
+While these events were passing in the north, Almagro's faction at Lima
+was daily receiving new accessions of strength.  For, in addition to those
+who, from the first, had been avowedly of his father's party, there were
+many others who, from some cause or other, had conceived a disgust for
+Pizarro, and who now willingly enlisted under the banner of the chief
+that had overthrown him.
+
+The first step of the young general, or rather of Rada, who directed his
+movements, was to secure the necessary supplies for the troops, most of
+whom, having long been in indigent circumstances, were wholly
+unprepared for service.  Funds to a considerable amount were raised, by
+seizing on the moneys of the Crown in the hands of the treasurer.
+Pizarro's secretary, Picado, was also drawn from his prison, and
+interrogated as to the place where his master's treasures were deposited.
+But, although put to the torture, he would not---or, as is probable, could
+not --give information on the subject; and the conspirators, who had a
+long arrear of injuries to settle with him, closed their proceedings by
+publicly beheading him in the great square of Lima.3
+
+Valverde, Bishop of Cuzco, as he himself assures us, vainly interposed in
+his behalf.  It is singular, that, the last time this fanatical prelate appears
+on the stage, it should be in the benevolent character of a supplicant for
+mercy.4  Soon afterwards, he was permitted, with the judge, Velasquez,
+and some other adherents of Pizarro, to embark from the port of Lima.
+We have a letter from him, dated at Tumbez, in November, 1541; almost
+immediately after which he fell into the hands of the Indians, and with
+his companions was massacred at Puna.  A violent death not
+unfrequently closed the stormy career of the American adventurer.
+Valverde was a Dominican friar, and, like Father Olmedo in the suite of
+Cortes, had been by his commander's side throughout the whole of his
+expedition.  But he did not always, like the good Olmedo, use his
+influence to stay the uplifted hand of the warrior.  At least, this was not
+the mild aspect in which he presented himself at the terrible massacre of
+Caxamalca.  Yet some contemporary accounts represent him, after he
+had been installed in his episcopal office, as unwearied in his labors to
+convert the natives, and to ameliorate their condition; and his own
+correspondence with the government, after that period, shows great
+solicitude for these praiseworthy objects.  Trained in the severest school
+of monastic discipline, which too often closes the heart against the
+common charities of life, he could not, like the benevolent Las Casas,
+rise so far above its fanatical tenets as to regard the heathen as his
+brother, while in the state of infidelity; and, in the true spirit of that
+school, he doubtless conceived that the sanctity of the end justified the
+means, however revolting in themselves.  Yet the same man, who thus
+freely shed the blood of the poor native to secure the triumph of his faith,
+would doubtless have as freely poured out his own in its defence.  The
+character was no uncommon one in the sixteenth century.5
+
+Almagro's followers, having supplied themselves with funds, made as
+little scruple to appropriate to their own use such horses and arms, of
+every description, as they could find in the city.  And this they did with
+the less reluctance, as the inhabitants for the most part testified no good-
+will to their cause.  While thus employed, Almagro received intelligence
+that Holguin had left Cuzco with a force of near three hundred men, with
+which he was preparing to effect a junction with Alvarado in the north.
+It was important to Almagro's success that he should defeat this junction.
+If to procrastinate was the policy of Vaca de Castro, it was clearly that of
+Almagro to quicken operations, and to bring matters to as speedy an
+issue as possible; to march at once against Holguin, whom he might
+expect easily to overcome with his superior numbers; then to follow up
+the stroke by the still easier defeat of Alvarado, when the new governor
+would be, in a manner, at his mercy.  It would be easy to beat these
+several bodies in detail, which, once united, would present formidable
+odds.  Almagro and his party had already arrayed themselves against the
+government by a proceeding too atrocious, and which struck too directly
+at the royal authority, for its perpetrators to flatter themselves with the
+hopes of pardon.  Their only chance was boldly to follow up the blow,
+and, by success, to place them, selves in so formidable an attitude as to
+excite the apprehensions of government.  The dread of its too potent
+vassal might extort terms that would never be conceded to his prayers.
+
+But Almagro and his followers shrunk from this open collision with the
+Crown.  They had taken up rebellion because it lay in their path, not
+because they had wished it.  They had meant only to avenge their
+personal wrongs on Pizarro, and not to defy the royal authority.  When,
+therefore, some of the more resolute, who followed things fearlessly to
+their consequences, proposed to march at once against Vaca de Castro,
+and, by striking at the head, settle the contest by a blow, it was almost
+universally rejected; and it was not till after long debate that it was
+finally determined to move against Holguin, and cut off his
+communication with Alonso de Alvarado.
+
+Scarcely had Almagro commenced his march on Xauxa, where he
+proposed to give battle to his enemy, than he met with a severe
+misfortune in the death of Juan de Rada.  He was a man somewhat
+advanced in years; and the late exciting scenes, in which he had taken the
+principal part, had been too much for a frame greatly shattered by a life
+of extraordinary hardship.  He was thrown into a fever, of which he soon
+after died.  By his death, Almagro sustained an inestimable loss; for,
+besides his devoted attachment to his young leader, he was, by his large
+experience, and his cautious though courageous character, better
+qualified than any other cavalier in the army to conduct him safely
+through the stormy sea on which he had led him to embark.
+
+Among the cavaliers of highest consideration after Rada's death, the two
+most aspiring were Christoval de Sotelo, and Garcia de Alvarado; both
+possessed of considerable military talent, but the latter marked by a bold,
+presumptuous manner, which might remind one of his illustrious
+namesake, who achieved much higher renown under the banner of
+Cortes.  Unhappily, a jealousy grew up between these two officers; that
+jealousy, so common among the Spaniards, that it may seem a national
+characteristic; an impatience of equality, founded on a false principle of
+honor, which has ever been the fruitful source of faction among them,
+whether under a monarchy or a republic.
+
+This was peculiarly unfortunate for Almagro, whose inexperience led
+him to lean for support on others, and who, in the present distracted state
+of his council, knew scarcely where to turn for it.  In the delay
+occasioned by these dissensions, his little army did not reach the valley
+of Xauxa till after the enemy had passed it.  Almagro followed close,
+leaving behind his baggage and artillery that he might move the lighter.
+But the golden opportunity was lost.  The rivers, swollen by autumnal
+rains, impeded his pursuit; and, though his light troops came up with a
+few stragglers of the rear-guard, Holguin succeeded in conducting his
+forces through the dangerous passes of the mountains, and in effecting a
+junction with Alonso de Alvarado, near the northern seaport of Huaura.
+
+Disappointed in his object, Almagro prepared to march on Cuzco,-the
+capital, as he regarded it, of his own jurisdiction,--to get possession of
+that city, and there make preparations to meet his adversary in the field.
+Sotelo was sent forward with a small corps in advance.  He experienced
+no opposition from the now defenceless citizens; the government of the
+place was again restored to the hands of the men of Chili, and their
+young leader soon appeared at the head of his battalions, and established
+his winter-quarters in the Inca capital.
+
+Here, the jealousy of the rival captains broke out into an open feud.  It
+was ended by the death of Sotelo, treacherously assassinated in his own
+apartment by Garcia de Alvarado.  Almagro, greatly outraged by this
+atrocity, was the more indignant, as he felt himself too weak to punish
+the offender.  He smothered his resentment for the present, affecting to
+treat the dangerous officer with more distinguished favor.  But Alvarado
+was not the dupe of this specious behaviour.  He felt that he had forfeited
+the confidence of his commander.  In revenge, he laid a plot to betray
+him; and Almagro, driven to the necessity of self-defence, imitated the
+example of his officer, by entering his house with a party of armed men,
+who, laying violent hands on the insurgent, slew him on the spot.6
+
+This irregular proceeding was followed by the best consequences.  The
+seditious schemes of Alvarado perished with him.  The seeds of
+insubordination were eradicated, and from that moment Almagro
+experienced only implicit obedience and the most loyal support from his
+followers.  From that hour, too, his own character seemed to be changed;
+he relied far less on others than on himself, and developed resources not
+to have been anticipated in one of his years; for he had hardly reached
+the age of twenty-two.7  From this time he displayed an energy and
+forecast, which proved him, in despite of his youth, not unequal to the
+trying emergencies of the situation in which it was his unhappy lot to be
+placed.
+
+He instantly set about providing for the wants of his men, and strained
+every nerve to get them in good fighting order for the approaching
+campaign.  He replenished his treasury with a large amount of silver
+which he drew from the mines of La Plata.  Saltpetre, obtained in
+abundance in the neighborhood of Cuzco, furnished the material for
+gunpowder.  He caused cannon, some of large dimensions, to be cast
+under the superintendence of Pedro de Candia, the Greek, who, it may be
+remembered, had first come into the country with Pizarro, and who, with
+a number of his countrymen,--Levantines, as they were called,-was well
+acquainted with this manufacture.  Under their care, fire-arms were
+made, together with cuirasses and helmets, in which silver was mingled
+with copper,8 and of so excellent a quality, that they might vie, says an
+old soldier of the time, with those from the workshops of Milan.9
+Almagro received a seasonable supply, moreover, from a source scarcely
+to have been expected.  This was from Manco, the wandering Inca, who
+detesting the memory of Pizarro, transferred to the young Almagro the
+same friendly feelings which he had formerly borne to his father;
+heightened, it may be, by the consideration that Indian blood flowed in
+the veins of the young commander.  From this quarter Almagro obtained
+a liberal supply of swords, spears, shields, and arms and armour of every
+description, chiefly taken by the Inca at the memorable siege of Cuzco.
+He also received the gratifying assurance, that the latter would support
+him with a detachment of native troops when he opened the campaign.
+
+Before making a final appeal to arms, however, Almagro resolved to try
+the effect of negotiation with the new governor.  In the spring, or early in
+the summer, of 1542, he sent an embassy to the latter, then at Lima, in
+which he deprecated the necessity of taking arms against an officer of the
+Crown.  His only desire, he said, was to vindicate his own rights; to
+secure the possession of New Toledo, the province bequeathed to him by
+his father, and from which he had been most unjustly excluded by
+Pizarro.  He did not dispute the governor's authority over New Castile, as
+the country was designated which had been assigned to the marquess;
+and he concluded by proposing that each party should remain within his
+respective territory until the determination of the Court of Castile could
+be made known to them.  To this application, couched in respectful
+terms, Almagro received no answer.
+
+Frustrated in his hopes of a peaceful accommodation, the young captain
+now saw that nothing was left but the arbitrament of arms.  Assembling
+his troops, preparatory to his departure from the capital, he made them a
+brief address.  He protested that the step which he and his brave
+companions were about to take was not an act of rebellion against the
+Crown.  It was forced on them by the conduct of the governor himself.
+The commission of that officer gave him no authority over the territory
+of New Toledo, settled on Almagro's father, and by his father bequeathed
+to him.  If Vaca de Castro, by exceeding the limits of his authority, drove
+him to hostilities, the blood spill in the quarrel would lie on the head of
+that commander, not on his.  "In the assassination of Pizarro," he
+continued, "we took that justice into our own hands which elsewhere was
+denied us.  It is the same now, in our contest with the royal governor.
+We are as true-hearted and loyal subjects of the Crown as he is." And he
+concluded by invoking his soldiers to stand by him heart and hand in the
+approaching contest, in which they were all equally interested with
+himself.
+
+The appeal was not made to an insensible audience.  There were few
+among them who did not feel that their fortunes were indissolubly
+connected with those of their commander; and while they had little to
+expect from the austere character of the governor, they were warmly
+attached to the person of their young chief, who, with all the popular
+qualities of his father, excited additional sympathy from the
+circumstances of his age and his forlorn condition.  Laying their hands
+on the cross, placed on an altar raised for the purpose, the officers and
+soldiers severally swore to brave every peril with Almagro, and remain
+true to him to the last.
+
+In point of numbers, his forces had not greatly strengthened since his
+departure from Lima.  He mustered but little more than five hundred in
+all; but among them were his father's veterans, well seasoned by many an
+Indian campaign.  He had about two hundred horse, many of them clad
+in complete mail, a circumstance not too common in these wars, where a
+stuffed doublet of cotton was often the only panoply of the warrior.  His
+infantry, formed of pikemen and arquebusiers, was excellently armed.
+But his strength lay in his heavy ordnance, consisting of sixteen pieces,
+eight large and eight smaller guns, or falconets, as they were called,
+forming, says one who saw it, a beautiful park of artillery, that would
+have made a brave show on the citadel of Burgos.10  The little army, in
+short, though not imposing from its numbers, was under as good
+discipline, and as well appointed, as any that ever fought on the fields of
+Peru; much better than any which Almagro's own father or Pizarro ever
+led into the field and won their conquests with.  Putting himself at the
+head of his gallant company, the chieftain sallied forth from the walls of
+Cuzco about midsummer, in 1542, and directed his march towards the
+coast in expectation of meeting the enemy.11
+
+While the events detailed in the preceding pages were passing, Vaca de
+Castro, whom we left at Quito in the preceding year, was advancing
+slowly towards the south.  His first act, after leaving that city, showed his
+resolution to enter into no compromise with the assassins of Pizarro.
+Benalcazar, the distinguished officer whom I have mentioned as having
+early given in his adherence to him, had protected one of the principal
+conspirators, his personal friend, who had come into his power, and had
+facilitated his escape.  The governor, indignant at the proceeding, would
+listen to no explanation, but ordered the offending officer to return to his
+own district of Popayan.  It was a bold step, in the precarious state of his
+own fortunes.
+
+As the governor pursued his march, he was well received by the people
+on the way; and when he entered the cities of San Miguel and of
+Truxillo, he was welcomed with loyal enthusiasm by the inhabitants, who
+readily acknowledged his authority, though they showed little alacrity to
+take their chance with him in the coming struggle.
+
+After lingering a long time in each of these places, he resumed his march
+and reached the camp of Alonso de Alvarado at Huaura, early in 1542.
+Holguin had established his quarters at some little distance from his
+rival; for a jealousy had sprung up, as usual, between these two captains,
+who both aspired to the supreme command of Captain General of the
+army.  The office of governor, conferred on Vaca de Castro, might seem
+to include that of commander-in-chief of the forces.  But De Castro was
+a scholar, bred to the law;.  and, whatever authority he might arrogate to
+himself in civil matters, the two captains imagined that the military
+department he would resign into the hands of others.  They little knew
+the character of the man.
+
+Though possessed of no more military science than belonged to every
+cavalier in that martial age, the governor knew that to avow his
+ignorance, and to resign the management of affairs into the hands of
+others, would greatly impair his authority, if not bring him into contempt
+with the turbulent spirits among whom he was now thrown.  He had both
+sagacity and spirit, and trusted to be able to supply his own deficiencies
+by the experience of others.  His position placed the services of the
+ablest men m the country at his disposal, and with the aid of their
+counsels he felt quite competent to decide on his plan of operations, and
+to enforce the execution of it.  He knew, moreover, that the only way to
+allay the jealousy of the two parties in the present crisis was to assume
+himself the office which was the cause of their dissension.
+
+Still he approached his ambitious officers with great caution; and the
+representations, which he made through some judicious persons who had
+the most intimate access to them, were so successful, that both were in a
+short time prevailed on to relinquish their pretensions in his favor.
+Holguin, the more unreasonable of the two, then waited on him in his
+rival's quarters, where the governor had the further satisfaction to
+reconcile him to Alonso de Alvarado.  It required some address, as their
+jealousy of each other had proceeded to such lengths that a challenge had
+passed between them.
+
+Harmony being thus restored, the licentiate passed over to Holguin's
+camp, where he was greeted with salvoes of artillery, and loud
+acclamations of "Viva el Rey" from the loyal soldiery.  Ascending a
+platform covered with velvet, he made an animated harangue to the
+troops; his commission was read aloud by the secretary; and the little
+army tendered their obedience to him as the representative of the Crown.
+
+Vaca de Castro's next step was to send off the greater part of his force, in
+the direction of Xauxa, while, at the head of a small corps, he directed
+his march towards Lima.  Here he was received with lively
+demonstrations of joy by the citizens, who were generally attached to the
+cause of Pizarro, the founder and constant patron of their capital.
+Indeed, the citizens had lost no time after Almagro's departure in
+expelling his creatures from the municipality, and reasserting their
+allegiance.  With these favorable dispositions towards himself, the
+governor found no difficulty in obtaining a considerable loan of money
+from the wealthier inhabitants, But he was less successful, at first, in his
+application for horses and arms, since the harvest had been too faithfully
+gleaned, already, by the men of Chili.  As, however, he prolonged his
+stay some time in the capital, he obtained important supplies, before he
+left it, both of arms and ammunition, while he added to his force by a
+considerable body of recruits.12
+
+As he was thus employed, he received tidings that the enemy had left
+Cuzco, and was on his march towards the coast.  Quitting Los Reyes,
+therefore, with his trusty followers, Vaca de Castro marched at once to
+Xauxa, the appointed place of rendezvous.  Here he mustered his forces,
+and found that they amounted to about seven hundred men.  The cavalry,
+in which lay his strength, was superior in numbers to that of his
+antagonist, but neither so well mounted or armed.  It included many
+cavaliers of birth, and well-tried soldiers, besides a number who, having
+great interests at stake, as possessed of large estates in the country, had
+left them at the call of government, to enlist under its banners.13  His
+infantry, besides pikes, was indifferently well supplied with firearms; but
+he had nothing to show in the way of artillery except three or four ill-
+mounted falconets.  Yet, notwithstanding these deficiencies, the royal
+army, if so insignificant a force can deserve that name, was so far
+superior in numbers to that of his rival, that the one might be thought, on
+the whole, to be no unequal match for the other.14
+
+The reader, familiar with the large masses employed in European
+warfare, may smile at the paltry forces of the Spaniards.  But in the New
+World, where a countless host of natives went for little, five hundred
+well-trained Europeans were regarded as a formidable body.  No army,
+up to the period before us, had ever risen to a thousand.  Yet it is not
+numbers, as I have already been led to remark, that give importance to a
+conflict; but the consequences that depend on it,--the magnitude of the
+stake, and the skill and courage of the players.  The more limited the
+means, even, the greater may be the science shown in the use of them;
+until, forgetting the poverty of the materials, we fix our attention on the
+conduct of the actors, and the greatness of the results.
+
+While at Xauxa, Vaca de Castro received an embassy from Gonzalo
+Pizarro, returned from his expedition from the "Land of Cinnamon," in
+which that chief made an offer of his services in the approaching contest.
+The governor's answer showed that he was not wholly averse to an
+accommodation with Almagro, provided it could be effected without
+compromising the royal authority.  He was willing, perhaps, to avoid the
+final trial by battle, when he considered, that, from the equality of the
+contending forces, the issue must be extremely doubtful.  He knew that
+the presence of Pizarro in the camp, the detested enemy of the
+Almagrians, would excite distrust in their bosoms that would probably
+baffle every effort at accommodation.  Nor is it likely that the governor
+cared to have so restless a spirit introduced into his own councils.  He
+accordingly sent to Gonzalo, thanking him for the promptness of his
+support, but courteously declined it, while he advised him to remain in
+his province, and repose after the fatigues of his wearisome expedition.
+At the same time, he assured him that he would not fail to call for his
+services when occasion required it.--The haughty cavalier was greatly
+disgusted by the repulse.15
+
+The governor now received such an account of Almagro's movements
+as led him to suppose that he was preparing to occupy Gaumanga, a
+fortified place of considerable strength, about thirty leagues from
+Xauxa.16  Anxious to secure this post, he broke up his encampment, and
+by forced marches, conducted in so irregular a manner as must have
+placed him in great danger if his enemy had been near to profit by it, he
+succeeded in anticipating Almagro, and threw himself into the place
+while his antagonist was at Bilcas, some ten leagues distant.
+
+At Guamanga, Vaca de Castro received another embassy from Almagro,
+of similar import with the former.  The young chief again deprecated the
+existence of hostilities between brethren of the same family, and
+proposed an accommodation of the quarrel on the same basis as before.
+To these proposals the governor now condescended to reply.  It might be
+thought, from his answer, that he felt some compassion for the youth and
+inexperience of Almagro, and that he was willing to distinguish between
+him and the principal conspirators, provided he could detach him from
+their interests.  But it is more probable that he intended only to amuse his
+enemy by a show of negotiation, while he gained time for tampering with
+the fidelity of his troops.
+
+He insisted that Almagro should deliver up to him all those immediately
+implicated in the death of Pizarro, and should then disband his forces.
+On these conditions the government would pass over his treasonable
+practices, and he should be reinstated in the royal favor.  Together with
+this mission, Vaca de Castro, it is reported, sent a Spaniard, disguised as
+an Indian, who was instructed to communicate with certain officers in
+Almagro's camp, and prevail on them, if possible, to abandon his cause
+and return to their allegiance.  Unfortunately, the disguise of the
+emissary was detected.  He was seized, put to the torture, and, having
+confessed the whole of the transaction, was hanged as a spy.
+
+Almagro laid the proceeding before his captains.  The terms proffered by
+the governor were such as no man with a particle of honor in his nature
+could entertain for a moment; and Almagro's indignation, as well as that
+of his companions, was heightened by the duplicity of their enemy, who
+could practise such insidious arts, while ostensibly engaged in a fair and
+open negotiation.  Fearful, perhaps, lest the tempting offers of their
+antagonist might yet prevail over the constancy of some of the weaker
+spirits among them, they demanded that all negotiation should be broken
+off, and that they should be led at once against the enemy.17
+
+The governor, meanwhile, finding the broken country around Guamanga
+unfavorable for his cavalry, on which he mainly relied, drew off his
+forces to the neighboring lowlands, known as the Plains of Chupas.  It
+was the tempestuous season of the year, and for several days the storm
+raged wildly among the hills, and, sweeping along their sides into the
+valley, poured down rain, sleet, and snow on the miserable bivouacs of
+the soldiers, till they were drenched to the skin and nearly stiffened by
+the cold.18  At length, on the sixteenth of September, 1542, the scouts
+brought in tidings that Almagro's troops were advancing, with the
+intention, apparently, of occupying the highlands around Chupas.  The
+war of the elements had at last subsided, and was succeeded by one of
+those brilliant days which are found only in the tropics.  The royal camp
+was early in motion, as Vaca de Castro, desirous to secure the heights
+that commanded the valley, detached a body of arquebusiers on that
+service, supported by a corps of cavalry, which he soon followed with
+the rest of the forces.  On reaching the eminence, news was brought that
+the enemy had come to a halt, and established himself in a strong
+position at less than a league's distance.
+
+It was now late in the afternoon, and the sun was not more than two
+hours above the horizon.  The governor hesitated to begin the action
+when they must so soon be overtaken by night.  But Alonso de Alvarado
+assured him that "now was the time; for the spirits of his men were hot
+for fight, and it was better to take the benefit of it than to damp their
+ardor by delay." The governor acquiesced, exclaiming at the same time, -
+-"O for the might of Joshua, to stay the sun in his course!" 19  He then
+drew up his little army in order of battle, and made his dispositions for
+the attack.
+
+In the centre he placed his infantry, consisting of arquebusiers and
+pikemen, constituting the battle, as it was called.  On the flanks, he
+established his cavalry, placing the right wing, together with the royal
+standard, under charge of Alonso de Alvarado, and the left under
+Holguin, supported by a gallant body of cavaliers.  His artillery, too
+insignificant to be of much account, was also in the centre.  He proposed
+himself to lead the van, and to break the first lance with the enemy; but
+from this chivalrous display he was dissuaded by his officers, who
+reminded him that too much depended on his life to have it thus
+wantonly exposed.  The governor contented himself, therefore, with
+heading a body of reserve, consisting of forty horse, to act on any quarter
+as occasion might require.  This corps, comprising the flower of his
+chivalry, was chiefly drawn from Alvarado's troop, greatly to the
+discontent of that captain.  The governor himself rode a coal-black
+charger, and wore a rich surcoat of brocade over his mail, through which
+the habit and emblems of the knightly order of St. James, conferred on
+him just before his departure from Castile, were conspicuous.20  It was a
+point of honor with the chivalry of the period to court danger by
+displaying their rank in the splendor of their military attire and the
+caparisons of their horses.
+
+Before commencing the assault, Vaca de Castro addressed a few remarks
+to his soldiers, in order to remove any hesitation that some might yet
+feel, who recollected the displeasure shown by the emperor to the victors
+as well as the vanquished after the battle of Salinas.  He told them that
+their enemies were rebels.  They were in arms against him.  the
+representative of the Crown, and it was his duty to quell this rebellion
+and punish the authors of it.  He then caused the law to be read aloud,
+proclaiming the doom of traitors.  By this law, Almagro and his
+followers had forfeited their lives and property, and the governor
+promised to distribute the latter among such of his men as showed the
+best claim to it by their conduct in the battle.  This last politic promise
+vanquished the scruples of the most fastidious; and, having completed
+his dispositions in the most judicious and soldier-like manner, Vaca de
+Castro gave the order to advance.21
+
+As the forces turned a spur of the hills, which had hitherto screened them
+from their enemies, they came in sight of the latter, formed along the
+crest of a gentle eminence, with their snow-white banners, the
+distinguishing color of the Almagrians, floating above their heads, and
+their bright arms flinging back the broad rays of the evening sun.
+Almagro's disposition of his troops was not unlike that of his adversary.
+In the centre was his excellent artillery, covered by his arquebusiers and
+spearmen; while his cavalry rode on the flanks.  The troops on the left he
+proposed to lead in person.  He had chosen his position with judgment,
+as the character of the ground gave full play to his guns, which opened
+an effective fire on the assailants as they drew near.  Shaken by the storm
+of shot, Vaca de Castro saw the difficulty of advancing in open view of
+the hostile battery.  He took the counsel, therefore, of Francisco de
+Carbajal, who undertook to lead the forces by a circuitous, but safer,
+route.  This is the first occasion on which the name of this veteran
+appears in these American wars, where it was afterwards to acquire a
+melancholy notoriety.  He had come to the country after the campaigns
+of forty years in Europe, where he had studied the art of war under the
+Great Captain, Gonsalvo de Cordova.  Though now far advanced in age,
+he possessed all the courage and indomitable energy of youth, and well
+exemplified the lessons he had studied under his great commander.
+
+Taking advantage of a winding route that sloped round the declivity of
+the hills, he conducted the troops in such a manner, that, until they
+approached quite near the enemy, they were protected by the intervening
+ground.  While thus advancing, they were assailed on the left flank by
+the Indian battalions under Paullo, the Inca Manco's brother; but a corps
+of musketeers, directing a scattering fire among them, soon rid the
+Spaniards of this annoyance.  When, at length, the royal troops, rising
+above the hill, again came into view of Almagro's lines, the artillery
+opened on them with fatal effect.  It was but for a moment, however, as,
+from some unaccountable cause, the guns were pointed as such an angle,
+that, although presenting an obvious mark, by far the greater part of the
+shot passed over their heads.  Whether this was the result of treachery, or
+merely of awkwardness, is uncertain.  The artillery was under charge of
+the engineer, Pedro de Candia.  This man, who, it" may be remembered,
+was one of the thirteen that so gallantly stood by Pizarro in the island of
+Gallo, had fought side by side with his leader through the whole of the
+Conquest.  He had lately, however, conceived some disgust with him,
+and had taken part with the faction of Almagro.  The death of his old
+commander, he may perhaps have thought, had settled all their
+differences, and he was now willing to return to his former allegiance.
+At least, it is said, that, at this very time, he was in correspondence with
+Vaca de Castro.  Almagro himself seems to have had no doubt of his
+treachery.  For, after remonstrating in vain with him on his present
+conduct, he ran him through the body, and the unfortunate cavalier fell
+lifeless on the field.  Then, throwing himself on one of the guns,
+Almagro gave it a new direction, and that so successfully, that, when it
+was discharged, it struck down several of the cavalry.22
+
+The firing now took better effect, and by one volley a whole file of the
+royal infantry was swept off, and though others quickly stepped in to fill
+up the ranks, the men, impatient of their sufferings, loudly called on the
+troopers, who had halted for a moment, to quicken their advance.23
+This delay had been caused by Carbajal's desire to bring his own guns to
+bear on the opposite columns.  But the design was quickly abandoned;
+the clumsy ordnance was left on the field, and orders were given to the
+cavalry to charge; the trumpets sounded, and, crying their war-cries, the
+bold cavaliers struck their spurs into their steeds, and rode at full speed
+against the enemy.
+
+Well had it been for Almagro, if he had remained firm on the post which
+gave him such advantage.  But from a false point of honor, he thought it
+derogatory to a brave knight passively to await the assault, and, ordering
+his own men to charge, the hostile squadrons, rapidly advancing against
+each other, met midway on the plain.  The shock was terrible.  Horse and
+rider reeled under the force of it.  The spears flew into shivers;24 and the
+cavaliers, drawing their swords, or wielding their maces and battle-axes,-
+-though some of the royal troopers were armed only with a common
+axe,--dealt their blows with all the fury of civil hate.  It was a fearful
+struggle, not merely of man against man, but, to use the words of an
+eyewitness, of brother against brother, and friend against friend.25  No
+quarter was asked; for the wrench that had been strong enough to tear
+asunder the dearest ties of kindred left no hold for humanity.  The
+excellent arms of the Almagrians counterbalanced the odds of numbers;
+but the royal partisans gained some advantage by striking at the horses
+instead of the mailed bodies of their antagonists.
+
+The infantry, meanwhile, on both sides, kept up a sharp cross-fire from
+their arquebuses, which did execution on the ranks of the cavaliers, as
+well as on one another.  But Almagro's battery of heavy guns, now well
+directed, mowed down the advancing columns of foot.  The latter,
+staggering, began to fall back from the terrible fire, when Francisco de
+Carbajal, throwing himself before them, cried out, "Shame on you, my
+men!  Do you give way now?  I am twice as good a mark for the enemy
+as any of you!" He was a very large man; and, throwing off his steel
+helmet and cuirass, that he might have no advantage over his followers,
+he remained lightly attired in his cotton doublet, when, swinging his
+partisan over his head, he sprang boldly forward through blinding
+volumes of smoke and a tempest of musket-balls, and, supported by the
+bravest of his troops, overpowered the gunners, and made himself master
+of their pieces.
+
+The shades of night had now, for some time been coming thicker and
+thicker over the field.  But still the deadly struggle went on in the
+darkness, as the red and white badges intimated the respective parties,
+and their war-cries rose above the din,--"Vaca de Castro y el Rey,"--
+"Almagro y el Rey,"--while both invoked the aid of their military apostle
+St. James.  Holguin, who commanded the royalists on the left, pierced
+through by two musket-balls, had been slain early in the action.  He had
+made himself conspicuous by a rich sobre-vest of white velvet over his
+armour.  Still a gallant band of cavaliers maintained the fight so valiantly
+on that quarter, that the Almagrians found it difficult to keep their
+ground.26
+
+It fared differently on the right, where Alonso de Alvarado commanded.
+He was there encountered by Almagro in person, who fought worthy of
+his name.  By repeated charges on his opponent, he endeavored to bear
+down his squadrons, so much worse mounted and worse armed than his
+own.  Alvarado resisted with undiminished courage; but his numbers had
+been thinned, as we have seen, before the battle, to supply the governor's
+reserve, and, fairly overpowered by the superior strength of his
+adversary, who had already won two of the royal banners, he was slowly
+giving ground.  "Take, but kill not!" shouted the generous young chief,
+who felt himself sure of victory.27
+
+But at this crisis, Vaca de Castro, who, with his reserve, had occupied a
+rising ground that commanded the field of action, was fully aware that
+the time had now come for him to take part in the struggle.  He had long
+strained his eyes through the gloom to watch the movements of the
+combatants, and received constant tidings how the fight was going.  He
+no longer hesitated, but, calling on his men to follow, led off boldly into
+the thickest of the melee to the support of his stout-hearted officer.  The
+arrival of a new corps on the field, all fresh for action, gave another turn
+to the tide.28  Alvarado's men took heart and rallied.  Almagro's, though
+driven back by the fury of the assault, quickly returned against their
+assailants.  Thirteen of Vaca de Castro's cavaliers fell dead from their
+saddles.  But it was the last effort of the Almagrians.  Their strength,
+though not their spirit, failed them.  They gave way in all directions, and,
+mingling together in the darkness, horse, foot, and artillery, they
+trampled one another down, as they made the best of their way from the
+press of their pursuers.  Almagro used every effort to stay them.  He
+performed miracles of valor, says one who witnessed them; but he was
+borne along by the tide, and, though he seemed to court death, by the
+freedom with which he exposed his person to danger, yet he escaped
+without a wound.
+
+Others there were of his company, and among them a young cavalier
+named Geronimo de Alvarado, who obstinately refused to quit the field;
+and shouting out,--"We slew Pizarro!  we killed the tyrant!" they threw
+themselves on the lances of their conquerors, preferring death on the
+battle-field to the ignominious doom of the gibbet.29
+
+It was nine o'clock when the battle ceased, though the firing was heard at
+intervals over the field at a much later hour, as some straggling party of
+fugitives were overtaken by their pursuers.  Yet many succeeded in
+escaping in the obscurity of night, while some, it is said, contrived to
+elude pursuit in a more singular way; tearing off the badges from the
+corpses of their enemies, they assumed them for themselves, and,
+mingling in the ranks as followers of Vaca de Castro, joined in the
+pursuit.
+
+That commander, at length, fearing some untoward accident, and that the
+fugitives, should they rally again under cover of the darkness, might
+inflict some loss on their pursuers, caused his trumpets to sound, and
+recalled his scattered forces under their banners.  All night they remained
+under arms on the field, which, so lately the scene of noisy strife, was
+now hushed in silence, broken only by the groans of the wounded and the
+dying.  The natives, who had hung, during the fight, like a dark cloud,
+round the skirts of the mountains, contemplating with gloomy
+satisfaction the destruction of their enemies, now availed themselves of
+the obscurity to descend, like a pack of famished wolves, upon the
+plains, where they stripped the bodies of the slain, and even of the living,
+but disabled wretches, who had in vain dragged themselves into the
+bushes for concealment.  The following morning, Vaca de Castro gave
+orders that the wounded--those who had not perished in the cold damps
+of the night--should be committed to the care of the surgeons, while the
+priests were occupied with administering confession and absolution to
+the dying.  Four large graves or pits were dug, in which the bodies of the
+slain--the conquerors and the conquered--were heaped indiscriminately
+together.  But the remains of Alvarez de Holguin and several other
+cavaliers of distinction were transported to Guamanga, where they were
+buried with the solemnities suited to their rank; and the tattered banners
+won from their vanquished countrymen waved over their monuments, the
+melancholy trophies of their victory.
+
+The number of killed is variously reported,--from three hundred to five
+hundred on both sides.30  The mortality was greatest among the
+conquerors, who suffered more from the cannon of the enemy before the
+action, than the latter suffered in the rout that followed it.  The number of
+wounded was still greater; and full half of the survivors of Almagro's
+party were made prisoners.  Many, indeed, escaped from the field to the
+neighboring town of Guamanga, where they took refuge in the churches
+and monasteries.  But their asylum was not respected, and they were
+dragged forth and thrown into prison.  Their brave young commander
+fled with a few followers only to Cuzco, where he was instantly arrested
+by the magistrates whom he had himself placed over the city.31
+
+At Guamanga, Vaca de Castro appointed a commission, with the
+Licentiate de la Gama at its head, for the trial of the prisoners; and
+justice was not satisfied, till forty had been condemned to death, and
+thirty others--some of them with the loss of one or more of their
+members-sent into banishment.32  Such severe reprisals have been too
+common with the Spaniards in their civil feuds.  Strange that they should
+so blindly plunge into these, with this dreadful doom for the vanquished!
+
+From the scene of this bloody tragedy, the governor proceeded to Cuzco,
+which he entered at the head of his victorious battalions, with all the
+pomp and military display of a conqueror.  He maintained a
+corresponding state in his way of living, at the expense of a sneer from
+some, who sarcastically contrasted this ostentatious profusion with the
+economical reforms he subsequently introduced into the finances.33  But
+Vaca de Castro was sensible of the effect of this outward show on the
+people generally, and disdained no means of giving authority to his
+office.  His first act was to determine the fate of his prisoner, Almagro.
+A council of war was held.  Some were for sparing the unfortunate chief,
+in consideration of his youth, and the strong cause of provocation he had
+received.  But the majority were of opinion that such mercy could not be
+extended to the leader of the rebels, and that his death was indispensable
+to the permanent tranquillity of the country.
+When led to execution in the great square of Cuzco,--the same spot
+where his father had suffered but a few years before,---Almagro
+exhibited the most perfect composure, though, as the herald proclaimed
+aloud the doom of the traitor, he indignantly denied that he was one.  He
+made no appeal for mercy to his judges, but simply requested that his
+bones might be laid by the side of his father's.  He objected to having his
+eyes bandaged, as was customary on such occasions, and, after
+confession, he devoutly embraced the cross, and submitted his neck to
+the stroke of the executioner.  His remains, agreeably to his request, were
+transported to the monastery of La Merced, where they were deposited
+side by side with those of his unfortunate parent.34
+
+There have been few names, indeed, in the page of history, more
+unfortunate than that of Almagro.  Yet the fate of the son excites a
+deeper sympathy than that of the father; and this, not merely on account
+of his youth, and the peculiar circumstances of his situation.  He
+possessed many of the good qualities of the elder Almagro, with a frank
+and manly nature, in which the bearing of the soldier was somewhat
+softened by the refinement of a better education than is to be found in the
+license of a camp.  His career, though short, gave promise of
+considerable talent, which required only a fair field for its development.
+But he was the child of misfortune, and his morning of life was overcast
+by clouds and tempests.  If his character, naturally benignant, sometimes
+showed the fiery sparkles of the vindictive Indian temper, some apology
+may be found, not merely in his blood, but in the circumstances of his
+situation.  He was more sinned against than sinning; and, if conspiracy
+could ever find a justification, it must be in a case like his, where, borne
+down by injuries heaped on his parent and himself, he could obtain no
+redress from the only quarter whence he had a right to look for it.  With
+him, the name of Almagro became extinct, and the faction of Chili, so
+long the terror of the land, passed away for ever.
+
+While these events were occurring in Cuzco, the governor learned that
+Gonzalo Pizarro had arrived at Lima, where he showed himself greatly
+discontented with the state of things in Peru.  He loudly complained that
+the government of the country, after his brother's death, had not been
+placed in his hands; and, as reported by some, he was now meditating
+schemes for getting possession of it.  Vaca de Castro well knew that
+there would be no lack of evil counsellors to urge Gonzalo to this
+desperate step; and, anxious to extinguish the spark of insurrection
+before it had been fanned by these turbulent spirits into a flame, he
+detached a strong body to Lima to secure that capital.  At the same time
+he commanded the presence of Gonzalo Pizarro in Cuzco.
+
+That chief did not think it prudent to disregard the summons; and shortly
+after entered the Inca capital, at the head of a well-armed body of
+cavaliers.  He was at once admitted into the governor's presence, when
+the latter dismissed his guard, remarking that he had nothing to fear from
+a brave and loyal knight like Pizarro.  He then questioned him as to his
+late adventures in Canelas, and showed great sympathy for his
+extraordinary sufferings.  He took care not to alarm his jealousy by any
+allusion to his ambitious schemes, and concluded by recommending him,
+now that the tranquillity of the country was reestablished, to retire and
+seek the repose he so much needed, on his valuable estates at Charcas.
+Gonzalo Pizarro, finding no ground opened for a quarrel with the cool
+and politic governor, and probably feeling that he was, at least not now,
+in sufficient strength to warrant it, thought it prudent to take the advice,
+and withdrew to La Plata, where he busied himself in working those rich
+mines of silver that soon put him in condition for more momentous
+enterprise than any he had yet attempted.35
+
+Thus rid of his formidable competitor, Vaca de Castro occupied himself
+with measures for the settlement of the country.  He began with his army,
+a part of which he had disbanded.  But many cavaliers still remained,
+pressing their demands for a suitable recompense for their services.
+These they were not disposed to undervalue, and the governor was happy
+to rid himself of their importunities by employing them on distant
+expeditions, among which was the exploration of the country watered by
+the great Rio de la Plata.  The boiling spirits of the highmettled cavaliers,
+without some such vent, would soon have thrown the whole country
+again into a state of fermentation.
+
+His next concern was to provide laws for the better government of the
+colony.  He gave especial care to the state of the Indian population; and
+established schools for teaching them Christianity.  By various
+provisions, he endeavored to secure them from the exactions of their
+conquerors, and he encouraged the poor natives to transfer their own
+residence to the communities of the white men.  He commanded the
+caciques to provide supplies for the tambos, or houses for the
+accommodation of travellers, which lay in their neighborhood, by which
+regulation he took away from the Spaniards a plausible apology for
+rapine, and greatly promoted facility of intercourse.  He was watchful
+over the finances, much dilapidated in the late troubles, and in several
+instances retrenched what he deemed excessive repartimientos among the
+Conquerors.  This last act exposed him to much odium from the objects
+of it.  But his measures were so just and impartial, that he was supported
+by public opinion.36
+
+Indeed, Vaca de Castro's conduct, from the hour of his arrival in the
+country, had been such as to command respect, and prove him competent
+to the difficult post for which he had been selected.  Without funds,
+without troops, he had found the country, on his landing, in a state of
+anarchy; yet, by courage and address, he had gradually acquired
+sufficient strength to quell the insurrection.  Though no soldier, he had
+shown undaunted spirit and presence of mind in the hour of action, and
+made his military preparations with a forecast and discretion that excited
+the admiration of the most experienced veteran.
+
+If he may be thought to have abused the advantages of victory by cruelty
+towards the conquered, it must be allowed that he was not influenced by
+any motives of a personal nature.  He was a lawyer, bred in high notions
+of royal prerogative.  Rebellion he looked upon as an unpardonable
+crime; and, if his austere nature was unrelenting in the exaction of
+justice, he lived in an iron age, when justice was rarely tempered by
+mercy.
+
+In his subsequent regulations for the settlement of the country, he
+showed equal impartiality and wisdom.  The colonists were deeply
+sensible of the benefits of his administration, and afforded the best
+commentary on his services by petitioning the Court of Castile to
+continue him in the government of Peru.37 Unfortunately, such was not
+the policy of the Crown.
+
+
+
+Book 4
+
+Chapter 7
+
+Abuses By The Conquerors--Code For The Colonies-
+Great Excitement In Peru--Blasco Nunez The Viceroy-
+His Severe Policy--Opposed By Gonzalo Pizarro
+
+1543--1544
+
+Before continuing the narrative of events in Peru, we must turn to the
+mother-country, where important changes were in progress in respect to
+the administration of the colonies.
+
+Since his accession to the Crown, Charles the Fifth had been chiefly
+engrossed by the politics of Europe, where a theatre was opened more
+stimulating to his ambition than could be found in a struggle with the
+barbarian princes of the New World.  In this quarter, therefore, an
+empire almost unheeded, as it were, had been suffered to grow up, until
+it had expanded into dimensions greater than those of his European
+dominions and destined soon to become far more opulent.  A scheme of
+government had, it is true, been devised, and laws enacted from time to
+time for the regulation of the colonies.  But these laws were often
+accommodated less to the interests of the colonies themselves, than to
+those of the parent country; and, when contrived in a better spirit, they
+were but imperfectly executed; for the voice of authority, however loudly
+proclaimed at home, too often died away in feeble echoes before it had
+crossed the waters.
+
+This state of things, and, indeed, the manner in which the Spanish
+territories in the New World had been originally acquired, were most
+unfortunate both for the conquered races and their masters.  Had the
+provinces gained by the Spaniards been the fruit of peaceful acquisition,
+--of barter and negotiation,--or had their conquest been achieved under
+the immediate direction of government, the interests of the natives would
+have been more carefully protected.  From the superior civilization of the
+Indians in the Spanish American colonies, they still continued after the
+Conquest to remain on the ground, and to mingle in the same
+communities, with the white men; in this forming an obvious contrast to
+the condition of our own aborigines, who, shrinking from the contact of
+civilization, have withdrawn, as the latter has advanced, deeper and
+deeper into the heart of the wilderness.  But the South American Indian
+was qualified by his previous institutions for a more refined legislation
+than could be adapted to the wild hunters of the forest; and, had the
+sovereign been there in person to superintend his conquests, he could
+never have suffered so large a portion of his vassals to be wantonly
+sacrificed to the cupidity and cruelty of the handful of adventurers who
+subdued them.
+
+But, as it was, the affair of reducing the country was committed to the
+hands of irresponsible individuals, soldiers of fortune, desperate
+adventurers, who entered on conquest as a game, which they were to play
+in the most unscrupulous manner, with little care but to win it.  Receiving
+small encouragement from the government, they were indebted to their
+own valor for success; and the right of conquest, they conceived,
+extinguished every existing right in the unfortunate natives.  The lands,
+the persons, of the conquered races were parcelled out and appropriated
+by the victors as the legitimate spoils of victory; and outrages were
+perpetrated every day, at the contemplation of which humanity shudders.
+
+These outrages, though nowhere perpetrated on so terrific a scale as in
+the islands, where, in a few years, they had nearly annihilated the native
+population, were yet of sufficient magnitude in Peru to call down the
+vengeance of Heaven on the heads of their authors; and the Indian might
+feel that this vengeance was not long delayed, when he beheld his
+oppressors, wrangling over their miserable spoil, and turning their
+swords against each other.  Peru, as already mentioned, was subdued by
+adventurers, for the most part, of a lower and more ferocious stamp than
+those who followed the banner of Cortes.  The character of the followers
+partook, in some measure, of that of the leaders in their respective
+enterprises.  It was a sad fatality for the Incas; for the reckless soldiers of
+Pizarro were better suited to contend with the fierce Aztec than with the
+more refined and effeminate Peruvian.  Intoxicated by the unaccustomed
+possession of power, and without the least notion of the responsibilities
+which attached to their situation as masters of the land, they too often
+abandoned themselves to the indulgence of every whim which cruelty or
+caprice could dictate.  Not unfrequently, says an unsuspicious witness, I
+have seen the Spaniards, long after the Conquest, amuse themselves by
+hunting down the natives with bloodhounds for mere sport, or in order to
+train their dogs to the game! 1  The most unbounded scope was given to
+licentiousness.  The young maiden was torn without remorse from the
+arms of her family to gratify the passion of her brutal conqueror.2  The
+sacred houses of the Virgins of the Sun were broken open and violated,
+and the cavalier swelled his harem with a troop of Indian girls making it
+seem that the Crescent would have been a much more fitting symbol for
+his banner than the immaculate Cross.3
+
+But the dominant passion of the Spaniard was the lust of gold.  For this
+he shrunk from no toil himself, and was merciless in his exactions of
+labor from his Indian slave.  Unfortunately, Peru abounded in mines
+which too well repaid this labor; and human life was the item of least
+account in the estimate of the Conquerors.  Under his Incas, the Peruvian
+was never suffered to be idle; but the task imposed on him was always
+proportioned to his strength.  He had his seasons of rest and refreshment,
+and was well protected against the inclemency of the weather.  Every
+care was shown for his personal safety.  But the Spaniards, while they
+taxed the strength of the native to the utmost, deprived him of the means
+of repairing it, when exhausted.  They suffered the provident
+arrangements of the Incas to fall into decay.  The granaries were
+emptied; the flocks were wasted in riotous living.  They were slaughtered
+to gratify a mere epicurean whim, and many a llama was destroyed solely
+for the sake of the brains----a dainty morsel, much coveted by the
+Spaniards.4  So reckless was the spirit of destruction after the Conquest,
+says Ondegardo.  the wise governor of Cuzco, that in four years more of
+these animals perished than in four hundred, in the times of the Incas.5
+The flocks, once so numerous over the broad table-lands, were now
+thinned to a scanty number, that sought shelter in the fastnesses of the
+Andes.  The poor Indian, without food, without the warm fleece which
+furnished him a defence against the cold, now wandered half-starved and
+naked over the plateau.  Even those who had aided the Spaniards in the
+conquest fared no better; and many an Inca noble roamed a mendicant
+over the lands where he once held rule, and if driven, perchance, by his
+necessities, to purloin something from the superfluity of his conquerors,
+he expiated it by a miserable death.6
+
+It is true, there were good men, missionaries, faithful to their calling,
+who wrought hard in the spiritual conversion of the native, and who,
+touched by his misfortunes, would gladly have interposed their arm to
+shield him from his oppressors.7  But too often the ecclesiastic became
+infected by the general spirit of licentiousness; and the religious
+fraternities, who led a life of easy indulgence on the lands cultivated by
+their Indian slaves, were apt to think less of the salvation of their souls
+than of profiting by the labor of their bodies.8
+
+Yet still there were not wanting good and wise men in the colonies, who,
+from time to time, raised the voice of remonstrance against these abuses,
+and who carried their complaints to the foot of the throne.  To the credit
+of the government, it must also be confessed, that it was solicitous to
+obtain such information as it could, both from its own officers, and from
+commissioners deputed expressly for the purpose, whose voluminous
+communications throw a flood of light on the internal condition of the
+country, and furnish the best materials for the historian.9  But it was
+found much easier to get this information than to profit by it.
+
+In 1541, Charles the Fifth, who had been much occupied by the affairs of
+Germany, revisited his ancestral dominions, where his attention was
+imperatively called to the state of the colonies.  Several memorials in
+relation to it were laid before him; but no one pressed the matter so
+strongly on the royal conscience as Las Casas, afterwards Bishop of
+Chiapa.  This good ecclesiastic, whose long life had been devoted to
+those benevolent labors which gained him the honorable title of
+Protector of the Indians, had just completed his celebrated treatise on the
+Destruction of the Indies, the most remarkable record, probably, to be
+found, of human wickedness, but which, unfortunately, loses much of its
+effect from the credulity of the writer, and his obvious tendency to
+exaggerate.
+
+In 1542, Las Casas placed his manuscript in the hands of his royal aster.
+That same year, a council was called at Valladolid, composed chiefly of
+jurists and theologians, to devise a system of laws for the regulation of
+the American colonies.
+
+Las Casas appeared before this body, and made an elaborate argument,
+of which a part only has been given to the public.  He there assumes, as a
+fundamental proposition, that the Indians were by the law of nature free;
+that, as vassals of the Crown, they had a right to its protection, and
+should be declared free from that time, without exception and for ever.10
+He sustains this proposition by a great variety of arguments,
+comprehending the substance of most that has been since urged in the
+same cause by the friends of humanity.  He touches on the ground of
+expediency, showing, that, without the interference of government, the
+Indian race must be gradually exterminated by the systematic oppression
+of the Spaniards.  In conclusion, he maintains, that, if the Indians, as it
+was pretended, would not labor unless compelled, the white man would
+still find it for his interest to cultivate the soil; and that if he should not
+be able to do so, that circumstance would give him no right over the
+Indian, since God does not allow evil that good may come of it.11--This
+lofty morality, it will be remembered, was from the lips of a Dominican,
+in the sixteenth century, one of the order that rounded the Inquisition,
+and in the very country where the fiery tribunal was then in most active
+operation!12
+
+The arguments of Las Casas encountered all the opposition naturally to
+be expected from indifference, selfishness, and bigotry.  They were also
+resisted by some persons of just and benevolent views in his audience,
+who, while they admitted the general correctness of his reasoning, and
+felt deep sympathy for the wrongs of the natives, yet doubted whether his
+scheme of reform was not fraught with greater evils than those it was
+intended to correct.  For Las Casas was the uncompromising friend of
+freedom.  He intrenched himself strongly on the ground of natural right;
+and, like some of the reformers of our own day, disdained to calculate
+the consequences of carrying out the principle to its full and unqualified
+extent.  His earnest eloquence, instinct with the generous love of
+humanity, and fortified by a host of facts, which it was not easy to assail,
+prevailed over his auditors.  The result of their deliberations was a code
+of ordinances, which, however, far from being limited to the wants of the
+natives, had particular reference to the European population, and the
+distractions of the country.  It was of general application to all the
+American colonies.  It will be necessary here only to point out some of
+the provisions having immediate reference to Peru.
+
+The Indians were declared true and loyal vassals of the Crown, and their
+freedom as such was fully recognized.  Yet, to maintain inviolate the
+guaranty of the government to the Conquerors, it was decided, that those
+lawfully possessed of slaves might still retain them; but, at the death of
+the present proprietors, they were to revert to the Crown.
+
+It was provided, however, that slaves, in any event, should be forfeited
+by all those who had shown themselves unworthy to hold them by
+neglect or ill-usage; by all public functionaries, or such as had held
+offices under the government; by ecclesiastics and religious
+corporations; and lastly,--a sweeping clause,--by all who had taken a
+criminal part in the feuds of Almagro and Pizarro.
+
+It was further ordered, that the Indians should be moderately taxed; that
+they should not be compelled to labor where they did not choose, and
+that where, from particular circumstances, this was made necessary, they
+should receive a fair compensation.  It was also decreed, that, as the
+repartimientos of land were often excessive, they should in such cases be
+reduced; and that, where proprietors had been guilty of a notorious abuse
+of their slaves, their estates should be forfeited altogether.
+
+As Peru had always shown a spirit of insubordination, which required a
+more vigorous interposition of authority than was necessary in the other
+colonies, it was resolved to send a viceroy to that country, who should
+display a state, and be armed with powers, that might make him a more
+fitting representative of the sovereign.  He was to be accompanied by a
+Royal Audience, consisting of four judges, with extensive powers of
+jurisdiction, both criminal and civil, who, besides a court of justice,
+should constitute a sort of council to advise with and aid the viceroy.
+The Audience of Panama was to be dissolved, and the new tribunal,
+with the vice-king's court, was to be established at Los Reyes, or Lima,
+as it now began to be called,---henceforth the metropolis of the Spanish
+empire on the Pacific.13
+
+Such were some of the principal features of this remarkable code, which,
+touching on the most delicate relations of society, broke up the very
+foundations of property, and, by a stroke of the pen, as it were, converted
+a nation of slaves into freemen.  It would have required, we may
+suppose, but little forecast to divine, that in the remote regions of
+America, and especially in Peru, where the colonists had been hitherto
+accustomed to unbounded license, a reform, so salutary in essential
+points, could be enforced thus summarily only at the price of a
+revolution.  Yet the ordinances received the sanction of the emperor that
+same year, and in November, 1543, were published at Madrid.14
+
+No sooner was their import known than it was conveyed by numerous
+letters to the colonists, from their friends in Spain.  The tidings flew like
+wildfire over the land, from Mexico to Chili.  Men were astounded at the
+prospect of the ruin that awaited them.  In Peru, particularly, there was
+scarcely one that could hope to escape the operation of the law.  Few
+there were who had not taken part, at some time or other, in the civil
+feuds of Almagro and Pizarro; and still fewer of those that remained that
+would not be entangled in some one or other of the insidious clauses that
+seemed spread out, like a web, to ensnare them.
+
+The whole country was thrown into commotion.  Men assembled
+tumultuously in the squares and public places, and, as the regulations
+were made known they were received with universal groans and hisses.
+"Is this the fruit," they cried, "of all our toil?  Is it for this that we have
+poured out our blood like water?  Now that we are broken down by
+hardships and sufferings, to be left at the end of our campaigns as poor
+as at the beginning!  Is this the way government rewards our services in
+winning for it an empire?  The government has done little to aid us in
+making the conquest, and for what we have we may thank our own good
+swords; and with these same swords," they continued, warming into
+menace, "we know how to defend it."  Then, stripping up his sleeve, the
+war-worn veteran bared his arm, or, exposing his naked bosom, pointed
+to his scars, as the best title to his estates.15
+
+The governor, Vaca de Castro, watched the storm thus gathering from all
+quarters, with the deepest concern.  He was himself in the very heart of
+disaffection; for Cuzco, tenanted by a mixed and lawless population was
+so far removed into the depths of the mountains, that it had much less
+intercourse with the parent country, and was consequently much less
+under her influence, than the great towns on the coast.  The people now
+invoked the governor to protect them against the tyranny of the Court;
+but he endeavored to calm the agitation by representing, that by these
+violent measures they would only defeat their own object.  He counselled
+them to name deputies to lay their petition before the Crown, stating the
+impracticability of the present scheme of reform, and praying for the
+repeal of it; and he conjured them to wait patiently for the arrival of the
+viceroy, who might be prevailed on to suspend the ordinances till further
+advices could be received from Castile.
+
+But it was not easy to still the tempest; and the people now eagerly
+looked for some one whose interests and sympathies might lie with
+theirs, and whose position in the community might afford them
+protection.  The person to whom they naturally turned in this crisis was
+Gonzalo Pizarro, the last in the land of that family who had led the
+armies of the Conquest,--a cavalier whose gallantry and popular manners
+had made him always a favorite with the people.  He was now beset with
+applications to interpose in their behalf with the government, and shield
+them from the oppressive ordinances.
+
+But Gonzalo Pizarro was at Charcas, busily occupied in exploring the
+rich veins of Potosi, whose silver fountains, just brought into light, were
+soon to pour such streams of wealth over Europe.  Though gratified with
+this appeal to his protection, the cautious cavalier was more intent on
+providing for the means of enterprise than on plunging prematurely into
+it; and, while he secretly encouraged the malecontents, he did not
+commit himself by taking part in any revolutionary movement.  At the
+same period, he received letters from Vaca de Castro,--whose vigilant
+eye watched all the aspects of the time,---cautioning Gonzalo and his
+friends not to be seduced, by any wild schemes of reform, from their
+allegiance.  And, to check still further these disorderly movements, he
+ordered his alcaldes to arrest every man guilty of seditious language, and
+bring him at once to punishment.  By this firm yet temperate conduct the
+minds of the populace were overawed, and there was a temporary lull in
+the troubled waters, while all looked anxiously for the coming of the
+viceroy.16
+
+The person selected for this critical post was a knight of Avila, named
+Blasco Nunez Vela.  He was a cavalier of ancient family, handsome in
+person, though now somewhat advanced in years, and reputed brave and
+devout.  He had filled some offices of responsibility to the satisfaction of
+Charles the Fifth, by whom he was now appointed to this post in Peru.
+The selection did no credit to the monarch's discernment.
+
+It may seem strange that this important place should not have been
+bestowed on Vaca de Castro, already on the spot, and who had shown
+himself so well qualified to fill it.  But ever since that officer's mission to
+Peru, there had been a series of assassinations, insurrections, and civil
+wars, that menaced the wretched colony with ruin; and, though his wise
+administration had now brought things into order, the communication
+with the Indies was so tardy, that the results of his policy were not yet
+fully disclosed.  As it was designed, moreover, to make important
+innovations in the government, it was thought better to send some one
+who would have no personal prejudices to encounter, from the part he
+had already taken, and who, coming directly from the Court, and clothed
+with extraordinary powers, might present himself with greater authority
+than could one who had become familiar to the people in an inferior
+capacity.  The monarch, however, wrote a letter with his own hand to,
+Vaca de Castro in which he thanked that officer for his past services, and
+directed him, after aiding the new viceroy with the fruits of his large
+experience, to return to Castile, and take his seat in the Royal Council.
+Letters of a similar complimentary kind were sent to the loyal colonists
+who had stood by the governor in the late troubles of the country.
+Freighted with these testimonials, and with the ill-starred ordinances,
+Blasco Nunez embarked at San Lucar, on the 3d of November, 1543.  He
+was attended by the four judges of the Audience, and by a numerous
+retinue, that he might appear in the state befitting his distinguished
+rank.17
+
+About the middle of the following January, 1544, the viceroy, after a
+favorable passage, landed at Nombre de Dios.  He found there a vessel
+laden with silver from the Peruvian mines, ready to sail for Spain.  His
+first act was to lay an embargo on it for the government, as containing
+the proceeds of slave labor.  After this extraordinary measure, taken in
+opposition to the advice of the Audience, he crossed the Isthmus to
+Panama.  Here he gave sure token of his future policy, by causing more
+than three hundred Indians, who had been brought by their owners from
+Peru, to be liberated and sent back to their own country.  This
+highhanded measure created the greatest sensation in the city, and was
+strongly resisted by the judges of the Audience.  They besought him not
+to begin thus precipitately to execute his commission, but to wait till his
+arrival in the colony, when he should have taken time to acquaint himself
+somewhat with the country, and with the temper of the people.  But
+Blasco Nunez coldly replied, that "he had come, not to tamper with the
+laws, nor to discuss their merits, but to execute them,--and execute them
+he would, to the letter, whatever might be the consequence."18  This
+answer, and the peremptory tone in which it was delivered, promptly
+adjourned the debate; for the judges saw that debate was useless with one
+who seemed to consider all remonstrance as an attempt to turn him from
+his duty, and whose ideas of duty precluded all discretionary exercise of
+authority, even where the public good demanded it.
+
+Leaving the Audience, as one of its body was ill, at Panama, the viceroy
+proceeded on his way, and, coasting down the shores of the Pacific, on
+the fourth of March he disembarked at Tumbez.  He was well received
+by the loyal inhabitants; his authority was publicly proclaimed, and the
+people were overawed by the display of a magnificence and state such as
+had not till then been seen in Peru.  He took an early occasion to intimate
+his future line of policy by liberating a number of Indian slaves on the
+application of their caciques.  He then proceeded by land towards the
+south, and showed his determination to conform in his own person to the
+strict letter of the ordinances, by causing his baggage to be carried by
+mules, where it was practicable; and where absolutely necessary to make
+use of Indians, he paid them fairly for their services.19
+
+The whole country was thrown into consternation by reports of the
+proceedings of the viceroy, and of his conversations, most unguarded,
+which were eagerly circulated, and, no doubt, often exaggerated.
+Meetings were again called in the cities.  Discussions were held on the
+expediency of resisting his further progress, and a deputation of citizens
+from Cuzco, who were then in Lima, strongly urged the people to close
+the gates of that capital against him.  But Vaca de Castro had also left
+Cuzco for the latter city, on the earliest intimation of the viceroy's
+approach, and, with some difficulty, he prevailed on the inhabitants not
+to swerve from their loyalty, but to receive their new ruler with suitable
+honors, and trust to his calmer judgment for postponing the execution of
+the law till the case could be laid before the throne.
+
+But the great body of the Spaniards, after what they had heard, had
+slender confidence in the relief to be obtained from this quarter.  They
+now turned with more eagerness than ever towards Gonzalo Pizarro; and
+letters and addresses poured in upon him from all parts of the country,
+inviting him to take on himself the office of their protector.  These
+applications found a more favorable response than on the former
+occasion.
+
+There were, indeed, many motives at work to call Gonzalo into action.  It
+was to his family, mainly, that Spain was indebted for this extension of
+her colonial empire; and he had felt deeply aggrieved that the
+government of the colony should be trusted to other hands than his.  He
+had felt this on the arrival of Vaca de Castro, and much more so when
+the appointment of a viceroy proved it to be the settled policy of the
+Crown to exclude his family from the management of affairs.  His
+brother Hernando still languished in prison, and he himself was now to
+be sacrificed as the principal victim of the fatal ordinances.  For who had
+taken so prominent a part in the civil war with the elder Almagro?  And
+the viceroy was currently reported--it may have been scandal---to have
+intimated that Pizarro would be dealt with accordingly.20  Yet there was
+no one in the country who had so great a stake, who had so much to lose
+by the revolution.  Abandoned thus by the government, he conceived that
+it was now time to take care of himself.
+
+Assembling together some eighteen or twenty cavaliers in whom he most
+trusted, and taking a large amount of silver, drawn from the mines, he
+accepted the invitation to repair to Cuzco.  As he approached this capital,
+he was met by a numerous body of the citizens, who came out to
+welcome him, making the air ring with their shouts, as they saluted him
+with the title of Procurator-General of Peru.  The title was speedily
+confirmed by the municipality of the city, who invited him to head a
+deputation to Lima, in order to state their grievances to the viceroy, and
+solicit the present suspension of the ordinances.
+
+But the spark of ambition was kindled in the bosom of Pizarro.  He felt
+strong in the affections of the people; and, from the more elevated
+position in which he now stood, his desires took a loftier and more
+unbounded range.  Yet, if he harbored a criminal ambition in his breast,
+he skilfully veiled it from others--perhaps from himself.  The only object
+he professed to have in view was the good of the people;21 a suspicious
+phrase, usually meaning the good of the individual.  He now demanded
+permission to raise and organize an armed force, with the further title of
+Captain-General.  His views were entirely pacific; but it was not safe,
+unless strongly protected, to urge them on a person of the viceroy's
+impatient and arbitrary temper.  It was further contended by Pizarro's
+friends, that such a force was demanded, to rid the country of their old
+enemy, the Inca Manco, who hovered in the neighboring mountains with
+a body of warriors, ready, at the first opportunity, to descend on the
+Spaniards.  The municipality of Cuzco hesitated, as well it might, to
+confer powers so far beyond its legitimate authority.  But Pizarro avowed
+his purpose, in case of refusal, to decline the office of Procurator; and
+the efforts of his partisans, backed by those of the people, at length
+silenced the scruples of the magistrates, who bestowed on the ambitious
+chief the military command to which he aspired.  Pizarro accepted it with
+the modest assurance, that he did so "purely from regard to the interests
+of the king, of the Indies, and, above all, of Peru!" 22
+
+
+
+Book 4
+
+Chapter 8
+
+The Viceroy Arrives At Lima--Gonzalo Pizarro Marches From Cuzco--
+Death Of The Inca Manco--Rash Conduct Of The Viceroy--
+Seized And Deposed By The Audience--
+Gonzalo Proclaimed Governor Of Peru
+
+1544
+
+While the events recorded in the preceding pages were in progress,
+Blasco Nunez had been journeying towards Lima.  But the alienation
+which his conduct had already caused in the minds of the colonists was
+shown in the cold reception which he occasionally experienced on the
+route, and in the scanty accommodations provided for him and his
+retinue.  In one place where he took up his quarters, he found an ominous
+inscription over the door:--"He that takes my property must expect to pay
+for it with his life." 1  Neither daunted, nor diverted from his purpose,
+the inflexible viceroy held on his way towards the capital, where the
+inhabitants, preceded by Vaca de Castro and the municipal authorities,
+came out to receive him.  He entered in great state, under a canopy of
+crimson cloth, embroidered with the arms of Spain, and supported by
+stout poles or staves of solid silver, which were borne by the members of
+the municipality.  A cavalier, holding a mace, the emblem of authority,
+rode before him; and after the oaths of office were administered in the
+council-chamber, the procession moved towards the cathedral, where Te
+Deum was sung, and Blasco Nunez was installed in his new dignity of
+viceroy of Peru.2
+
+His first act was to proclaim his determination in respect to the
+ordinances.  He had no warrant to suspend their execution.  He should
+fulfil his commission; but he offered to join the colonists in a memorial
+to the emperor, soliciting the repeal of a code which he now believed
+would be for the interests neither of the country nor of the Crown.3
+With this avowed view of the subject, it may seem strange that Blasco
+Nunez should not have taken the responsibility of suspending the law
+until his sovereign could be assured of the inevitable consequences of
+enforcing it.  The pacha of a Turkish despot, who had allowed himself
+this latitude for the interests of his master, might, indeed, have reckoned
+on the bowstring.  But the example of Mendoza, the prudent viceroy of
+Mexico who adopted this course in a similar crisis, and precisely at the
+same period, showed its propriety under existing circumstances.  The
+ordinances were suspended by him till the Crown could be warned of the
+consequences of enforcing them,--and Mexico was saved from
+revolution.4  But Blasco Nunez had not the wisdom of Mendoza.
+
+The public apprehension was now far from being allayed.  Secret cabals
+were formed in Lima, and communications held with the different towns.
+No distrust, however, was raised in the breast of the viceroy, and, when
+informed of the preparations of Gonzalo Pizarro, he took no other step
+than to send a message to his camp, announcing the extraordinary
+powers with which he was himself invested, and requiring that chief to
+disband his forces.  He seemed to think that a mere word from him
+would be sufficient to dissipate rebellion.  But it required more than a
+breath to scatter the iron soldiery of Peru.
+
+Gonzalo Pizarro, meanwhile, was busily occupied in mustering his army.
+His first step was to order from Guamanga sixteen pieces of artillery,
+sent there by Vaca de Castro, who, in the present state of excitement,
+was unwilling to trust the volatile people of Cuzco with these implements
+of destruction.  Gonzalo, who had no scruples as to Indian labor,
+appropriated six thousand of the natives to the service of transporting
+this train of ordnance across the mountains.5
+
+By his exertions and those of his friends, the active chief soon mustered
+a force of nearly four hundred men, which, if not very imposing in the
+outset, he conceived would be swelled, in his descent to the coast, by
+tributary levies from the towns and villages on the way.  All his own
+funds were expended in equipping his men and providing for the march;
+and, to supply deficiencies, he made no scruple---since, to use his words,
+it was for the public interest--to appropriate the moneys in the royal
+treasury.  With this seasonable aid, his troops, well mounted and
+thoroughly equipped, were put in excellent fighting order; and, after
+making them a brief harangue, in which he was careful to insist on the
+pacific character of his enterprise, somewhat at variance with its military
+preparations, Gonzalo Pizarro sallied forth from the gates of the capital.
+
+Before leaving it, he received an important accession of strength in the
+person of Francisco de Carbajal, the veteran who performed so
+conspicuous a part in the battle of Chupas.  He was at Charcas when the
+news of the ordinances reached Peru; and he instantly resolved to quit
+the country and return to Spain, convinced that the New World would be
+no longer the land for him,--no longer the golden Indies.  Turning his
+effects into money, he prepared to embark them on board the first ship
+that offered.  But no opportunity occurred, and he could have little
+expectation now of escaping the vigilant eye of the viceroy.  Yet, though
+solicited by Pizarro to take command under him in the present
+expedition, the veteran declined, saying, he was eighty years old, and had
+no wish but to return home, and spend his few remaining days in quiet.6
+Well had it been for him, had he persisted in his refusal.  But he yielded
+to the importunities of his friend; and the short space that yet remained to
+him of life proved long enough to brand his memory with perpetual
+infamy.
+
+Soon after quitting Cuzco, Pizarro learned the death of the Inca Manco.
+He was massacred by a party of Spaniards, of the faction of Almagro,
+who, on the defeat of their young leader, had taken refuge in the Indian
+camp.  They, in turn, were all slain by the Peruvians.  It is impossible to
+determine on whom the blame of the quarrel should rest, since no one
+present at the time has recorded it.7
+
+The death of Manco Inca, as he was commonly called, is an event not to
+be silently passed over in Peruvian history; for he was the last of his race
+that may be said to have been animated by the heroic spirit of the ancient
+Incas.  Though placed on the throne by Pizarro, far from remaining a
+mere puppet in his hands, Manco soon showed that his lot was not to be
+cast with that of his conquerors.  With the ancient institutions of his
+country lying a wreck around him, he yet struggled bravely, like
+Guatemozin, the last of the Aztecs, to uphold her tottering fortunes, or to
+bury his oppressors under her ruins.  By the assault on his own capital of
+Cuzco, in which so large a portion of it was demolished, he gave a check
+to the arms of Pizarro, and, for a season, the fate of the Conquerors
+trembled in the balance.  Though foiled, in the end, by the superior
+science of his adversary, the young barbarian still showed the same
+unconquerable spirit as before.  He withdrew into the fastnesses of his
+native mountains, whence sallying forth as occasion offered, he fell on
+the caravan of the traveller, or on some scattered party of the military;
+and, in the event of a civil war, was sure to throw his own weight into the
+weaker scale, thus prolonging the contest of his enemies, and feeding his
+revenge by the sight of their calamities.  Moving lightly from spot to
+spot, he eluded pursuit amidst the wilds of the Cordilleras; and, hovering
+in the neighborhood of the towns, or lying in ambush on the great
+thoroughfares of the country, the Inca Manco made his name a terror to
+the Spaniards.  Often did they hold out to him terms of accommodation;
+and every succeeding ruler, down to Blasco Nunez, bore instructions
+from the Crown to employ every art to conciliate the formidable warrior.
+But Manco did not trust the promises of the white man; and he chose
+rather to maintain his savage independence in the mountains, with the
+few brave spirits around him, than to live a slave in the land which had
+once owned the sway of his ancestors.
+
+The death of the Inca removed one of the great pretexts for Gonzalo
+Pizarro's military preparations; but it had little influence on him, as may
+be readily imagined.  He was much more sensible to the desertion of
+some of his followers, which took place early on the march.  Several of
+the cavaliers of Cuzco, startled by his unceremonious appropriation of
+the public moneys, and by the belligerent aspect of affairs, now for the
+first time seemed to realize that they were in the path of rebellion.  A
+number of these, including some principal men of the city, secretly
+withdrew from the army, and, hastening to Lima, offered their services to
+the viceroy.  The troops were disheartened by this desertion, and even
+Pizarro for a moment faltered in his purpose, and thought of retiring with
+some fifty followers to Charcas, and there making his composition with
+government.  But a little reflection, aided by the remonstrances of the
+courageous Carbajal, who never turned his back on an enterprise which
+he had once assumed, convinced him that he had gone too far to recede,-
+-that his only safety was to advance.
+
+He was reassured by more decided manifestations, which he soon after
+received, of the public opinion.  An officer named Puelles, who
+commanded at Guanuco, joined him, with a body of horse with which he
+had been intrusted by the viceroy.  This defection was followed by that
+of others, and Gonzalo, as he descended the sides of the table-land,
+found his numbers gradually swelled to nearly double the amount with
+which he had left the Indian capital.
+
+As he traversed with a freer step the bloody field of Chupas, Carbajal
+pointed out the various localities of the battle-ground, and Pizarro might
+have found food for anxious reflection, as he meditated on the fortunes
+of a rebel.  At Guamanga he was received with open arms by the
+inhabitants, many of whom eagerly enlisted under his banner; for they
+trembled for their property, as they heard from all quarters of the
+inflexible temper of the viceroy.8
+
+That functionary began now to be convinced that he was in a critical
+position.  Before Puelles's treachery, above noticed, had been
+consummated, the viceroy had received some vague intimation of his
+purpose.  Though scarcely crediting it, he detached one of his company,
+named Diaz, with a force to intercept him.  But, although that cavalier
+undertook the mission with alacrity, he was soon after prevailed on to
+follow the example of his comrade, and, with the greater part of the men
+under his command, went over to the enemy.  In the civil feuds of this
+unhappy land, parties changed sides so lightly, that treachery to a
+commander had almost ceased to be a stain on the honor of a cavalier.
+Yet all, on whichever side they cast their fortunes, loudly proclaimed
+their loyalty to the Crown.
+
+Thus betrayed by his own men, by those apparently most devoted to his
+service, Blasco Nunez became suspicious of every one around him.
+Unfortunately, his suspicions fell on some who were most deserving of
+his confidence.  Among these was his predecessor, Vaca de Castro.  That
+officer had conducted himself, in the delicate situation in which he had
+been placed, with his usual discretion, and with perfect integrity and
+honor.  He had frankly communicated with the viceroy, and well had it
+been for Blasco Nunez, if he had known how to profit by it.  But he was
+too much puffed up by the arrogance of office, and by the conceit of his
+own superior wisdom, to defer much to the counsels of his experienced
+predecessor.  The latter was now suspected by the viceroy of maintaining
+a secret correspondence with his enemies at Cuzco,--a suspicion which
+seems to have had no better foundation than the personal friendship
+which Vaca de Castro was known to entertain for these individuals.  But,
+with Blasco Nunez, to suspect was to be convinced; and he ordered De
+Castro to be placed under arrest, and confined on board of a vessel lying
+in the harbor.  This high-handed measure was followed by the arrest and
+imprisonment of several other cavaliers, probably on grounds equally
+frivolous.9
+
+He now turned his attention towards the enemy.  Notwithstanding his
+former failure, he still did not altogether despair of effecting something
+by negotiation, and he sent another embassy, having the bishop of Lima
+at its head, to Gonzalo Pizarro's camp, with promises of a general
+amnesty, and some proposals of a more tempting character to the
+commander.  But this step, while it proclaimed his own weakness, had no
+better success than the preceding.10
+
+The viceroy now vigorously prepared for war.  His first care was to put
+the capital in a posture of defence, by strengthening its fortifications, and
+throwing barricades across the streets.  He ordered a general enrolment
+of the citizens, and called in levies from the neighboring towns,-a call
+not very promptly answered.  A squadron of eight or ten vessels was got
+ready in the port to act in concert with the land forces.  The bells were
+taken from the churches, and used in the manufacture of muskets;11 and
+funds were procured from the fifths which had accumulated in the royal
+treasury.  The most extravagant bounty was offered to the soldiers, and
+prices were paid for mules and horses, which showed that gold, or rather
+silver, was the commodity of least value in Peru.12  By these efforts, the
+active commander soon assembled a force considerably larger than that
+of his adversary.  But how could he confide in it?
+
+While these preparations were going forward, the judges of the Audience
+arrived at Lima.  They had shown, throughout their progress, no great
+respect either for the ordinances, or the will of the viceroy; for they had
+taxed the poor natives as freely and unscrupulously as any of the
+Conquerors.  We have seen the entire want of cordiality subsisting
+between them and their principal in Panama.  It became more apparent,
+on their landing at Lima.  They disapproved of his proceedings in every
+particular; of his refusal to suspend the ordinances,--although, in fact, he
+had found no opportunity, of late, to enforce them; of his preparations
+for defence, declaring that he ought rather trust to the effect of
+negotiation; and, finally, of his imprisonment of so many loyal cavaliers,
+which they pronounced an arbitrary act, altogether beyond the bounds of
+his authority; and they did not scruple to visit the prison in person, and
+discharge the captives from their confinement.13
+
+This bold proceeding, while it conciliated the good-will of the people,
+severed, at once, all relations with the viceroy.  There was in the
+Audience a lawyer, named Cepeda, a cunning, ambitious man, with
+considerable knowledge in the way of his profession, and with still
+greater talent for intrigue.  He did not disdain the low arts of a
+demagogue to gain the favor of the populace, and trusted to find his own
+account in fomenting a misunderstanding with Blasco Nunez.  The latter,
+it must be confessed, did all in his power to aid his counsellor in this
+laudable design.
+
+A certain cavalier in the place, named Suarez de Carbajal, who had long
+held an office under government, fell under the viceroy's displeasure, on
+suspicion of conniving at the secession of some of his kinsmen, who had
+lately taken part with the malecontents.  The viceroy summoned Carbajal
+to attend him at his palace, late at night; and when conducted to his
+presence, he bluntly charged him with treason.  The latter stoutly denied
+the accusation, in tones as haughty as those of his accuser.  The
+altercation grew warm, until, in the heat of passion, Blasco Nunez struck
+him with his poniard.  In an instant, the attendants, taking this as a signal,
+plunged their swords into the body of the unfortunate man, who fell
+lifeless on the floor.14
+
+Greatly alarmed for the consequences of his rash act,--for Carbajal was
+much beloved in Lima,--Blasco Nunez ordered the corpse of the
+murdered man to be removed by a private stairway from the house, and
+carried to the cathedral, where, rolled in his bloody cloak, it was laid in a
+grave hastily dug to receive it.  So tragic a proceeding, known to so
+many witnesses, could not long be kept secret.  Vague rumors of the fact
+explained the mysterious disappearance of Carbajal.  The grave was
+opened, and the mangled remains of the slaughtered cavalier established
+the guilt of the viceroy.15
+
+From this hour Blasco Nunez was held in universal abhorrence; and his
+crime, in this instance, assumed the deeper dye of ingratitude, since the
+deceased was known to have had the greatest influence in reconciling the
+citizens early to his government.  No one knew where the blow would
+fall next, or how soon he might himself become the victim of the
+ungovernable passions of the viceroy.  In this state of things, some
+looked to the Audience, and yet more to Gonzalo Pizarro, to protect
+them.
+
+That chief was slowly advancing towards Lima, from which, indeed, he
+was removed but a few days' march.  Greatly perplexed, Blasco Nunez
+now felt the loneliness of his condition.  Standing aloof, as it were from
+his own followers, thwarted by the Audience, betrayed by his soldiers, he
+might well feel the consequences of his misconduct.  Yet there seemed
+no other course for him, but either to march out and meet the enemy, or
+to remain in Lima and defend it.  He had placed the town in a posture of
+defence, which argued this last to have been his original purpose.  But he
+felt he could no longer rely on his troops, and he decided on a third
+course, most unexpected.
+
+This was to abandon the capital, and withdraw to Truxillo, about eighty
+leagues distant.  The women would embark on board the squadron, and,
+with the effects of the citizens, be transported by water.  The troops, with
+the rest of the inhabitants, would march by land, laying waste the country
+as they proceeded.  Gonzalo Pizarro, when he arrived at Lima, would
+find it without supplies for his army, and, thus straitened he would not
+care to take a long march across a desert in search of his enemy.16
+
+What the viceroy proposed to effect by this movement is not clear,
+unless it were to gain time; and yet the more time he had gained, thus far,
+the worse it had proved for him.  But he was destined to encounter a
+decided opposition from the judges.  They contended that he had no
+warrant for such an act, and that the Audience could not lawfully hold its
+sessions out of the capital.  Blasco Nunez persisted in his determination,
+menacing that body with force, if necessary.  The judges appealed to the
+citizens to support them in resisting such an arbitrary measure.  They
+mustered a force for their own protection, and that same day passed a
+decree that the viceroy should be arrested.
+
+Late at night, Blasco Nunez was informed of the hostile preparations of
+the judges.  He instantly summoned his followers, to the number of more
+than two hundred, put on his armour, and prepared to march out at the
+head of his troops against the Audience.  This was the true course; for in
+a crisis like that in which he was placed, requiring promptness and
+decision, the presence of the leader is essential to insure success.  But,
+unluckily, he yielded to the remonstrances of his brother and other
+friends, who dissuaded him from rashly exposing his life in such a
+venture.
+
+What Blasco Nunez neglected to do was done by the judges.  They
+sallied forth at the head of their followers, whose number, though small
+at first, they felt confident would be swelled by volunteers as they
+advanced.  Rushing forward, they cried out,--"Liberty!  Liberty!  Long
+live the king and the Audience! " It was early dawn, and the inhabitants,
+startled from their slumbers, ran to the windows and balconies, and,
+learning the object of the movement, some snatched up their arms and
+joined in it, while the women, waving their scarfs and kerchiefs, cheered
+on the assault.
+
+When the mob arrived before the viceroy's palace, they halted for a
+moment, uncertain what to do.  Orders were given to fire on them from
+the windows, and a volley passed over their heads.  No one was injured;
+and the greater part of the viceroy's men, with most of the officers,
+including some of those who had been so anxious for his personal safety,
+--now openly joined the populace.  The palace was then entered, and
+abandoned to pillage.  Blasco Nunez, deserted by all but a few faithful
+adherents, made no resistance.  He surrendered to the assailants, was led
+before the judges, and by them was placed in strict confinement.  The
+citizens, delighted with the result, provided a collation for the soldiers;
+and the affair ended without the loss of a single life.  Never was there so
+bloodless a revolution.17
+
+The first business of the judges was to dispose of the prisoner.  He was
+sent, under a strong guard, to a neighboring island, till some measures
+could be taken respecting him.  He was declared to be deposed from his
+office; a provisional government was established, consisting of their own
+body, with Cepeda at its head, as president; and its first act was to
+pronounce the detested ordinances suspended, till instructions could be
+received from Court.  It was also decided to send Blasco Nunez back to
+Spain with one of their own body, who should explain to the emperor the
+nature of the late disturbances, and vindicate the measures of the
+Audience.  This was soon put in execution.  The Licentiate Alvarez was
+the person selected to bear the viceroy company; and the unfortunate
+commander, after passing several days on the desolate island, with
+scarcely any food, and exposed to all the inclemencies of the weather,
+took his departure for Panama.18
+
+A more formidable adversary yet remained in Gonzalo Pizarro, who had
+now advanced to Xauxa, about ninety miles from Lima.  Here he halted,
+while numbers of the citizens prepared to join his banner, choosing
+rather to take service under him than to remain under the selfconstituted
+authority of the Audience.  The judges, meanwhile, who had tasted the
+sweets of office too short a time to be content to resign them, after
+considerable delay, sent an embassy to the Procurator.  They announced
+to him the revolution that had taken place, and the suspension of the
+ordinances.  The great object of his mission had been thus accomplished;
+and, as a new government was now organized, they called on him to
+show his obedience to it, by disbanding his forces, and withdrawing to
+the unmolested enjoyment of his estates.  It was a bold demand, though
+couched in the most courteous and complimentary phrase,--to make of
+one in Pizarro's position.  It was attempting to scare away the eagle just
+ready to stoop on his prey.  If the chief had faltered, however, he would
+have been reassured by his lion-hearted lieutenant.  "Never show faint
+heart," exclaimed the latter, "when you are so near the goal.  Success has
+followed every step of your path.  You have now only to stretch forth
+your hand, and seize the government.  Every thing else will follow."--
+The envoy who brought the message from the judges was sent back with
+the answer, that "the people had called Gonzalo Pizarro to the
+government of the country, and, if the Audience did not at once invest
+him with it, the city should be delivered up to pillage." 19
+
+The bewildered magistrates were thrown into dismay by this decisive
+answer.  Yet loth to resign, they took counsel in their perplexity of Vaca
+de Castro, still detained on board of one of the vessels.  But that
+commander had received too little favor at the hands of his successors to
+think it necessary to peril his life on their account by thwarting the plans
+of Pizarro.  He maintained a discreet silence, therefore, and left the
+matter to the wisdom of the Audience.
+
+Meanwhile, Carbajal was sent into the city to quicken their deliberations.
+He came at night, attended only by a small party of soldiers, intimating
+his contempt of the power of the judges.  His first act was to seize a
+number of cavaliers, whom he dragged from their beds, and placed under
+arrest.  They were men of Cuzco, the same already noticed as having left
+Pizarro's ranks soon after his departure from that capital.  While the
+Audience still hesitated as to the course they should pursue, Carbajal
+caused three of his prisoners, persons of consideration and property, to
+be placed on the backs of mules, and escorted out of town to the suburbs,
+where, with brief space allowed for confession, he hung them all on the
+branches of a tree.  He superintended the execution himself, and
+tauntingly complimented one of his victims, by telling him, that, "in
+consideration of his higher rank, he should have the privilege of selecting
+the bough on which to be hanged!"20  The ferocious officer would have
+proceeded still further in his executions, it is said, had it not been for
+orders received from his leader.  But enough was done to quicken the
+perceptions of the Audience as to their course, for they felt their own
+lives suspended by a thread in such unscrupulous hands.  Without further
+delay, therefore, they sent to invite Gonzalo Pizarro to enter the city,
+declaring that the security of the country and the general good required
+the government to be placed in his hands.21
+
+That chief had now advanced within half a league of the capital, which
+soon after, on the twenty-eighth of October, 1544, he entered in battle-
+array.  His whole force was little short of twelve hundred Spaniards,
+besides several thousand Indians, who dragged his heavy guns in the
+advance.22  Then came the files of spearmen and arquebusiers, making a
+formidable corps of infantry for a colonial army; and lastly, the cavalry,
+at the head of which rode Pizarro himself, on a powerful charger, gaily
+caparisoned.  The rider was in complete mail, over which floated a richly
+embroidered surcoat, and his head was protected by a crimson cap,
+highly ornamented,--his showy livery setting off his handsome,
+soldierlike person to advantage.23  Before him was borne the royal
+standard of Castile; for every one, royalist or rebel, was careful to fight
+under that sign.  This emblem of loyalty was supported on the right by a
+banner, emblazoned with the arms of Cuzco, and by another on the left,
+displaying the armorial bearings granted by the Crown to the Pizarros.
+As the martial pageant swept through the streets of Lima, the air was rent
+with acclamations from the populace, and from the spectators in the
+balconies.  The cannon sounded at intervals, and the bells of the city--
+those that the viceroy had spared rang out a joyous peal, as if in honor of
+a victory!
+
+The oaths of office were duly administered by the judges of the Royal
+Audience, and Gonzalo Pizarro was proclaimed Governor and Captain
+General of Peru, till his Majesty's pleasure could be known in respect to
+the government.  The new ruler then took up his quarters in the palace of
+his brother,--where the stains of that brother's blood were not yet effaced.
+Fetes, bull-fights, and tournaments graced the ceremony of inauguration,
+and were prolonged for several days, while the giddy populace of the
+capital abandoned themselves to jubilee, as if a new and more auspicious
+order of things had commenced for Peru!  24
+
+
+
+Book 4
+
+Chapter 9
+
+Measures Of Gonzalo Pizarro--Escape Of Vaca De Castro--
+Reappearance Of The Viceroy--His Disastrous Retreat--
+Defeat And Death Of The Viceroy--Gonzalo Pizarro Lord Of Peru
+
+1544--1546
+
+The first act of Gonzalo Pizarro was to cause those persons to be
+apprehended who had taken the most active part against him in the late
+troubles.  Several he condemned to death; but afterwards commuted the
+sentence, and contented himself with driving them into banishment and
+confiscating their estates.1  His next concern was to establish his
+authority on a firm basis.  He filled the municipal government of Lima
+with his own partisans.  He sent his lieutenants to take charge of the
+principal cities.  He caused galleys to be built at Arequipa to secure the
+command of the seas; and brought his forces into the best possible
+condition, to prepare for future emergencies.
+
+The Royal Audience existed only in name; for its powers were speedily
+absorbed by the new ruler, who desired to place the government on the
+same footing as under the marquess, his brother.  Indeed, the Audience
+necessarily fell to pieces, from the position of its several members.
+Alvarez had been sent with the viceroy to Castile.  Cepeda, the most
+aspiring of the court, now that he had failed in his own schemes of
+ambition, was content to become a tool in the hands of the military chief
+who had displaced him.  Zarate, a third judge, who had, from the first,
+protested against the violent measures of his colleagues, was confined to
+his house by a mortal illness;2 and Tepeda, the remaining magistrate,
+Gonzalo now proposed to send back to Castile with such an account of
+the late transactions as should vindicate his own conduct in the eyes of
+the emperor.  This step was opposed by Carbajal, who bluntly told his
+commander that "he had gone too far to expect favor from the Crown;
+and that he had better rely for his vindication on his pikes and muskets!"
+3
+
+But the ship which was to transport Tepeda was found to have suddenly
+disappeared from the port.  It was the same in which Vaca de Castro was
+confined; and that officer, not caring to trust to the forbearance of one
+whose advances, on a former occasion, he had so unceremoniously
+repulsed, and convinced, moreover, that his own presence could profit
+nothing in a land where he held no legitimate authority, had prevailed on
+the captain to sail with him to Panama.  He then crossed the Isthmus, and
+embarked for Spain.  The rumors of his coming had already preceded
+him, and charges were not wanting against him from some of those
+whom he had offended by his administration.  He was accused of having
+carried measures with a high hand, regardless of the rights, both of the
+colonist and of the native; and, above all, of having embezzled the public
+moneys, and of returning with his coffers richly freighted to Castile.
+This last was an unpardonable crime.
+
+No sooner had the governor set foot in his own country than he was
+arrested, and hurried to the fortress of Arevalo; and, though he was
+afterwards removed to better quarters, where he was treated with the
+indulgence due to his rank, he was still kept a prisoner of state for twelve
+years, when the tardy tribunals of Castile pronounced a judgment in his
+favor.  He was acquitted of every charge that had been brought against
+him, and, so far from peculation, was proved to have returned home no
+richer than he went.  He was released from confinement, reinstated in his
+honors and dignities, took his seat anew in the royal council, and Vaca
+de Castro enjoyed, during the remainder of his days, the consideration to
+which he was entitled by his deserts.4  The best eulogium on the wisdom
+of his administration was afforded by the troubles brought on the
+colonies by that of his successor.  The nation became gradually sensible
+of the value of his services; though the manner in which they were
+requited by the government must be allowed to form a cold commentary
+on the gratitude of princes.
+
+Gonzalo Pizarro was doomed to experience a still greater disappointment
+than that caused by the escape of Vaca de Castro, in the return of Blasco
+Nunez.  The vessel which bore him from the country had hardly left the
+shore, when Alvarez, the judge, whether from remorse at the part which
+he had taken, or apprehensive of the consequences of carrying back the
+viceroy to Spain, presented himself before that dignitary, and announced
+that he was no longer a prisoner.  At the same time he excused himself
+for the part he had taken, by his desire to save the life of Blasco Nunez,
+and extricate him from his perilous situation.  He now placed the vessel
+at his disposal, and assured him it should take him wherever he chose.
+
+The viceroy, whatever faith he may have placed in the judge's
+explanation, eagerly availed himself of his offer.  His proud spirit
+revolted at the idea of returning home in disgrace, foiled, as he had been,
+in every object of his mission.  He determined to try his fortune again in
+the land, and his only doubt was, on what point to attempt to rally his
+partisans around him.  At Panama he might remain in safety, while he
+invoked assistance from Nicaragua, and other colonies at the north.  But
+this would be to abandon his government at once; and such a confession
+of weakness would have a bad effect on his followers in Peru.  He
+determined, therefore, to direct his steps towards Quito, which, while it
+was within his jurisdiction, was still removed far enough from the theatre
+of the late troubles to give him time to rally, and make head against his
+enemies.
+
+In pursuance of this purpose, the viceroy and his suite disembarked at
+Tumbez, about the middle of October, 1544.  On landing, he issued a
+manifesto setting forth the violent proceedings of Gonzalo Pizarro and
+his followers, whom he denounced as traitors to their prince, and he
+called on all true subjects in the colony to support him in maintaining the
+royal authority.  The call was not unheeded; and volunteers came in,
+though tardily, from San Miguel, Puerto Viejo, and other places on the
+coast, cheering the heart of the viceroy with the conviction that the
+sentiment of loyalty was not yet extinct in the bosoms of the Spaniards.
+
+But, while thus occupied, he received tidings of the arrival of one of
+Pizarro's captains on the coast, with a force superior to his own.  Their
+number was exaggerated; but Blasco Nunez, without waiting to ascertain
+the truth, abandoned his position at Tumbez, and, with as much
+expedition as he could make across a wild and mountainous country half-
+buried in snow, he marched to Quito.  But this capital, situated at the
+northern extremity of his province, was not a favorable point for the
+rendezvous of his followers; and, after prolonging his stay till he had
+received assurance from Benalcazar, the loyal commander at Popayan,
+that he would support him with all his strength in the coming conflict, he
+made a rapid countermarch to the coast, and took up his position at the
+town of San Miguel.  This was a spot well suited to his purposes, as lying
+on the great high road along the shores of the Pacific, besides being the
+chief mart for commercial intercourse with Panama and the north.
+
+Here the viceroy erected his standard, and in a few weeks found himself
+at the head of a force amounting to nearly five hundred in all, horse and
+foot, ill provided with arms and ammunition, but apparently zealous in
+the cause.  Finding himself in sufficient strength to commence active
+operations, he now sallied forth against several of Pizarro's captains in
+the neighborhood, over whom he obtained some decided advantages,
+which renewed his confidence, and flattered him with the hopes of
+reestablishing his ascendency in the country.5
+
+During this time, Gonzalo Pizarro was not idle.  He had watched with
+anxiety the viceroy's movements; and was now convinced that it was
+time to act, and that, if he would not be unseated himself, he must
+dislodge his formidable rival.  He accordingly placed a strong garrison
+under a faithful officer in Lima, and, after sending forward a force of
+some six hundred men by land to Truxillo, he embarked for the same
+port himself, on the 4th of March, 1545, the very day on which the
+viceroy had marched from Quito.
+
+At Truxillo, Pizarro put himself at the head of his little army, and moved
+without loss of time against San Miguel.  His rival, eager to bring their
+quarrel to an issue, would fain have marched out to give him battle; but
+his soldiers, mostly young and inexperienced levies, hastily brought
+together, were intimidated by the name of Pizarro.  They loudly insisted
+on being led into the upper country, where they would be reinforced by
+Benalcazar; and their unfortunate commander, like the rider of some
+unmanageable steed, to whose humors he is obliged to submit, was
+hurried away in a direction contrary to his wishes.  It was the fate of
+Blasco Nunez to have his purposes baffled alike by his friends and his
+enemies.
+
+On arriving before San Miguel, Gonzalo Pizarro found, to his great
+mortification, that his antagonist had left it.  Without entering the town,
+he quickened his pace, and, after traversing a valley of some extent,
+reached the skirts of a mountain chain, into which Blasco Nunez had
+entered but a few hours before.  It was late in the evening; but Pizarro,
+knowing the importance of despatch, sent forward Carbajal with a party
+of light troops to overtake the fugitives.  That captain succeeded in
+coming up with their lonely bivouac among the mountains at midnight,
+when the weary troops were buried in slumber.  Startled from their
+repose by the blast of the trumpet, which, strange to say, their enemy had
+incautiously sounded,6 the viceroy and his men sprang to their feet,
+mounted their horses, grasped their arquebuses, and poured such a volley
+into the ranks of their assailants, that Carbajal, disconcerted by his
+reception, found it prudent, with his inferior force, to retreat.  The
+viceroy followed, till, fearing an ambuscade in the darkness of the night,
+he withdrew, and allowed his adversary to rejoin the main body of the
+army under Pizarro.
+
+This conduct of Carbajal, by which he allowed the game to slip through
+his hands, from mere carelessness, is inexplicable.  It forms a singular
+exception to the habitual caution and vigilance displayed in his military
+career.  Had it been the act of any other captain, it would have cost him
+his head.  But Pizarro, although greatly incensed, set too high a value on
+the services and well-tried attachment of his lieutenant, to quarrel with
+him.  Still it was considered of the last importance to overtake the
+enemy, before he had advanced much farther to the north, where the
+difficulties of the ground would greatly embarrass the pursuit.  Carbajal,
+anxious to retrieve his error, was accordingly again placed at the head of
+a corps of light troops, with instructions to harass the enemy's march, cut
+off his stores, and keep him in check, if possible, till the arrival of
+Pizarro.7
+
+But the viceroy had profited by the recent delay to gain considerably on
+his pursuers.  His road led across the valley of Caxas, a broad,
+uncultivated district, affording little sustenance for man or beast.  Day
+after day, his troops held on their march through this dreary region,
+intersected with barrancas and rocky ravines that added incredibly to
+their toil.  Their principal food was the parched corn, which usually
+formed the nourishment of the travelling Indians, though held of much
+less account by the Spaniards; and this meagre fare was reinforced by
+such herbs as they found on the way-side, which, for want of better
+utensils, the soldiers were fain to boil in their helmets.8  Carbajal,
+meanwhile, pressed on them so close, that their baggage, ammunition,
+and sometimes their mules, fell into his hands.  The indefatigable warrior
+was always on their track, by day and by night, allowing them scarcely
+any repose.  They spread no tent, and lay down in their arms, with their
+steeds standing saddled beside them; and hardly had the weary soldier
+closed his eyes, when he was startled by the cry that the enemy was upon
+him.9
+
+At length, the harassed followers of Blasco Nunez reached the
+depoblado, or desert of Paltos, which stretches towards the north for
+many a dreary league.  The ground, intersected by numerous streams, has
+the character of a great quagmire, and men and horses floundered about
+in the stagnant waters, or with difficulty worked their way over the
+marsh, or opened a passage through the tangled underwood that shot up
+in rank luxuriance from the surface.  The wayworn horses, without food,
+except such as they could pick up in the wilderness, were often spent
+with travel, and, becoming unserviceable, were left to die on the road,
+with their hamstrings cut, that they might be of no use to the enemy;
+though more frequently they were despatched to afford a miserable
+banquet to their masters.10  Many of the men now fainted by the way
+from mere exhaustion, or loitered in the woods, unable to keep up with
+the march.  And woe to the straggler who fell into the hands of Carbajal,
+at least if he had once belonged to the party of Pizarro.  The mere
+suspicion of treason sealed his doom with the unrelenting soldier.11
+
+The sufferings of Pizarro and his troop were scarcely less than those of
+the viceroy; though they were somewhat mitigated by the natives of the
+country, who, with ready instinct, discerned which party was the
+strongest, and, of course, the most to be feared.  But, with every
+alleviation, the chieftain's sufferings were terrible.  It was repeating the
+dismal scenes of the expedition to the Amazon.  The soldiers of the
+Conquest must be admitted to have purchased their triumphs dearly.
+
+Yet the viceroy had one source of disquietude, greater, perhaps, than any
+arising from physical suffering.  This was the distrust of his own
+followers.  There were several of the principal cavaliers in his suite
+whom he suspected of being in correspondence with the enemy, and even
+of designing to betray him into their hands.  He was so well convinced of
+this, that he caused two of these officers to be put to death on the march;
+and their dead bodies, as they lay by the roadside, meeting the eye of the
+soldier, told him that there were others to be feared in these frightful
+solitudes besides the enemy in his rear.12
+
+Another cavalier, who held the chief command under the viceroy, was
+executed, after a more formal investigation of his case, at the first place
+where the army halted.  At this distance of time, it is impossible to
+determine how far the suspicions of Blasco Nunez were founded on
+truth.  The judgments of contemporaries are at variance.13  In times of
+political ferment, the opinion of the writer is generally determined by the
+complexion of his party.  To judge from the character of Blasco Nunez,
+jealous and irritable, we might suppose him to have acted without
+sufficient cause.  But this consideration is counterbalanced by that of the
+facility with which his followers swerved from their allegiance to their
+commander, who seems to have had so light a hold on their affections,
+that they were shaken off by the least reverse of fortune.  Whether his
+suspicions were well or ill founded, the effect was the same on the mind
+of the viceroy.  With an enemy in his rear whom he dared not fight, and
+followers whom he dared not trust, the cup of his calamities was nearly
+full.
+
+At length, he issued forth on firm ground, and, passing through
+Tomebamba, Blasco Nunez reentered his northern capital of Quito.  But
+his reception was not so cordial as that which he had before experienced.
+He now came as a fugitive, with a formidable enemy in pursuit; and he
+was soon made to feel that the surest way to receive support is not to
+need it.
+
+Shaking from his feet the dust of the disloyal city, whose superstitious
+people were alive to many an omen that boded his approaching ruin,14
+the unfortunate commander held on his way towards Pastos, in the
+jurisdiction of Benalcazar.  Pizarro and his forces entered Quito not long
+after, disappointed, that, with all his diligence, the enemy still eluded his
+pursuit.  He halted only to breathe his men, and, declaring that "he would
+follow up the viceroy to the North Sea but he would overtake him," 15
+he resumed his march.  At Pastos, he nearly accomplished his object.
+His advance-guard came up with Blasco Nunez as the latter was halting
+on the opposite bank of a rivulet.  Pizarro's men, fainting from toil and
+heat, staggered feebly to the water-side, to slake their burning thirst, and
+it would have been easy for the viceroy's troops, refreshed by repose, and
+superior in number to their foes, to have routed them.  But Blasco Nunez
+could not bring his soldiers to the charge.  They had fled so long before
+their enemy, that the mere sight of him filled their hearts with panic, and
+they would have no more thought of turning against him than the hare
+would turn against the hound that pursues her.  Their safety, they felt,
+was to fly, not to fight, and they profited by the exhaustion of their
+pursuers only to quicken their retreat.
+
+Gonzalo Pizarro continued the chase some leagues beyond Pastos; when,
+finding himself carried farther than he desired into the territories of
+Benalcazar, and not caring to encounter this formidable captain at
+disadvantage, he came to a halt, and, notwithstanding his magnificent
+vaunt about the North Sea, ordered a retreat, and made a rapid
+countermarch on Quito.  Here he found occupation in repairing the
+wasted spirits of his troops, and in strengthening himself with fresh
+reinforcements, which much increased his numbers; though these were
+again diminished by a body that he detached under Carbajal to suppress
+an insurrection, which he now learned had broken out in the south.  It
+was headed by Diego Centeno, one of his own officers, whom he had
+established in La Plata, the inhabitants of which place had joined in the
+revolt and raised the standard for the Crown.  With the rest of his forces,
+Pizarro resolved to remain at Quito, waiting the hour when the viceroy
+would reenter his dominions; as the tiger crouches by some spring in the
+wilderness, patiently waiting the return of his victims.
+
+Meanwhile Blasco Nunez had pushed forward his retreat to Popayan, the
+capital of Benalcazar's province.  Here he was kindly received by the
+people; and his soldiers, reduced by desertion and disease to one fifth of
+their original number, rested from the unparalleled fatigues of a march
+which had continued for more than two hundred leagues.16  It was not
+long before he was joined by Cabrera, Benalcazar's lieutenant with a
+stout reinforcement, and, soon after, by that chieftain himself.  His whole
+force now amounted to near four hundred men, most of them in good
+condition, and well trained in the school of American warfare.  His own
+men were sorely deficient both in arms and ammunition; and he set about
+repairing the want by building furnaces for manufacturing arquebuses
+and pikes.17--One familiar with the history of these times is surprised to
+see the readiness with which the Spanish adventurers turned their hands
+to various trades and handicrafts usually requiring a long apprenticeship.
+They displayed the dexterity so necessary to settlers in a new country,
+where every man must become in some degree his own artisan.  But this
+state of things, however favorable to the ingenuity of the artist, is not
+very propitious to the advancement of the art; and there can be little
+doubt that the weapons thus made by the soldiers of Blasco Nunez were
+of the most rude and imperfect construction.
+
+As week after week rolled away, Gonzalo Pizarro, though fortified with
+the patience of a Spanish soldier, felt uneasy at the protracted stay of
+Blasco Nunez in the north, and he resorted to stratagem to decoy him
+from his retreat.  He marched out of Quito with the greater part of his
+forces, pretending that he was going to support his lieutenant in the
+south, while he left a garrison in the city under the command of Puelles,
+the same officer who had formerly deserted from the viceroy.  These
+tidings he took care should be conveyed to the enemy's camp.  The
+artifice succeeded as he wished.  Blasco Nunez and his followers,
+confident in their superiority over Puelles, did not hesitate for a moment
+to profit by the supposed absence of Pizarro.  Abandoning Popayan, the
+viceroy, early in January, 1546, moved by rapid marches towards the
+south.  But before he reached the place of his destination, he became
+appraised of the snare into which he had been drawn.  He communicated
+the fact to his officers; but he had already suffered so much from
+suspense, that his only desire now was, to bring his quarrel with Pizarro
+to the final arbitrament of arms.
+
+That chief, meanwhile, had been well informed, through his spies, of the
+viceroy's movements.  On learning the departure of the latter from
+Popayan, he had reentered Quito, joined his forces with those of Puelles,
+and, issuing from the capital, had taken up a strong position about three
+leagues to the north, on a high ground that commanded a stream, across
+which the enemy must pass.  It was not long before the latter came in
+sight, and Blasco Nunez, as night began to fall, established himself on
+the opposite bank of the rivulet.  It was so near to the enemy's quarters,
+that the voices of the sentinels could be distinctly heard in the opposite
+camps, and they did not fail to salute one another with the epithet of
+"traitors."  In these civil wars, as we have seen, each party claimed for
+itself the exclusive merit of loyalty.18
+
+But Benalcazar soon saw that Pizarro's position was too strong to be
+assailed with any chance of success.  He proposed, therefore, to the
+viceroy, to draw off his forces secretly in the night; and, making a detour
+round the hills, to fall on the enemy's rear, where he would be least
+prepared to receive them.  The counsel was approved; and, no sooner
+were the two hosts shrouded from each other's eyes by the darkness,
+than, leaving his camp-fires burning to deceive the enemy, Blasco Nunez
+broke up his quarters, and began his circuitous march in the direction of
+Quito.  But either he had been misinformed, or his guides misled him; for
+the roads proved so impracticable, that he was compelled to make a
+circuit of such extent, that dawn broke before he drew near the point of
+attack.  Finding that he must now abandon the advantage of a surprise, he
+pressed forward to Quito, where he arrived with men and horses sorely
+fatigued by a night-march of eight leagues, from a point which, by the
+direct route, would not have exceeded three.  It was a fatal error on the
+eve of an engagement.19
+
+He found the capital nearly deserted by the men.  They had all joined the
+standard of Pizarro; for they had now caught the general spirit of
+disaffection, and looked upon that chief as their protector from the
+oppressive ordinances.  Pizarro was the representative of the people.
+Greatly moved at this desertion, the unhappy viceroy, lifting his hands to
+heaven, exclaimed, --"Is it thus, Lord, that you abandonest thy servants?"
+The women and children came out, and in vain offered him food, of
+which he stood obviously in need, asking him, at the same time, "Why he
+had come there to die?"  His followers, with more indifference than their
+commander, entered the houses of the inhabitants, and unceremoniously
+appropriated whatever they could find to appease the cravings of
+appetite.
+
+Benalcazar, who saw the temerity of giving battle, in their present
+condition, recommended the viceroy to try the effect of negotiation, and
+offered himself to go to the enemy's camp, and arrange, if possible, terms
+of accommodation with Pizarro.  But Blasco Nunez, if he desponded for
+a moment, had now recovered his wonted constancy, and he proudly
+replied,--"There is no faith to be kept with traitors.  We have come to
+fight, not to parley; and we must do our duty like good and loyal
+cavaliers.  I will do mine," he continued, "and be assured I will be the
+first man to break a lance with the enemy." 20
+
+He then called his troops together, and addressed to them a few words
+preparatory to marching.  "You are all brave men," he said, "and loyal to
+your sovereign.  For my own part, I hold life as little in comparison with
+my duty to my prince.  Yet let us not distrust our success; the Spaniard,
+in a good cause, has often overcome greater odds than these.  And we are
+fighting for the right; it is the cause of God,--the cause of God," 21 he
+concluded, and the soldiers, kindled by his generous ardor, answered him
+with huzzas that went to the heart of the unfortunate commander, little
+accustomed of late to this display of enthusiasm.
+
+It was the eighteenth of January, 1546, when Blasco Nunez marched out
+at the head of his array, from the ancient city of Quito.  He had
+proceeded but a mile,22 when he came in view of the enemy, formed
+along the crest of some high lands, which, by a gentle swell, rose
+gradually from the plains of Anaquito.  Gonzalo Pizarro, greatly
+chagrined on ascertaining the departure of the viceroy, early in the
+morning, had broken up his camp, and directed his march on the capital,
+fully resolved that his enemy should not escape him.
+
+The viceroy's troops, now coming to a halt, were formed in order of
+battle.  A small body of arquebusiers was stationed in the advance to
+begin the fight.  The remainder of that corps was distributed among the
+spearmen, who occupied the centre, protected on the flanks by the horse
+drawn up in two nearly equal squadrons.  The cavalry amounted to about
+one hundred and forty, being little inferior to that on the other side,
+though the whole number of the viceroy's forces, being less than four
+hundred, did not much exceed the half of his rival's.  On the right, and in
+front of the royal banner, Blasco Nunez, supported by thirteen chosen
+cavaliers, took his station, prepared to head the attack.
+
+Pizarro had formed his troops in a corresponding manner with that of his
+adversary.  They mustered about seven hundred in all, well appointed, in
+good condition, and officered by the best knights in Peru.23  As,
+notwithstanding his superiority of numbers, Pizarro, did not seem
+inclined to abandon his advantageous position, Blasco Nunez gave
+orders to advance.  The action commenced with the arquebusiers, and in
+a few moments the dense clouds of smoke, rolling over the field,
+obscured every object; for it was late in the day when the action began,
+and the light was rapidly fading.
+
+The infantry, now leveling their pikes, advanced under cover of the
+smoke, and were soon hotly engaged with the opposite files of spearmen.
+Then came the charge of the cavalry, which--notwithstanding they were
+thrown into some disorder by the fire of Pizarro's arquebusiers, far
+superior in number to their own--was conducted with such spirit that the
+enemy's horse were compelled to reel and fall back before it.  But it was
+only to recoil with greater violence, as, like an overwhelming wave,
+Pizarro's troopers rushed on their foes, driving them along the slope, and
+bearing down man and horse in indiscriminate ruin.  Yet these, in turn, at
+length rallied, cheered on by the cries and desperate efforts of their
+officers.  The lances were shivered, and they fought hand to hand with
+swords and battle-axes mingled together in wild confusion.  But the
+struggle was of no long duration; for, though the numbers were nearly
+equal, the viceroy's cavalry, jaded by the severe march of the previous
+night,24 were no match for their antagonists.  The ground was strewn
+with the wreck of their bodies; and horses and riders, the dead and the
+dying, lay heaped on one another.  Cabrera, the brave lieutenant of
+Benalcazar, was slain, and that commander was thrown under his horse's
+feet, covered with wounds, and left for dead on the field.  Alvarez, the
+judge, was mortally wounded.  Both he and his colleague Cepeda were in
+the action, though ranged on opposite sides, fighting as if they had been
+bred to arms, not to the peaceful profession of the law.
+
+Yet Blasco Nunez and his companions maintained a brave struggle on
+the right of the field.  The viceroy had kept his word by being the first to
+break his lance against the enemy, and by a well-directed blow had borne
+a cavalier, named Alonso de Montalvo, clean out of his saddle.  But he
+was at length overwhelmed by numbers, and, as his companions, one
+after another, fell by his side, he was left nearly unprotected.  He was
+already wounded, when a blow on the head from the battle-axe of a
+soldier struck him from his horse, and he fell stunned on the ground.
+Had his person been known, he might have been taken alive, but he wore
+a sobre-vest of Indian cotton over his armour, which concealed the
+military order of St. James, and the other badges of his rank.25
+
+His person, however, was soon recognized by one of Pizarro's followers,
+who, not improbably, had once followed the viceroy's banner.  The
+soldier immediately pointed him out to the Licentiate Carbajal.  This
+person was the brother of the cavalier whom, as the reader may
+remember, Blasco Nunez had so rashly put to death in his palace at
+Lima.  The licentiate had afterwards taken service under Pizarro, and,
+with several of his kindred, was pledged to take vengeance on the
+viceroy.  Instantly riding up, he taunted the fallen commander with the
+murder of his brother, and was in the act of dismounting to despatch him
+with his own hand, when Puelles remonstrating on this, as an act of
+degradation, commanded one of his attendants, a black slave, to cut off
+the viceroy's head.  This the fellow executed with a single stroke of his
+sabre, while the wretched man, perhaps then dying of his wounds, uttered
+no word, but with eyes imploringly turned up towards heaven, received
+the fatal blow.26  The head was then borne aloft on a pike, and some
+were brutal enough to pluck out the grey hairs from the beard and set
+them in their caps, as grisly trophies of their victory.27  The fate of the
+day was now decided.  Yet still the infantry made a brave stand, keeping
+Pizarro's horse at bay with their bristling array of pikes.  But their
+numbers were thinned by the arquebusiers; and, thrown into disorder,
+they could no longer resist the onset of the horse, who broke into their
+column, and soon scattered and drove them off the ground.  The pursuit
+was neither long nor bloody; for darkness came on, and Pizarro bade his
+trumpets sound, to call his men together under their banners.
+
+Though the action lasted but a short time, nearly one third of the
+viceroy's troops had perished.  The loss of their opponents was
+inconsiderable.28  Several of the vanquished cavaliers took refuge in the
+churches of Quito.  But they were dragged from the sanctuary, and some
+---probably those who had once espoused the cause of Pizarro--were led
+to execution, and others banished to Chili.  The greater part were
+pardoned by the conqueror.  Benalcazar, who recovered from his
+wounds, was permitted to return to his government, on condition of no
+more bearing arms against Pizarro.  His troops were invited to take
+service under the banner of the victor, who, however, never treated them
+with the confidence shown to his ancient partisans.  He was greatly
+displeased at the indignities offered to the viceroy; whose mangled
+remains he caused to be buried with the honors due to his rank in the
+cathedral of Quito.  Gonzalo Pizarro, attired in black, walked as chief
+mourner in the procession.---It was usual with the Pizarros, as we have
+seen, to pay these obituary honors to their victims.29
+
+Such was the sad end of Blasco Nunez Vela, first viceroy of Peru.  It was
+less than two years since he had set foot in the country, a period of
+unmitigated disaster and disgrace.  His misfortunes may be imputed
+partly to circumstances, and partly to his own character.  The minister of
+an odious and oppressive law, he was intrusted with no discretionary
+power in the execution of it.30  Yet every man may, to a certain extent,
+claim the right to such a power; since, to execute a commission, which
+circumstances show must certainly defeat the object for which it was
+designed, would be absurd.  But it requires sagacity to determine the
+existence of such a contingency, and moral courage to assume the
+responsibility of acting on it.  Such a crisis is the severest test of
+character.  To dare to disobey from a paramount sense of duty is a
+paradox that a little soul can hardly comprehend.  Unfortunately, Blasco
+Nunez was a pedantic martinet, a man of narrow views, who could not
+feel himself authorized under any circumstances to swerve from the letter
+of the law.  Puffed up by his brief authority, moreover, he considered
+opposition to the ordinances as treason to himself; and thus, identifying
+himself with his commission, he was prompted by personal feelings,
+quite as much as by those of a public and patriotic nature.
+
+Neither was the viceroy's character of a kind that tended to mitigate the
+odium of his measures, and reconcile the people to their execution.  It
+afforded a strong contrast to that of his rival, Pizarro, whose frank,
+chivalrous bearing, and generous confidence in his followers, made him
+universally popular, blinding their judgments, and giving to the worse
+the semblance of the better cause.  Blasco Nunez, on the contrary,
+irritable and suspicious, placed himself in a false position with all whom
+he approached; for a suspicious temper creates an atmosphere of distrust
+around it that kills every kindly affection.  His first step was to alienate
+the members of the Audience who were sent to act in concert with him.
+But this was their fault as well as his, since they were as much too lax, as
+he was too severe, in the interpretation of the law.31  He next alienated
+and outraged the people whom he was appointed to govern.  And, lastly,
+he disgusted his own friends, and too often turned them into enemies; so
+that, in his final struggle for power and for existence, he was obliged to
+rely on the arm of the stranger.  Yet in the catalogue of his qualities we
+must not pass in silence over his virtues.  There are two to the credit of
+which he is undeniably entitled,--a loyalty, which shone the brighter
+amidst the general defection around him, and a constancy under
+misfortune, which might challenge the respect even of his enemies.  But
+with the most liberal allowance for his merits, it can scarcely be doubted
+that a person more incompetent to the task assigned him could not have
+been found in Castile.32
+
+The victory of Anaquito was received with general joy in the
+neighboring capital; all the cities of Peru looked on it as sealing the
+downfall of the detested ordinances, and the name of Gonzalo Pizarro
+was sounded from one end of the country to the other as that of its
+deliverer.  That chief continued to prolong his stay in Quito during the
+wet season, dividing his time between the licentious pleasures of the
+reckless adventurer and the cares of business that now pressed on him as
+ruler of the state.  His administration was stained with fewer acts of
+violence than might have been expected from the circumstances of his
+situation.  So long as Carbajal, the counsellor in whom he unfortunately
+placed greatest reliance, was absent, Gonzalo sanctioned no execution, it
+was observed, but according to the forms of law.33  He rewarded his
+followers by new grants of land, and detached several on expeditions, to
+no greater distance, however, than would leave it in his power readily to
+recall them.  He made various provisions for the welfare of the natives,
+and some, in particular, for instructing them in the Christian faith.  He
+paid attention to the faithful collection of the royal dues, urging on the
+colonists that they should deport themselves so as to conciliate the
+goodwill of the Crown, and induce a revocation of the ordinances.  His
+administration, in short, was so conducted, that even the austere Gasca,
+his successor, allowed "it was a good government,--for a tyrant." 34
+
+At length, in July, 1546, the new governor bade adieu to Quito, and,
+leaving there a sufficient garrison under his officer Puelles, began his
+journey to the south.  It was a triumphal progress, and everywhere he
+was received on the road with enthusiasm by the people.  At Truxillo, the
+citizens came out in a body to welcome him, and the clergy chanted
+anthems in his honor, extolling him as the "victorious prince," and
+imploring the Almighty "to lengthen his days, and give him honor."35
+At Lima, it was proposed to clear away some of the buildings, and open
+a new street for his entrance, which might ever after bear the name of the
+victor.  But the politic chieftain declined this flattering tribute, and
+modestly preferred to enter the city by the usual way.  A procession was
+formed of the citizens, the soldiers, and the clergy, and Pizarro made his
+entry into the capital with two of his principal captains on foot, holding
+the reins of his charger, while the archbishop of Lima, and the bishops of
+Cuzco, Quito, and Bogota, the last of whom had lately come to the city
+to be consecrated, rode by his side.  The streets were strewn with
+boughs, the walls of the houses hung with showy tapestries, and
+triumphal arches were thrown over the way in honor of the victor.  Every
+balcony, veranda, and house-top was crowded with spectators, who sent
+up huzzas, loud and long, saluting the victorious soldier with the titles of
+"Liberator, and Protector of the people."  The bells rang out their joyous
+peal, as on his former entrance into the capital; and amidst strains of
+enlivening music, and the blithe sounds of jubilee, Gonzalo held on his
+way to the palace of his brother.  Peru was once more placed under the
+dynasty of the Pizarros.36
+
+Deputies came from different parts of the country, tending the
+congratulations of their respective cities; and every one eagerly urged his
+own claims to consideration for the services he had rendered in the
+revolution.  Pizarro, at the same time, received the welcome intelligence
+of the success of his arms in the south.  Diego Centeno, as before stated,
+had there raised the standard of rebellion, or rather, of loyalty to his
+sovereign.  He had made himself master of La Plata, and the spirit of
+insurrection had spread over the broad province of Charcas.  Carbajal,
+who had been sent against him from Quito, after repairing to Lima, had
+passed at once to Cuzco, and there, strengthening his forces, had
+descended by rapid marches on the refractory district.  Centeno did not
+trust himself in the field against this formidable champion.  He retreated
+with his troops into the fastnesses of the sierra.  Carbajal pursued,
+following on his track with the pertinacity of a bloodhound; over
+mountain and moor, through forests and dangerous ravines, allowing him
+no respite, by day or by night.  Eating, drinking, sleeping in his saddle,
+the veteran, eighty years of age, saw his own followers tire one after
+another, while he urged on the chase, like the wild huntsman of Burger,
+as if endowed with an unearthly frame, incapable of fatigue!  During this
+terrible pursuit, which continued for more than two hundred leagues over
+a savage country, Centeno found himself abandoned by most of his
+followers.  Such of them as fell into Carbajal's hands were sent to speedy
+execution; for that inexorable chief had no mercy on those who had been
+false to their party.37  At length, Centeno, with a handful of men, arrived
+on the borders of the Pacific, and there, separating from one another,
+they provided, each in the best way he could, for their own safety.  Their
+leader found an asylum in a cave in the mountains, where he was secretly
+fed by an Indian curaca, till the time again for him to unfurl the standard
+of revolt.38
+
+Carbajal, after some further decisive movements, which fully established
+the ascendency of Pizarro over the south, returned in triumph to La Plata.
+There he occupied himself with working the silver mines of Potosi, in
+which a vein, recently opened, promised to make richer returns than any
+yet discovered in Mexico or Peru;39 and he was soon enabled to send
+large remittances to Lima, deducting no stinted commission for himself,-
+-for the cupidity of the lieutenant was equal to his cruelty.
+
+Gonzalo Pizarro was now undisputed master of Peru.  From Quito to the
+northern confines of Chili, the whole country acknowledged his
+authority.  His fleet rode triumphant on the Pacific, and gave him the
+command of every city and hamlet on its borders.  His admiral,
+Hinojosa, a discreet and gallant officer, had secured him Panama, and,
+marching across the Isthmus, had since obtained for him the possession
+of Nombre de Dios,--the principal key of communication with Europe.
+His forces were on an excellent footing, including the flower of the
+warriors who had fought under his brother, and who now eagerly rallied
+under the name of Pizarro; while the tide of wealth that flowed in from
+the mines of Potosi supplied him with the resources of an European
+monarch.
+
+The new governor now began to assume a state correspondent with his
+full-blown fortunes.  He was attended by a body-guard of eighty soldiers.
+He dined always in public, and usually with not less than a hundred
+guests at table.  He even affected, it was said, the most decided etiquette
+of royalty, giving his hand to be kissed, and allowing no one, of whatever
+rank, to be seated in his presence.40  But this is denied by others.  It
+would not be strange that a vain man like Pizarro, with a superficial,
+undisciplined mind, when he saw himself thus raised from an humble
+condition to the highest post in the land, should be somewhat intoxicated
+by the possession of power, and treat with superciliousness those whom
+he had once approached with deference.  But one who had often seen
+him in his prosperity assures us, that it was not so, and that the governor
+continued to show the same frank and soldierlike bearing as before his
+elevation, mingling on familiar terms with his comrades, and displaying
+the same qualities which had hitherto endeared him to the people.41
+
+However this may be, it is certain there were not wanting those who
+urged him to throw off his allegiance to the Crown, and set up an
+independent government for himself.  Among these was his lieutenant,
+Carbajal, whose daring spirit never shrunk from following things to their
+consequences.  He plainly counselled Pizarro to renounce his allegiance
+at once.  "In fact, you have already done so," he said.  "You have been in
+arms against a viceroy, have driven him from the country, beaten and
+slain him in battle.  What favor, or even mercy, can you expect from the
+Crown?  You have gone too far either to halt, or to recede.  You must go
+boldly on, proclaim yourself king; the troops, the people, will support
+you."  And he concluded, it is said, by advising him to marry the Coya,
+the female representative of the Incas, that the two races might
+henceforth repose in quiet under a common sceptre! 42
+
+The advice of the bold counsellor was, perhaps, the most politic that
+could have been given to Pizarro under existing circumstances.  For he
+was like one who had heedlessly climbed far up a dizzy precipice,--too
+far to descend safely, while he had no sure hold where he was.  His only
+chance was to climb still higher, till he had gained the summit.  But
+Gonzalo Pizarro shrunk from the attitude, in which this placed him, of
+avowed rebellion.  Notwithstanding the criminal course into which he
+had been, of late, seduced, the sentiment of loyalty was too deeply
+implanted in his bosom to be wholly eradicated.  Though in arms against
+the measures and ministers of his sovereign, he was not prepared to raise
+the sword against the sovereign himself.  He, doubtless, had conflicting
+emotion in his bosom; like Macbeth, and many a less noble nature,
+
+'"Would not play false,
+And yet would wrongly win."
+
+And however grateful to his vanity might be the picture of the airdrawn
+sceptre thus painted to his imagination, he had not the audacity --we
+may, perhaps, say, the criminal ambition--to attempt to grasp it.
+
+Even at this very moment, when urged to this desperate extremity, he
+was preparing a mission to Spain, in order to vindicate the course he had
+taken, and to solicit an amnesty for the past, with a full confirmation of
+his authority, as successor to his brother in the government of Peru.--
+Pizarro did not read the future with the calm, prophetic eye of Carbajal.
+
+Among the biographical notices of the writers on Spanish colonial
+affairs, the name of Herrera, who has done more for this vast subject
+than any other author, should certainly not be omitted.  His account of
+Peru takes its proper place in his great work, the Historia General de las
+lndias, according to the chronological plan on which that history is
+arranged.  But as it suggests reflections not different in character from
+those suggested by other portions of the work, I shall take the liberty to
+refer the reader to the Postscript to Book Third of the Conquest of
+Mexico, for a full account of these volumes and their learned author.
+
+Another chronicler, to whom I have been frequently indebted in the
+progress of the narrative, is Francisco Lopez de Gomara.  The reader
+will also find a notice of this author in the Conquest of Mexico, Book 5,
+Postscript.  But as the remarks on his writings are there confined to his
+Cronica de Nueva Espana, it may be well to add here some reflections on
+his greater work, Historia de las Indias, in which the Peruvian story bears
+a conspicuous part.
+
+The "History of the Indies" is intended to give a brief view of the whole
+range of Spanish conquest in the islands and on the American continent,
+as far as had been achieved by the middle of the sixteenth century.  For
+this account, Gomara, though it does not appear that he ever visited the
+New World, was in a situation that opened to him the best means of
+information.  He was well acquainted with the principal men of the time,
+and gathered the details of their history from their own lips; while, from
+his residence at court, he was in possession of the state of opinion there,
+and of the impression made by passing events on those most competent
+to judge of them.  He was thus enabled to introduce into his work many
+interesting particulars, not to be found in other records of the period.  His
+range of inquiry extended beyond the mere doings of the Conquerors,
+and led him to a survey of the general resources of the countries he
+describes, and especially of their physical aspect and productions.  The
+conduct of his work, no less than its diction, shows the cultivated
+scholar, practised in the art of composition.  Instead of the naivete,
+engaging, but childlike, of the old military chroniclers, Gomara handles
+his various topics with the shrewd and piquant criticism of a man of the
+world; while his descriptions are managed with a comprehensive brevity
+that forms the opposite to the long-winded and rambling paragraphs of
+the monkish annalist.  These literary merits, combined with the
+knowledge of the writer's opportunities for information, secured his
+productions from the oblivion which too often awaits the unpublished
+manuscript; and he had the satisfaction to see them pass into more than
+one edition in his own day.  Yet they do not bear the highest stamp of
+authenticity.  The author too readily admits accounts into his pages
+which are not supported by contemporary testimony.  This he does, not
+from credulity, for his mind rather leans in an opposite direction, but
+from a Want, apparently, of the true spirit of historic conscientiousness.
+The imputation of carelessness in his statements--to use a temperate
+phrase--was brought against Gomara in his own day; and Garcilasso tells
+us, that, when called to account by some of the Peruvian cavaliers for
+misstatements which bore hard on themselves, the historian made but an
+awkward explanation.  This is a great blemish on his productions, and
+renders them of far less value to the modern compiler, who seeks for the
+well of truth undefiled, than many an humbler but less unscrupulous
+chronicle.
+
+There is still another authority used in this work, Gonzalo Fernandez de
+Oviedo, of whom I have given an account elsewhere; and the reader
+curious in the matter will permit me to refer him for a critical notice of
+his life and writings to the Conquest of Mexico, Book 4, Postscript.--His
+account of Peru is incorporated into his great work, Natural & General
+Historia de las lndias, MS., where it forms the forty-sixth and forty-
+seventh books.  It extends from Pizarro's landing at Tumbez to
+Almagro's return from Chili, and thus covers the entire portion of what
+may be called the conquest of the country.  The style of its execution,
+corresponding with that of the residue of the work to which it belongs,
+affords no ground for criticism different from that already passed on the
+general character of Oviedo's writings.
+
+This eminent person was at once a scholar and a man of the world.
+Living much at court, and familiar with persons of the highest distinction
+in Castile, he yet passed much of his time in the colonies, and thus added
+the fruits of personal experience to what he had gained from the reports
+of others.  His curiosity was indefatigable, extending to every department
+of natural science, as well as to the civil and personal history of the
+colonists.  He was, at once, their Pliny and their Tacitus.  His works
+abound in portraitures of character, sketched with freedom and
+animation.  His reflections are piquant, and often rise to a philosophic
+tone, which discards the usual trammels of the age; and the progress of
+the story is varied by a multiplicity of personal anecdotes, that give a
+rapid insight into the characters of the parties.
+
+With his eminent qualifications, and with a social position that
+commanded respect, it is strange that so much of his writings-the whole
+of his great Historia de las Indias, and his curious Quincuagenas--should
+be so long suffered to remain in manuscript.  This is partly chargeable to
+the caprice of fortune; for the History was more than once on the eve of
+publication, and is even now understood to be prepared for the press.
+Yet it has serious defects, which may have contributed to keep it in its
+present form.  In its desultory and episodical style of composition, it
+resembles rather notes for a great history, than history itself.  It may be
+regarded in the light of commentaries, or as illustrations of the times.  In
+that view his pages are of high worth, and have been frequently resorted
+to by writers who have not too scrupulously appropriated the statements
+of the old chronicler, with slight acknowledgments to their author.
+
+It is a pity that Oviedo should have shown more solicitude to tell what
+was new, than to ascertain how much of it was strictly true.  Among his
+merits will scarcely be found that of historical accuracy.  And yet we
+may find an apology for this, to some extent, in the fact, that his writings,
+as already intimated, are not so much in the nature of finished
+compositions, as of loose memoranda, where everything, rumor as well
+as fact,--even the most contradictory rumors,--are all set down at
+random, forming a miscellaneous heap of materials, of which the discreet
+historian may avail himself to rear a symmetrical fabric on foundations
+of greater strength and solidity.
+
+Another author worthy of particular note is Pedro Cieza de Leon.  His
+Cronica del Peru should more properly be styled an Itinerary, or rather
+Geography, of Peru.  It gives a minute topographical view of the country
+at the time of the Conquest; of its provinces and towns, both Indian and
+Spanish; its flourishing sea-coast; its forests, valleys, and interminable
+ranges of mountains in the interior; with many interesting particulars of
+the existing population,--their dress, manners, architectural remains, and
+public works, while, scattered here and there, may be found notices of
+their early history and social polity.  It is, in short, a lively picture of the
+country in its physical and moral relations, as it met the eye at the time of
+the Conquest, and in that transition period when it was first subjected to
+European influences.  The conception of a work, at so early a period, on
+this philosophical plan, reminding us of that of Malte-Brun in our own
+time,--parva componere magnis,-was, of itself, indicative of great
+comprehensiveness of mind in its author.  It was a task of no little
+difficulty, where there was yet no pathway opened by the labors of the
+antiquarian; no hints from the sketch-book of the traveller, or the
+measurements of the scientific explorer.  Yet the distances from place to
+place are all carefully jotted down by the industrious compiler, and the
+bearings of the different places and their peculiar features are exhibited
+with sufficient precision, considering the nature of the obstacles he had
+to encounter.  The literary execution of the work, moreover, is highly
+respectable, sometimes even rich and picturesque; and the author
+describes the grand and beautiful scenery of the Cordilleras with a
+sensibility to its charms, not often found in the tasteless topographer, still
+less often in the rude Conqueror.
+
+Cieza de Leon came to the New World, as he informs us, at the early age
+of thirteen.  But it is not till Gasca's time that we find his name enrolled
+among the actors in the busy scenes of civil strife, when he accompanied
+the president in his campaign against Gonzalo Pizarro.  His Chronicle,
+or, at least, the notes for it, was compiled in such leisure as he could
+snatch from his more stirring avocations; and after ten years from the
+time he undertook it, the First Part--all we have---was completed in
+1550, when the author had reached only the age of thirty-two.  It
+appeared at Seville in 1553, and the following year at Antwerp; while an
+Italian translation, printed at Rome, in 1555, attested the rapid celebrity
+of the work.  The edition of Antwerp--the one used by me in this
+compilation--is in the duodecimo form, exceedingly well printed, and
+garnished with wood-cuts, in which Satan,-for the author had a full
+measure of the ancient credulity,--with his usual bugbear
+accompaniments frequently appears in bodily presence.  In the Preface,
+Cieza announces his purpose to continue the work in three other parts,
+illustrating respectively the ancient history of the country under the
+Incas, its conquest by the Spaniards, and the civil wars which ensued.
+He even gives, with curious minuteness, the contents of the several
+books of the projected history.  But the First Part, as already noticed,
+was alone completed; and the author, having returned to Spain, died
+there in 1560, at the premature age of forty-two, without having covered
+any portion of the magnificent ground-plan which he had thus
+confidently laid out.  The deficiency is much to be regretted, considering
+the talent of the writer, and his opportunities for personal observation.
+But he has done enough to render us grateful for his labors.  By the vivid
+delineation of scenes and scenery, as they were presented fresh to his
+own eyes, he has furnished us with a background to the historic picture,--
+the landscape, as it were, in which the personages of the time might be
+more fitly portrayed.  It would have been impossible to exhibit the
+ancient topography of the land so faithfully at a subsequent period, when
+old things had passed away, and the Conqueror, breaking down the
+landmarks of ancient civilization, had effaced many of the features even
+of the physical aspect of the country, as it existed under the elaborate
+culture of the Incas.
+
+
+
+History of the Conquest of Peru
+
+by William Hickling Prescott
+
+Book 5
+
+Settlement Of The Country
+
+Chapter 1
+
+Great Sensation In Spain--Pedro De La Gasca--His Early Life-
+His Mission To Peru--His Politic Conduct--His Offers To Pizarro-
+Gains The Fleet
+
+1545--1547
+
+While the important revolution detailed in the preceding pages was going
+forward in Peru, rumors of it, from time to time, found their way to the
+mother-country; but the distance was so great, and opportunities for
+communication so rare, that the tidings were usually very long behind the
+occurrence of the events to which they related.  The government heard
+with dismay of the troubles caused by the ordinances and the intemperate
+conduct of the viceroy; and it was not long before it learned that this
+functionary was deposed and driven from his capital, while the whole
+country, under Gonzalo Pizarro, was arrayed in arms against him.  All
+classes were filled with consternation at this alarming intelligence; and
+many that had before approved the ordinances now loudly condemned
+the ministers, who, without considering the inflammable temper of the
+people, had thus rashly fired a train which menaced a general explosion
+throughout the colonies.1  No such rebellion, within the memory of man,
+had occurred in the Spanish empire.  It was compared with the famous
+war of the comunidades, in the beginning of Charles the Fifth's reign.
+But the Peruvian insurrection seemed the more formidable of the two.
+The troubles of Castile, being under the eye of the Court, might be the
+more easily managed; while it was difficult to make the same power felt
+on the remote shores of the Indies.  Lying along the distant Pacific, the
+principle of attraction which held Peru to the parent country was so
+feeble, that this colony might, at any time, with a less impulse than that
+now given to it, fly from its political orbit.
+
+It seemed as if the fairest of its jewels was about to fall from the imperial
+diadem!
+
+Such was the state of things in the summer of 1545, when Charles the
+Fifth was absent in Germany, occupied with the religious troubles of the
+empire.  The government was in the hands of his son, who, under the
+name of Philip the Second, was soon to sway the sceptre over the largest
+portion of his father's dominions, and who was then holding his court at
+Valladolid.  He called together a council of prelates, jurists, and military
+men of greatest experience, to deliberate on the measures to be pursued
+for restoring order in the colonies.  All agreed in regarding Pizarro's
+movement in the light of an audacious rebellion; and there were few, at
+first, who were not willing to employ the whole strength of government
+to vindicate the honor of the Crown,--to quell the insurrection, and bring
+the authors of it to punishment.2
+
+But, however desirable this might appear, a very little reflection showed
+that it was not easy to be done, if, indeed, it were practicable.  The great
+distance of Peru required troops to be transported not merely across the
+ocean, but over the broad extent of the great continent.  And how was
+this to be effected, when the principal posts, the keys of communication
+with the country, were in the hands of the rebels, while their fleet rode in
+the Pacific, the mistress of its waters, cutting off all approach to the
+coast?  Even if a Spanish force could be landed in Peru, what chance
+would it have, unaccustomed, as it would be, to the country and the
+climate, of coping with the veterans of Pizarro, trained to war in the
+Indies and warmly attached to the person of their commander?  The new
+levies thus sent out might become themselves infected with the spirit of
+insurrection, and cast off their own allegiance.3
+
+Nothing remained, therefore, but to try conciliatory measures.  The
+government, however mortifying to its pride, must retrace its steps.  A
+free grace must be extended to those who submitted, and such persuasive
+arguments should be used, and such politic concessions made, as would
+convince the refractory colonists that it was their interest, as well as their
+duty, to return to their allegiance.
+
+But to approach the people in their present state of excitement, and to
+make those concessions without too far compromising the dignity and
+permanent authority of the Crown, was a delicate matter, for the success
+of which they must rely wholly on the character of the agent.  After much
+deliberation, a competent person, as it was thought, was found in an
+ecclesiastic, by the name of Pedro de la Gasca,--a name which, brighter
+by contrast with the gloomy times in which it first appeared, still shines
+with undiminished splendor after the lapse of ages.
+
+Pedro de la Gasca was born, probably, towards the close of the fifteenth
+century, in a small village in Castile named Barco de Avila.  He came,
+both by father and mother's side, from an ancient and noble lineage;
+ancient indeed, if, as his biographers contend, he derived his descent
+from Casca, one of the conspirators against Julius Caesar!4  Having the
+misfortune to lose his father early in life, he was placed by his uncle in
+the famous seminary of Alcala de Henares, rounded by the great
+Ximenes.  Here he made rapid proficiency in liberal studies, especially in
+those connected with his profession, and at length received the degree of
+Master of Theology.
+
+The young man, however, discovered other talents than those demanded
+by his sacred calling.  The war of the comunidades was then raging in the
+country; and the authorities of his college showed a disposition to take
+the popular side.  But Gasca, putting himself at the head of an armed
+force, seized one of the gates of the city, and, with assistance from the
+royal troops, secured the place to the interests of the Crown.  This early
+display of loyalty was probably not lost on his vigilant sovereign.5
+
+From Alcala, Gasca was afterwards removed to Salamanca; where he
+distinguished himself by his skill in scholastic disputation, and obtained
+the highest academic honors in that ancient university, the fruitful
+nursery of scholarship and genius.  He was subsequently intrusted with
+the management of some important affairs of an ecclesiastical nature,
+and made a member of the Council of the Inquisition.
+
+In this latter capacity he was sent to Valencia, about 1540, to examine
+into certain alleged cases of heresy in that quarter of the country.  These
+were involved in great obscurity; and, although Gasca had the assistance
+of several eminent jurists in the investigation, it occupied him nearly two
+years.  In the conduct of this difficult matter, he showed so much
+penetration, and such perfect impartiality, that he was appointed by the
+Cortes of Valencia to the office of visitador of that kingdom; a highly
+responsible post, requiring great discretion in the person who filled it,
+since it was his province to inspect the condition of the courts of justice
+and of finance, throughout the land, with authority to reform abuses.  It
+was proof of extraordinary consideration, that it should have been
+bestowed on Gasca; since it was a departure from the established usage -
+-and that in a nation most wedded to usage--to confer the office on any
+but a subject of the Aragonese crown.6
+
+Gasca executed the task assigned to him with independence and ability.
+While he was thus occupied, the people of Valencia were thrown into
+consternation by a meditated invasion of the French and the Turks, who,
+under the redoubtable Barbarossa, menaced the coast and the
+neighboring Balearic isles.  Fears were generally entertained of a rising
+of the Morisco population; and the Spanish officers who had command
+in that quarter, being left without the protection of a navy, despaired of
+making head against the enemy.  In this season of general panic, Gasca
+alone appeared calm and self-possessed.  He remonstrated with the
+Spanish commanders on their unsoldierlike despondency; encouraged
+them to confide in the loyalty of the Moriscos; and advised the
+immediate erection of fortifications along the shores for their protection.
+He was, in consequence, named one of a commission to superintend
+these works, and to raise levies for defending the sea-coast; and so
+faithfully was the task performed, that Barbarossa, after some ineffectual
+attempts to make good his landing, was baffled at all points, and
+compelled to abandon the enterprise as hopeless.  The chief credit of this
+resistance must be assigned to Gasca, who superintended the
+construction of the defences, and who was enabled to contribute a large
+part of the requisite funds by the economical reforms he had introduced
+into the administration of Valencia.7
+
+It was at this time, the latter part of the year 1545, that the council of
+Philip selected Gasca as the person most competent to undertake the
+perilous mission to Peru.8  His character, indeed, seemed especially
+suited to it.  His loyalty had been shown through his whole life.  With
+great suavity of manners he combined the most intrepid resolution.
+Though his demeanor was humble, as beseemed his calling, it was far
+from abject; for he was sustained by a conscious rectitude of purpose,
+that impressed respect on all with whom he had intercourse.  He was
+acute in his perceptions, had a shrewd knowledge of character, and,
+though bred to the cloister, possessed an acquaintance with affairs, and
+even with military science, such as was to have been expected only from
+one reared in courts and camps.
+
+Without hesitation, therefore, the council unanimously recommended
+him to the emperor, and requested his approbation of their proceedings.
+Charles had not been an inattentive observer of Gasca's course.  His
+attention had been particularly called to the able manner in which he had
+conducted the judicial process against the heretics of Valencia.9  The
+monarch saw, at once, that he was the man for the present emergency;
+and he immediately wrote to him, with his own hand, expressing his
+entire satisfaction at the appointment, and intimating his purpose to
+testify his sense of his worth by preferring him to one of the principal
+sees then vacant.
+
+Gasca accepted the important mission now tendered to him without
+hesitation; and, repairing to Madrid, received the instructions of the
+government as to the course to be pursued.  They were expressed in the
+most benign and conciliatory tone, perfectly in accordance with the
+suggestions of his own benevolent temper.10  But, while he commended
+the tone of the instructions, he considered the powers with which he was
+to be intrusted as wholly incompetent to their object.  They were
+conceived in the jealous spirit with which the Spanish government
+usually limited the authority of its great colonial officers, whose distance
+from home gave peculiar cause for distrust.  On every strange and
+unexpected emergency, Gasca saw that he should be obliged to send
+back for instructions.  This must cause delay, where promptitude was
+essential to success.  The Court, moreover, as he represented to the
+council, was, from its remoteness from the scene of action, utterly
+incompetent to pronounce as to the expediency of the measures to be
+pursued.  Some one should be sent out in whom the king could implicitly
+confide, and who should be invested with powers competent to every
+emergency; powers not merely to decide on what was best, but to carry
+that decision into execution; and he boldly demanded that he should go
+not only as the representative of the sovereign, but clothed with all the
+authority of the sovereign himself.  Less than this would defeat the very
+object for which he was to be sent.  "For myself," he concluded, "I ask
+neither salary nor compensation of any kind.  I covet no display of state
+or military array.  With my stole and breviary I trust to do the work that
+is committed to me.11  Infirm as I am in body, the repose of my own
+home would have been more grateful to me than this dangerous mission;
+but I will not shrink from it at the bidding of my sovereign, and if, as is
+very probable, I may not be permitted again to see my native land, I
+shall, at least, be cheered by the consciousness of having done my best to
+serve its interests." 12
+
+The members of the council, while they listened with admiration to the
+disinterested avowal of Gasca, were astounded by the boldness of his
+demands.  Not that they distrusted the purity of his motives, for these
+were above suspicion.  But the powers for which he stipulated were so
+far beyond those hitherto delegated to a colonial viceroy, that they felt
+they had no warrant to grant them.  They even shrank from soliciting
+them from the emperor, and required that Gasca himself should address
+the monarch, and state precisely the grounds on which demands so
+extraordinary were founded.
+
+Gasca readily adopted the suggestion, and wrote in the most full and
+explicit manner to his sovereign, who had then transferred his residence
+to Flanders.  But Charles was not so tenacious, or, at least, so jealous, of
+authority, as his ministers.  He had been too long in possession of it to
+feel that jealousy; and, indeed, many years were not to elapse, before,
+oppressed by its weight, he was to resign it altogether into the hands of
+his son.  His sagacious mind, moreover, readily comprehended the
+difficulties of Gasca's position.  He felt that the present extraordinary
+crisis was to be met only by extraordinary measures.  He assented to the
+force of his vassal's arguments, and, on the sixteenth of February, 1546,
+wrote him another letter expressive of his approbation, and intimated his
+willingness to grant him powers as absolute as those he had requested.
+
+Gasca was to be styled President of the Royal Audience.  But, under this
+simple title, he was placed at the head of every department in the colony,
+civil, military, and judicial.  He was empowered to make new
+repartimientos, and to confirm those already made.  He might declare
+war, levy troops, appoint to all offices, or remove from them, at pleasure.
+He might exercise the royal prerogative of pardoning offences, and was
+especially authorized to grant an amnesty to all, without exception,
+implicated in the present rebellion.  He was, moreover, to proclaim at
+once the revocation of the odious ordinances.  These two last provisions
+might be said to form the basis of all his operations.
+
+Since ecclesiastics were not to be reached by the secular arm, and yet
+were often found fomenting troubles in the colonies, Gasca was
+permitted to banish from Peru such as he thought fit.  He might even
+send home the viceroy, if the good of the country required it.  Agreeably
+to his own suggestion, he was to receive no specified stipend; but he had
+unlimited orders on the treasuries both of Panama and Peru.  He was
+furnished with letters from the emperor to the principal authorities, not
+only in Peru, but in Mexico and the neighboring colonies, requiring their
+countenance and support; and, lastly, blank letters, bearing the royal
+signature, were delivered to him, which he was to fill up at his
+pleasure.13
+
+While the grant of such unbounded powers excited the warmest
+sentiments of gratitude in Gasca towards the sovereign who could repose
+in him so much confidence, it seems--which is more extraordinary--not
+to have raised corresponding feelings of envy in the courtiers.  They
+knew well that it was not for himself that the good ecclesiastic had
+solicited them.  On the contrary, some of the council were desirous that
+he should be preferred to the bishopric, as already promised him, before
+his departure; conceiving that he would thus go with greater authority
+than as an humble ecclesiastic, and fearing, moreover, that Gasca
+himself, were it omitted, might feel some natural disappointment.  But
+the president hastened to remove these impressions.  "The honor would
+avail me little," he said, "where I am going; and it would be manifestly
+wrong to appoint me to an office in the Church, while I remain at such a
+distance that I cannot discharge the duties of it.  The consciousness of
+my insufficiency," he continued, "should I never return, would lie heavy
+on my soul in my last moments." 14  The politic reluctance to accept the
+mitre has passed into a proverb.  But there was no affectation here; and
+Gasca's friends, yielding to his arguments, forbore to urge the matter
+further.
+
+The new president now went forward with his preparation.  They were
+few and simple; for he was to be accompanied by a slender train of
+followers, among whom the most conspicuous was Alonso de Alvarado,
+the gallant officer who, as the reader may remember, long commanded
+under Francisco Pizarro.  He had resided of late years at court; and now
+at Gasca's request accompanied him to Peru, where his presence might
+facilitate negotiations with the insurgents, while his military experience
+would prove no less valuable in case of an appeal to arms.15  Some
+delay necessarily occurred in getting ready his little squadron, and it was
+not till the 26th of May, 1546, that the president and his suite embarked
+at San Lucar for the New World.
+
+After a prosperous voyage, and not a long one for that day, he landed,
+about the middle of July, at the port of Santa Martha.  Here he received
+the astounding intelligence of the battle of Ariaquito, of the defeat and
+death of the viceroy, and of the manner in which Gonzalo Pizarro had
+since established his absolute rule over the land.  Although these events
+had occurred several months before Gasca's departure from Spain, yet,
+so imperfect was the intercourse, no tidings of them had then reached
+that country.
+
+They now filled the president with great anxiety; as he reflected that the
+insurgents, after so atrocious an act as the slaughter of the viceroy, might
+well despair of grace, and become reckless of consequences.  He was
+careful, therefore, to have it understood, that the date of his commission
+was subsequent to that of the fatal battle, and that it authorized an entire
+amnesty of all offences hitherto committed against the government.16
+
+Yet, in some points of view, the death of Blasco Nunez might be
+regarded as an auspicious circumstance for the settlement of the country.
+Had he lived till Gasca's arrival, the latter would have been greatly
+embarrassed by the necessity of acting in concert with a person so
+generally detested in the colony, or by the unwelcome alternative of
+sending him back to Castile.  The insurgents, moreover, would, in all
+probability, be now more amenable to reason, since all personal
+animosity might naturally be buried in the grave of their enemy.
+
+The president was much embarrassed by deciding in what quarter he
+should attempt to enter Peru.  Every port was in the hands of Pizarro, and
+was placed under the care of his officers, with strict charge to intercept
+any communications from Spain, and to detain such persons as bore a
+commission from that country until his pleasure could be known
+respecting them.  Gasca, at length, decided on crossing over to Nombre
+de Dios, then held with a strong force by Hernan Mexia, an officer to
+whose charge Gonzalo had committed this strong gate to his dominions,
+as to a person on whose attachment to his cause he could confidently
+rely.
+
+Had Gasca appeared off this place in a menacing attitude, with a military
+array, or, indeed, with any display of official pomp that might have
+awakened distrust in the commander, he would doubtless have found it
+no easy matter to effect a landing.  But Mexia saw nothing to apprehend
+in the approach of a poor ecclesiastic, without an armed force, with
+hardly even a retinue to support him, coming solely, as it seemed, on an
+errand of mercy.  No sooner, therefore, was he acquainted with the
+character of the envoy, and his mission, than he prepared to receive him
+with the honors due to his rank, and marched out at the head of his
+soldiers, together with a considerable body of ecclesiastics resident in the
+place.  There was nothing in the person of Gasca, still less in his humble
+clerical attire and modest retinue, to impress the vulgar spectator with
+feelings of awe or reverence.  Indeed, the poverty-stricken aspect, as it
+seemed, of himself and his followers, so different from the usual state
+affected by the Indian viceroys, excited some merriment among the rude
+soldiery, who did not scruple to break their coarse jests on his
+appearance, in hearing of the president himself.17  "If this is the sort of
+governor his Majesty sends over to us," they exclaimed, "Pizarro need
+not trouble his head much about it."
+
+Yet the president, far from being ruffled by this ribaldry, or from
+showing resentment to its authors, submitted to it with the utmost
+humility, and only seemed the more grateful to his own brethren, who, by
+their respectful demeanor, appeared anxious to do him honor.
+
+But, however plain and unpretending the manners of Gasca, Mexia, on
+his first interview with him soon discovered that he had no common man
+to deal with.  The president, after briefly explaining the nature of his
+commission, told him that he had come as a messenger of peace; and that
+it was on peaceful measures he relied for his success.  He then stated the
+general scope of his commission, his authority to grant a free pardon to
+all, without exception, who at once submitted to government, and,
+finally, his purpose to proclaim the revocation of the ordinances.  The
+objects of the revolution were thus attained.  To contend longer would be
+manifest rebellion, and that without a motive; and he urged the
+commander by every principle of loyalty and patriotism to support him
+in settling the distractions of the country, and bringing it back to its
+allegiance.
+
+The candid and conciliatory language of the president, so different from
+the arrogance of Blasco Nunez, and the austere demeanor of Vaca de
+Castro, made a sensible impression on Mexia.  He admitted the force of
+Gasca's reasoning, and flattered himself that Gonzalo Pizarro would not
+be insensible to it.  Though attached to the fortunes of that leader, he was
+loyal in heart, and, like most of the party, had been led by accident,
+rather than by design, into rebellion; and now that so good an
+opportunity occurred to do it with safety, he was not unwilling to retrace
+his steps, and secure the royal favor by thus early returning to his
+allegiance.  This he signified to the president, assuring him of his hearty
+cooperation in the good work of reform.18
+
+This was an important step for Gasca.  It was yet more important for him
+to secure the obedience of Hinojosa, the governor of Panama, in the
+harbor of which city lay Pizarro's navy, consisting of two-and-twenty
+vessels.  But it was not easy to approach this officer.  He was a person of
+much higher character than was usually found among the reckless
+adventurers in the New World.  He was attached to the interests of
+Pizarro, and the latter had requited him by placing him in command of
+his armada and of Panama, the key to his territories on the Pacific.
+
+The president first sent Mexia and Alonso de Alvarado to prepare the
+way for his own coming, by advising Hinojosa of the purport of his
+mission.  He soon after followed, and was received by that commander
+with every show of outward respect.  But while the latter listened with
+deference to the representations of Gasca, they failed to work the change
+in him which they had wrought in Mexia; and he concluded by asking the
+president to show him his powers, and by inquiring whether they gave
+him authority to confirm Pizarro in his present post, to which he was
+entitled no less by his own services than by the general voice of the
+people.
+
+This was an embarrassing question.  Such a concession would have been
+altogether too humiliating to the Crown; but to have openly avowed this
+at the present juncture to so stanch an adherent of Pizarro might have
+precluded all further negotiation.  The president evaded the question,
+therefore, by simply stating, that the time had not yet come for him to
+produce his powers, but that Hinojosa might be assured they were such
+as to secure an ample recompense to every loyal servant of his
+country.19
+
+Hinojosa was not satisfied; and he immediately wrote to Pizarro,
+acquainting him with Gasca's arrival and with the object of his mission,
+at the same time plainly intimating his own conviction that the president
+had no authority to confirm him in the government.  But before the
+departure of the ship, Gasca secured the services of a Dominican friar,
+who had taken his passage on board for one of the towns on the coast.
+This man he intrusted with manifestoes, setting forth the purport of his
+visit, and proclaiming the abolition of the ordinances, with a free pardon
+to all who returned to their obedience.  He wrote, also, to the prelates
+and to the corporations of the different cities.  The former he requested
+to cooperate with him in introducing a spirit of loyalty and subordination
+among the people, while he intimated to the towns his purpose to confer
+with them hereafter, in order to devise some effectual measures for the
+welfare of the country.  These papers the Dominican engaged to
+distribute, himself, among the principal cities of the colony; and he
+faithfully kept his word, though, as it proved, at no little hazard of his
+life.  The seeds thus scattered might many of them fall on barren ground.
+But the greater part, the president trusted, would take root in the hearts
+of the people; and he patiently waited for the harvest.
+
+Meanwhile, though he failed to remove the scruples of Hinojosa, the
+courteous manners of Gasca, and his mild, persuasive discourse, had a
+visible effect on other individuals with whom he had daily intercourse.
+Several of these, and among them some of the principal cavaliers in
+Panama, as well as in the squadron, expressed their willingness to join
+the royal cause, and aid the president in maintaining it.  Gasca profited
+by their assistance to open a communication with the authorities of
+Guatemala and Mexico, whom he advised of his mission, while he
+admonished them to allow no intercourse to be carried on with the
+insurgents on the coast of Peru.  He, at length, also prevailed on the
+governor of Panama to furnish him with the means of entering into
+communication with Gonzalo Pizarro himself; and a ship was despatched
+to Lima, bearing a letter from Charles the Fifth, addressed to that chief,
+with an epistle also from Gasca.
+
+The emperor's communication was couched in the most condescending
+and even conciliatory terms.  Far from taxing Gonzalo with rebellion, his
+royal master affected to regard his conduct as in a manner imposed on
+him by circumstances, especially by the obduracy of the viceroy Nunez
+in denying the colonists the inalienable right of petition.  He gave no
+intimation of an intent to confirm Pizarro in the government, or, indeed,
+to remove him from it; but simply referred him to Gasca as one who
+would acquaint him with the royal pleasure, and with whom he was to
+cooperate in restoring tranquillity to the country.
+
+Gasca's own letter was pitched on the same politic key.  He remarked,
+however, that the exigencies which had hitherto determined Gonzalo's
+line of conduct existed no longer.  All that had been asked was conceded.
+There was nothing now to contend for; and it only remained for Pizarro
+and his followers to show their loyalty and the sincerity of their
+principles by obedience to the Crown.  Hitherto, the president said,
+Pizarro had been in arms against the viceroy; and the people had
+supported him as against a common enemy.  If he prolonged the contest,
+that enemy must be his sovereign.  In such a struggle, the people would
+be sure to desert him; and Gasca conjured him, by his honor as a
+cavalier, and his duty as a loyal vassal, to respect the royal authority, and
+not rashly provoke a contest which must prove to the world that his
+conduct hitherto had been dictated less by patriotic motives than by
+selfish ambition.
+
+This letter, which was conveyed in language the most courteous and
+complimentary to the subject of it, was of great length.  It was
+accompanied by another much more concise, to Cepeda, the intriguing
+lawyer, who, as Gasca knew, had the greatest influence over Pizarro, in
+the absence of Carbajal, then employed in reaping the silver harvest from
+the newly discovered mines of Potosi.20  In this epistle, Gasca affected
+to defer to the cunning politician as a member of the Royal Audience,
+and he conferred with him on the best manner of supplying a vacancy in
+that body.  These several despatches were committed to a cavalier,
+named Paniagua, a faithful adherent of the president, and one of those
+who had accompanied him from Castile.  To this same emissary he also
+gave manifestos and letters, like those intrusted to the Dominican, with
+orders secretly to distribute them in Lima, before he quitted that
+capital.21
+
+Weeks and months rolled away, while the president still remained at
+Panama, where, indeed, as his communications were jealously cut off
+with Peru, he might be said to be detained as a sort of prisoner of state.
+Meanwhile, both he and Hinojosa were looking with anxiety for the
+arrival of some messenger from Pizarro, who should indicate the manner
+in which the president's mission was to be received by that chief.  The
+governor of Panama was not blind to the perilous position in which he
+was himself placed, nor to the madness of provoking a contest with the
+Court of Castile.  But he had a reluctance--not too often shared by the
+cavaliers of Peru--to abandon the fortunes of the commander who had
+reposed in him so great confidence.  Yet he trusted that this commander
+would embrace the opportunity now offered, of placing himself and the
+country in a state of permanent security.
+
+Several of the cavaliers who had given in their adhesion to Gasca,
+displeased by this obstinacy, as they termed it, of Hinojosa, proposed to
+seize his person and then get possession of the armada.  But the president
+at once rejected this offer.  His mission, he said, was one of peace, and
+he would not stain it at the outset by an act of violence.  He even
+respected the scruples of Hinojosa; and a cavalier of so honorable a
+nature, he conceived, if once he could be gained by fair means, would be
+much more likely to be true to his interests, than if overcome either by
+force or fraud.  Gasca thought he might safely abide his time.  There was
+policy, as well as honesty, in this; indeed, they always go together.
+
+Meantime, persons were occasionally arriving from Lima and the
+neighboring places, who gave accounts of Pizarro, varying according to
+the character and situation of the parties.  Some represented him as
+winning all hearts by his open temper and the politic profusion with
+which, though covetous of wealth, he distributed repartimientos and
+favors among his followers.  Others spoke of him as carrying matters
+with a high hand, while the greatest timidity and distrust prevailed
+among the citizens of Lima.  All agreed that his power rested on too
+secure a basis to be shaken; and that, if the president should go to Lima,
+he must either consent to become Pizarro's instrument and confirm him
+in the government, or forfeit his own life.22
+
+It was undoubtedly true, that Gonzalo, while he gave attention, as his
+friends say, to the public business, found time for free indulgence in
+those pleasures which wait on the soldier of fortune in his hour of
+triumph.  He was the object of flattery and homage; courted even by
+those who hated him.  For such as did not love the successful chieftain
+had good cause to fear him; and his exploits were commemorated in
+romances or ballads, as rivalling--it was not far from truth--those of the
+most doughty paladins of chivalry.23
+
+Amidst this burst of adulation, the cup of joy commended to Pizarro's
+lips had one drop of bitterness in it that gave its flavor to all the rest; for,
+notwithstanding his show of confidence, he looked with unceasing
+anxiety to the arrival of tidings that might assure him in what light his
+conduct was regarded by the government at home.  This was proved by
+his jealous precautions to guard the approaches to the coast, and to
+detain the persons of the royal emissaries.  He learned, therefore, with no
+little uneasiness, from Hinojosa, the landing of President Gasca, and the
+purport of his mission.  But his discontent was mitigated, when he
+understood that the new envoy had come without military array, without
+any of the ostentatious trappings of office to impose on the minds of the
+vulgar, but alone, as it were, in the plain garb of an humble
+missionary.24  Pizarro could not discern, that under this modest exterior
+lay a moral power, stronger than his own steel-clad battalions, which,
+operating silently on public opinion,--the more sure than it was silent,--
+was even now undermining his strength, like a subterraneous channel
+eating away the foundations of some stately edifice, that stands secure in
+its pride of place!
+
+But, although Gonzalo Pizarro could not foresee this result, he saw
+enough to satisfy him that it would be safest to exclude the president
+from Peru.  The tidings of his arrival, moreover, quickened his former
+purpose of sending an embassy to Spain to vindicate his late
+proceedings, and request the royal confirmation of his authority.  The
+person placed at the head of this mission was Lorenzo de Aldana, a
+cavalier of discretion as well as courage, and high in the confidence of
+Pizarro, as one of his most devoted partisans.  He had occupied some
+important posts under that chief, one secret of whose successes was the
+sagacity he showed in the selection of his agents.
+
+Besides Aldana and one or two cavaliers, the bishop of Lima was joined
+in the commission, as likely, from his position, to have a favorable
+influence on Gonzalo's fortunes at court.  Together with the despatches
+for the government, the envoys were intrusted with a letter to Gasca from
+the inhabitants of Lima; in which, after civilly congratulating the
+president on his arrival, they announce their regret that he had come too
+late.  The troubles of the country were now settled by the overthrow of
+the viceroy, and the nation was reposing in quiet under the rule of
+Pizarro.  An embassy, they stated, was on its way to Castile, not to solicit
+pardon, for they had committed no crime,25 but to petition the emperor
+to confirm their leader in the government, as the man in Peru best
+entitled to it by his virtues.26  They expressed the conviction that
+Gasca's presence would only serve to renew the distractions of the
+country, and they darkly intimated that his attempt to land would
+probably cost him his life.--The language of this singular document was
+more respectful than might be inferred from its import.  It was dated the
+14th of October, 1546, and was subscribed by seventy of the principal
+cavaliers in the city.  It was not improbably dictated by Cepeda, whose
+hand is visible in most of the intrigues of Pizarro's little court.  It is also
+said, --the authority is somewhat questionable,--that Aldana received
+instructions from Gonzalo secretly to offer a bribe of fifty thousand
+pesos de oro to the president, to prevail on him to return to Castile; and
+in case of his refusal, some darker and more effectual way was to be
+devised to rid the country of his presence.27
+
+Aldana, fortified with his despatches, sped swiftly on his voyage to
+Panama.  Through him the governor learned the actual state of feeling in
+the councils of Pizarro; and he listened with regret to the envoy's
+conviction, that no terms would be admitted by that chief or his
+companions, that did not confirm him in the possession of Peru.28
+
+Aldana was soon admitted to an audience by the president.  It was
+attended with very different results from what had followed from the
+conferences with Hinojosa; for Pizarro's envoy was not armed by nature
+with that stubborn panoply which had hitherto made the other proof
+against all argument.  He now learned with surprise the nature of Gasca's
+powers, and the extent of the royal concessions to the insurgents.  He had
+embarked with Gonzalo Pizarro on a desperate venture, and he found
+that it had proved successful.  The colony had nothing more, in reason,
+to demand; and, though devoted in heart to his leader, he did not feel
+bound by any principle of honor to take part with him, solely to gratify
+his ambition, in a wild contest with the Crown that must end in inevitable
+ruin.  He consequently abandoned his mission to Castile, probably never
+very palatable to him, and announced his purpose to accept the pardon
+proffered by government, and support the president in settling the affairs
+of Peru.  He subsequently wrote, it should be added, to his former
+commander in Lima, stating the course he had taken, and earnestly
+recommending the latter to follow his example.
+
+The influence of this precedent in so important a person as Aldana,
+aided, doubtless, by the conviction that no change was now to be
+expected in Pizarro, while delay would be fatal to himself, at length
+prevailed over Hinojosa's scruples, and he intimated to Gasca his
+willingness to place the fleet under his command.  The act was
+performed with great pomp and ceremony.  Some of Pizarro's stanchest
+partisans were previously removed from the vessels; and on the
+nineteenth of November, 1546, Hinojosa and his captains resigned their
+commissions into the hands of the president.  They next took the oaths of
+allegiance to Castile; a free pardon for all past offences was proclaimed
+by the herald from a scaffold erected in the great square of the city; and
+the president, greeting them as true and loyal vassals of the Crown,
+restored their several commissions to the cavaliers.  The royal standard
+of Spain was then unfurled on board the squadron, and proclaimed that
+this stronghold of Pizarro's power had passed away from him for ever.29
+
+The return of their commissions to the insurgent captains was a politic
+act in Gasca.  It secured the services of the ablest officers in the country,
+and turned against Pizarro the very arm on which he had most leaned for
+support.  Thus was this great step achieved, without force or fraud, by
+Gasca's patience and judicious forecast.  He was content to bide his time;
+and he now might rely with well-grounded confidence on the ultimate
+success of his mission.
+
+
+
+Book 5
+
+Chapter 2
+
+Gasca Assembles His Forces--Defection Of Pizarro's Followers--
+He Musters His Levies--Agitation In Lima--He Abandons The City--
+Gasca Sails From Panama--Bloody Battle Of Huarina
+
+1547
+
+No sooner was Gasca placed in possession of Panama and the fleet, than
+he entered on a more decisive course of policy than he had been hitherto
+allowed to pursue.  He raised levies of men, and drew together supplies
+from all quarters.  He took care to discharge the arrears already due to
+the soldiers, and promised liberal pay for the future; for, though mindful
+that his personal charges should cost little to the Crown, he did not stint
+his expenditure when the public good required it.  As the funds in the
+treasury were exhausted, he obtained loans on the credit of the
+government from the wealthy citizens of Panama, who, relying on his
+good faith, readily made the necessary advances.  He next sent letters to
+the authorities of Guatemala and Mexico, requiring their assistance in
+carrying on hostilities, if necessary, against the insurgents; and he
+despatched a summons, in like manner, to Benalcazar, in the provinces
+north of Peru, to meet him, on his landing in that country, with his whole
+available force.
+
+The greatest enthusiasm was shown by the people of Panama in getting
+the little navy in order for his intended voyage; and prelates and
+commanders did not disdain to prove their loyalty by taking part in the
+good work, along with the soldiers and sailors.1  Before his own
+departure, however, Gasca proposed to send a small squadron of four
+ships under Aldana, to cruise off the port of Lima, with instructions to
+give protection to those well affected to the royal cause, and receive
+them, if need be, on board his vessels.  He was also intrusted with
+authenticated copies of the president's commission, to be delivered to
+Gonzalo Pizarro, that the chief might feel, there was yet time to return
+before the gates of mercy were closed against him.2
+
+While these events were going on, Gasca's proclamations and letters
+were doing their work in Peru.  It required but little sagacity to perceive
+that the nation at large, secured in the protection of person and property,
+had nothing to gain by revolution.  Interest and duty, fortunately, now lay
+on the same side; and the ancient sentiment of loyalty, smothered for a
+time, but not extinguished, revived in the breasts of the people.  Still this
+was not manifested, at once, by any overt act; for, under a strong military
+rule, men dared hardly think for themselves, much less communicate
+their thoughts to one another.  But changes of public opinion, like
+changes in the atmosphere that come on slowly and imperceptibly, make
+themselves more and more widely felt, till, by a sort of silent sympathy,
+they spread to the remotest corners of the land.  Some intimations of
+such a change of sentiment at length found their way to Lima, although
+all accounts of the president's mission had been jealously excluded from
+that capital.  Gonzalo Pizarro himself became sensible of these
+symptoms of disaffection, though almost too faint and feeble, as yet, for
+the most experienced eye to descry in them the coming tempest.
+
+Several of the president's proclamations had been forwarded to Gonzalo
+by his faithful partisans; and Carbajal, who had been summoned from
+Potosi, declared they were "more to be dreaded than the lances of
+Castile." 3  Yet Pizarro did not, for a moment, lose his confidence in his
+own strength; and with a navy like that now in Panama at his command,
+he felt he might bid defiance to any enemy on his coasts.  He had implicit
+confidence in the fidelity of Hinojosa.
+
+It was at this period that Paniagua arrived off the port with Gasca's
+despatches to Pizarro, consisting of the emperor's letter and his own.
+They were instantly submitted by that chieftain to his trusty counsellors,
+Carbajal and Cepeda, and their opinions asked as to the course to be
+pursued.  It was the crisis of Pizarro's fate.
+
+Carbajal, whose sagacious eye fully comprehended the position in which
+they stood, was in favor of accepting the royal grace on the terms
+proposed; and he intimated his sense of their importance by declaring,
+that "he would pave the way for the bearer of them into the capital with
+ingots of gold and silver." 4  Cepeda was of a different way of thinking.
+He was a judge of the Royal Audience; and had been sent to Peru as the
+immediate counsellor of Blasco Nunez.  But he had turned against the
+viceroy, had encountered him in battle, and his garments might be said to
+be yet wet with his blood!  What grace was there, then, for him?
+Whatever respect might be shown to the letter of the royal provisions, in
+point of fact, he must ever live under the Castilian rule a ruined man.  He
+accordingly, strongly urged the rejection of Gasca's offers.  "They will
+cost you your government," he said to Pizarro; "the smooth-tongued
+priest is not so simple a person as you take him to be.  He is deep and
+politic.5  He knows well what promises to make; and, once master of the
+country, he will know, too, how to keep them."
+
+Carbajal was not shaken by the arguments or the sneers of his
+companions; and as the discussion waxed warm, Cepeda taxed his
+opponent with giving counsel suggested by fears for his own safety,--a
+foolish taunt, sufficiently disproved by the whole life of the doughty old
+warrior, Carbajal did not insist further on his own views, however, as he
+found them unwelcome to Pizarro, and contented himself with coolly
+remarking, that "he had, indeed, no relish for rebellion; but he had as
+long a neck for a halter, he believed, as any of his companions; and as he
+could hardly expect to live much longer, at any rate, it was, after all, of
+little moment to him." 6
+
+Pizarro, spurred on by a fiery ambition that overleaped every obstacle,7
+did not condescend to count the desperate chances of a contest with the
+Crown.  He threw his own weight into the scale with Cepeda.  The offer
+of grace was rejected; and he thus cast away the last tie which held him
+to his country, and, by the act, proclaimed himself a rebel.8
+
+It was not long after the departure of Paniagua, that Pizarro received
+tidings of the defection of Aldana and Hinojosa, and of the surrender of
+the fleet, on which he had expended an immense sum, as the chief
+bulwark of his power.  This unwelcome intelligence was followed by
+accounts of the further defection of some of the principal towns in the
+north, and of the assassination of Puelles, the faithful lieutenant to whom
+he had confided the government of Quito.  It was not very long, also,
+before he found his authority assailed in the opposite quarter at Cuzco;
+for Centeno, the loyal chieftain who, as the reader may remember, had
+been driven by Carbajal to take refuge in a cave near Arequipa, had
+issued from his concealment after remaining there a year, and, on
+learning the arrival of Gasca, had again raised the royal standard.  Then
+collecting a small body of followers, and falling on Cuzco by night, he
+made himself master of that capital, defeated the garrison who held it,
+and secured it for the Crown.  Marching soon after into the province of
+Charcas, the bold chief allied himself with the officer who commanded
+for Pizarro in La Plata; and their combined forces, to the number of a
+thousand, took up a position on the borders of Lake Titicaca, where the
+two cavaliers coolly waited an opportunity to take the field against their
+ancient commander.
+
+Gonzalo Pizarro, touched to the heart by the desertion of those in whom
+he most confided, was stunned by the dismal tidings of his losses coming
+so thick upon him.  Yet he did not waste his time in idle crimination or
+complaint; but immediately set about making preparations to meet the
+storm with all his characteristic energy.  He wrote, at once to such of his
+captains as he believed still faithful, commanding them to be ready with
+their troops to march to his assistance at the shortest notice.  He
+reminded them of their obligations to him, and that their interests were
+identical with his own.  The president's commission, he added, had been
+made out before the news had reached Spain of the battle of Ariaquito,
+and could never cover a pardon to those concerned in the death of the
+viceroy.9
+
+Pizarro was equally active in enforcing his levies in the capital, and in
+putting them in the best fighting order.  He soon saw himself at the head
+of a thousand men, beautifully equipped, and complete in all their
+appointments; "as gallant an array," says an old writer, "though so small
+in number, as ever trod the plains of Italy,"--displaying in the excellence
+of their arms, their gorgeous uniforms, and the caparisons of their horses,
+a magnificence that could be furnished only by the silver of Peru.10
+Each company was provided with a new stand of colors, emblazoned
+with its peculiar device.  Some bore the initials and arms of Pizarro, and
+one or two of these were audaciously surmounted by a crown, as if to
+intimate the rank to which their commander might aspire.11
+
+Among the leaders most conspicuous on this occasion was Cepeda,
+"who," in the words of a writer of his time, "had exchanged the robe of
+the licentiate for the plumed casque and mailed harness of the warrior."
+12  But the cavalier to whom Pizarro confided the chief care of
+organizing his battalions was the veteran Carbajal, who had studied the
+art of war under the best captains of Europe, and whose life of adventure
+had been a practical commentary on their early lessons.  It was on his
+arm that Gonzalo most leaned in the hour of danger; and well had it been
+for him, if he had profited by his counsels at an earlier period.
+
+It gives one some idea of the luxurious accommodations of Pizarro's
+forces, that he endeavored to provide each of his musketeers with a
+horse.  The expenses incurred by him were enormous.  The immediate
+cost of his preparations, we are told, was not less than half a million of
+pesos de oro; and his pay to the cavaliers, and, indeed, to the common
+soldiers, in his little army, was on an extravagant scale, nowhere to be
+met with but on the silver soil of Peru.13
+
+When his own funds were exhausted, he supplied the deficiency by fines
+imposed on the rich citizens of Lima as the price of exemption from
+service, by forced loans, and various other schemes of military
+exaction.14  From this time, it is said, the chieftain's temper underwent a
+visible change.15  He became more violent in his passions, more
+impatient of control, and indulged more freely in acts of cruelty and
+license.  The desperate cause in which he was involved made him
+reckless of consequences.  Though naturally frank and confiding, the
+frequent defection of his followers filled him with suspicion.  He knew
+not in whom to confide.  Every one who showed himself indifferent to
+his cause, or was suspected of being so, was dealt with as an open
+enemy.  The greatest distrust prevailed in Lima.  No man dared confide
+in his neighbor.  Some concealed their effects; others contrived to elude
+the vigilance of the sentinels, and hid themselves in the neighboring
+woods and mountains.16  No one was allowed to enter or leave the city
+without a license.  All commerce, all intercourse, with other places was
+cut off.  It was long since the fifth belonging to the Crown had been
+remitted to Castile; as Pizarro had appropriated them for his own use.
+He now took possession of the mints, broke up the royal stamps, and
+issued a debased coin, emblazoned with his own cipher.17  It was the
+most decisive act of sovereignty.
+
+At this gloomy period, the lawyer Cepeda contrived a solemn farce, the
+intent of which was to give a sort of legal sanction to the rebel cause in
+the eyes of the populace.  He caused a process to be prepared against
+Gasca, Hinojosa, and Aldana, in which they were accused of treason
+against the existing government of Peru, were convicted, and condemned
+to death.  This instrument he submitted to a number of jurists in the
+capital, requiring their signatures.  But they had no mind thus inevitably
+to implicate themselves, by affixing their names to such a paper; and
+they evaded it by representing, that it would only serve to cut off all
+chance, should any of the accused be so disposed, of their again
+embracing the cause they had deserted.  Cepeda was the only man who
+signed the document.  Carbajal treated the whole thing with ridicule.
+"What is the object of your process?" said he to Cepeda.  "Its object,"
+replied the latter, "is to prevent delay, that, if taken at any time, the guilty
+party may be at once led to execution." "I cry you mercy," retorted
+Carbajal; "I thought there must be some virtue in the instrument, that
+would have killed them outright.  Let but one of these same traitors fall
+into my hands, and I will march him off to execution, without waiting for
+the sentence of a court, I promise you!" 18
+
+While this paper war was going on, news was brought that Aldana's
+squadron was off the port of Callao.  That commander had sailed from
+Panama, the middle of February, 1547.  On his passage down the coast
+he had landed at Truxillo, where the citizens welcomed him with
+enthusiasm, and eagerly proclaimed their submission to the royal
+authority.  He received, at the same time, messages from several of
+Pizarro's officers in the interior, intimating their return to their duty, and
+their readiness to support the president.  Aldana named Caxamalca as a
+place of rendezvous, where they should concentrate their forces, and wait
+the landing of Gasca.  He then continued his voyage towards Lima.
+
+No sooner was Pizarro informed of his approach, than, fearful lest it
+might have a disastrous effect in seducing his followers from their
+fidelity, he marched them about a league out of the city, and there
+encamped.  He was two leagues from the coast, and he posted a guard on
+the shore to intercept all communication with the vessels.  Before leaving
+the capital, Cepeda resorted to an expedient for securing the inhabitants
+more firmly, as he conceived, in Pizarro's interests.  He caused the
+citizens to be assembled, and made them a studied harangue, in which he
+expatiated on the services of their governor, and the security which the
+country had enjoyed under his rule.  He then told them that every man
+was at liberty to choose for himself; to remain under the protection of
+their present ruler, or, if they preferred, to transfer their allegiance to his
+enemy.  He invited them to speak their minds, but required every one
+who would still continue under Pizarro to take an oath of fidelity to his
+cause, with the assurance, that, if any should be so false hereafter as to
+violate this pledge, he should pay for it with his life.19  There was no
+one found bold enough--with his head thus in the lion's mouth--to swerve
+from his obedience to Pizarro; and every man took the oath prescribed,
+which was administered in the most solemn and imposing form by the
+licentiate.  Carbajal, as usual, made a jest of the whole proceeding.
+"How long," he asked his companion, "do you think these same oaths
+will stand?  The first wind that blows off the coast after we are gone will
+scatter them in air!" His prediction was soon verified.
+
+Meantime, Aldana anchored off the port, where there was no vessel of
+the insurgents to molest him.  By Cepeda's advice, some four or five had
+been burnt a short time before, during the absence of Carbajal, in order
+to cut off all means by which the inhabitants could leave the place.  This
+was deeply deplored by the veteran soldier on his return.  "It was
+destroying," he said, "the guardian angels of Lima." 20  And certainly,
+under such a commander, they might now have stood Pizarro in good
+stead; but his star was on the wane.
+
+The first act of Aldana was to cause the copy of Gasca's powers, with
+which he had been intrusted, to be conveyed to his ancient commander,
+by whom it was indignantly torn in pieces.  Aldana next contrived, by
+means of his agents, to circulate among the citizens, and even the
+soldiers of the camp, the president's manifestoes.  They were not long in
+producing their effect.  Few had been at all aware of the real purport of
+Gasca's mission, of the extent of his powers, or of the generous terms
+offered by government.  They shrunk from the desperate course into
+which they had been thus unwarily seduced, and they sought only in what
+way they could, with least danger, extricate themselves from their
+present position, and return to their allegiance.  Some escaped by night
+from the camp, eluded the vigilance of the sentinels, and effected their
+retreat on board the vessels.  Some were taken, and found no quarter at
+the hands of Carbajal and his merciless ministers.  But, where the spirit
+of disaffection was abroad, means of escape were not wanting.
+
+As the fugitives were cut off from Lima and the neighboring coast, they
+secreted themselves in the forests and mountains, and watched their
+opportunity for making their way to Truxilla and other ports at a
+distance; and so contagious was the example, that it not unfrequently
+happened that the very soldiers sent in pursuit of the deserters joined
+with them.  Among those that fled was the Licentiate Carbajal, who must
+not be confounded with his military namesake.  He was the same cavalier
+whose brother had been put to death in Lima by Blasco Nunez, and who
+revenged himself, as we have seen, by imbruing his own hands in the
+blood of the viceroy.  That a person thus implicated should trust to the
+royal pardon showed that no one need despair of it; and the example
+proved most disastrous to Pizarro.21
+
+Carbajal, who made a jest of every thing, even of the misfortunes which
+pinched him the sharpest, when told of the desertion of his comrades,
+amused himself by humming the words of a popular ditty:--
+
+"The wind blows the hairs off my head, mother; Two at a time, it blows
+them away!" 22
+
+But the defection of his followers made a deeper impression on Pizarro,
+and he was sorely distressed as he beheld the gallant array, to which he
+had so confidently looked for gaining his battles, thus melting away like
+a morning mist.  Bewildered by the treachery of those in whom he had
+most trusted, he knew not where to turn, nor what course to take.  It was
+evident that he must leave his present dangerous quarters without loss of
+time.  But whither should he direct his steps?  In the north, the great
+towns had abandoned his cause, and the president was already marching
+against him; while Centeno held the passes of the south, with a force
+double his own.  In this emergency, he at length resolved to occupy
+Arequipa, a seaport still true to him, where he might remain till he had
+decided on some future course of operations.
+
+After a painful but rapid march, Gonzalo arrived at this place, where he
+was speedily joined by a reinforcement that he had detached for the
+recovery of Cuzco.  But so frequent had been the desertions from both
+companies,--though in Pizarro's corps these had greatly lessened since
+the departure from the neighborhood of Lima,--that his whole number
+did not exceed five hundred men, less than half of the force which he had
+so recently mustered in the capital.  To such humble circumstances was
+the man now reduced, who had so lately lorded it over the land with
+unlimited sway!  Still the chief did not despond.  He had gathered new
+spirit from the excitement of his march and his distance from Lima; and
+he seemed to recover his former confidence, as he exclaimed,--"It is
+misfortune that teaches us who are our friends.  If but ten only remain
+true to me, fear not but I will again be master of Peru!" 23
+
+No sooner had the rebel forces withdrawn from the neighborhood of
+Lima, than the inhabitants of that city, little troubled, as Carbajal had
+predicted, by their compulsory oaths of allegiance to Pizarro, threw open
+their gates to Aldana, who took possession of this important place in the
+name of the president.  That commander, meanwhile, had sailed with his
+whole fleet from Panama, on the tenth of April, 1547.  The first part of
+his voyage was prosperous; but he was soon perplexed by contrary
+currents, and the weather became rough and tempestuous.  The violence
+of the storm continuing day after day, the sea was lashed into fury, and
+the fleet was tossed about on the billows, which ran mountain high, as if
+emulating the wild character of the region they bounded.  The rain
+descended in torrents, and the lightning was so incessant, that the
+vessels, to quote the lively language of the chronicler, "seemed to be
+driving through seas of flame!" 24  The hearts of the stoutest mariners
+were filled with dismay.  They considered it hopeless to struggle against
+the elements, and they loudly demanded to return to the continent, and
+postpone the voyage till a more favorable season of the year.
+
+But the president saw in this the ruin of his cause, as well as of the loyal
+vassals who had engaged, on his landing, to support it.  "I am willing to
+die," he said, "but not to return"; and, regardless of the remonstrances of
+his more timid followers, he insisted on carrying as much sail as the
+ships could possibly bear, at every interval of the storm.25  Meanwhile,
+to divert the minds of the seamen from their present danger, Gasca
+amused them by explaining some of the strange phenomena exhibited by
+the ocean in the tempest, which had filled their superstitious minds with
+mysterious dread.26
+
+Signals had been given for the ships to make the best of their way, each
+for itself, to the island of Gorgona.  Here they arrived, one after another,
+with but a single exception, though all more or less shattered by the
+weather.  The president waited only for the fury of the elements to spend
+itself, when he again embarked, and, on smoother waters, crossed over to
+Manta.  From this place he soon after continued his voyage to Tumbez,
+and landed at that port on the thirteenth of June.  He was everywhere
+received with enthusiasm, and all seemed anxious to efface the
+remembrance of the past by professions of future fidelity to the Crown.
+Gasca received, also, numerous letters of congratulation from cavaliers
+in the interior, most of whom had formerly taken service under Pizarro.
+He made courteous acknowledgments for their offers of assistance, and
+commanded them to repair to Caxamalca, the general place of
+rendezvous.
+
+To this same spot he sent Hinojosa, so soon as that officer had
+disembarked with the land forces from the fleet, ordering him to take
+command of the levies assembled there, and then join him at Xauxa.
+Here he determined to establish his headquarters.  It lay in a rich and
+abundant territory, and by its central position afforded a point for acting
+with greatest advantage against the enemy.
+
+He then moved forward, at the head of a small detachment of cavalry,
+along the level road on the coast towards Truxillo.  After halting for a
+short time in that loyal city, he traversed the mountain range on the
+southeast, and soon entered the fruitful valley of Xauxa.  There he was
+presently joined by reinforcements from the north, as well as from the
+principal places on the coast; and, not long after his arrival, received a
+message from Centeno, informing him that he held the passes by which
+Gonzalo Pizarro was preparing to make his escape from the country, and
+that the insurgent chief must soon fall into his hands.
+
+The royal camp was greatly elated by these tidings.  The war, then, was
+at length terminated, and that without the president having been called
+upon so much as to lift his sword against a Spaniard.  Several of his
+counsellors now advised him to disband the greater part of his forces, as
+burdensome and no longer necessary.  But the president was too wise to
+weaken his strength before he had secured the victory.  He consented,
+however, to countermand the requisition for levies from Mexico and the
+adjoining colonies, as now feeling sufficiently strong in the general
+loyalty of the country.  But, concentrating his forces at Xauxa, he
+established his quarters in that town, as he had first intended, resolved to
+await there tidings of the operations in the south.  The result was
+different from what he had expected.27
+
+Pizarro, meanwhile, whom we left at Arequipa, had decided, after much
+deliberation, to evacuate Peru, and pass into Chili.  In this territory,
+beyond the president's jurisdiction, he might find a safe retreat, The
+fickle people, he thought, would soon weary of their new ruler; and he
+would then rally in sufficient strength to resume active operations for the
+recovery of his domain.  Such were the calculations of the rebel
+chieftain.  But how was he to effect his object, while the passes among
+the mountains, where his route lay, were held by Centeno with a force
+more than double his own?  He resolved to try negotiation; for that
+captain had once served under him, and had, indeed, been most active in
+persuading Pizarro to take on himself the office of procurator.
+Advancing, accordingly, in the direction of Lake Titicaca, in the
+neighborhood of which Centeno had pitched his camp, Gonzalo
+despatched an emissary to his quarters to open a negotiation.  He called
+to his adversary's recollection the friendly relations that had once
+subsisted between them; and reminded him of one occasion in particular,
+in which he had spared his life, when convicted of a conspiracy against
+himself.  He harbored no sentiments of unkindness, he said, for
+Centeno's recent conduct, and had not now come to seek a quarrel with
+him.  His purpose was to abandon Peru; and the only favor he had to
+request of his former associate was to leave him a free passage across the
+mountains.
+
+To this communication Centeno made answer in terms as courtly as
+those of Pizarro himself, that he was not unmindful of their ancient
+friendship.  He was now ready to serve his former commander in any
+way not inconsistent with honor, or obedience to his sovereign.  But he
+was there in arms for the royal cause, and he could not swerve from his
+duty.  If Pizarro would but rely on his faith and surrender himself up, he
+pledged his knightly word to use all his interest with the government, to
+secure as favorable terms for him and his followers as had been granted
+to the rest of their countrymen.--Gonzalo listened to the smooth promises
+of his ancient comrade with bitter scorn depicted in his countenance,
+and, snatching the letter from his secretary, cast it away from him with
+indignation.  There was nothing left but an appeal to arms.28
+
+He at once broke up his encampment, and directed his march on the
+borders of Lake Titicaca, near which lay his rival.  He resorted, however,
+to stratagem, that he might still, if possible, avoid an encounter.  He sent
+forward his scouts in a different direction from that which he intended to
+take, and then quickened his march on Huarina.  This was a small town
+situated on the southeastern extremity of Lake Titicaca, the shores of
+which, the seat of the primitive civilization of the Incas, were soon to
+resound with the murderous strife of their more civilized conquerors!
+
+But Pizarro's movements had been secretly communicated to Centeno,
+and that commander, accordingly, changing his ground, took up a
+position not far from Huarina, on the same day on which Gonzalo
+reached this place.  The videttes of the two camps came in sight of each
+other that evening, and the rival forces, lying on their arms, prepared for
+action on the following morning.
+
+It was the twenty-sixth of October, 1547, when the two commanders,
+having formed their troops in order of battle, advanced to the encounter
+on the plains of Huarina.  The ground, defended on one side by a bold
+spur of the Andes, and not far removed on the other from the waters of
+Titicaca, was an open and level plain, well suited to military
+manoeuvres.  It seemed as if prepared by Nature as the lists for an
+encounter.
+
+Centeno's army amounted to about a thousand men.  His cavalry
+consisted of near two hundred and fifty, well equipped and mounted.
+Among them were several gentlemen of family, some of whom had once
+followed the banners of Pizarro; the whole forming an efficient corps, in
+which rode some of the best lances of Peru.  His arquebusiers were less
+numerous, not exceeding a hundred and fifty, indifferently provided with
+ammunition.  The remainder, and much the larger part of Centeno's
+army, consisted of spearmen, irregular levies hastily drawn together, and
+possessed of little discipline.29
+
+This corps of infantry formed the centre of his line, flanked by the
+arquebusiers in two nearly equal divisions, while his cavalry were also
+disposed in two bodies on the right and left wings.  Unfortunately,
+Centeno had been for the past week ill of a pleurisy,--so ill, indeed, that
+on the preceding day he had been bled several times.  He was now too
+feeble to keep his saddle, but was carried in a litter, and when he had
+seen his men formed in order, he withdrew to a distance from the field,
+unable to take part in the action.  But Solano, the militant bishop of
+Cuzco, who, with several of his followers, took part in the engagement,--
+a circumstance, indeed, of no strange occurrence,--rode along the ranks
+with the crucifix in his hand, bestowing his benediction on the soldiers,
+and exhorting each man to do his duty.
+
+Pizarro's forces were less than half of his rival's, not amounting to more
+than four hundred and eighty men.  The horse did not muster above
+eighty-five in all, and he posted them in a single body on the right of his
+battalion.  The strength of his army lay in his arquebusiers, about three
+hundred and fifty in number.  It was an admirable corps, commanded by
+Carbajal, by whom it had been carefully drilled.  Considering the
+excellence of its arms, and its thorough discipline, this little body of
+infantry might be considered as the flower of the Peruvian soldiery, and
+on it Pizarro mainly relied for the success of the day.30  The remainder
+of his force, consisting of pikemen, not formidable for their numbers,
+though, like the rest of the infantry, under excellent discipline, he
+distributed on the left of his musketeers, so as to repel the enemy's horse.
+
+Pizarro himself had charge of the cavalry, taking his place, as usual, in
+the foremost rank.  He was superbly accoutred.  Over his shining mail he
+wore a sobre-vest of slashed velvet of a rich crimson color; and he rode a
+high-mettled charger, whose gaudy caparisons, with the showy livery of
+his rider, made the fearless commander the most conspicuous object in
+the field.
+
+His lieutenant, Carbajal, was equipped in a very different style.  He wore
+armor of proof of the most homely appearance, but strong and
+serviceable; and his steel bonnet, with its closely barred visor of the
+same material, protected his head from more than one desperate blow on
+that day.  Over his arms he wore a surcoat of a greenish color, and he
+rode an active, strong-boned jennet, which, though capable of enduring
+fatigue, possessed neither grace nor beauty.  It would not have been easy
+to distinguish the veteran from the most ordinary cavalier.
+
+The two hosts arrived within six hundred paces of each other, when they
+both halted.  Carbajal preferred to receive the attack of the enemy, rather
+than advance further; for the ground he now occupied afforded a free
+range for his musketry, unobstructed by the trees or bushes that were
+sprinkled over some other parts of the field.  There was a singular
+motive, in addition, for retaining his present position.  The soldiers were
+encumbered, some with two, some with three, arquebuses each, being the
+arms left by those who, from time to time, had deserted the camp.  This
+uncommon supply of muskets, however serious an impediment on a
+march, might afford great advantage to troops waiting an assault; since,
+from the imperfect knowledge as well as construction of fire-arms at that
+day, much time was wasted in loading them.31
+
+Preferring, therefore, that the enemy should begin the attack, Carbajal
+came to a halt, while the opposite squadron, after a short respite,
+continued their advance a hundred paces farther.  Seeing that they then
+remained immovable.  Carbajal detached a small party of skirmishers to
+the front, in order to provoke them; but it was soon encountered by a
+similar party of the enemy, and some shots were exchanged, though with
+little damage to either side.  Finding this manoeuvre fail, the veteran
+ordered his men to advance a few paces, still hoping to provoke his
+antagonist to the charge.  This succeeded.  "We lose honor," exclaimed
+Centeno's soldiers; who, with a bastard sort of chivalry, belonging to
+undisciplined troops, felt it a disgrace to await an assault.  In vain their
+officers called out to them to remain at their post.  Their commander was
+absent, and they were urged on by the cries of a frantic friar, named
+Damingo Ruiz, who, believing the Philistines were delivered into their
+hands, called out,-- "Now is the time!  Onward, onward, fall on the
+enemy!" 32  There needed nothing further, and the men rushed forward
+in tumultuous haste, the pikemen carrying their levelled weapons so
+heedlessly as to interfere with one another, and in some instances to
+wound their comrades.  The musketeers, at the same time, kept up a
+disorderly fire as they advanced, which, from their rapid motion and the
+distance, did no execution.
+
+Carbajal was well pleased to see his enemies thus wasting their
+ammunition, Though he allowed a few muskets to be discharged, in
+order to stimulate his opponents the more, he commanded the great body
+of his infantry to reserve their fire till every shot could take effect.  As he
+knew the tendency of marksmen to shoot above the mark, he directed his
+men to aim at the girdle, or even a little below it; adding, that a shot that
+fell short might still do damage, while one that passed a hair's breadth
+above the head was wasted.33
+
+The veteran's company stood calm and unmoved, as Centeno's rapidly
+advanced; but when the latter had arrived within a hundred paces of their
+antagonists, Carbajal gave the word to fire.  An instantaneous volley ran
+along the line, and a tempest of balls was poured into the ranks of the
+assailants, with such unerring aim, that more than a hundred fell, dead on
+the field, while a still greater number were wounded.  Before they could
+recover from their disorder, Carbajal's men, snatching up their remaining
+pieces, discharged them with the like dreadful effect into the thick of the
+enemy.  The confusion of the latter was now complete, Unable to sustain
+the incessant shower of balls which fell on them from the scattering fire
+kept up by the arquebusiers, they were seized with a panic, and fled,
+scarcely making a show of further fight, from the field.
+
+But very different was the fortune of the day in the cavalry combat.
+Gonzalo Pizarro had drawn up his troop somewhat in the rear of
+Carbajal's right, in order to give the latter a freer range for the play of his
+musketry.  When the enemy's horse on the left galloped briskly against
+him, Pizarro, still favoring Carbajal,--whose fire, moreover, inflicted
+some loss on the assailants,--advanced but a few rods to receive the
+charge.  Centeno's squadron, accordingly, came thundering on in full
+career, and, notwithstanding the mischief sustained from their enemy's
+musketry, fell with such fury on their adversaries as to overturn them,
+man and horse, in the dust; "riding over their prostrate bodies," says the
+historian, "as if they had been a flock of sheep!" 34  The latter, with
+great difficulty recovering from the first shock, attempted to rally and
+sustain the fight on more equal terms.
+
+Yet the chief could not regain the ground he had lost.  His men were
+driven back at all points.  Many were slain, many more wounded, on
+both sides, and the ground was covered with the dead bodies of men and
+horses.  But the loss fell much the most heavily on Pizarro's troop; and
+the greater part of those who escaped with life were obliged to surrender
+as prisoners.  Cepeda, who fought with the fury of despair, received a
+severe cut from a sabre across the face, which disabled him and forced
+him to yield.35  Pizarro, after seeing his best and bravest fall round him,
+was set upon by three or four cavaliers at once.  Disentangling himself
+from the melee, he put spurs to his horse, and the noble animal, bleeding
+from a severe wound across the back, outstripped all his pursuers except
+one, who stayed him by seizing the bridle.  It would have gone hard with
+Gonzalo, but, grasping a light battle-axe, which hung by his side, he
+dealt such a blow on the head of his enemy's horse that he plunged
+violently, and compelled his rider to release his hold.  A number of
+arquebusiers, in the mean time, seeing Pizarro's distress, sprang forward
+to his rescue, slew two of his assailants who had now come up with him,
+and forced the others to fly in their turn.36
+
+The rout of the cavalry was complete; and Pizarro considered the day as
+lost, as he heard the enemy's trumpet sending forth the note of victory.
+But the sounds had scarcely died away, when they were taken up by the
+opposite side.  Centeno's infantry had been discomfited, as we have seen,
+and driven off the ground.  But his cavalry on the right had charged
+Carbajal's left, consisting of spearmen mingled with arquebusiers.  The
+horse rode straight against this formidable phalanx.  But they were
+unable to break through the dense array of pikes, held by the steady
+hands of troops who stood firm and fearless on their post; while, at the
+same time, the assailants were greatly annoyed by the galling fire of the
+arquebusiers in the rear of the spearmen.  Finding it impracticable to
+make a breach, the horsemen rode round the flanks in much disorder, and
+finally joined themselves with the victorious squadron of Centeno's
+cavalry in the rear.  Both parties now attempted another charge on
+Carbajal's battalion.  But his men facing about with the promptness and
+discipline of well-trained soldiers, the rear was converted into the front.
+The same forest of spears was presented to the attack; while an incessant
+discharge of balls punished the audacity of the cavaliers, who, broken
+and completely dispirited by their ineffectual attempt, at length imitated
+the example of the panic-struck foot, and abandoned the field.
+
+Pizarro and a few of his comrades still fit for action followed up the
+pursuit for a short distance only, as, indeed, they were in no condition
+themselves, nor sufficiently strong in numbers, long to continue it.  The
+victory was complete, and the insurgent chief took possession of the
+deserted tents of the enemy, where an immense booty was obtained in
+silver;37 and where he also found the tables spread for the refreshment
+of Centeno's soldiers after their return from the field.  So confident were
+they of success!  The repast now served the necessities of their
+conquerors.  Such is the fortune of war!  It was, indeed, a most decisive
+action; and Gonzalo Pizarro, as he rode over the field strewed with the
+corpses of his enemies, was observed several times to cross himself and
+exclaim,--"Jesu! What a victory!"
+
+No less than three hundred and fifty of Centeno's followers were killed,
+and the number of wounded was even greater.  More than a hundred of
+these are computed to have perished from exposure during the following
+night; for, although the climate in this elevated region is temperate, yet
+the night winds blowing over the mountains are sharp and piercing, and
+many a wounded wretch, who might have been restored by careful
+treatment, was chilled by the damps, and found a stiffened corpse at
+sunrise.  The victory was not purchased without a heavy loss on the part
+of the conquerors, a hundred or more of whom were left on the field.
+Their bodies lay thick on that part of the ground occupied by Pizarro's
+cavalry, where the fight raged hottest.  In this narrow space were found,
+also, the bodies of more than a hundred horses, the greater part of which,
+as well as those of their riders, usually slain with them, belonged to the
+victorious army.  It was the most fatal battle that had yet been fought on
+the blood-stained soil of Peru.38
+
+The glory of the day--the melancholy glory--must be referred almost
+wholly to Carbajal and his valiant squadron.  The judicious arrangements
+of the old warrior, with the thorough discipline and unflinching courage
+of his followers, retrieved the fortunes of the fight, when it was nearly
+lost by the cavalry, and secured the victory.
+
+Carbajal, proof against all fatigue, followed up the pursuit with those of
+his men that were in condition to join him.  Such of the unhappy
+fugitives as fell into his hands--most of whom had been traitors to the
+cause of Pizarro--were sent to instant execution.  The laurels he had won
+in the field against brave men in arms, like himself, were tarnished by
+cruelty towards his defenceless captives.  Their commander, Centeno,
+more fortunate, made his escape.  Finding the battle lost, he quitted his
+litter, threw himself upon his horse, and, notwithstanding his illness,
+urged on by the dreadful doom that awaited him, if taken, he succeeded
+in making his way into the neighboring sierra.  Here he vanished from
+his pursuers, and, like a wounded stag, with the chase close upon his
+track, he still contrived to elude it, by plunging into the depths of the
+forests, till, by a circuitous route, he miraculously succeeded in effecting
+his escape to Lima.  The bishop of Cuzco, who went off in a different
+direction, was no less fortunate.  Happy for him that he did not fall into
+the hands of the ruthless Carbajal, who, as the bishop had once been a
+partisan of Pizarro, would, to judge from the little respect he usually
+showed those of his cloth, have felt as little compunction in sentencing
+him to the gibbet as if he had been the meanest of the common file.39
+
+On the day following the action, Gonzalo Pizarro caused the bodies of
+the soldiers, still lying side by side on the field where they had been so
+lately engaged together in mortal strife, to be deposited in a common
+sepulchre.  Those of higher rank--for distinctions of rank were not to be
+forgotten in the grave--were removed to the church of the village of
+Huarina, which gave its name to the battle.  There they were interred
+with all fitting solemnity.  But in later times they were transported to the
+cathedral church of La Paz, "The City of Peace," and laid under a
+mausoleum erected by general subscription in that quarter.  For few there
+were who had not to mourn the loss of some friend or relative on that
+fatal day.
+
+The victor now profited by his success to send detachments to Arequipa,
+La Plata, and other cities in that part of the country, to raise funds and
+reinforcements for the war.  His own losses were more than compensated
+by the number of the vanquished party who were content to take service
+under his banner.  Mustering his forces, he directed his march to Cuzco,
+which capital, though occasionally seduced into a display of loyalty to
+the Crown, had early manifested an attachment to his cause.
+
+Here the inhabitants were prepared to receive him in triumph, under
+arches thrown across the streets, with bands of music, and minstrelsy
+commemorating his successes.  But Pizarro, with more discretion,
+declined the honors of an ovation while the country remained in the
+hands of his enemies.  Sending forward the main body of his troops, he
+followed on foot, attended by a slender retinue of friends and citizens,
+and proceeded at once to the cathedral, where thanksgivings were
+offered up, and Te Deum was chanted in honor of his victory.  He then
+withdrew to his residence, announcing his purpose to establish his
+quarters, for the present, in the venerable capital of the Incas.40
+
+All thoughts of a retreat into Chili were abandoned; for his recent
+success had kindled new hopes in his bosom, and revived his ancient
+confidence.  He trusted that it would have a similar effect on the
+vacillating temper of those whose fidelity had been shaken by fears for
+their own safety, and their distrust of his ability to cope with the
+president.  They would now see that his star was still in the ascendant.
+Without further apprehensions for the event, he resolved to remain in
+Cuzco, and there quietly await the hour when a last appeal to arms
+should decide which of the two was to remain master of Peru.
+
+
+
+Book 5
+
+Chapter 3
+
+Dismay In Gasca's Camp--His Winter Quarters--Resumes His March--
+Crosses The Apurimac--Pizarro's Conduct In Cuzco--
+He Encamps Near The City--Rout Of Xaquixaguana
+
+1547--1548
+
+While the events recorded in the preceding chapter were passing,
+President Gasca had remained at Xauxa, awaiting further tidings from
+Centeno, little doubting that they would inform him of the total
+discomfiture of the rebels.  Great was his dismay, therefore, on learning
+the issue of the fatal conflict in Haurina,--that the royalists had been
+scattered far and wide before the sword of Pizarro, while their
+commander had vanished like an apparition,1 leaving the greatest
+uncertainty as to his fate.
+
+The intelligence spread general consternation among the soldiers,
+proportioned to their former confidence; and they felt it was almost
+hopeless to contend with a man who seemed protected by a charm that
+made him invincible against the greatest odds.  The president, however
+sore his disappointment, was careful to conceal it, while he endeavored
+to restore the spirits of his followers.  "They had been too sanguine," he
+said, "and it was in this way that Heaven rebuked their persumption.  Yet
+it was but in the usual course of events that Providence, when it designed
+to humble the guilty, should allow him to reach as high an elevation as
+possible, that his fall might be the greater!"
+
+But while Gasca thus strove to reassure the superstitious and the timid,
+he bent his mind, with his usual energy, to repair the injury which the
+cause had sustained by the defeat at Huarina.  He sent a detachment
+under Alvarado to Lima, to collect such of the royalists as had fled
+thither from the field of battle, and to dismantle the ships of their cannon,
+and bring them to the camp.  Another body was sent to Guamanga, about
+sixty leagues from Cuzco, for the similar purpose of protecting the
+fugitives, and also of preventing the Indian caciques from forwarding
+supplies to the insurgent army in Cuzco.  As his own forces now
+amounted to considerably more than any his opponent could bring
+against him, Gasca determined to break up his camp without further
+delay, and march on the Inca capital.2
+
+Quitting Xauxa, December 29, 1547, he passed through Guamanga, and
+after a severe march, rendered particularly fatiguing by the inclement
+state of the weather and the badness of the roads, he entered the province
+of Andaguaylas.  It was a fair and fruitful country, and since the road
+beyond would take him into the depths of a gloomy sierra, scarcely
+passable in the winter snows, Gasca resolved to remain in his present
+quarters until the severity of the season was mitigated.  As many of the
+troops had already contracted diseases from exposure to the incessant
+rains, he established a camp hospital; and the good president personally
+visited the quarters of the sick, ministering to their wants, and winning
+their hearts by his sympathy.3
+
+Meanwhile, the royal camp was strengthened by the continual arrival of
+reinforcements; for notwithstanding the shock that was caused
+throughout the country by the first tidings of Pizarro's victory, a little
+reflection convinced the people that the right was the strongest, and must
+eventually prevail.  There came, also, with these levies, several of the
+most distinguished captains in the country.  Centeno, burning to retrieve
+his late disgrace, after recovering from his illness, joined the camp with
+his followers from Lima.  Benalcazar, the conqueror of Quito, who, as
+the reader will remember, had shared in the defeat of Blasco Nunez in
+the north, came with another detachment; and was soon after followed by
+Valdivia, the famous conqueror of Chili, who, having returned to Peru to
+gather recruits for his expedition, had learned the state of the country,
+and had thrown himself, without hesitation, into the same scale with the
+president, though it brought him into collision with his old friend and
+comrade, Gonzalo Pizarro.  The arrival of this last ally was greeted with
+general rejoicing by the camp; for Valdivia, schooled in the Italian wars,
+was esteemed the most accomplished soldier in Peru; and Gasca
+complimented him by declaring "he would rather see him than a
+reinforcement of eight hundred men!" 4
+
+Besides these warlike auxiliaries, the president was attended by a train of
+ecclesiastics and civilians, such as was rarely found in the martial fields
+of Peru.  Among them were the bishops of Quito, Cuzco, and Lima, the
+four judges of the new Audience, and a considerable number of
+churchmen and monkish missionaries.5  However little they might serve
+to strengthen his arm in battle, their presence gave authority and
+something of a sacred character to the cause, which had their effect on
+the minds of the soldiers.
+
+The wintry season now began to give way before the mild influence of
+spring, which makes itself early felt in these tropical, but from their
+elevation temperate, regions; and Gasca, after nearly three months
+detention in Andaguaylas, mustered his levies for the final march upon
+Cuzco.6  Their whole number fell little short of two thousand,--the
+largest European force yet assembled in Peru.  Nearly half were provided
+with fire-arms; and infantry were more available than horse in the
+mountain countries which they were to traverse.  But his cavalry was also
+numerous, and he carried with him a train of eleven heavy guns.  The
+equipment and discipline of the troops were good; they were well
+provided with ammunition and military stores; and were led by officers
+whose names were associated with the most memorable achievements in
+the New World.  All who had any real interest in the weal of the country
+were to be found, in short, under the president's banner, making a
+striking contrast to the wild and reckless adventurers who now swelled
+the ranks of Pizarro.
+
+Gasca, who did not affect a greater knowledge of military affairs than he
+really possessed, had given the charge of his forces to Hinojosa, naming
+the Marshal Alvarado as second in command.  Valdivia, who came after
+these dispositions had been made, accepted a colonel's commission, with
+the understanding that he was to be consulted and employed in all
+matters of moment.7--Having completed his arrangements, the president
+broke up his camp in March, 1548, and moved upon Cuzco.
+
+The first obstacle of his progress was the river Abancay, the bridge over
+which had been broken down by the enemy.  But as there was no force to
+annoy them on the opposite bank, the army was not long in preparing a
+new bridge, and throwing it across the stream, which in this place had
+nothing formidable in its character.  The road now struck into the heart
+of a mountain region, where woods, precipices, and ravines were
+mingled together in a sort of chaotic confusion, with here and there a
+green and sheltered valley, glittering like an island of verdure amidst the
+wild breakers of a troubled ocean!  The bold peaks of the Andes, rising
+far above the clouds, were enveloped in snow, which, descending far
+down their sides, gave a piercing coldness to the winds that swept over
+their surface, until men and horses were benumbed and stiffened under
+their influence.  The roads, in these regions, were in some places so
+narrow and broken, as to be nearly impracticable for cavalry.  The
+cavaliers were compelled to dismount; and the president, with the rest,
+performed the journey on foot, so hazardous, that, even in later times, it
+has been no uncommon thing for the sure-footed mule to be precipitated,
+with its cargo of silver, thousands of feet down the sheer sides of a
+precipice.8
+
+By these impediments of the ground, the march was so retarded, that the
+troops seldom accomplished more than two leagues a day.9  Fortunately,
+the distance was not great; and the president looked with more
+apprehension to the passage of the Apurimac, which he was now
+approaching.  This river, one of the most formidable tributaries of the
+Amazon, rolls its broad waters through the gorges of the Cordilleras, that
+rise up like an immense rampart of rock on either side, presenting a
+natural barrier which it would be easy for an enemy to make good
+against a force much superior to his own.  The bridges over this river, as
+Gasca learned before his departure from Andaguaylas, had been all
+destroyed by Pizarro.  The president, accordingly, had sent to explore the
+banks of the stream, and determine the most eligible spot for
+reestablishing communications with the opposite side.
+
+The place selected was near the Indian village of Cotapampa, about nine
+leagues from Cuzco; for the river, though rapid and turbulent from being
+compressed within more narrow limits, was here less than two hundred
+paces in width; a distance, however, not inconsiderable.  Directions had
+been given to collect materials in large quantities in the neighborhood of
+this spot as soon as possible; and at the same time, in order to perplex the
+enemy and compel him to divide his forces, should he be disposed to
+resist, materials in smaller quantities were assembled on three other
+points of the river.  The officer stationed in the neighborhood of
+Cotapampa was instructed not to begin to lay the bridge, till the arrival
+of a sufficient force should accelerate the work, and insure its success.
+
+The structure in question, it should be remembered, was one of those
+suspension bridges formerly employed by the Incas, and still used in
+crossing the deep and turbulent rivers of South America.  They are made
+of osier withes, twisted into enormous cables, which, when stretched
+across the water, are attached to heavy blocks of masonry, or, where it
+will serve, to the natural rock.  Planks are laid transversely across these
+cables, and a passage is thus secured, which, notwithstanding the light
+and fragile appearance of the bridge, as it swings at an elevation
+sometimes of several hundred feet above the abyss, affords a tolerably
+safe means of conveyance for men, and even for such heavy burdens as
+artillery.10
+
+Notwithstanding the peremptory commands of Gasca, the officer
+intrusted with collecting the materials for the bridge was so anxious to
+have the honor of completing the work himself, that he commenced it at
+once.  The president, greatly displeased at learning this, quickened his
+march, in order to cover the work with his whole force.  But, while
+toiling through the mountain labyrinth, tidings were brought him that a
+party of the enemy had demolished the small portion of the bridge
+already made, by cutting the cables on the opposite bank.  Valdivia,
+accordingly, hastened forward at the head of two hundred arquebusiers,
+while the main body of the army followed with as much speed as
+practicable.
+
+That officer, on reaching the spot, found that the interruption had been
+caused by a small party of Pizarro's followers, not exceeding twenty in
+number, assisted by a stronger body of Indians.  He at once caused
+balsas, broad and clumsy barks, or rather rafts, of the country, to be
+provided, and by this means passed his men over, without opposition, to
+the other side of the river.  The enemy, disconcerted by the arrival of
+such a force, retreated and made the best of their way to report the affair
+to their commander at Cuzco.  Meanwhile, Valdivia, who saw the
+Importance of every moment in the present crisis, pushed forward the
+work with the greatest vigor.  Through all that night his weary troops
+continued the labor, which was already well advanced, when the
+president and his battalions, emerging from the passes of the Cordilleras,
+presented themselves at sunrise on the opposite bank.
+
+Little time was given for repose, as all felt assured that the success of
+their enterprise hung on the short respite now given them by the
+improvident enemy.  The president, with his principal officers, took part
+in the labor with the common soldiers;11 and before ten o'clock in the
+evening, Gasca had the satisfaction to see the bridge so well secured, that
+the leading files of the army, unencumbered by their baggage, might
+venture to cross it.  A short time sufficed to place several hundred men
+on the other bank.  But here a new difficulty, not less formidable than
+that of the river, presented itself to the troops.  The ground rose up with
+an abrupt, almost precipitous, swell from the river-side, till, in the
+highest peaks, it reached an elevation of several thousand feet.  This
+steep ascent, though not to its full height, indeed, was now to be
+surmounted.  The difficulties of the ground, broken up into fearful
+chasms and water-courses, and tangled with thickets, were greatly
+increased by the darkness of the night; and the soldiers, as they toiled
+slowly upward, were filled with apprehension, akin to fear, from the
+uncertainty whether each successive step might not bring them into an
+ambuscade, for which the ground was so favorable.  More than once, the
+Spaniards were thrown into a panic by false reports that the enemy were
+upon them.  But Hinojosa and Valdivia were at hand to rally their men,
+and cheer them on, until, at length, before dawn broke, the bold cavaliers
+and their followers placed themselves on the highest point traversed by
+the road, where they waited the arrival of the president.  This was not
+long delayed; and in the course of the following morning, the royalists
+were already in sufficient strength to bid defiance to their enemy.
+
+The passage of the river had been effected with less loss than might have
+been expected, considering the darkness of the night, and the numbers
+that crowded over the aerial causeway.  Some few, indeed, fell into the
+water, and were drowned; and more than sixty horses, in the attempt to
+swim them across the river, were hurried down the current, and dashed
+against the rocks below.12  It still required time to bring up the heavy
+train of ordnance and the military wagons; and the president encamped
+on the strong ground which he now occupied, to await their arrival, and
+to breathe his troops after their extraordinary efforts.  In these quarters
+we must leave him, to acquaint the reader with the state of things in the
+insurgent army, and with the cause of its strange remissness in guarding
+the passes of the Apurimac.13
+
+From the time of Pizarro's occupation of Cuzco, he had lived in careless
+luxury in the midst of his followers, like a soldier of fortune in the hour
+of prosperity; enjoying the present, with as little concern for the future as
+if the crown of Peru were already fixed irrevocably upon his head.  It
+was otherwise with Carbajal.  He looked on the victory at Huarina as the
+commencement, not the close, of the struggle for empire; and he was
+indefatigable in placing his troops in the best condition for maintaining
+their present advantage.  At the first streak of dawn, the veteran might be
+seen mounted on his mule, with the garb and air of a common soldier,
+riding about in the different quarters of the capital, sometimes
+superintending the manufacture of arms, or providing military stores, and
+sometimes drilling his men, for he was most careful always to maintain
+the strictest discipline.14  His restless spirit seemed to find no pleasure
+but in incessant action; living, as he had always done, in the turmoil of
+military adventure, he had no relish for any thing unconnected with war,
+and in the city saw only the materials for a well organized camp.
+
+With these feelings, he was much dissatisfied at the course taken by his
+younger leader, who now professed his intention to abide where he was,
+and, when the enemy advanced, to give him battle.  Carbajal advised a
+very different policy.  He had not that full confidence, it would seem, in
+the loyalty of Pizarro's partisans, at least, not of those who had once
+followed the banner of Centeno.  These men, some three hundred in
+number, had been in a manner compelled to take service under Pizarro.
+They showed no heartiness in the cause, and the veteran strongly urged
+his commander to disband them at once; since it was far better to go to
+battle with a few faithful followers than with a host of the false and faint-
+hearted.
+
+But Carbajal thought, also, that his leader was not sufficiently strong in
+numbers to encounter his opponent, supported as he was by the best
+captains of Peru.  He advised, accordingly, that he should abandon
+Cuzco, carrying off all the treasure, provisions, and stores of every kind
+from the city, which might, in any way, serve the necessities of the
+royalists.  The latter, on their arrival, disappointed by the poverty of a
+place where they had expected to find so much booty, would become
+disgusted with the service.  Pizarro, meanwhile, might take refuge with
+his men in the neighboring fastnesses, where, familiar with the ground, it
+would be easy to elude the enemy; and if the latter persevered in the
+pursuit, with numbers diminished by desertion, it would not be difficult
+in the mountain passes to find an opportunity for assailing him at
+advantage.--Such was the wary counsel of the old warrior.  But it was not
+to the taste of his fiery commander, who preferred to risk the chances of
+a battle, rather than turn his back on a foe.
+
+Neither did Pizarro show more favor to a proposition, said to have been
+made by the Licentiate Cepeda,--that he should avail himself of his late
+success to enter into negotiations with Gasca.  Such advice, from the
+man who had so recently resisted all overtures of the president, could
+only have proceeded from a conviction, that the late victory placed
+Pizarro on a vantage-ground for demanding terms far better than would
+have been before conceded to him.  It may be that subsequent experience
+had also led him to distrust the fidelity of Gonzalo's followers, or,
+possibly, the capacity of their chief to conduct them through the present
+crisis.  Whatever may have been the motives of the slippery counsellor,
+Pizarro gave little heed to the suggestion, and even showed some
+resentment, as the matter was pressed on him.  In every contest, with
+Indian or European, whatever had been the odds, he had come off
+victorious.  He was not now for the first time to despond; and he
+resolved to remain in Cuzco, and hazard all on the chances of a battle.
+There was something in the hazard itself captivating to his bold and
+chivalrous temper.  In this, too, he was confirmed by some of the
+cavaliers who had followed him through all his fortunes; reckless young
+adventurers, who, like himself, would rather risk all on a single throw of
+the dice, than adopt the cautious, and, as it seemed to them, timid, policy
+of graver counsellors.  It was by such advisers, then, that Pizarro's future
+course was to be shaped.15
+
+Such was the state of affairs in Cuzco, when Pizarro's soldiers returned
+with the tidings, that a detachment of the enemy had crossed the
+Apurimac, and were busy in reestablishing the bridge.  Carbajal saw at
+once the absolute necessity of maintaining this pass.  "It is my affair," he
+said; "I claim to be employed on this service.  Give me but a hundred
+picked men, and I will engage to defend the pass against an army, and
+bring back the chaplain--the name by which the president was known in
+the rebel camp---a prisoner to Cuzco." 16  "I cannot spare you, father,"
+said Gonzalo, addressing him by this affectionate epithet, which he
+usually applied to his aged follower,17 "I cannot spare you so far from
+my own person"; and he gave the commission to Juan de Acosta, a
+young cavalier warmly attached to his commander, and who had given
+undoubted evidence of his valor on more than one occasion, but who, as
+the event proved, was signally deficient in the qualities demanded for
+so critical an undertaking as the present.  Acosta, accordingly, was
+placed at the head of two hundred mounted musketeers, and, after much
+wholesome counsel from Carbajal, set out on his expedition.
+
+But he soon forgot the veteran's advice, and moved at so dull a pace over
+the difficult roads, that, although the distance was not more than nine
+leagues, he found, on his arrival, the bridge completed, and so large a
+body of the enemy already crossed, that he was in no strength to attack
+them.  Acosta did, indeed, meditate an ambuscade by night; but the
+design was betrayed by a deserter, and he contented himself with
+retreating to a safe distance, and sending for a further reinforcement from
+Cuzco.  Three hundred men were promptly detached to his support; but
+when they arrived, the enemy was already planted in full force on the
+crest of the eminence.  The golden opportunity was irrecoverably lost;
+and the disconsolate cavalier rode back in all haste to report the failure
+of his enterprise to his commander in Cuzco.18
+
+The only question now to be decided was as to the spot where Gonzalo
+'Pizarro should give battle to his enemies.  He determined at once to
+abandon the capital, and wait for his opponents in the neighboring valley
+of Xaquixaguana.  It was about five leagues distant, and the reader may
+remember it as the place where Francis Pizarro burned the Peruvian
+general Challcuchima, on his first occupation of Cuzco.  The valley,
+fenced round by the lofty rampart of the Andes, was, for the most part,
+green and luxuriant, affording many picturesque points of view; and,
+from the genial temperature of the climate, had been a favorite summer
+residence of the Indian nobles, many of whose pleasure-houses still
+dotted the sides of the mountains.  A river, or rather stream, of no great
+volume, flowed through one end of this inclosure, and the neighboring
+soil was so wet and miry as to have the character of a morass.
+
+Here the rebel commander arrived, after a tedious march over roads not
+easily traversed by his train of heavy wagons and artillery.  His forces
+amounted in all to about nine hundred men, with some half-dozen pieces
+of ordnance.  It was a well-appointed body, and under excellent
+discipline, for it had been schooled by the strictest martinet in the
+Peruvian service.  But it was the misfortune of Pizarro that his army was
+composed, in part, at least, of men on whose attachment to his cause he
+could not confidently rely.  This was a deficiency which no courage nor
+skill in the leader could supply.
+
+On entering the valley, Pizarro selected the eastern quarter of it, towards
+Cuzco, as the most favorable spot for his encampment.  It was crossed by
+the stream above mentioned, and he stationed his army in such a manner,
+that, while one extremity of the camp rested on a natural barrier formed
+by the mountain cliffs that here rose up almost perpendicularly, the other
+was protected by the river.  While it was scarcely possible, therefore, to
+assail his flanks, the approaches in front were so extremely narrowed by
+these obstacles, that it would not be easy to overpower him by numbers
+in that direction.  In the rear, his communications remained open with
+Cuzco, furnishing a ready means for obtaining supplies.  Having secured
+this strong position, he resolved patiently to wait the assault of the
+enemy.19
+
+Meanwhile, the royal army had been toiling up the steep sides of the
+Cordilleras, until, at the close of the third day, the president had the
+satisfaction to find himself surrounded by his whole force, with their
+guns and military stores.  Having now sufficiently refreshed his men, he
+resumed his march, and all went forward with the buoyant confidence of
+bringing their quarrel with the tyrant, as Pizarro was called, to a speedy
+issue.
+
+Their advance was slow, as in the previous part of the march, for the
+ground was equally embarrassing.  It was not long, however, before the
+president learned that his antagonist had pitched his camp in the
+neighboring valley of Xaquixaguana.  Soon afterward, two friars, sent by
+Gonzalo himself, appeared in the army, for the ostensible purpose of
+demanding a sight of the powers with which Gasca was intrusted.  But as
+their conduct gave reason to suspect they were spies, the president
+caused the holy men to be seized, and refused to allowed them to return
+to Pizarro.  By an emissary of his own, whom he despatched to the rebel
+chief, he renewed the assurance of pardon already given him, in case he
+would lay down his arms and submit.  Such an act of generosity, at this
+late hour, must be allowed to be highly creditable to Gasca, believing, as
+he probably did, that the game was in his own hands.--It is a pity that the
+anecdote does not rest on the best authority.20
+
+After a march of a couple of days, the advanced guard of the royalists
+came suddenly on the outposts of the insurgents, from whom they had
+been concealed by a thick mist, and a slight skirmish took place between
+them.  At length, on the morning of the eighth of April, the royal army,
+turning the crest of the lofty range that belts round the lovely valley of
+Xaquixaguana, beheld far below on the opposite side the glittering lines
+of the enemy, with their white pavilions, looking like clusters of wild
+fowl nestling among the cliffs of the mountains.  And still further off
+might be descried a host of Indian warriors, showing gaudily in their
+variegated costumes; for the natives, in this part of the country, with little
+perception of their true interests, manifested great zeal in the cause of
+Pizarro.
+
+Quickening their step, the royal army now hastily descended the steep
+sides of the sierra; and notwithstanding every effort of their officers, they
+moved in so little order, each man picking his way as he could, that the
+straggling column presented many a vulnerable point to the enemy; and
+the descent would not have been accomplished without considerable
+loss, had Pizarro's cannon been planted on any of the favorable positions
+which the ground afforded.  But that commander, far from attempting to
+check the president's approach, remained doggedly in the strong position
+he had occupied, with the full confidence that his adversaries would not
+hesitate to assail it, strong as it was, in the same manner as they had done
+at Huarina.21
+
+Yet he did not omit to detach a corps of arquebusiers to secure a
+neighboring eminence or spur of the Cordilleras, which in the hands of
+the enemy might cause some annoyance to his own camp, while it
+commanded still more effectually the ground soon to be occupied by the
+assailants.  But his manoeuvre was noticed by Hinojosa; and he defeated
+it by sending a stronger detachment of the royal musketeers, who
+repulsed the rebels, and, after a short skirmish, got possession of the
+heights.  Gasca's general profited by this success to plant a small battery
+of cannon on the eminence, from which, although the distance was too
+great for him to do much execution, he threw some shot into the hostile
+camp.  One ball, indeed, struck down two men, one of them Pizarro's
+page, killing a horse, at the same time, which he held by the bridle; and
+the chief instantly ordered the tents to be struck, considering that they
+afforded too obvious a mark for the artillery.22
+
+Meanwhile, the president's forces had descended into the valley, and as
+they came on the plain were formed into line by their officers.  The
+ground occupied by the army was somewhat lower than that of their
+enemy, whose shot, as discharged, from time to time, from his batteries,
+passed over their heads.  Information was now brought by a deserter, one
+of Centeno's old followers, that Pizarro was getting ready for a night
+attack.  The president, in consequence, commanded his whole force to be
+drawn up in battle array, prepared, at any instant, to repulse the assault.
+But if such were meditated by the insurgent chief, he abandoned it,--and,
+as it is said, from a distrust of the fidelity of some of the troops, who,
+under cover of the darkness, he feared, would go over to the opposite
+side.  If this be true, he must have felt the full force of Carbajal's
+admonition, when too late to profit by it.  The unfortunate commander
+was in the situation of some bold, high-mettled cavalier, rushing to battle
+on a war-horse whose tottering joints threaten to give way under him at
+every step, and leave his rider to the mercy of his enemies!
+
+The president's troops stood to their arms the greater part of the night,
+although the air from the mountains was so keen, that it was with
+difficulty they could hold their lances in their hands.23  But before the
+rising sun had kindled into a glow the highest peaks of the sierra, both
+camps were in motion, and busily engaged in preparations for the
+combat.  The royal army was formed into two battalions of infantry, one
+to attack the enemy in front, and the other, if possible, to operate on his
+flank.  These battalions were protected by squadrons of horse on the
+wings and in the rear, while reserves both of horse and arquebusiers were
+stationed to act as occasion might require.  The dispositions were made
+in so masterly a manner, as to draw forth a hearty eulogium from old
+Carbajal, who exclaimed, "Surely the Devil or Valdivia must be among
+them!" an undeniable compliment to the latter, since the speaker was
+ignorant of that commander's presence in the camp.24
+
+Gasca, leaving the conduct of the battle to his officers, withdrew to the
+rear with his train of clergy and licentiates, the last of whom did not
+share in the ambition of their rebel brother, Cepeda, to break a lance in
+the field.
+
+Gonzalo Pizarro formed his squadron in the same manner as he had done
+on the plains of Huarina; except that the increased number of his horse
+now enabled him to cover both flanks of his infantry.  It was still on his
+fire-arms, however, that he chiefly relied.  As the ranks were formed, he
+rode among them, encouraging his men to do their duty like brave
+cavaliers, and true soldiers of the Conquest.  Pizarro was superbly
+armed, as usual, and wore a complete suit of mail, of the finest
+manufacture, which, as well as his helmet, was richly inlaid with gold.25
+He rode a chestnut horse of great strength and spirit, and as he galloped
+along the line, brandishing his lance, and displaying his easy
+horsemanship.  he might be thought to form no bad personification of the
+Genius of Chivalry.  To complete his dispositions he ordered Cepeda to
+lead up the infantry for the licentiate seems to have had a larger share in
+the conduct of his affairs of late, or at least in the present military
+arrangements, than Carbajal.  The latter, indeed, whether from disgust at
+the course taken by his leader, or from a distrust, which, it is said, he did
+not affect to conceal, of the success of the present operations, disclaimed
+all responsibility for them, and chose to serve rather as a private cavalier
+than as a commander.26  Yet Cepeda, as the event showed, was no less
+shrewd in detecting the coming ruin.
+
+When he had received his orders from Pizarro he rode forward as if to
+select the ground for his troops to occupy; and in doing so disappeared
+for a few moments behind a projecting cliff.  He soon reappeared,
+however, and was seen galloping at full speed across the plain.  His men
+looked with astonishment, yet not distrusting his motives, till, as he
+continued his course direct towards the enemy's lines, his treachery
+became apparent.  Several pushed forward to overtake him, and among
+them a cavalier, better mounted than Cepeda.  The latter rode a horse of
+no great strength or speed, quite unfit for this critical manoeuvre of his
+master.  The animal, was, moreover, encumbered by the weight of the
+caparisons with which his ambitious rider had loaded him, so that, on
+reaching a piece of miry ground that lay between the armies, his pace
+was greatly retarded.27  Cepeda's pursuers rapidly gained on him, and
+the cavalier above noticed came, at length, so near as to throw a lance at
+the fugitive, which, wounding him in the thigh, pierced his horse's flank,
+and they both came headlong to the ground.  It would have fared ill with
+the licentiate, in this emergency, but fortunately a small party of troopers
+on the other side, who had watched the chase, now galloped briskly
+forward to the rescue, and, beating off his pursuers, they recovered
+Cepeda from the mire, and bore him to the president's quarters.
+
+He was received by Gasca with the greatest satisfaction,--so great, that,
+according to one chronicler, he did not disdain to show it by saluting the
+licentiate on the cheek.28  The anecdote is scarcely reconcilable with the
+characters and relations of the parties, or with the president's subsequent
+conduct.  Gasca, however, recognized the full value of his prize, and the
+effect which his desertion at such a time must have on the spirits of the
+rebels.  Cepeda's movement, so unexpected by his own party, was the
+result of previous deliberation, as he had secretly given assurance, it is
+said, to the prior of Arequipa, then in the royal camp, that, if Gonzalo
+Pizarro could not be induced to accept the pardon offered him, he would
+renounce his cause.29  The time selected by the crafty counsellor for
+doing so was that most fatal to the interests of his commander.
+
+The example of Cepeda was contagious.  Garcilasso de la Vega, father of
+the historian, a cavalier of old family, and probably of higher
+consideration than any other in Pizarro's party, put spurs to his horse, at
+the same time with the licentiate, and rode over to the enemy.  Ten or a
+dozen of the arquebusiers followed in the same direction, and succeeded
+in placing themselves under the protection of the advanced guard of the
+royalists.
+
+Pizarro stood aghast at this desertion, in so critical a juncture, of those in
+whom he had most trusted.  He was, for a moment, bewildered.  The very
+ground on which he stood seemed to be crumbling beneath him.  With
+this state of feeling among his soldiers, he saw that every minute of delay
+was fatal.  He dared not wait for the assault, as he had intended, in his
+strong position, but instantly gave the word to advance.  Gasca's general,
+Hinojosa, seeing the enemy in motion, gave similar orders to his own
+troops.  Instantly the skirmishers and arquebusiers on the flanks moved
+rapidly forward, the artillery prepared to open their fire, and "the whole
+army," says the president in his own account of the affair, "advanced
+with steady step and perfect determination." 30
+
+But before a shot was fired, a column of arquebusiers, composed chiefly
+of Centeno's followers, abandoned their post, and marched directly over
+to the enemy.  A squadron of horse, sent in pursuit of them, followed
+their example.  The president instantly commanded his men to halt,
+unwilling to spill blood unnecessarily, as the rebel host was like to fall to
+pieces of itself.
+
+Pizarro's faithful adherents were seized with a panic, as they saw
+themselves and their leader thus betrayed into the enemy's hands.
+Further resistance was useless.  Some threw down their arms and fled in
+the direction of Cuzco.  Others sought to escape to the mountains; and
+some crossed to the opposite side, and surrendered themselves prisoners,
+hoping it was not too late to profit by the promises of grace.  The Indian
+allies, on seeing the Spaniards falter, had been the first to go off the
+ground.31
+
+Pizarro, amidst the general wreck, found himself left with only a few
+cavaliers who disdained to fly.  Stunned by the unexpected reverse of
+fortune, the unhappy chief could hardly comprehend his situation.
+"What remains for us?" said he to Acosta, one of those who still adhered
+to him.  "Fall on the enemy, since nothing else is left," answered the non-
+hearted soldier, "and die like Romans!" "Better to die like Christians,"
+replied his commander; and, slowly turning his horse, he rode off in the
+direction of the royal army.32
+
+He had not proceeded far, when he was met by an officer, to whom, after
+ascertaining his name and rank, Pizarro delivered up his sword, and
+yielded himself prisoner.  The officer, overjoyed at his prize, conducted
+him, at once, to the president's quarters.  Gasca was on horseback,
+surrounded by his captains, some of whom, when they recognized the
+person of the captive, had the grace to withdraw, that they might not
+witness his humiliation.33  Even the best of them, with a sense of right
+on their side, may have felt some touch of compunction at the thought
+that their desertion had brought their benefactor to this condition.
+
+Pizarro kept his seat in his saddle, but, as he approached, made a
+respectful obeisance to the president, which the latter acknowledged by a
+cold salute.  Then, addressing his prisoner in a tone of severity, Gasca
+abruptly inquired,--"Why he had thrown the country into such confusion;
+--raising the banner of revolt; killing the viceroy; usurping the
+government; and obstinately refusing the offers of grace that had been
+repeatedly made him?"
+
+Gonzalo attempted to justify himself by referring the fate of the viceroy
+to his misconduct, and his own usurpation, as it was styled, to the free
+election of the people, as well as that of the Royal Audience.  "It was my
+family," he said, "who conquered the country; and, as their
+representative here, I felt I had a right to the government."  To this Gasca
+replied, in a still severer tone, "Your brother did, indeed, conquer the
+land; and for this the emperor was pleased to raise both him and you
+from the dust.  He lived and died a true and loyal subject; and it only
+makes your ingratitude to your sovereign the more heinous."  Then,
+seeing his prisoner about to reply, the president cut short the conference,
+ordering him into close confinement.  He was committed to the charge of
+Centeno, who had sought the office, not from any unworthy desire to
+gratify his revenge,--for he seems to have had a generous nature,--but for
+the honorable purpose of ministering to the comfort of the captive.
+Though held in strict custody by this officer, therefore, Pizarro was
+treated with the deference due to his rank, and allowed every indulgence
+by his keeper, except his freedom.34
+
+In this general wreck of their fortunes, Francisco de Carbajal fared no
+better than his chief.  As he saw the soldiers deserting their posts and
+going over to the enemy, one after another, he coolly hummed the words
+of his favorite old ballad,--
+
+"The wind blows the hairs off my head, mother!"
+
+But when he found the field nearly empty, and his stout-hearted
+followers vanished like a wreath of smoke, he felt it was time to provide
+for his own safety.  He knew there could be no favor for him; and,
+putting spurs to his horse, he betook himself to flight with all the speed
+he could make.  He crossed the stream that flowed, as already
+mentioned, by the camp, but, in scaling the opposite bank, which was
+steep and stony, his horse, somewhat old, and oppressed by the weight of
+his rider, who was large and corpulent, lost his footing and fell with him
+into the water.  Before he could extricate himself, Carbajal was seized by
+some of his own followers, who hoped, by such a prize, to make their
+peace with the victor, and hurried off towards the president's quarters.
+
+The convoy was soon swelled by a number of the common file from the
+royal army, some of whom had long arrears to settle with the prisoner;
+and, not content with heaping reproaches and imprecations on his head,
+they now threatened to proceed to acts of personal violence, which
+Carbajal, far from deprecating, seemed rather to court, as the speediest
+way of ridding himself of life.35  When he approached the president's
+quarters, Centeno, who was near, rebuked the disorderly rabble, and
+compelled them to give way.  Carbajal, on seeing this, with a respectful
+air demanded to whom he was indebted for this courteous protection.  To
+which his ancient comrade replied, "Do you not know me?  Diego
+Centeno!" "I crave your pardon," said the veteran, sarcastically alluding
+to his long flight in the Charcas, and his recent defeat at Huarina; "it is so
+long since I have seen any thing but your back, that I had forgotten your
+face!" 36
+
+Among the president's suite was the martial bishop of Cuzco, who, it will
+be remembered, had shared with Centeno in the disgrace of his defeat.
+His brother had been taken by Carbajal, in his flight from the field, and
+instantly hung up by that fierce chief, who, as we have had more than
+one occasion to see, was no respecter of persons.  The bishop now
+reproached him with his brother's murder, and, incensed by his cool
+replies, was ungenerous enough to strike the prisoner on the face.
+Carbajal made no attempt at resistance.  Nor would he return a word to
+the queries put to him by Gasca; but, looking haughtily round on the
+circle, maintained a contemptuous silence.  The president, seeing that
+nothing further was to be gained from his captive, ordered him, together
+with Acosta, and the other cavaliers who had surrendered, into strict
+custody, until their fate should be decided.37
+
+Gasca's next concern was to send an officer to Cuzco, to restrain his
+partisans from committing excesses in consequence of the late victory, if
+victory that could be called, where not a blow had been struck.  Every
+thing belonging to the vanquished, their tents, arms, ammunition, and
+military stores, became the property of the victors.  Their camp was well
+victualled, furnishing a seasonable supply to the royalists, who had
+nearly expended their own stock of provisions.  There was, moreover,
+considerable booty in the way of plate and money; for Pizarro's men, as
+was not uncommon in those turbulent times, went, many of them, to the
+war with the whole of their worldly wealth, not knowing of any safe
+place in which to bestow it.  An anecdote is told of one of Gasca's
+soldiers, who, seeing a mule running over the field, with a large pack on
+his back, seized the animal, and mounted him, having first thrown away
+the burden, supposing it to contain armour, or something of little worth.
+Another soldier, more shrewd, picked up the parcel, as his share of the
+spoil, and found it contained several thousand gold ducats!   It was the
+fortune of war.38
+
+Thus terminated the battle, or rather rout, of Xaquixaguana.  The number
+of killed and wounded--for some few perished in the pursuit-was not
+great; according to most accounts, not exceeding fifteen killed on the
+rebel side, and one only on that of the royalists!  and that one by the
+carelessness of a comrade.39  Never was there a cheaper victory; so
+bloodless a termination of a fierce and bloody rebellion!  It was gained
+not so much by the strength of the victors as by the weakness of the
+vanquished.  They fell to pieces of their own accord, because they had no
+sure ground to stand on.  The arm, not nerved by the sense of right,
+became powerless in the hour of battle.  It was better that they should
+thus be overcome by moral force than by a brutal appeal to arms.  Such a
+victory was more in harmony with the beneficent character of the
+conqueror and of his cause.  It was the triumph of order; the best homage
+to law and justice.
+
+
+Book 5
+
+Chapter 4
+
+Execution Of Carbajal--Gonzalo Pizarro Beheaded--Spoils Of Victory-
+Wise Reforms By Gasca--He Returns To Spain-
+His Death And Character
+
+1548--1550
+
+It was now necessary to decide on the fate of the prisoners; and Alonso
+de Alvarado, with the Licentiate Cianca, one of the new Royal Audience,
+was instructed to prepare the process.  It did not require a long time.  The
+guilt of the prisoners was too manifest, taken, as they had been, with
+arms in their hands.  They were all sentenced to be executed, and their
+estates were confiscated to the use of the Crown.  Gonzalo Pizarro was
+to be beheaded, and Carbajal to be drawn and quartered.  No mercy was
+shown to him who had shown none to others.  There was some talk of
+deferring the execution till the arrival of the troops in Cuzco; but the fear
+of disturbances from those friendly to Pizarro determined the president
+to carry the sentence into effect the following day, on the field of battle.1
+
+When his doom was communicated to Carbajal, he heard it with his
+casual indifference.  "They can but kill me," he said, as if he had already
+settled the matter in his own mind.2  During the day, many came to see
+him in his confinement; some to upbraid him with his cruelties; but most,
+from curiosity to see the fierce warrior who had made his name so
+terrible through the land.  He showed no unwillingness to talk with them,
+though it was in those sallies of caustic humor in which he usually
+indulged at the expense of his hearer.  Among these visitors was a
+cavalier of no note, whose life, it appears, Carbajal had formerly spared,
+when in his power.  This person expressed to the prisoner his strong
+desire to serve him; and as he reiterated his professions, Carbajal cut
+them short by exclaiming,--"And what service can you do me?  Can you
+set me free?  If you cannot do that, you can do nothing.  If I spared your
+life, as you say, it was probably because I did not think it worth while to
+take it."
+
+Some piously disposed persons urged him to see a priest, if it were only
+to unburden his conscience before leaving the world.  "But of what use
+would that be?" asked Carbajal.  "I have nothing that lies heavy on my
+conscience, unless it be, indeed, the debt of half a real to a shopkeeper in
+Seville, which I forgot to pay before leaving the country!" 3
+
+He was carried to execution on a hurdle, or rather in a basket, drawn by
+two mules.  His arms were pinioned, and, as they forced his bulky body
+into this miserable conveyance, he exclaimed,---"Cradles for infants, and
+a cradle for the old man too, it seems!" 4  Notwithstanding the
+disinclination he had manifested to a confessor, he was attended by
+several ecclesiastics on his way to the gallows; and one of them
+repeatedly urged him to give some token of penitence at this solemn
+hour, if it were only by repeating the Pater Noster and Ave Maria.
+Carbajal, to rid himself of the ghostly father's importunity, replied by
+coolly repeating the words, "Pater Noster," "Ave Maria"!  He then
+remained obstinately silent.  He died, as he had lived, with a jest, or
+rather a scoff, upon his lips.5
+
+Francisco de Carbajal was one of the most extraordinary characters of
+these dark and turbulent times; the more extraordinary from his great
+age; for, at the period of his death, he was in his eighty-fourth year;--an
+age when the bodily powers, and, fortunately, the passions, are usually
+blunted; when, in the witty words of the French moralist, "We flatter
+ourselves we are leaving our vices, whereas it is our vices that are
+leaving us." 6  But the fires of youth glowed fierce and unquenchable in
+the bosom of Carbajal.
+
+The date of his birth carries us back towards the middle of the fifteenth
+century, before the times of Ferdinand and Isabella.  He was of obscure
+parentage, and born, as it is said, at Arevalo.  For forty years he served in
+the Italian wars, under the most illustrious captains of the day, Gonsalvo
+de Cordova, Navarro, and the Colonnas.  He was an ensign at the battle
+of Ravenna; witnessed the capture of Francis the First at Pavia; and
+followed the banner of the ill-starred Bourbon at the sack of Rome.  He
+got no gold for his share of the booty, on this occasion, but simply the
+papers of a notary's office, which, Carbajal shrewdly thought, would be
+worth gold to him.  And so it proved; for the notary was fain to redeem
+them at a price which enabled the adventurer to cross the seas to Mexico,
+and seek his fortune in the New World.  On the insurrection of the
+Peruvians, he was sent to the support of Francis Pizarro, and was
+rewarded by that chief with a grant of land in Cuzco.  Here he remained
+for several years, busily employed in increasing his substance; for the
+love of lucre was a ruling passion in his bosom.  On the arrival of Vaca
+de Castro, we find him doing good service under the royal banner; and at
+the breaking out of the great rebellion under Gonzalo Pizarro, he
+converted his property into gold, and prepared to return to Castile.  He
+seemed to have a presentiment that to remain where he was would be
+fatal.  But, although he made every effort to leave Peru, he was
+unsuccessful, for the viceroy had laid an embargo on the shipping.7  He
+remained in the country, therefore, and took service, as we have seen,
+though reluctantly, under Pizarro.  It was his destiny.
+
+The tumultuous life on which he now entered roused all the slumbering
+passions of his soul, which lay there, perhaps unconsciously to himself;
+cruelty, avarice, revenge.  He found ample exercise for them in the war
+with his countrymen; for civil war is proverbially the most sanguinary
+and ferocious of all.  The atrocities recorded of Carbajal, in his new
+career, and the number of his victims, are scarcely credible.  For the
+honor of humanity, we may trust the accounts are greatly exaggerated;
+but that he should have given rise to them at all is sufficient to consign
+his name to infamy.8
+
+He even took a diabolical pleasure, it is said, in amusing himself with the
+sufferings of his victims, and in the hour of execution would give
+utterance to frightful jests, that made them taste more keenly the
+bitterness of death!  He had a sportive vein, if such it could be called,
+which he freely indulged on every occasion.  Many of his sallies were
+preserved by the soldiery; but they are, for the most part, of a coarse,
+repulsive character, flowing from a mind familiar with the weak and
+wicked side of humanity, and distrusting every other.  He had his jest for
+every thing,--for the misfortunes of others, and for his own.  He looked
+on life as a farce,--though he too often made it a tragedy.
+
+Carbajal must be allowed one virtue; that of fidelity to his party.  This
+made him less tolerant to perfidy in others.  He was never known to
+show mercy to a renegade.  This undeviating fidelity, though to a bad
+cause, may challenge something like a feeling of respect, where fidelity
+was so rare.9
+
+As a military man, Carbajal takes a high rank among the soldiers of the
+New World.  He was strict, even severe, in enforcing discipline, so that
+he was little loved by his followers.  Whether he had the genius for
+military combinations requisite for conducting war on an extended scale
+may be doubted; but in the shifts and turns of guerilla warfare he was
+unrivalled.  Prompt, active, and persevering, he was insensible to danger
+or fatigue, and, after days spent in the saddle, seemed to attach little
+value to the luxury of a bed.10
+
+He knew familiarly every mountain pass, and, such were the sagacity and
+the resources displayed in his roving expeditions, that he was vulgarly
+believed to be attended by a familiar.11  With a character so
+extraordinary, with powers prolonged so far beyond the usual term of
+humanity, and passions so fierce in one tottering on the verge of the
+grave, it was not surprising that many fabulous stories should be eagerly
+circulated respecting him, and that Carbajal should be clothed with
+mysterious terrors as a sort of supernatural being,--the demon of the
+Andes!
+
+Very different were the circumstances attending the closing scene of
+Gonzalo Pizarro.  At his request, no one had been allowed to visit him in
+his confinement.  He was heard pacing his tent during the greater part of
+the day, and when night came, having ascertained from Centeno that his
+execution was to take place on the following noon, he laid himself down
+to rest.  He did not sleep long, however, but soon rose, and continued to
+traverse his apartment, as if buried in meditation, till dawn.  He then sent
+for a confessor, and remained with him till after the hour of noon, taking
+little or no refreshment.  The officers of justice became impatient; but
+their eagerness was sternly rebuked by the soldiery, many of whom,
+having served under Gonzalo's banner, were touched with pity for his
+misfortunes.
+
+When the chieftain came forth to execution, he showed in his dress the
+same love of magnificence and display as in happier days.  Over his
+doublet he wore a superb cloak of yellow velvet, stiff with gold
+embroidery, while his head was protected by a cap of the same materials,
+richly decorated, in like manner, with ornaments of gold.12  In this
+gaudy attire he mounted his mule, and the sentence was so far relaxed
+that his arms were suffered to remain unshackled.  He was escorted by a
+goodly number of priests and friars, who held up the crucifix before his
+eyes, while he carried in his own hand an image of the Virgin.  She had
+ever been the peculiar object of Pizarro's devotion; so much so, that
+those who knew him best in the hour of his prosperity were careful, when
+they had a petition, to prefer it in the name of the blessed Mary.
+
+Pizarro's lips were frequently pressed to the emblem of his divinity,
+while his eyes were bent on the crucifix in apparent devotion, heedless of
+the objects around him.  On reaching the scaffold, he ascended it with a
+firm step, and asked leave to address a few words to the soldiery
+gathered round it.  "There are many among you," said he, "who have
+grown rich on my brother's bounty, and my own.  Yet, of all my riches,
+nothing remains to me but the garments I have on; and even these are not
+mine, but the property of the executioner.  I am without means, therefore,
+to purchase a mass for the welfare of my soul; and I implore you, by the
+remembrance of past benefits, to extend this charity to me when I am
+gone, that it may be well with you in the hour of death."  A profound
+silence reigned throughout the martial multitude, broken only by sighs
+and groans, as they listened to Pizarro's request; and it was faithfully
+responded to, since, after his death, masses were said in many of the
+towns for the welfare of the departed chieftain.
+
+Then, kneeling down before a crucifix placed on a table, Pizarro
+remained for some minutes absorbed in prayer; after which, addressing
+the soldier who was to act as the minister of justice, he calmly bade him
+"do his duty with a steady hand"  He refused to have his eyes bandaged,
+and, bending forward his neck, submitted it to the sword of the
+executioner, who struck off the head with a single blow, so true that the
+body remained for some moments in the same erect posture as in life.13
+The head was taken to Lima, where it was set in a cage or frame, and
+then fixed on a gibbet by the side of Carbajal's.  On it was placed a label,
+bearing,-"This is the head of the traitor Gonzalo Pizarro, who rebelled
+in Peru against his sovereign, and battled in the cause of tyranny and
+treason against the royal standard in the valley of Xaquixaguana." 14
+His large estates, including the rich mines in Potosi, were confiscated;
+his mansion in Lima was razed to the ground, the place strewed with salt,
+and a stone pillar set up, with an inscription interdicting any one from
+building on a spot which had been profaned by the residence of a traitor.
+
+Gonzalo's remains were not exposed to the indignities inflicted on
+Carbajal's, whose quarters were hung in chains on the four great roads
+leading to Cuzco.  Centeno saved Pizarro's body from being stripped, by
+redeeming his costly raiment from the executioner, and in this sumptuous
+shroud it was laid in the chapel of the convent of Our Lady of Mercy in
+Cuzco.  It was the same spot where, side by side, lay the bloody remains
+of the Almagros, father and son, who in like manner had perished by the
+hand of justice, and were indebted to private charity for their burial.  All
+these were now consigned "to the same grave," says the historian, with
+some bitterness, "as if Peru could not afford land enough for a burial-
+place to its conquerors." 15
+
+Gonzalo Pizarro had reached only his forty-second year at the time of his
+death,--being just half the space allotted to his follower Carbajal.  He
+was the youngest of the remarkable family to whom Spain was indebted
+for the acquisition of Peru.  He came over to the country with his brother
+Francisco, on the return of the latter from his visit to Castile.  Gonzalo
+was present in all the remarkable passages of the Conquest.  He
+witnessed the seizure of Atahuallpa, took an active part in suppressing
+the insurrection of the Incas, and especially in the reduction of Charcas.
+He afterwards led the disastrous expedition to the Amazon; and, finally,
+headed the memorable rebellion which ended so fatally to himself.
+There are but few men whose lives abound in such wild and romantic
+adventure, and, for the most part, crowned with success.  The space
+which he occupies in the page of history is altogether disproportioned to
+his talents.  It may be in some measure ascribed to fortune, but still more
+to those showy qualities which form a sort of substitute for mental talent,
+and which secured his popularity with the vulgar.
+
+He had a brilliant exterior; excelled in all martial exercises; rode well,
+fenced well, managed his lance to perfection, was a first-rate marksman
+with the arquebuse, and added the accomplishment of being an excellent
+draughtsman.  He was bold and chivalrous, even to temerity; courted
+adventure, and was always in the front of danger.  He was a knight-
+errant, in short, in the most extravagant sense of the term, and, "mounted
+on his favorite charger," says one who had often seen him, "made no
+more account of a squadron of Indians than of a swarm of flies."16
+
+While thus, by his brilliant exploits and showy manners, he captivated
+the imaginations of his countrymen, he won their hearts no less by his
+soldier-like frankness, his trust in their fidelity,--too often abused,-and
+his liberal largesses; for Pizarro, though avaricious of the property of
+others, was, like the Roman conspirator, prodigal of his own.  This was
+his portrait in happier days, when his heart had not been corrupted by
+success; for that some change was wrought on him by his prosperity is
+well attested.  His head was made giddy by his elevation; and it is proof
+of a want of talent equal to his success, that he knew not how to profit by
+it.  Obeying the dictates of his own rash judgment, he rejected the
+warnings of his wisest counsellors, and relied with blind confidence on
+his destiny.  Garcilasso imputes this to the malignant influence of the
+stars.17  But the superstitious chronicler might have better explained it
+by a common principle of human nature; by the presumption nourished
+by success; the insanity, as the Roman, or rather Grecian, proverb calls
+it, with which the gods afflict men when they design to ruin them.18
+
+Gonzalo was without education, except such as he had picked up in the
+rough school of war.  He had little even of that wisdom which springs
+from natural shrewdness and insight into character.  In all this he was
+inferior to his elder brothers, although he fully equalled them in
+ambition.  Had he possessed a tithe of their sagacity, he would not have
+madly persisted in rebellion, after the coming of the president.  Before
+this period, he represented the people.  Their interests and his were
+united.  He had their support, for he was contending for the redress of
+their wrongs.  When these were redressed by the government, there was
+nothing to contend for.  From that time, he was battling only for himself.
+The people had no part nor interest in the contest.  Without a common
+sympathy to bind them together, was it strange that they should fall off
+from him, like leaves in winter, and leave him exposed, a bare and
+sapless trunk, to the fury of the tempest?
+
+Cepeda, more criminal than Pizarro, since he had both superior
+education and intelligence, which he employed only to mislead his
+commander, did not long survive him.  He had come to the country in an
+office of high responsibility.  His first step was to betray the viceroy
+whom he was sent to support; his next was to betray the Audience with
+whom he should have acted; and lastly, he betrayed the leader whom he
+most affected to serve.  His whole career was treachery to his own
+government.  His life was one long perfidy.
+
+After his surrender, several of the cavaliers, disgusted at his coldblooded
+apostasy, would have persuaded Gasca to send him to execution along
+with his commander; but the president refused, in consideration of the
+signal service he had rendered the Crown by his defection.  He was put
+under arrest, however, and sent to Castile.  There he was arraigned for
+high-treason.  He made a plausible defence, and as he had friends at
+court, it is not improbable he would have been acquitted; but, before the
+trial was terminated, he died in prison.  It was the retributive justice not
+always to be found in the affairs of this world.19
+
+Indeed, it so happened, that several of those who had been most forward
+to abandon the cause of Pizarro survived their commander but a short
+time.  The gallant Centeno, and the Licentiate Carbajal, who deserted
+him near Lima, and bore the royal standard on the field of
+Xaquixaguana, both died within a year after Pizarro.  Hinojosa was
+assassinated but two years later in La Plata; and his old comrade
+Valdivia, after a series of brilliant exploits in Chili, which furnished her
+most glorious theme to the epic Muse of Castile, was cut off by the
+invincible warriors of Arauco.  The Manes of Pizarro were amply
+avenged.
+
+Acosta, and three or four other cavaliers who surrendered with Gonzalo,
+were sent to execution on the same day with their chief; and Gasca, on
+the morning following the dismal tragedy, broke up his quarters and
+marched with his whole army to Cuzco, where he was received by the
+politic people with the same enthusiasm which they had so recently
+shown to his rival.  He found there a number of the rebel army who bad
+taken refuge in the city after their late defeat, where they were
+immediately placed under arrest.  Proceedings, by Gasca's command,
+were instituted against them.  The principal cavaliers, to the number of
+ten or twelve, were executed; others were banished or sent to the galleys.
+The same rigorous decrees were passed against such as had fled and
+were not yet taken; and the estates of all were confiscated.  The estates of
+the rebels supplied a fund for the recompense of the loyal.20  The
+execution of justice may seem to have been severe; but Gasca was
+willing that the rod should fall heavily on those who had so often
+rejected his proffers of grace.  Lenity was wasted on a rude, licentious
+soldiery, who hardly recognized the existence of government, unless they
+felt its rigor.
+
+A new duty now devolved on the president,--that of rewarding his
+faithful followers,--not less difficult, as it proved, than that of punishing
+the guilty.  The applicants were numerous; since every one who had
+raised a finger in behalf of the government claimed his reward.  They
+urged their demands with a clamorous importunity which perplexed the
+good president, and consumed every moment of his time.
+
+Disgusted with this unprofitable state of things, Gasca resolved to rid
+himself of the annoyance at once, by retiring to the valley of
+Guaynarima, about twelve leagues distant from the city, and there
+digesting, in quiet, a scheme of compensation, adjusted to the merits of
+the parties.  He was accompanied only by his secretary, and by Loaysa,
+now archbishop of Lima, a man of sense, and well acquainted with the
+affairs of the country.  In this seclusion the president remained three
+months, making a careful examination into the conflicting claims, and
+apportioning the forfeitures among the parties according to their
+respective services.  The repartimientos, it should be remarked, were
+usually granted only for life, and, on the death of the incumbent, reverted
+to the Crown, to be reassigned or retained at its pleasure.
+
+When his arduous task was completed, Gasca determined to withdraw to
+Lima, leaving the instrument of partition with the archbishop, to be
+communicated to the army.  Notwithstanding all the care that had been
+taken for an equitable adjustment, Gasca was aware that it was
+impossible to satisfy the demands of a jealous and irritable soldiery,
+where each man would be likely to exaggerate his own deserts, while he
+underrated those of his comrades; and he did not care to expose himself
+to importunities and complaints that could serve no other purpose than to
+annoy him.
+
+On his departure, the troops were called together by the archbishop in
+the cathedral, to learn the contents of the schedule intrusted to him.  A
+discourse was first preached by a worthy Dominican, the prior of
+Arequipa, in which the reverend father expatiated on the virtue of
+contentment, the duty of obedience, and the folly, as well as wickedness,
+of an attempt to resist the constituted authorities,--topics, in short, which
+he conceived might best conciliate the good-will and conformity of his
+audience.
+
+A letter from the president was then read from the pulpit.  It was
+addressed to the officers and soldiers of the army.  The writer began with
+briefly exposing the difficulties of his task, owing to the limited amount
+of the gratuities, and the great number and services of the claimants.  He
+had given the matter the most careful consideration, he said, and
+endeavored to assign to each his share, according to his deserts, without
+prejudice or partiality.  He had, no doubt, fallen into errors, but he
+trusted his followers would excuse them, when they reflected that he had
+done according to the best of his poor abilities; and all, he believed,
+would do him the justice to acknowledge he had not been influenced by
+motives of personal interest.  He bore emphatic testimony to the services
+they had rendered to the good cause, and concluded with the most
+affectionate wishes for their future prosperity and happiness.  The letter
+was dated at Guaynarima, August 17, 1548, and bore the simple
+signature of the Licentiate Gasca.21
+
+The archbishop next read the paper containing the president's award.
+The annual rent of the estates to be distributed amounted to a hundred
+and thirty thousand pesos ensayados;22 a large amount, considering the
+worth of money in that day,--in any other country than Peru, where
+money was a drug.23
+
+The repartimientos thus distributed varied in value from one hundred to
+thirty-five hundred pesos of yearly rent; all, apparently, graduated with
+the nicest precision to the merits of the parties.  The number of
+pensioners was about two hundred and fifty; for the fund would not have
+sufficed for general distribution, nor were the services of the greater part
+deemed worthy of such a mark of consideration.24
+
+The effect produced by the document, on men whose minds were filled
+with the most indefinite expectations, was just such as had been
+anticipated by the president.  It was received with a general murmur of
+disapprobation.  Even those who had got more than they expected were
+discontented, on comparing their condition with that of their comrades,
+whom they thought still better remunerated in proportion to their deserts.
+They especially inveighed against the preference shown to the old
+partisans of Gonzalo Pizarro--as Hinojosa, Centeno, and Aldana-over
+those who had always remained loyal to the Crown.  There was some
+ground for such a preference; for none had rendered so essential services
+in crushing the rebellion; and it was these services that Gasca proposed
+to recompense.  To reward every man who had proved himself loyal,
+simply for his loyalty, would have frittered away the donative into
+fractions that would be of little value to any.25
+
+It was in vain, however, that the archbishop, seconded by some of the
+principal cavaliers, endeavored to infuse a more contented spirit into the
+multitude.  They insisted that the award should be rescinded, and a new
+one made on more equitable principles; threatening, moreover, that, if
+this were not done by the president, they would take the redress of the
+matter into their own hands.  Their discontent, fomented by some
+mischievous persons who thought to find their account in it, at length
+proceeded so far as to menace a mutiny; and it was not suppressed till the
+commander of Cuzco sentenced one of the ringleaders to death, and
+several others to banishment.  The iron soldiery of the Conquest required
+an iron hand to rule them.
+
+Meanwhile, the president had continued his journey towards Lima; and
+on the way was everywhere received by the people with an enthusiasm,
+the more grateful to his heart that he felt he had deserved it.  As he drew
+near the capital, the loyal inhabitants prepared to give him a magnificent
+reception.  The whole population came forth from the gates, led by the
+authorities of the city, with Aldana as corregidor at their head.  Gasca
+rode on a mule, dressed in his ecclesiastical robes.  On his right, borne
+on a horse richly caparisoned, was the royal seal, in a box curiously
+chased and ornamented.  A gorgeous canopy of brocade was supported
+above his head by the officers of the municipality, who, in their robes of
+crimson velvet, walked bareheaded by his side.  Gay troops of dancers,
+clothed in fantastic dresses of gaudy-colored silk, followed the
+procession, strewing flowers and chanting verses as they went, in honor
+of the president.  They were designed as emblematical of the different
+cities of the colony; and they bore legends or mottoes in rhyme on their
+caps, intimating their loyal devotion to the Crown, and evincing much
+more loyalty in their composition, it may be added, than poetical
+merit.26  In this way, without beat of drum, or noise of artillery, or any
+of the rude accompaniments of war, the good president made his
+peaceful entry into the City of the Kings, while the air was rent with the
+acclamations of the people, who hailed him as their "Father and
+Deliverer, the Saviour of their country!" 27
+
+But, however grateful was this homage to Gasca's heart, he was not a
+man to waste his time in idle vanities.  He now thought only by what
+means he could eradicate the seeds of disorder which shot up so readily
+in this fruitful soil, and how he could place the authority of the
+government on a permanent basis.  By virtue of his office, he presided
+over the Royal Audience, the great judicial, and, indeed, executive
+tribunal of the colony; and he gave great despatch to the business, which
+had much accumulated during the late disturbances.  In the unsettled
+state of property, there was abundant subject for litigation; but,
+fortunately, the new Audience was composed of able, upright judges,
+who labored diligently with their chief to correct the mischief caused by
+the misrule of their predecessors.
+
+Neither was Gasca unmindful of the unfortunate natives; and he occupied
+himself earnestly with that difficult problem,--the best means practicable
+of ameliorating their condition.  He sent a number of commissioners, as
+visitors, into different parts of the country, whose business it was to
+inspect the encomiendas, and ascertain the manner in which the Indians
+were treated, by conversing not only with the proprietors, but with the
+natives themselves.  They were also to learn the nature and extent of the
+tributes paid in former times by the vassals of the Incas.28
+
+In this way, a large amount of valuable information was obtained, which
+enabled Gasca, with the aid of a council of ecclesiastics and jurists, to
+digest a uniform system of taxation for the natives, lighter even than that
+imposed on them by the Peruvian princes.  The president would gladly
+have relieved the conquered races from the obligations of personal
+service; but, on mature consideration, this was judged impracticable in
+the present state of the country, since the colonists, more especially in
+the tropical regions, looked to the natives for the performance of labor,
+and the latter, it was found from experience, would not work at all,
+unless compelled to do so.  The president, however, limited the amount
+of service to be exacted with great precision, so that it was in the nature
+of a moderate personal tax.  No Peruvian was to be required to change
+his place of residence, from the climate to which he had been
+accustomed, to another; a fruitful source of discomfort, as well as of
+disease, in past times.  By these various regulations, the condition of the
+natives, though not such as had been contemplated by the sanguine
+philanthropy of Las Casas, was improved far more than was compatible
+with the craving demands of the colonists; and all the firmness of the
+Audience was required to enforce provisions so unpalatable to the latter.
+Still they were enforced.  Slavery, in its most odious sense, was no
+longer tolerated in Peru.  The term "slave" was not recognized as having
+relation to her institutions; and the historian of the Indies makes the
+proud boast,--it should have been qualified by the limitations I have
+noticed, --that every Indian vassal might aspire to the rank of a
+freeman.29
+
+Besides these reforms, Gasca introduced several in the municipal
+government of the cities, and others yet more important in the
+management of the finances, and in the mode of keeping the accounts.
+By these and other changes in the internal economy of the colony, he
+placed the administration on a new basis, and greatly facilitated the way
+for a more sure and orderly government by his successors.  As a final
+step, to secure the repose of the country after he was gone, he detached
+some of the more aspiring cavaliers on distant expeditions, trusting that
+they would draw off the light and restless spirits, who might otherwise
+gather together and disturb the public tranquillity; as we sometimes see
+the mists which have been scattered by the genial influence of the sun
+become condensed, and settle into a storm, on his departure.30
+
+Gasca had been now more than fifteen months in Lima, and nearly three
+years had elapsed since his first entrance into Peru.  In that time, he had
+accomplished the great objects of his mission.  When he landed, he
+found the colony in a state of anarchy, or rather organized rebellion
+under a powerful and popular chief.  He came without funds or forces to
+support him.  The former he procured through the credit which he
+established in his good faith; the latter he won over by argument and
+persuasion from the very persons to whom they had been confided by his
+rival.  Thus he turned the arms of that rival against himself.  By a calm
+appeal to reason he wrought a change in the hearts of the people; and,
+without costing a drop of blood to a single loyal subject, he suppressed a
+rebellion which had menaced Spain with the loss of the wealthiest of her
+provinces.  He had punished the guilty, and in their spoils found the
+means to recompense the faithful.  He had, moreover, so well husbanded
+the resources of the country, that he was enabled to pay off the large loan
+he had negotiated with the merchants of the colony, for the expenses of
+the war, exceeding nine hundred thousand pesos de oro.31  Nay, more,
+by his economy he had saved a million and a half of ducats for the
+government, which for some years had received nothing from Peru; and
+he now proposed to carry back this acceptable treasure to swell the royal
+coffers.32  All this had been accomplished without the cost of out-fit or
+salary, or any charge to the Crown except that of his own frugal
+expenditure.33  The country was now in a state of tranquillity.  Gasca
+felt that his work was done; and that he was free to gratify his natural
+longing to return to his native land.
+
+Before his departure, he arranged a distribution of those repartimientos
+which had lapsed to the Crown during the past year by the death of the
+incumbents.  Life was short in Peru; since those who lived by the sword,
+if they did not die by the sword, too often fell early victims to the
+hardships incident to their adventurous career.  Many were the applicants
+for the new bounty of government; and, as among them were some of
+those who had been discontented with the former partition, Gasca was
+assailed by remonstrances, and sometimes by reproaches couched in no
+very decorous or respectful language.  But they had no power to disturb
+his equanimity; he patiently listened, and replied to all in the mild tone of
+expostulation best calculated to turn away wrath; "by this victory over
+himself," says an old writer, "acquiring more real glory, than by all his
+victories over his enemies." 34
+
+An incident occurred on the eve of his departure, touching in itself, and
+honorable to the parties concerned.  The Indian caciques of the
+neighboring country, mindful of the great benefits he had rendered their
+people, presented him with a considerable quantity of plate in token of
+their gratitude.  But Gasca refused to receive it, though in doing so he
+gave much concern to the Peruvians, who feared they had unwittingly
+fallen under his displeasure.
+
+Many of the principal colonists, also, from the same wish to show their
+sense of his important services, sent to him, after he had embarked, a
+magnificent donative of fifty thousand gold castellanos.  "As he had
+taken leave of Peru," they said, "there could be no longer any ground for
+declining it."  But Gasca was as decided in his rejection of this present,
+as he had been of the other.  "He had come to the country," he remarked,
+"to serve the king, and to secure the blessings of peace to the inhabitants;
+and now that, by the favor of Heaven, he had been permitted to
+accomplish this, he would not dishonor the cause by any act that might
+throw suspicion on the purity of his motives."  Notwithstanding his
+refusal, the colonists contrived to secrete the sum of twenty thousand
+castellanos on board his vessel, with the idea, that, once in his own
+country, with his mission concluded, the president's scruples would be
+removed.  Gasca did, indeed, accept the donative; for he felt that it
+would be ungracious to send it back; but it was only till he could
+ascertain the relatives of the donors, when he distributed it among the
+most needy.35
+
+Having now settled all his affairs, the president committed the
+government, until the arrival of a viceroy, to his faithful partners of the
+Royal Audience; and in January, 1550 he embarked with the royal
+treasure on board of a squadron for Panama.  He was accompanied to the
+shore by a numerous crowd of the inhabitants, cavaliers and common
+people, persons of all ages and conditions, who followed to take their
+last look of their benefactor, and watch with straining eyes the vessel that
+bore him away from their land.
+
+His voyage was prosperous, and early in March the president reached his
+destined port.  He stayed there only till he could muster horses and mules
+sufficient to carry the treasure across the mountains; for he knew that this
+part of the country abounded in wild, predatory spirits, who would be
+sorely tempted to some act of violence by a knowledge of the wealth
+which he had with him.  Pushing forward, therefore, he crossed the
+rugged Isthmus, and, after a painful march, arrived in safety at Nombre
+de Dios.
+
+The event justified his apprehensions.  He had been gone but three days,
+when a ruffian horde, after murdering the bishop of Guatemala, broke
+into Panama with the design of inflicting the same fate on the president,
+and of seizing the booty.  No sooner were the tidings communicated to
+Gasca, than, with his usual energy, he levied a force and prepared to
+march to the relief of the invaded capital.  But Fortune--or, to speak
+more correctly, Providence--favored him here, as usual; and, on the eve
+of his departure, he learned that the marauders had been met by the
+citizens, and discomfited with great slaughter.  Disbanding his forces,
+therefore, he equipped a fleet of nineteen vessels to transport himself and
+the royal treasure to Spain, where he arrived in safety, entering the
+harbor of Seville after a little more than four years from the period when
+he had sailed from the same port.36
+
+Great was the sensation throughout the country caused by his arrival.
+Men could hardly believe that results so momentous had been
+accomplished in so short a time by a single individual,--a poor
+ecclesiastic, who, unaided by government, had, by his own strength, as it
+were, put down a rebellion which had so long set the arms of Spain at
+defiance!
+
+The emperor was absent in Flanders.  He was overjoyed on learning the
+complete success of Gasca's mission; and not less satisfied with the
+tidings of the treasure he had brought with him; for the exchequer, rarely
+filled to overflowing, had been exhausted by the recent troubles in
+Germany.  Charles instantly wrote to the president, requiring his
+presence at court, that he might learn from his own lips the particulars of
+his expedition.  Gasca, accordingly, attended by a numerous retinue of
+nobles and cavaliers,--for who does not pay homage to him whom the
+king delighteth to honor?--embarked at Barcelona, and, after a favorable
+voyage, joined the Court in Flanders.
+
+He was received by his royal master, who fully appreciated his services,
+in a manner most grateful to his feelings; and not long afterward he was
+raised to the bishopric of Palencia,--a mode of acknowledgment best
+suited to his character and deserts.  Here he remained till 1561, when he
+was promoted to the vacant see of Siguenza.  The rest of his days he
+passed peacefully in the discharge of his episcopal functions; honored by
+his sovereign, and enjoying the admiration and respect of his
+countrymen.37
+
+In his retirement, he was still consulted by the government in matters of
+importance relating to the Indies.  The disturbances of that unhappy land
+were renewed, though on a much smaller scale than before, soon after
+the president's departure.  They were chiefly caused by discontent with
+the repartimientos, and with the constancy of the Audience in enforcing
+the benevolent restrictions as to the personal services of the natives.  But
+these troubles subsided, after a very few years, under the wise rule of the
+Mendozas,--two successive viceroys of that illustrious house which has
+given so many of its sons to the service of Spain.  Under their rule, the
+mild yet determined policy was pursued, of which Gasca had set the
+example.  The ancient distractions of the country were permanently
+healed.  With peace, prosperity returned within the borders of Peru; and
+the consciousness of the beneficent results of his labors may have shed a
+ray of satisfaction, as it did of glory, over the evening of the president's
+life.
+
+That life was brought to a close in November, 1567, at an age, probably,
+not far from the one fixed by the sacred writer as the term of human
+existence.38  He died at Valladolid, and was buried in the church of
+Santa Maria Magdalena, in that city, which he had built and liberally
+endowed.  His monument, surmounted by the sculptured effigy of a
+priest in his sacerdotal robes, is still to be seen there, attracting the
+admiration of the traveller by the beauty of its execution.  The banners
+taken from Gonzalo Pizarro on the field of Xaquixaguana were
+suspended over his tomb, as the trophies of his memorable mission to
+Peru.39  The banners have long since mouldered into dust, with the
+remains of him who slept beneath them; but the memory of his good
+deeds will endure for ever.40
+
+Gasca was plain in person, and his countenance was far from comely, He
+was awkward and ill-proportioned; for his limbs were too long for his
+body,--so that when he rode, he appeared to be much shorter than he
+really was.41  His dress was humble, his manners simple, and there was
+nothing imposing in his presence.  But, on a nearer intercourse, there was
+a charm in his discourse that effaced every unfavorable impression
+produced by his exterior, and won the hearts of his hearers.
+
+The president's character may be thought to have been sufficiently
+portrayed in the history already given of his life.  It presented a
+combination of qualities which generally serve to neutralize each other,
+but which were mixed in such proportions in him as to give it additional
+strength.  He was gentle, yet resolute; by nature intrepid, yet preferring to
+rely on the softer arts of policy.  He was frugal in his personal
+expenditure, and economical in the public; yet caring nothing for riches
+on his own account, and never stinting his bounty when the public good
+required it.  He was benevolent and placable, yet could deal sternly with
+the impenitent offender; lowly in his deportment, yet with a full measure
+of that self-respect which springs from conscious rectitude of purpose;
+modest and unpretending, yet not shrinking from the most difficult
+enterprises; deferring greatly to others, yet, in the last resort, relying
+mainly on himself; moving with deliberation,--patiently waiting his time;
+but, when that came, bold, prompt, and decisive.
+
+Gasca, was not a man of genius, in the vulgar sense of that term.  At
+least, no one of his intellectual powers seems to have received an
+extraordinary development, beyond what is found in others.  He was not
+a great writer, nor a great orator, nor a great general.  He did not affect to
+be either.  He committed the care of his military matters to military men;
+of ecclesiastical to the clergy; and his civil and judicial concerns he
+reposed on the members of the Audience.  He was not one of those little
+great men who aspire to do every thing themselves, under the conviction
+that nothing can be done so well by others.  But the president was a keen
+judge of character.  Whatever might be the office, he selected the best
+man for it.  He did more.  He assured himself of the fidelity of his agents,
+presided at their deliberations; dictated a general line of policy, and thus
+infused a spirit of unity into their plans, which made all move in concert
+to the accomplishment of one grand result.
+
+A distinguishing feature of his mind was his common sense,--the best
+substitute for genius in a ruler who has the destinies of his fellow-men at
+his disposal, and more indispensable than genius itself.  In Gasca, the
+different qualities were blended in such harmony, that there was no room
+for excess.  They seemed to regulate each other.  While his sympathy
+with mankind taught him the nature of their wants, his reason suggested
+to what extent these were capable of relief, as well as the best mode of
+effecting it.  He did not waste his strength on illusory schemes of
+benevolence, like Las Casas, on the one hand; nor did he countenance
+the selfish policy of the colonists, on the other.  He aimed at the
+practicable,--the greatest good practicable.
+
+In accomplishing his objects, he disclaimed force equally with fraud.  He
+trusted for success to his power over the convictions of his hearers; and
+the source of this power was the confidence he inspired in his own
+integrity.  Amidst all the calumnies of faction, no imputation was ever
+cast on the integrity of Gasca.42  No wonder that a virtue so rare should
+be of high price in Peru.
+
+There are some men whose characters have been so wonderfully adapted
+to the peculiar crisis in which they appeared, that they seem to have been
+specially designed for it by Providence.  Such was Washington, in our
+own country, and Gasca in Peru.  We can conceive of individuals with
+higher qualities, at least with higher intellectual qualities, than belonged
+to either of these great men.  But it was the wonderful conformity of their
+characters to the exigencies of their situation, the perfect adaptation of
+the means to the end, that constituted the secret of their success; that
+enabled Gasca so gloriously to crush revolution, and Washington still
+more gloriously to achieve it.
+
+Gasca's conduct on his first coming to the colonies affords the best
+illustration of his character.  Had he come backed by a military array, or
+even clothed in the paraphernalia of authority, every heart and hand
+would have been closed against him.  But the humble ecclesiastic excited
+no apprehension; and his enemies were already disarmed, before he had
+begun his approaches.  Had Gasca, impatient of Hinojosa's tardiness,
+listened to the suggestions of those who advised his seizure, he would
+have brought his cause into jeopardy by this early display of violence
+But he wisely chose to win over his enemy by operating on his
+conviction.
+
+In like manner, he waited his time for making his entry into Peru.  He
+suffered his communications to do their work in the minds of the people,
+and was careful not to thrust in the sickle before the harvest was ripe.
+
+In this way, wherever he went, every thing was prepared for his coming;
+and when he set foot in Peru, the country was already his own.
+
+After the dark and turbulent spirits with which we have been hitherto
+occupied, it is refreshing to dwell on a character like that of Gasca.  In
+the long procession which has passed in review before us, we have seen
+only the mail-clad cavalier, brandishing his bloody lance, and mounted
+on his war-horse, riding over the helpless natives, or battling with his
+own friends and brothers; fierce, arrogant, and cruel, urged on by the lust
+of gold, or the scarce more honorable love of a bastard glory.  Mingled
+with these qualities, indeed, we have seen sparkles of the chivalrous and
+romantic temper which belongs to the heroic age of Spain.  But, with
+some honorable exceptions, it was the scum of her chivalry that resorted
+to Peru, and took service under the banner of the Pizarros.  At the close
+of this long array of iron warriors, we behold the poor and humble
+missionary coming into the land on an errand of mercy, and everywhere
+proclaiming the glad tidings of peace.  No warlike trumpet heralds his
+approach, nor is his course to be tracked by the groans of the wounded
+and the dying.  The means he employs are in perfect harmony with his
+end.  His weapons are argument and mild persuasion.  It is the reason he
+would conquer, not the body.  He wins his way by conviction, not by
+violence.  It is a moral victory to which he aspires, more potent, and
+happily more permanent, than that of the blood-stained conqueror.  As he
+thus calmly, and imperceptibly, as it were, comes to his great results, he
+may remind us of the slow, insensible manner in which Nature works out
+her great changes in the material world, that are to endure when the
+ravages of the hurricane are passed away and forgotten.
+
+With the mission of Gasca terminates the history of the Conquest of
+Peru.  The Conquest, indeed, strictly terminates with the suppression of
+the Peruvian revolt, when the strength, if not the spirit, of the Inca race
+was crushed for ever.  The reader, however, might feel a natural curiosity
+to follow to its close the fate of the remarkable family who achieved the
+Conquest.  Nor would the story of the invasion itself be complete without
+some account of the civil wars which grew out of it; which serve,
+moreover, as a moral commentary on preceding events, by showing that
+the indulgence of fierce, unbridled passions is sure to recoil, sooner or
+later, even in this life, on the heads of the guilty.
+
+It is true, indeed, that the troubles of the country were renewed on the
+departure of Gasca.  The waters had been too fearfully agitated to be
+stilled, at once, into a calm; but they gradually subsided, under the
+temperate rule of his successors, who wisely profited by his policy and
+example.  Thus the influence of the good president remained after he was
+withdrawn from the scene of his labors; and Peru, hitherto so distracted,
+continued to enjoy as large a share of repose as any portion of the
+colonial empire of Spain.  With the benevolent mission of Gasca, then,
+the historian of the Conquest may be permitted to terminate his labors, -
+with feelings not unlike those of the traveller who, having long journeyed
+among the dreary forests and dangerous defiles of the mountains, at
+length emerges on some pleasant landscape smiling in tranquillity and
+peace.
+
+Augustin de Zarate--a highly respectable authority, frequently cited in
+the later portion of this work--was Contador de Mercedes, Comptroller
+of Accounts, for Castile.  This office he filled for fifteen years; after
+which he was sent by the government to Peru to examine into the state of
+the colonial finances, which had been greatly deranged by the recent
+troubles, and to bring them, if possible, into order.
+
+Zarate went out accordingly in the train of the viceroy Blasco Nunez,
+and found himself, through the passions of his imprudent leader,
+entangled, soon after his arrival, in the inextricable meshes of civil
+discord.  In the struggle which ensued, he remained with the Royal
+Audience; and we find him in Lima, on the approach of Gonzalo Pizarro
+to that capital, when Zarate was deputed by the judges to wait on the
+insurgent chief, and require him to disband his troops and withdraw to
+his own estates.  The historian executed the mission, for which he seems
+to have had little relish, and which certainly was not without danger.
+From this period, we rarely hear of him in the troubled scenes that
+ensued.  He probably took no further part in affairs than was absolutely
+forced on him by circumstances; but the unfavorable bearing of his
+remarks on Gonzalo Pizarro intimates, that, however he may have been
+discontented with the conduct of the viceroy, he did not countenance, for
+a moment, the criminal ambition of his rival.  The times were certainly
+unpropitious to the execution of the financial reforms for which Zarate
+had come to Peru.  But he showed so much real devotion to the interests
+of the Crown, that the emperor, on his return, signified his satisfaction by
+making him Superintendent of the Finances in Flanders.
+
+Soon after his arrival in Peru, he seems to have conceived the idea of
+making his countrymen at home acquainted with the stirring events
+passing in the colony, which, moreover, afforded some striking passages
+for the study of the historian.  Although he collected notes and diaries, as
+he tells us, for this purpose, he did not dare to avail himself of them till
+his return to Castile.  "For to have begun the history in Peru," he says,
+"would have alone been enough to put my life in jeopardy; since a
+certain commander, named Francisco de Carbajal, threatened to take
+vengeance on any one who should be so rash as to attempt the relation of
+his exploits, ---far less deserving, as they were, to be placed on record,
+than to be consigned to eternal oblivion."  In this same commander, the
+reader will readily recognize the veteran lieutenant of Gonzalo Pizarro.
+
+On his return home, Zarate set about the compilation of his work.  His
+first purpose was to confine it to the events that followed the arrival of
+Blasco Nunez; but he soon found, that, to make these intelligible, he
+must trace the stream of history higher up towards its sources.  He
+accordingly enlarged his plan, and, beginning with the discovery of Peru,
+gave an entire view of the conquest and subsequent occupation of the
+country, bringing the narrative down to the close of Gasca's mission.  For
+the earlier portion of the story, he relied on the accounts of persons who
+took a leading part in the events.  He disposes more summarily of this
+portion than of that in which he himself was both a spectator and an
+actor; where his testimony, considering the advantages his position gave
+him for information, is of the highest value.
+
+Alcedo in his Biblioteca Americana, MS., speaks of Zarate's work as
+"containing much that is good, but as not entitled to the praise of
+exactness."  He wrote under the influence of party heat, which
+necessarily operates to warp the fairest mind somewhat from its natural
+bent.  For this we must make allowance, in perusing accounts of
+conflicting parties.  But there is no intention, apparently, to turn the truth
+aside in support of his own cause; and his access to the best sources of
+knowledge often supplies us with particulars not within the reach of
+other chroniclers.  His narrative is seasoned, moreover, with sensible
+reflections and passing comments, that open gleams of light into the dark
+passages of that eventful period.  Yet the style of the author can make
+but moderate pretensions to the praise of elegance or exactness; while
+the sentences run into that tedious, interminable length which belongs to
+the garrulous compositions of the regular thoroughbred chronicler of the
+olden time.
+
+The personalities, necessarily incident, more or less, to such a work, led
+its author to shrink from publication, at least during his life.  By the
+jealous spirit of the Castilian cavalier, "censure," he says, "however
+light, is regarded with indignation, and even praise is rarely dealt out in a
+measure satisfactory to the subject of it."  And he expresses his
+conviction that those do wisely, who allow their accounts of their own
+times to repose in the quiet security of manuscript, till the generation that
+is to be affected by them has passed away.  His own manuscript,
+however, was submitted to the emperor; and it received such
+commendation from this royal authority, that Zarate, plucking up a more
+courageous spirit, consented to give it to the press.  It accordingly
+appeared at Antwerp, in 1555, in octavo; and a second edition was
+printed, in folio, at Seville, in 1577.  It has since been incorporated in
+Barcia's valuable collection; and, whatever indignation or displeasure it
+may have excited among contemporaries, who smarted under the author's
+censure, or felt themselves defrauded of their legitimate guerdon,
+Zarate's work has taken a permanent rank among the most respectable
+authorities for a history of the time.
+
+The name of Zarate naturally suggests that of Fernandez, for both were
+laborers in the same field of history.  Diego Fernandez de Palencia, or
+Palentino, as he is usually called, from the place of his birth, came over
+to Peru, and served as a private in the royal army raised to quell the
+insurrections that broke out after Gasca's return to Castile.  Amidst his
+military occupations, he found leisure to collect materials for a history of
+the period, to which he was further urged by the viceroy, Mendoza,
+Marques de Canete, who bestowed on him, as he tells us, the post of
+Chronicler of Peru.  This mark of confidence in his literary capacity
+intimates higher attainments in Fernandez than might be inferred from
+the humble station that he occupied.  With the fruits of his researches the
+soldier-chronicler returned to Spain, and, after a time, completed his
+narrative of the insurrection of Giron.
+
+The manuscript was seen by the President of the Council of the Indies,
+and he was so much pleased with its execution, that he urged the author
+to write the account, in like manner, of Gonzalo Pizarro's rebellion, and
+of the administration of Gasca.  The historian was further stimulated, as
+he mentions in his dedication to Philip the Second, by the promise of a
+guerdon from that monarch, on the completion of his labors; a very
+proper, as well as politic, promise, but which inevitably suggests the idea
+of an influence not altogether favorable to severe historic impartiality.
+Nor will such an inference be found altogether at variance with truth; for
+while the narrative of Fernandez studiously exhibits the royal cause in
+the most favorable aspect to the reader, it does scanty justice to the
+claims of the opposite party.  It would not be meet, indeed, that an
+apology for rebellion should be found in the pages of a royal pensioner;
+but there are always mitigating circumstances, which, however we may
+condemn the guilt, may serve to lessen our indignation towards the
+guilty.  These circumstances are not to be found in the pages of
+Fernandez.  It is unfortunate for the historian of such events, that it is so
+difficult to find one disposed to do even justice to the claims of the
+unsuccessful rebel.  Yet the Inca Garcilasso has not shrunk from this, in
+the case of Gonzalo Pizarro; and even Gomara, though living under the
+shadow, or rather in the sunshine, of the Court, has occasionally ventured
+a generous protest in his behalf.
+
+The countenance thus afforded to Fernandez from the highest quarter
+opened to him the best fountains of intelligence,--at least, on the
+government side of the quarrel.  Besides personal communication with
+the royalist leaders, he had access to their correspondence, diaries, and
+official documents.  He industriously profited by his opportunities; and
+his narrative, taking up the story of the rebellion from its birth, continues
+it to its final extinction, and the end of Gasca's administration.  Thus the
+First Part of his work, as it was now called, was brought down to the
+commencement of the Second, and the whole presented a complete
+picture of the distractions of the nation, till a new order of things was
+introduced, and tranquillity was permanently established throughout the
+country.
+
+The diction is sufficiently plain, not aspiring to rhetorical beauties
+beyond the reach of its author, and out of keeping with the simple
+character of a chronicle, The sentences are arranged with more art than
+in most of the unwieldy compositions of the time; and, while there is no
+attempt at erudition or philosophic speculation, the current of events
+flows on in an orderly manner, tolerably prolix, it is true, but leaving a
+clear and intelligible impression on the mind of the reader.  No history of
+that period compares with it in the copiousness of its details; and it has
+accordingly been resorted to by later compilers, as an inexhaustible
+reservoir for the supply of their own pages; a circumstance that may be
+thought of itself to bear no slight testimony to the general fidelity, as well
+as fulness, of the narrative.--The Chronicle of Fernandez, thus arranged
+in two parts, under the general title of Historia del Peru, was given to the
+world in the author's lifetime, at Seville, in 1571 in one volume, folio,
+being the edition used in the preparation of this work.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of History of the Conquest of Peru, by 
+William Hickling Prescott
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1209 ***
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of History of the Conquest of Peru, by 
+William Hickling Prescott
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license
+
+
+Title: History of the Conquest of Peru
+
+Author: William Hickling Prescott
+
+Posting Date: February 24, 2014 [EBook #1209]
+Release Date: February, 1998
+
+Language: English
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+Character set encoding: ASCII
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+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORY OF THE CONQUEST OF PERU ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Mark Rehorst, mrehorst@fmi.fujitsu.com
+
+(See also #1323, a slightly different version with footnotes)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+History Of The Conquest Of Peru
+
+by William Hickling Prescott
+
+
+
+
+"Congestae cumulantur opes, orbisque rapinas Accipit."
+
+Claudian, In Ruf., lib. i., v. 194.
+
+
+"So color de religion
+Van a buscar plata y oro
+Del encubierto tesoro."
+Lope De Vega, El Nuevo Mundo, Jorn. 1.
+
+
+
+Preface
+
+The most brilliant passages in the history of Spanish adventure in the
+New World are undoubtedly afforded by the conquests of Mexico and
+Peru--the two states which combined with the largest extent of empire a
+refined social polity, and considerable progress in the arts of civilization.
+Indeed, so prominently do they stand out on the great canvas of history,
+that the name of the one, notwithstanding the contrast they exhibit in
+their respective institutions, most naturally suggests that of the other; and
+when I sent to Spain to collect materials for an account of the Conquest
+of Mexico, I included in my researches those relating to the Conquest of
+Peru.
+
+The larger part of the documents, in both cases, was obtained from the
+same great repository,--the archives of the Royal Academy of History at
+Madrid; a body specially intrusted with the preservation of whatever may
+serve to illustrate the Spanish colonial annals.  The richest portion of its
+collection is probably that furnished by the papers of Munoz.  This
+eminent scholar, historiographer of the Indies, employed nearly fifty
+years of his life in amassing materials for a history of Spanish discovery
+and conquest in America.  For this, as he acted under the authority of the
+government, every facility was afforded him; and public offices and
+private depositories, in all the principal cities of the empire, both at home
+and throughout the wide extent of its colonial possessions, were freely
+opened to his inspection.  The result was a magnificent collection of
+manuscripts, many of which he patiently transscribed with his own hand.
+But he did not live to reap the fruits of his persevering industry.  The
+first volume, relative to the voyages of Columbus, were scarcely finished
+when he died; and his manuscripts, at least that portion of them which
+have reference to Mexico and Peru, were destined to serve the uses of
+another, an inhabitant of that New World to which they related.
+
+Another scholar, to whose literary stores I am largely indebted, is Don
+Martin Fernandez de Navarrette, late Director of the Royal Academy of
+History.  Through the greater part of his long life he was employed in
+assembling original documents to illustrate the colonial annals.  Many of
+these have been incorporated in his great work, "Coleccion de los Viages
+y Descubrimientos," which, although far from being completed after the
+original plan of its author, is of inestimable service to the historian.  In
+following down the track of discovery, Navarrete turned aside from the
+conquests of Mexico and Peru, to exhibit the voyages of his countrymen
+in the Indian seas.  His manuscripts, relating to the two former countries,
+he courteously allowed to be copied for me.  Some of them have since
+appeared in print, under the auspices of his learned coadjutors, Salva and
+Baranda, associated with him in the Academy; but the documents placed
+in my hands form a most important contribution to my materials for the
+present history.
+
+The death of this illustrious man, which occurred some time after the
+present work was begun, has left a void in his country not easy to be
+filled; for he was zealously devoted to letters, and few have done more to
+extend the knowledge of her colonial history.  Far from an exclusive
+solicitude for his own literary projects, he was ever ready to extend his
+sympathy and assistance to those of others.  His reputation as a scholar
+was enhanced by the higher qualities which he possessed as a man,--by
+his benevolence, his simplicity of manners, and unsullied moral worth.
+My own obligations to him are large; for from the publication of my first
+historical work, down to the last week of his life, I have constantly
+received proofs from him of his hearty and most efficient interest in the
+prosecution of my historical labors; and I now the more willingly pay
+this well-merited tribute to his deserts, that it must be exempt from all
+suspicion of flattery.
+
+In the list of those to whom I have been indebted for materials, I must,
+also, include the name of M. Ternaux-Compans, so well known by his
+faithful and elegant French versions of the Munoz manuscripts; and that
+of my friend Don Pascual de Gayangos, who, under the modest dress of
+translation, has furnished a most acute and learned commentary on
+Spanish Arabian history,--securing for himself the foremost rank in that
+difficult department of letters, which has been illumined by the labors of
+a Masdeu, a Casiri, and a Conde.
+
+To the materials derived from these sources, I have added some
+manuscripts of an important character from the library of the Escurial.
+These, which chiefly relate to the ancient institutions of Peru, formed
+part of the splendid collection of Lord Kingsborough, which has
+unfortunately shared the lot of most literary collections, and been
+dispersed since the death of its noble author.  For these I am indebted to
+that industrious bibliographer, Mr. O. Rich, now resident in London.
+Lastly, I must not omit to mention my obligations, in another way, to my
+friend Charles Folsom, Esq., the learned librarian of the Boston
+Athenaeum; whose minute acquaintance with the grammatical structure
+and the true idiom of our English tongue has enabled me to correct many
+inaccuracies into which I had fallen in the composition both of this and
+of my former works.
+
+From these different sources I have accumulated a large amount of
+manuscripts, of the most various character, and from the most authentic
+sources; royal grants and ordinances, instructions of the Court, letters of
+the Emperor to the great colonial officers, municipal records, personal
+diaries and memoranda, and a mass of private correspondence of the
+principal actors in this turbulent drama.  Perhaps it was the turbulent
+state of the country which led to a more frequent correspondence
+between the government at home and the colonial officers.  But,
+whatever be the cause, the collection of manuscript materials in reference
+to Peru is fuller and more complete than that which relates to Mexico; so
+that there is scarcely a nook or corner so obscure, in the path of the
+adventurer, that some light has not been thrown on it by the written
+correspondence of the period.  The historian has rather had occasion to
+complain of the embarras des richesses; for, in the multiplicity of
+contradictory testimony, it is not always easy to detect the truth, as the
+multiplicity of cross-lights is apt to dazzle and bewilder the eye of the
+spectator.
+
+The present History has been conducted on the same general plan with
+that of the Conquest of Mexico.  In an Introductory Book, I have
+endeavored to portray the institutions of the Incas, that the reader may be
+acquainted with the character and condition of that extraordinary race,
+before he enters on the story of their subjugation.  The remaining books
+are occupied with the narrative of the Conquest.  And here, the subject, it
+must be allowed, notwithstanding the opportunities it presents for the
+display of character, strange, romantic incident, and picturesque scenery,
+does not afford so obvious advantages to the historian, as the Conquest
+of Mexico.  Indeed, few subjects can present a parallel with that, for the
+purposes either of the historian or the poet.  The natural development of
+the story, there, is precisely what would be prescribed by the severest
+rules of art.  The conquest of the country is the great end always in the
+view of the reader.  From the first landing of the Spaniards on the soil,
+their subsequent adventures, their battles and negotiations, their ruinous
+retreat, their rally and final siege, all tend to this grand result, till the
+long series is closed by the downfall of the capital.  In the march of
+events, all moves steadily forward to this consummation.  It is a
+magnificent epic, in which the unity of interest is complete.
+
+In the "Conquest of Peru," the action, so far as it is founded on the
+subversion of the Incas, terminates long before the close of the narrative.
+The remaining portion is taken up with the fierce feuds of the
+Conquerors, which would seem, from their very nature, to be incapable
+of being gathered round a central point of interest.  To secure this, we
+must look beyond the immediate overthrow of the Indian empire.  The
+conquest of the natives is but the first step, to be followed by the
+conquest of the Spaniards,--the rebel Spaniards, themselves,--till the
+supremacy of the Crown is permanently established over the country.  It
+is not till this period, that the acquisition of this Transatlantic empire can
+be said to be completed; and, by fixing the eye on this remoter point, the
+successive steps of the narrative will be found leading to one great result,
+and that unity of interest preserved which is scarcely less essential to
+historic than dramatic composition.  How far this has been effected, in
+the present work, must be left to the judgment of the reader.
+
+No history of the conquest of Peru, founded on original documents, and
+aspiring to the credit of a classic composition, like the "Conquest of
+Mexico" by Solis, has been attempted, as far as I am aware, by the
+Spaniards.  The English possess one of high value, from the pen of
+Robertson, whose masterly sketch occupies its due space in his great
+work on America.  It has been my object to exhibit this same story, in all
+its romantic details; not merely to portray the characteristic features of
+the Conquest, but to fill up the outline with the coloring of life, so as to
+present a minute and faithful picture of the times.  For this purpose, I
+have, in the composition of the work, availed myself freely of my
+manuscript materials, allowed the actors to speak as much as possible for
+themselves, and especially made frequent use of their letters; for
+nowhere is the heart more likely to disclose itself, than in the freedom of
+private correspondence.  I have made liberal extracts from these
+authorities in the notes, both to sustain the text, and to put in a printed
+form those productions of the eminent captains and statesmen of the
+time, which are not very accessible to Spaniards themselves.
+
+M. Amedee Pichot, in the Preface to the French translation of the
+"Conquest of Mexico," infers from the plan of the composition, that I
+must have carefully studied the writings of his countryman, M. de
+Barante.  The acute critic does me but justice in supposing me familiar
+with the principles of that writer's historical theory, so ably developed in
+the Preface to his "Ducs de Bourgogne." And I have had occasion to
+admire the skilful manner in which he illustrates this theory himself, by
+constructing out of the rude materials of a distant time a monument of
+genius that transports us at once into the midst of the Feudal Ages,-and
+this without the incongruity which usually attaches to a modernantique.
+In like manner, I have attempted to seize the characteristic expression of
+a distant age, and to exhibit it in the freshness of life.  But in an essential
+particular, I have deviated from the plan of the French historian.  I have
+suffered the scaffolding to remain after the building has been completed.
+In other words, I have shown to the reader the steps of the process by
+which I have come to my conclusions.  Instead of requiring him to take
+my version of the story on trust, I have endeavored to give him a reason
+for my faith.  By copious citations from the original authorities, and by
+such critical notices of them as would explain to him the influences to
+which they were subjected, I have endeavored to put him in a position
+for judging for himself, and thus for revising, and, if need be, reversing,
+the judgments of the historian.  He will, at any rate, by this means, be
+enabled to estimate the difficulty of arriving at truth amidst the conflict
+of testimony; and he will learn to place little reliance on those writers
+who pronounce on the mysterious past with what Fontenelle calls "a
+frightful degree of certainty,"--a spirit the most opposite to that of the
+true philosophy of history.
+
+Yet it must be admitted, that the chronicler who records the events of an
+earlier age has some obvious advantages in the store of manuscript
+materials at his command,--the statements of friends, rivals, and enemies,
+furnishing a wholesome counterpoise to each other; and also, in the
+general course of events, as they actually occurred, affording the best
+commentary on the true motives of the parties.  The actor, engaged in the
+heat of the strife, finds his view bounded by the circle around him and
+his vision blinded by the smoke and dust of the conflict: while the
+spectator, whose eye ranges over the ground from a more distant and
+elevated point, though the individual objects may lose somewhat of their
+vividness, takes in at a glance all the operations of the field.  Paradoxical
+as it may appear, truth rounded on contemporary testimony would seem,
+after all, as likely to be attained by the writer of a later day, as by
+contemporaries themselves.
+
+Before closing these remarks, I may be permitted to add a few of a
+personal nature.  In several foreign notices of my writings, the author has
+been said to be blind; and more than once I have had the credit of having
+lost my sight in the composition of my first history.  When I have met
+with such erroneous accounts, I have hastened to correct them.  But the
+present occasion affords me the best means of doing so; and I am the
+more desirous of this, as I fear some of my own remarks, in the Prefaces
+to my former histories, have led to the mistake.
+
+While at the University, I received an injury in one of my eyes, which
+deprived me of the sight of it.  The other, soon after, was attacked by
+inflammation so severely, that, for some time, I lost the sight of that also;
+and though it was subsequently restored, the organ was so much
+disordered as to remain permanently debilitated, while twice in my life,
+since, I have been deprived of the use of it for all purposes of reading
+and writing, for several years together.  It was during one of these
+periods that I received from Madrid the materials for the "History of
+Ferdinand and Isabella," and in my disabled condition, with my
+Transatlantic treasures lying around me, I was like one pining from
+hunger in the midst of abundance.  In this state, I resolved to make the
+ear, if possible, do the work of the eye.  I procured the services of a
+secretary, who read to me the various authorities; and in time I became
+so far familiar with the sounds of the different foreign languages (to
+some of which, indeed, I had been previously accustomed by a residence
+abroad), that I could comprehend his reading without much difficulty.
+As the reader proceeded, I dictated copious notes; and, when these had
+swelled to a considerable amount, they were read to me repeatedly, till I
+had mastered their contents sufficiently for the purposes of composition.
+The same notes furnished an easy means of reference to sustain the text.
+
+Still another difficulty occurred, in the mechanical labor of writing,
+which I found a severe trial to the eye.  This was remedied by means of a
+writing-case, such as is used by the blind, which enabled me to commit
+my thoughts to paper without the aid of sight, serving me equally well in
+the dark as in the light.  The characters thus formed made a near
+approach to hieroglyphics; but my secretary became expert in the art of
+deciphering, and a fair copy--with a liberal allowance for unavoidable
+blunders--was transcribed for the 'use of the printer.  I have described the
+process with more minuteness, as some curiosity has been repeatedly
+expressed in reference to my modus operandi under my privations, and
+the knowledge of it may be of some assistance to others in similar
+circumstances.
+
+Though I was encouraged by the sensible progress of my work, it was
+necessarily slow.  But in time the tendency to inflammation diminished,
+and the strength of the eye was confirmed more and more.  It was at
+length so far restored, that I could read for several hours of the day
+though my labors in this way necessarily terminated with the daylight.
+Nor could I ever dispense with the services of a secretary, or with the
+writing-case; for, contrary to the usual experience, I have found writing a
+severer trial to the eye than reading,--a remark, however, which does not
+apply to the reading of manuscript; and to enable myself therefore, to
+revise my composition more carefully, I caused a copy of the "History of
+Ferdinand and Isabella" to be printed for my own inspection, before it
+was sent to the press for publication.  Such as I have described was the
+improved state of my health during the preparation of the "Conquest of
+Mexico"; and, satisfied with being raised so nearly to a level with the
+rest of my species, I scarcely envied the superior good fortune of those
+who could prolong their studies into the evening, and the later hours of
+the night.
+
+But a change has again taken place during the last two years.  The sight
+of my eye has become gradually dimmed, while the sensibility of the
+nerve has been so far increased, that for several weeks of the last year I
+have not opened a volume, and through the whole time I have not had the
+use of it, on an average, for more than an hour a day.  Nor can I cheer
+myself with the delusive expectation, that, impaired as the organ has
+become, from having been tasked, probably, beyond its strength, it can
+ever renew its youth, or be of much service to me hereafter in my literary
+researches.  Whether I shall have the heart to enter, as I had proposed, on
+a new and more extensive field of historical labor, with these
+impediments, I cannot say.  Perhaps long habit, and a natural desire to
+follow up the career which I have so long pursued, may make this, in a
+manner, necessary, as my past experience has already proved that it is
+practicable.
+
+From this statement--too long, I fear, for his patience--the reader, who
+feels any curiosity about the matter, will understand the real extent of my
+embarrassments in my historical pursuits.  That they have not been very
+light will be readily admitted, when it is considered that I have had but a
+limited use of my eye, in its best state, and that much of the time I have
+been debarred from the use of it altogether.  Yet the difficulties I have
+had to contend with are very far inferior to those which fall to the lot of a
+blind man.  I know of no historian, now alive, who can claim the glory of
+having overcome such obstacles, but the author of "La Conquete de
+l'Angleterre par les Normands"; who, to use his own touching and
+beautiful language, "has made himself the friend of darkness"; and who,
+to a profound philosophy that requires no light but that from within,
+unites a capacity for extensive and various research, that might well
+demand the severest application of the student.
+
+The remarks into which I have been led at such length will, I trust, not be
+set down by the reader to an unworthy egotism, but to their true source, a
+desire to correct a misapprehension to which I may have unintentionally
+given rise myself, and which has gained me the credit with some--far
+from grateful to my feelings, since undeserved--of having surmounted
+the incalculable obstacles which lie in the path of the blind man.
+
+Boston, April 2, 1847.
+
+
+
+History Of The Conquest Of Peru
+
+by William Hickling Prescott
+
+Book 1
+
+Introduction
+
+View Of The Civilization Of The Incas
+
+Chapter 1
+
+Physical Aspect Of The Country--Sources Of Peruvian Civilization--
+Empire Of The Incas--Royal Family--Nobility
+
+Of the numerous nations which occupied the great American continent at
+the time of its discovery by the Europeans, the two most advanced in
+power and refinement were undoubtedly those of Mexico and Peru.  But,
+though resembling one another in extent of civilization, they differed
+widely as to the nature of it; and the philosophical student of his species
+may feel a natural curiosity to trace the different steps by which these two
+nations strove to emerge from the state of barbarism, and place
+themselves on a higher point in the scale of humanity.--In a former work I
+have endeavored to exhibit the institutions and character of the ancient
+Mexicans, and the story of their conquest by the Spaniards.  The present
+will be devoted to the Peruvians; and, if their history shall be found to
+present less strange anomalies and striking contrasts than that of the
+Aztecs, it may interest us quite as much by the pleasing picture it offers of
+a well-regulated government and sober habits of industry under the
+patriarchal sway of the Incas.
+
+The empire of Peru, at the period of the Spanish invasion, stretched along
+the Pacific from about the second degree north to the thirty-seventh
+degree of south latitude; a line, also, which describes the western
+boundaries of the modern republics of Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and Chili.
+Its breadth cannot so easily be determined; for, though bounded
+everywhere by the great ocean on the west, towards the east it spread out,
+in many parts, considerably beyond the mountains, to the confines of
+barbarous states, whose exact position is undetermined, or whose names
+are effaced from the map of history.  It is certain, however, that its breadth
+was altogether disproportioned to its length.1
+
+The topographical aspect of the country is very remarkable.  A strip of
+land, rarely exceeding twenty leagues in width, runs along the coast, and
+is hemmed in through its whole extent by a colossal range of mountains,
+which, advancing from the Straits of Magellan, reaches its highest
+elevation-indeed, the highest on the American continent--about the
+seventeenth degree south, 2 and, after crossing the line, gradually subsides
+into hills of inconsiderable magnitude, as it enters the isthmus of Panama.
+This is the famous Cordillera of the Andes, or "copper mountains," 3 as
+termed by the natives, though they might with more reason have been
+called "mountains of gold." Arranged sometimes in a single line, though
+more frequently in two or three lines running parallel or obliquely to each
+other, they seem to the voyager on the ocean but one continuous chain;
+while the huge volcanoes, which to the inhabitants of the tableland look
+like solitary and independent masses, appear to aim only like so many
+peaks of the same vast and magnificent range.  So immense is the scale on
+which Nature works in these regions, that it is only when viewed from a
+great distance, that the spectator can, in any degree, comprehend the
+relation of the several parts to the stupendous whole.  Few of the works of
+Nature, indeed, are calculated to produce impressions of higher sublimity
+than the aspect of this coast, as it is gradually unfolded to the eye of the
+mariner sailing on the distant waters of the Pacific; where mountain is
+seen to rise above mountain, and Chimborazo, with its glorious canopy of
+snow, glittering far above the clouds, crowns the whole as with a celestial
+diadem.4
+
+The face of the country would appear to be peculiarly unfavorable to the
+purposes both of agriculture and of internal communication.  The sandy
+strip along the coast, where rain never falls, is fed only by a few scanty
+streams, that furnish a remarkable contrast to the vast volumes of water
+which roll down the eastern sides of the Cordilleras into the Atlantic.  The
+precipitous steeps of the sierra, with its splintered sides of porphyry and
+granite, and its higher regions wrapped in snows that never melt under the
+fierce sun of the equator, unless it be from the desolating action of its own
+volcanic fires, might seem equally unpropitious to the labors of the
+husbandman.  And all communication between the parts of the long-
+extended territory might be thought to be precluded by the savage
+character of the region, broken up by precipices, furious torrents, and
+impassable quebradas,--those hideous rents in the mountain chain, whose
+depths the eye of the terrified traveller, as he winds along his aerial
+pathway, vainly endeavors to fathom.5  Yet the industry, we might almost
+say, the genius, of the Indian was sufficient to overcome all these
+impediments of Nature.
+
+By a judicious system of canals and subterraneous aqueducts, the waste
+places on the coast were refreshed by copious streams, that clothed them
+in fertility and beauty.  Terraces were raised upon the steep sides of the
+Cordillera; and, as the different elevations had the effect of difference of
+latitude, they exhibited in regular gradation every variety of vegetable
+form, from the stimulated growth of the tropics, to the temperate products
+of a northern clime; while flocks of llamas--the Peruvian sheep--wandered
+with their shepherds over the broad, snow-covered wastes on the crests of
+the sierra, which rose beyond the limits of cultivation.  An industrious
+population settled along the lofty regions of the plateaus, and towns and
+hamlets, clustering amidst orchards and widespreading gardens, seemed
+suspended in the air far above the ordinary elevation of the clouds.  6
+Intercourse was maintained between these numerous settlements by means
+of great roads which traversed the mountain passes, and opened an easy
+communication between the capital and the remotest extremities of the
+empire.
+
+The source of this civilization is traced to the valley of Cuzco, the central
+region of Peru, as its name implies.7  The origin of the Peruvian empire,
+like the origin of all nations, except the very few which, like our own,
+have had the good fortune to date from a civilized period and people, is
+lost in the mists of fable, which, in fact, have settled as darkly round its
+history as round that of any nation, ancient or modern, in the Old World.
+According to the tradition most familiar to the European scholar, the time
+was, when the ancient races of the continent were all plunged in
+deplorable barbarism; when they worshipped nearly every object in nature
+indiscriminately; made war their pastime, and feasted on the flesh of their
+slaughtered captives.  The Sun, the great luminary and parent of mankind,
+taking compassion on their degraded condition, sent two of his children,
+Manco Capac and Mama Oello Huaco, to gather the natives into
+communities, and teach them the arts of civilized life.  The celestial pair,
+brother and sister, husband and wife, advanced along the high plains in
+the neighborhood of Lake Titicaca, to about the sixteenth degree south.
+They bore with them a golden wedge, and were directed to take up their
+residence on the spot where the sacred emblem should without effort sink
+into the ground.  They proceeded accordingly but a short distance, as far
+as the valley of Cuzco, the spot indicated by the performance of the
+miracle, since there the wedge speedily sank into the earth and
+disappeared for ever.  Here the children of the Sun established their
+residence, and soon entered upon their beneficent mission among the rude
+inhabitants of the country; Manco Capac teaching the men the arts of
+agriculture, and Mama Oello  8 initiating her own sex in the mysteries of
+weaving and spinning.  The simple people lent a willing ear to the
+messengers of Heaven, and, gathering together in considerable numbers,
+laid the foundations of the city of Cuzco.  The same wise and benevolent
+maxims, which regulated the conduct of the first Incas, 9 descended to
+their successors, and under their mild sceptre a community gradually
+extended itself along the broad surface of the table-land, which asserted
+its superiority over the surrounding tribes.  Such is the pleasing picture of
+the origin of the Peruvian monarchy, as portrayed by Garcilasso de la
+Vega, the descendant of the Incas, and through him made familiar to the
+European reader.10
+
+But this tradition is only one of several current among the Peruvian
+Indians, and probably not the one most generally received.  Another
+legend speaks of certain white and bearded men, who, advancing from the
+shores of Lake Titicaca, established an ascendancy over the natives, and
+imparted to them the blessings of civilization.  It may remind us of the
+tradition existing among the Aztecs in respect to Quetzalcoatl, the good
+deity, who with a similar garb and aspect came up the great plateau from
+the east on a like benevolent mission to the natives.  The analogy is the
+more remarkable, as there is no trace of any communication with, or even
+knowledge of, each other to be found in the two nations.11
+
+The date usually assigned for these extraordinary events was about four
+hundred years before the coming of the Spaniards, or early in the twelfth
+century.12  But, however pleasing to the imagination, and however
+popular, the legend of Manco Capac, it requires but little reflection to
+show its improbability, even when divested of supernatural
+accompaniments.  On the shores of Lake Titicaca extensive ruins exist at
+the present day, which the Peruvians themselves acknowledge to be of
+older date than the pretended advent of the Incas, and to have furnished
+them with the models of their architecture.13  The date of their
+appearance, indeed, is manifestly irreconcilable with their subsequent
+history.  No account assigns to the Inca dynasty more than thirteen princes
+before the Conquest.  But this number is altogether too small to have
+spread over four hundred years, and would not carry back the foundations
+of the monarchy, on any probable computation, beyond two centuries and
+a half,-an antiquity not incredible in itself, and which, it may be remarked,
+does not precede by more than half a century the alleged foundation of the
+capital of Mexico.  The fiction of Manco Capac and his sister-wife was
+devised, no doubt, at a later period, to gratify the vanity of the Peruvian
+monarchs, and to give additional sanction to their authority by deriving it
+from a celestial origin.
+
+We may reasonably conclude that there existed in the country a race
+advanced in civilization before the time of the Incas; and, in conformity
+with nearly every tradition, we may derive this race from the
+neighborhood of Lake Titicaca; 14 a conclusion strongly confirmed by the
+imposing architectural remains which still endure, after the lapse of so
+many years, on its borders.  Who this race were, and whence they came,
+may afford a tempting theme for inquiry to the speculative antiquarian.
+But it is a land of darkness that lies far beyond the domain of history.15
+
+The same mists that hang round the origin of the Incas continue to settle
+on their subsequent annals; and, so imperfect were the records employed
+by the Peruvians, and so confused and contradictory their traditions, that
+the historian finds no firm footing on which to stand till within a century
+of the Spanish conquest.16  At first, the progress of the Peruvians seems
+to have been slow, and almost imperceptible.  By their wise and temperate
+policy, they gradually won over the neighboring tribes to their dominion,
+as these latter became more and more convinced of the benefits of a just
+and well-regulated government.  As they grew stronger, they were enabled
+to rely more directly on force; but, still advancing under cover of the same
+beneficent pretexts employed by their predecessors, they proclaimed
+peace and civilization at the point of the sword.  The rude nations of the
+country, without any principle of cohesion among themselves, fell one
+after another before the victorious arm of the Incas.  Yet it was not till the
+middle of the fifteenth century that the famous Topa Inca Yupanqui,
+grandfather of the monarch who occupied the throne at the coming of the
+Spaniards, led his armies across the terrible desert of Atacama, and,
+penetrating to the southern region of Chili, fixed the permanent boundary
+of his dominions at the river Maule.  His son, Huayna Capac, possessed of
+ambition and military talent fully equal to his father's, marched along the
+Cordillera towards the north, and, pushing his conquests across the
+equator, added the powerful kingdom of Quito to the empire of Peru.17
+
+The ancient city of Cuzco, meanwhile, had been gradually advancing in
+wealth and population, till it had become the worthy metropolis of a great
+and flourishing monarchy.  It stood in a beautiful valley on an elevated
+region of the plateau, which, among the Alps, would have been buried in
+eternal snows, but which within the tropics enjoyed a genial and
+salubrious temperature.  Towards the north it was defended by a lofty
+eminence, a spur of the great Cordillera; and the city was traversed by a
+river, or rather a small stream, over which bridges of timber, covered with
+heavy slabs of stone, furnished an easy means of communication with the
+opposite banks.  The streets were long and narrow; the houses low, and
+those of the poorer sort built of clay and reeds.  But Cuzco was the royal
+residence, and was adorned with the ample dwellings of the great nobility;
+and the massy fragments still incorporated in many of the modern edifices
+bear testimony to the size and solidity of the ancient.18
+
+The health of the city was promoted by spacious openings and squares, in
+which a numerous population from the capital and the distant country
+assembled to celebrate the high festivals of their religion.  For Cuzco was
+the "Holy City"; 19 and the great temple of the Sun, to which pilgrims
+resorted from the furthest borders of the empire, was the most magnificent
+structure in the New World, and unsurpassed, probably, in the costliness
+of its decorations by any building in the Old.
+
+Towards the north, on the sierra or rugged eminence already noticed, rose
+a strong fortress, the remains of which at the present day, by their vast
+size, excite the admiration of the traveller.20 It was defended by a single
+wall of great thickness, and twelve hundred feet long on the side facing
+the city, where the precipitous character of the ground was of itself almost
+sufficient for its defence.  On the other quarter, where the approaches
+were less difficult, it was protected by two other semicircular walls of the
+same length as the preceding.  They were separated, a considerable
+distance from one another and from the fortress; and the intervening
+ground was raised so that the walls afforded a breastwork for the troops
+stationed there in times of assault.  The fortress consisted of three towers,
+detached from one another.  One was appropriated to the Inca, and was
+garnished with the sumptuous decorations befitting a royal residence,
+rather than a military post.  The other two were held by the garrison,
+drawn from the Peruvian nobles, and commanded by an officer of the
+blood royal; for the position was of too great importance to be intrusted to
+inferior hands.  The hill was excavated below the towers, and several
+subterraneous galleries communicated with the city and the palaces of the
+Inca.21
+
+The fortress, the walls, and the galleries were all built of stone, the heavy
+blocks of which were not laid in regular courses, but so disposed that the
+small ones might fill up the interstices between the great.  They formed a
+sort of rustic work, being rough-hewn except towards the edges, which
+were finely wrought; and, though no cement was used, the several blocks
+were adjusted with so much exactness and united so closely, that it was
+impossible to introduce even the blade of a knife between them.22  Many
+of these stones were of vast size; some of them being full thirty-eight feet
+long, by eighteen broad, and six feet thick.23
+
+We are filled with astonishment, when we consider, that these enormous
+masses were hewn from their native bed and fashioned into shape, by a
+people ignorant of the use of iron; that they were brought from quarries,
+from four to fifteen leagues distant, 24 without the aid of beasts of burden;
+were transported across rivers and ravines, raised to their elevated
+position on the sierra, and finally adjusted there with the nicest accuracy,
+without the knowledge of tools and machinery familiar to the European.
+Twenty thousand men are said to have been employed on this great
+structure, and fifty years consumed in the building.25  However this may
+be, we see in it the workings of a despotism which had the lives and
+fortunes of its vassals at its absolute disposal, and which, however mild in
+its general character, esteemed these vassals, when employed in its
+service, as lightly as the brute animals for which they served as a
+substitute.
+
+The fortress of Cuzco was but part of a system of fortifications established
+throughout their dominions by the Incas.  This system formed a prominent
+feature in their military policy; but before entering on this latter, it will
+be proper to give the reader some view of their civil institutions and
+scheme of government.
+
+The sceptre of the Incas, if we may credit their historian, descended in
+unbroken succession from father to son, through their whole dynasty.
+Whatever we may think of this, it appears probable that the right of
+inheritance might be claimed by the eldest son of the Coya, or lawful
+queen, as she was styled, to distinguish her from the host of concubines
+who shared the affections of the sovereign.26  The queen was further
+distinguished, at least in later reigns, by the circumstance of being
+selected from the sisters of the Inca, an arrangement which, however
+revolting to the ideas of civilized nations, was recommended to the
+Peruvians by its securing an heir to the crown of the pure heaven-born
+race, uncontaminated by any mixture of earthly mould.27
+
+In his early years, the royal offspring was intrusted to the care of the
+amautas, or "wise men," as the teachers of Peruvian science were called,
+who instructed him in such elements of knowledge as they possessed, and
+especially in the cumbrous ceremonial of their religion, in which he was
+to take a prominent part.  Great care was also bestowed on his military
+education, of the last importance in a state which, with its professions of
+peace and good-will, was ever at war for the acquisition of empire.
+
+In this military school he was educated with such of the Inca nobles as
+were nearly of his own age; for the sacred name of Inca--a fruitful source
+of obscurity in their annals--was applied indifferently to all who
+descended by the male line from the founder of the monarchy.28  At the
+age of sixteen the pupils underwent a public examination, previous to
+their admission to what may be called the order of chivalry.  This
+examination was conducted by some of the oldest and most illustrious
+Incas.  The candidates were required to show their prowess in the athletic
+exercises of the warrior; in wrestling and boxing, in running such long
+courses as fully tried their agility and strength, in severe fasts of several
+days' duration, and in mimic combats, which, although the weapons were
+blunted, were always attended with wounds, and sometimes with death.
+During this trial, which lasted thirty days, the royal neophyte fared no
+better than his comrades, sleeping on the bare ground, going unshod, and
+wearing a mean attire,--a mode of life, it was supposed, which might tend
+to inspire him with more sympathy with the destitute.  With all this show
+of impartiality, however, it will probably be doing no injustice to the
+judges to suppose that a politic discretion may have somewhat quickened
+their perceptions of the real merits of the heir-apparent.
+
+At the end of the appointed time, the candidates selected as worthy of the
+honors of their barbaric chivalry were presented to the sovereign, who
+condescended to take a principal part in the ceremony of inauguration.
+He began with a brief discourse, in which, after congratulating the young
+aspirants on the proficiency they had shown in martial exercises, he
+reminded them of the responsibilities attached to their birth and station;
+and, addressing them affectionately as "children of the Sun," he exhorted
+them to imitate their great progenitor in his glorious career of beneficence
+to mankind.  The novices then drew near, and, kneeling one by one before
+the Inca, he pierced their ears with a golden bodkin; and this was suffered
+to remain there till an opening had been made large enough for the
+enormous pendants which were peculiar to their order, and which gave
+them, with the Spaniards, the name of orejones.29  This ornament was so
+massy in the ears of the sovereign, that the cartilage was distended by it
+nearly to the shoulder, producing what seemed a monstrous deformity in
+the eyes of the Europeans, though, under the magical influence of fashion,
+it was regarded as a beauty by the natives.
+
+When this operation was performed, one of the most venerable of the
+nobles dressed the feet of the candidates in the sandals worn by the order,
+which may remind us of the ceremony of buckling on the spurs of the
+Christian knight.  They were then allowed to assume the girdle or sash
+around the loins, corresponding with the toga virilis of the Romans, and
+intimating that they had reached the season of manhood.  Their heads
+were adorned with garlands of flowers, which, by their various colors,
+were emblematic of the clemency and goodness that should grace the
+character of every true warrior; and the leaves of an evergreen plant were
+mingled with the flowers, to show that these virtues should endure without
+end.30  The prince's head was further ornamented by a fillet, or tasselled
+fringe, of a yellow color, made of the fine threads of the vicuna wool,
+which encircled the forehead as the peculiar insignia of the heir apparent.
+The great body of the Inca nobility next made their appearance, and,
+beginning with those nearest of kin, knelt down before the prince, and did
+him homage as successor to the crown.  The whole assembly then moved
+to the great square of the capital, where songs, and dances, and other
+public festivities closed the important ceremonial of the huaracu.31
+
+The reader will be less surprised by the resemblance which this
+ceremonial bears to the inauguration of a Christian knight in the feudal
+ages, if he reflects that a similar analogy may be traced in the institutions
+of other people more or less civilized; and that it is natural that nations,
+occupied with the one great business of war, should mark the period,
+when the preparatory education for it was ended, by similar characteristic
+ceremonies.
+Having thus honorably passed through his ordeal, the heir-apparent was
+deemed worthy to sit in the councils of his father, and was employed in
+offices of trust at home, or, more usually, sent on distant expeditions to
+practise in the field the lessons which he had hitherto studied only in the
+mimic theatre of war.  His first campaigns were conducted under the
+renowned commanders who had grown grey in the service of his father;
+until, advancing in years and experience, he was placed in command
+himself, and, like Huayna Capac, the last and most illustrious of his line,
+carried the banner of the rainbow, the armorial ensign of his house, far
+over the borders, among the remotest tribes of the plateau.
+
+The government of Peru was a despotism, mild in its character, but in its
+form a pure and unmitigated despotism.  The sovereign was placed at an
+immeasurable distance above his subjects.  Even the proudest of the Inca
+nobility, claiming a descent from the same divine original as himself,
+could not venture into the royal presence, unless barefoot, and bearing a
+light burden on his shoulders in token of homage.32  As the
+representative of the Sun, he stood at the head of the priesthood, and
+presided at the most important of the religious festivals.33  He raised
+armies, and usually commanded them in person.  He imposed taxes, made
+laws, and provided for their execution by the appointment of judges,
+whom he removed at pleasure.  He was the source from which every thing
+flowed, all dignity, all power, all emolument.  He was, in short, in the well-
+known phrase of the European despot, "himself the state." 34
+
+The Inca asserted his claims as a superior being by assuming a pomp in
+his manner of living well calculated to impose on his people.  His dress
+was of the finest wool of the vicuna, richly dyed, and ornamented with a
+profusion of gold and precious stones.  Round his head was wreathed a
+turban of many-colored folds, called the llautu; and a tasselled fringe, like
+that worn by the prince, but of a scarlet color, with two feathers of a rare
+and curious bird, called the coraquenque, placed upright in it, were the
+distinguishing insignia of royalty.  The birds from which these feathers
+were obtained were found in a desert country among the mountains; and it
+was death to destroy or to take them, as they were reserved for the
+exclusive purpose of supplying the royal head-gear.  Every succeeding
+monarch was provided with a new pair of these plumes, and his credulous
+subjects fondly believed that only two individuals of the species had ever
+existed to furnish the simple ornament for the diadem of the Incas.35
+
+Although the Peruvian monarch was raised so far above the highest of his
+subjects, he condescended to mingle occasionally with them, and took
+great pains personally to inspect the condition of the humbler classes.  He
+presided at some of the religious celebrations, and on these occasions
+entertained the great nobles at his table, when he complimented them,
+after the fashion of more civilized nations, by drinking the health of those
+whom he most delighted to honor.36
+
+But the most effectual means taken by the Incas for communicating with
+their people were their progresses through the empire.  These were
+conducted, at intervals of several years, with great state and magnificence.
+The sedan, or litter, in which they travelled, richly emblazoned with gold
+and emeralds, was guarded by a numerous escort.  The men who bore it
+on their shoulders were provided by two cities, specially appointed for the
+purpose.  It was a post to be coveted by no one, if, as is asserted, a fall
+was punished by death.37  They travelled with ease and expedition,
+halting at the tambos, or inns, erected by government along the route, and
+occasionally at the royal palaces, which in the great towns afforded ample
+accommodations to the whole of the monarch's retinue.  The noble roads
+which traversed the table-land were lined with people who swept away the
+stones and stubble from their surface, strewing them with sweet-scented
+flowers, and vying with each other in carrying forward the baggage from
+one village to another.  The monarch halted from time to time to listen to
+the grievances of his subjects, or to settle some points which had been
+referred to his decision by the regular tribunals.  As the princely train
+wound its way along the mountain passes, every place was thronged with
+spectators eager to catch a glimpse of their sovereign; and, when he raised
+the curtains of his litter, and showed himself to their eyes, the air was rent
+with acclamations as they invoked blessings on his head.38  Tradition
+long commemorated the spots at which he halted, and the simple people
+of the country held them in reverence as places consecrated by the
+presence of an Inca.39
+
+The royal palaces were on a magnificent scale, and, far from being
+confined to the capital or a few principal towns, were scattered over all
+the provinces of their vast empire.40  The buildings were low, but
+covered a wide extent of ground.  Some of the apartments were spacious,
+but they were generally small, and had no communication with one
+another, except that they opened into a common square or court.  The
+walls were made of blocks of stone of various sizes, like those described
+in the fortress of Cuzco, rough-hewn, but carefully wrought near the line
+of junction, which was scarcely visible to the eye.  The roofs were of
+wood or rushes, which have perished under the rude touch of time, that
+has shown more respect for the walls of the edifices.  The whole seems to
+have been characterized by solidity and strength, rather than by any
+attempt at architectural elegance.41
+
+But whatever want of elegance there may have been in the exterior of the
+imperial dwellings, it was amply compensated by the interior, in which all
+the opulence of the Peruvian princes was ostentatiously displayed.  The
+sides of the apartments were thickly studded with gold and silver
+ornaments.  Niches, prepared in the walls, were filled with images of
+animals and plants curiously wrought of the same costly materials; and
+even much of the domestic furniture, including the utensils devoted to the
+most ordinary menial services, displayed the like wanton magnificence!
+42  With these gorgeous decorations were mingled richly colored stuffs of
+the delicate manufacture of the Peruvian wool, which were of so beautiful
+a texture, that the Spanish sovereigns, with all the luxuries of Europe and
+Asia at their command, did not disdain to use them.43  The royal
+household consisted of a throng of menials, supplied by the neighboring
+towns and villages, which, as in Mexico, were bound to furnish the
+monarch with fuel and other necessaries for the consumption of the
+palace.
+
+But the favorite residence of the Incas was at Yucay, about four leagues
+distant from the capital.  In this delicious valley, locked up within the
+friendly arms of the sierra, which sheltered it from the rude breezes of the
+east, and refreshed by gushing fountains and streams of running water,
+they built the most beautiful of their palaces.  Here, when wearied with
+the dust and toil of the city, they loved to retreat, and solace themselves
+with the society of their favorite concubines, wandering amidst groves and
+airy gardens, that shed around their soft, intoxicating odors, and lulled the
+senses to voluptuous repose.  Here, too, they loved to indulge in the
+luxury of their baths, replenished by streams of crystal water which were
+conducted through subterraneous silver channels into basins of gold.  The
+spacious gardens were stocked with numerous varieties of plants and
+flowers that grew without effort in this temperate region of the tropics,
+while parterres of a more extraordinary kind were planted by their side,
+glowing with the various forms of vegetable life skilfully imitated in gold
+and silver! Among them the Indian corn, the most beautiful of American
+grains, is particularly commemorated, and the curious workmanship is
+noticed with which the golden ear was half disclosed amidst the broad
+leaves of silver, and the light tassel of the same material that floated
+gracefully from its top.44
+
+If this dazzling picture staggers the faith of the reader, he may reflect that
+the Peruvian mountains teemed with gold; that the natives understood the
+art of working the mines, to a considerable extent; that none of the ore, as
+we shall see hereafter, was converted into coin, and that the whole of it
+passed into the hands of the sovereign for his own exclusive benefit,
+whether for purposes of utility or ornament.  Certain it is that no fact is
+better attested by the Conquerors themselves, who had ample means of
+information, and no motive for misstatement.--The Italian poets, in their
+gorgeous pictures of the gardens of Alcina and Morgana, came nearer the
+truth than they imagined.
+
+Our surprise, however, may reasonably be excited, when we consider that
+the wealth displayed by the Peruvian princes was only that which each
+had amassed individually for himself.  He owed nothing to inheritance
+from his predecessors.  On the decease of an Inca, his palaces were
+abandoned, all his treasures, except what were employed in his obsequies,
+his furniture and apparel, were suffered to remain as he left them, and his
+mansions, save one, were closed up for ever.  The new sovereign was to
+provide himself with every thing new for his royal state.  The reason of
+this was the popular belief, that the soul of the departed monarch would
+return after a time to reanimate his body on earth; and they wished that he
+should find every thing to which he had been used in life prepared for his
+reception.45
+
+When an Inca died, or, to use his own language, "was called home to the
+mansions of his father, the Sun,"  46 his obsequies were celebrated with
+great pomp and solemnity.  The bowels were taken from the body, and
+deposited in the temple of Tampu, about five leagues from the capital.  A
+quantity of his plate and jewels was buried with them, and a number of his
+attendants and favorite concubines, amounting sometimes, it is said, to a
+thousand, were immolated on his tomb.47  Some of them showed the
+natural repugnance to the sacrifice occasionally manifested by the victims
+of a similar superstition in India.  But these were probably the menials
+and more humble attendants; since the women have been known, in more
+than one instance, to lay violent hands on themselves, when restrained
+from testifying their fidelity by this act of conjugal martyrdom.  This
+melancholy ceremony was followed by a general mourning throughout the
+empire.  At stated intervals, for a year, the people assembled to renew the
+expressions of their sorrow, processions were made, displaying the banner
+of the departed monarch; bards and minstrels were appointed to chronicle
+his achievements, and their songs continued to be rehearsed at high
+festivals in the presence of the reigning monarch,--thus stimulating the
+living by the glorious example of the dead.48
+
+The body of the deceased Inca was skilfully embalmed, and removed to
+the great temple of the Sun at Cuzco.  There the Peruvian sovereign, on
+entering the awful sanctuary, might behold the effigies of his royal
+ancestors, ranged in opposite files,--the men on the right, and their queens
+on the left, of the great luminary which blazed in refulgent gold on the
+walls of the temple.  The bodies, clothed in the princely attire which they
+had been accustomed to wear, were placed on chairs of gold, and sat with
+their heads inclined downward, their hands placidly crossed over their
+bosoms, their countenances exhibiting their natural dusky hue,--less liable
+to change than the fresher coloring of a European complexion,--and their
+hair of raven black, or silvered over with age, according to the period at
+which they died! It seemed like a company of solemn worshippers fixed in
+devotion,--so true were the forms and lineaments to life.  The Peruvians
+were as successful as the Egyptians in the miserable attempt to perpetuate
+the existence of the body beyond the limits assigned to it by nature.49
+
+They cherished a still stranger illusion in the attentions which they
+continued to pay to these insensible remains, as if they were instinct with
+life.  One of the houses belonging to a deceased Inca was kept open and
+occupied by his guard and attendants, with all the state appropriate to
+royalty.  On certain festivals, the revered bodies of the sovereigns were
+brought out with great ceremony into the public square of the capital.
+Invitations were sent by the captains of the guard of the respective Incas
+to the different nobles and officers of the court; and entertainments were
+provided in the names of their masters, which displayed all the profuse
+magnificence of their treasures,--and "such a display," says an ancient
+chronicler, "was there in the great square of Cuzco, on this occasion, of
+gold and silver plate and jewels, as no other city in the world ever
+witnessed." 50  The banquet was served by the menials of the respective
+households, and the guests partook of the melancholy cheer in the
+presence of the royal phantom with the same attention to the forms of
+courtly etiquette as if the living monarch had presided! 51
+
+The nobility of Peru consisted of two orders, the first and by far the most
+important of which was that of the Incas, who, boasting a common
+descent with their sovereign, lived, as it were, in the reflected light of his
+glory.  As the Peruvian monarchs availed themselves of the right of
+polygamy to a very liberal extent, leaving behind them families of one or
+even two hundred children, 52 the nobles of the blood royal, though
+comprehending only their descendants in the male line, came in the course
+of years to be very numerous.53  They were divided into different
+lineages, each of which traced its pedigree to a different member of the
+royal dynasty, though all terminated in the divine founder of the empire.
+
+They were distinguished by many exclusive and very important privileges;
+they wore a peculiar dress; spoke a dialect, if we may believe the
+chronicler, peculiar to themselves; 54 and had the choicest portion of the
+public domain assigned for their support.  They lived, most of them, at
+court, near the person of the prince, sharing in his counsels, dining at his
+board, or supplied from his table.  They alone were admissible to the great
+offices in the priesthood.  They were invested with the command of
+armies, and of distant garrisons, were placed over the provinces, and, in
+short, filled every station of high trust and emolument.55  Even the laws,
+severe in their general tenor, seem not to have been framed with reference
+to them; and the people, investing the whole order with a portion of the
+sacred character which belonged to the sovereign, held that an Inca noble
+was incapable of crime.56
+
+The other order of nobility was the Curacas, the caciques of the
+conquered nations, or their descendants.  They were usually continued by
+the government in their places, though they were required to visit the
+capital occasionally, and to allow their sons to be educated there as the
+pledges of their loyalty.  It is not easy to define the nature or extent of
+their privileges.  They were possessed of more or less power, according to
+the extent of their patrimony, and the number of their vassals.  Their
+authority was usually transmitted from father to son, though sometimes
+the successor was chosen by the people.57  They did not occupy the
+highest posts of state, or those nearest the person of the sovereign, like the
+nobles of the blood.  Their authority seems to have been usually local, and
+always in subordination to the territorial jurisdiction of the great
+provincial governors, who were taken from the Incas.58
+
+It was the Inca nobility, indeed, who constituted the real strength of the
+Peruvian monarchy.  Attached to their prince by ties of consanguinity,
+they had common sympathies and, to a considerable extent, common
+interests with him.  Distinguished by a peculiar dress and insignia, as well
+as by language and blood, from the rest of the community, they were
+never confounded with the other tribes and nations who were incorporated
+into the great Peruvian monarchy.  After the lapse of centuries, they still
+retained their individuality as a peculiar people.  They were to the
+conquered races of the country what the Romans were to the barbarous
+hordes of the Empire, or the Normans to the ancient inhabitants of the
+British Isles.  Clustering around the throne, they formed an invincible
+phalanx, to shield it alike from secret conspiracy and open insurrection.
+Though living chiefly in the capital, they were also distributed throughout
+the country in all its high stations and strong military posts, thus
+establishing lines of communication with the court, which enabled the
+sovereign to act simultaneously and with effect on the most distant
+quarters of his empire.  They possessed, moreover, an intellectual
+preeminence, which, no less than their station, gave them authority with
+the people.  Indeed, it may be said to have been the principal foundation
+of their authority.  The crania of the Inca race show a decided superiority
+over the other races of the land in intellectual power; 59 and it cannot be
+denied that it was the fountain of that peculiar civilization and social
+polity, which raised the Peruvian monarchy above every other state in
+South America.  Whence this remarkable race came, and what was its
+early history, are among those mysteries that meet us so frequently in the
+annals of the New World, and which time and the antiquary have as yet
+done little to explain.
+
+
+
+Book 1
+
+Chapter 2
+
+Orders Of The State--Provisions For Justice--Division Of Lands-
+Revenues And Registers--Great Roads And Posts-
+Military Tactics And Policy
+
+If we are surprised at the peculiar and original features of what may be
+called the Peruvian aristocracy, we shall be still more so as we descend
+to the lower orders of the community, and see the very artificial character
+of their institutions,--as artificial as those of ancient Sparta, and, though
+in a different way, quite as repugnant to the essential principles of our
+nature.  The institutions of Lycurgus, however, were designed for a petty
+state, while those of Peru, although originally intended for such, seemed,
+like the magic tent in the Arabian tale, to have an indefinite power of
+expansion, and were as well suited to the most flourishing condition of
+the empire as to its infant fortunes.  In this remarkable accommodation to
+change of circumstances we see the proofs of a contrivance that argues
+no slight advance in civilization.
+
+The name of Peru was not known to the natives.  It was given by the
+Spaniards, and originated, it is said, in a misapprehension of the Indian
+name of "river."1  However this may be, it is certain that the natives had
+no other epithet by which to designate the large collection of tribes and
+nations who were assembled under the sceptre of the Incas, than that of
+Tavantinsuyu, or "four quarters of the world."2  This will not surprise a
+citizen of the United States, who has no other name by which to class
+himself among nations than what is borrowed from a quarter of the
+globe.3  The kingdom, conformably to its name, was divided into four
+parts, distinguished each by a separate title, and to each of which ran one
+of the four great roads that diverged from Cuzco, the capital or navel of
+the Peruvian monarchy.  The city was in like manner divided into four
+quarters; and the various races, which gathered there from the distant
+parts of the empire, lived each in the quarter nearest to its respective
+province.  They all continued to wear their peculiar national costume, so
+that it was easy to determine their origin; and the same order and system
+of arrangement prevailed in the motley population of the capital, as in
+the great provinces of the empire.  The capital, in fact, was a miniature
+image of the empire.4
+
+The four great provinces were each placed under a viceroy or governor,
+who ruled over them with the assistance of one or more councils for the
+different departments.  These viceroys resided, some portion of their
+time, at least, in the capital, where they constituted a sort of council of
+state to the Inca.5  The nation at large was distributed into decades, or
+small bodies of ten; and every tenth man, or head of a decade, had
+supervision of the rest,---being required to see that they enjoyed the
+rights and immunities to which they were entitled, to solicit aid in their
+behalf from government, when necessary, and to bring offenders to
+justice.  To this last they were stimulated by a law that imposed on them,
+in case of neglect, the same penalty that would have been incurred by the
+guilty party.  With this law hanging over his head, the magistrate of Peru,
+we may well believe, did not often go to sleep on his post.6
+
+The people were still further divided into bodies of fifty, one hundred,
+five hundred, and a thousand, with each an officer having general
+supervision over those beneath, and the higher ones possessing, to a
+certain extent, authority in matters of police.  Lastly, the whole empire
+was distributed into sections or departments of ten thousand inhabitants,
+with a governor over each, from the Inca nobility, who had control over
+the curacas and other territorial officers in the district.  There were, also,
+regular tribunals of justice, consisting of magistrates in each of the towns
+or small communities, with jurisdiction over petty offences, while those
+of a graver character were carried before superior judges, usually the
+governors or rulers of the districts.  These judges all held their authority
+and received their support from the Crown, by which they were
+appointed and removed at pleasure.  They were obliged to determine
+every suit in five days from the time it was brought before them; and
+there was no appeal from one tribunal to another.  Yet there were
+important provisions for the security of justice.  A committee of visitors
+patrolled the kingdom at certain times to investigate the character and
+conduct of the magistrates; and any neglect or violation of duty was
+punished in the most exemplary manner.  The inferior courts were also
+required to make monthly returns of their proceedings to the higher ones,
+and these made reports in like manner to the viceroys; so that the
+monarch, seated in the centre of his dominions, could look abroad, as it
+were, to the most distant extremities, and review and rectify any abuses
+in the administration of the law.7
+
+The laws were few and exceedingly severe.  They related almost wholly
+to criminal matters.  Few other laws were needed by a people who had
+no money, little trade, and hardly any thing that could be called fixed
+property.  The crimes of theft, adultery, and murder were all capital;
+though it was wisely provided that some extenuating circumstances
+might be allowed to mitigate the punishment.8   Blasphemy against the
+Sun, and malediction of the Inca,--offences, indeed, of the same
+complexion were also punished with death.  Removing landmarks,
+turning the water away from a neighbor's land into one's own, burning a
+house, were all severely punished.  To burn a bridge was death.  The inca
+allowed no obstacle to those facilities of communication so essential to
+the maintenance of public order.  A rebellious city or province was laid
+waste, and its inhabitants exterminated.  Rebellion against the "Child of
+the Sun," was the greatest of all crimes.9
+
+The simplicity and severity of the Peruvian code may be thought to infer
+a state of society but little advanced; which had few of those complex
+interests and relations that grow up in a civilized community, and which
+had not proceeded far enough in the science of legislation to economize
+human suffering by proportioning penalties to crimes.  But the Peruvian
+institutions must be regarded from a different point of view from that in
+which we study those of other nations.  The laws emanated from the
+sovereign, and that sovereign held a divine commission, and was
+possessed of a divine nature.  To violate the law was not only to insult
+the majesty of the throne, but it was sacrilege.  The slightest offence,
+viewed in this light, merited death; and the gravest could incur no
+heavier penalty.10  Yet, in the infliction of their punishments, they
+showed no unnecessary cruelty; and the sufferings of the victim were not
+prolonged by the ingenious torments so frequent among barbarous
+nations.11
+
+These legislative provisions may strike us as very defective, even as
+compared with those of the semi-civilized races of Anahuac, where a
+gradation of courts, moreover, with the right of appeal, afforded a
+tolerable security for justice.  But in a country like Peru, where few but
+criminal causes were known, the right of appeal was of less consequence.
+The law was simple, its application easy; and, where the judge was
+honest, the case was as likely to be determined correctly on the first
+hearing as on the second.  The inspection of the board of visitors, and the
+monthly returns of the tribunals, afforded no slight guaranty for their
+integrity.  The law which required a decision within five days would
+seem little suited to the complex and embarrassing litigation of a modern
+tribunal.  But, in the simple questions submitted to the Peruvian judge,
+delay would have been useless; and the Spaniards, familiar with the evils
+growing out of long-protracted suits, where the successful litigant is too
+often a ruined man, are loud in their encomiums of this swift-handed and
+economical justice.12
+
+The fiscal regulations of the Incas, and the laws respecting property, are
+the most remarkable features in the Peruvian polity.  The whole territory
+of the empire was divided into three parts, one for the Sun, another for
+the Inca, and the last for the people.  Which of the three was the largest
+is doubtful.  The proportions differed materially in different provinces.
+The distribution, indeed, was made on the same general principle, as
+each new conquest was added to the monarchy; but the propertion varied
+according to the amount of population, and the greater or less amount of
+land consequently required for the support of the inhabitants.13
+
+The lands assigned to the Sun furnished a revenue to support the
+temples, and maintain the costly ceremonial of the Peruvian worship and
+the multitudinous priesthood.  Those reserved for the Inca went to
+support the royal state, as well as the numerous members of his
+household and his kindred, and supplied the various exigencies of
+government.  The remainder of the lands was divided, per capita, in
+equal shares among the people.  It was provided by law, as we shall see
+hereafter, that every Peruvian should marry at a certain age.  When this
+event took place, the community or district in which he lived furnished
+him with a dwelling, which, as it was constructed of humble materials,
+was done at little cost.  A lot of land was then assigned to him sufficient
+for his own maintenance and that of his wife.  An additional portion was
+granted for every child, the amount allowed for a son being the double of
+that for a daughter.  The division of the soil was renewed every year, and
+the possessions of the tenant were increased or diminished according to
+the numbers in his family.14  The same arrangement was observed with
+reference to the curacas, except only that a domain was assigned to them
+corresponding with the superior dignity of their stations.15
+
+A more thorough and effectual agrarian law than this cannot be
+imagined.  In other countries where such a law has been introduced, its
+operation, after a time, has given way to the natural order of events, and,
+under the superior intelligence and thrift of some and the prodigality of
+others, the usual vicissitudes of fortune have been allowed to take their
+course, and restore things to their natural inequality.  Even the iron law
+of Lycurgus ceased to operate after a time, and melted away before the
+spirit of luxury and avarice.  The nearest approach to the Peruvian
+constitution was probably in Judea, where, on the recurrence of the great
+national jubilee, at the close of every half-century, estates reverted to
+their original proprietors.  There was this important difference in Peru;
+that not only did the lease, if we may so call it, terminate with the year,
+but during that period the tenant had no power to alienate or to add to his
+possessions.  The end of the brief term found him in precisely the same
+condition that he was in at the beginning.  Such a state of things might be
+supposed to be fatal to any thing like attachment to the soil, or to that
+desire of improving it, which is natural to the permanent proprietor, and
+hardly less so to the holder of a long lease.  But the practical operation of
+the law seems to have been otherwise; and it is probable, that, under the
+influence of that love of order and aversion to change which marked the
+Peruvian institutions, each new partition of the soil usually confirmed the
+occupant in his possession, and the tenant for a year was converted into a
+proprietor for life.
+
+The territory was cultivated wholly by the people.  The lands belonging
+to the Sun were first attended to.  They next tilled the lands of the old, of
+the sick, of the widow and the orphan, and of soldiers engaged in actual
+service; in short, of all that part of the community who, from bodily
+infirmity or any other cause, were unable to attend to their own concerns.
+The people were then allowed to work on their own ground, each man
+for himself, but with the general obligation to assist his neighbor, when
+any circumstance--the burden of a young and numerous family, for
+example--might demand it.16  Lastly, they cultivated the lands of the
+Inca.  This was done, with great ceremony, by the whole population in a
+body.  At break of day, they were summoned together by proclamation
+from some neighboring tower or eminence, and all the inhabitants of the
+district, men, women, and children, appeared dressed in their gayest
+apparel, bedecked with their little store of finery and ornaments, as if for
+some great jubilee.  They went through the labors of the day with the
+same joyous spirit, chanting their popular ballads which commemorated
+the heroic deeds of the Incas, regulating their movements by the measure
+of the chant, and all mingling in the chorus, of which the word hailli, or
+"triumph," was usually the burden.  These national airs had something
+soft and pleasing in their character, that recommended them to the
+Spaniards; and many a Peruvian song was set to music by them after the
+Conquest, and was listened to by the unfortunate natives with
+melancholy satisfaction, as it called up recollections of the past, when
+their days glided peacefully away under the sceptre of the Incas.17
+
+A similar arrangement prevailed with respect to the different
+manufactures as to the agricultural products of the country.  The flocks
+of llamas, or Peruvian sheep, were appropriated exclusively to the Sun
+and to the Inca.18  Their number was immense.  They were scattered
+over the different provinces, chiefly in the colder regions of the country,
+where they were intrusted to the care of experienced shepherds, who
+conducted them to different pastures according to the change of season.
+A large number was every year sent to the capital for the consumption of
+the Court, and for the religious festivals and sacrifices.  But these were
+only the males, as no female was allowed to be killed.  The regulations
+for the care and breeding of these flocks were prescribed with the
+greatest minuteness, and with a sagacity which excited the admiration of
+the Spaniards, who were familiar with the management of the great
+migratory flocks of merinos in their own country.19
+
+At the appointed season, they were all sheared, and the wool was
+deposited in the public magazines.  It was then dealt out to each family in
+such quantities as sufficed for its wants, and was consigned to the female
+part of the household, who were well instructed in the business of
+spinning and weaving.  When this labor was accomplished, and the
+family was provided with a coarse but warm covering, suited to the cold
+climate of the mountains,--for, in the lower country, cotton, furnished in
+like manner by the Crown, took the place, to a certain extent, of wool,--
+the people were required to labor for the Inca.  The quantity of the cloth
+needed, as well as the peculiar kind and quality of the fabric, was first
+determined at Cuzco.  The work was then apportioned among the
+different provinces.  Officers, appointed for the purpose, superintended
+the distribution of the wool, so that the manufacture of the different
+articles should be intrusted to the most competent hands.20  They did not
+leave the matter here, but entered the dwellings, from time to time, and
+saw that the work was faithfully executed.  This domestic inquisition was
+not confined to the labors for the Inca.  It included, also, those for the
+several families; and care was taken that each household should employ
+the materials furnished for its own use in the manner that was intended,
+so that no one should be unprovided with necessary apparel.21  In this
+domestic labor all the female part of the establishment was expected to
+join.  Occupation was found for all, from the child five years old to the
+aged matron not too infirm to hold a distaff.  No one, at least none but
+the decrepit and the sick, was allowed to eat the bread of idleness in
+Peru.  Idleness was a crime in the eye of the law, and, as such, severely
+punished; while industry was publicly commended and stimulated by
+rewards.22
+
+The like course was pursued with reference to the other requisitions of
+the government.  All the mines in the kingdom belonged to the Inca.
+They were wrought exclusively for his benefit, by persons familiar with
+this service, and selected from the districts where the mines were
+situated.23  Every Peruvian of the lower class was a husbandman, and,
+with the exception of those already specified, was expected to provide
+for his own support by the cultivation of his land.  A small portion of the
+community, however, was instructed in mechanical arts; some of them of
+the more elegant kind, subservient to the purposes of luxury and
+ornament.  The demand for these was chiefly limited to the sovereign
+and his Court; but the labor of a larger number of hands was exacted for
+the execution of the great public works which covered the land.  The
+nature and amount of the services required were all determined at Cuzco
+by commissioners well instructed in the resources of the country, and in
+the character of the inhabitants of different provinces.24
+
+This information was obtained by an admirable regulation, which has
+scarcely a counterpart in the annals of a semi-civilized people.  A
+register was kept of all the births and deaths throughout the country, and
+exact returns of the actual population were made to government every
+year, by means of the quipus, a curious invention, which will be
+explained hereafter.25  At certain intervals, also, a general survey of the
+country was made, exhibiting a complete view of the character of the
+soil, its fertility, the nature of its products, both agricultural and mineral,-
+-in short, of all that constituted the physical resources of the empire.26
+Furnished with these statistical details, it was easy for the government,
+after determining the amount of requisitions, to distribute the work
+among the respective provinces best qualified to execute it.  The task of
+apportioning the labor was assigned to the local authorities, and great
+care was taken that it should be done in such a manner, that, while the
+most competent hands were selected, it should not fall disproportionately
+heavy on any.27
+
+The different provinces of the country furnished persons peculiarly
+suited to different employments, which, as we shall see hereafter, usually
+descended from father to son.  Thus, one district supplied those most
+skilled in working the mines, another the most curious workers in metals,
+or in wood, and so on.28  The artisan was provided by government with
+the materials; and no one was required to give more than a stipulated
+portion of his time to the public service.  He was then succeeded by
+another for the like term; and it should be observed, that all who were
+engaged in the employment of the government--and the remark applies
+equally to agricultural labor--were maintained, for the time, at the public
+expense.29  By this constant rotation of labor, it was intended that no
+one should be overburdened, and that each man should have time to
+provide for the demands of his own household.  It was impossible--in the
+judgment of a high Spanish authority--to improve on the system of
+distribution, so carefully was it accommodated to the condition and
+comfort of the artisan.30  The security of the working classes seems to
+have been ever kept in view in the regulations of the government; and
+these were so discreetly arranged, that the most wearing and
+unwholesome labors, as those of the mines, occasioned no detriment to
+the health of the laborer; a striking contrast to his subsequent condition
+under the Spanish rule.31
+
+A part of the agricultural produce and manufactures was transported to
+Cuzco, to minister to the immediate demands of the Inca and his Court.
+But far the greater part was stored in magazines scattered over the
+different provinces.  These spacious buildings, constructed of stone,
+were divided between the Sun and the Inca, though the greater share
+seems to have been appropriated by the monarch.  By a wise regulation,
+any deficiency in the contributions of the Inca might be supplied from
+the granaries of the Sun.32  But such a necessity could rarely have
+happened; and the providence of the government usually left a large
+surplus in the royal depositories, which was removed to a third class of
+magazines, whose design was to supply the people in seasons of scarcity,
+and, occasionally, to furnish relief to individuals, whom sickness or
+misfortune had reduced to poverty; thus, in a manner, justifying the
+assertion of a Castilian document, that a large portion of the revenues of
+the Inca found its way back again, through one channel or another, into
+the hands of the people.33  These magazines were found by the
+Spaniards, on their arrival, stored with all the various products and
+manufactures of the country,--with maize, coca, quinua, woolen and
+cotton stuffs of the finest quality, with vases and utensils of gold, silver,
+and copper, in short, with every article of luxury or use within the
+compass of Peruvian skill.34  The magazines of grain, in particular,
+would frequently have sufficed for the consumption of the adjoining
+district for several years.35  An inventory of the various products of the
+country, and the quarters whence they were obtained, was every year
+taken by the royal officers, and recorded by the quipucamayus on their
+registers, with surprising regularity and precision.  These registers were
+transmitted to the capital, and submitted to the Inca, who could thus at a
+glance, as it were, embrace the whole results of the national industry, and
+see how far they corresponded with the requisitions of government.36
+
+Such are some of the most remarkable features of the Peruvian
+institutions relating to property, as delineated by writers who, however
+contradictory in the details, have a general conformity of outline.  These
+institutions are certainly so remarkable, that it is hardly credible they
+should ever have been enforced throughout a great empire, and for a long
+period of years.  Yet we have the most unequivocal testimony to the fact
+from the Spaniards, who landed in Peru in time to witness their
+operation; some of whom, men of high judicial station and character,
+were commissioned by the government to make investigations into the
+state of the country under its ancient rulers.
+
+The impositions on the Peruvian people seem to have been sufficiently
+heavy.  On them rested the whole burden of maintaining, not only their
+own order, but every other order in the state.  The members of the royal
+house, the great nobles, even the public functionaries, and the numerous
+body of the priesthood, were all exempt from taxation.37  The whole
+duty of defraying the expenses of the government belonged to the
+people.  Yet this was not materially different from the condition of things
+formerly existing in most parts of Europe, where the various privileged
+classes claimed exemption--not always with success, indeed--from
+bearing part of the public burdens.  The great hardship in the case of the
+Peruvian was, that he could not better his condition.  His labors were for
+others, rather than for himself.  However industrious, he could not add a
+rood to his own possessions, nor advance himself one hair's breadth in
+the social scale.  The great and universal motive to honest industry, that
+of bettering one's lot, was lost upon him.  The great law of human
+progress was not for him.  As he was born, so he was to die.  Even his
+time he could not properly call his own.  Without money, with little
+property of any kind, he paid his taxes in labor.38  No wonder that the
+government should have dealt with sloth as a crime.  It was a crime
+against the state, and to be wasteful of time was, in a manner, to rob the
+exchequer.  The Peruvian, laboring all his life for others, might be
+compared to the convict in a treadmill, going the same dull round of
+incessant toil, with the consciousness, that, however profitable the results
+to the state, they were nothing to him.
+
+But this is the dark side of the picture.  If no man could become rich in
+Peru, no man could become poor.  No spendthrift could waste his
+substance in riotous luxury.  No adventurous schemer could impoverish
+his family by the spirit of speculation.  The law was constantly directed
+to enforce a steady industry and a sober management of his affairs.  No
+mendicant was tolerated in Peru.  When a man was reduced by poverty
+or misfortune, (it could hardly be by fault,) the arm of the law was
+stretched out to minister relief; not the stinted relief of private charity,
+nor that which is doled out, drop by drop, as it were, from the frozen
+reservoirs of "the parish," but in generous measure, bringing no
+humiliation to the object of it, and placing him on a level with the rest of
+his countrymen.39
+
+No man could be rich, no man could be poor, in Peru; but all might
+enjoy, and did enjoy, a competence.  Ambition, avarice, the love of
+change, the morbid spirit of discontent, those passions which most
+agitate the minds of men, found no place in the bosom of the Peruvian.
+The very condition of his being seemed to be at war with change.  He
+moved on in the same unbroken circle in which his fathers had moved
+before him, and in which his children were to follow.  It was the object
+of the Incas to infuse into their subjects a spirit of passive obedience and
+tranquillity,--a perfect acquiescence in the established order of things.  In
+this they fully succeeded.  The Spaniards who first visited the country are
+emphatic in their testimony, that no government could have been better
+suited to the genius of the people; and no people could have appeared
+more contented with their lot, or more devoted to their government.40
+
+Those who may distrust the accounts of Peruvian industry will find their
+doubts removed on a visit to the country.  The traveller still meets,
+especially in the central regions of the table-land, with memorials of the
+past, remains of temples, palaces, fortresses, terraced mountains, great
+military roads, aqueducts, and other public works, which, whatever
+degree of science they may display in their execution, astonish him by
+their number, the massive character of the materials, and the grandeur of
+the design.  Among them, perhaps the most remarkable are the great
+roads, the broken remains of which are still in sufficient preservation to
+attest their former magnificence.  There were many of these roads,
+traversing different parts of the kingdom; but the most considerable were
+the two which extended from Quito to Cuzco, and, again diverging from
+the capital, continued in a southern direction towards Chili.
+
+One of these roads passed over the grand plateau, and the other along the
+lowlands on the borders of the ocean.  The former was much the more
+difficult achievement, from the character of the country.  It was
+conducted over pathless sierras buried in snow; galleries were cut for
+leagues through the living rock; rivers were crossed by means of bridges
+that swung suspended in the air; precipices were scaled by stairways
+hewn out of the native bed; ravines of hideous depth were filled up with
+solid masonry; in short, all the difficulties that beset a wild and
+mountainous region, and which might appall the most courageous
+engineer of modern times, were encountered and successfully overcome.
+The length of the road, of which scattered fragments only remain, is
+variously estimated, from fifteen hundred to two thousand miles; and
+stone pillars, in the manner of European milestones, were erected at
+stated intervals of somewhat more than a league, all along the route.  Its
+breadth scarcely exceeded twenty feet.41  It was built of heavy flags of
+freestone, and in some parts, at least, covered with a bituminous cement,
+which time has made harder than the stone itself.  In some places, where
+the ravines had been filled up with masonry, the mountain torrents,
+wearing on it for ages, have gradually eaten a way through the base, and
+left the superincumbent mass--such is the cohesion of the materials--still
+spanning the valley like an arch ! 42
+
+Over some of the boldest streams it was necessary to construct
+suspension bridges, as they are termed, made of the tough fibres of the
+maguey, or of the osier of the country, which has an extraordinary degree
+of tenacity and strength.  These osiers were woven into cables of the
+thickness of a man's body.  The huge ropes, then stretched across the
+water, were conducted through rings or holes cut in immense buttresses
+of stone raised on the opposite banks of the river, and there secured to
+heavy pieces of timber.  Several of these enormous cables, bound
+together, formed a bridge, which, covered with planks, well secured and
+defended by a railing of the same osier materials on the sides, afforded a
+safe passage for the traveller.  The length of this aerial bridge, sometimes
+exceeding two hundred feet, caused it, confined, as it was, only at the
+extremities, to dip with an alarming inclination towards the centre, while
+the motion given to it by the passenger occasioned an oscillation still
+more frightful, as his eye wandered over the dark abyss of waters that
+foamed and tumbled many a fathom beneath.  Yet these light and fragile
+fabrics were crossed without fear by the Peruvians, and are still retained
+by the Spaniards over those streams which, from the depth or
+impetuosity of the current, would seem impracticable for the usual
+modes of conveyance.  The wider and more tranquil waters were crossed
+on balsas--a kind of raft still much used by the natives--to which sails
+were attached, furnishing the only instance of this higher kind of
+navigation among the American Indians.43
+
+The other great road of the Incas lay through the level country between
+the Andes and the ocean.  It was constructed in a different manner, as
+demanded by the nature of the ground, which was for the most part low,
+and much of it sandy.  The causeway was raised on a high embankment
+of earth, and defended on either side by a parapet or wall of clay; and
+trees and odoriferous shrubs were planted along the margin, regaling the
+sense of the traveller with their perfumes, and refreshing him by their
+shades, so grateful under the burning sky of the tropics.  In the strips of
+sandy waste, which occasionally intervened, where the light and volatile
+soil was incapable of sustaining a road, huge piles, many of them to be
+seen at this day, were driven into the ground to indicate the route to the
+traveller.44
+
+All along these highways, caravansaries, or tambos, as they were called,
+were erected, at the distance of ten or twelve miles from each other, for
+the accommodation, more particularly, of the Inca and his suite, and
+those who journeyed on the public business.  There were few other
+travellers in Peru.  Some of these buildings were on an extensive scale,
+consisting of a fortress, barracks, and other military works, surrounded
+by a parapet of stone, and covering a large tract of ground.  These were
+evidently destined for the accommodation of the imperial armies, when
+on their march across the country.  The care of the great roads was
+committed to the districts through which they passed, and a large number
+of hands was constantly employed under the Incas to keep them in repair.
+This was the more easily done in a country where the mode of travelling
+was altogether on foot; though the roads are said to have been so nicely
+constructed, that a carriage might have rolled over them as securely as on
+any of the great roads of Europe.45  Still, in a region where the elements
+of fire and water are both actively at work in the business of destruction,
+they must, without constant supervision, have gradually gone to decay.
+Such has been their fate under the Spanish conquerors, who took no care
+to enforce the admirable system for their preservation adopted by the
+Incas.  Yet the broken portions that still survive, here and there, like the
+fragments of the great Roman roads scattered over Europe, bear
+evidence to their primitive grandeur, and have drawn forth the eulogium
+from a discriminating traveller, usually not too profuse in his panegyric,
+that "the roads of the Incas were among the most useful and stupendous
+works ever executed by man." 46
+
+The system of communication through their dominions was still further
+improved by the Peruvian sovereigns, by the introduction of posts, in the
+same manner as was done by the Aztecs.  The Peruvian posts, however,
+established on all the great routes that conducted to the capital, were on a
+much more extended plan than those in Mexico.  All along these routes,
+small buildings were erected, at the distance of less than five miles
+asunder,47 in each of which a number of runners, or chasquis, as they
+were called, were stationed to carry forward the despatches of
+government.48  These despatches were either verbal, or conveyed by
+means of quipus, and sometimes accompanied by a thread of the crimson
+fringe worn round the temples of the Inca, which was regarded with the
+same implicit deference as the signet ring of an Oriental despot.49
+
+The chasquis were dressed in a peculiar livery, intimating their
+profession.  They were all trained to the employment, and selected for
+their speed and fidelity.  As the distance each courier had to perform was
+small, and as he had ample time to refresh himself at the stations, they
+dart over the ground with great swiftness, and messages were carried
+through the whole extent of the long routes, at the rate of a hundred and
+fifty miles a day.  The office of the chasquis was not limited to carrying
+despatches.  They frequently brought various articles for the use of the
+Court; and in this way, fish from the distant ocean, fruits, game, and
+different commodities from the hot regions on the coast, were taken to
+the capital in good condition, and served fresh at the royal table.50  It is
+remarkable that this important institution should have been known to
+both the Mexicans and the Peruvians without any correspondence with
+one another; and that it should have been found among two barbarian
+nations of the New World, long before it was introduced among the
+civilized nations of Europe.51
+
+By these wise contrivances of the Incas, the most distant parts of the
+long-extended empire of Peru were brought into intimate relations with
+each other.  And while the capitals of Christendom, but a few hundred
+miles apart, remained as far asunder as if seas had rolled between them,
+the great capitals Cuzco and Quito were placed by the high roads of the
+Incas in immediate correspondence.  Intelligence from the numerous
+provinces was transmitted on the wings of the wind to the Peruvian
+metropolis, the great focus to which all the lines of communication
+converged.  Not an insurrectionary movement could occur, not an
+invasion, on the remotest frontier, before the tidings were conveyed to
+the capital, and the imperial armies were on their march across the
+magnificent roads of the country to suppress it.  So admirable was the
+machinery contrived by the American despots for maintaining
+tranquillity throughout their dominions! It may remind us of the similar
+institutions of ancient Rome, when, under the Caesars, she was mistress
+of half the world.
+
+A principal design of the great roads was to serve the purposes of
+military communication.  It formed an important item of their military
+policy, which is quite as well worth studying as their municipal.
+
+Notwithstanding the pacific professions of the Incas, and the pacific
+tendency, indeed, of their domestic institutions, they were constantly at
+war.  It was by war that their paltry territory had been gradually enlarged
+to a powerful empire.  When this was achieved, the capital, safe in its
+central position, was no longer shaken by these military movements, and
+the country enjoyed, in a great degree, the blessings of tranquillity and
+order.  But, however tranquil at heart, there is not a reign upon record in
+which the nation was not engaged in war against the barbarous nations
+on the frontier.  Religion furnished a plausible pretext for incessant
+aggression, and disguised the lust of conquest in the Incas, probably,
+from their own eyes, as well as from those of their subjects.  Like the
+followers of Mahomet, bearing the sword in one hand and the Koran in
+the other, the Incas of Peru offered no alternative but the worship of the
+Sun or war.
+
+It is true, their fanaticism--or their policy--showed itself in a milder form
+than was found in the descendants of the Prophet.  Like the great
+luminary which they adored, they operated by gentleness more potent
+than violence.52  They sought to soften the hearts of the rude tribes
+around them, and melt them by acts of condescension and kindness.  Far
+from provoking hostilities, they allowed time for the salutary example of
+their own institutions to work its effect, trusting that their less civilized
+neighbors would submit to their sceptre, from a conviction of the
+blessings it would secure to them.  When this course failed, they
+employed other measures, but still of a pacific character; and endeavored
+by negotiation, by conciliatory treatment, and by presents to the leading
+men, to win them over to their dominion.  In short, they practised all the
+arts familiar to the most subtle politician of a civilized land to secure the
+acquisition of empire.  When all these expedients failed, they prepared
+for war.
+
+Their levies were drawn from all the different provinces; though from
+some, where the character of the people was particularly hardy, more
+than from others.53  It seems probable that every Peruvian, who had
+reached a certain age, might be called to bear arms.  But the rotation of
+military service, and the regular drills, which took place twice or thrice
+in a month, of the inhabitants of every village, raised the soldiers
+generally above the rank of a raw militia.  The Peruvian army, at first
+inconsiderable, came, with the increase of population, in the latter days
+of the empire, to be very large, so that their monarchs could bring into
+the field, as contemporaries assure us, a force amounting to two hundred
+thousand men.  They showed the same skill and respect for order in their
+military organization, as in other things.  The troops were divided into
+bodies corresponding with our battalions and companies, led by officers,
+that rose, in regular gradation, from the lowest subaltern to the Inca
+noble, who was intrusted with the general command.54
+
+Their arms consisted of the usual weapons employed by nations, whether
+civilized or uncivilized, before the invention of powder,--bows and
+arrows, lances, darts, a short kind of sword, a battle-axe or partisan, and
+slings, with which they were very expert.  Their spears and arrows were
+tipped with copper, or, more commonly, with bone, and the weapons of
+the Inca lords were frequently mounted with gold or silver.  Their heads
+were protected by casques made either of wood or of the skins of wild
+animals, and sometimes richly decorated with metal and with precious
+stones, surmounted by the brilliant plumage of the tropical birds.  These,
+of course, were the ornaments only of the higher orders.  The great mass
+of the soldiery were dressed in the peculiar costume of their provinces,
+and their heads were wreathed with a sort of turban or roll of different-
+colored cloths, that produced a gay and animating effect.  Their
+defensive armor consisted of a shield or buckler, and a close tunic of
+quilted cotton, in the same manner as with the Mexicans.  Each company
+had its particular banner, and the imperial standard, high above all,
+displayed the glittering device and the rainbow,--the armorial ensign of
+the Incas, intimating their claims as children of the skies.55
+
+By means of the thorough system of communication established in the
+country, a short time sufficed to draw the levies together from the most
+distant quarters.  The army was put under the direction of some
+experienced chief, of the blood royal, or, more frequently, headed by the
+Inca in person.  The march was rapidly performed, and with little fatigue
+to the soldier; for, all along the great routes, quarters were provided for
+him, at regular distances, where he could find ample accommodations.
+The country is still covered with the remains of military works,
+constructed of porphyry or granite, which tradition assures us were
+designed to lodge the Inca and his army.56
+
+At regular intervals, also, magazines were established, filled with grain,
+weapons, and the different munitions of war, with which the army was
+supplied on its march.  It was the especial care of the government to see
+that these magazines, which were furnished from the stores of the Incas,
+were always well filled.  When the Spaniards invaded the country, they
+supported their own armies for a long time on the provisions found in
+them.57  The Peruvian soldier was forbidden to commit any trespass on
+the property of the inhabitants whose territory lay in the line of march.
+Any violation of this order was punished with death.58  The soldier was
+clothed and fed by the industry of the people, and the Incas rightly re-
+solved that he should not repay this by violence.  Far from being a tax on
+the labors of the husbandman, or even a burden on his hospitality, the
+imperial armies traversed the country, from one extremity to the other,
+with as little inconvenience to the inhabitants, as would be created by a
+procession of peaceful burghers, or a muster of holiday soldiers for a
+review.
+
+From the moment war was proclaimed, the Peruvian monarch used all
+possible expedition in assembling his forces, that he might anticipate the
+movements of his enemies, and prevent a combination with their allies.
+It was, however, from the neglect of such a principle of combination, that
+the several nations of the country, who might have prevailed by
+confederated strength, fell one after another under the imperial yoke.
+Yet, once in the field the Inca did not usually show any disposition to
+push his advantages to the utmost, and urge his foe to extremity.  In
+every stage of the war, he was open to propositions for peace; and
+although he sought to reduce his enemies by carrying off their harvests
+and distressing them by famine, he allowed his troops to commit no
+unnecessary outrage on person or property.  "We must spare our
+enemies," one of the Peruvian princes is quoted as saying, "or it will be
+our loss, since they and all that belong to them must soon be ours." 59  It
+was a wise maxim, and, like most other wise maxims, founded equally on
+benevolence and prudence.  The Incas adopted the policy claimed for the
+Romans by their countryman, who tells us that they gained more by
+clemency to the vanquished than by their victories.60
+
+In the same considerate spirit, they were most careful to provide for the
+security and comfort of their own troops; and, when a war was long
+protracted, or the climate proved unhealthy, they took care to relieve
+their men by frequent reinforcements, allowing the earlier recruits to
+return to their homes.61  But while thus economical of life, both in their
+own followers and in the enemy, they did not shrink from sterner
+measures when provoked by the ferocious or obstinate character of the
+resistance; and the Peruvian annals contain more than one of those
+sanguinary pages which cannot be pondered at the present day without a
+shudder.  It should be added, that the beneficent policy, which I have
+been delineating as characteristic of the Incas, did not belong to all; and
+that there was more than one of the royal line who displayed a full
+measure of the bold and unscrupulous spirit of the vulgar conqueror.
+
+The first step of the government, after the reduction of a country, was to
+introduce there the worship of the Sun.  Temples were erected, and
+placed under the care of a numerous priesthood, who expounded to the
+conquered people the mysteries of their new faith, and dazzled them by
+the display of its rich and stately ceremonial.62  Yet the religion of the
+conquered was not treated with dishonor.  The Sun was to be worshipped
+above all; but the images of their gods were removed to Cuzco and
+established in one of the temples, to hold their rank among the inferior
+deities of the Peruvian Pantheon.  Here they remained as hostages, in
+some sort, for the conquered nation, which would be the less inclined to
+forsake its allegiance, when by doing so it must leave its own gods in the
+hands of its enemies.63
+
+The Incas provided for the settlement of their new conquests, by
+ordering a census to be taken of the population, and a careful survey to
+be made of the country, ascertaining its products, and the character and
+capacity of its soil.64  A division of the territory was then made on the
+same principle with that adopted throughout their own kingdom; and
+their respective portions were assigned to the Sun, the sovereign, and the
+people.  The amount of the last was regulated by the amount of the
+population, but the share of each individual was uniformly the same.  It
+may seem strange, that any people should patiently have acquiesced in an
+arrangement which involved such a total surrender of property.  But it
+was a conquered nation that did so, held in awe, on the least suspicion of
+meditating resistance, by armed garrisons, who were established at
+various commanding points throughout the country.65  It is probable,
+too, that the Incas made no greater changes than was essential to the new
+arrangement, and that they assigned estates, as far as possible, to their
+former proprietors.  The curacas, in particular, were confirmed in their
+ancient authority; or, when it was found expedient to depose the existing
+curaca, his rightful heir was allowed to succeed him.66  Every respect
+was shown to the ancient usages and laws of the land, as far as was
+compatible with the fundamental institutions of the Incas.  It must also be
+remembered, that the conquered tribes were, many of them, too little
+advanced in civilization to possess that attachment to the soil which
+belongs to a cultivated nation.67  But, to whatever it be referred, it seems
+probable that the extraordinary institutions of the Incas were established
+with little opposition in the conquered territories.68
+
+Yet the Peruvian sovereigns did not trust altogether to this show of
+obedience in their new vassals; and, to secure it more effectually, they
+adopted some expedients too remarkable to be passed by in silence.-
+Immediately after a recent conquest, the curacas and their families were
+removed for a time to Cuzco.  Here they learned the language of the
+capital, became familiar with the manners and usages of the court, as
+well as with the general policy of government, and experienced such
+marks of favor from the sovereign as would be most grateful to their
+feelings, and might attach them most warmly to his person.  Under the
+influence of these sentiments, they were again sent to rule over their
+vassals, but still leaving their eldest sons in the capital, to remain there as
+a guaranty for their own fidelity, as well as to grace the court of the
+Inca.69
+
+Another expedient was of a bolder and more original character.  This
+was nothing less than to revolutionize the language of the country.  South
+America, like North, was broken up into a great variety of dialects, or
+rather languages, having little affinity with one another.  This
+circumstance occasioned great embarrassment to the government in the
+administration of the different provinces, with whose idioms they were
+unacquainted.  It was determined, therefore, to substitute one universal
+language, the Quichua,--the language of the court, the capital, and the
+surrounding country,--the richest and most comprehensive of the South
+American dialects.  Teachers were provided in the towns and villages
+throughout the land, who were to give instruction to all, even the
+humblest classes; and it was intimated at the same time, that no one
+should be raised to any office of dignity or profit, who was unacquainted
+with this tongue.  The curacas and other chiefs, who attended at the
+capital became familiar with this dialect in their intercourse with the
+Court and, on their return home, set the example of conversing in it
+among themselves.  This example was imitated by their followers, and
+the Quichua gradually became the language of elegance and fashion, in
+the same manner as the Norman French was affected by all those who
+aspired to any consideration in England, after the Conquest.  By this
+means, while each province retained its peculiar tongue, a beautiful
+medium of communication was introduced, which enabled the
+inhabitants of one part of the country to hold intercourse with every
+other, and the Inca and his deputies to communicate with all.  This was
+the state of things on the arrival of the Spaniards.  It must be admitted,
+that history furnishes few examples of more absolute authority than such
+a revolution in the language of an empire, at the bidding of a master.70
+
+Yet little less remarkable was another device of the Incas for securing the
+loyalty of their subjects.  When any portion of the recent conquests
+showed a pertinacious spirit of disaffection, it was not uncommon to
+cause a part of the population, amounting, it might be, to ten thousand
+inhabitants or more, to remove to a distant quarter of the kingdom,
+occupied by ancient vassals of undoubted fidelity to the crown.  A like
+number of these last was transplanted to the territory left vacant by the
+emigrants.  By this exchange, the population was composed of two
+distinct races, who regarded each other with an eye of jealousy, that
+served as an effectual check on any mutinous proceeding.  In time, the
+influence of the well affected prevailed, supported, as they were, by
+royal authority, and by the silent working of the national institutions, to
+which the strange races became gradually accustomed.  A spirit of
+loyalty sprang up by degrees in their bosoms, and, before a generation
+had passed away, the different tribes mingled in harmony together as
+members of the same community.71  Yet the different races continued to
+be distinguished by difference of dress; since, by the law of the land,
+every citizen was required to wear the costume of his native province.72
+Neither could the colonist, who had been thus unceremoniously
+transplanted, return to his native district for, by another law, it was
+forbidden to any one to change his residence without license.73  He was
+settled for life.  The Peruvian government ascribed to every man his
+local habitation, his sphere of action, nay, the very nature and quality of
+that action.  He ceased to be a free agent; it might be almost said, that it
+relieved him of personal responsibility.
+
+In following out this singular arrangement, the Incas showed as much
+regard for the comfort and convenience of the colonist as was compatible
+with the execution of their design.  They were careful that the mitimaes,
+as these emigrants were styled, should be removed to climates most
+congenial with their own.  The inhabitants of the cold countries were not
+transplanted to the warm, nor the inhabitants of the warm countries to the
+cold.74  Even their habitual occupations were consulted, and the
+fisherman was settled in the neighborhood of the ocean, or the great
+lakes; while such lands were assigned to the husbandman as were best
+adapted to the culture with which he was most familiar.75  And, as
+migration by many, perhaps by most, would be regarded as a calamity,
+the government was careful to show particular marks of favor to the
+mitimaes, and, by various privileges and immunities, to ameliorate their
+condition, and thus to reconcile them, if possible, to their lot.76
+
+The Peruvian institutions, though they may have been modified and
+matured under successive sovereigns, all bear the stamp of the same
+original,--were all cast in the same mould.  The empire, strengthening
+and enlarging at every successive epoch of its history, was, in its latter
+days, but the development, on a great scale, of what it was in miniature at
+its commencement, as the infant germ is said to contain within itself all
+the ramifications of the future monarch of the forest.  Each succeeding
+Inca seemed desirous only to tread in the path, and carry out the plans, of
+his predecessor.  Great enterprises, commenced under one, were
+continued by another, and completed by a third.  Thus, while all acted on
+a regular plan, without any of the eccentric or retrograde movements
+which betray the agency of different individuals, the state seemed to be
+under the direction of a single hand, and steadily pursued, as if through
+one long reign, its great career of civilization and of conquest.
+
+The ultimate aim of its institutions was domestic quiet.  But it seemed as
+if this were to be obtained only by foreign war.  Tranquillity in the heart
+of the monarchy, and war on its borders, was the condition of Peru.  By
+this war it gave occupation to a part of its people, and, by the reduction
+and civilization of its barbarous neighbors, gave security to all.   Every
+Inca sovereign, however mild and benevolent in his domestic rule, was a
+warrior, and led his armies in person.  Each successive reign extended
+still wider the boundaries of the empire.  Year after year saw the
+victorious monarch return laden with spoils, and followed by a throng of
+tributary chieftains to his capital.  His reception there was a Roman
+triumph.  The whole of its numerous population poured out to welcome
+him, dressed in the gay and picturesque costumes of the different
+provinces, With banners waving above their heads, and strewing
+branches and flowers along the path of the conqueror.  The Inca, borne
+aloft in his golden chair on the shoulders of his nobles, moved in solemn
+procession, under the triumphal arches that were thrown across the way,
+to the great temple of the Sun.  There, without attendants,--for all but the
+monarch were excluded from the hallowed precincts,--the victorious
+prince, stripped of his royal insignia, barefooted, and with all humility,
+approached the awful shrine, and offered up sacrifice and thanksgiving
+to the glorious Deity who presided over the fortunes of the Incas.  This
+ceremony concluded, the whole population gave itself up to festivity;
+music, revelry, and dancing were heard in every quarter of the capital,
+and illuminations and bonfires commemorated the victorious campaign
+of the Inca, and the accession of a new territory to his empire.77
+
+In this celebration we see much of the character of a religious festival.
+Indeed, the character of religion was impressed on all the Peruvian wars.
+The life of an Inca was one long crusade against the infidel, to spread
+wide the worship of the Sun, to reclaim the benighted nations from their
+brutish superstitions, and impart to them the blessings of a well-regulated
+government.  This, in the favorite phrase of our day, was the "mission"
+of the Inca.  It was also the mission of the Christian conqueror who
+invaded the empire of this same Indian potentate.  Which of the two
+executed his mission most faithfully, history must decide.
+
+Yet the Peruvian monarchs did not show a childish impatience in the
+acquisition of empire.  They paused after a campaign, and allowed time
+for the settlement of one conquest before they undertook another; and, in
+this interval, occupied themselves with the quiet administration of their
+kingdom, and with the long progresses, which brought them into nearer
+intercourse with their people.  During this interval, also, their new
+vassals had begun to accommodate themselves to the strange institutions
+of their masters.  They learned to appreciate the value of a government
+which raised them above the physical evils of a state of barbarism,
+secured them protection of person, and a full participation in all the
+privileges enjoyed by their conquerors; and, as they became more
+familiar with the peculiar institutions of the country, habit, that second
+nature, attached them the more strongly to these institutions, from their
+very peculiarity.  Thus, by degrees, and without violence, arose the great
+fabric of the Peruvian empire, composed of numerous independent and
+even hostile tribes, yet, under the influence of a common religion,
+common language, and common government, knit together as one nation,
+animated by a spirit of love for its institutions and devoted loyalty to its
+sovereign.  What a contrast to the condition of the Aztec monarchy, on
+the neighboring continent, which, composed of the like heterogeneous
+materials, without any internal principle of cohesion, was only held
+together by the stern pressure, from without, of physical force !--Why the
+Peruvian monarchy should have fared no better than its rival, in its
+conflict with European civilization, will appear in the following pages.
+
+
+
+Book 1
+
+Chapter 3
+
+Peruvian Religion--Deities--Gorgeous Temples--Festivals-
+Virgins Of The Sun--Marriage
+
+It is a remarkable fact, that many, if not most, of the rude tribes
+inhabiting the vast American continent, however disfigured their creeds
+may have been in other respects by a childish superstition, had attained
+to the sublime conception of one Great Spirit, the Creator of the
+Universe, who, immaterial in his own nature, was not to be dishonored
+by an attempt at visible representation, and who, pervading all space,
+was not to be circumscribed within the walls of a temple.  Yet these
+elevated ideas, so far beyond the ordinary range of the untutored
+intellect, do not seem to have led to the practical consequences that
+might have been expected; and few of the American nations have shown
+much solicitude for the maintenance of a religious worship, or found in
+their faith a powerful spring of action.
+
+But, with progress in civilization, ideas more akin to those of civilized
+communities were gradually unfolded; a liberal provision was made, and
+a separate order instituted, for the services of religion, which were
+conducted with a minute and magnificent ceremonial, that challenged
+comparison, in some respects, with that of the most polished nations of
+Christendom.  This was the case with the nations inhabiting the table-
+land of North America, and with the natives of Bogota, Quito, Peru, and
+the other elevated regions on the great Southern continent.  It was, above
+all, the case with the Peruvians, who claimed a divine original for the
+founders of their empire, whose laws all rested on a divine sanction, and
+whose domestic institutions and foreign wars were alike directed to
+preserve and propagate their faith.  Religion was the basis of their polity,
+the very condition, as it were, of their social existence.  The government
+of the Incas, in its essential principles, was a theocracy.
+
+Yet, though religion entered so largely into the fabric and conduct of the
+political institutions of the people, their mythology, that is, the
+traditionary legends by which they affected to unfold the mysteries of the
+universe, was exceedingly mean and puerile.  Scarce one of their
+traditions--except the beautiful one respecting the founders of their royal
+dynasty--is worthy of note, or throws much light on their own antiquities,
+or the primitive history of man.  Among the traditions of importance is
+one of the deluge, which they held in common with so many of the
+nations in all parts of the globe, and which they related with some
+particulars that bear resemblance to a Mexican legend.1
+
+Their ideas in respect to a future state of being deserve more attention.
+They admitted the existence of a soul hereafter, and connected with this
+a belief in the resurrection of the body.  They assigned two distinct
+places for the residence of the good and of the wicked, the latter of
+which they fixed in the centre of the earth.  The good they supposed were
+to pass a luxurious life of tranquillity and ease, which comprehended
+their highest notions of happiness.  The wicked were to expiate their
+crimes by ages of wearisome labor.  They associated with these ideas a
+belief in an evil principle or spirit, bearing the name of Cupay, whom
+they did not attempt to propitiate by sacrifices, and who seems to have
+been only a shadowy personification of sin, that exercised little influence
+over their conduct.2
+
+It was this belief in the resurrection of the body, which led them to
+preserve the body with so much solicitude, by a simple process,
+however, that, unlike the elaborate embalming of the Egyptians,
+consisted in exposing it to the action of the cold, exceedingly dry, and
+highly rarefied atmosphere of the mountains.3  As they believed that the
+occupations in the future world would have great resemblance to those of
+the present, they buried with the deceased noble some of his apparel, his
+utensils, and, frequently, his treasures; and completed the gloomy
+ceremony by sacrificing his wives and favorite domestics, to bear him
+company and do him service in the happy regions beyond the clouds.4
+Vast mounds of an irregular, or, more frequently, oblong shape,
+penetrated by galleries running at right angles to each other, were raised
+over the dead, whose dried bodies or mummies have been found in
+considerable numbers, sometimes erect, but more often in the sitting
+posture, common to the Indian tribes of both continents.  Treasures of
+great value have also been occasionally drawn from these monumental
+deposits, and have stimulated, speculators to repeated excavations with
+the hope of similar good-fortune.  It was a lottery like that of searching
+after mines, but where the chances have proved still more against the
+adventurers.5
+
+The Peruvians, like so many other of the Indian races, acknowledged a
+Supreme Being, the Creator and Ruler of the Universe, whom they
+adored under the different names of Pachacamac and Viracocha.6  No
+temple was raised to this invisible Being, save one only in the valley
+which took its name from the deity himself, not far from the Spanish city
+of Lima.  Even this temple had existed there before the country came
+under the sway of the Incas, and was the great resort of Indian pilgrims
+from remote parts of the land; a circumstance which suggests the idea,
+that the worship of this Great Spirit, though countenanced, perhaps, by
+their accommodating policy, did not originate with the Peruvian
+princes.7
+
+The deity whose worship they especially inculcated, and which they
+never failed to establish wherever their banners were known to penetrate,
+was the Sun.  It was he, who, in a particular manner, presided over the
+destinies of man; gave light and warmth to the nations, and life to the
+vegetable world; whom they reverenced as the father of their royal
+dynasty, the founder of their empire; and whose temples rose in every
+city and almost every village throughout the land, while his altars
+smoked with burnt offerings,--a form of sacrifice peculiar to the
+Peruvians among the semi-civilized nations of the New World.8
+
+Besides the Sun, the Incas acknowledged various objects of worship in
+some way or other connected with this principal deity.  Such was the
+Moon, his sister-wife; the Stars, revered as part of her heavenly train,-
+though the fairest of them, Venus, known to the Peruvians by the name
+of Chasca, or the "youth with the long and curling locks," was adored as
+the page of the Sun, whom he attends so closely in his rising and in his
+setting.  They dedicated temples also to the Thunder and Lightning,9 in
+whom they recognized the Sun's dread ministers, and to the Rainbows
+whom they worshipped as a beautiful emanation of their glorious
+deity.10
+
+In addition to these, the subjects of the Incas enrolled among their
+inferior deities many objects in nature, as the elements, the winds, the
+earth, the air, great mountains and rivers, which impressed them with
+ideas of sublimity and power, or were supposed in some way or other to
+exercise a mysterious influence over the destinies of man.11  They
+adopted also a notion, not unlike that professed by some of the schools
+of ancient philosophy, that every thing on earth had its archetype or idea,
+its mother, as they emphatically styled it, which they held sacred, as, in
+some sort, its spiritual essence.12  But their system, far from being
+limited even to these multiplied objects of devotion, embraced within its
+ample folds the numerous deities of the conquered nations, whose
+images were transported to the capital, where the burdensome charges of
+their worship were defrayed by their respective provinces.  It was a rare
+stroke of policy in the Incas, who could thus accommodate their religion
+to their interests.13
+
+But the worship of the Sun constituted the peculiar care of the Incas, and
+was the object of their lavish expenditure.  The most ancient of the many
+temples dedicated to this divinity was in the Island of Titicaca, whence
+the royal founders of the Peruvian line were said to have proceeded.
+From this circumstance, this sanctuary was held in peculiar veneration.
+Every thing which belonged to it, even the broad fields of maize, which
+Surrounded the temple, and formed part of its domain, imbibed a portion
+of its sanctity.  The yearly produce was distributed among the different
+public magazines, in small quantities to each, as something that would
+sanctify the remainder of the store.  Happy was the man who could
+secure even an ear of the blessed harvest for his own granary! 14
+
+But the most renowned of the Peruvian temples, the pride of the capital,
+and the wonder of the empire, was at Cuzco, where, under the
+munificence of successive sovereigns, it had become so enriched, that it
+received the name of Coricancha, or "the Place of Gold." It consisted of
+a principal building and several chapels and inferior edifices, covering a
+large extent of ground in the heart of the city, and completely
+encompassed by a wall, which, with the edifices, was all constructed of
+stone.  The work was of the kind already described in the other public
+buildings of the country, and was so finely executed, that a Spaniard,
+who saw it in its glory, assures us, he could call to mind only two
+edifices in Spain, which, for their workmanship, were at all to be
+compared with it.15  Yet this substantial, and, in some respects,
+magnificent structure, was thatched with straw !
+
+The interior of the temple was the most worthy of admiration.  It was
+literally a mine of gold.  On the western wall was emblazoned a
+representation of the deity, consisting of a human countenance, looking
+forth from amidst innumerable rays of light, which emanated from it in
+every direction, in the same manner as the sun is often personified with
+us.  The figure was engraved on a massive plate of gold of enormous
+dimensions, thickly powdered with emeralds and precious stones.16  It
+was so situated in front of the great eastern portal, that the rays of the
+morning sun fell directly upon it at its rising, lighting up the whole
+apartment with an effulgence that seemed more than natural, and which
+was reflected back from the golden ornaments with which the walls and
+ceiling were everywhere in crusted.  Gold, in the figurative language of
+the people was "the tears wept by the sun," 17  and every part of the
+interior of the temple glowed with burnished plates and studs of the
+precious metal.  The cornices, which surrounded the walls of the
+sanctuary, were of the same costly material; and a broad belt or frieze of
+gold, let into the stonework, encompassed the whole exterior of the
+edifice.18
+
+Adjoining the principal structure were several chapels of smaller
+dimensions.  One of them was consecrated to the Moon, the deity held
+next in reverence, as the mother of the Incas.  Her effigy was delineated
+in the same manner as that of the Sun, on a vast plate that nearly covered
+one side of the apartment.  But this plate, as well as all the decorations of
+the building, was of silver, as suited to the pale, silvery light of the
+beautiful planet.  There were three other chapels, one of which was
+dedicated to the host of Stars, who formed the bright court of the Sister
+of the Sun; another was consecrated to his dread ministers of vengeance,
+the Thunder and the Lightning; and a third, to the Rainbow, whose
+many-colored arch spanned the walls of the edifice with hues almost as
+radiant as its own.  There were besides several other buildings, or
+insulated apartments, for the accommodation of the numerous priests
+who officiated in the services of the temple.19
+
+All the plate, the ornaments, the utensils of every description,
+appropriated to the uses of religion, were of gold or silver.  Twelve
+immense vases of the latter metal stood on the floor of the great saloon,
+filled with grain of the Indian corn;20  the censers for the perfumes, the
+ewers which held the water for sacrifice, the pipes which conducted it
+through subterraneous channels into the buildings, the reservoirs that
+received it, even the agricultural implements used in the gardens of the
+temple, were all of the same rich materials.  The gardens, like those
+described, belonging to the royal palaces, sparkled with flowers of gold
+and silver, and various imitations of the vegetable kingdom.  Animals,
+also, were to be found there,--among which the llama, with its golden
+fleece, was most conspicuous,--executed in the same style, and with a
+degree of skill, which, in this instance, probably, did not surpass the
+excellence of the material.21
+
+If the reader sees in this fairy picture only the romantic coloring of some
+fabulous El Dorado, he must recall what has been said before in
+reference to the palaces of the Incas, and consider that these "Houses of
+the Sun," as they were styled, were the common reservoir into which
+flowed all the streams of public and private benefaction throughout the
+empire.  Some of the statements, through credulity, and others, in the
+desire of exciting admiration, may be greatly exaggerated; but, in the
+coincidence of contemporary testimony, it is not easy to determine the
+exact line which should mark the measure of our skepticism.  Certain it
+is, that the glowing picture I have given is warranted by those who saw
+these buildings in their pride, or shortly after they had been despoiled by
+the cupidity of their countrymen.  Many of the costly articles were buried
+by the natives, or thrown into the waters of the rivers and the lakes; but
+enough remained to attest the unprecedented opulence of these religious
+establishments.  Such things as were in their nature portable were
+speedily removed, to gratify the craving of the Conquerors, who even
+tore away the solid cornices and frieze of gold from the great temple,
+filling the vacant places with the cheaper, but--since it affords no
+temptation to avarice--more durable, material of plaster.  Yet even thus
+shorn of their splendor, the venerable edifices still presented an
+attraction to the spoiler, who found in their dilapidated walls an
+inexhaustable quarry for the erection of other buildings.  On the very
+ground once crowned by the gorgeous Coricancha rose the stately church
+of St. Dominic, one of the most magnificent structures of the New
+World.  Fields of maize and lucerne now bloom on the spot which
+glowed with the golden gardens of the temple; and the friar chants his
+orisons within the consecrated precincts once occupied by the Children
+of the Sun.22
+
+Besides the great temple of the Sun, there was a large number of inferior
+temples and religious houses in the Peruvian capital and its environs,
+amounting, as is stated, to three or four hundred.23 For Cuzco was a
+sanctified spot, venerated not only as the abode of the Incas, but of all
+those deities who presided over the motley nations of the empire.  It was
+the city beloved of the Sun; where his worship was maintained in its
+splendor; "where every fountain, pathway, and wall," says an ancient
+chronicler, "was regarded as a holy mystery." 24  And unfortunate was
+the Indian noble who, at some period or other of his life, had not made
+his pilgrimage to the Peruvian Mecca.
+
+Other temples and religious dwellings were scattered over the provinces;
+and some of them constructed on a scale of magnificence, that almost
+rivalled that of the metropolis.  The attendants on these composed an
+army of themselves.  The whole number of functionaries, including those
+of the sacerdotal order, who officiated at the Coricancha alone, was no
+less than four thousand.25
+
+At the head of all, both here and throughout the land, stood the great
+High-Priest, or Villac Vmu, as he was called.  He was second only to the
+Inca in dignity, and was usually chosen from his brothers or nearest
+kindred.  He was appointed by the monarch, and held his office for life;
+and he, in turn, appointed to all the subordinate stations of his own order.
+This order was very numerous.  Those members of it who officiated in
+the House of the Sun, in Cuzco, were taken exclusively from the sacred
+race of the Incas.  The ministers in the provincial temples were drawn
+from the families of the curacas; but the office of high-priest in each
+district was reserved for one of the blood royal.  It was designed by this
+regulation to preserve the faith in its purity, and to guard against any
+departure from the stately ceremonial which it punctiliously
+prescribed.26
+
+The sacerdotal order, though numerous, was not distinguished by any
+peculiar badge or costume from the rest of the nation.  Neither was it the
+sole depository of the scanty science of the country, nor was it charged
+with the business of instruction, nor with those parochial duties, if they
+may so be called, which bring the priest in contact with the great body of
+the people,--as was the case in Mexico.  The cause of this peculiarity
+may probably be traced to the existence of a superior order, like that of
+the Inca nobles, whose sanctity of birth so far transcended all human
+appointments, that they in a manner engrossed whatever there was of
+religious veneration in the people.  They were, in fact, the holy order of
+the state.  Doubtless, any of them might, as very many of them did, take
+on themselves the sacerdotal functions; and their own insignia and
+peculiar privileges were too well understood to require any further badge
+to separate them from the people.
+
+The duties of the priest were confined to ministration in the temple.
+Even here his attendance was not constant, as he was relieved after a
+stated interval by other brethren of his order, who succeeded one another
+in regular rotation.  His science was limited to an acquaintance with the
+fasts and festivals of his religion, and the appropriate ceremonies which
+distinguished them.  This, however frivolous might be its character, was
+no easy acquisition; for the ritual of the Incas involved a routine of
+observances, as complex and elaborate as ever distinguished that of any
+nation, whether pagan or Christian.  Each month had its appropriate
+festival, or rather festivals.  The four principal had reference to the Sun,
+and commemorated the great periods of his annual progress, the solstices
+and equinoxes.  Perhaps the most magnificent of all the national
+solemnities was the feast of Raymi, held at the period of the summer
+solstice, when the Sun, having touched the southern extremity of his
+course, retraced his path, as if to gladden the hearts of his chosen people
+by his presence.  On this occasion, the Indian nobles from the different
+quarters of the country thronged to the capital to take part in the great
+religious celebration.
+
+For three days previous, there was a general fast, and no fire was allowed
+to be lighted in the dwellings.  When the appointed day arrived, the Inca
+and his court, followed by the whole population of the city, assembled at
+early dawn in the great square to greet the rising of the Sun.  They were
+dressed in their gayest apparel, and the Indian lords vied with each other
+in the display of costly ornaments and jewels on their persons, while
+canopies of gaudy feather-work and richly tinted stuffs, borne by the
+attendants over their heads, gave to the great square, and the streets that
+emptied into it, the appearance of being spread over with one vast and
+magnificent awning.  Eagerly they watched the coming of their deity,
+and, no sooner did his first yellow rays strike the turrets and loftiest
+buildings of the capital, than a shout of gratulation broke forth from the
+assembled multitude, accompanied by songs of triumph, and the wild
+melody of barbaric instruments, that swelled louder and louder as his
+bright orb, rising above the mountain range towards the east, shone in
+full splendor on his votaries.  After the usual ceremonies of adoration, a
+libation was offered to the great deity by the Inca, from a huge golden
+vase, filled with the fermented liquor of maize or of maguey, which,
+after the monarch had tasted it himself, he dispensed among his royal
+kindred.  These ceremonies completed, the vast assembly was arranged
+in order of procession, and took its way towards the Coricancha.27
+
+As they entered the street of the sacred edifice, all divested themselves of
+their sandals, except the Inca and his family, who did the same on
+passing through the portals of the temple, where none but these august
+personages were admitted.28  After a decent time spent in devotion, the
+sovereign, attended by his courtly train, again appeared, and preparations
+were made to commence the sacrifice.  This, with the Peruvians,
+consisted of animals, grain, flowers, and sweet-scented gums; sometimes
+of human beings, on which occasions a child or beautiful maiden was
+usually selected as the victim.  But such sacrifices were rare, being
+reserved to celebrate some great public event, as a coronation, the birth
+of a royal heir, or a great victory.  They were never followed by those
+cannibal repasts familiar to the Mexicans, and to many of the fierce
+tribes conquered by the Incas.  Indeed, the conquests of these princes
+might well be deemed a blessing to the Indian nations, if it were only
+from their suppression of cannibalism, and the diminution, under their
+rule, of human sacrifices.29
+
+At the feast of Raymi, the sacrifice usually offered was that of the llama;
+and the priest, after opening the body of his victim, sought in the
+appearances which it exhibited to read the lesson of the mysterious
+future.  If the auguries were unpropitious, a second victim was
+slaughtered, in the hope of receiving some more comfortable assurance.
+The Peruvian augur might have learned a good lesson of the Roman,--to
+consider every omen as favorable, which served the interests of his
+country.30
+
+A fire was then kindled by means of a concave mirror of polished metal,
+which, collecting the rays of the sun into a focus upon a quantity of dried
+cotton, speedily set it on fire.  It was the expedient used on the like
+occasions in ancient Rome, at least under the reign of the pious Numa.
+When the sky was overcast, and the face of the good deity was hidden
+from his worshippers, which was esteemed a bad omen, fire was
+obtained by means of friction.  The sacred flame was intrusted to the care
+of the Virgins of the Sun, and if, by any neglect, it was suffered to go out
+in the course of the year, the event was regarded as a calamity that boded
+some strange disaster to the monarchy.31  A burnt offering of the victims
+was then made on the altars of the deity.  This sacrifice was but the
+prelude to the slaughter of a great number of llamas, part of the flocks of
+the Sun, which furnished a banquet not only for the Inca and his Court,
+but for the people, who made amends at these festivals for the frugal fare
+to which they were usually condemned.  A fine bread or cake, kneaded
+of maize flour by the fair hands of the Virgins of the Sun, was also
+placed on the royal board, where the Inca, presiding over the feast,
+pledged his great nobles in generous goblets of the fermented liquor of
+the country, and the long revelry of the day was closed at night by music
+and dancing.  Dancing and drinking were the favorite pastimes of the
+Peruvians.  These amusements continued for several days, though the
+sacrifices terminated on the first.--Such was the great festival of Raymi;
+and the recurrence of this and similar festivities gave relief to the
+monotonous routine of toil prescribed to the lower orders of the
+community.32
+
+In the distribution of bread and wine at this high festival, the orthodox
+Spaniards, who first came into the country, saw a striking resemblance to
+the Christian communion; 33  as in the practice of confession and
+penance, which, in a most irregular form, indeed, seems to have been
+used by the Peruvians, they discerned a coincidence with another of the
+sacraments of the Church.34  The good fathers were fond of tracing such
+coincidences, which they considered as the contrivance of Satan, who
+thus endeavored to delude his victims by counterfeiting the blessed rites
+of Christianity.35  Others, in a different vein, imagined that they saw in
+such analogies the evidence, that some of the primitive teachers of the
+Gospel, perhaps an apostle himself, had paid a visit to these distant
+regions, and scattered over them the seeds of religious truth.36  But it
+seems hardly necessary to invoke the Prince of Darkness, or the
+intervention of the blessed saints, to account for coincidences which
+have existed in countries far removed from the light of Christianity, and
+in ages, indeed, when its light had not yet risen on the world.  It is much
+more reasonable to refer such casual points of resemblance to the general
+constitution of man, and the necessities of his moral nature.37
+
+Another singular analogy with Roman Catholic institutions is presented
+by the Virgins of the Sun, the "elect," as they were called,38 to whom I
+have already had occasion to refer.  These were young maidens,
+dedicated to the service of the deity, who, at a tender age, were taken
+from their homes, and introduced into convents, where they were placed
+under the care of certain elderly matrons, mamaconas, who had grown
+grey within their walls.39  Under these venerable guides, the holy virgins
+were instructed in the nature of their religious duties.  They were
+employed in spinning and embroidery, and, with the fine hair of the
+vicuna wove the hangings for the temples, and the apparel for the Inca
+and his household.40  It was their duty, above all, to watch over the
+sacred fire obtained at the festival of Raymi.  From the moment they
+entered the establishment, they were cut off from all connection with the
+world, even with their own family and friends.  No one but the Inca, and
+the Coya or queen, might enter the consecrated precincts.  The greatest
+attention was paid to their morals, and visitors were sent every year to
+inspect the institutions, and to report on the state of their discipline.41
+Woe to the unhappy maiden who was detected in an intrigue!  By the
+stern law of the Incas, she was to be buried alive, her lover was to be
+strangled, and the town or village to which he belonged was to be razed
+to the ground, and "sowed with stones," as if to efface every memorial of
+his existence.42  One is astonished to find so close a resemblance
+between the institutions of the American Indian, the ancient Roman, and
+the modern Catholic! Chastity and purity of life are virtues in woman,
+that would seem to be of equal estimation with the barbarian and with the
+civilized.--Yet the ultimate destination of the inmates of these religious
+houses was materially different.
+
+The great establishment at Cuzco consisted wholly of maidens of the
+royal blood, who amounted, it is said, to no less than fifteen hundred.
+The provincial convents were supplied from the daughters of the curacas
+and inferior nobles, and, occasionally, where a girl was recommended by
+great personal attractions, from the lower classes of the people.43  The
+"Houses of the Virgins of the Sun" consisted of low ranges of stone
+buildings, covering a large extent of ground, surrounded by high walls,
+which excluded those within entirely from observation.  They were
+provided with every accommodation for the fair inmates, and were
+embellished in the same sumptuous and costly manner as the palaces of
+the Incas, and the temples; for they received the particular care of
+government, as an important part of the religious establishment.44
+
+Yet the career of all the inhabitants of these cloisters was not confined
+within their narrow walls.  Though Virgins of the Sun, they were brides
+of the Inca, and, at a marriageable age, the most beautiful among them
+were selected for the honors of his bed, and transferred to the royal
+seraglio.  The full complement of this amounted in time not only to
+hundreds, but thousands, who all found accommodations in his different
+palaces throughout the country.  When the monarch was disposed to
+lessen the number of his establishment, the concubine with whose society
+he was willing to dispense returned, not to her former monastic
+residence, but to her own home; where, however humble might be her
+original condition, she was maintained in great state, and, far from being
+dishonored by the situation she had filled, was held in universal
+reverence as the Inca's bride.45
+
+The great nobles of Peru were allowed, like their sovereign, a plurality of
+wives.  The people, generally, whether by law, or by necessity stronger
+than law, were more happily limited to one.  Marriage was conducted in
+a manner that gave it quite as original a character as belonged to the
+other institutions of the country.  On an appointed day of the year, all
+those of a marriageable age--which, having reference to their ability to
+take charge of a family, in the males was fixed at not less than
+twentyfour years, and in the women at eighteen or twenty--were called
+together in the great squares of their respective towns and villages,
+throughout the empire.  The Inca presided in person over the assembly of
+his own kindred, and taking the hands of the different couples who were
+to be united, he placed them within each other, declaring the parties man
+and wife.  The same was done by the curacas towards all persons of their
+own or inferior degree in their several districts.  This was the simple
+form of marriage in Peru.  No one was allowed to select a wife beyond
+the community to which he belonged, which generally comprehended all
+his own kindred; 46 nor was any but the sovereign authorized to dispense
+with the law of nature--or at least, the usual law of nations--so far as to
+marry his own sister.47  No marriage was esteemed valid without the
+consent of the parents; and the preference of the parties, it is said, was
+also to be consulted; though, considering the barriers imposed by the
+prescribed age of the candidates, this must have been within rather
+narrow and whimsical limits.  A dwelling was got ready for the new-
+married pair at the charge of the district, and the prescribed portion of
+land assigned for their maintenance.  The law of Peru provided for the
+future, as well as for the present.  It left nothing to chance.--The simple
+ceremony of marriage was followed by general festivities among the
+friends of the parties, which lasted several days; and as every wedding
+took place on the same day, and as there were few families who had not
+someone of their members or their kindred personally interested, there
+was one universal bridal jubilee throughout the empire.48
+
+The extraordinary regulations respecting marriage under the Incas are,
+eminently characteristic of the genius of the government; which, far from
+limiting itself to matters of public concern, penetrated into the most
+private recesses of domestic life, allowing no man, however humble, to
+act for himself, even in those personal matters in which none but himself,
+or his family at most, might be supposed to be interested.  No Peruvian
+was too low for the fostering vigilance of government.  None was so high
+that he was not made to feel his dependence upon it in every act of his
+life.  His very existence as an individual was absorbed in that of the
+community.  His hopes and his fears, his joys and his sorrows, the
+tenderest sympathies of his nature, which would most naturally shrink
+from observation, were all to be regulated by law.  He was not allowed
+even to be happy in his own way.  The government of the Incas was the
+mildest, --but the most searching of despotisms.
+
+
+
+Book 1
+
+Chapter 4
+
+Education--Quipus-Astronomy-Agriculture--Aqueducts-Guano--
+Important Esculents
+
+"Science was not intended for the people; but for those of generous
+blood.  Persons of low degree are only puffed up by it, and rendered
+vain and arrogant.  Neither should such meddle with the affairs of
+government; for this would bring high offices into disrepute, and cause
+detriment to the state.1 Such was the favorite maxim, often repeated, of
+Tupac Inca Yupanqui, one of the most renowned of the Peruvian
+sovereigns.  It may seem strange that such a maxim should ever have
+been proclaimed in the New World, where popular institutions have been
+established on a more extensive scale than was ever before witnessed;
+where government rests wholly on the people; and education--at least, in
+the great northern division of the continent--is mainly directed to qualify
+the people for the duties of government.  Yet this maxim was strictly
+conformable to the genius of the Peruvian monarchy, and may serve as a
+key to its habitual policy; since, while it watched with unwearied
+solicitude over its subjects, provided for their physical necessities, was
+mindful of their morals, and showed, throughout, the affectionate
+concern of a parent for his children, it yet regarded them only as
+children, who were never to emerge from the state of pupilage, to act or
+to think for themselves, but whose whole duty was comprehended in the
+obligation of implicit obedience.
+
+Such was the humiliating condition of the people under the Incas: while
+the numerous families of the blood royal enjoyed the benefit of all the
+light of education, which the civilization of the country could afford;
+and, long after the Conquest, the spots continued to be pointed out where
+the seminaries had existed for their instruction.  These were placed
+under the care of the amautas, or "wise men," who engrossed the scanty
+stock of science--if science it could be called--possessed by the
+Peruvians, and who were the sole teachers of youth.  It was natural that
+the monarch should take a lively interest in the instruction of the young
+nobility, his own kindred.  Several of the Peruvian princes are said to
+have built their palaces in the neighborhood of the schools, in order that
+they might the more easily visit them and listen to the lectures of the
+amautas, which they occasionally reinforced by a homily of their own.2
+In these schools, the royal pupils were instructed in all the different kinds
+of knowledge in which their teachers were versed, with especial
+reference to the stations they were to occupy in after-life.  They studied
+the laws, and the principles of administering the government, in which
+many of them were to take part.  They were initiated in the peculiar rites
+of their religion, most necessary to those who were to assume the
+sacerdotal functions.  They learned also to emulate the achievements of
+their royal ancestors by listening to the chronicles compiled by the
+amautas.  They were taught to speak their own dialect with purity and
+elegance; and they became acquainted with the mysterious science of the
+quipus, which supplied the Peruvians with the means of communicating
+their ideas to one another, and of transmitting them to future
+generations.3
+
+The quipu was a cord about two feet long, composed of different colored
+threads tightly twisted together, from which a quantity of smaller threads
+were suspended in the manner of a fringe.  The threads were of different
+colors and were tied into knots.  The word quipu, indeed, signifies a
+knot.  The colors denoted sensible objects; as, for instance, white
+represented silver, and yellow, gold.  They sometimes also stood for
+abstract ideas.  Thus, white signified peace, and red, war.  But the
+quipus were chiefly used for arithmetical purposes.  The knots served
+instead of ciphers, and could be combined in such a manner as to
+represent numbers to any amount they required.  By means of these they
+went through their calculations with great rapidity, and the Spaniards
+who first visited the country bear testimony to their accuracy.4
+
+Officers were established in each of the districts, who, under the title of
+quipucamayus, Or "keepers of the quipus," were required to furnish the
+government with information on various important matters.  One had
+charge of the revenues, reported the quantity of raw material distributed
+among the laborers, the quality and quantity of the fabrics made from it,
+and the amount of stores, of various kinds, paid into the royal magazines.
+Another exhibited the register of births and deaths, the marriages, the
+number of those qualified to bear arms, and the like details in reference
+to the population of the kingdom.  These returns were annually
+forwarded to the capital, where they were submitted to the inspection of
+officers acquainted with the art of deciphering these mystic records.
+The government was thus provided with a valuable mass of statistical
+information, and the skeins of many-colored threads, collected and
+carefully preserved, constituted what might be called the national
+archives.5
+
+But, although the quipus sufficed for all the purposes of arithmetical
+computation demanded by the Peruvians, they were incompetent to
+represent the manifold ideas and images which are expressed by writing,
+Even here, however, the invention was not without its use.  For,
+independently of the direct representation of simple objects, and even of
+abstract ideas, to a very limited extent, as above noticed, it afforded great
+help to the memory by way of association.  The peculiar knot or color,
+in this way, suggested what it could not venture to represent; in the same
+manner-to borrow the homely illustration of an old writer--as the number
+of the Commandment calls to mind the Commandment itself.  The
+quipus, thus used, might be regarded as the Peruvian system of
+mnemonics.
+
+Annalists were appointed in each of the principal communities, whose
+business it was to record the most important events which occurred in
+them.  Other functionaries of a higher character, usually the amautas,
+were intrusted with the history of the empire, and were selected to
+chronicle the great deeds of the reigning Inca, or of his ancestors.6  The
+narrative, thus concocted, could be communicated only by oral tradition;
+but the quipus served the chronicler to arrange the incidents with
+method, and to refresh his memory.  The story, once treasured up in the
+mind, was indelibly impressed there by frequent repetition.  It was
+repeated by the amauta to his pupils, and in this way history, conveyed
+partly by oral tradition, and partly by arbitrary signs, was handed down
+from generation to generation, with sufficient discrepancy of details, but
+with a general conformity of outline to the truth.
+
+The Peruvian quipus were, doubtless, a wretched substitute for that
+beautiful contrivance, the alphabet, which, employing a few simple
+characters as the representatives of sounds, instead of ideas, is able to
+convey the most delicate shades of thought that ever passed through the
+mind of man.  The Peruvian invention, indeed, was far below that of the
+hieroglyphics, even below the rude picture-writing of the Aztecs; for the
+latter art, however incompetent to convey abstract ideas, could depict
+sensible objects with tolerable accuracy.  It is evidence of the total
+ignorance in which the two nations remained of each other, that the
+Peruvians should have borrowed nothing of the hieroglyphical system of
+the Mexicans, and this, notwithstanding that the existence of the maguey
+plant agave, in South America might have furnished them with the very
+material used by the Aztecs for the construction of their maps.7
+
+It is impossible to contemplate without interest the struggles made by
+different nations, as they emerge from barbarism, to supply themselves
+with some visible symbols of thought,--that mysterious agency by which
+the mind of the individual may be put in communication with the minds
+of a whole community.  The want of such a symbol is itself the greatest
+impediment to the progress of civilization.  For what is it but to
+imprison the thought, which has the elements of immortality, within the
+bosom of its author, or of the small circle who come in contact with him,
+instead of sending it abroad to give light to thousands, and to generations
+yet unborn! Not only is such a symbol an essential element of
+civilization, but it may be assumed as the very criterion of civilization;
+for the intellectual advancement of a people will keep pace pretty nearly
+with its facilities for intellectual communication.
+
+Yet we must be careful not to underrate the real value of the Peruvian
+system; nor to suppose that the quipus were as awkward an instrument, in
+the hand of a practised native, as they would be in ours.  We know the
+effect of habit in all mechanical operations, and the Spaniards bear
+constant testimony to the adroitness and accuracy of the Peruvians in
+this.  Their skill is not more surprising than the facility with which habit
+enables us to master the contents of a printed page, comprehending
+thousands of separate characters, by a single glance, as it were, though
+each character must require a distinct recognition by the eye, and that,
+too, without breaking the chain of thought in the reader's mind.  We
+must not hold the invention of the quipus too lightly, when we reflect
+that they supplied the means of calculation demanded for the affairs of a
+great nation, and that, however insufficient, they afforded no little help to
+what aspired to the credit of literary composition.
+
+The office of recording the national annals was not wholly confined to
+the amautas.  It was assumed in part by the haravecs, or poets, who
+selected the most brilliant incidents for their songs or ballads, which
+were chanted at the royal festivals and at the table of the Inca.8  In this
+manner, a body of traditional minstrelsy grew up, like the British and
+Spanish ballad poetry, by means of which the name of many a rude
+chieftain, that might have perished for want of a chronicler, has been
+borne down the tide of rustic melody to later generations.
+
+Yet history may be thought not to gain much by this alliance with poetry;
+for the domain of the poet extends over an ideal realm peopled with the
+shadowy forms of fancy, that bear little resemblance to the rude realities
+of life.  The Peruvian annals may be deemed to show somewhat of the
+effects of this union, since there is a tinge of the marvellous spread over
+them down to the very latest period, which, like a mist before the reader's
+eye, makes it difficult to distinguish between fact and fiction.
+
+The poet found a convenient instrument for his purposes in the beautiful
+Quichua dialect.  We have already seen the extraordinary measures
+taken by the Incas for propagating their language throughout their
+empire.  Thus naturalized in the remotest provinces, it became enriched
+by a variety of exotic words and idioms, which, under the influence of
+the Court and of poetic culture, if I may so express myself, was gradually
+blended, like some finished mosaic made up of coarse and disjointed
+materials, into one harmonious whole.  The Quichua became the most
+comprehensive and various, as well as the most elegant, of the South
+American dialects.9
+
+Besides the compositions already noticed, the Peruvians, it is said,
+showed some talent for theatrical exhibitions; not those barren
+pantomimes which, addressed simply to the eye, have formed the
+amusement of more than one rude nation.  The Peruvian pieces aspired
+to the rank of dramatic compositions, sustained by character and
+dialogue, founded sometimes on themes of tragic interest, and at others
+on such as, from their light and social character, belong to comedy.10
+Of the execution of these pieces we have now no means of judging.  It
+was probably rude enough, as befitted an unformed people.  But,
+whatever may have been the execution, the mere conception of such an
+amusement is a proof of refinement that honorably distinguishes the
+Peruvian from the other American races, whose pastime was war, or the
+ferocious sports that reflect the image of it.
+
+The intellectual character of the Peruvians, indeed, seems to have been
+marked rather by a tendency to refinement than by those hardier qualities
+which insure success in the severer walks of science.  In these they were
+behind several of the semi-civilized nations of the New World.  They
+had some acquaintance with geography, so far as related to their own
+empire, which was indeed extensive; and they constructed maps with
+lines raised on them to denote the boundaries and localities, on a similar
+principle with those formerly used by the blind.  In astronomy, they
+appear to have made but moderate proficiency.  They divided the year
+into twelve lunar months, each of which, having its own name, was
+distinguished by its appropriate festival.11  They had, also, weeks; but of
+what length, whether of seven, nine, or ten days, is uncertain.  As their
+lunar year would necessarily fall short of the true time, they rectified
+their calendar by solar observations made by means of a number of
+cylindrical columns raised on the high lands round Cuzco, which served
+them for taking azimuths; and, by measuring their shadows, they
+ascertained the exact times of the solstices.  The period of the equinoxes
+they determined by the help of a solitary pillar, or gnomon, placed in the
+centre of a circle, which was described in the area of the great temple,
+and traversed by a diameter that was drawn from east to west.  When the
+shadows were scarcely visible under the noontide rays of the sun, they
+said that "the god sat with all his light upon the column." 12  Quito
+which lay immediately under the equator, where the vertical rays of the
+sun threw no shadow at noon, was held in especial veneration as the
+favored abode of the great deity.  The period of the equinoxes was
+celebrated by public rejoicings.  The pillar was crowned by the golden
+chair of the Sun, and, both then and at the solstices, the columns were
+hung with garlands, and offerings of flowers and fruits were made, while
+high festival was kept throughout the empire.  By these periods the
+Peruvians regulated their religious rites and ceremonial, and prescribed
+the nature of their agricultural labors.  The year itself took its departure
+from the date of the winter solstice.13
+
+This meagre account embraces nearly all that has come down to us of
+Peruvian astronomy.  It may seem strange that a nation, which had
+proceeded thus far in its observations, should have gone no farther; and
+that, notwithstanding its general advance in civilization, it should in this
+science have fallen so far short, not only of the Mexicans, but of the
+Muyscas, inhabiting the same elevated regions of the great southern
+plateau with themselves.  These latter regulated their calendar on the
+same general plan of cycles and periodical series as the Aztecs,
+approaching yet nearer to the system pursued by the people of Asia.14
+
+It might have been expected that the Incas, the boasted children of the
+Sun, would have made a particular study of the phenomena of the
+heavens, and have constructed a calendar on principles as scientific as
+that of their semi-civilized neighbors.  One historian, indeed, assures us
+that they threw their years into cycles of ten, a hundred, and a thousand
+years, and that by these cycles they regulated their chronology.15  But
+this assertion--not improbable in itself--rests on a writer but little gifted
+with the spirit of criticism, and is counter-balanced by the silence of
+every higher and earlier authority, as well as by the absence of any
+monument, like those found among other American nations, to attest the
+existence of such a calendar.  The inferiority of the Peruvians may be,
+perhaps, in part explained by the fact of their priesthood being drawn
+exclusively from the body of the Incas, a privileged order of nobility,
+who had no need, by the assumption of superior learning, to fence
+themselves round from the approaches of the vulgar.  The little true
+science possessed by the Aztec priest supplied him with a key to unlock
+the mysteries of the heavens, and the false system of astrology which he
+built upon it gave him credit as a being who had something of divinity in
+his own nature.  But the Inca noble was divine by birth.  The illusory
+study of astrology, so captivating to the unenlightened mind, engaged no
+share of his attention.  The only persons in Peru, who claimed the power
+of reading the mysterious future, were the diviners, men who, combining
+with their pretensions some skill in the healing art, resembled the
+conjurors found among many of the Indian tribes.  But the office was
+held in little repute, except among the lower classes, and was abandoned
+to those whose age and infirmity disqualified them for the real business
+of life.16
+
+The Peruvians had knowledge of one or two constellations, and watched
+the motions of the planet Venus, to which, as we have seen, they
+dedicated altars.  But their ignorance of the first principles of
+astronomical science is shown by their ideas of eclipses, which, they
+supposed, denoted some great derangement of the planet; and when the
+moon labored under one of these mysterious infirmities, they sounded
+their instruments, and filled the air with shouts and lamentations, to rouse
+her from her lethargy.  Such puerile conceits as these form a striking
+contrast with the real knowledge of the Mexicans, as displayed in their
+hieroglyphical maps, in which the true cause of this phenomenon is
+plainly depicted.17
+
+But, if less successful in exploring the heavens, the Incas must be
+admitted to have surpassed every other American race in their dominion
+over the earth.  Husbandry was pursued by them on principles that may
+be truly called scientific.  It was the basis of their political institutions.
+Having no foreign commerce, it was agriculture that furnished them with
+the means of their internal exchanges, their subsistence, and their
+revenues.  We have seen their remarkable provisions for distributing the
+land in equal shares among the people, while they required every man,
+except the privileged orders, to assist in its cultivation.  The Inca himself
+did not disdain to set the example.  On one of the great annual festivals,
+he proceeded to the environs of Cuzco, attended by his Court, and, in the
+presence of all the people, turned up the earth with a golden plough,--or
+an instrument that served as such,--thus consecrating the occupation of
+the husbandman as one worthy to be followed by the Children of the
+Sun.18
+
+The patronage of the government did not stop with this cheap display of
+royal condescension, but was shown in the most efficient measures for
+facilitating the labors of the husbandman.  Much of the country along the
+sea-coast suffered from want of water, as little or no rain fell there, and
+the few streams, in their short and hurried course from the mountains,
+exerted only a very limited influence on the wide extent of territory.  The
+soil, it is true, was, for the most part, sandy and sterile; but many places
+were capable of being reclaimed, and, indeed, needed only to be
+properly irrigated to be susceptible of extraordinary production.  To
+these spots water was conveyed by means of canals and subterraneous
+aqueducts, executed on a noble scale.  They consisted of large slabs of
+freestone nicely fitted together without cement, and discharged a volume
+of water sufficient, by means of latent ducts or sluices, to moisten the
+lands in the lower level, through which they passed.  Some of these
+aqueducts were of great length.  One that traversed the district of
+Condesuyu measured between four and five hundred miles.  They were
+brought from some elevated lake or natural reservoir in the heart of the
+mountains, and were fed at intervals by other basins which lay in their
+route along the slopes of the sierra.  In this descent, a passage was
+sometimes to be opened through rocks,--and this without the aid of iron
+tools; impracticable mountains were to be turned; rivers and marshes to
+be crossed; in short, the same obstacles were to be encountered as in the
+construction of their mighty roads.  But the Peruvians seemed to take
+pleasure in wrestling with the difficulties of nature.  Near Caxamarca, a
+tunnel is still visible, which they excavated in the mountains, to give an
+outlet to the waters of a lake, when these rose to a height in the rainy
+season that threatened the country with inundation.19
+
+Most of these beneficent works of the Incas were suffered to go to decay
+by their Spanish conquerors.  In some spots, the waters are still left to
+flow in their silent, subterraneous channels, whose windings and whose
+sources have been alike unexplored.  Others, though partially
+dilapidated, and closed up with rubbish and the rank vegetation of the
+soil, still betray their course by occasional patches of fertility.  Such are
+the remains in the valley of Nasca, a fruitful spot that lies between long
+tracts of desert; where the ancient water-courses of the Incas, measuring
+four or five feet in depth by three in width, and formed of large blocks of
+uncemented masonry, are conducted from an unknown distance.
+
+The greatest care was taken that every occupant of the land through
+which these streams passed should enjoy the benefit of them.  The
+quantity of water alloted to each was prescribed by law; and royal
+overseers superintended the distribution, and saw that it was faithfully
+applied to the irrigation of the ground.20
+
+The Peruvians showed a similar spirit of enterprise in their schemes for
+introducing cultivation into the mountainous parts of their domain.
+Many of the hills, though covered with a strong soil, were too precipitous
+to be tilled.  These they cut into terraces, faced with rough stone,
+diminishing in regular gradation towards the summit; so that, while the
+lower strip, or anden, as it was called by the Spaniards, that belted round
+the base of the mountain, might comprehend hundreds of acres, the
+upper-most was only large enough to accommodate a few rows of Indian
+corn.21  Some of the eminences presented such a mess of solid rock,
+that, after being hewn into terraces, they were obliged to be covered deep
+with earth, before they could serve the purpose of the husbandman.  With
+such patient toil did the Peruvians combat the formidable obstacles
+presented by the face of their country! Without the use of tools or the
+machinery familiar to the European, each individual could have done
+little; but acting in large masses, and under a common direction, they
+were enabled by indefatigable perseverance to achieve results, to have
+attempted which might have filled even the European with dismay.22
+
+In the same spirit of economical husbandry which redeemed the rocky
+sierra from the curse of sterility, they dug below the arid soil of the
+valleys, and sought for a stratum where some natural moisture might be
+found.  These excavations, called by the Spaniards hoyas, or "pits," were
+made on a great scale, comprehending frequently more than an acre,
+sunk to the depth of fifteen or twenty feet, and fenced round within by a
+wall of adobes, or bricks baked in the sun.  The bottom of the
+excavation, well prepared by a rich manure of the sardines,--a small fish
+obtained in vast quantities along the coast,--was planted with some kind
+or grain or vegetable.23
+
+The Peruvian farmers were well acquainted with the different kinds of
+manures, and made large use of them; a circumstance rare in the rich
+lands of the tropics, and probably not elsewhere practised by the rude
+tribes of America.  They made great use of guano, the valuable deposit
+of sea-fowl, that has attracted so much attention, of late, from the
+agriculturists both of Europe and of our own country, and the stimulating
+and nutritious properties of which the Indians perfectly appreciated.
+This was found in such immense quantities on many of the little islands
+along the coast, as to have the appeaarnce of lofty hills, which, covered
+with a white saline incrustation, led the Conquerors to give them the
+name of the sierra nevada, or "snowy mountains."
+
+The Incas took their usual precautions for securing the benefits of this
+important article to the husbandman.  They assigned the small islands on
+the coast to the use of the respective districts which lay adjacent to them.
+When the island was large, it was distributed among several districts, and
+the boundaries for each were clearly defined.  All encroachment on the
+rights of another was severely punished.  And they secured the
+preservation of the fowl by penalties as stern as those by which the
+Norman tyrants of England protected their own game.  No one was
+allowed to set foot on the island during the season for breeding, under
+pain of death; and to kill the birds at any time was punished in the like
+manner.24
+
+With this advancement in agricultural science, the Peruvians might be
+supposed to have had some knowledge of the plough, in such general use
+among the primitive nations of the eastern continent.  But they had
+neither the iron ploughshare of the Old World, nor had they animals for
+draught, which, indeed, were nowhere found in the New.  The
+instrument which they used was a strong, sharp-pointed stake, traversed
+by a horizontal piece, ten or twelve inches from the point, on which the
+ploughman might set his foot and force it into the ground.  Six or eight
+strong men were attached by ropes to the stake, and dragged it forcibly
+along, --pulling together, and keeping time as they moved by chanting
+their national songs, in which they were accompanied by the women who
+followed in their-train, to break up the sods with their rakes.  The mellow
+soil offered slight resistance; and the laborer., by long practice, acquired
+a dexterity which enabled him to turn up the ground to the requisite
+depth with astonishing facility.  This substitute for the plough was but a
+clumsy contrivance; yet it is curious as the only specimen of the kind
+among the American aborigines, and was perhaps not much inferior to
+the wooden instrument introduced in its stead by the European
+conquerors .25
+
+It was frequently the policy of the Incas, after providing a deserted tract
+with the means for irrigation, and thus fitting it for the labors of the
+husbandman, to transplant there a colony of mitimaes, who brought it
+under cultivation by raising the crops best suited to the soil.  While the
+peculiar character and capacity of the lands were thus consulted, a means
+of exchange of the different products was afforded to the neighboring
+provinces, which, from the formation of the country, varied much more
+than usual within the same limits.  To facilitate these agricultural
+exchanges, fairs were instituted, which took place three times a month in
+some of the most populous places, where, as money was unknown, a
+rude kind of commerce was kept up by the barter of their respective
+products.  These fairs afforded so many holidays for the relaxation of the
+industrious laborer.26
+
+Such were the expedients adopted by the Incas for the improvement of
+their territory; and, although imperfect, they must be allowed to show an
+acquaintance with the principles of agricultural science, that gives them
+some claim to the rank of a civilized people.  Under their patient and
+discriminating culture, every inch of good soil was tasked to its greatest
+power of production; while the most-unpromising spots were compelled
+to contribute something to the subsistence of the people.  Everywhere the
+land teemed with evidence of agricultural wealth, from the smiling
+valleys along the coast to the terraced steeps of the sierra, which, rising
+into pyramids of verdure, glowed with all the splendors of tropical
+vegetation.
+
+The formation of the country was particularly favorable, as already
+remarked, to an infinite variety of products, not so much from its extent
+as from its various elevations, which, more remarkable, even, than those
+in Mexico, comprehend every degree of latitude from the equator to the
+polar regions.  Yet, though the temperature changes in this region with
+the degree of elevation, it remains nearly the same in the same spots
+throughout the year; and the inhabitant feels none of those grateful
+vicissitudes of season which belong to the temperate latitudes of the
+globe.  Thus, while the summer lies in full power on the burning regions
+of the palm and the cocoa-tree that fringe the borders of the ocean, the
+broad surface of the table-land blooms with the freshness of perpetual
+spring, and the higher summits of the Cordilleras are white with
+everlasting winter.
+
+The Peruvians turned this fixed variety of climate, if I may so say, to the
+best account by cultivating the productions appropriate to each; and they
+particularly directed their attention to those which afforded the most
+nutriment to man.  Thus, in the lower level were to be found the
+cassavatree and the banana, that bountiful plant, which seems to have
+relieved man from the primeval curse--if it were not rather a blessing--of
+toiling for his sustenance.27  As the banana faded from the landscape, a
+good substitute was found in the maize, the great agricultural staple of
+both the northern and southern divisions of the American continent; and
+which, after its exportation to the Old World, spread so rapidly there, as
+to suggest the idea of its being indigenous to it.28  The Peruvians were
+well acquainted with the different modes of preparing this useful
+vegetable, though it seems they did not use it for bread, except at
+festivals; and they extracted a sort of honey from the stalk, and made an
+intoxicating liquor from the fermented grain, to which, like the Aztecs,
+they were immoderately addicted.29
+
+The temperate climate of the table-land furnished them with the maguey,
+agave Americana, many of the extraordinary qualities of which they
+comprehended, though not its most important one of affording a material
+for paper.  Tobacco, too, was among the products of this elevated region.
+Yet the Peruvians differed from every other Indian nation to whom it was
+known, by using it only for medicinal purposes, in the form of snuff.30
+They may have found a substitute for its narcotic qualities in the coco
+(Erythroxylum Peruvianurn), or cuca, as called by the natives.  This is a
+shrub which grows to the height of a man.  The leaves when gathered are
+dried in the sun, and, being mixed with a little lime, form a preparation
+for chewing, much like the betel-leaf of the East.31  With a small supply
+of this cuca in his pouch, and a handful of roasted maize, the Peruvian
+Indian of our time performs his wearisome journeys, day ,after day,
+without fatigue, or, at least, without complaint.  Even food the most
+invigorating is less grateful to him than his loved narcotic.  Under the
+Incas, it is said to have been exclusively reserved for the noble orders.  If
+so, the people gained one luxury by the Conquest; and, after that period,
+it was so extensively used by them, that this article constituted a most
+important item of the colonial revenue of Spain.32  Yet, with the
+soothing charms of an opiate, this weed so much vaunted by the natives,
+when used to excess, is said to be attended with all the mischievous
+effects of habitual intoxication.33
+
+Higher up on the slopes of the Cordilleras, beyond the limits of the maize
+and of the quinoa,--a grain bearing some resemblance to rice, and largely
+cultivated by the Indians,--was to be found the potato, the introduction of
+which into Europe has made an era in the history of agriculture.
+Whether indigenous to Peru, or imported from the neighboring country
+of Chili, it formed the great staple of the more elevated plains, under the
+Incas, and its culture was continued to a height in the equatorial regions
+which reached many thousand feet above the limits of perpetual snow in
+the temperate latitudes of Europe.34  Wild specimens of the vegetable
+might be seen still higher, springing up spontaneously amidst the stunted
+shrubs that clothed the lofty sides of the Cordilleras till these gradually
+subsided into the mosses and the short yellow grass: pajonal, which, like
+a golden carpet, was unrolled around the base of the mighty cones, that
+rose far into the regions of eternal silence, covered with the snows of
+centuries.35
+
+
+
+Book 1
+
+Chapter 5
+
+Peruvian Sheep--Great Hunts--Manufactures--Mechanical Skill--
+Architecture--Concluding Reflections
+
+A Nation which had made such progress in agriculture might be
+reasonably expected to have made, also, some proficiency in the
+mechanical arts--especially when, as in the case of the Peruvians, their
+agricultural economy demanded in itself no inconsiderable degree of
+mechanical skill.  Among most nations, progress in manufactures has
+been found to have an intimate connection with the progress of
+husbandry.  Both arts are directed to the same great object of supplying
+the necessaries, the comforts, or, in a more refined condition of society,
+the luxuries of life; and when the one is brought to a perfection that
+infers a certain advance in civilization, the other must naturally find a
+corresponding development under the increasing demands and capacities
+of such a state.  The subjects of the Incas, in their patient and tranquil
+devotion to the more humble occupations of industry which bound them
+to their native soil, bore greater resemblance to the Oriental nations, as
+the Hindoos and Chinese, than they bore to the members of the great
+Anglo-Saxon family whose hardy temper has driven them to seek their
+fortunes on the stormy ocean, and to open a commerce with the most
+distant regions of the globe.  The Peruvians, though lining a long extent
+of sea-coast, had no foreign commerce.
+
+They had peculiar advantages for domestic manufacture in a material
+incomparably superior to anything possessed by the other races of the
+Western continent.  They found a good substitute for linen in a fabric
+which, like the Aztecs, they knew how to weave from the tough thread of
+the maguey.  Cotton grew luxuriantly on the low, sultry level of the
+coast, and furnished them with a clothing suitable to the milder latitudes
+of the country.  But from the llama and the kindred species of Peruvian
+sheep they obtained a fleece adapted to the colder climate of the
+tableland, "more estimable," to quote the language of a well-informed
+writer, "than the down of the Canadian beaver, the fleece of the brebis
+des Calmoucks, or of the Syrian goat." 1
+
+Of the four varieties of the Peruvian sheep, the llama, the one most
+familiarly known, is the least valuable on account of its wool.  It is
+chiefly employed as a beast of burden, for which, although it is
+somewhat larger than any of the other varieties, its diminutive size and
+strength would seem to disqualify it.  It carries a load of little more than
+a hundred pounds, and cannot travel above three or four leagues in a day.
+But all this is compensated by the little care and cost required for its
+management and its maintenance.  It picks up an easy subsistence from
+the moss and stunted herbage that grow scantily along the withered sides
+and the steeps of the Cordilleras.  The structure of its stomach, like that
+of the camel, is such as to enable it to dispense with any supply of water
+for weeks, nay, months together.  Its spongy hoof, armed with a claw or
+pointed talon to enable it to take secure hold on the ice, never requires to
+be shod; and the load laid upon its back rests securely in its bed of wool,
+without the aid of girth or saddle.  The llamas move in troops of five
+hundred or even a thousand, and thus, though each individual carries but
+little, the aggregate is considerable.  The whole caravan travels on at its
+regular pace, passing the night in the open air without suffering from the
+coldest temperature, and marching in perfect order, and in obedience to
+the voice of the driver.  It is only when overloaded that the spirited little
+animal refuses to stir, and neither blows nor caresses can induce him to
+rise from the ground.  He is as sturdy in asserting his rights on this
+occasion, as he is usually docile and unresisting.2
+
+The employment of domestic animals distinguished the Peruvians from
+the other races of the New World.  This economy of human labor by the
+substitution of the brute is an important element of civilization, interior
+only to what is gained by the substitution of machinery for both.  Yet the
+ancient Peruvians seem to have made much less account of it than their
+Spanish conquerors, and to have valued the llama, in common with the
+other animals of that genus, chiefly for its fleece.  Immense herds of
+these "large cattle," as they were called, and of the "smaller cattle," 3 or
+alpacas, were held by the government, as already noticed, and placed
+under the direction of shepherds, who conducted them from one quarter
+of the country to another, according to the changes of the season.  These
+migrations were regulated with all the precision with which the code of
+the mesta determined the migrations of the vast merino flocks in Spain;
+and the Conquerors, when they landed in Peru, were amazed at finding a
+race of animals so similar to their own in properties and habits, and
+under the control of a system of legislation which might seem to have
+been imported from their native land.4
+
+But the richest store of wool was obtained, not from these domesticated
+animals, but from the two other species, the huanacos and the vicunas,
+which roamed in native freedom over the frozen ranges of the
+Cordilleras; where not unfrequently they might be seen scaling the snow-
+covered peaks which no living thing inhabits save the condor, the huge
+bird of the Andes, whose broad pinions bear him up in the atmosphere to
+the height of more than twenty thousand feet above the level of the sea.5
+In these rugged pastures, "the flock without a fold" finds sufficient
+sustenance in the ychu, a species of grass which is found scattered all
+along the great ridge of the Cordilleras, from the equator to the southern
+limits of Patagonia.  And as these limits define the territory traversed by
+the Peruvian sheep, which rarely, if ever, venture north of the line, it
+seems not improbable that this mysterious little plant is so important to
+their existence, that the absence of it is the principal reason why they
+have not penetrated to the northern latitudes of Quito and New
+Granada.6
+
+But, although thus roaming without a master over the boundless wastes
+of the Cordilleras, the Peruvian peasant was never allowed to hunt these
+wild animals, which were protected by laws as severe as were the sleek
+herds that grazed on the more cultivated slopes of the plateau.  The wild
+game of the forest and the mountain was as much the property of the
+government, as if it had been inclosed within a park, or penned within a
+fold.7  It was only on stated occasions, at the great hunts, which took
+place once a year, under the personal superintendence of the Inca or his
+principal officers, that the game was allowed to be taken.  These hunts.
+were not repeated in the same quarter of the country oftener than once.
+in four years, that time might be allowed for the waste occasioned by
+them to be replenished.  At the appointed time, all those living in the
+district and its neighborhood, to the number, it might be, of fifty or sixty
+thousand men,8 were distributed round, so as to form a cordon of
+immense extent, that should embrace the whole country which was to be
+hunted over.  The men were armed with long poles and spears, with
+which they beat up game of every description lurking in the woods, the
+valleys, and the mountains, killing the beasts of prey without mercy, and
+driving the others, consisting chiefly of the deer of the country, and the
+huanacos and vicunas, towards the centre of the wide-extended circle;
+until, as this gradually contracted, the timid inhabitants of the forest were
+concentrated on some spacious plain, where the eye of the hunter might
+range freely over his victims, who found no place for shelter or escape.
+
+The male deer and some of the coarser kind of the Peruvian sheep were
+slaughtered; their skins were reserved for the various useful
+manufactures to which they are ordinarily applied, and their flesh, cut
+into thin slices, was distributed among the people, who converted it into
+charqui, the dried meat of the country, which constituted then the sole, as
+it has since the principal, animal food of the lower classes of Peru.9
+
+But nearly the whole of the sheep, amounting usually to thirty or forty
+thousand, or even a larger number, after being carefully sheared, were
+suffered to escape and regain their solitary haunts among the mountains.
+The wool thus collected was deposited in the royal magazines, whence,
+in due time, it was dealt out to the people.  The coarser quality was
+worked up into garments for their own use, and the finer for the Inca; for
+none but an Inca noble could wear the fine fabric of the vicuna.10
+
+The Peruvians showed great skill in the manufacture of different articles
+for the royal household from this delicate material, which, under the
+name of vigonia wool, is now familiar to the looms of Europe.  It was
+wrought into shawls, robes, and other articles of dress for the monarch,
+and into carpets, coverlets, and hangings for the imperial palaces and the
+temples.  The cloth was finished on both sides alike; 11 the delicacy of
+the texture was such as to give it the lustre of silk; and the brilliancy of
+the dyes excited the admiration and the envy of the European artisan.12
+The Peruvians produced also an article of great strength and durability
+by mixing the hair of animals with wool; and they were expert in the
+beautiful feather-work, which they held of less account than the
+Mexicans from the superior quality of the materials for other fabrics,
+which they had at their command.13
+
+The natives showed a skill in other mechanical arts similar to that
+displayed by their manufactures of cloth.  Every man in Peru was
+expected to be acquainted with the various handicrafts essential to
+domestic comfort.  No long apprenticeship was required for this, where
+the wants were so few as among the simple peasantry of the Incas.  But,
+if this were all, it would imply but a very moderate advancement in the
+arts.  There were certain individuals, however, carefully trained to those
+occupations which minister to the demands of the more opulent classes
+of society.  These occupations, like every other calling and office in
+Peru, always descended from father to son.14  The division of castes, in
+this particular, was as precise as that which existed in Egypt or
+Hindostan.  If this arrangement be unfavorable to originality, or to the
+development of the peculiar talent of the individual, it at least conduces
+to an easy and finished execution by familiarizing the artist with the
+practice of his art from childhood.15
+
+The royal magazines and the huacas or tombs of the Incas have been
+found to contain many specimens of curious and elaborate workmanship.
+Among these are vases of gold and silver, bracelets, collars, and other
+ornaments for the person; utensils of every description, some of fine
+clay, and many more of copper; mirrors of a hard, polished stone, or
+burnished silver, with a great variety of other articles made frequently on
+a whimsical pattern, evincing quite as much ingenuity as taste or
+inventive talent.16  The character of the Peruvian mind led to imitation,
+in fact, rather than invention, to delicacy and minuteness of finish, rather
+than to boldness or beauty of design.
+
+That they should have accomplished these difficult works with such tools
+as they possessed, is truly wonderful.  It was comparativeIy easy to cast
+and even sculpture metallic substances, both of which they did with
+consummate skill.  But that they should have shown the like facility in
+cutting the hardest substances, as emeralds and other precious stones, is
+not easy to explain.  Emeralds they obtained in considerable quantity
+from the barren district of Atacames, and this inflexible material seems
+to have been almost as ductile in the hands of the Peruvian artist as if it
+had been made of clay.17  Yet the natives were unacquainted with the
+use of iron, though the soil was largely impregnated with it.18  The tools
+used were of stone, or more frequently of copper.  But the material on
+which they relied for the execution of their most difficult tasks was
+formed by combining a very small portion of tin with copper.19  This
+composition gave a hardness to the metal which seems to have been little
+inferior to that of steel.  With the aid of it, not only did the Peruvian
+artisan hew into shape porphyry and granite, but by his patient industry
+accomplished works which the European would not have ventured to
+undertake.  Among the remains of the monuments of Cannar may be seen
+movable rings in the muzzles of animals, all nicely sculptured of one
+entire block of granite.20  It is worthy of remark, that the Egyptians, the
+Mexicans, and the Peruvians, in their progress towards civilization,
+should never have detected the use of iron, which lay around them in
+abundance; and that they should each, without any knowledge of the
+other, have found a substitute for it in such a curious composition of
+metals as gave to their tools almost the temper of steel; 21 a secret that
+has been lost--or, to speak more correctly, has never been discovered-by
+the civilized European.
+
+I have already spoken of the large quantity of gold and silver wrought
+into various articles of elegance and utility for the Incas; though the
+amount was inconsiderable, in comparison with what could have been
+afforded by the mineral riches of the land, and with what has since been
+obtained by the more sagacious and unscrupulous cupidity of the white
+man.  Gold was gathered by the Incas from the deposits of the streams.
+They extracted the ore also in considerable quantities from the valley of
+Curimayo, northeast of Caxamarca, as well as from other places; and the
+silver mines of Porco, in particular, yielded them considerable returns.
+Yet they did not attempt to penetrate into the bowels of the earth 'by
+sinking a shaft, but simply excavated a cavern in the steep sides of the
+mountain, or, at most, opened a horizonal vein of moderate depth.  They
+were equally deficient in the knowledge of the best means of detaching
+the precious metal from the dross with which it was united, and had no
+idea of the virtues of quicksilver,--a mineral not rare in Peru, as an
+amalgam to effect this decomposition.22  Their method of smelting the
+ore was by means of furnaces built in elevated and exposed situations,
+where they might be fanned by the strong breezes of the mountains.  The
+subjects of the Incas, in short, with all their patient perseverance, did
+little more than penetrate below the crust, the outer rind, as it were,
+formed over those golden caverns which lie hidden in the dark depths of
+the Andes.  Yet what they gleaned from the surface was more than
+adequate for all their demands.  For they were not a commercial people,
+and had no knowledge of money.23  In this they differed from the
+ancient Mexicans, who had an established currency of a determinate
+value.  In one respect, however, they were superior to their American
+rivals, since they made use of weights to determine the quantity of their
+commodities, a thing wholly unknown to the Aztecs.  This fact is
+ascertained by the discovery of silver balances, adjusted with perfect
+accuracy, in some of the tombs of the Incas.24
+
+But the surest test of the civilization of a people--at least, as sure as any--
+afforded by mechanical art is to be found in their architecture, which
+presents so noble a field for the display of the grand and the beautiful,
+and which, at the same time, is so intimately connected with the essential
+comforts of life.  There is no object on which the resources of the
+wealthy are more freely lavished, or which calls out more effectually the
+inventive talent of the artist.  The painter and the sculptor may display
+their individual genius in creations of surpassing excellence, but it is the
+great monuments of architectural taste and magnificence that are
+stamped in a peculiar manner by the genius of the nation.  The Greek, the
+Egyptian, the Saracen, the Gothic,--what a key do their respective styles
+afford to the character and condition of the people! The monuments of
+China, of Hindostan, and of Central America are all indicative of an
+immature period, in which the imagination has not been disciplined by
+study, and which, therefore, in its best results, betrays only the
+illregulated aspirations after the beautiful, that belong to a semi-civilized
+people.
+
+The Peruvian architecture, bearing also the general characteristics of an
+imperfect state of refinement, had still its peculiar character; and so
+uniform was that character, that the edifices throughout the country seem
+to have been all cast in the same mould.25  They were usually built of
+porphyry or granite; not unfrequently of brick.  This, which was formed
+into blocks or squares of much larger dimensions than our brick, was
+made of a tenacious earth mixed up with reeds or tough grass, and
+acquired a degree of hardness with age that made it insensible alike to
+the storms and the more trying sun of the tropics.26  The walls were of
+great thickness, but low, seldom reaching to more than twelve or
+fourteen feet in height.  It is rare to meet with accounts of a building that
+rose to a  second story.27
+
+The apartments had no communication with one another, but usually
+opened into a court; and, as they were unprovided with windows, or
+apertures that served for them, the only light from without must have
+been admitted by the doorways.  These were made with the sides
+approaching each other towards the top, so that the lintel was
+considerably narrower than the threshold, a peculiarity, also, in Egyptian
+architecture.  The roofs have for the most part disappeared with time.
+Some few survive in the less ambitious edifices, of a singular bell-shape,
+and made of a composition of earth and pebbles.  They are supposed,
+however, to have been generally formed of more perishable materials, of
+wood or straw.  It is certain that some of the most considerable stone-
+buildings were thatched with straw.  Many seem to have been
+constructed without the aid of cement; and writers have contended that
+the Peruvians were unacquainted with the use of mortar, or cement of
+any kind.28  But a close, tenacious mould, mixed with lime, may be
+discovered filling up the interstices of the granite in some buildings; and
+in others, where the wellfitted blocks leave no room for this coarser
+material, the eye of the antiquary has detected a fine bituminous glue, as
+hard as the rock itself.29
+
+The greatest simplicity is observed in the construction of the buildings.
+which are usually free from outward ornament; though in some the huge
+stones are shaped into a convex form with great regularity, and adjusted
+with such nice precision to one another, that it would be impossible, but
+for the flutings, to determine the line of junction.  In others, the stone is
+rough, as it was taken from the quarry, in the most irregular forms, with
+the edges nicely wrought and fitted to each other.  There is no
+appearance of columns or of arches; though there is some contradiction
+as to the latter point.  But it is not to be doubted, that, although they may
+have made some approach to this mode of construction by the greater or
+less inclination of the walls, the Peruvian architects were wholly
+unacquainted with the true principle of the circular arch reposing on its
+key-stone.30
+
+The architecture of the Incas is characterized, says an eminent traveller,
+"by simplicity, symmetry, and solidity."31  It may seem unphilosophical
+to condemn the peculiar fashion of a nation as indicating want of taste,
+because its standard of taste differs from our own.  Yet there is an
+incongruity in the composition of the Peruvian buildings which argues a
+very imperfect acquaintance with the first principles of architecture.
+While they put together their bulky masses of porphyry and granite with
+the nicest art, they were incapable of mortising their timbers, and, in their
+ignorance of iron, knew no better way of holding the beams together that
+tying them with thongs of maguey.  In the same incongruous spirit, the
+building that was thatched with straw, and unilluminated by a window,
+was glowing with tapestries of gold and silver! These are the
+inconsistencies of a rude people, among whom the arts are but partially
+developed.  It might not be difficult to find examples of like
+inconsistency in the architecture and domestic arrangements of our
+Anglo-Saxon, and, at a still later period of our Norman ancestors.
+
+Yet the buildings of the Incas were accommodated to the character of the
+climate, and were well fitted to resist those terrible convulsions which
+belong to the land of volcanoes.  The wisdom of their plan is attested by
+the number which still survive, while the more modern constructions of
+the Conquerors have been buried in ruins.  The hand of the Conquerors,
+indeed, has fallen heavily on these venerable monuments, and, in their
+blind and superstitious search for hidden treasure, has caused infinitely
+more ruin than time or the earthquake.32  Yet enough of these
+monuments still remain to invite the researches of the antiquary.  Those
+only in the most conspicuous situations have been hitherto examined.
+But, by the testimony of travellers, many more are to be found in the less
+frequented parts of the country; and we may hope they will one day call
+forth a kindred spirit of enterprise to that which has so successfully
+explored the mysterious recesses of Central America and Yucatan.
+
+I cannot close this analysis of the Peruvian institutions without a few
+reflections on their general character and tendency, which, if they
+involve some repetition of previous remarks, may, I trust, be excused,
+from my desire to leave a correct and consistent impression on the
+reader.  In this survey, we cannot but be struck with the total
+dissimilarity between these institutions and those of the Aztecs,--the
+other great nation who led in the march of civilization on this western
+continent, and whose empire in the northern portion of it was as
+conspicuous as that of the Incas in the south.  Both nations came on the
+plateau, and commenced their career of conquest, at dates, it may be, not
+far removed from each other.33  And it is worthy of notice, that, in
+America, the elevated region along the crests of the great mountain
+ranges should have been the chosen seat of civilization in both
+hemispheres.
+
+Very different was the policy pursued by the two races in their military
+career.  The Aztecs, animated by the most ferocious spirit, carried on a
+war of extermination, signalizing their triumphs by the sacrifice of
+hecatombs of captives; while the Incas, although they pursued the game
+of conquest with equal pertinacity, preferred a milder policy, substituting
+negotiation and intrigue for violence, and dealt with their antagonists so
+that their future resources should not be crippled, and that they should
+come as friends, not as foes, into the bosom of the empire.
+
+Their policy toward the conquered forms a contrast no less striking to
+that pursued by the Aztecs.  The Mexican vassals were ground by
+excessive imposts and military conscriptions.  No regard was had to their
+welfare, and the only limit to oppression was the power of endurance.
+They were over-awed by fortresses and armed garrisons, and were made
+to feel every hour that they were not part and parcel of the nation, but
+held only in subjugation as a conquered people.  The Incas, on the other
+hand, admitted their new subjects at once to all the rights enjoyed by the
+rest of the community; and, though they made them conform to the
+established laws and usages of the empire, they watched over their
+personal security and comfort with a sort of parental solicitude.  The
+motley population, thus bound together by common interest, was
+animated by a common feeling of loyality, which gave greater strength
+and stability to the empire, as it became more and more widely extended;
+while the various tribes who successively came under the Mexican
+sceptre, being held together only by the pressure of external force, were
+ready to fall asunder the moment that that force was withdrawn.  The
+policy of the two nations displayed the principle of fear as contrasted
+with the principle of love.
+
+The characteristic features of their religious systems had as little
+resemblance to each other.  The whole Aztec pantheon partook more or
+less of the sanguinary spirit of the terrible war-god who presided over it,
+and their frivolous ceremonial almost always terminated with human
+sacrifice and cannibal orgies.  But the rites of the Peruvians were of a
+more innocent cast, as they tended to a more spiritual worship.  For the
+worship of the Creator is most nearly approached by that of the heavenly
+bodies, which, as they revolve in their bright orbits, seem to be the most
+glorious symbols of his beneficence and power.
+
+In the minuter mechanical arts, both showed considerable skill; but in the
+construction of important public works, of roads, aqueducts, canals, and
+in agriculture in all its details, the Peruvians were much superior.
+Strange that they should have fallen so far below their rivals in their
+efforts after a higher intellectual culture, in astronomical science, more
+especially, and in the art of communicating thought by visible symbols.
+When we consider the greater refinement of the Incas, their inferiority to
+the Aztecs in these particulars can be explained only by the fact, that the
+latter in all probability were indebted for their science to the race who
+preceded them in the land,--that shadowy race whose origin and whose
+end are alike veiled from the eye of the inquirer, but who possibly may
+have sought a refuge from their ferocious invaders in those regions of
+Central America the architectural remains of which now supply us with
+the most pleasing monuments of Indian civilization.  It is with this more
+polished race, to whom the Peruvians seem to have borne some
+resemblance in their mental and moral organization, that they should be
+compared.  Had the empire of the Incas been permitted to extend itself
+with the rapid strides with which it was advancing at the period of the
+Spanish conquest, the two races might have come into conflict, or,
+perhaps, into alliance with one another.
+
+The Mexicans and Peruvians, so different in the character of their
+peculiar civilization, were, it seems probable, ignorant of each other's
+existence; and it may appear singular, that, during the simultaneous
+continuance of their empires, some of the seeds of science and of art,
+which pass so imperceptibly from one people to another, should not have
+found their way across the interval which separated the two nations.
+They furnish an interesting example of the opposite directions which the
+human mind may take in its struggle to emerge from darkness into the
+light of civilization,
+
+A closer resemblance--as I have more than once taken occasion to
+notice--may be found between the Peruvian institutions and some of the
+despotic governments of Eastern Asia; those governments where
+despotism appears in its more mitigated form, and the whole people,
+under the patriarchal sway of its sovereign, seem to be gathered together
+like the members of one vast family.  Such were the Chinese, for
+example, whom the Peruvians resembled in their implicit obedience to
+authority, their mild yet somewhat stubborn temper, their solicitude for
+forms, their reverence for ancient usage, their skill in the minuter
+manufactures, their imitative rather than inventive cast of mind, and their
+invincible patience, which serves instead of a more adventurous spirit for
+the execution of difficult undertakings.34
+
+A still closer analogy may be found with the natives of Hindostan in their
+division into castes, their worship of the heavenly bodies and the
+elements of nature, and their acquaintance with the scientific principles
+of husbandry.  To the ancient Egyptians, also, they bore considerable
+resemblance in the same particulars, as well as in those ideas of a future
+existence which led them to attach so much importance to the permanent
+preservation of the body.
+
+But we shall look in vain in the history of the East for a parallel to the
+absolute control exercised by the Incas over their subjects.  In the East,
+this was rounded on physical power,--on the external resources of the
+government.  The authority of the Inca might be compared with that of
+the Pope in the day of his might, when Christendom trembled at the
+thunders of the Vatican, and the successor of St.  Peter set his foot on the
+necks of princes.  But the authority of the Pope was founded on opinion.
+His temporal power was nothing.  The empire of the Incas rested on
+both.  It was a theocracy more potent in its operation than that of the
+Jews; for, though the sanction of the law might be as great among the
+latter, the law was expounded by a human lawgiver, the servant and
+representative of Divinity.  But the Inca was both the lawgiver and the
+law.  He was not merely the representative of Divinity, or, like the Pope,
+its vicegerent, but he was Divinity itself.  The violation of his ordinance
+was sacrilege.  Never was there a scheme of government enforced by
+such terrible sanctions, or which bore so oppressively on the subjects of
+it.  For it reached not only to the visible acts, but to the private conduct,
+the words, the very thoughts, of its vassals.
+
+It added not a little to the efficacy of the government, that, below the
+sovereign, there was an order of hereditary nobles of the same divine
+original with himself, who, placed far below himself, were still
+immeasurably above the rest of the community, not merely by descent,
+but, as it would seem, by their intellectual nature.  These were the
+exclusive depositaries of power, and, as their long hereditary training
+made them familiar with their vocation, and secured them implicit
+deference from the multitude, they became the prompt and well-practised
+agents for carrying out the executive measures of the administration.  All
+that occurred throughout the wide extent of his empire---such was the
+perfect system of communication--passed in review, as it were, before
+the eyes of the monarch, and a thousand hands, armed with irresistible
+authority, stood ready in every quarter to do his bidding.  Was it not, as
+we have said, the most oppressive, though the mildest, of despotisms?
+
+It was the mildest, from the very circumstance, that the transcendent rank
+of the sovereign, and the humble, nay, superstitious, devotion to his will
+make it superfluous to assert this will be acts of violence or rigor.  The
+great mass of the people may have appeared to his eyes as but little
+removed above the condition of the brute, formed to minister to his
+pleasures.  But, from their very helplessness, he regarded them with
+feelings of commiseration, like those which a kind master might feel for
+the poor animals committed to his charge, or--to do justice to the
+beneficent character attributed to many of the Incas--that a parent might
+feel for his young and impotent offspring.  The laws were carefully
+directed to their preservation and personal comfort.  The people were not
+allowed to be employed on works pernicious to their health, nor to pine--
+a sad contrast to their subsequent destiny--under the imposition of tasks
+too heavy for their powers.  They were never made the victims of public
+or private extortion; and a benevolent forecast watched carefully over
+their necessities, and provided for their relief in seasons of infirmity, and
+for their sustenance in health.  The government of the Incas, however
+arbitrary in form, was in its spirit truly patriarchal.
+
+Yet in this there was nothing cheering to the dignity of human nature.
+What the people had was conceded as a boon, not as a right.  When a
+nation was brought under the sceptre of the Incas, it resigned every
+personal right, even the rights dearest to humanity.  Under this
+extraordinary polity, a people advanced in many of the social
+refinements, well skilled in manufactures and agriculture, were
+unacquainted, as we have seen, with money.  They had nothing that
+deserved to be called property.  They could follow no craft, could
+engage in no labor, no amusement, but such as was specially provided by
+law.  They could not change their residence or their dress without a
+license from the government.  They could not even exercise the freedom
+which is conceded to the most abject in other countries, that of selecting
+their own wives.  The imperative spirit of despotism would not allow
+them to be happy or miserable in any way but that established by law.
+The power of free agency--the inestimable and inborn right of every
+human being--was annihilated in Peru.
+
+The astonishing mechanism of the Peruvian polity could have resulted
+only from the combined authority of opinion and positive power in the
+ruler to an extent unprecedented in the history of man.  Yet that it should
+have so successfully gone into operation, and so long endured, in
+opposition to the taste, the prejudices, and the very principles of our
+nature, is a strong proof of a generally wise and temperate administration
+of the government.
+
+The policy habitually pursued by the Incas for the prevention of evils
+that might have disturbed the order of things is well exemplified in their
+provisions against poverty and idleness.  In these they rightly discerned
+the two great causes of disaffection in a populous community.  The
+industry of the people was secured not only by their compulsory
+occupations at home, but by their employment on those great public
+works which covered every part of the country, and which still bear
+testimony in their decay to their primitive grandeur.  Yet it may well
+astonish us to find, that the natural difficulty of these undertakings,
+sufficiently great in itself, considering the imperfection of their tools and
+machinery, was inconceivably enhanced by the politic contrivance of
+government.  The royal edifices of Quito, we are assured by the Spanish
+conquerors, were constructed of huge masses of stone, many of which
+were carried all the way along the mountain roads from Cuzco, a
+distance of several hundred leagues.35  The great square of the capital
+was filled to a considerable depth with mould brought with incredible
+labor up the steep slopes of the Cordilleras from the distant shores of the
+Pacific Ocean.36  Labor was regarded not only as a means, but as an
+end, by the Peruvian law.
+
+With their manifold provisions against poverty the reader has already
+been made acquainted.  They were so perfect, that, in their wide extent of
+territory,--much of it smitten with the curse of barrenness,--no man,
+however humble, suffered from the want of food and clothing.  Famine,
+so common a scourge in every other American nation, so common at that
+period in every country of civilized Europe, was an evil unknown in the
+dominions of the Incas.
+
+The most enlightened of the Spaniards who first visited Peru, struck with
+the general appearance of plenty and prosperity, and with the astonishing
+order with which every thing throughout the country was regulated, are
+loud in their expressions of admiration.  No better government, in their
+opinion, could have been devised for the people.  Contented with their
+condition, and free from vice, to borrow the language of an eminent
+authority of that early day, the mild and docile character of the Peruvians
+would have well fitted them to receive the teachings of Christianity, had
+the love of conversion, instead of gold, animated the breasts of the
+Conquerors.37  And a philosopher of a later time, warmed by the
+contemplation of the picture--which his own fancy had colored---of
+public prosperity and private happiness under the rule of the Incas,
+pronounces "the moral man in Peru far superior to the European." 38
+
+Yet such results are scarcely reconcilable with the theory of the
+government I have attempted to analyze.  Where there is no free agency,
+there can be no morality.  Where there is no temptation, there can be
+little claim to virtue.  Where the routine is rigorously prescribed by law,
+the law, and not the man, must have the credit of the conduct.  if that
+government is the best, which is felt the least, which encroaches on the
+natural liberty of the subject only so far as is essential to civil
+subordination, then of all governments devised by man the Peruvian has
+the least real claim to our admiration.
+
+It is not easy to comprehend the genius and the full import of institutions
+so opposite to those of our own free republic, where every man, however
+humble his condition, may aspire to the highest honors of the state,--may
+select his own career, and carve out his fortune in his own way; where
+the light of knowledge, instead of being concentrated on a chosen few, is
+shed abroad like the light of day, and suffered to fall equally on the poor
+and the rich; where the collision of man with man wakens a generous
+emulation that calls out latent talent and tasks the energies to the utmost;
+where consciousness of independence gives a feeling of self-reliance
+unknown to the timid subjects of a despotism; where, in short, the
+government is made for man,--not as in Peru, where man seemed to be
+made only for the government.  The New World is the theatre in which
+these two political systems, so opposite in their character, have been
+carried into operation.  The empire of the Incas has passed away and left
+no trace.  The other great experiment is still going on,--the experiment
+which is to solve the problem, so long contested in the Old World, of the
+capacity of man for self-government.  Alas for humanity, if it should fail!
+
+The testimony of the Spanish conquerors is not uniform in respect to the
+favorable influence exerted by the Peruvian institutions on the character
+of the people.  Drinking and dancing are said to have been the pleassures
+to which they were immoderately addicted.  Like the slaves and serfs in
+other lands, whose position excluded them from more serious and
+ennobling occupations, they found a substitute in frivolous or sensual
+indulgence.  Lazy, luxurious, and licentious, are the epithets bestowed on
+them by one of those who saw them at the Conquest, but whose pen was
+not too friendly to the Indian.39  Yet the spirit of independence could
+hardly be strong in a people who had no interest in the soil, no personal
+rights to defend; and the facility with which they yielded to the Spanish
+invader--after every allowance for their comparative inferiority--argues a
+deplorable destitution of that patriotic feeling which holds life as little in
+comparison with freedom.
+
+But we must not judge too hardly of the unfortunate native, because he
+quailed before the civilization of the European.  We must not be
+insensible to the really great results that were achieved by the
+government of the Incas.  We must not forget, that, under their rule, the
+meanest of the people enjoyed a far greater degree of personal comfort,
+at least, a greater exemption from physical suffering, than was possessed
+by similar classes in other nations on the American continent,--greater,
+probably, than was possessed by these classes in most of the countries of
+feudal Europe.  Under their sceptre, the higher orders of the state had
+made advances in many of the arts that belong to a cultivated
+community.  The foundations of a regular government were laid, which,
+in an age of rapine, secured to its subjects the inestimable blessings of
+tranquillity and safety.  By the well-sustained policy of the Incas, the
+rude tribes of the forest were gradually drawn from their fastnesses, and
+gathered within the folds of civilization; and of these materials was
+constructed a flourishing and populous empire, such as was to be found
+in no other quarter of the American continent.  The defects of this
+government were those of overrefinement in legislation,--the last defects
+to have been looked for, certainly, in the American aborigines.
+
+
+Note.   I have not thought it necessary to swell this Introduction by an
+inquiry into the origin of the Peruvian civilization, like that appended to
+the history of the Mexican.   The Peruvian history doubtless suggests
+analogies with more than one nation in the East, some of which have
+been briefly adverted to in the preceding pages; although these analogies
+are adduced there not as evidence of a common origin, but as showing
+the coincidences which might naturally spring up among different
+nations under the same phase of civilization.  Such coincidences are
+neither so numerous nor so striking as those afforded by the Aztec
+history.  The correspondence presented by the astronomical science of
+the Mexicans is alone of more importance than all the rest, Yet the light
+of analogy, afforded by the institutions of the Incas, seems to point, as
+far as it goes, towards the same direction; and as the investigation could
+present but little substantially to confirm, and still less to confute, the
+views taken in the former disquisition, I have not thought it best to
+fatigue the reader with it.
+
+
+Two of the prominent authorities on whom I have relied in this
+Introductory portion of the work, are Juan de Sarmiento and the
+Licentiate Ondegardo.  Of the former I have been able to collect no
+information beyond what is afforded by his own writings.  In the title
+prefixed to his manuscript, he is styled President of the Council of the
+Indies, a post of high authority, which infers a weight of character in the
+party, and means of information, that entitle his opinions on colonial
+topics to great deference.
+
+These means of information were much enlarged by Sarmiento's visit to
+the colonies, during the administration of Gasca.  Having conceived the
+design of compiling a history of the ancient Peruvian institutions, he
+visited Cuzco, as he tells us, in 1550, and there drew from the natives
+themselves the materials for his narrative.  His position gave him access
+to the most authentic sources of knowledge, and from the lips of the Inca
+nobles, the best instructed of the conquered race, he gathered the
+traditions of their national history and institutions.  The quipus formed,
+as we have seen, an imperfect system of mnemonics, requiring constant
+attention, and much inferior to the Mexican hieroglyphics.  It was only
+by diligent instruction that they were made available to historical
+purposes; and this instruction was so far neglected after the Conquest,
+that the ancient annals of the country would have perished with the
+generation which was the sole depositary of them, had it not been for the
+efforts of a few intelligent scholars, like Sarmiento, who saw the
+importance, at this critical period, of cultivating an intercourse with the
+natives, and drawing from them their hidden stores of information.
+
+To give still further authenticity to his work, Sarmiento travelled over the
+country, examined the principal objects of interest with his own eyes,
+and thus verified the accounts of the natives as far as possible by
+personal observation.  The result of these labors was his work entitled,
+"Relacion de la sucesion y govierno de las Yngas Senores naturales que
+fueron de las Provincias del Peru y otras cosas tocantes a aquel Reyno,
+para el Iltmo.  Senor Dn Juan Sarmiento, Presidente del Consejo Rl de
+Indias."
+
+It is divided into chapters, and embraces about four hundred folio pages
+in manuscript.  The introductory portion of the work is occupied with the
+traditionary tales of the origin and early period of the Incas; teeming, as
+usual, in the antiquities of a barbarous people, with legendary fables of
+the most wild and monstrous character.  Yet these puerile conceptions
+afford an inexhaustible mine for the labors of the antiquarian, who
+endeavors to unravel the allegorical web which a cunning priesthood had
+devised as symbolical of those mysteries of creation that it was beyond
+their power to comprehend.  But Sarmiento happily confines himself to
+the mere statement of traditional fables, without the chimerical ambition
+to explain them.
+
+From this region of romance, Sarmiento passes to the institutions of the
+Peruvians, describes their ancient polity, their religion, their progress in
+the arts, especially agriculture; and presents, in short, an elaborate
+picture of the civilization which they reached under the Inca dynasty.
+This part of his work, resting, as it does, on the best authority, confirmed
+in many instances by his own observation, is of unquestionable value,
+and is written with an apparent respect for truth, that engages the
+confidence of the reader.  The concluding portion of the manuscript is
+occupied with the civil history of the country.  The reigns of the early
+Incas, which lie beyond the sober province of history, he despatches
+with commendable brevity.  But on the three last reigns, and fortunately
+of the greatest princes who occupied the Peruvian throne, he is more
+diffuse.  This was comparatively firm ground for the chronicler, for the
+events were too recent to be obscured by the vulgar legends that gather
+like moss round every incident of the older time.  His account stops with
+the Spanish invasion: for this story, Sarmiento felt, might be safely left to
+his contemporaries who acted a part in it, but whose taste and education
+had qualified them but indifferently for exploring the antiquities and
+social institutions of the natives.
+
+Sarmiento's work is composed in a simple, perspicuous style, without
+that ambition of rhetorical display too common with his countrymen.  He
+writes with honest candor, and while he does ample justice to the merits
+and capacity of the conquered races, he notices with indignation the
+atrocities of the Spaniards and the demoralizing tendency of the
+Conquest.  It may be thought, indeed, that he forms too high an estimate
+of the attainments of the nation under the Incas.  And it is not
+improbable, that, astonished by the vestiges it afforded of an original
+civilization, he became enamoured of his subject, and thus exhibited it in
+colors somewhat too glowing to the eye of the European.  But this was
+an amiable failing, not too largely shared by the stern Conquerors, who
+subverted the institutions of the country, and saw little to admire in it,
+save its gold.  It must be further admitted, that Sarmiento has no design
+to impose on his reader, and that he is careful to distinguish between
+what he reports on hearsay, and what on personal experience.  The
+Father of History himself does not discriminate between these two things
+more carefully.
+
+Neither is the Spanish historian to be altogether vindicated from the
+superstition which belongs to his time; and we often find him referring to
+the immediate interposition of Satan those effects which might quite as
+well be charged on the perverseness of man.  But this was common to the
+age, and to the wisest men in it; and it is too much to demand of a man to
+be wiser than his generation.  It is sufficient praise of Sarmiento, that, in
+an age when superstition was too often allied with fanaticism, he seems
+to have had no tincture of bigotry in his nature.  His heart opens with
+benevolent fulness to the unfortunate native; and his language, while it is
+not kindled into the religious glow of the missionary, is warmed by a
+generous ray of philanthropy that embraces the conquered, no less than
+the conquerors, as his brethren.
+
+Notwithstanding the great value of Sarmiento's work for the information
+it affords of Peru under the Incas, it is but little known, has been rarely
+consulted by historians, and still remains among the unpublished
+manuscripts which lie, like uncoined bullion, in the secret chambers of
+the Escurial.
+
+The other authority to whom I have alluded, the Licentiate Polo de
+Ondegardo, was a highly respectable jurist, whose name appears
+frequently in the affairs of Peru.  I find no account of the period when he
+first came into the country.  But he was there on the arrival of Gasca, and
+resided at Lima under the usurpation of Gonzalo Pizarro.  When the
+artful Cepeda endeavored to secure the signatures of the inhabitants to
+the instrument proclaiming the sovereignty of his chief, we find
+Ondegardo taking the lead among those of his profession in resisting it.
+On Gasca's arrival, he consented to take a commission in his army.  At
+the close of the rebellion he was made corregidor of La Plata, and
+subsequently of Cuzco, in which honorable station he seems to have
+remained several years.  In the exercise of his magisterial functions, he
+was brought into familiar intercourse with the natives, and had ample
+opportunity for studying their laws and ancient customs.  He conducted
+himself with such prudence and moderation, that he seems to have won
+the confidence not only of his countrymen but of the Indians; while the
+administration was careful to profit by his large experience in devising
+measures for the better government of the colony.
+
+The Relaciones, so often cited in this History, were prepared at the
+suggestion of the viceroys, the first being addressed to the Marques de
+Canete, in 1561, and the second, ten years later, to the Conde de Nieva.
+The two cover about as much ground as Sarmiento's manuscript; and the
+second memorial, written so long after the first, may be thought to
+intimate the advancing age of the author, in the greater carelessness and
+diffuseness of the composition.
+
+As these documents are in the nature of answers to the interrogatories
+propounded by government- the range of topics might seem to be limited
+within narrower bounds than the modern historian would desire.  These
+queries, indeed, had particular reference to the revenues, tributes,--the
+financial administration, in short, of the Incas; and on these obscure
+topics the communication of Ondegardo is particularly full.  But the
+enlightened curiosity of government embraced a far wider range; and the
+answers necessarily implied an acquaintance with the domestic policy of
+the Incas, with their laws, social habits, their religion, science, and arts,
+in short, with all that make up the elements of civilization.  Ondegardo's
+memoirs, therefore, cover the whole ground of inquiry for the
+philosophic historian.
+
+In the management of these various subjects, Ondegardo displays both
+acuteness and erudition.  He never shrinks from the discussion, however
+difficult; and while he gives his conclusions with an air of modesty, it is
+evident that he feels conscious of having derived his information through
+the most authentic channels.  He rejects the fabulous with disdain;
+decides on the probabilities of such facts as he relates, and candidly
+exposes the deficiency of evidence.  Far from displaying the simple
+enthusiasm of the well-meaning but credulous missionary, he proceeds
+with the cool and cautious step of a lawyer accustomed to the conflict of
+testimony and the uncertainty of oral tradition.  This circumspect manner
+of proceeding, and the temperate character of his judgments, entitle
+Ondegardo to much higher consideration as an authority than most of his
+countrymen who have treated of Indian antiquities.
+
+There runs through his writings a vein of humanity, shown particularly in
+his tenderness to the unfortunate natives, to whose ancient civilization he
+does entire, but not extravagant, justice; while, like Sarmiento, he
+fearlessly denounces the excesses of his own countrymen, and admits the
+dark reproach they had brought on the honor of the nation.  But while
+this censure forms the strongest ground for condemnation of the
+Conquerors, since it comes from the lips of a Spaniard like themselves, it
+proves, also, that Spain in this age of violence could send forth from her
+bosom wise and good men who refused to make common cause with the
+licentious rabble around them.  Indeed, proof enough is given in these
+very memorials of the unceasing efforts of the colonial government, from
+the good viceroy Mendoza downwards, to secure protection and the
+benefit of a mild legislation to the unfortunate natives.  But the iron
+Conquerors, and the colonist whose heart softened only to the touch of
+gold, presented a formidable barrier to improvement.
+
+Ondegardo's writings are honorably distinguished by freedom from that
+superstition which is the debasing characteristic of the times; a
+superstition shown in the easy credit given to the marvellous, and this
+equally whether in heathen or in Christian story; for in the former the eye
+of credulity could discern as readily the direct interposition of Satan, as
+in the latter the hand of the Almighty.  It is this ready belief in a spiritual
+agency, whether for good or for evil, which forms one of the most
+prominent features in the writings of the sixteenth century.  Nothing
+could be more repugnant to the true spirit of philosophical inquiry or
+more irreconcilable with rational criticism.  Far from betraying such
+weakness, Ondegardo writes in a direct and business-like manner,
+estimating things for what they are worth by the plain rule of common-
+sense.  He keeps the main object of his argument ever in view, without
+allowing himself, like the garrulous chroniclers of the period, to be led
+astray into a thousand rambling episodes that bewilder the reader and
+lead to nothing.
+
+Ondegardo's memoirs deal not only with the antiquities of the nation, but
+with its actual condition, and with the best means for redressing the
+manifold evils to which it was subjected under the stern rule of its
+conquerors.  His suggestions are replete with wisdom, and a merciful
+policy, that would reconcile the interests of government with the
+prosperity and happiness of its humblest vassal.  Thus, while his
+contemporaries gathered light from his suggestions as to the present
+condition of affairs, the historian of later times is no less indebted to him
+for information in respect to the past.  His manuscript was freely
+consulted by Herrera and the reader, as he peruses the pages of the
+learned historian of the Indies, is unconsciously enjoying the benefit of
+the researches of Ondegardo.  His valuable Relaciones thus had their
+uses for future generations, though they have never been admitted to the
+honors of the press.  The copy in my possession, like that of Sarmiento's
+manuscript, for which I am indebted to that industrious bibliographer,
+Mr.  Rich formed part of the magnificent collection of Lord
+Kingsborough,--a name ever to be held in honor by the scholar for his
+indefatigable efforts to illustrate the antiquities of America.
+
+Ondegardo's manuscripts, it should be remarked, do not bear his
+signature.  But they contain allusions to several actions of the writer's
+life, which identify them, beyond any reasonable doubt, as his
+production.  In the archives of Simancas is a duplicate copy of the first
+memorial, Relacion Primera, though, like the one in the Escurial, without
+its author's name.  Munoz assigns it to the pen of Gabriel de Rojas, a
+distinguished cavalier of the Conquest.  This is clearly an error; for the
+author of the manuscript identifies himself with Ondegardo, by
+declaring, in his reply to the fifth interrogatory, that he was the person
+who discovered the mummies of the Incas in Cuzco; an act expressly
+referred both by Acosta and Garcilasso, to the Licentiate Polo de
+Ondegardo, when corregidor of that city.--Should the savans of Madrid
+hereafter embrace among the publications of valuable manuscripts these
+Relaciones, they should be careful not to be led into an error here, by the
+authority of a critic like Munoz whose criticism is rarely at fault.
+
+
+
+History of the Conquest of Peru
+
+by William Hickling Prescott
+
+Book 2
+
+Discovery of Peru
+
+Chapter 1
+
+Ancient And Modern Science--Art Of Navigation--Maritime Discovery--
+Spirit Of The Spaniards--Possessions In The New World-
+Rumors Concerning Peru
+
+Whatever difference of opinion may exist as to the comparative merits of
+the ancients and the moderns in the arts, in poetry, eloquence, and all
+that depends on imagination, there can be no doubt that in science the
+moderns have eminently the advantage.  It could not be otherwise.  In the
+early ages of the world, as in the early period of life, there was the
+freshness of a morning existence, when the gloss of novelty was on every
+thing that met the eye; when the senses, not blunted by familiarity, were
+more keenly alive to the beautiful, and the mind, under the influence of a
+healthy and natural taste, was not perverted by philosophical theory;
+when the simple was necessarily connected with the beautiful, and the
+epicurean intellect, sated by repetition, had not begun to seek for
+stimulants in the fantastic and capricious.  The realms of fancy were all
+untravelled, and its fairest flowers had not been gathered, nor its beauties
+despoiled, by the rude touch of those who affected to cultivate them.
+The wing of genius was not bound to the earth by the cold and
+conventional rules of criticism, but was permitted to take its flight far
+and wide over the broad expanse of creation.
+
+But with science it was otherwise.  No genius could suffice for the
+creation of facts,--hardly for their detection.  They were to be gathered in
+by painful industry; to be collected from careful observation and
+experiment.  Genius, indeed, might arrange and combine these facts into
+new forms, and elicit from their combinations new and important
+inferences; and in this process might almost rival in originality the
+creations of the poet and the artist.  But if the processes of science are
+necessarily slow, they are sure.  There is no retrograde movement in her
+domain.  Arts may fade, the Muse become dumb, a moral lethargy may
+lock up the faculties of a nation, the nation itself may pass away and
+leave only the memory of its existence but the stores of science it has
+garnered up will endure for ever.  As other nations come upon the stage,
+and new forms of civilization arise.  the monuments of art and of
+imagination, productions of an older time, will lie as an obstacle in the
+path of improvement.  They cannot be built upon; they occupy the
+ground which the new aspirant for immortality would cover.  The whole
+work is to be gone over again, and other forms of beauty--whether higher
+or lower in the scale of merit, but unlike the past--must arise to take a
+place by their side.  But, in science, every stone that has been laid
+remains as the foundation for another.  The coming generation takes up
+the work where the preceding left it.  There is no retrograde movement.
+The individual nation may recede, but science still advances.  Every step
+that has been gained makes the ascent easier for those who come after.
+Every step carries the patient inquirer after truth higher and higher
+towards heaven, and unfolds to him, as he rises, a wider horizon, and
+new and more magnificent views of the universe.
+
+Geography partook of the embarrassments which belonged to every other
+department of science in the primitive ages of the world.  The knowledge
+of the earth could come only from an extended commerce; and
+commerce is founded on artificial wants or an enlightened curiosity,
+hardly compatible with the earlier condition of society.  In the infancy of
+nations, the different tribes, occupied with their domestic feuds, found
+few occasions to wander beyond the mountain chain or broad stream that
+formed the natural boundary of their domains.  The Phoenicians, it is
+true, are said to have sailed beyond the Pillars of Hercules, and to have
+launched out on the great western ocean.  But the adventures of these
+ancient voyagers belong to the mythic legends of antiquity, and ascend
+far beyond the domain of authentic record.
+
+The Greeks, quick and adventurous.  skilled in mechanical art, had many
+of the qualities of successful navigators, and within the limits of their
+little inland sea ranged fearlessly and freely.  But the conquests of
+Alexander did more to extend the limits of geographical science, and
+opened an acquaintance with the remote countries of the East.  Yet the
+march of the conqueror is slow in comparison with the movements of the
+unencumbered traveller.  The Romans were still less enterprising than
+the Greeks, were less commercial in their character.  The contributions to
+geographical knowledge grew with the slow acquisitions of empire.  But
+their system was centralizing in its tendency; and instead of taking an
+outward direction and looking abroad for discovery, every part of the
+vast imperial domain turned towards the capital at its head and central
+point of attraction.  The Roman conqueror pursued his path by land, not
+by sea.  But the water is the great highway between nations, the true
+element for the discoverer.  The Romans were not a maritime people.  At
+the close of their empire, geographical science could hardly be said to
+extend farther than to an acquaintance with Europe,--and this not its
+more northern division,--together with a portion of Asia and Africa;
+while they had no other conception of a world beyond the western waters
+than was to be gathered from the fortunate prediction of the poet.1
+
+Then followed the Middle Ages; the dark ages, as they are called, though
+in their darkness were matured those seeds of knowledge, which, in
+fulness of time, were to spring up into new and more glorious forms of
+civilization.  The organization of society became more favorable to
+geographical science.  Instead of one overgrown, lethargic empire,
+oppressing every thing by its colossal weight, Europe was broken up into
+various independent communities, many of which, adopting liberal forms
+of government, felt all the impulses natural to freemen; and the petty
+republics on the Mediterranean and the Baltic sent forth their swarms of
+seamen in a profitable commerce, that knit together the different
+countries scattered along the great European waters.
+
+But the improvements which took place in the art of navigation, the more
+accurate measurement of time, and, above all, the discovery of the
+polarity of the magnet, greatly advanced the cause of geographical
+knowledge.  Instead of creeping timidly along the coast, or limiting his
+expeditions to the narrow basins of inland waters, the voyager might now
+spread his sails boldly on the deep, secure of a guide to direct his bark
+unerringly across the illimitable waste.  The consciousness of this power
+led thought to travel in a new direction; and the mariner began to look
+with earnestness for another path to the Indian Spice-islands than that by
+which the Eastern caravans had traversed the continent of Asia.  The
+nations on whom the spirit of enterprise, at this crisis, naturally
+descended, were Spain and Portugal, placed, as they were, on the
+outposts of the European continent, commanding the great theatre of
+future discovery.
+
+Both countries felt the responsibility of their new position.  The crown of
+Portugal was constant in its efforts, through the fifteenth century, to find
+a passage round the southern point of Africa into the Indian Ocean;
+though so timid was the navigation, that every fresh headland became a
+formidable barrier; and it was not till the latter part of the century that
+the adventurous Diaz passed quite round the Stormy Cape, as he termed
+it, but which John the Second, with happier augury, called the Cape of
+Good Hope.  But, before Vasco de Gama had availed himself of this
+discovery to spread his sails in the Indian seas, Spain entered on her
+glorious career, and sent Columbus across the western waters.
+
+The object of the great navigator was still the discovery of a route to
+India, but by the west instead of the east.  He had no expectation of
+meeting with a continent in his way, and, after repeated voyages, he
+remained in his original error, dying, as is well known, in the conviction
+that it was the eastern shore of Asia which he had reached.  It was the
+same object which directed the nautical enterprises of those who
+followed in the Admiral's track; and the discovery of a strait into the
+Indian Ocean was the burden of every order from the government, and
+the design of many an expedition to different points of the new continent,
+which seemed to stretch its leviathan length along from one pole to the
+other.  The discovery of an Indian passage is the true key to the maritime
+movements of the fifteenth and the first half of the sixteenth centuries.  It
+was the great leading idea that gave the character to the enterprise of the
+age.
+
+It is not easy at this time to comprehend the impulse given to Europe by
+the discovery of America.  It was not the gradual acquisition of some
+border territory, a province or a kingdom that had been gained, but a
+New World that was now thrown open to the Europeans.  The races of
+animals, the mineral treasures, the vegetable forms, and the varied
+aspects of nature, man in the different phases of civilization, filled the
+mind with entirely new sets of ideas, that changed the habitual current of
+thought and stimulated it to indefinite conjecture.  The eagerness to
+explore the wonderful secrets of the new hemisphere became so active,
+that the principal cities of Spain were, in a manner, depopulated, as
+emigrants thronged one after another to take their chance upon the
+deep.2  It was a world of romance that was thrown open; for, whatever
+might be the luck of the adventurer, his reports on his return were tinged
+with a coloring of romance that stimulated still higher the sensitive
+fancies of his countrymen, and nourished the chimerical sentiments of an
+age of chivalry.  They listened with attentive ears to tales of Amazons
+which seemed to realize the classic legends of antiquity, to stories of
+Patagonian giants, to flaming pictures of an El Dorado, where the sands
+sparkled with gems, and golden pebbles as large as birds' eggs were
+dragged in nets out of the rivers.
+
+Yet that the adventurers were no impostors, but dupes, too easy dupes of
+their own credulous fancies, is shown by the extravagant character of
+their enterprises; by expeditions in search of the magical Fountain of
+Health, of the golden Temple of Doboyba, of the golden sepulchres of
+Zenu; for gold was ever floating before their distempered vision, and the
+name of Castilla del Oro, Golden Castile, the most unhealthy and
+unprofitable region of the Isthmus, held out a bright promise to the
+unfortunate settler, who too frequently, instead of gold, found there only
+his grave.
+
+In this realm of enchantment, all the accessories served to maintain the
+illusion.  The simple natives, with their defenceless bodies and rude
+weapons, were no match for the European warrior armed to the teeth in
+mail.  The odds were as great as those found in any legend of chivalry,
+where the lance of the good knight overturned hundreds at a touch.  The
+perils that lay in the discoverer's path, and the sufferings he had to
+sustain, were scarcely inferior to those that beset the knight-errant.
+Hunger and thirst and fatigue, the deadly effluvia of the morass with its
+swarms of venomous insects, the cold of mountain snows, and the
+scorching sun of the tropics, these were the lot of every cavalier who
+came to seek his fortunes in the New World.  It was the reality of
+romance.  The life of the Spanish adventurer was one chapter more--and
+not the least remarkable --in the chronicles of knight-errantry.
+
+The character of the warrior took somewhat of the exaggerated coloring
+shed over his exploits.  Proud and vainglorious, swelled with lofty
+anticipations of his destiny, and an invincible confidence in his own
+resources, no danger could appall and no toil could tire him.  The greater
+the danger, indeed, the higher the charm; for his soul revelled in
+excitement, and the enterprise without peril wanted that spur of romance
+which was necessary to rouse his energies into action.  Yet in the motives
+of action meaner influences were strangely mingled with the loftier, the
+temporal with the spiritual.  Gold was the incentive and the recompense,
+and in the pursuit of it his inflexible nature rarely hesitated as to the
+means.  His courage was sullied with cruelty, the cruelty that flowed
+equally--strange as it may seem--from his avarice and his religion;
+religion as it was understood in that age,--the religion of the Crusader.  It
+was the convenient cloak for a multitude of sins, which covered them
+even from himself.  The Castilian, too proud for hypocrisy, committed
+more cruelties in the name of religion than were ever practised by the
+pagan idolater or the fanatical Moslem.  The burning of the infidel was a
+sacrifice acceptable to Heaven, and the conversion of those who survived
+amply atoned for the foulest offences.  It is a melancholy and mortifying
+consideration, that the most uncompromising spirit of intolerance--the
+spirit of the Inquisitor at home, and of the Crusader abroad-should have
+emanated from a religion which preached peace upon earth and good-
+will towards man!
+
+What a contrast did these children of Southern Europe present to the
+Anglo-Saxon races who scattered themselves along the great northern
+division of the western hemisphere! For the principle of action with these
+latter was not avarice, nor the more specious pretext of proselytism; but
+independence---independence religious and political.  To secure this,
+they were content to earn a bare subsistence by a life of frugality and toil.
+They asked nothing from the soil, but the reasonable returns of their own
+labor.  No golden visions threw a deceitful halo around their path and
+beckoned them onwards through seas of blood to the subversion of an
+unoffending dynasty.  They were content with the slow but steady
+progress of their social polity.  They patiently endured the privations of
+the wilderness, watering the tree of liberty with their tears and with the
+sweat of their brow, till it took deep root in the land and sent up its
+branches high towards the heavens; while the communities of the
+neighboring continent, shooting up into the sudden splendors of a
+tropical vegetation, exhibited, even in their prime, the sure symptoms of
+decay.
+
+It would seem to have been especially ordered by Providence that the
+discovery of the two great divisions of the American hemisphere should
+fall to the two races best fitted to conquer and colonize them.  Thus the
+northern section was consigned to the Anglo-Saxon race, whose orderly,
+industrious habits found an ample field for development under its colder
+skies and on its more rugged soil; while the southern portion, with its
+rich tropical products and treasures of mineral wealth, held out the most
+attractive bait to invite the enterprise of the Spaniard.  How different
+might have been the result, if the bark of Columbus had taken a more
+northerly direction, as he at one time meditated, and landed its band of
+adventurers on the shores of what is now Protestant America!
+
+Under the pressure of that spirit of nautical enterprise which filled the
+maritime communities of Europe in the sixteenth century, the whole
+extent of the mighty continent, from Labrador to Terra del Fuego, was
+explored in less than thirty years after its discovery; and in 1521, the
+Portuguese Maghellan, sailing under the Spanish flag, solved the
+problem of the strait, and found a westerly way to the long sought Spice-
+islands of India,--greatly to the astonishment of the Portuguese, who,
+sailing from the opposite direction, there met their rivals, face to face, at
+the antipodes.  But while the whole eastern coast of the American
+continent had been explored, and the central portion of it colonized,--
+even after the brilliant achievement of the Mexican conquest,---the veil
+was not yet raised that hung over the golden shores of the Pacific.
+
+Floating rumors had reached the Spaniards, from time to time, of
+countries in the far west, teeming with the metal they so much coveted;
+but the first distinct notice of Peru was about the year 1511, when Vasco
+Nunez de Balboa, the discoverer of the Southern Sea, was weighing
+some gold which he had collected from the natives.  A young barbarian
+chieftain, who was present, struck the scales with his fist, and, scattering
+the glittering metal around the apartment, exclaimed,---"If this is what
+you prize so much that you are willing to leave your distant homes, and
+risk even life itself for it, I can tell you of a land where they eat and drink
+out of golden vessels, and gold is as cheap as iron is with you." It was
+not long after this startling intelligence that Balboa achieved the
+formidable adventure of scaling the mountain rampart of the Isthmus
+which divides the two mighty oceans from each other; when, armed with
+sword and buckler, he rushed into the waters of the Pacific, and cried
+out, in the true chivalrous vein, that "he claimed this unknown sea with
+all that it contained for the king of Castile, and that he would make good
+the claim against all, Christian or infidel, who dared to gainsay it!"3  All
+the broad continent and sunny isles washed by the waters of the Southern
+Ocean! Little did the bold cavalier comprehend the full import of his
+magnificent vaunt.
+
+On this spot he received more explicit tidings of the Peruvian empire,
+heard proofs recounted of its civilization, and was shown drawings of the
+llama, which, to the European eye, seemed a species of the Arabian
+camel.  But, although he steered his caravel for these golden realms, and
+even pushed his discoveries some twenty leagues south of the Gulf of St.
+Michael, the adventure was not reserved for him.  The illustrious
+discoverer was doomed to fall a victim to that miserable jealousy with
+which a little spirit regards the achievements of a great one.
+
+The Spanish colonial domain was broken up into a number of petty
+governments, which were dispensed sometimes to court favorites,
+though, as the duties of the post, at this early period, were of an arduous
+nature, they were more frequently reserved for men of some practical
+talent and enterprise.  Columbus, by virtue of his original contract with
+the Crown, had jurisdiction over the territories discovered by himself,
+embracing some of the principal islands, and a few places on the
+continent.  This jurisdiction differed from that of other functionaries,
+inasmuch as it was hereditary; a privilege found in the end too
+considerable for a subject, and commuted, therefore, for a title and a
+pension.  These colonial governments were multiplied with the increase
+of empire, and by the year 1524, the period at which our narrative
+properly commences, were scattered over the islands, along the Isthmus
+of Darien, the broad tract of Terra Firma, and the recent conquests of
+Mexico.  Some of these governments were of no great extent.  Others,
+like that of Mexico, were of the dimensions of a kingdom; and most had
+an indefinite range for discovery assigned to them in their immediate
+neighborhood, by which each of the petty potentates might enlarge his
+territorial sway, and enrich his followers and himself.  This politic
+arrangement best served the ends of the Crown, by affording a perpetual
+incentive to the spirit of enterprise.  Thus living on their own little
+domains at a long distance from the mother country, these military rulers
+held a sort of vice-regal sway, and too frequently exercised it in the most
+oppressive and tyrannical manner; oppressive to the native, and
+tyrannical towards their own followers.  It was the natural consequence,
+when men, originally low in station, and unprepared by education for
+office, were suddenly called to the possession of a brief, but in its nature
+irresponsible, authority.  It was not till after some sad experience of these
+results, that measures were taken to hold these petty tyrants in check by
+means of regular tribunals, or Royal Audiences, as they were termed,
+which, composed of men of character and learning, might interpose the
+arm of the law, or, at least, the voice of remonstrance, for the protection
+of both colonist and native.
+
+Among the colonial governors, who were indebted for their situation to
+their rank at home, was Don Pedro Arias de Avila, or Pedrarias, as
+usually called.  He was married to a daughter of Dona Beatriz de
+Bobadilla, the celebrated Marchioness of Moya, best known as the friend
+of Isabella the Catholic.  He was a man of some military experience and
+considerable energy of character.  But, as it proved, he was of a
+malignant temper; and the base qualities, which might have passed
+unnoticed in the obscurity of private life, were made conspicuous, and
+perhaps created in some measure, by sudden elevation to power; as the
+sunshine, which operates kindly on a generous soil, and stimulates it to
+production, calls forth from the unwholesome marsh only foul and
+pestilent vapors.  This man was placed over the territory of Castilla del
+Oro, the ground selected by Nunez de Balboa for the theatre of his
+discoveries.  Success drew on this latter the jealousy of his superior, for
+it was crime enough in the eyes of Pedrarias to deserve too well.  The
+tragical history of this cavalier belongs to a period somewhat earlier than
+that with which we are to be occupied.  It has been traced by abler hands
+than mine, and, though brief, forms one of the most brilliant passages in
+the annals of the American conquerors.4
+
+But though Pedrarias was willing to cut short the glorious career of his
+rival, he was not insensible to the important consequences of his
+discoveries.  He saw at once the unsuitableness of Darien for prosecuting
+expeditions on the Pacific, and, conformably to the original suggestion of
+Balboa, in 1519, he caused his rising capital to be transferred from the
+shores of the Atlantic to the ancient site of Panama, some distance east of
+the present city of that name.5  This most unhealthy spot, the cemetery of
+many an unfortunate colonist, was favorably situated for the great object
+of maritime enterprise; and the port, from its central position, afforded
+the best point of departure for expeditions, whether to the north or south,
+along the wide range of undiscovered coast that lined the Southern
+Ocean.  Yet in this new and more favorable position, several years were
+suffered to elapse before the course of discovery took the direction of
+Peru.  This was turned exclusively towards the north, or rather west, in'
+obedience to the orders of government, which had ever at heart the
+detection of a strait that, as was supposed, must intersect some part or
+other of the long-extended Isthmus.  Armament after armament was
+fitted out with this chimerical object; and Pedrarias saw his domain
+extending every year farther and farther without deriving any
+considerable advantage from his acquisitions.  Veragua, Costa Rica,
+Nicaragua, were successively occupied; and his brave cavaliers forced a
+way across forest and mountain and warlike tribes of savages, till, at
+Honduras, they came in collision with the companions of Cortes, the
+Conquerors of Mexico, who had descended from the great northern
+plateau on the regions of Central America, and thus completed the
+survey of this wild and mysterious land.
+
+It was not till 1522 that a regular expedition was despatched in the
+direction south of Panama, under the conduct of Pascual de Andagoya, a
+cavalier of much distinction in the colony.  But that officer penetrated
+only to the Puerto de Pinas, the limit of Balboa's discoveries, when the
+bad state of his health compelled him to reembark and abandon his
+enterprise at its commencement.6
+
+Yet the floating rumors of the wealth and civilization of a mighty nation
+at the South were continually reaching the ears and kindling the dreamy
+imaginations of the colonists; and it may seem astonishing that an
+expedition in that direction should have been so long deferred.  But the
+exact position and distance of this fairy realm were matter of conjecture.
+The long tract of intervening country was occupied by rude and warlike
+races; and the little experience which the Spanish navigators had already
+had of the neighboring coast and its inhabitants, and still more, the
+tempestuous character of the seas--for their expeditions had taken place
+at the most unpropitious seasons of the year--enhanced the apparent
+difficulties of the undertaking, and made even their stout hearts shrink
+from it.
+
+Such was the state of feeling in the little community of Panama for
+several years after its foundation.  Meanwhile, the dazzling conquest of
+Mexico gave a new impulse to the ardor of discovery, and, in 1524, three
+men were found in the colony, in whom the spirit of adventure triumphed
+over every consideration of difficulty and danger that obstructed the
+prosecution of the enterprise.  One among them was selected as fitted by
+his character to conduct it to a successful issue.  That man was Francisco
+Pizarro; and as he held the same conspicuous post in the Conquest of
+Peru that was occupied by Cortes in that of Mexico it will be necessary
+to take a brief review of his early history.
+
+
+
+Book 2
+
+Chapter 2
+
+Francisco Pizarro--His Early History--First Expedition To The South--
+Distresses Of The Voyagers--Sharp Encounters--Return To Panama--
+Almagro's Expedition
+
+1524-1525
+
+Francisco Pizarro was born at Truxillo, a city of Estremadura, in Spain.
+The period of his birth is uncertain; but probably it was not far from
+1471.1  He was an illegitimate child, and that his parents should not have
+taken pains to perpetuate the date of his birth is not surprising.  Few care
+to make a particular record of their transgressions.  His father, Gonzalo
+Pizarro, was a colonel of infantry, and served with some distinction in
+the Italian campaigns under the Great Captain, and afterwards in the
+wars of Navarre.  His mother, named Francisca Gonzales, was a person
+of humble condition in the town of Truxillo.2
+
+But little is told of Francisco's early years, and that little not always
+deserving of credit.  According to some, he was deserted by both his
+parents, and left as a foundling at the door of one of the principal
+churches of the city.  It is even said that he would have perished, had he
+not been nursed by a sow.3  This is a more discreditable fountain of
+supply than that assigned to the infant Romulus.  The early history of
+men who have made their names famous by deeds in after-life, like the
+early history of nations, affords a fruitful field for invention.
+
+It seems certain that the young Pizarro received little care from either of
+his parents, and was suffered to grow up as nature dictated.  He was
+neither taught to read nor write, and his principal occupation was that of
+a swineherd.  But this torpid way of life did not suit the stirring spirit of
+Pizarro, as he grew older, and listened to the tales, widely circulated and
+so captivating to a youthful fancy, of the New World.  He shared in the
+popular enthusiasm, and availed himself of a favorable moment to
+abandon his ignoble charge, and escape to Seville, the port where the
+Spanish adventurers embarked to seek their fortunes in the West.  Few of
+them could have turned their backs on their native land with less cause
+for regret than Pizarro.4
+
+In what year this important change in his destiny took place we are not
+informed.  The first we hear of him in the New World is at the island of
+Hispaniola, in 1510, where he took part in the expedition to Uraba in
+Terra Firma, under Alonzo de Ojeda, a cavalier whose character and
+achievements find no parallel but in the pages of Cervantes.  Hernando
+Cortes, whose mother was a Pizarro, and related, it is said, to the father
+of Francis, was then in St.  Domingo, and prepared to accompany
+Ojeda's expedition, but was prevented by a temporary lameness.  Had he
+gone, the fall of the Aztec empire might have been postponed for some
+time longer, and the sceptre of Montezuma have descended in peace to
+his posterity.  Pizarro shared in the disastrous fortunes of Ojeda's colony,
+and, by his discretion, obtained so far the confidence of his commander,
+as to be left in charge of the settlement, when the latter returned for
+supplies to the islands.  The lieutenant continued at his perilous post for
+nearly two months, waiting deliberately until death should have thinned
+off the colony sufficiently to allow the miserable remnant to be
+embarked in the single small vessel that remained to it.5
+
+After this, we find him associated with Balboa, the discoverer of the
+Pacific, and cooperating with him in establishing the settlement at
+Darien.  He had the glory of accompanying this gallant cavalier in his
+terrible march across the mountains, and of being among the first
+Europeans, therefore, whose eyes were greeted with the long-promised
+vision of the Southern Ocean.
+
+After the untimely death of his commander, Pizarro attached himself to
+the fortunes of Pedrarias, and was employed by that governor in several
+military expeditions, which, if they afforded nothing else, gave him the
+requisite training for the perils and privations that lay in the path of the
+future Conqueror of Peru.
+
+In 1515, he was selected, with another cavalier named Morales, to cross
+the Isthmus and traffic with the natives on the shores of the Pacific.  And
+there, while engaged in collecting his booty of gold and pearls from the
+neighbouring islands, as his eye ranged along the shadowy line of coast
+till it faded in the distance, his imagination may have been first fired with
+the idea of, one day, attempting the conquest of the mysterious regions
+beyond the mountains.  On the removal of the seat of government across
+the Isthmus to Panama, Pizarro accompanied Pedrarias, and his name
+became conspicuous among the cavaliers who extended the line of
+conquest to the north over the martial tribes of Veragua.  But all these
+expeditions, whatever glory they may have brought him, were productive
+of very little gold; and, at the age of fifty, the captain Pizarro found
+himself in possession only of a tract of unhealthy land in the
+neighborhood of the capital, and of such repartimientos of the natives as
+were deemed suited to his military services.6  The New World was a
+lottery, where the great prizes were so few that the odds were much
+against the player; yet in the game he was content to stake health,
+fortune, and, too often, his fair fame.
+
+Such was Pizarro's situation when, in 1522, Andagoya returned from his
+unfinished enterprise to the south of Panama, bringing back with him
+more copious accounts than any hitherto received of the opulence and
+grandeur of the countries that lay beyond.7  It was at this time, too, that
+the splendid achievements of Cortes made their impression on the public
+mind, and gave a new impulse to the spirit of adventure.  The southern
+expeditions became a common topic of speculation among the colonists
+of Panama.  But the region of gold, as it lay behind the mighty curtain of
+the Cordilleras, was still veiled in obscurity.  No idea could be formed of
+its actual distance; and the hardships and difficulties encountered by the
+few navigators who had sailed in that direction gave a gloomy character
+to the undertaking, which had hitherto deterred the most daring from
+embarking in it.  There is no evidence that Pizarro showed any particular
+alacrity in the cause.  Nor were his own funds such as to warrant any
+expectation of success without great assistance from others.  He found
+this in two individuals of the colony, who took too important a part in the
+subsequent transactions not to be particularly noticed.
+
+One of them, Diego de Almagro, was a soldier of fortune somewhat
+older, it seems probable, than Pizarro; though little is known of his birth,
+and even the place of it is disputed.  It is supposed to have been the town
+of Almagro in New Castile, whence his own name, for want of a better
+source was derived; for, like Pizarro, he was a foundling.8  Few
+particulars are known of him till the present period of our history; for he
+was one of those whom the working of turbulent times first throws upon
+the surface,--less fortunate, perhaps, than if left in their original
+obscurity.  In his military career, Almagro had earned the reputation of a
+gallant soldier.  He was frank and liberal in his disposition, somewhat
+hasty and ungovernable in his passions, but, like men of a sanguine
+temperament, after the first sallies had passed away, not difficult to be
+appeased.  He had, in short, the good qualities and the defects incident to
+an honest nature, not improved by the discipline of early education or
+self-control.
+
+The other member of the confederacy was Hernando de Luque, a
+Spanish ecclesiastic, who exercised the functions of vicar at Panama, and
+had formerly filled the office of schoolmaster in the Cathedral of Darien.
+He seems to have been a man of singular prudence and knowledge of the
+world; and by his respectable qualities had acquired considerable
+influence in the little community to which he belonged, as well as the
+control of funds, which made his cooperation essential to the success of
+the present enterprise.
+
+It was arranged among the three associates, that the two cavaliers should
+contribute their little stock towards defraying the expenses of the
+armament, but by far the greater part of the funds was to be furnished by
+Luque.  Pizarro was to take command of the expedition, and the business
+of victualling and equipping the vessels was assigned to Almagro.  The
+associates found no difficulty in obtaining the consent of the governor to
+their undertaking.  After the return of Andagoya, he had projected
+another expedition, but the officer to whom it was to be intrusted died.
+Why he did not prosecute his original purpose, and commit the affair to
+an experienced captain like Pizarro, does not appear.  He was probably
+not displeased that the burden of the enterprise should be borne by
+others, so long as a good share of the profits went into his own coffers.
+This he did not overlook in his stipulations.9
+
+Thus fortified with the funds of Luque, and the consent of the governor,
+Almagro was not slow to make preparations for the voyage.  Two small
+vessels were purchased, the larger of which had been originally built by
+Balboa, for himself, with a view to this same expedition.  Since his
+death, it had lain dismantled in the harbor of Panama.  It was now
+refitted as well as circumstances would permit, and put in order for sea,
+while the stores and provisions were got on board with an alacrity which
+did more credit, as the event proved, to Almagro's zeal than to his
+forecast.
+
+There was more difficulty in obtaining the necessary complement of
+hands; for a general feeling of distrust had gathered round expeditions in
+this direction, which could not readily be overcome.  But there were
+many idle hangers-on in the colony, who had come out to mend their
+fortunes, and were willing to take their chance of doing so, however
+desperate.  From such materials as these, Almagro assembled a body of
+somewhat more than a hundred men;10 and every thing being ready,
+Pizarro assumed the command, and, weighing anchor, took his departure
+from the little port of Panama, about the middle of November, 1524..
+Almagro was to follow in a second vessel of inferior size, as soon as it
+could be fitted out.11
+
+The time of year was the most unsuitable that could have been selected
+for the voyage; for it was the rainy season, when the navigation to the
+south, impeded by contrary winds, is made doubly dangerous by the
+tempests that sweep over the coast.  But this was not understood by the
+adventurers.  After touching at the Isle of Pearls, the frequent resort of
+navigators, at a few leagues' distance from Panama, Pizarro held his way
+across the Gulf of St.  Michael, and steered almost due south for the
+Puerto de Pinas, a headland in the province of Biruquete, which marked
+the limit of Andagoya's voyage.  Before his departure, Pizarro had
+obtained all the information which he could derive from that officer in
+respect to the country, and the route he was to follow.  But the cavalier's
+own experience had been too limited to enable him to be of much
+assistance.
+
+Doubling the Puerto de Pinas, the little vessel entered the river Biru, the
+misapplication of which name is supposed by some to have given rise to
+that of the empire of the Incas.12  After sailing up this stream for a
+couple of leagues, Pizarro came to anchor, and disembarking his whole
+force except the sailors, proceeded at the head of it to explore the
+country.  The land spread out into a vast swamp, where the heavy rains
+had settled in pools of stagnant water, and the muddy soil afforded no
+footing to the traveller.  This dismal morass was fringed with woods,
+through whose thick and tangled undergrowth they found it difficult to
+penetrate and emerging from them, they came out on a hilly country, so
+rough and rocky in its character, that their feet were cut to the bone, and
+the weary soldier, encumbered with his heavy mail or thick-padded
+doublet of cotton, found it difficult to drag one foot after the other.  The
+heat at times was oppressive; and, fainting with toil and famished for
+want of food, they sank down on the earth from mere exhaustion.  Such
+was the ominous commencement of the expedition to Peru.
+
+Pizarro, however, did not lose heart.  He endeavored to revive the spirits
+of his men, and besought them not to be discouraged by difficulties
+which a brave heart would be sure to overcome, reminding them of the
+golden prize which awaited those who persevered.  Yet it was obvious
+that nothing was to be gained by remaining longer in this desolate region.
+Returning to their vessel, therefore, it was suffered to drop down the
+river and proceed along its southern course on the great ocean.
+
+After coasting a few leagues, Pizarro anchored off a place not very
+inviting in its appearance, where he took in a supply of wood and water.
+Then, stretching more towards the open sea, he held on in the same
+direction towards the south.  But in this he was baffled by a succession of
+heavy tempests, accompanied with such tremendous peals of thunder and
+floods of rain as are found only in the terrible storms of the tropics.  The
+sea was lashed into fury, and, swelling into mountain billows, threatened
+every moment to overwhelm the crazy little bark, which opened at every
+seam.  For ten days the unfortunate voyagers were tossed about by the
+pitiless elements, and it was only by incessant exertions--the exertions of
+despair--that they preserved the ship from foundering.  To add to their
+calamities, their provisions began to fail, and they were short of water, of
+which they had been furnished only with a small number of casks; for
+Almagro had counted on their recruiting their scanty supplies, from time
+to time, from the shore.  Their meat was wholly consumed, and they
+were reduced to the wretched allowance of two ears of Indian corn a day
+for each man.
+
+Thus harassed by hunger and the elements, the battered voyagers were
+too happy to retrace their course and regain the port where they had last
+taken in supplies of wood and water.  Yet nothing could be more
+unpromising than the aspect of the country.  It had the same character of
+low, swampy soil, that distinguished the former landing-place; while
+thick-matted forests, of a depth which the eye could not penetrate,
+stretched along the coast to an interminable length.  It was in vain that
+the wearied Spaniards endeavored to thread the mazes of this tangled
+thicket, where the creepers and flowering vines, that shoot up luxuriant
+in a hot and humid atmosphere, had twined themselves round the huge
+trunks of the forest-trees, and made a network that could be opened only
+with the axe.  The rain, in the mean time, rarely slackened, and the
+ground, strewed with leaves and saturated with moisture, seemed to slip
+away beneath their feet.
+
+Nothing could be more dreary and disheartening than the aspect of these
+funereal forests; where the exhalations from the overcharged surface of
+the ground poisoned the air, and seemed to allow no life, except that,
+indeed, of myriads of insects, whose enamelled wings glanced to and fro,
+like sparks of fire, in every opening of the woods.  Even the brute
+creation appeared instinctively to have shunned the fatal spot, and
+neither beast nor bird of any description was seen by the wanderers.
+Silence reigned unbroken in the heart of these dismal solitudes; at least,
+the only sounds that could be heard were the plashing of the rain-drops
+on the leaves, and the tread of the forlorn adventurers.13
+
+Entirely discouraged by the aspect of the country, the Spaniards began to
+comprehend that they had gained nothing by changing their quarters
+from sea to shore, and they felt the most serious apprehensions of
+perishing from famine in a region which afforded nothing but such
+unwholesome berries as they could pick up here and there in the woods.
+They loudly complained of their hard lot, accusing their commander as
+the author of all their troubles, and as deluding them with promises of a
+fairy land, which seemed to recede in proportion as they advanced.  It
+was of no use, they said, to contend against fate, and it was better to take
+their chance of regaining the port of Panama in time to save their lives,
+than to wait where they were to die of hunger.
+
+But Pizarro was prepared to encounter much greater evils than these,
+before returning to Panama, bankrupt in credit, an object of derision as a
+vainglorious dreamer, who had persuaded others to embark in an
+adventure which he had not the courage to carry through himself.  The
+present was his only chance.  To return would be ruin.  He used every
+argument, therefore, that mortified pride or avarice could suggest to turn
+his followers from their purpose; represented to them that these were the
+troubles that necessarily lay in the path of the discoverer; and called to
+mind the brilliant successes of their countrymen in other quarters, and
+the repeated reports, which they had themselves received, of the rich
+regions along the coast, of which it required only courage and constancy
+on their part to become the masters.  Yet, as their present exigencies
+were pressing, he resolved to send back the vessel to the Isle of Pearls, to
+lay in a fresh stock of provisions for his company, which might enable
+them to go forward with renewed confidence.  The distance was not
+great, and in a few days they would all be relieved from their perilous
+position.  The officer detached on this service was named Montenegro;
+and taking with him nearly half the company, after receiving Pizarro's
+directions, he instantly weighed anchor, and steered for the Isle of Pearls.
+
+On the departure of his vessel, the Spanish commander made an attempt
+to explore the country, and see if some Indian settlement might not be
+found, where he could procure refreshments for his followers.  But his
+efforts were vain, and no trace was visible of a human dwelling; though,
+in the dense and impenetrable foliage of the equatorial regions, the
+distance of a few rods might suffice to screen a city from observation.
+The only means of nourishment left to the unfortunate adventurers were
+such shell-fish as they occasionally picked up on the shore, or the bitter
+buds of the palm-tree, and such berries and unsavory herbs as grew wild
+in the woods.  Some of these were so poisonous, that the bodies of those
+who ate them swelled up and were tormented with racking pains.  Others,
+preferring famine to this miserable diet, pined away from weakness and
+actually died of starvation.  Yet their resolute leader strove to maintain
+his own cheerfulness and to keep up the drooping spirits of his men.  He
+freely shared with them his scanty stock of provisions, was unwearied in
+his endeavors to procure them sustenance, tended the sick, and ordered
+barracks to be constructed for their accommodation, which might, at
+least, shelter them from the drenching storms of the season.  By this
+ready sympathy with his followers in their sufferings, he obtained an
+ascendency over their rough natures, which the assertion of authority, at
+least in the present extremity, could never have secured to him.
+
+Day after day, week after week, had now passed away, and no tidings
+were heard of the vessel that was to bring relief to the wanderers.  In vain
+did they strain their eyes over the distant waters to catch a glimpse of
+their coming friends.  Not a speck was to be seen in the blue distance,
+where the canoe of the savage dared not venture, and the sail of the white
+man was not yet spread.  Those who had borne up bravely at first now
+gave way to despondency, as they felt themselves abandoned by their
+countrymen on this desolate shore.  They pined under that sad feeling
+which "maketh the heart sick." More than twenty of the little band had
+already died, and the survivors seemed to be rapidly following.14
+
+At this crisis reports were brought to Pizarro of a light having been seen
+through a distant opening in the woods.  He hailed the tidings with
+eagerness, as intimating the existence of some settlement in the
+neighborhood; and, putting himself at the head of a small party, went in
+the direction pointed out, to reconnoitre.  He was not disappointed, and,
+after extricating himself from a dense wilderness of underbrush and
+foliage, he emerged into an open space, where a small Indian village was
+planted.  The timid inhabitants, on the sudden apparition of the strangers,
+quitted their huts in dismay; and the famished Spaniards, rushing in,
+eagerly made themselves masters of their contents.  These consisted of
+different articles of food, chiefly maize and cocoanuts.  The supply,
+though small, was too seasonable not to fill them with rapture.
+
+The astonished natives made no attempt at resistance.  But, gathering
+more confidence as no violence was offered to their persons, they drew
+nearer the white men, and inquired, "Why they did not stay at home and
+till their own lands, instead of roaming about to rob others who had
+never harmed them?"15  Whatever may have been their opinion as to
+the question of right, the Spaniards, no doubt, felt then that it would have
+been wiser to do so.  But the savages wore about their persons gold
+ornaments of some size, though of clumsy workmanship.  This furnished
+the best reply to their demand.  It was the golden bait which lured the
+Spanish adventurer to forsake his pleasant home for the trials of the
+wilderness.  From the Indians Pizarro gathered a confirmation of the
+reports he had so often received of a rich country lying farther south; and
+at the distance of ten days' journey across the mountains, they told him,
+there dwelt a mighty monarch whose dominions had been invaded by
+another still more powerful, the Child of the Sun.16  It may have been
+the invasion of Quito that was meant, by the valiant Inca Huayna Capac,
+which took place some years previous to Pizarro's expedition.
+
+At length, after the expiration of more than six weeks, the Spaniards
+beheld with delight the return of the wandering bark that had borne away
+their comrades, and Montenegro sailed into port with an ample supply of
+provisions for his famishing countrymen.  Great was his horror at the
+aspect presented by the latter, their wild and haggard countenances and
+wasted frames,--so wasted by hunger and disease, that their old
+companions found it difficult to recognize them.  Montenegro accounted
+for his delay by incessant head winds and bad weather; and he himself
+had also a doleful tale to tell of the distress to which he and his crew had
+been reduced by hunger, on their passage to the Isle of Pearls.--It is
+minute incidents like these with which we have been occupied, that
+enable one to comprehend the extremity of suffering to which the
+Spanish adventurer was subjected in the prosecution of his great work of
+discovery.
+
+Revived by the substantial nourishment to which they had so long been
+strangers, the Spanish cavaliers, with the buoyancy that belongs to men
+of a hazardous and roving life, forgot their past distresses in their
+eagerness to prosecute their enterprise.  Reembarking therefore on board
+his vessel, Pizarro bade adieu to the scene of so much suffering, which
+he branded with the appropriate name of Puerto de la Hambre, the Port
+of Famine, and again opened his sails to a favorable breeze that bore him
+onwards towards the south.
+
+Had he struck boldly out into the deep, instead of hugging the
+inhospitable shore, where he had hitherto found so little to recompense
+him, he might have spared himself the repetition of wearisome and
+unprofitable adventures, and reached by a shorter route the point of his
+destination.  But the Spanish mariner groped his way along these
+unknown coasts, landing at every convenient headland, as if fearful lest
+some fruitful region or precious mine might be overlooked, should a
+single break occur in the line of survey.  Yet it should be remembered,
+that, though the true point of Pizarro's destination is obvious to us,
+familiar with the topography of these countries, he was wandering in the
+dark, feeling his way along, inch by inch, as it were, without chart to
+guide him, without knowledge of the seas or of the bearings of the coast,
+and even with no better defined idea of the object at which he aimed than
+that of a land teeming with gold, that lay somewhere at the south! It was
+a hunt after an El Dorado; on information scarcely more circumstantial
+or authentic than that which furnished the basis of so many chimerical
+enterprises in this land of wonders.  Success only, the best argument with
+the multitude, redeemed the expeditions of Pizarro from a similar
+imputation of extravagance.
+
+Holding on his southerly course under the lee of the shore, Pizarro, after
+a short run, found himself abreast of an open reach of country, or at least
+one less encumbered with wood, which rose by a gradual swell, as it
+receded from the coast.  He landed with a small body of men, and,
+advancing a short distance into the interior, fell in with an Indian hamlet.
+It was abandoned by the inhabitants, who, on the approach of the
+invaders, had betaken themselves to the mountains; and the Spaniards,
+entering their deserted dwellings, found there a good store of maize and
+other articles of food, and rude ornaments of gold of considerable value.
+Food was not more necessary for their bodies than was the sight of gold,
+from time to time, to stimulate their appetite for adventure.  One
+spectacle, however, chilled their blood with horror.  This was the sight of
+human flesh, which they found roasting before the fire, as the barbarians
+had left it, preparatory to their obscene repast.  The Spaniards,
+conceiving that they had fallen in with a tribe of Caribs, the only race in
+that part of the New World known to be cannibals, retreated precipitately
+to their vessel.17  They were not steeled by sad familiarity with the
+spectacle, like the Conquerors of Mexico.
+
+The weather, which had been favorable, now set in tempestuous, with
+heavy squalls, accompanied by incessant thunder and lightning, and the
+rain, as usual in these tropical tempests, descended not so much in drops
+as in unbroken sheets of water.  The Spaniards, however, preferred to
+take their chance on the raging element rather than remain in the scene of
+such brutal abominations.  But the fury of the storm gradually subsided,
+and the little vessel held on her way along the coast, till, coming abreast
+of a bold point of land named by Pizarro Punta Quemada, he gave orders
+to anchor.  The margin of the shore was fringed with a deep belt of
+mangrove-trees, the long roots of which, interlacing one another, formed
+a kind of submarine lattice-work that made the place difficult of
+approach.  Several avenues, opening through this tangled thicket, led
+Pizarro to conclude that the country must be inhabited, and he
+disembarked, with the greater part of his force, to explore the interior.
+
+He had not penetrated more than a league, when he found his conjecture
+verified by the sight of an Indian town of larger size than those he had
+hitherto seen, occupying the brow of an eminence, and well defended by
+palisades.  The inhabitants, as usual, had fled; but left in their dwellings a
+good supply of provisions and some gold trinkets, which the Spaniards
+made no difficulty of appropriating to themselves.  Pizarro's flimsy bark
+had been strained by the heavy gales it had of late encountered, so that it
+was unsafe to prosecute the voyage further without more thorough
+repairs than could be given to her on this desolate coast.  He accordingly
+determined to send her back with a few hands to be careened at Panama,
+and meanwhile to establish his quarters in his present position, which
+was so favorable for defence.  But first he despatched a small party
+under Montenegro to reconnoitre the country, and, if possible, to open a
+communication with the natives.
+
+The latter were a warlike race.  They had left their habitations in order to
+place their wives and children in safety.  But they had kept an eye on the
+movements of the invaders, and, when they saw their forces divided, they
+resolved to fall upon each body singly before it could communicate with
+the other.  So soon, therefore, as Montenegro had penetrated through the
+defiles of the lofty hills, which shoot out like spurs of the Cordilleras
+along this part of the coast, the Indian warriors, springing from their
+ambush, sent off a cloud of arrows and other missiles that darkened the
+air, while they made the forest ring with their shrill warwhoop.  The
+Spaniards, astonished at the appearance of the savages, with their naked
+bodies gaudily painted, and brandishing their weapons as they glanced
+among the trees and straggling underbrush that choked up the defile,
+were taken by surprise and thrown for a moment into disarray.  Three of
+their number were killed and several wounded.  Yet, speedily rallying,
+they returned the discharge of the assailants with their cross-bows,--for
+Pizarro's troops do not seem to have been provided with muskets on this
+expedition,--and then gallantly charging the enemy, sword in hand,
+succeeded in driving them back into the fastnesses of the mountains.  But
+it only led them to shift their operations to another quarter, and make an
+assault on Pizarro before he could be relieved by his lieutenant.
+
+Availing themselves of their superior knowledge of the passes, they
+reached that commander's quarters long before Montenegro, who had
+commenced a countermarch in the same direction.  And issuing from the
+woods, the bold savages saluted the Spanish garrison with a tempest of
+darts and arrows, some of which found their way through the joints of the
+harness and the quilted mail of the cavaliers.  But Pizarro was too well
+practised a soldier to be off his guard.  Calling his men about him, he
+resolved not to abide the assault tamely in the works, but to sally out, and
+meet the enemy on their own ground.  The barbarians, who had advanced
+near the defences, fell back as the Spaniards burst forth with their valiant
+leader at their head.  But, soon returning with admirable ferocity to the
+charge, they singled out Pizarro, whom, by his bold bearing and air of
+authority, they easily recognized as the chief; and, hurling at him a storm
+of missiles, wounded him, in spite of his armour, in no less than seven
+places.18
+
+Driven back by the fury of the assault directed against his own person,
+the Spanish commander retreated down the slope of the hill, still
+defending himself as he could with sword and buckler, when his foot
+slipped and he fell.  The enemy set up a fierce yell of triumph, and some
+of the boldest sprang forward to despatch him.  But Pizarro was on his
+feet in an instant, and, striking down two of the foremost with his strong
+arm, held the rest at bay till his soldiers could come to the rescue.  The
+barbarians, struck with admiration at his valor, began to falter, when
+Montenegro luckily coming on the ground at the moment, and falling on
+their rear, completed their confusion; and, abandoning the field, they
+made the best of their way into the recesses of the mountains.  The
+ground was covered with their slain; but the victory was dearly
+purchased by the death of two more Spaniards and a long list of
+wounded.
+
+A council of war was then called.  The position had lost its charm in the
+eyes of the Spaniards, who had met here with the first resistance they had
+yet experienced on their expedition.  It was necessary to place the
+wounded in some secure spot, where their injuries could be attended to.
+Yet it was not safe to proceed farther, in the crippled state of their vessel.
+On the whole, it was decided to return and report their proceedings to the
+governor; and, though the magnificent hopes of the adventurers had not
+been realized, Pizarro trusted that enough had been done to vindicate the
+importance of the enterprise, and to secure the countenance of Pedrarias
+for the further prosecution of it.19
+
+Yet Pizarro could not make up his mind to present himself, in the present
+state of the undertaking, before the governor.  He determined, therefore,
+to be set on shore with the principal part of his company at Chicama, a
+place on the main land, at a short distance west of Panama From this
+place, which he reached without any further accident, he despatched the
+vessel, and in it his treasurer, Nicolas de Ribera, with the gold he had
+collected, and with instructions to lay before the governor in full account
+of his discoveries, and the result of the expedition.
+
+While these events were passing, Pizarro's associate, Almagro, had been
+busily employed in fitting out another vessel for the expedition at the
+port of Panama.  It was not till long after his friend's departure that he
+was prepared to follow him.  With the assistance of Luque, he at length
+succeeded in equipping a small caravel and embarking a body of
+between sixty and seventy adventurers, mostly of the lowest order of the
+colonists.  He steered in the track of his comrade, with the intention of
+overtaking him as soon as possible.  By a signal previously concerted of
+notching the trees, he was able to identify the spots visited by Pizarro,--
+Puerto de Pinas, Puerto de la Hambre, Pueblo Quemado--touching
+successively at every point of the coast explored by his countrymen,
+though in a much shorter time.  At the last-mentioned place he was
+received by the fierce natives with the same hostile demonstrations as
+Pizarro, though in the present encounter the Indians did not venture
+beyond their defences.  But the hot blood of Almagro was so exasperated
+by this check, that he assaulted the place and carried it sword in hand,
+setting fire to the outworks and dwellings, and driving the wretched
+inhabitants into the forests.
+
+His victory cost him dear.  A wound from a javelin on the head caused
+an inflammation in one of his eyes, which, after great anguish, ended in
+the loss of it.  Yet the intrepid adventurer did not hesitate to pursue his
+voyage, and, after touching at several places on the coast, some of which
+rewarded him with a considerable booty in gold, he reached the mouth of
+the Rio de San Juan, about the fourth degree of north latitude.  He was
+struck with the beauty of the stream, and with the cultivation on its
+borders, which were sprinkled with Indian cottages showing some skill in
+their construction, and altogether intimating a higher civilization than
+any thing he had yet seen.
+
+Still his mind was filled with anxiety for the fate of Pizarro and his
+followers.  No trace of them had been found on the coast for a long time,
+and it was evident they must have foundered at sea, or made their way
+back to Panama.  This last he deemed most probable; as the vessel might
+have passed him unnoticed under the cover of the night, or of the dense
+fogs that sometimes hang over the coast.
+
+Impressed with this belief, he felt no heart to continue his voyage of
+discovery, for which, indeed, his single bark, with its small complement
+of men, was altogether inadequate.  He proposed, therefore, to return
+without delay.  On his way, he touched at the Isle of Pearls, and there
+learned the result of his friend's expedition, and the place of his present
+residence.  Directing his course, at once, to Chicama, the two cavaliers
+soon had the satisfaction of embracing each other, and recounting their
+several exploits and escapes.  Almagro returned even better freighted
+with gold than his confederate, and at every step of his progress he had
+collected fresh confirmation of the existence of some great and opulent
+empire in the South.  The confidence of the two friends was much
+strengthened by their discoveries; and they unhesitatingly pledged
+themselves to one another to die rather than abandon the enterprise.20
+
+The best means of obtaining the levies requisite for so formidable an
+undertaking--more formidable, as it now appeared to them, than before --
+were made the subject of long and serious discussion.  It was at length
+decided that Pizarro should remain in his present quarters, inconvenient
+and even unwholesome as they were rendered by the humidity of the
+climate, and the pestilent swarms of insects that filled the atmosphere.
+Almagro would pass over to Panama, lay the case before the governor,
+and secure, if possible, his good-will towards the prosecution of the
+enterprise.  If no obstacle were thrown in their way from this quarter,
+they might hope, with the assistance of Luque, to raise the necessary
+supplies; while the results of the recent expedition were sufficiently
+encouraging to draw adventurers to their standard in a community which
+had a craving for excitement that gave even danger a charm, and which
+held life cheap in comparison with gold.
+
+
+
+Book 2
+
+Chapter 3
+
+The Famous Contract-Second Expedition--Ruiz Explores The Coast--
+Pizarro's Sufferings In The Forests--Arrival Of New Recruits-
+Fresh Discoveries And Disasters--Pizarro On The Isle Of Gallo
+
+1526--1527
+
+On his arrival at Panama, Almagro found that events had taken a turn
+less favorable to his views than he had anticipated.  Pedrarias, the
+governor, was preparing to lead an expedition in person against a
+rebellious officer in Nicaragua; and his temper, naturally not the most
+amiable, was still further soured by this defection of his lieutenant, and
+the necessity it imposed on him of a long and perilous march.  When,
+therefore, Almagro appeared before him with the request that he might
+be permitted to raise further levies to prosecute his enterprise, the
+governor received him with obvious dissatisfaction, listened coldly to the
+narrative of his losses, turned an incredulous ear to his magnificent
+promises for the future, and bluntly demanded an account of the lives,
+which had been sacrificed by Pizarro's obstinacy, but which, had they
+been spared, might have stood him in good stead in his present
+expedition to Nicaragua.  He positively declined to countenance the rash
+schemes of the two adventurers any longer, and the conquest of Peru
+would have been crushed in the bud, but for the efficient interposition of
+the remaining associate, Fernando de Luque.
+
+This sagacious ecclesiastic had received a very different impression from
+Almagro's narrative, from that which had been made on the mind of the
+irritable governor.  The actual results of the enterprise in gold and silver,
+thus far, indeed, had been small,--forming a mortifying contrast to the
+magnitude of their expectations.  But, in another point of view, they were
+of the last importance; since the intelligence which the adventurers had
+gained in every successive stage of their progress confirmed, in the
+strongest manner, the previous accounts, received from Andogoya and
+others, of a rich Indian empire at the south, which might repay the
+trouble of conquering it as well as Mexico had repaid the enterprise of
+Cortes.  Fully entering, therefore, into the feelings of his military
+associates, he used all his influence with the governor to incline him to a
+more favorable view of Almagro's petition; and no one in the little
+community of Panama exercised greater influence over the councils of
+the executive than Father Luque, for which he was indebted no less to his
+discretion and acknowledged sagacity than to his professional station.
+
+But while Pedrarias, overcome by the arguments or importunity of the
+churchman, yielded a reluctant assent to the application, he took care to
+testify his displeasure with Pizarro, on whom he particularly charged the
+loss of his followers, by naming Almagro as his equal in command in the
+proposed expedition.  This mortification sunk deep into Pizarro's mind.
+He suspected his comrade, with what reason does not appear, of
+soliciting this boon from the governor.  A temporary coldness arose
+between them, which subsided, in outward show, at least, on Pizarro's
+reflecting that it was better to have this authority conferred on a friend
+than on a stranger, perhaps an enemy.  But the seeds of permanent
+distrust were left in his bosom, and lay waiting for the due season to
+ripen into a fruitful harvest of discord.1
+
+Pedrarias had been originally interested in the enterprise, at least, so far
+as to stipulate for a share of the gains, though he had not contributed, as
+it appears, a single ducat towards the expenses.  He was at length,
+however, induced to relinquish all right to a share of the contingent
+profits.  But, in his manner of doing so, he showed a mercenary spirit,
+better becoming a petty trader than a high officer of the Crown.  He
+stipulated that the associates should secure to him the sum of one
+thousand pesos de oro in requital of his good-will, and they eagerly
+closed with his proposal, rather than be encumbered with his pretensions.
+For so paltry a consideration did he resign his portion of the rich spoil of
+the Incas! 2  But the governor was not gifted with the eye of a prophet.
+His avarice was of that short-sighted kind which defeats itself.  He had
+sacrificed the chivalrous Balboa just as that officer was opening to him
+the conquest of Peru, and he would now have quenched the spirit of
+enterprise, that was taking the same direction, in Pizarro and his
+associates.
+
+Not long after this, in the following year, he was succeeded in his
+government by Don Pedro de los Rios, a cavalier of Cordova.  It was the
+policy of the Castilian Crown to allow no one of the great colonial
+officers to occupy the same station so long as to render himself
+formidable by his authority.3  It had, moreover, many particular causes
+of disgust with Pedrarias.  The functionary they sent out to succeed him
+was fortified with ample instructions for the good of the colony, and
+especially of the natives, whose religious conversion was urged as a
+capital object, and whose personal freedom was unequivocally asserted,
+as loyal vassals of the Crown.  It is but justice to the Spanish government
+to admit that its provisions were generally guided by a humane and
+considerate policy, which was as regularly frustrated by the cupidity of
+the colonist, and the capricious cruelty of the conqueror.  The few
+remaining years of Pedrarias were spent in petty squabbles, both of a
+personal and official nature; for he was still continued in office, though
+in one of less consideration than that which he had hitherto filled.  He
+survived but a few years, leaving behind him a reputation not to be
+envied, of one who united a pusillanimous spirit with uncontrollable
+passions; who displayed, notwithstanding, a certain energy of character,
+or, to speak more correctly, an impetuosity of purpose, which might have
+led to good results had it taken a right direction.  Unfortunately, his lack
+of discretion was such, that the direction he took was rarely of service to
+his country or to himself.
+
+Having settled their difficulties with the governor, and obtained his
+sanction to their enterprise, the confederates lost no time in making the
+requisite preparations for it.  Their first step was to execute the
+memorable contract which served as the basis of their future
+arrangements; and, as Pizarro's name appears in this, it seems probable
+that that chief had crossed over to Panama so soon as the favorable
+disposition of Pedrarias had been secured.4  The instrument, after
+invoking in the most solemn manner the names of the Holy Trinity and
+Our Lady the Blessed Virgin, sets forth, that, whereas the parties have
+full authority to discover and subdue the countries and provinces lying
+south of the Gulf, belonging to the empire of Peru, and as Fernando de
+Luque had advanced the funds for the enterprise in bars of gold of the
+value of twenty thousand pesos, they mutually bind themselves to divide
+equally among them the whole of the conquered territory.  This
+stipulation is reiterated over and over again, particularly with reference
+to Luque, who, it is declared, is to be entitled to one third of all lands,
+repartimientos, treasures of every kind, gold, silver, and precious stones,-
+-to one third even of all vassals, rents, and emoluments arising from such
+grants as may be conferred by the Crown on either of his military
+associates, to be held for his own use, or for that of his heirs, assigns, or
+legal representative.
+
+The two captains solemnly engage to devote themselves exclusively to
+the present undertaking until it is accomplished; and, in case of failure in
+their part of the covenant, they pledge themselves to reimburse Luque for
+his advances, for which all the property they possess shall be held
+responsible, and this declaration is to be a sufficient warrant for the
+execution of judgment against them, in the same manner as if it had
+proceeded from the decree of a court of justice.
+
+The commanders, Pizarro and Almagro, made oath, in the name of God
+and the Holy Evangelists, sacredly to keep this covenant, swearing it on
+the missal, on which they traced with their own hands the sacred emblem
+of the cross.  To give still greater efficacy to the compact, Father Luque
+administered the sacrament to the parties, dividing the consecrated wafer
+into three portions, of which each one of them partook; while the
+bystanders, says an historian, were affected to tears by this spectacle of
+the solemn ceremonial with which these men voluntarily devoted
+themselves to a sacrifice that seemed little short of insanity.5
+
+The instrument, which was dated March 10, 1526, was subscribed by
+Luque, and attested by three respectable citizens of Panama, one of
+whom signed on behalf of Pizarro, and the other for Almagro; since
+neither of these parties, according to the avowal of the instrument, was
+able to subscribe his own name.6
+
+Such was the singular compact by which three obscure individuals coolly
+carved out and partitioned among themselves, an empire of whose
+extent, power, and resources, of whose situation, of whose existence,
+even, they had no sure or precise knowledge.  The positive and
+unhesitating manner in which they speak of the grandeur of this empire,
+of its stores of wealth, so conformable to the event, but of which they
+could have really known so little, forms a striking contrast with the
+general skepticism and indifference manifested by nearly every other
+person, high and low, in the community of Panama.7
+
+The religious tone of the instrument is not the least remarkable feature in
+it, especially when we contrast this with the relentless policy, pursued by
+the very men who were parties to it, in their conquest of the country.  "In
+the name of the Prince of Peace," says the illustrious historian of
+America, "they ratified a contract of which plunder and bloodshed were
+the objects."8  The reflection seems reasonable.  Yet, in criticizing what
+is done, as well as what is written, we must take into account the spirit of
+the times.9  The invocation of Heaven was natural, where the object of
+the undertaking was, in part, a religious one.  Religion entered, more or
+less, into the theory, at least, of the Spanish conquests in the New World.
+That motives of a baser sort mingled largely with these higher ones, and
+in different proportions according to the character of the individual, no
+one will deny.  And few are they that have proposed to themselves a long
+career of action without the intermixture of some vulgar personal motive,
+--fame, honors, or emolument.  Yet that religion furnishes a key to the
+American crusades, however rudely they may have been conducted, is
+evident from the history of their origin; from the sanction openly given to
+them by the Head of the Church; from the throng of self-devoted
+missionaries, who followed in the track of the conquerors to garner up
+the rich harvest of souls; from the reiterated instructions of the Crown,
+the great object of which was the conversion of the natives; from those
+superstitious acts of the iron-hearted soldiery themselves, which,
+however they may be set down to fanaticism, were clearly too much in
+earnest to leave any ground for the charge of hypocrisy.  It was indeed a
+fiery cross that was borne over the devoted land, scathing and consuming
+it in its terrible progress; but it was still the cross, the sign of man's
+salvation, the only sign by which generations and generations yet unborn
+were to be rescued from eternal perdition.
+
+It is a remarkable fact, which has hitherto escaped the notice of the
+historian, that Luque was not the real party to this contract.  He
+represented another, who placed in his hands the funds required for the
+undertaking.  This appears from an instrument signed by Luque himself
+and certified before the same notary that prepared the original contract.
+The instrument declares that the whole sum of twenty thousand pesos
+advanced for the expedition was furnished by the Licentiate Gaspar de
+Espinosa, then at Panama; that the vicar acted only as his agent and by
+his authority; and that, in consequence, the said Espinosa and no other
+was entitled to a third of all the profits and acquisitions resulting from
+the conquest of Peru.  This instrument, attested by three persons, one of
+them the same who had witnessed the original contract, was dated on the
+6th of August, 1531.10  The Licentiate Espinosa was a respectable
+functionary, who had filled the office of principal alcalde in Darien, and
+since taken a conspicuous part in the conquest and settlement of Tierra
+Firme.  He enjoyed much consideration for his personal character and
+station; and it is remarkable that so little should be known of the manner
+in which the covenant, so solemnly made, was executed in reference to
+him.  As in the case of Columbus, it is probable that the unexpected
+magnitude of the results was such as to prevent a faithful adherence to
+the original stipulation; and yet, from the same consideration, one can
+hardly doubt that the twenty thousand pesos of the bold speculator must
+have brought him a magnificent return.  Nor did the worthy vicar of
+Panama, as the history will show hereafter, go without his reward.
+
+Having completed these preliminary arrangements, the three associates
+lost no time in making preparations for the voyage.  Two vessels were
+purchased, larger and every way better than those employed on the
+former occasion.  Stores were laid in, as experience dictated, on a larger
+scale than before, and proclamation was made of "an expedition to
+Peru." But the call was not readily answered by the skeptical citizens of
+Panama.  Of nearly two hundred men who had embarked on the former
+cruise, not more than three fourths now remained.11 This dismal
+mortality, and the emaciated, poverty-stricken aspect of the survivors,
+spoke more eloquently than the braggart promises and magnificent
+prospects held out by the adventurers.  Still there were men in the
+community of such desperate circumstances, that any change seemed like
+a chance of bettering their condition.  Most of the former company also,
+strange to say, felt more pleased to follow up the adventure to the end
+than to abandon it, as they saw the light of a better day dawning upon
+them.  From these sources the two captains succeeded in mustering about
+one hundred and sixty men, making altogether a very inadequate force
+for the conquest of an empire.  A few horses were also purchased, and a
+better supply of ammunition and military stores than before, though still
+on a very limited scale.  Considering their funds, the only way of
+accounting for this must be by the difficulty of obtaining supplies at
+Panama, which, recently founded, and on the remote coast of the Pacific,
+could be approached only by crossing the rugged barrier of mountains,
+which made the transportation of bulky articles extremely difficult.  Even
+such scanty stock of materials as it possessed was probably laid under
+heavy contribution, at the present juncture, by the governor's
+preparations for his own expedition to the north.
+
+Thus indifferently provided, the two captains, each in his own vessel,
+again took their departure from Panama, under the direction of
+Bartholomew Ruiz, a sagacious and resolute pilot, well experienced in
+the navigation of the Southern Ocean.  He was a native of Moguer, in
+Andalusia, that little nursery of nautical enterprise, which furnished so
+many seamen for the first voyages of Columbus.  Without touching at the
+intervening points of the coast, which offered no attraction to the
+voyagers, they stood farther out to sea, steering direct for the Rio de San
+Juan, the utmost limit reached by Almagro.  The season was better
+selected than on the former occasion, and they were borne along by
+favorable breezes to the place of their destination, which they reached
+without accident in a few days.  Entering the mouth of the river, they saw
+the banks well lined with Indian habitations; and Pizarro, disembarking,
+at the head of a party of soldiers, succeeded in surprising a small village
+and carrying off a considerable booty of gold ornaments found in the
+dwellings, together with a few of the natives.12
+
+Flushed with their success, the two chiefs were confident that the sight of
+the rich spoil so speedily obtained could not fall to draw adventurers to
+their standard in Panama; and, as they felt more than ever the necessity
+of a stronger force to cope with the thickening population of the country
+which they were now to penetrate, it was decided that Almagro should
+return with the treasure and beat up for reinforcements, while the pilot
+Ruiz, in the other vessel, should reconnoitre the country towards the
+south, and obtain such information as might determine their future
+movements.  Pizarro, with the rest of the force, would remain in the
+neighborhood of the river, as he was assured by the Indian prisoners, that
+not far in the interior was an open reach of country, where he and his
+men could find comfortable quarters.  This arrangement was instantly put
+in execution.  We will first accompany the intrepid pilot in his cruise
+towards the south.
+
+Coasting along the great continent, with his canvas still spread to
+favorable winds, the first place at which Ruiz cast anchor was off the
+little island of Gallo, about two degrees north.  The inhabitants, who
+were not numerous, were prepared to give him a hostile reception,--for
+tidings of the invaders had preceded them along the country, and even
+reached this insulated spot.  As the object of Ruiz was to explore, not
+conquer, he did not care to entangle himself in hostilities with the
+natives; so, changing his purpose of landing, he weighed anchor, and ran
+down the coast as far as what is now called the Bay of St. Matthew.  The
+country, which, as he advanced, continued to exhibit evidence of a better
+culture as well as of a more dense population than the parts hitherto seen,
+was crowded, along the shores, with spectators, who gave no signs of
+fear or hostility.  They stood gazing on the vessel of the white men as it
+glided smoothly into the crystal waters of the bay, fancying it, says an
+old writer, some mysterious being descended from the skies.
+
+Without staying long enough on this friendly coast to undeceive the
+simple people, Ruiz, standing off shore, struck out into the deep sea; but
+he had not sailed far in that direction, when he was surprised by the sight
+of a vessel, seeming in the distance like a caravel of considerable size,
+traversed by a large sail that carried it sluggishly over the waters.  The
+old navigator was not a little perplexed by this phenomenon, as he was
+confident no European bark could have been before him in these
+latitudes, and no Indian nation, yet discovered, not even the civilized
+Mexican, was acquainted with the use of sails in navigation.  As he drew
+near, he found it was a large vessel, or rather raft, called balsa by the
+natives, consisting of a number of huge timbers of a light, porous wood,
+tightly lashed together, with a frail flooring of reeds raised on them by
+way of deck.  Two masts or sturdy poles, erected in the middle of the
+vessel, sustained a large square-sail of cotton, while a rude kind of
+rudder and a movable keel, made of plank inserted between the logs,
+enabled the mariner to give a direction to the floating fabric, which held
+on its course without the aid of oar or paddle.13  The simple architecture
+of this craft was sufficient for the purposes of the natives, and indeed has
+continued to answer them to the present day; for the balsa, surmounted
+by small thatched huts or cabins, still supplies the most commodious
+means for the transportation of passengers and luggage on the streams
+and along the shores of this part of the South American continent.
+
+On coming alongside, Ruiz found several Indians, both men and women,
+on board, some with rich ornaments on their persons, besides several
+articles wrought with considerable skill in gold and silver, which they
+were carrying for purposes of traffic to the different places along the
+coast.  But what most attracted his attention was the woollen cloth of
+which some of their dresses were made.  It was of a fine texture,
+delicately embroidered with figures of birds and flowers, and dyed in
+brilliant colors.  He also observed in the boat a pair of balances made to
+weigh the precious metals.14  His astonishment at these proofs of
+ingenuity and civilization, so much higher than anything he had ever
+seen in the country, was heightened by the intelligence which he
+collected from some of these Indians.  Two of them had come from
+Tumbez, a Peruvian port, some degrees to the south; and they gave him
+to understand, that in their neighborhood the fields were covered with
+large flocks of the animals from which the wool was obtained, and that
+gold and silver were almost as common as wood in the palaces of their
+monarch.  The Spaniards listened greedily to reports which harmonized
+so well with their fond desires.  Though half distrusting the exaggeration,
+Ruiz resolved to detain some of the Indians, including the natives of
+Tumbez, that they might repeat the wondrous tale to his commander, and
+at the same time, by learning the Castilian, might hereafter serve as
+interpreters with their countrymen.  The rest of the party he suffered to
+proceed without further interruption on their voyage.  Then holding on
+his course, the prudent pilot, without touching at any other point of the
+coast, advanced as far as the Punta de Pasado, about half a degree south,
+having the glory of being the first European who, sailing in this direction
+on the Pacific, had crossed the equinoctial line.  This was the limit' of his
+discoveries; on reaching which he tacked about, and standing away to the
+north, succeeded, after an absence of several weeks, in regaining the spot
+where he had left Pizarro and his comrades.15
+
+It was high time; for the spirits of that little band had been sorely tried by
+the perils they had encountered.  On the departure of his vessels, Pizarro
+marched into the interior, in the hope of finding the pleasant champaign
+country which had been promised him by the natives.  But at every step
+the forests seemed to grow denser and darker, and the trees towered to a
+height such as he had never seen, even in these fruitful regions, where
+Nature works on so gigantic a scale.16  Hill continued to rise above hill,
+as he advanced, rolling onward, as it were, by successive waves to join
+that colossal barrier of the Andes, whose frosty sides, far away above the
+clouds, spread out like a curtain of burnished silver, that seemed to
+connect the heavens with the earth.
+
+On crossing these woody eminences, the forlorn adventurers would
+plunge into ravines of frightful depth, where the exhalations of a humid
+soil steamed up amidst the incense of sweet-scented flowers, which
+shone through the deep glooms in every conceivable variety of color.
+Birds, especially of the parrot tribe, mocked this fantastic variety of
+nature with tints as brilliant as those of the vegetable world.  Monkeys
+chattered in crowds above their heads, and made grimaces like the
+fiendish spirits of these solitudes; while hideous reptiles, engendered in
+the slimy depths of the pools, gathered round the footsteps of the
+wanderers.  Here was seen the gigantic boa, coiling his unwieldy folds
+about the trees, so as hardly to be distinguished from their trunks, till he
+was ready to dart upon his prey; and alligators lay basking on the borders
+of the streams, or, gliding under the waters, seized their incautious victim
+before he was aware of their approach.17  Many of the Spaniards
+perished miserably in this way, and others were waylaid by the natives,
+who kept a jealous eye on their movements, and availed themselves of
+every opportunity to take them at advantage.  Fourteen of Pizarro's men
+were cut off at once in a canoe which had stranded on the bank of a
+stream.18
+
+Famine came in addition to other troubles, and it was with difficulty that
+they found the means of sustaining life on the scanty fare of the forest,--
+occasionally the potato, as it grew without cultivation, or the wild cocoa-
+nut, or, on the shore, the salt and bitter fruit of the mangrove; though the
+shore was less tolerable than the forest, from the swarms of mosquitos
+which compelled the wretched adventurers to bury their bodies up to
+their very faces in the sand.  In this extremity of suffering, they thought
+only of return; and all schemes of avarice and ambition--except with
+Pizarro and a few dauntless spirits--were exchanged for the one craving
+desire to return to Panama.
+
+It was at this crisis that the pilot Ruiz returned with the report of his
+brilliant discoveries; and, not long after, Almagro sailed into port with
+his vessel laden with refreshments, and a considerable reinforcement of
+volunteers.  The voyage of that commander had been prosperous.  When
+he arrived at Panama, he found the government in the hands of Don
+Pedro de los Rios; and he came to anchor in the harbor, unwilling to trust
+himself on shore, till he had obtained from Father Luque some account
+of the dispositions of the executive.  These were sufficiently favorable;
+for the new governor had particular instructions fully to carry out the
+arrangements made by his predecessor with the associates.  On learning
+Almagro's arrival, he came down to the port to welcome him, professing
+his willingness to afford every facility for the execution of his designs.
+Fortunately, just before this period, a small body of military adventurers
+had come to Panama from the mother country, burning with desire to
+make their fortunes in the New World.  They caught much more eagerly
+than the old and wary colonists at the golden bait held out to them; and
+with their addition, and that of a few supernumerary stragglers who hung
+about the town, Almagro found himself at the head of a reinforcement of
+at least eighty men, with which, having laid in a fresh supply of stores, he
+again set sail for the Rio de San Juan.
+
+The arrival of the new recruits all eager to follow up the expedition, the
+comfortable change in their circumstances produced by an ample supply
+of refreshments, and the glowing pictures of the wealth that awaited them
+in the south, all had their effect on the dejected spirits of Pizarro's
+followers.  Their late toils and privations were speedily forgotten, and,
+with the buoyant and variable feelings incident to a freebooter's life, they
+now called as eagerly on their commander to go forward in the voyage,
+as they had before called on him to abandon it.  Availing themselves of
+the renewed spirit of enterprise, the captains embarked on board their
+vessels, and, under the guidance of the veteran pilot, steered in the same
+track he had lately pursued.
+
+But the favorable season for a southern course, which in these latitudes
+lasts but a few months in the year, had been suffered to escape.  The
+breezes blew steadily towards the north, and a strong current, not far
+from shore, set in the same direction.  The winds frequently rose into
+tempests, and the unfortunate voyagers were tossed about, for many
+days, in the boiling surges, amidst the most awful storms of thunder and
+lightning, until, at length, they found a secure haven in the island of
+Gallo, already visited by Ruiz.  As they were now too strong in numbers
+to apprehend an assault, the crews landed, and, experiencing no
+molestation from the natives, they continued on the island for a fortnight,
+refitting their damaged vessels, and recruiting themselves after the
+fatigues of the ocean.  Then, resuming their voyage, the captains stood
+towards the south until they reached the Bay of St. Matthew.  As they
+advanced along the coast, they were struck, as Ruiz had been before,
+with the evidences of a higher civilization constantly exhibited in the
+general aspect of the country and its inhabitants.  The hand of cultivation
+was visible in every quarter.  The natural appearance of the coast, too,
+had something in it more inviting; for, instead of the eternal labyrinth of
+mangrove-trees, with their complicated roots snarled into formidable
+coils under the water, as if to waylay and entangle the voyager, the low
+margin of the sea was covered with a stately growth of ebony, and with a
+species of mahogany, and other hard woods that take the most brilliant
+and variegated polish.  The sandal-wood, and many balsamic trees of
+unknown names, scattered their sweet odors far and wide, not in an
+atmosphere tainted with vegetable corruption, but on the pure breezes of
+the ocean, bearing health as well as fragrance on their wings.  Broad
+patches of cultivated land intervened, disclosing hill-sides covered with
+the yellow maize and the potato, or checkered, in the lower levels, with
+blooming plantations of cacao.19
+
+The villages became more numerous; and, as the vessels rode at anchor
+off the port of Tacamez, the Spaniards saw before them a town of two
+thousand houses or more, laid out into streets, with a numerous
+population clustering around it in the suburbs.20  The men and women
+displayed many ornaments of gold and precious stones about their
+persons, which may seem strange, considering that the Peruvian Incas
+claimed a monopoly of jewels for themselves and the nobles on whom
+they condescended to bestow them.  But, although the Spaniards had
+now reached the outer limits of the Peruvian empire, it was not Peru, but
+Quito, and that portion of it but recently brought under the sceptre of the
+Incas, where the ancient usages of the people could hardly have been
+effaced under the oppressive system of the American despots.  The
+adjacent country was, moreover, particularly rich in gold, which,
+collected from the washings of the streams, still forms one of the staple
+products of Barbacoas.  Here, too, was the fair River of Emeralds, so
+called from the quarries of the beautiful gem on its borders, from which
+the Indian monarchs enriched their treasury.21
+
+The Spaniards gazed with delight on these undeniable evidences of
+wealth, and saw in the careful cultivation of the soil a comfortable
+assurance that they had at length reached the land which had so long
+been seen in brilliant, though distant, perspective before them.  But here
+again they were doomed to be disappointed by the warlike spirit of the
+people, who, conscious of their own strength, showed no disposition to
+quail before the invaders.  On the contrary, several of their canoes shot
+out, loaded with warriors, who, displaying a gold mask as their ensign,
+hovered round the vessels with looks of defiance, and, when pursued,
+easily took shelter under the lee of the land.22
+
+A more formidable body mustered along the shore, to the number,
+according to the Spanish accounts, of at least ten thousand warriors,
+eager, apparently, to come to close action with the invaders.  Nor could
+Pizarro, who had landed with a party of his men in the hope of a
+conference with the natives, wholly prevent hostilities; and it might have
+gone hard with the Spaniards, hotly pressed by their resolute enemy so
+superior in numbers, but for a ludicrous accident reported by the
+historians as happening to one of the cavaliers.  This was a fall from his
+horse, which so astonished the barbarians, who were not prepared for
+this division of what seemed one and the same being into two, that, filled
+with consternation, they fell back, and left a way open for the Christians
+to regain their vessels! 23
+
+A council of war was now called.  It was evident that the forces of the
+Spaniards were unequal to a contest with so numerous and well-
+appointed a body of natives; and, even if they should prevail here, they
+could have no hope of stemming the torrent which must rise against them
+in their progress--for the country was becoming more and more thickly
+settled, and towns and hamlets started into view at every new headland
+which they doubled.  It was better, in the opinion of some,--the faint-
+hearted,-to abandon the enterprise at once, as beyond their strength.  But
+Almagro took a different view of the affair.  "To go home," he said,
+"with nothing done, would be ruin, as well as disgrace.  There was
+scarcely one but had left creditors at Panama, who looked for payment to
+the fruits of this expedition.  To go home now would be to deliver
+themselves at once into their hands.  It would be to go to prison.  Better
+to roam a freeman, though in the wilderness, than to lie bound with
+fetters in the dungeons of Panama.24  The only course for them," he
+concluded, "was the one lately pursued.  Pizarro might find some more
+commodious place where he could remain with part of the force while he
+himself went back for recruits to Panama.  The story they had now to tell
+of the riches of the land, as they had seen them with their own eyes,
+would put their expedition in a very different light, and could not fail to
+draw to their banner as many volunteers as they needed."
+
+But this recommendation, however judicious, was not altogether to the
+taste of the latter commander, who did not relish the part, which
+constantly fell to him, of remaining behind in the swamps and forests of
+this wild country.  "It is all very well," he said to Almagro, "for you, who
+pass your time pleasantly enough, careering to and fro in your vessel, or
+snugly sheltered in a land of plenty at Panama; but it is quite another
+matter for those who stay behind to droop and die of hunger in the
+wilderness.25  To this Almagro retorted with some heat, professing his
+own willingness to take charge of the brave men who would remain with
+him, if Pizarro declined it.  The controversy assuming a more angry and
+menacing tone, from words they would have soon come to blows, as
+both, laying their hands on their swords, were preparing to rush on each
+other, when the treasurer Ribera, aided by the pilot Ruiz, succeeded in
+pacifying them.  It required but little effort on the part of these cooler
+counsellors to convince the cavaliers of the folly of a conduct which
+must at once terminate the expedition in a manner little creditable to its
+projectors.  A reconciliation consequently took place, sufficient, at least
+in outward show, to allow the two commanders to act together in
+concert.  Almagro's plan was then adopted; and it only remained to find
+out the most secure and convenient spot for Pizarro's quarters.
+
+Several days were passed in touching at different parts of the coast, as
+they retraced their course; but everywhere the natives appeared to have
+caught the alarm, and assumed a menacing, and from their numbers a
+formidable, aspect.  The more northerly region, with its unwholesome
+fens and forests, where nature wages a war even more relentless than
+man, was not to be thought of.  In this perplexity, they decided on the
+little island of Gallo, as being, on the whole, from its distance from the
+shore, and from the scantiness of its population, the most eligible spot
+for them in their forlorn and destitute condition.26
+
+But no sooner was the resolution of the two captains made known, than a
+feeling of discontent broke forth among their followers, especially those
+who were to remain with Pizarro on the island, "What!" they exclaimed,
+"were they to be dragged to that obscure spot to die by hunger? The
+whole expedition had been a cheat and a failure, from beginning to end.
+The golden countries, so much vaunted, had seemed to fly before them
+as they advanced; and the little gold they had been fortunate enough to
+glean had all been sent back to Panama to entice other fools to follow
+their example.  What had they got in return for all their sufferings? The
+only treasures they could boast were their bows and arrows, and they
+were now to be left to die on this dreary island, without so much as a
+rood of consecrated ground to lay their bones in!27
+
+In this exasperated state of feeling, several of the soldiers wrote back to
+their friends, informing them of their deplorable condition, and
+complaining of the cold-blooded manner in which they were to be
+sacrificed to the obstinate cupidity of their leaders.  But the latter were
+wary enough to anticipate this movement, and Almagro defeated it by
+seizing all the letters in the vessels, and thus cutting off at once the
+means of communication with their friends at home.  Yet this act of
+unscrupulous violence, like most other similar acts, fell short of its
+purpose; for a soldier named Sarabia had the ingenuity to evade it by
+introducing a letter into a ball of cotton, which was to be taken to
+Panama as a specimen of the products of the country, and presented to
+the governor's lady.28
+
+The letter, which was signed by several of the disaffected soldiery
+besides the writer, painted in gloomy colors the miseries of their
+condition, accused the two commanders of being the authors of this, and
+called on the authorities of Panama to interfere by sending a vessel to
+take them from the desolate spot, while some of them might still be
+found surviving the horrors of their confinement.  The epistle concluded
+with a stanza, in which the two leaders were stigmatized as partners in a
+slaughter-house; one being employed to drive in the cattle for the other
+to butcher.  The verses, which had a currency in their day among the
+colonists to which they were certainly not entitled by their poetical
+merits, may be thus rendered into corresponding doggerel:
+
+"Look out, Senor Governor,
+For the drover while he's near;
+Since he goes home to get the sheep
+For the butcher who stays here." 29
+
+
+
+Book 2
+
+Chapter 4
+
+Indignation Of The Governor--Stern Resolution Of Pizarro-
+Prosecution Of The Voyage--Brilliant Aspect Of Tumbez-
+Discoveries Along The Coast--Return To Panama-
+Pizarro Embarks For Spain
+
+1527--1528
+
+Not long after Almagro's departure, Pizarro sent off the remaining vessel,
+under the pretext of its being put in repair at Panama.  It probably
+relieved him of a part of his followers, whose mutinous spirit made them
+an obstacle rather than a help in his forlorn condition, and with whom he
+was the more willing to part from the difficulty of finding subsistence on
+the barren spot which he now occupied.
+
+Great was the dismay occasioned by the return of Almagro and his
+followers, in the little community of Panama; for the letter,
+surreptitiously conveyed in the ball of cotton, fell into the hands for
+which it was intended, and the contents soon got abroad with usual
+quantity of exaggeration.  The haggard and dejected mien of the
+adventurers, of itself, told a tale sufficiently disheartening, and it was
+soon generally believed that the few ill-fated survivors of the expedition
+were detained against their will by Pizarro, to end their days with their
+disappointed leader on his desolate island.
+
+Pedro de los Rios, the governor, was so much incensed at the result of
+the expedition, and the waste of life it had occasioned to the colony, that
+he turned a deaf ear to all the applications of Luque and Almagro for
+further countenance in the affair; he derided their sanguine anticipations
+of the future, and finally resolved to send an officer to the isle of Gallo,
+with orders to bring back every Spaniard whom he should find still living
+in that dreary abode.  Two vessels were immediately despatched for the
+purpose, and placed under charge of a cavalier named Tafur, a native of
+Cordova.
+
+Meanwhile Pizarro and his followers were experiencing all the miseries
+which might have been expected from the character of the barren spot on
+which they were imprisoned.  They were, indeed, relieved from all
+apprehensions of the natives, since these had quitted the island on its
+occupation by the white men; but they had to endure the pains of hunger
+even in a greater degree than they had formerly experienced in the wild
+woods of the neighboring continent.  Their principal food was crabs and
+such shell-fish as they could scantily pick up along the shores.  Incessant
+storms of thunder and lightning, for it was the rainy season, swept over
+the devoted island, and drenched them with a perpetual flood.  Thus,
+halfnaked, and pining with famine, there were few in that little company
+who did not feel the spirit of enterprise quenched within them, or who
+looked for any happier termination of their difficulties than that afforded
+by a return to Panama.  The appearance of Tafur, therefore, with his two
+vessels, well stored with provisions, was greeted with all the rapture that
+the crew of a sinking wreck might feel on the arrival of some unexpected
+succour; and the only thought, after satisfying the immediate cravings of
+hunger, was to embark and leave the detested isle forever.
+
+But by the same vessel letters came to Pizarro from his two confederates,
+Luque and Almagro, beseeching him not to despair in his present
+extremity, but to hold fast to his original purpose.  To return under the
+present circumstances would be to seal the fate of the expedition; and
+they solemnly engaged, if he would remain firm at his post, to furnish
+him in a short time with the necessary means for going forward.1
+
+A ray of hope was enough for the courageous spirit of Pizarro.  It does
+not appear that he himself had entertained, at any time, thoughts of
+returning.  If he had, these words of encouragement entirely banished
+them from his bosom, and he prepared to stand the fortune of the cast on
+which he had so desperately ventured.  He knew, however, that
+solicitations or remonstrances would avail little with the companions of
+his enterprise; and he probably did not care to win over the more timid
+spirits who, by perpetually looking back, would only be a clog on his
+future movements.  He announced his own purpose, however, in a
+laconic but decided manner, characteristic of a man more accustomed to
+act than to talk, and well calculated to make an impression on his rough
+followers.
+
+Drawing his sword, he traced a line with it on the sand from east to west.
+Then turning towards the south, "Friend and comrades!" he said, "on that
+side are toil, hunger, nakedness, the drenching storm, desertion, and
+death; on this side, ease and pleasure.  There lies Peru with its riches;
+here, Panama, and its poverty.  Choose, each man, what best becomes a
+brave Castilian.  For my part, I go to the south." So saying, he stepped
+across the line.2  He was followed by the brave pilot Ruiz; next by Pedro
+de Candia, a cavalier, born, as his name imports, in one of the isles of
+Greece.  Eleven others successively crossed the line, thus intimating their
+willingness to abide the fortunes of their leader, for good or for evil.3
+Fame, to quote the enthusiastic language of an ancient chronicler, has
+commemorated the names of this little band, "who thus, in the face or
+difficulties unexampled in history, with death rather than riches for their
+reward, preferred it all to abandoning their honor, and stood firm by their
+leader as an example of loyalty to future ages." 4
+
+But the act excited no such admiration in the mind of Tafur, who looked
+on it as one of gross disobedience to the commands of the governor, and
+as little better than madness, involving the certain destruction of the
+parties engaged in it.  He refused to give any sanction to it himself by
+leaving one of his vessels with the adventurers to prosecute their voyage,
+and it was with great difficulty that he could be persuaded even to allow
+them a part of the stores which he had brought for their support.  This
+had no influence on their determination, and the little party, bidding
+adieu to their returning comrades, remained unshaken in their purpose of
+abiding the fortunes of their commander.5
+
+There is something striking to the imagination in the spectacle of these
+few brave spirits, thus consecrating themselves to a daring enterprise,
+which seemed as far above their strength as any recorded in the fabulous
+annals of knight-errantry.  A handful of men, without food, without
+clothing, almost without arms, without knowledge of the land to which
+they were bound, without vessel to transport them, were here left on a
+lonely rock in the ocean with the avowed purpose of carrying on a
+crusade against a powerful empire, staking their lives on its success.
+What is there in the legends of chivalry that surpasses it? This was the
+crisis of Pizarro's fate.  There are moments in the lives of men, which, as
+they are seized or neglected, decide their future destiny.6  Had Pizarro
+faltered from his strong purpose, and yielded to the occasion, now so
+temptingly presented, for extricating himself and his broken band from
+their desperate position, his name would have been buried with his
+fortunes, and the conquest of Peru would have been left for other and
+more successful adventurers.  But his constancy was equal to the
+occasion, and his conduct here proved him competent to the perilous
+post he had assumed, and inspired others with a confidence in him which
+was the best assurance of success.
+
+In the vessel that bore back Tafur and those who seceded from the
+expedition the pilot Ruiz was also permitted to return, in order to
+cooperate with Luque and Almagro in their application for further
+succour.
+
+Not long after the departure of the ships, it was decided by Pizarro to
+abandon his present quarters, which had little to recommend them, and
+which, he reflected, might now be exposed to annoyance from the
+original inhabitants, should they take courage and return, on learning the
+diminished number of the white men.  The Spaniards, therefore, by his
+orders, constructed a rude boat or raft, on which they succeeded in
+transporting themselves to the little island of Gorgona, twenty-five
+leagues to the north of their present residence.  It lay about five leagues
+from the continent, and was uninhabited.  It had some advantages over
+the isle of Gallo; for it stood higher above the sea, and was partially
+covered with wood, which afforded shelter to a species of pheasant, and
+the hare or rabbit of the country, so that the Spaniards, with their cross-
+bows, were enabled to procure a tolerable supply of game.  Cool streams
+that issued from the living rock furnished abundance of water, though the
+drenching rains that fell, without intermission, left them in no danger of
+perishing by thirst.  From this annoyance they found some protection in
+the rude huts which they constructed; though here, as in their former
+residence, they suffered from the no less intolerable annoyance of
+venomous insects, which multiplied and swarmed in the exhalations of
+the rank and stimulated soil.  In this dreary abode Pizarro omitted no
+means by which to sustain the drooping spirits of his men.  Morning
+prayers were duly said, and the evening hymn to the Virgin was regularly
+chanted; the festivals of the church were carefully commemorated, and
+every means taken by their commander to give a kind of religious
+character to his enterprise, and to inspire his rough followers with a
+confidence in the protection of Heaven, that might support them in their
+perilous circumstances.7
+
+In these uncomfortable quarters, their chief employment was to keep
+watch on the melancholy ocean, that they might hail the first signal of the
+anticipated succour.  But many a tedious month passed away, and no
+sign of it appeared.  All around was the same wide waste of waters,
+except to the eastward, where the frozen crest of the Andes, touched with
+the ardent sun of the equator, glowed like a ridge of fire along the whole
+extent of the great continent.  Every speck in the distant horizon was
+carefully noticed, and the drifting timber or masses of sea-weed, heaving
+to and fro on the bosom of the waters, was converted by their
+imaginations into the promised vessel; till, sinking under successive
+disappointments, hope gradually gave way to doubt, and doubt settled
+into despair.8
+
+Meanwhile the vessel of Tafur had reached the port of Panama.  The
+tidings which she brought of the inflexible obstinacy of Pizarro and his
+followers filled the governor with indignation.  He could look on it in no
+other light than as an act of suicide, and steadily refused to send further
+assistance to men who were obstinately bent on their own destruction.
+Yet Luque and Almagro were true to their engagements.  They
+represented to the governor, that, if the conduct of their comrade was
+rash, it was at least in the service of the Crown, and in prosecuting the
+great work of discovery.  Rios had been instructed, on his taking the
+government, to aid Pizarro in the enterprise; and to desert him now
+would be to throw away the remaining chance of success, and to incur
+the responsibility of his death and that of the brave men who adhered to
+him.  These remonstrances, at length, so far operated on the mind of that
+functionary, that he reluctantly consented that a vessel should be sent to
+the island of Gorgona, but with no more hands than were necessary to
+work her, and with positive instructions to Pizarro to return in six months
+and report himself at Panama, whatever might be the future results of his
+expedition.
+
+Having thus secured the sanction of the executive, the two associates lost
+no time in fitting out a small vessel with stores and a supply of arms and
+ammunition, and despatched it to the island.  The unfortunate tenants of
+this little wilderness, who had now occupied it for seven months,9 hardly
+dared to trust their senses when they descried the white sails of the
+friendly bark coming over the waters.  And although, when the vessel
+anchored off the shore, Pizarro was disappointed to find that it brought
+no additional recruits for the enterprise, yet he greeted it with joy, as
+affording the means of solving the great problem of the existence of the
+rich southern empire, and of thus opening the way for its future conquest.
+Two of his men were so ill, that it was determined to leave them in the
+care of some of the friendly Indians who had continued with him through
+the whole of his sojourn, and to call for them on his return.  Taking with
+him the rest of his hardy followers and the natives of Tumbez, he
+embarked, and, speedily weighing anchor, bade adieu to the "Hell," as it
+was called by the Spaniards, which had been the scene of so much
+suffering and such undaunted resolution.10
+
+Every heart was now elated with hope, as they found themselves once
+more on the waters, under the guidance of the good pilot Ruiz, who,
+obeying the directions of the Indians, proposed to steer for the land of
+Tumbez, which would bring them at once into the golden empire of the
+Incas, --the El Dorado, of which they had been so long in pursuit.
+Passing by the dreary isle of Gallo, which they had such good cause to
+remember, they stood farther out to sea until they made point Tacumez,
+near which they had landed on their previous voyage.  They did not
+touch at any part of the coast, but steadily held on their way, though
+considerably impeded by the currents, as well as by the wind, which
+blew with little variation from the south.  Fortunately, the wind was light,
+and, as the weather was favorable, their voyage, though slow, was not
+uncomfortable.  In a few days, they came in sight of Point Pasado, the
+limit of the pilot's former navigation; and, crossing the line, the little bark
+entered upon those unknown seas which had never been ploughed by
+European keel before.  The coast, they observed, gradually declined
+from its former bold and rugged character, gently sloping towards the
+shore, and spreading out into sandy plains, relieved here and there by
+patches of uncommon richness and beauty; while the white cottages of
+the natives glistening along the margin of the sea, and the smoke that
+rose among the distant hills, intimated the increasing population of the
+country.
+
+At length, after the lapse of twenty days from their departure from the
+island, the adventurous vessel rounded the point of St. Helena, and
+glided smoothly into the waters of the beautiful gulf of Guayaquil.  The
+country was here studded along the shore with towns and villages,
+though the mighty chain of the Cordilleras, sweeping up abruptly from
+the coast, left but a narrow strip of emerald verdure, through which
+numerous rivulets, spreading fertility around them, wound their way into
+the sea.
+
+The voyagers were now abreast of some of the most stupendous heights
+of this magnificent range; Chimborazo, with its broad round summit,
+towering like the dome of the Andes, and Cotopaxi, with its dazzling
+cone of silvery white, that knows no change except from the action of its
+own volcanic fires; for this mountain is the most terrible of the American
+volcanoes, and was in formidable activity at no great distance from the
+period of our narrative.  Well pleased with the signs of civilization that
+opened on them at every league of their progress, the Spaniards, at
+length, came to anchor, off the island of Santa Clara, lying at the
+entrance of the bay of Tumbez.11
+
+The place was uninhabited, but was recognized by the Indians on board,
+as occasionally resorted to by the warlike people of the neighboring isle
+of Puna, for purposes of sacrifice and worship.  The Spaniards found on
+the spot a few bits of gold rudely wrought into various shapes, and
+probably designed as offerings to the Indian deity.  Their hearts were
+cheered, as the natives assured them they would see abundance of the
+same precious metal in their own city of Tumbez.
+
+The following morning they stood across the bay for this place.  As they
+drew near, they beheld a town of considerable size, with many of the
+buildings apparently of stone and plaster, situated in the bosom of a
+fruitful meadow, which seemed to have been redeemed from the sterility
+of the surrounding country by careful and minute irrigation.  When at
+some distance from shore, Pizarro saw standing towards him several
+large balsas, which were found to be filled with warriors going on an
+expedition against the island of Puna.  Running alongside of the Indian
+flotilla, he invited some of the chiefs to come on board of his vessel.
+The Peruvians gazed with wonder on every object which met their eyes,
+and especially on their own countrymen, whom they had little expected
+to meet there.  The latter informed them in what manner they had fallen
+into the hands of the strangers, whom they described as a wonderful race
+of beings, that had come thither for no harm, but solely to be made
+acquainted with the country and its inhabitants.  This account was
+confirmed by the Spanish commander, who persuaded the Indians to
+return in their balsas and report what they had learned to their townsmen,
+requesting them at the same time to provide his vessel with refreshments,
+as it was his desire to enter into a friendly intercourse with the natives.
+
+The people of Tumbez were gathered along the shore, and were gazing
+with unutterable amazement on the floating castle, which, now having
+dropped anchor, rode lazily at its moorings in their bay.  They eagerly
+listened to the accounts of their countrymen, and instantly reported the
+affair to the curaca or ruler of the district, who, conceiving that the
+strangers must be beings of a superior order, prepared at once to comply
+with their request.  It was not long before several balsas were seen
+steering for the vessel laden with bananas, plantains, yuca, Indian corn,
+sweet potatoes, pine-apples, cocoa-nuts, and other rich products of the
+bountiful vale of Tumbez.  Game and fish, also, were added, with a
+number of llamas, of which Pizarro had seen the rude drawings
+belonging to Balboa, but of which till now he had met with no living
+specimen.  He examined this curious animal, the Peruvian sheep,--or, as
+the Spaniards called it, the "little camel" of the Indians,--with much
+interest, greatly admiring the mixture of wool and hair which supplied
+the natives with the materials for their fabrics.
+
+At that time there happened to be at Tumbez an Inca noble, or orejon, --
+for so, as I have already noticed, men of his rank were called by the
+Spaniards, from the huge ornaments of gold attached to their ears.  He
+expressed great curiosity to see the wonderful strangers, and had,
+accordingly, come out with the balsas for the purpose.  It was easy to
+perceive from the superior quality of his dress, as well as from the
+deference paid to him by the others, that he was a person of
+consideration, and Pizarro received him with marked distinction.  He
+showed him the different parts of the ship, explaining to him the uses of
+whatever engaged his attention, and answering his numerous queries, as
+well as he could, by means of the Indian interpreters.  The Peruvian chief
+was especially desirous of knowing whence and why Pizarro and his
+followers had come to these shores.  The Spanish captain replied, that he
+was the vassal of a great prince, the greatest and most powerful in the
+world, and that he had come to this country to assert his master's lawful
+supremacy over it.  He had further come to rescue the inhabitants from
+the darkness of unbelief in which they were now wandering.  They
+worshipped an evil spirit, who would sink their souls into everlasting
+perdition; and he would give them the knowledge of the true and only
+God, Jesus Christ, since to believe in him was eternal salvation.12
+
+The Indian prince listened with deep attention and apparent wonder; but
+answered nothing.  It may be, that neither he nor his interpreters had any
+very distinct ideas of the doctrines thus abruptly revealed to them.  It
+may be that he did not believe there was any other potentate on earth
+greater than the Inca; none, at least, who had a better right to rule over
+his dominions.  And it is very possible he was not disposed to admit that
+the great luminary whom he worshipped was inferior to the God of the
+Spaniards.  But whatever may have passed in the untutored mind of the
+barbarian, he did not give vent to it, but maintained a discreet silence,
+without any attempt to controvert or to convince his Christian antagonist.
+
+He remained on board the vessel till the hour of dinner, of which he
+partook with the Spaniards, expressing his satisfaction at the strange
+dishes, and especially pleased with the wine, which he pronounced far
+superior to the fermented liquors of his own country.  On taking leave, he
+courteously pressed the Spaniards to visit Tumbez, and Pizarro
+dismissed him with the present, among other things, of an iron hatchet,
+which had greatly excited his admiration; for the use of iron, as we have
+seen, was as little known to the Peruvians as to the Mexicans.
+
+On the day following, the Spanish captain sent one of his own men,
+named Alonso de Molina, on shore, accompanied by a negro who had
+come in the vessel from Panama, together with a present for the curaca
+of some swine and poultry, neither of which were indigenous to the New
+World.  Towards evening his emissary returned with a fresh supply of
+fruits and vegetables, that the friendly people sent to the vessel.  Molina
+had a wondrous tale to tell.  On landing, he was surrounded by the
+natives, who expressed the greatest astonishment at his dress, his fair
+complexion, and his long beard.  The women, especially, manifested
+great curiosity in respect to him, and Molina seemed to be entirely won
+by their charms and captivating manners.  He probably intimated his
+satisfaction by his demeanor, since they urged him to stay among them,
+promising in that case to provide him with a beautiful wife.
+
+Their surprise was equally great at the complexion of his sable
+companion.  They could not believe it was natural, and tried to rub off
+the imaginary dye with their hands.  As the African bore all this with
+characteristic good-humor, displaying at the same time his rows of ivory
+teeth, they were prodigiously delighted.13  The animals were no less
+above their comprehension; and, when the cock crew, the simple people
+clapped their hands, and inquired what he was saying.14  Their intellects
+were so bewildered by sights so novel, that they seemed incapable of
+distinguishing between man and brute.
+
+Molina was then escorted to the residence of the curaca, whom he found
+living in much state, with porters stationed at his doors, and with a
+quantity of gold and silver vessels, from which he was served.  He was
+then taken to different parts of the Indian city, saw a fortress built of
+rough stone, and, though low, spreading over a large extent of ground.15
+Near this was a temple; and the Spaniard's description of its decorations.
+blazing with gold and silver, seemed so extravagant, that Pizarro,
+distrusting his whole account, resolved to send a more discreet and
+trustworthy emissary on the following day.16
+
+The person selected was Pedro de Candia, the Greek cavalier mentioned
+as one of the first who intimated his intention to share the fortunes of his
+commander.  He was sent on shore, dressed in complete mail as became
+a good knight, with his sword by his side, and his arquebuse on his
+shoulder.  The Indians were even more dazzled by his appearance than
+by Molina's, as the sun fell brightly on his polished armour, and glanced
+from his military weapons.  They had heard much of the formidable
+arquebuse from their townsmen who had come in the vessel, and they
+besought Candia "to let it speak to them." He accordingly set up a
+wooden board as a target, and, taking deliberate aim, fired off the
+musket.  The flash of the powder and the startling report of the piece, as
+the board, struck by the ball, was shivered into splinters, filled the
+natives with dismay.  Some fell on the ground, covering their faces with
+their hands, and others approached the cavalier with feelings of awe,
+which were gradually dispelled by the assurance they received from the
+smiling expression of his countenance.17
+
+They then showed him the same hospitable attentions which they had
+paid to Molina; and his description of the marvels of the place, on his
+return, fell nothing short of his predecessor's.  The fortress, which was
+surrounded by a triple row of wall, was strongly garrisoned.  The temple
+he described as literally tapestried with plates of gold and silver.
+Adjoining this structure was a sort of convent appropriated to the Inca's
+destined brides, who manifested great curiosity to see him.  Whether this
+was gratified is not clear; but Candia described the gardens of the
+convent, which he entered, as glowing with imitations of fruits and
+vegetables all in pure gold and silver!18  He had seen a number of
+artisans at work, whose sole business seemed to be to furnish these
+gorgeous decorations for the religious houses.
+
+The reports of the cavalier may have been somewhat over-colored.19  It
+was natural that men coming from the dreary wilderness, in which they
+had been buried the last six months, should have been vividly impressed
+by the tokens of civilization which met them on the Peruvian coast.  But
+Tumbez was a favorite city of the Peruvian princes.  It was the most
+important place on the northern borders of the empire, contiguous to the
+recent acquisition of Quito.  The great Tupac Yupanqui had established a
+strong fortress there, and peopled it with a colony of mitimaes.  The
+temple, and the house occupied by the Virgins of the Sun, had been
+erected by Huayna Capac, and were liberally endowed by that Inca, after
+the sumptuous fashion of the religious establishments of Peru.  The town
+was well supplied with water by numerous aqueducts, and the fruitful
+valley in which it was embosomed, and the ocean which bathed its
+shores, supplied ample means of subsistence to a considerable
+population.  But the cupidity of the Spaniards, after the Conquest, was
+not slow in despoiling the place of its glories; and the site of its proud
+towers and temples, in less than half a century after that fatal period, was
+to be traced only by the huge mass of ruins that encumbered the
+ground.20
+
+The Spaniards were nearly mad with joy, says an old writer, at receiving
+these brilliant tidings of the Peruvian city.  All their fond dreams were
+now to be realized, and they had at length reached the realm which had
+so long flitted in visionary splendor before them.  Pizarro expressed his
+gratitude to Heaven for having crowned his labors with so glorious a
+result; but he bitterly lamented the hard fate which, by depriving him of
+his followers, denied him, at such a moment, the means of availing
+himself of his success.  Yet he had no cause for lamentation; and the
+devout Catholic saw in this very circumstance a providential
+interposition which prevented the attempt at conquest, while such
+attempts would have been premature.  Peru was not yet torn asunder by
+the dissensions of rival candidates for the throne; and, united and strong
+under the sceptre of a warlike monarch, she might well have bid defiance
+to all the forces that Pizarro could muster.  "It was manifestly the work
+of Heaven," exclaims a devout son of the Church, "that the natives of the
+country should have received him in so kind and loving a spirit, as best
+fitted to facilitate the conquest; for it was the Lord's hand which led him
+and his followers to this remote region for the extension of the holy faith,
+and for the salvation of souls." 21
+
+Having now collected all the information essential to his object, Pizarro,
+after taking leave of the natives of Tumbez, and promising a speedy
+return, weighed anchor, and again turned his prow towards the south.
+Still keeping as near as possible to the coast, that no place of importance
+might escape his observation, he passed Cape Blanco, and, after sailing
+about a degree and a half, made the port of Payta.  The inhabitants, who
+had notice of his approach, came out in their balsas to get sight of the
+wonderful strangers, bringing with them stores of fruits, fish, and
+vegetables, with the same hospitable spirit shown by their countrymen at
+Tumbez.
+
+After staying here a short time, and interchanging presents of trifling
+value with the natives, Pizarro continued his cruise; and, sailing by the
+sandy plains of Sechura for an extent of near a hundred miles, he
+doubled the Punta de Aguja, and swept down the coast as it fell off
+towards the east, still carried forward by light and somewhat variable
+breezes.  The weather now became unfavorable, and the voyagers
+encountered a succession of heavy gales, which drove them some
+distance out to sea, and tossed them about for many days.  But they did
+not lose sight of the mighty ranges of the Andes, which, as they
+proceeded towards the south, were still seen, at nearly the same distance
+from the shore, rolling onwards, peak after peak, with their stupendous
+surges of ice, like some vast ocean, that had been suddenly arrested and
+frozen up in the midst of its wild and tumultuous career.  With this
+landmark always in view, the navigator had little need of star or compass
+to guide his bark on her course.
+
+As soon as the tempest had subsided, Pizarro stood in again for the
+continent, touching at the principal points as he coasted along.
+Everywhere he was received with the same spirit of generous hospitality;
+the natives coming out in their balsas to welcome him, laden with their
+little cargoes of fruits and vegetables, of all the luscious varieties that
+grow in the tierra caliente.  All were eager to have a glimpse of the
+strangers, the "Children of the Sun," as the Spaniards began already to be
+called, from their fair complexions, brilliant armour, and the
+thunderbolts which they bore in their hands.22  The most favorable
+reports, too, had preceded them, of the urbanity and gentleness of their
+manners, thus unlocking the hearts of the simple natives, and disposing
+them to confidence and kindness.  The iron-hearted soldier had not yet
+disclosed the darker side of his character.  He was too weak to do so.
+The hour of Conquest had not yet come.
+
+In every place Pizarro received the same accounts of a powerful monarch
+who ruled over the land, and held his court on the mountain plains of the
+interior, where his capital was depicted as blazing with gold and silver,
+and displaying all the profusion of an Oriental satrap.  The Spaniards,
+except at Tumbez, seem to have met with little of the precious metals
+among the natives on the coast.  More than one writer asserts that they
+did not covet them, or, at least, by Pizarro's orders, affected not to do so.
+He would not have them betray their appetite for gold, and actually
+refused gifts when they were proffered!23  It is more probable that they
+saw little display of wealth, except in the embellishments of the temples
+and other sacred buildings, which they did not dare to violate.  The
+precious metals, reserved for the uses of religion and for persons of high
+degree, were not likely to abound in the remote towns and hamlets on the
+coast.
+
+Yet the Spaniards met with sufficient evidence of general civilization
+and power to convince them that there was much foundation for the
+reports of the natives.  Repeatedly they saw structures of stone and
+plaster, and occasionally showing architectural skill in the execution, if
+not elegance of design.  Wherever they cast anchor, they beheld green
+patches of cultivated country redeemed from the sterility of nature, and
+blooming with the variegated vegetation of the tropics; while a refined
+system of irrigation, by means of aqueducts and canals, seemed to be
+spread like a net-work over the surface of the country, making even the
+desert to blossom as the rose.  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
+
+Having reached this point, about the ninth degree of southern latitude,
+Pizarro's followers besought him not to prosecute the voyage farther.
+Enough and more than enough had been done, they said, to prove the
+existence and actual position of the great Indian empire of which they
+had so long been in search.  Yet, with their slender force, they had no
+power to profit by the discovery.  All that remained, therefore, was to
+return and report the success of their enterprise to the governor at
+Panama.  Pizarro acquiesced in the reasonableness of this demand.  He
+had now penetrated nine degrees farther than any former navigator in
+these southern seas, and, instead of the blight which, up to this hour, had
+seemed to hang over his fortunes, he could now return in triumph to his
+countrymen.  Without hesitation, therefore, he prepared to retrace his
+course, and stood again towards the north.
+
+On his way, he touched at several places where he had before landed.  At
+one of these, called by the Spaniards Santa Cruz, he had been invited on
+shore by an Indian woman of rank, and had promised to visit her on his
+return.  No sooner did his vessel cast anchor off the village where she
+lived, than she came on board, followed by a numerous train of
+attendants.  Pizarro received her with every mark of respect, and on her
+departure presented her with some trinkets which had a real value in the
+eyes of an Indian princess.  She urged the Spanish commander and his
+companions to return the visit, engaging to send a number of hostages on
+board, as security for their good treatment.  Pizarro assured her that the
+frank confidence she had shown towards them proved that this was
+unnecessary.  Yet, no sooner did he put off in his boat, the following day,
+to go on shore, than several of the principal persons in the place came
+alongside of the ship to be received as hostages during the absence of the
+Spaniards,--a singular proof of consideration for the sensitive
+apprehensions of her guests.
+
+Pizarro found that preparations had been made for his reception in a style
+of simple hospitality that evinced some degree of taste.  Arbours were
+formed of luxuriant and wide-spreading branches, interwoven with
+fragrant flowers and shrubs that diffused a delicious perfume through the
+air.  A banquet was provided, teeming with viands prepared in the style
+of the Peruvian cookery, and with fruits and vegetables of tempting hue
+and luscious to the taste, though their names and nature were unknown to
+the Spaniards.  After the collation was ended, the guests were entertained
+with music and dancing by a troop of young men and maidens simply
+attired, who exhibited in their favorite national amusement all the agility
+and grace which the supple limbs of the Peruvian Indians so well
+qualified them to display.  Before his departure, Pizarro stated to his
+kind host the motives of his visit to the country, in the same manner as he
+had done on other occasions, and he concluded by unfurling the royal
+banner of Castile, which he had brought on shore, requesting her and her
+attendants to raise it in token of their allegiance to his sovereign.  This
+they did with great good-humor, laughing all the while, says the
+chronicler, and making it clear that they had a very imperfect conception
+of the serious nature of the ceremony.  Pizarro was contented with this
+outward display of loyalty, and returned to his vessel well satisfied with
+the entertainment he had received, and meditating, it may be, on the best
+mode of repaying it, hereafter, by the subjugation and conversion of the
+country.
+
+The Spanish commander did not omit to touch also at Tumbez, on his
+homeward voyage.  Here some of his followers, won by the comfortable
+aspect of the place and the manners of the people, intimated a wish to
+remain, conceiving, no doubt, that it would be better to live where they
+would be persons of consequence than to return to an obscure condition
+in the community of Panama.  One of these men was Alonso de Molina,
+the same who had first gone on shore at this place, and been captivated
+by the charms of the Indian beauties.  Pizarro complied with their
+wishes, thinking it would not be amiss to find, on his return, some of his
+own followers who would be instructed in the language and usages of the
+natives.  He was also allowed to carry back in his vessel two or three
+Peruvians, for the similar purpose of instructing them in the Castilian.
+One of them, a youth named by the Spaniards Felipillo, plays a part of
+some importance in the history of subsequent events.
+
+On leaving Tumbez, the adventurers steered directly for Panama,
+touching only, on their way, at the ill-fated island of Gorgona to take on
+board their two companions who were left there too ill to proceed with
+them.  One had died, and, receiving the other, Pizarro and his gallant
+little band continued their voyage; and, after an absence of at least
+eighteen months, found themselves once more safely riding at anchor in
+the harbor of Panama.25
+
+The sensation caused by their arrival was great, as might have been
+expected.  For there were few, even among the most sanguine of their
+friends, who did not imagine that they had long since paid for their
+temerity, and fallen victims to the climate or the natives, or miserably
+perished in a watery grave.  Their joy was proportionably great,
+therefore, as they saw the wanderers now returned, not only in health and
+safety, but with certain tidings of the fair countries which had so long
+eluded their grasp.  It was a moment of proud satisfaction to the three
+associates, who, in spite of obloquy, derision, and every impediment
+which the distrust of friends or the coldness of government could throw
+in their way, had persevered in their great enterprise until they had
+established the truth of what had been so generally denounced as a
+chimera.  It is the misfortune of those daring spirits who conceive an idea
+too vast for their own generation to comprehend, or, at least, to attempt
+to carry out, that they pass for visionary dreamers.  Such had been the
+fate of Luque and his associates.  The existence of a rich Indian empire
+at the south, which, in their minds, dwelling long on the same idea and
+alive to all the arguments in its favor, had risen to the certainty of
+conviction, had been derided by the rest of their countrymen as a mere
+mirage of the fancy, which, on nearer approach, would melt into air;
+while the projectors, who staked their fortunes on the adventure, were
+denounced as madmen.  But their hour of triumph, their slow and
+hardearned triumph, had now arrived.
+
+Yet the governor, Pedro de los Rios, did not seem, even at this moment,
+to be possessed with a conviction of the magnitude of the discovery,--or,
+perhaps, he was discouraged by its very magnitude.  When the
+associates, now with more confidence, applied to him for patronage in an
+undertaking too vast for their individual resources, he coldly replied, "He
+had no desire to build up other states at the expense of his own; nor
+would he be led to throw away more lives than had already been
+sacrificed by the cheap display of gold and silver toys and a few Indian
+sheep!" 26
+
+Sorely disheartened by this repulse from the only quarter whence
+effectual aid could be expected, the confederates, without funds, and
+with credit nearly exhausted by their past efforts, were perplexed in the
+extreme.  Yet to stop now,--what was it but to abandon the rich mine
+which their own industry and perseverance had laid open, for others to
+work at pleasure?  In this extremity the fruitful mind of Luque suggested
+the only expedient by which they could hope for success.  This was to
+apply to the Crown itself.  No one was so much interested in the result of
+the expedition.  It was for the government, indeed, that discoveries were
+to be made, that the country was to be conquered.  The government alone
+was competent to provide the requisite means, and was likely to take a
+much broader and more liberal view of the matter than a petty colonial
+officer.
+
+But who was there qualified to take charge of this delicate mission?
+Luque was chained by his professional duties to Panama; and his
+associates, unlettered soldiers, were much better fitted for the business of
+the camp than of the court.  Almagro, blunt, though somewhat swelling
+and ostentatious in his address, with a diminutive stature and a
+countenance naturally plain, now much disfigured by the loss of an eye,
+was not so well qualified for the mission as his companion in arms, who,
+possessing a good person and altogether a commanding presence, was
+plausible, and, with all his defects of education, could, where deeply
+interested, be even eloquent in discourse.  The ecclesiastic, however,
+suggested that the negotiation should be committed to the Licentiate
+Corral, a respectable functionary, then about to return on some public
+business to the mother country.  But to this Almagro strongly objected.
+No one, he said, could conduct the affair so well as the party interested
+in it.  He had a high opinion of Pizarro's prudence, his discernment of
+character, and his cool, deliberate policy.27  He knew enough of his
+comrade to have confidence that his presence of mind would not desert
+him, even in the new, and therefore embarrassing, circumstances in
+which he would be placed at court.  No one, he said, could tell the story
+of their adventures with such effect, as the man who had been the chief
+actor in them.  No one could so well paint the unparalleled sufferings and
+sacrifices which they had encountered; no other could tell so forcibly
+what had been done, what yet remained to do, and what assistance would
+be necessary to carry it into execution.  He concluded, with characteristic
+frankness, by strongly urging his confederate to undertake the mission.
+
+Pizarro felt the force of Almagro's reasoning, and, though with
+undisguised reluctance, acquiesced in a measure which was less to his
+taste than an expedition to the wilderness.  But Luque came into the
+arrangement with more difficulty.  "God grant, my children," exclaimed
+the ecclesiastic, "that one of you may not defraud the other of his
+blessing!" 28  Pizarro engaged to consult the interests of his associates
+equally with his own.  But Luque, it is clear, did not trust Pizarro.
+
+There was some difficulty in raising the funds necessary for putting the
+envoy in condition to make a suitable appearance at court; so low had the
+credit of the confederates fallen, and so little confidence was yet placed
+in the result of their splendid discoveries.  Fifteen hundred ducats were at
+length raised; and Pizarro, in the spring of 1528, bade adieu to Panama,
+accompanied by Pedro de Candia.29  He took with him, also, some of
+the natives, as well as two or three llamas, various nice fabrics of cloth,
+with many ornaments and vases of gold and silver, as specimens of the
+civilization of the country, and vouchers for his wonderful story.
+
+Of all the writers on ancient Peruvian history, no one has acquired so
+wide celebrity, or been so largely referred to by later compilers, as the
+Inca Garcilasso de la Vega.  He was born at Cuzco, in 1540; and was a
+mestizo, that is of mixed descent, his father being European, and his
+mother Indian.  His father, Garcilasso de la Vega, was one of that
+illustrious family whose achievements, both in arms and letters, shed
+such lustre over the proudest period of the Castilian annals.  He came to
+Peru, in the suite of Pedro de Alvarado, soon after the country had been
+gained by Pizarro.  Garcilasso attached himself to the fortunes of this
+chief, and, after his death, to those of his brother Gonzalo,--remaining.
+constant to the latter, through his rebellion, up to the hour of his rout at
+Xaquixaguana, when Garcilasso took the same course with most of his
+faction, and passed over to the enemy.  But this demonstration of loyalty,
+though it saved his life, was too late to redeem his credit with the
+victorious party; and the obloquy which he incurred by his share in the
+rebellion threw a cloud over his subsequent fortunes, and even over
+those of his son, as it appears, in after years.
+
+The historian's mother was of the Peruvian blood royal.  She was niece
+of Huayna Capac, and granddaughter of the renowned Tupac Inca
+Yupanqui.  Garcilasso, while he betrays obvious satisfaction that the
+blood of the civilized European flows in his veins shows himself not a
+little proud of his descent from the royal dynasty of Peru; and this he
+intimated by combining with his patronymic the distinguishing title of
+the Peruvian princes,---subscribing himself always Garcilasso Inca de la
+Vega.
+
+His early years were passed in his native land, where he was reared in the
+Roman Catholic faith, and received the benefit of as good an education
+as could be obtained, amidst the incessant din of arms and civil
+commotion.  In 1560, when twenty years of age, he left America, and
+from that time took up his residence in Spain.  Here he entered the
+military service, and held a captain's commission in the war against the
+Moriscos, and, afterwards, under Don John of Austria.  Though he
+acquitted himself honorably in his adventurous career, he does not seem
+to have been satisfied with the manner in which his services were
+requited by the government.  The old reproach of the father's disloyalty
+still clung to the son and Garcilasso assures us that this circumstance
+defeated all his efforts to recover the large inheritance of landed property
+belonging to his mother, which had escheated to the Crown.  "Such were
+the prejudices against me," says he, "that I could not urge my ancient
+claims or expectations; and I left the army so poor and so much in debt,
+that I did not care to show myself again at court; but was obliged to
+withdraw into an obscure solitudes where I lead a tranquil life for the
+brief space that remains to me, no longer deluded by the world or its
+vanities."
+
+The scene of this obscure retreat was not, however, as the reader might
+imagine from this tone of philosophic resignation, in the depths of some
+rural wilderness, but in Cordova, once the gay capital of Moslem
+science, and still the busy haunt of men.  Here our philosopher occupied
+himself with literary labors, the more sweet and soothing to his wounded
+spirit, that they tended to illustrate the faded glories of his native land,
+and exhibit them in their primitive splendor to the eyes of his adopted
+countrymen.  "And I have no reason to regret," he says in his Preface to
+his account of Florida, "that Fortune has not smiled on me, since this
+circumstance has opened a literary career which, I trust, will secure to
+me a wider and more enduring fame than could flow from any worldly
+prosperity."
+
+In 1609, he gave to the world the First Part of his great work, the
+Commentarios Reales, devoted to the history of the country under the
+Incas; and in 1616, a few months before his death, he finished the
+Second Part, embracing the story of the Conquest, which was published
+at Cordova the following year.  The chronicler, who thus closed his
+labors with his life, died at the ripe old age of seventy-six.  He left a
+considerabe sum for the purchase of masses for his soul, showing that the
+complaints of his poverty are not to be taken literally.  His remains were
+interred in the cathedral church of Cordova, in a chapel which bears the
+name of Garcilasso; and an inscription was placed on his monument,
+intimating the high respect in which the historian was held both for his
+moral worth and his literary attainments.
+
+The First Part of the Commentarios Reales is occupied, as already
+noticed, with the ancient history of the country, presenting a complete
+picture of its civilization under the Incas,--far more complete than has
+been given by any other writer.  Garcilasso's mother was but ten years
+old at the time of her cousin Atahuallpa's accession, or rather usurpation,
+as it is called by the party of Cuzco.  She had the good fortune to escape
+the massacre which, according to the chroniclers befell most of her
+kindred, and with her brother continued to reside in their ancient capital
+after the Conquest.  Their conversations naturally turned to the good old
+times of the Inca rule, which, colored by their fond regrets, may be
+presumed to have lost nothing as seen through the magnifying medium of
+the past.  The young Garcilasso Listened greedily to the stories which
+recounted the magnificence and prowess of his royal ancestors, and
+though he made no use of them at the time, they sunk deep into his
+memory, to be treasured up for a future occasion.  When he prepared,
+after the lapse of many years, in his retirement at Cordova, to compose
+the history of his country, he wrote to his old companions and
+schoolfellows, of the Inca family, to obtain fuller information than he
+could get in Spain on various matters of historical interest.  He had
+witnessed in his youth the ancient ceremonies and usages of his
+countrymen, understood the science of their quipus, and mastered many
+of their primitive traditions.  With the assistance he now obtained from
+his Peruvian kindred, he acquired a familiarity with the history of the
+great Inca race, and of their national institutions, to an extent that no
+person could have possessed, unless educated in the midst of them,
+speaking the same language, and with the same Indian blood flowing in
+his veins.  Garcilasso, in short, was the representative of the conquered
+race; and we might expect to find the lights and shadows of the picture
+disposed under his pencil so as to produce an effect very different from
+that which they had hitherto exhibited under the hands of the
+Conquerors.
+
+Such, to a certain extent, is the fact; and this circumstance affords a
+means of comparison which would alone render his works of great value
+in arriving at just historic conclusions.  But Garcilasso wrote late in life,
+after the story had been often told by Castilian writers.  He naturally
+deferred much to men, some of whom enjoyed high credit on the score
+both of their scholarship and their social position.  His object, he
+professes, was not so much to add any thing new of his own, as to correct
+their errors and the misconceptions into which they had been brought by
+their ignorance of the Indian languages and the usages of his people.  He
+does, in fact, however, go far beyond this; and the stores of information
+which he has collected have made his work a large repository, whence
+later laborers in the same field have drawn copious materials.  He writes
+from the fulness of his heart, and illuminates every topic that he touches
+with a variety and richness of illustration, that leave little to be desired
+by the most importunate curiosity.  The difference between reading his
+Commentaries and the accounts of European writers is the difference that
+exists between reading a work in the original and in a bald translation.
+Garcilasso's writings are an emanation from the Indian mind.
+
+Yet his Commentaries are open to a grave objection,--and one naturally
+suggested by his position.  Addressing himself to the cultivated
+European, he was most desirous to display the ancient glories of his
+people, and still more of the Inca race, in their most imposing form.
+This, doubtless, was the great spur to his literary labors, for which
+previous education, however good for the evil time on which he was
+cast, had far from qualified him.  Garcilasso, therefore, wrote to effect a
+particular object.  He stood forth as counsel for his unfortunate
+countrymen, pleading the cause of that degraded race before the tribunal
+of posterity.  The exaggerated tone of panegyric consequent on this
+becomes apparent in every page of his work.  He pictures forth a state of
+society such as an Utopian philosopher would hardly venture to depict.
+His royal ancestors became the types of every imaginery excellence, and
+the golden age is revived for a nation, which, while the war of
+proselytism is raging on its borders, enjoys within all the blessings of
+tranquillity and peace.  Even the material splendors of the monarchy,
+sufficiently great in this land of gold, become heightened, under the
+glowing imagination of the Inca chronicler, into the gorgeous illusions of
+a fairy tale.
+
+Yet there is truth at the bottom of his wildest conceptions, and it would
+be unfair to the Indian historian to suppose that he did not himself
+believe most of the magic marvels which he describes.  There is no
+credulity like that of a Christian convert,---one newly converted to the
+faith.  From long dwelling in the darkness of paganism, his eyes, when
+first opened to the light of truth, have not acquired the power of
+discriminating the just proportions of objects, of distinguishing between
+the real and the imaginary.  Garcilasso was not a convert indeed, for he
+was bred from infancy in the Roman Catholic faith.  But he was
+surrounded by converts and neophytes,--by those of his own blood, who,
+after practising all their lives the rites of paganism, were now first
+admitted into the Christian fold.  He listened to the teachings of the
+missionary, learned from him to give implicit credit to the marvellous
+legends of the Saints, and the no less marvellous accounts of his own
+victories in his spiritual warfare for the propagation of the faith.  Thus
+early accustomed to such large drafts on his credulity, his reason lost its
+heavenly power of distinguishing truth from error, and he became so
+familiar with the miraculous, that the miraculous was no longer a
+miracle.
+
+Yet, while large deductions are to be made on this account from the
+chronicler's reports, there is always a germ of truth which it is not
+difficult to detect, and even to disengage from the fanciful covering
+which envelopes it; and after every allowance for the exaggerations of
+national vanity, we shall find an abundance of genuine information in
+respect to the antiquities of his country, for which we shall look in vain
+in any European writer.
+
+Garcilasso's work is the reflection of the age in which he lived.  It is
+addressed to the imagination, more than to sober reason.  We are dazzled
+by the gorgeous spectacle it perpetually exhibits, and delighted by the
+variety of amusing details and animated gossip sprinkled over its pages.
+The story of the action is perpetually varied by discussions on topics
+illustrating its progress, so as to break up the monotony of the narrative,
+and afford an agreeable relief to the reader.  This is true of the First Part
+of his great work.  In the Second there was no longer room for such
+discussion.  But he has supplied the place by garrulous reminiscences,
+personal anecdotes, incidental adventures, and a host of trivial details,--
+trivial in the eyes of the pedant,--which historians have been too willing
+to discard, as below the dignity of history.  We have the actors in this
+great drama in their private dress, become acquainted with their personal
+habits, listen to their familiar sayings, and, in short gather up those
+minutiae which in the aggregate make up so much of life and not less of
+character.
+
+It is this confusion of the great and the little, thus artlessly blended
+together, that constitutes one of the charms of the old romantic
+chronicle,--not the less true that, in this respect, it approaches nearer to
+the usual tone of romance.  It is in such writings that we may look to find
+the form and pressure of the age.  The wormeaten state-papers, official
+correspondence, public records, are all serviceable, indispensable, to
+history.  They are the framework on which it is to repose; the skeleton of
+facts which gives it its strength and proportions.  But they are as
+worthless as the dry bones of the skeleton, unless clothed with the
+beautiful form and garb of humanity, and instinct with the spirit of the
+age.--Our debt is large to the antiquarian, who with conscientious
+precision lays broad and deep the foundations of historic truth; and no
+less to the philosophic annalist who exhibits man in the dress of public
+life,--man in masquerade; but our gratitude must surely not be withheld
+from those, who, like Garcilasso de la Vega, and many a romancer of the
+Middle Ages, have held up the mirror--distorted though it may somewhat
+be-to the interior of life, reflecting every object, the great and the mean
+the beautiful and the deformed, with their natural prominence and their
+vivacity of coloring, to the eye of the spectator.  As a work of art, such a
+production may be thought to be below criticism.  But, although it defy
+the rules of art in its composition, it does not necessarily violate the
+principles of taste; for it conforms in its spirit to the spirit of the age in
+which it was written.  And the critic, who coldly condemns it on the
+severe principles of art, will find a charm in its very simplicity, that will
+make him recur again and again to its pages, while more correct and
+classical compositions are laid aside and forgotten.
+
+I cannot dismiss this notice of Garcilasso, though already long
+protracted, without some allusion to the English translation of his
+Commentaries.  It appeared in James the Second's reign, and is the work
+of Sir Paul Rycaut, Knight.  It was printed at London in 1688, in folio,
+with considerable pretension in its outward dress, well garnished with
+wood-cuts, and a frontispiece displaying the gaunt and rather sardonic
+features, not of the author, but his translator.  The version keeps pace
+with the march of the original, corresponding precisely in books and
+chapters, and seldom, though sometimes, using the freedom, so common
+in these ancient versions, of abridgment and omission.  Where it does
+depart from the original, it is rather from ignorance than intention.
+Indeed, as far as the plea of ignorance will avail him, the worthy knight
+may urge it stoutly in his defence.  No one who reads the book will doubt
+his limited acquaintance with his own tongue, and no one who compares
+it with the original will deny his ignorance of the Castilian.  It contains as
+many blunders as paragraphs, and most of them such as might shame a
+schoolboy.  Yet such are the rude charms of the original, that this ruder
+version of it has found considerable favor with readers; and Sir Paul
+Rycaut's translation, old as it is, may still be met with in many a private,
+as well as public library.
+
+
+
+History of the Conquest of Peru
+
+by William Hickling Prescott
+
+Book 3
+
+Chapter 1
+
+Pizarro's Reception At Court--His Capitulation With The Crown -
+He Visits His Birthplace--Returns To The New World-
+Difficulties With Almagro--His Third Expedition-
+Adventures On The Coast--Battles In The Isle Of Puna
+
+1528--1531
+
+Pizarro and his officer, having crossed the Isthmus, embarked at Nombre
+de Dios for the old country, and, after a good passage, reached Seville
+early in the summer of 1528.  There happened to be at that time in port a
+person well known in the history of Spanish adventure as the Bachelor
+Enciso.  He had taken an active part in the colonization of Tierra Firme,
+and had a pecuniary claim against the early colonists of Darien, of whom
+Pizarro was one.  Immediately on the landing of the latter, he was seized
+by Enciso's orders, and held in custody for the debt.  Pizarro, who had
+fled from his native land as a forlorn and houseless adventurer, after an
+absence of more than twenty years, passed, most of them, in
+unprecedented toil and suffering, now found himself on his return the
+inmate of a prison.  Such was the commencement of those brilliant
+fortunes which, as he had trusted, awaited him at home.  The
+circumstance excited general indignation; and no sooner was the Court
+advised of his arrival in the country, and the great purpose of his
+mission, than orders were sent for his release, with permission to proceed
+at once on his journey.
+
+Pizarro found the emperor at Toledo, which he was soon to quit, in order
+to embark for Italy.  Spain was not the favorite residence of Charles the
+Fifth, in the earlier part of his reign.  He was now at that period of it
+when he was enjoying the full flush of his triumphs over his gallant rival
+of France, whom he had defeated and taken prisoner at the great battle of
+Pavia; and the victor was at this moment preparing to pass into Italy to
+receive the imperial crown from the hands of the Roman Pontiff.  Elated
+by his successes and his elevation to the German throne, Charles made
+little account of his hereditary kingdom, as his ambition found so
+splendid a career thrown open to it on the wide field of European
+politics.
+
+He had hitherto received too inconsiderable returns from his transatlantic
+possessions to give them the attention they deserved.  But, as the recent
+acquisition of Mexico and the brilliant anticipations in respect to the
+southern continent were pressed upon his notice, he felt their importance
+as likely to afford him the means of prosecuting his ambitious and most
+expensive enterprises.
+
+Pizarro, therefore, who had now come to satisfy the royal eyes, by visible
+proofs, of the truth of the golden rumors which, from time to time, had
+reached Castile, was graciously received by the emperor.  Charles
+examined the various objects which his officer exhibited to him with
+great attention.  He was particularly interested by the appearance of the
+llama, so remarkable as the only beast of burden yet known on the new
+continent; and the fine fabrics of woollen cloth, which were made from
+its shaggy sides, gave it a much higher value, in the eyes of the sagacious
+monarch, than what it possessed as an animal for domestic labor.  But
+the specimens of gold and silver manufacture, and the wonderful tale
+which Pizarro had to tell of the abundance of the precious metals, must
+have satisfied even the cravings of royal cupidity.
+
+Pizarro, far from being embarrassed by the novelty of his situation,
+maintained his usual self-possession, and showed that decorum and even
+dignity in his address which belong to the Castilian.  He spoke in a
+simple and respectful style, but with the earnestness and natural
+eloquence of one who had been an actor in the scenes he described, and
+who was conscious that the impression he made on his audience was to
+decide his future destiny.  All listened with eagerness to the account of
+his strange adventures by sea and land, his wanderings in the forests, or
+in the dismal and pestilent swamps on the sea-coast, without food, almost
+without raiment, with feet torn and bleeding at every step, with his few
+companions becoming still fewer by disease and death, and yet pressing
+on with unconquerable spirit to extend the empire of Castile, and the
+name and power of her sovereign; but when he painted his lonely
+condition on the desolate island, abandoned by the government at home,
+deserted by all but a handful of devoted followers, his royal auditor,
+though not easily moved, was affected to tears.  On his departure from
+Toledo, Charles commended the affairs of his vassal in the most
+favorable terms to the consideration of the Council of the Indies.1
+
+There was at this time another man at court, who had come there on a
+similar errand from the New World, but whose splendid achievements
+had already won for him a name that threw the rising reputation of
+Pizarro comparatively into the shade.  This man was Hernando Cortes,
+the Conqueror of Mexico.  He had come home to lay an empire at the
+feet of his sovereign, and to demand in return the redress of his wrongs,
+and the recompense of his great services.  He was at the close of his
+career, as Pizarro was at the commencement of his; the Conqueror of the
+North and of the South; the two men appointed by Providence to
+overturn the most potent of the Indian dynasties, and to open the golden
+gates by which the treasures of the New World were to pass into the
+coffers of Spain.
+
+Notwithstanding the emperor's recommendation, the business of Pizarro
+went forward at the tardy pace with which affairs are usually conducted
+in the court of Castile.  He found his limited means gradually sinking
+under the expenses incurred by his present situation, and he represented,
+that, unless some measures were speedily taken in reference to his suit,
+however favorable they might be in the end, he should be in no condition
+to profit by them.  The queen, accordingly, who had charge of the
+business, on her husband's departure, expedited the affair, and on the
+twenty sixth of July, 1529, she executed the memorable Capitulation,
+which defined the powers and privileges of Pizarro.
+
+The instrument secured to that chief the right of discovery and conquest
+in the province of Peru, or New Castile,--as the country was then
+called, in the same manner as Mexico had received the name of New
+Spain,--for the distance of two hundred leagues south of Santiago.  He
+was to receive the titles and rank of Governor and Captain-General of
+the province, together with those of Adelantado, and Alguacil Mayor, for
+life; and he was to have a salary of seven hundred and twenty-five
+thousand maravedis, with the obligation of maintaining certain officers
+and military retainers, corresponding with the dignity of his station.  He
+was to have the right to erect certain fortresses, with the absolute
+government of them; to assign encomiendas of Indians, under the
+limitations prescribed by law; and, in fine, to exercise nearly all the
+prerogatives incident to the authority of a viceroy.
+
+His associate, Almagro, was declared commander of the fortress of
+Tumbez, with an annual rent of three hundred thousand maravedis, and
+with the further rank and privileges of an hidalgo.  The reverend Father
+Luque received the reward of his services in the Bishopric of Tumbez,
+and he was also declared Protector of the Indians of Peru.  He was to
+enjoy the yearly stipend of a thousand ducats,--to be derived, like the
+other salaries and gratuities in this instrument, from the revenues of the
+conquered territory.
+
+Nor were the subordinate actors in the expedition forgotten.  Ruiz
+received the title of Grand Pilot of the Southern Ocean, with a liberal
+provision; Candia was placed at the head of the artillery; and the
+remaining eleven companions on the desolate island were created
+hidalgos and cavalleros, and raised to certain municipal dignities,--in
+prospect.
+
+Several provisions of a liberal tenor were also made, to encourage
+emigration to the country.  The new settlers were to be exempted from
+some of the most onerous, but customary taxes, as the alcabala, or to be
+subject to them only in a mitigated form.  The tax on the precious metals
+drawn from mines was to be reduced, at first, to one tenth, instead of the
+fifth imposed on the same metals when obtained by barter or by rapine.
+
+It was expressly enjoined on Pizarro to observe the existing regulations
+for the good government and protection of the natives; and he was
+required to carry out with him a specified number of ecclesiastics, with
+whom he was to take counsel in the conquest of the country, and whose
+efforts were to be dedicated to the service and conversion of the Indians;
+while lawyers and attorneys, on the other hand, whose presence was
+considered as boding ill to the harmony of the new settlements, were
+strictly prohibited from setting foot in them.
+
+Pizarro, on his part, was bound, in six months from the date of the
+instrument, to raise a force, well equipped for the service, of two
+hundred and fifty men, of whom one hundred might be drawn from the
+colonies; and the government engaged to furnish some trifling assistance
+in the purchase of artillery and military stores.  Finally, he was to be
+prepared, in six months after his return to Panama, to leave that port and
+embark on his expedition.2
+
+Such are some of the principal provisions of this Capitulation, by which
+the Castilian government, with the sagacious policy which it usually
+pursued on the like occasions, stimulated the ambitious hopes of the
+adventurer by high-sounding titles, and liberal promises of reward
+contingent on his success, but took care to stake nothing itself on the
+issue of the enterprise.  It was careful to reap the fruits of his toil, but not
+to pay the cost of them.
+
+A circumstance, that could not fail to be remarked in these provisions,
+was the manner in which the high and lucrative posts were accumulated
+on Pizarro, to the exclusion of Almagro, who, if he had not taken as
+conspicuous a part in personal toil and exposure, had, at least, divided
+with him the original burden of the enterprise, and, by his labors in
+another direction, had contributed quite as essentially to its success.
+Almagro had willingly conceded the post of honor to his confederate; but
+it had been stipulated, on Pizarro's departure for Spain, that, while he
+solicited the office of Governor and Captain-General for himself, he
+should secure that of Adelantado for his companion.  In like manner, he
+had engaged to apply for the see of Tumbez for the vicar of Panama, and
+the office of Alguacil Mayor for the pilot Ruiz.  The bishopric took the
+direction that was concerted, for the soldier could scarcely claim the
+mitre of the prelate; but the other offices, instead of their appropriate
+distribution, were all concentred in himself.  Yet it was in reference to
+his application for his friends, that Pizarro had promised on his departure
+to deal fairly and honorably by them all.3
+
+It is stated by the military chronicler, Pedro Pizarro, that his kinsman did,
+in fact, urge the suit strongly in behalf of Almagro; but that he was
+refused by the government, on the ground that offices of such paramount
+importance could not be committed to different individuals.  The ill
+effects of such an arrangement had been long since felt in more than one
+of the Indian colonies, where it had led to rivalry and fatal collision.4
+Pizarro, therefore, finding his remonstrances unheeded, had no
+alternative but to combine the offices in his own person, or to see the
+expedition fall to the ground.  This explanation of the affair has not
+received the sanction of other contemporary historians.  The
+apprehensions expressed by Luque, at the time of Pizarro's assuming the
+mission, of some such result as actually occurred, founded, doubtless, on
+a knowledge of his associate's character, may warrant us in distrusting
+the alleged vindication of his conduct, and our distrust will not be
+diminished by familiarity with his subsequent career.  Pizarro's virtue
+was not of a kind to withstand temptation,--though of a much weaker sort
+than that now thrown in his path.
+
+The fortunate cavalier was also honored with the habit of St. Jago;5 and
+he was authorized to make an important innovation in his family
+escutcheon,--for by the father's side he might claim his armorial bearings.
+The black eagle and the two pillars emblazoned on the royal arms were
+incorporated with those of the Pizarros; and an Indian city, with a vessel
+in the distance on the waters, and the llama of Peru, revealed the theatre
+and the character of his exploits; while the legend announced, that
+"under the auspices of Charles, and by the industry, the genius, and the
+resources of Pizarro, the country had been discovered and reduced to
+tranquillity,"---thus modestly intimating both the past and prospective
+services of the Conqueror.6
+
+These arrangements having been thus completed to Pizarro's satisfaction,
+he left Toledo for Truxillo, his native place, in Estremadura, where he
+thought he should be most likely to meet with adherents for his new
+enterprise, and where it doubtless gratified his vanity to display himself
+in the palmy, or at least promising, state of his present circumstances.  If
+vanity be ever pardonable, it is certainly in a man who, born in an
+obscure station in life, without family, interest, or friends to back him,
+has carved out his own fortunes in the world, and, by his own resources,
+triumphed over all the obstacles which nature and accident had thrown in
+his way.  Such was the condition of Pizarro, as he now revisited the place
+of his nativity, where he had hitherto been known only as a poor outcast,
+without a home to shelter, a father to own him, or a friend to lean upon.
+But he now found both friends and followers, and some who were eager
+to claim kindred with him, and take part in his future fortunes.  Among
+these were four brothers.  Three of them, like himself, were illegitimate;
+one of whom, named Francisco Martin de Alcantara, was related to him
+by the mother's side; the other two, named Gonzalo and Juan Pizarro,
+were descended from the father.  "They were all poor, and proud as they
+were poor," says Oviedo, who had seen them; "and their eagerness for
+gain was in proportion to their poverty." 7
+
+The remaining and eldest brother, named Hernando, was a legitimate
+son,--'legitimate," continues the same caustic authority, "by his pride, as
+well as by his birth." His features were plain, even disagreeably so; but
+his figure was good.  He was large of stature, and, like his brother
+Francis, had on the whole an imposing presence.8  In his character, he
+combined some of the worst defects incident to the Castilian.  He was
+jealous in the extreme; impatient not merely of affront, but of the least
+slight, and implacable in his resentment.  He was decisive in his
+measures, and unscrupulous in their execution.  No touch of pity had
+power to arrest his arm.  His arrogance was such, that he was constantly
+wounding the self-love of those with whom he acted; thus begetting an
+ill-will which unnecessarily multiplied obstacles in his path.  In this he
+differed from his brother Francis, whose plausible manners smoothed
+away difficulties, and conciliated confidence and cooperation in his
+enterprises.  Unfortunately, the evil counsels of Hernando exercised an
+influence over his brother which more than compensated the advantages
+derived from his singular capacity for business.
+
+Notwithstanding the general interest which Pizarro's adventures excited
+in his country, that chief did not find it easy to comply with the
+provisions of the Capitulation in respect to the amount of his levies.
+Those who were most astonished by his narrative were not always most
+inclined to take part in his fortunes.  They shrunk from the unparalleled
+hardships which lay in the path of the adventurer in that direction; and
+they listened with visible distrust to the gorgeous pictures of the golden
+temples and gardens of Tumbez, which they looked upon as indebted in
+some degree, at least, to the coloring of his fancy, with the obvious
+purpose of attracting followers to his banner.  It is even said that Pizarro
+would have found it difficult to raise the necessary funds, but for the
+seasonable aid of Cortes, a native of Estremadura like himself, his
+companion in arms in early days, and, according to report, his kinsman.9
+No one was in a better condition to hold out a helping hand to a brother
+adventurer, and, probably, no one felt greater sympathy in Pizarro's
+fortunes, or greater confidence in his eventual success, than the man who
+had so lately trod the same career with renown.
+
+The six months allowed by the Capitulation had elapsed, and Pizarro had
+assembled somewhat less than his stipulated complement of men, with
+which he was preparing to embark in a little squadron of three vessels at
+Seville; but, before they were wholly ready, he received intelligence that
+the officers of the Council of the Indies proposed to inquire into the
+condition of the vessels, and ascertain how far the requisitions had been
+complied with.
+
+Without loss of time therefore, Pizarro afraid, if the facts were known,
+that his enterprise might be nipped in the bud, slipped his cables, and
+crossing the bar of San Lucar, in January, 1530, stood for the isle of
+Gomera,--one of the Canaries,--where he ordered his brother Hernando,
+who had charge of the remaining vessels, to meet him.
+
+Scarcely had he gone, before the officers arrived to institute the search.
+But when they objected the deficiency of men, they were easily--perhaps
+willingly--deceived by the pretext that the remainder had gone forward in
+the vessel with Pizarro.  At all events, no further obstacles were thrown
+in Hernando's way, and he was permitted, with the rest of the squadron,
+to join his brother, according to agreement, at Gomera.
+
+After a prosperous voyage, the adventurers reached the northern coast of
+the great southern continent, and anchored off the port of Santa Marta.
+Here they received such discouraging reports of the countries to which
+they were bound, of forests teeming with insects and venomous serpents,
+of huge alligators that swarmed on the banks of the streams, and of
+hardships and perils such as their own fears had never painted, that
+several of Pizarro's men deserted; and their leader, thinking it no longer
+safe to abide in such treacherous quarters, set sail at once for Nombre de
+Dios.
+
+Soon after his arrival there, he was met by his two associates, Luque and
+Almagro, who had crossed the mountains for the purpose of hearing
+from his own lips the precise import of the capitulation with the Crown.
+Great, as might have been expected, was Almagro's discontent at
+learning the result of what he regarded as the perfidious machinations of
+his associate.  "Is it thus," he exclaimed, "that you have dealt with the
+friend who shared equally with you in the trials, the dangers, and the cost
+of the enterprise; and this, notwithstanding your solemn engagements on
+your departure to provide for his interests as faithfully as your own?
+How could you allow me to be thus dishonored in the eyes of the world
+by so paltry a compensation, which seems to estimate my services as
+nothing in comparison with your own?" 10
+
+Pizarro, in reply, assured his companion that he had faithfully urged his
+suit, but that the government refused to confide powers which intrenched
+so closely on one another to different hands.  He had no alternative, but
+to accept all himself or to decline all; and he endeavored to mitigate
+Almagro's displeasure by representing that the country was large enough
+for the ambition of both, and that the powers conferred on himself were,
+in fact, conferred on Almagro, since all that he had would ever be at his
+friend's disposal, as if it were his own.  But these honeyed words did not
+satisfy the injured party; and the two captains soon after returned to
+Panama with feelings of estrangement, if not hostility, towards one
+another, which did not augur well for their enterprise.
+
+Still, Almagro was of a generous temper, and might have been appeased
+by the politic concessions of his rival, but for the interference of
+Hernando Pizarro, who, from the first hour of their meeting, showed
+little respect for the veteran, which, indeed, the diminutive person of the
+latter was not calculated to inspire, and who now regarded him with
+particular aversion as an impediment to the career of his brother.
+
+Almagro's friends--and his frank and liberal manners had secured him
+many--were no less disgusted than himself with the overbearing conduct
+of this new ally.  They loudly complained that it was quite enough to
+suffer from the perfidy of Pizarro, without being exposed to the insults of
+his family, who had now come over with him to fatten on the spoils of
+conquest which belonged to their leader.  The rupture soon proceeded to
+such a length, that Almagro avowed his intention to prosecute the
+expedition without further cooperation with his partner, and actually
+entered into negotiations for the purchase of vessels for that object.  But
+Luque, and the Licentiate Espinosa, who had fortunately come over at
+that time from St. Domingo, now interposed to repair a breach which
+must end in the ruin of the enterprise, and the probable destruction of
+those most interested in its success.  By their mediation, a show of
+reconciliation was at length effected between the parties, on Pizarro's
+assurance that he would relinquish the dignity of Adelantado in favor of
+his rival, and petition the emperor to confirm him in the possession of it;-
+-an assurance, it may be remarked, not easy to reconcile with his former
+assertion in respect to the avowed policy of the Crown in bestowing this
+office.  He was, moreover, to apply for a distinct government for his
+associate, so soon as he had become master of the country assigned to
+himself; and was to solicit no office for either of his own brothers, until
+Almagro had been first provided for.  Lastly, the former contract in
+regard to the division of the spoil into three equal shares between the
+three original associates was confirmed in the most explicit manner.  The
+reconciliation thus effected among the parties answered the temporary
+purpose of enabling them to go forward in concert in the expedition.  But
+it was only a thin scar that had healed ever the wound, which, deep and
+rankling within, waited only fresh cause of irritation to break out with a
+virulence more fatal than ever.11
+
+No time was now lost in preparing for the voyage.  It found little
+encouragement, however, among the colonists of Panama, who were too
+familiar with the sufferings on the former expeditions to care to
+undertake another, even with the rich bribe that was held out to allure
+them.  A few of the old company were content to follow out the
+adventure to its close; and some additional stragglers were collected
+from the province of Nicaragua,--a shoot, it may be remarked, from the
+colony of Panama.  But Pizarro made slender additions to the force
+brought over with him from Spain, though this body was in better
+condition, and, in respect to arms, ammunition, and equipment generally,
+was on a much better footing than his former levies.  The whole number
+did not exceed one hundred and eighty men, with twenty-seven horses
+for the cavalry.  He had provided himself with three vessels, two of them
+of a good size, to take the place of those which he had been compelled to
+leave on the opposite side of the isthmus at Nombre de Dios; an
+armament small for the conquest of an empire, and far short of that
+prescribed by the capitulation with the Crown.  With this the intrepid
+chief proposed to commence operations, trusting to his own successes,
+and the exertions of Almagro, who was to remain behind, for the present,
+to muster reinforcements.12
+
+On St. John the Evangelist's day, the banners of the company and the
+royal standard were consecrated in the cathedral church of Panama; a
+sermon was preached before the little army by Fray Juan de Vargas, one
+of the Dominicans selected by the government for the Peruvian mission;
+and mass was performed, and the sacrament administered to every
+soldier previous to his engaging in the crusade against the infidel.13
+Having thus solemnly invoked the blessing of Heaven on the enterprise,
+Pizarro and his followers went on board their vessels, which rode at
+anchor in the Bay of Panama, and early in January, 1531, sallied forth on
+his third and last expedition for the conquest of Peru.
+
+It was his intention to steer direct for Tumbez, which held out so
+magnificent a show of treasure on his former voyage.  But head winds
+and currents, as usual, baffled his purpose, and after a run of thirteen
+days, much shorter than the period formerly required for the same
+distance, his little squadron came to anchor in the Bay of St. Matthew,
+about one degree north; and Pizarro, after consulting with his officers,
+resolved to disembark his forces and advance along the coast, while the
+vessels, held their course at a convenient distance from the shore.
+
+The march of the troops was severe and painful in the extreme; for the
+road was constantly intersected by streams, which, swollen by the winter
+rains, widened at their mouths into spacious estuaries.  Pizarro, who had
+some previous knowledge of the country, acted as guide as well as
+commander of the expedition.  He was ever ready to give aid where it
+was needed, encouraging his followers to ford or swim the torrents as
+they best could, and cheering the desponding by his own buoyant and
+courageous spirit.
+
+At length they reached a thick-settled hamlet, or rather town, in the
+province of Coaque.  The Spaniards rushed on the place, and the
+inhabitants, without offering resistance, fled in terror to the neighboring
+forests, leaving their effects--of much greater value than had been
+anticipated--in the hands of the invaders.  "We fell on them, sword in
+hand," says one of the Conquerors, with some naivete; "for, if we had
+advised the Indians of our approach, we should never have found there
+such store of gold and precious stones." 14  The natives, however,
+according to another authority, stayed voluntarily; "for, as they had done
+no harm to the white men, they flattered themselves none would be
+offered to them, but that there would be only an interchange of good
+offices with the strangers," 15---an expectation founded, it may be, on
+the good character which the Spaniards had established for themselves
+on their preceding visit, but in which the simple people now found
+themselves most unpleasantly deceived.
+
+Rushing into the deserted dwellings, the invaders found there, besides
+stuffs of various kinds, and food most welcome in their famished
+condition, a large quantity of gold and silver wrought into clumsy
+ornaments, together with many precious stones; for this was the region of
+the esmeraldas, or emeralds, where that valuable gem was most
+abundant.  One of these jewels that fell into the hands of Pizarro, in this
+neighborhood, was as large as a pigeon's egg.  Unluckily, his rude
+followers did not know the value of their prize; and they broke many of
+them in pieces by pounding them with hammers.16  They were led to this
+extraordinary proceeding, it is said, by one of the Dominican
+missionaries, Fray Reginaldo de Pedraza, who assured them that this was
+the way to prove the true emerald, which could not be broken.  It was
+observed that the good father did not subject his own jewels to this wise
+experiment; but, as the stones, in consequence of it, fell in value, being
+regarded merely as colored glass, he carried back a considerable store of
+them to Panama.17
+
+The gold and silver ornaments rifled from the dwellings were brought
+together and deposited in a common heap; when a fifth was deducted for
+the Crown, and Pizarro distributed the remainder in due proportions
+among the officers and privates of his company.  This was the usage
+invariably observed on the like occasions throughout the Conquest.  The
+invaders had embarked in a common adventure.  Their interest was
+common, and to have allowed every one to plunder on his own account
+would only have led to insubordination and perpetual broils.  All were
+required, therefore, on pain of death, to contribute whatever they
+obtained, whether by bargain or by rapine, to the general stock; and all
+were too much interested in the execution of the penalty to allow the
+unhappy culprit, who violated the law, any chance of escape.18
+
+Pizarro, with his usual policy, sent back to Panama a large quantity of
+the gold, no less than twenty thousand castellanos in value, in the belief
+that the sight of so much treasure, thus speedily acquired, would settle
+the doubt of the wavering, and decide them on joining his banner.19  He
+judged right.  As one of the Conquerors piously expresses it, "It pleased
+the Lord that we should fall in with the town of Coaque, that the riches of
+the land might find credit with the people, and that they should flock to
+it." 20
+
+Pizarro, having refreshed his men, continued his march along the coast,
+but no longer accompanied by the vessels, which had returned for
+recruits to Panama.  The road, as he advanced, was checkered with strips
+of sandy waste, which, drifted about by the winds, blinded the soldiers,
+and afforded only treacherous footing for man and beast.  The glare was
+intense; and the rays of a vertical sun beat fiercely on the iron mail and
+the thick quilted doublets of cotton, till the fainting troops were almost
+suffocated with the heat.  To add to their distresses, a strange epidemic
+broke out in the little army.  It took the form of ulcers, or rather hideous
+warts of great size, which covered the body, and when lanced, as was the
+case with some, discharged such a quantity of blood as proved fatal to
+the sufferer.  Several died of this frightful disorder, which was so sudden
+in its attack, and attended with such prostration of strength, that those
+who lay down well at night were unable to lift their hands to their heads
+in the morning.21  The epidemic, which made its first appearance during
+this invasion, and which did not long survive it, spread over the country,
+sparing neither native nor white man.22  It was one of those plagues
+from the vial of wrath, which the destroying angel, who follows in the
+path of the conqueror, pours out on the devoted nations.
+
+The Spaniards rarely experienced on their march either resistance or
+annoyance from the inhabitants, who, instructed by the example of
+Coaque, fled with their effects into the woods and neighboring
+mountains.  No one came out to welcome the strangers and offer the rites
+of hospitality, as on their last visit to the land.  For the white men were
+no longer regarded as good beings that had come from heaven, but as
+ruthless destroyers, who, invulnerable to the assaults of the Indians, were
+borne along on the backs of fierce animals, swifter than the wind, with
+weapons in their hands, that scattered fire and desolation as they went.
+Such were the stories now circulated of the invaders, which, preceding
+them everywhere on their march, closed the hearts, if not the doors, of
+the natives against them.  Exhausted by the fatigue of travel and by
+disease, and grievously disappointed at the poverty of the land, which
+now offered no compensation for their toils, the soldiers of Pizarro
+cursed the hour in which they had enlisted under his standard, and the
+men of Nicaragua, in particular, says the old chronicler, calling to mind
+their pleasant quarters in their luxurious land, sighed only to return to
+their Mahometan paradise.23
+
+At this juncture the army was gladdened by the sight of a vessel from
+Panama, which brought some supplies, together with the royal treasurer,
+the veedor or inspector, the comptroller, and other high officers
+appointed by the Crown to attend the expedition.  They had been left in
+Spain by Pizarro, in consequence of his abrupt departure from the
+country; and the Council of the Indies, on learning the circumstance, had
+sent instructions to Panama to prevent the sailing of his squadron from
+that port.  But the Spanish government, with more wisdom,
+countermanded the order, only requiring the functionaries to quicken
+their own departure, and take their place without loss of time in the
+expedition.
+
+The Spaniards in their march along the coast had now advanced as far as
+Puerto Viejo.  Here they were soon after joined by another small
+reinforcement of about thirty men, under an officer named Belalcazar,
+who subsequently rose to high distinction in this service.  Many of the
+followers of Pizarro would now have halted at this spot and established a
+colony there.  But that chief thought more of conquering than of
+colonizing, at least for the present; and he proposed, as his first step, to
+get possession of Tumbez, which he regarded as the gate of the Peruvian
+empire.  Continuing his march, therefore, to the shores of what is now
+called the Gulf of Guayaquil, he arrived off the little island of Puna,
+lying at no great distance from the Bay of Tumbez.  This island, he
+thought, would afford him a convenient place to encamp until he was
+prepared to make his descent on the Indian city.
+
+The dispositions of the islanders seemed to favor his purpose.  He had
+not been long in their neighborhood, before a deputation of the natives,
+with their cacique at their head, crossed over in their balsas to the main
+land to welcome the Spaniards to their residence.  But the Indian
+interpreters of Tumbez, who had returned with Pizarro from Spain, and
+continued with the camp, put their master on his guard against the
+meditated treachery of the islanders, whom they accused of designing to
+destroy the Spaniards by cutting the ropes that held together the floats,
+and leaving those upon them to perish in the waters.  Yet the cacique,
+when charged by Pizarro with this perfidious scheme, denied it with such
+an air of conscious innocence, that the Spanish commander trusted
+himself and his followers, without further hesitation, to his conveyance,
+and was transported in safety to the shores of Puna.
+
+Here he was received in a hospitable manner, and his troops were
+provided with comfortable quarters.  Well satisfied with his present
+position, Pizarro resolved to occupy it until the violence of the rainy
+season was passed, when the arrival of the reinforcements he expected
+would put him in better condition for marching into the country of the
+Inca.
+
+The island, which lies in the mouth of the river of Guayaquil, and is
+about eight leagues in length by four in breadth, at the widest part, was at
+that time partially covered with a noble growth of timber.  But a large
+portion of it was subjected to cultivation, and bloomed with plantations
+of cacao, of the sweet potato, and the different products of a tropical
+climes evincing agricultural knowledge as well as industry in the
+population.  They were a warlike race; but had received from their
+Peruvian foes the appellation of "perfidious." It was the brand fastened
+by the Roman historians on their Carthaginian enemies,--with perhaps no
+better reason.  The bold and independent islanders opposed a stubborn
+resistance to the arms of the Incas; and, though they had finally yielded,
+they had been ever since at feud, and often in deadly hostility, with their
+neighbors of Tumbez.
+
+The latter no sooner heard of Pizarro's arrival on the island than, trusting,
+probably, to their former friendly relations with him, they came over in
+some number to the Spanish quarters.  The presence of their detested
+rivals was by no means grateful to the jealous inhabitants of Puna, and
+the prolonged residence of the white men on their island could not be
+otherwise than burdensome.  In their outward demeanor they still
+maintained the same show of amity; but Pizarro's interpreters again put
+him on his guard against the proverbial perfidy of their hosts.  With his
+suspicions thus roused, the Spanish commander was informed that a
+number of the chiefs had met together to deliberate on a plan of
+insurrection.  Not caring to wait for the springing of the mine, he
+surrounded the place of meeting with his soldiers and made prisoners of
+the suspected chieftains.  According to one authority, they confessed
+their guilt.24  This is by no means certain.  Nor is it certain that they
+meditated an insurrection.  Yet the fact is not improbable, in itself;
+though it derives little additional probability from the assertion of the
+hostile interpreters.  It is certain, however, that Pizarro was satisfied of
+the existence of a conspiracy; and, without further hesitation, he
+abandoned his wretched prisoners, ten or twelve in number, to the tender
+mercies of their rivals of Tumbez, who instantly massacred them before
+his eyes.25
+
+Maddened by this outrage, the people of Puna sprang to arms, and threw
+themselves at once, with fearful yells and the wildest menaces of despair,
+on the Spanish camp.  The odds of numbers were greatly in their favor,
+for they mustered several thousand warriors.  But the more decisive odds
+of arms and discipline were on the side of their antagonists; and, as the
+Indians rushed forward in a confused mass to the assault, the Castilians
+coolly received them on their long pikes, or swept them down by the
+volleys of their musketry.  Their ill-protected bodies were easily cut to
+pieces by the sharp sword of the Spaniard; and Hernando Pizarro, putting
+himself at the head of the cavalry, charged boldly into the midst, and
+scattered them far and wide over the field, until, panic-struck by the
+terrible array of steel-clad horsemen, and the stunning reports and the
+flash of fire-arms, the fugitives sought shelter in the depths of their
+forests.  Yet the victory was owing, in some degree, at least,--if we may
+credit the Conquerors,--to the interposition of Heaven; for St. Michael
+and his legions were seen high in the air above the combatants,
+contending with the arch-enemy of man, and cheering on the Christians
+by their example! 26
+
+Not more than three or four Spaniards fell in the fight; but many were
+wounded, and among them Hernando Pizarro, who received a severe
+injury in the leg from a javelin.  Nor did the war end here; for the
+implacable islanders, taking advantage of the cover of night, or of any
+remissness on the part of the invaders, were ever ready to steal out of
+their fastnesses and spring on their enemy's camp, while, by cutting off
+his straggling parties, and destroying his provisions, they kept him in
+perpetual alarm.
+
+In this uncomfortable situation, the Spanish commander was gladdened
+by the appearance of two vessels off the island.  They brought a
+reinforcement consisting of a hundred volunteers besides horses for the
+cavalry.  It was commanded by Hernando de Soto, a captain afterwards
+famous as the discoverer of the Mississippi, which still rolls its majestic
+current over the place of his burial,--a fitting monument for his remains,
+as it is of his renown.27
+
+The reinforcement was most welcome to Pizarro, who had been long
+discontented with his position on an island, where he found nothing to
+compensate the life of unintermitting hostility which he was compelled to
+lead.  With these recruits, he felt himself in sufficient strength to cross
+over to the continent, and resume military operations in the proper
+theatre for discovery and conquest.  From the Indians of Tumbez he
+learned that the country had been for some time distracted by a civil war
+between two sons of the late monarch, competitors for the throne.  This
+intelligence he regarded as of the utmost importance, for he remembered
+the use which Cortes had made of similar dissensions among the tribes of
+Anahuac.  Indeed, Pizarro seems to have had the example of his great
+predecessor before his eyes on more occasions than this.  But he fell far
+short of his model; for, notwithstanding the restraint he sometimes put
+upon himself, his coarser nature and more ferocious temper often
+betrayed him into acts most repugnant to sound policy, which would
+never have been countenanced by the Conqueror of Mexico.
+
+
+
+Book 3
+
+Chapter 2
+
+Peru At The Time Of The Conquest--Reign Of Huayna Capac-
+The Inca Brothers--Conquest For The Empire-
+Triumph And Cruelties Of Atahuallpa
+
+Before accompanying the march of Pizarro and his followers into the
+country of the Incas, it is necessary to make the reader acquainted with
+the critical situation of the kingdom at that time.  For the Spaniards
+arrived just at the consummation of an important revolution,--at a crisis
+most favorable to their views of conquest, and but for which, indeed, the
+conquest, with such a handful of soldiers, could never have been
+achieved.
+
+In the latter part of the fifteenth century died Tupac Inca Yupanqui, one
+of the most renowned of the "Children of the Sun," who, carrying the
+Peruvian arms across the burning sands of Atacama, penetrated to the
+remote borders of Chili, while in the opposite direction he enlarged the
+limits of the empire by the acquisition of the southern provinces of
+Quito.  The war in this quarter was conducted by his son Huayna Capac,
+who succeeded his father on the throne, and fully equalled him in
+military daring and in capacity for government.
+
+Under this prince, the whole of the powerful state of Quito, which
+rivalled that of Peru itself in wealth and refinement, was brought under
+the sceptre of the Incas; whose empire received, by this conquest, the
+most important accession yet made to it since the foundation of the
+dynasty of Manco Capac.  The remaining days of the victorious monarch
+were passed in reducing the independent tribes on the remote limits of
+his territory, and, still more, in cementing his conquests by the
+introduction of the Peruvian polity.  He was actively engaged in
+completing the great works of his father, especially the high-roads which
+led from Quito to the capital.  He perfected the establishment of posts,
+took great pains to introduce the Quichua dialect throughout the empire,
+promoted a better system of agriculture, and, in fine, encouraged the
+different branches of domestic industry and the various enlightened plans
+of his predecessors for the improvement of his people.  Under his sway,
+the Peruvian monarchy reached its most palmy state; and under both him
+and his illustrious father it was advancing with such rapid strides in the
+march of civilization as would soon have carried it to a level with the
+more refined despotisms of Asia, furnishing the world, perhaps, with
+higher evidence of the capabilities of the American Indian than is
+elsewhere to be found on the great western continent.--But other and
+gloomier destinies were in reserve for the Indian races.
+
+The first arrival of the white men on the South American shores of the
+Pacific was about ten years before the death of Huayna Capac, when
+Balboa crossed the Gulf of St. Michael, and obtained the first clear
+report of the empire of the Incas.  Whether tidings of these adventurers
+reached the Indian monarch's ears is doubtful.  There is no doubt,
+however, that he obtained the news of the first expedition under Pizarro
+and Almagro, when the latter commander penetrated as far as the Rio de
+San Juan, about the fourth degree north.  The accounts which he received
+made a strong impression on the mind of Huayna Capac.  He discerned
+in the formidable prowess and weapons of the invaders proofs of a
+civilization far superior to that of his own people.  He intimated his
+apprehension that they would return, and that at some day, not far
+distant, perhaps, the throne of the Incas might be shaken by these
+strangers, endowed with such incomprehensible powers.1  To the vulgar
+eye, it was a little speck on the verge of the horizon; but that of the
+sagacious monarch seemed to descry in it the dark thunder-cloud, that
+was to spread wider and wider till it burst in fury on his nation!
+
+There is some ground for believing thus much.  But other accounts,
+which have obtained a popular currency, not content with this, connect
+the first tidings of the white men with predictions long extant in the
+country, and with supernatural appearances, which filled the hearts of the
+whole nation with dismay.  Comets were seen flaming athwart the
+heavens.  Earthquakes shook the land; the moon was girdled with rings
+of fire of many colors; a thunderbolt fell on one of the royal palaces and
+consumed it to ashes; and an eagle, chased by several hawks, was seen,
+screaming in the air, to hover above the great square of Cuzco, when,
+pierced by the talons of his tormentors, the king of birds fell lifeless in
+the presence of many of the Inca nobles, who read in this an augury of
+their own destruction!  Huayna Capac himself, calling his great officers
+around him, as he found he was drawing near his end, announced the
+subversion of his empire by the race of white and bearded strangers, as
+the consummation predicted by the oracles after the reign of the twelfth
+Inca, and he enjoined it on his vassals not to resist the decrees of
+Heaven, but to yield obedience to its messengers.2
+
+Such is the report of the impressions made by the appearance of the
+Spaniards in the country, reminding one of the similar feelings of
+superstitious terror occasioned by their appearance in Mexico.  But the
+traditions of the latter land rest on much higher authority than those of
+the Peruvians, which, unsupported by contemporary testimony, rest
+almost wholly on the naked assertion of one of their own nation, who
+thought to find, doubtless, in the inevitable decrees of Heaven, the best
+apology for the supineness of his countrymen.
+
+It is not improbable that rumors of the advent of a strange and
+mysterious race should have spread gradually among the Indian tribes
+along the great table-land of the Cordilleras, and should have shaken the
+hearts of the stoutest warriors with feelings of undefined dread, as of
+some impending calamity.  In this state of mind, it was natural that
+physical convulsions, to which that volcanic country is peculiarly
+subject, should have made an unwonted impression on their minds; and
+that the phenomena, which might have been regarded only as
+extraordinary, in the usual seasons of political security, should now be
+interpreted by the superstitious soothsayer as the handwriting on the
+heavens, by which the God of the Incas proclaimed the approaching
+downfall of their empire.
+
+Huayna Capac had, as usual with the Peruvian princes, a multitude of
+concubines, by whom he left a numerous posterity.  The heir to the
+crown, the son of his lawful wife and sister, was named Huascar.3  At the
+period of the history at which we are now arrived, he was about thirty
+years of age.  Next to the heir-apparent, by another wife, a cousin of the
+monarch's, came Manco Capac, a young prince who will occupy an
+important place in our subsequent story.  But the best-beloved of the
+Inca's children was Atahuallpa.  His mother was the daughter of the last
+Scyri of Quito, who had died of grief, it was said, not long after the
+subversion of his kingdom by Huayna Capac.  The princess was
+beautiful, and the Inca, whether to gratify his passion, or, as the
+Peruvians say, willing to make amends for the ruin of her parents,
+received her among his concubines.  The historians of Quito assert that
+she was his lawful wife; but this dignity, according to the usages of the
+empire, was reserved for maidens of the Inca blood.
+
+The latter years of Huayna Capac were passed in his new kingdom of
+Quito.  Atahuallpa was accordingly brought up under his own eye,
+accompanied him, while in his tender years, in his campaigns, slept in
+the same tent with his royal father, and ate from the same plate.4  The
+vivacity of the boy, his courage and generous nature, won the affections
+of the old monarch to such a degree, that he resolved to depart from the
+established usages of the realm, and divide his empire between him and
+his elder brother Huascar.  On his death-bed, he called the great officers
+of the crown around him, and declared it to be his will that the ancient
+kingdom of Quito should pass to Atahuallpa, who might be considered as
+having a natural claim on it, as the dominion of his ancestors.  The rest
+of the empire he settled on Huascar; and he enjoined it on the two
+brothers to acquiesce in this arrangement, and to live in amity with each
+other.  This was the last act of the heroic monarch; doubtless, the most
+impolitic of his whole life.  With his dying breath he subverted the
+fundamental laws of the empire; and, while he recommended harmony
+between the successors to his authority, he left in this very division of it
+the seeds of inevitable discord.5
+
+His death took place, as seems probable, at the close of 1525, not quite
+seven years before Pizarro's arrival at Puna.6  The tidings of his decease
+spread sorrow and consternation throughout the land; for, though stern
+and even inexorable to the rebel and the long-resisting foe, he was a
+brave and magnanimous monarch, and legislated with the enlarged views
+of a prince who regarded every part of his dominions as equally his
+concern.  The people of Quito, flattered by the proofs which he had
+given of preference for them by his permanent residence in that country,
+and his embellishment of their capital, manifested unfeigned sorrow at
+his loss; and his subjects at Cuzco, proud of the glory which his arms and
+his abilities had secured for his native land, held him in no less
+admiration;7 while the more thoughtful and the more timid, in both
+countries, looked with apprehension to the future, when the sceptre of
+the vast empire, instead of being swayed by an old and experienced
+hand, was to be consigned to rival princes, naturally jealous of one
+another, and, from their age, necessarily exposed to the unwholesome
+influence of crafty and ambitious counsellors.  The people testified their
+regret by the unwonted honors paid to the memory of the deceased Inca.
+His heart was retained in Quito, and his body, embalmed after the
+fashion of the country, was transported to Cuzco, to take its place in the
+great temple of the Sun, by the side of the remains of his royal ancestors.
+His obsequies were celebrated with sanguinary splendor in both the
+capitals of his far-extended empire; and several thousand of the imperial
+concubines, with numerous pages and officers of the palace, are said to
+have proved their sorrow, or their superstition, by offering up their own
+lives, that they might accompany their departed lord to the bright
+mansions of the Sun.8
+
+For nearly five years after the death of Huayna Capac, the royal brothers
+reigned, each over his allotted portion of the empire, without distrust of
+one another, or, at least, without collision.  It seemed as if the wish of
+their father was to be completely realized, and that the two states were to
+maintain their respective integrity and independence as much as if they
+had never been united into one.  But, with the manifold causes for
+jealousy and discontent, and the swarms of courtly sycophants, who
+would find their account in fomenting these feelings, it was easy to see
+that this tranquil state of things could not long endure.  Nor would it
+have endured so long, but for the more gentle temper of Huascar, the
+only party who had ground for complaint.  He was four or five years
+older than his brother, and was possessed of courage not to be doubted;
+but he was a prince of a generous and easy nature, and perhaps, if left to
+himself, might have acquiesced in an arrangement which, however
+unpalatable, was the will of his deified father.  But Atahuallpa was of a
+different temper.  Warlike, ambitious, and daring, he was constantly
+engaged in enterprises for the enlargement of his own territory, though
+his crafty policy was scrupulous not to aim at extending his acquisitions
+in the direction of his royal brother.  His restless spirit, however, excited
+some alarm at the court of Cuzco, and Huascar, at length, sent an envoy
+to Atahuallpa, to remonstrate with him on his ambitious enterprises, and
+to require him to render him homage for his kingdom of Quito.
+
+This is one statement.  Other accounts pretend that the immediate cause
+of rupture was a claim instituted by Huascar for the territory of
+Tumebamba, held by his brother as part of his patrimonial inheritance.  It
+matters little what was the ostensible ground of collision between
+persons placed by circumstances in so false a position in regard to one
+another, that collision must, at some time or other, inevitably occur.
+
+The commencement, and, indeed, the whole course, of hostilities which
+soon broke out between the rival brothers are stated with irreconcilable,
+and, considering the period was so near to that of the Spanish invasion,
+with unaccountable discrepancy.  By some it is said, that, in Atahuallpa's
+first encounter with the troops of Cuzco, he was defeated and made
+prisoner near Tumebamba, a favorite residence of his father in the
+ancient territory of Quito, and in the district of Canaris.  From this
+disaster he recovered by a fortunate escape from confinement, when,
+regaining his capital, he soon found himself at the head of a numerous
+army, led by the most able and experienced captains in the empire.  The
+liberal manners of the young Atahuallpa had endeared him to the
+soldiers, with whom, as we have seen, he served more than one campaign
+in his father's lifetime.  These troops were the flower of the great army of
+the Inca, and some of them had grown gray in his long military career,
+which had left them at the north, where they readily transferred their
+allegiance to the young sovereign of Quito.  They were commanded by
+two officers of great consideration, both possessed of large experience in
+military affairs, and high in the confidence of the late Inca.  One of them
+was named Quizquiz; the other, who was the maternal uncle of
+Atahuallpa, was called Chalicuchima.
+
+With these practised warriors to guide him, the young monarch put
+himself at the head of his martial array, and directed his march towards
+the south.  He had not advanced farther than Ambato, about sixty miles
+distant from his capital, when he fell in with a numerous host, which had
+been sent against him by his brother, under the command of a
+distinguished chieftain, of the Inca family.  A bloody battle followed,
+which lasted the greater part of the day; and the theatre of combat was
+the skirts of the mighty Chimborazo.9
+
+The battle ended favorably for Atahuallpa, and the Peruvians were
+routed with great slaughter, and the loss of their commander.  The prince
+of Quito availed himself of his advantage to push forward his march until
+he arrived before the gates of Tumebamba, which city, as well as the
+whole district of Canaris, though an ancient dependency of Quito, had
+sided with his rival in the contest.  Entering the captive city like a
+conqueror, he put the inhabitants to the sword, and razed it with all its
+stately edifices, some of which had been reared by his own father, to the
+ground.  He carried on the same war of extermination, as he marched
+through the offending district of Canaris.  In some places, it is said, the
+women and children came out, with green branches in their hands, in
+melancholy procession, to deprecate his wrath; but the vindictive
+conqueror, deaf to their entreaties, laid the country waste with fire and
+sword, sparing no man capable of bearing arms who fell into his
+hands.10
+
+The fate of Canaris struck terror into the hearts of his enemies, and one
+place after another opened its gates to the victor, who held on his
+triumphant march towards the Peruvian capital.  His arms experienced a
+temporary check before the island of Puna, whose bold warriors
+maintained the cause of his brother.  After some days lost before this
+place, Atahuallpa left the contest to their old enemies, the people of
+Tumbez, who had early given in their adhesion to him, while he resumed
+his march and advanced as far as Caxamalca, about seven degrees south.
+Here he halted with a detachment of the army, sending forward the main
+body under the command of his two generals, with orders to move
+straight upon Cuzco.  He preferred not to trust himself farther in the
+enemy's country, where a defeat might be fatal.  By establishing his
+quarters at Caxamalca, he would be able to support his generals, in case
+of a reverse, or, at worst, to secure his retreat on Quito, until he was
+again in condition to renew hostilities.
+
+The two commanders, advancing by rapid marches, at length crossed the
+Apurimac river, and arrived within a short distance of the Peruvian
+capital.--Meanwhile, Huascar had not been idle.  On receiving tidings of
+the discomfiture of his army at Ambato, he made every exertion to raise
+levies throughout the country.  By the advice, it is said, of his priests--the
+most incompetent advisers in times of danger--he chose to await the
+approach of the enemy in his own capital; and it was not till the latter had
+arrived within a few leagues of Cuzco, that the Inca, taking counsel of
+the same ghostly monitors, sallied forth to give him battle.
+
+The two armies met on the plains of Quipaypan, in the neighborhood of
+the Indian metropolis.  Their numbers are stated with the usual
+discrepancy; but Atahuallpa's troops had considerably the advantage in
+discipline and experience, for many of Huascar's levies had been drawn
+hastily together from the surrounding country.  Both fought, however,
+with the desperation of men who felt that every thing was at stake.  It was
+no longer a contest for a province, but for the possession of an empire.
+Atahuallpa's troops, flushed with recent success, fought with the
+confidence of those who relied on their superior prowess; while the loyal
+vassals of the Inca displayed all the self-devotion of men who held their
+own lives cheap in the service of their master.
+
+The fight raged with the greatest obstinacy from sunrise to sunset; and
+the ground was covered with heaps of the dying and the dead, whose
+bones lay bleaching on the battle-field long after the conquest by the
+Spaniards.  At length, fortune declared in favor of Atahuallpa; or rather,
+the usual result of superior discipline and military practice followed.
+The ranks of the Inca were thrown into irretrievable disorder, and gave
+way in all directions.  The conquerors followed close on the heels of the
+flying.  Huascar himself, among the latter, endeavored to make his
+escape with about a thousand men who remained round his person.  But
+the royal fugitive was discovered before he had left the field; his little
+party was enveloped by clouds of the enemy, and nearly every one of the
+devoted band perished in defence of their Inca.  Huascar was made
+prisoner, and the victorious chiefs marched at once on his capital, which
+they occupied in the name of their sovereign.11
+
+These events occurred in the spring of 1532, a few months before the
+landing of the Spaniards.  The tidings of the success of his arms and the
+capture of his unfortunate brother reached Atahuallpa at Caxamalca.  He
+instantly gave orders that Huascar should be treated with the respect due
+to his rank, but that he should be removed to the strong fortress of
+Xauxa, and held there in strict confinement.  His orders did not stop
+here,--if we are to receive the accounts of Garcilasso de la Vega, himself
+of the Inca race, and by his mother's side nephew of the great Huayna
+Capac.
+
+According to this authority, Atahuallpa invited the Inca nobles
+throughout the country to assemble at Cuzco in order to deliberate on the
+best means of partitioning the empire between him and his brother.
+When they had met in the capital, they were surrounded by the soldiery
+of Quito, and butchered without mercy.  The motive for this perfidious
+act was to exterminate the whole of the royal family, who might each one
+of them show a better title to the crown than the illegitimate Atahuallpa.
+But the massacre did not end here.  The illegitimate offspring, like
+himself, half-brothers of the monster, all, in short, who had any of the
+Inca blood in their veins, were involved in it; and with an appetite for
+carnage unparalleled in the annals of the Roman Empire or of the French
+Republic, Atahuallpa ordered all the females of the blood royal, his
+aunts, nieces, and cousins, to be put to death, and that, too, with the most
+refined and lingering tortures.  To give greater zest to his revenge, many
+of the executions took place in the presence of Huascar himself, who was
+thus compelled to witness the butchery of his own wives and sisters,
+while, in the extremity of anguish, they in vain called on him to protect
+them! 12
+
+Such is the tale told by the historian of the Incas, and received by him, as
+he assures us, from his mother and uncle, who, being children at the
+time, were so fortunate as to be among the few that escaped the massacre
+of their house.13  And such is the account repeated by many a Castilian
+writer since, without any symptom of distrust.  But a tissue of
+unprovoked atrocities like these is too repugnant to the principles of
+human nature,--and, indeed, to common sense, to warrant our belief in
+them on ordinary testimony.
+
+The annals of semi-civilized nations unhappily show that there have been
+instances of similar attempts to extinguish the whole of a noxious race,
+which had become the object of a tyrant's jealousy; though such an
+attempt is about as chimerical as it would be to extirpate any particular
+species of plant, the seeds of which had been borne on every wind over
+the country.  But, if the attempt to exterminate the Inca race was actually
+made by Atahuallpa, how comes it that so many of the pure descendants
+of the blood royal--nearly six hundred in number--are admitted by the
+historian to have been in existence seventy years after the imputed
+massacre?14  Why was the massacre, instead of being limited to the
+legitimate members of the royal stock, who could show a better title to
+the crown than the usurper, extended to all, however remotely, or in
+whatever way, connected with the race?  Why were aged women and
+young maidens involved in the proscription, and why were they
+subjected to such refined and superfluous tortures, when it is obvious
+that beings so impotent could have done nothing to provoke the jealousy
+of the tyrant?  Why, when so many were sacrificed from some vague
+apprehension of distant danger, was his rival Huascar, together with his
+younger brother Manco Capac, the two men from whom the conqueror
+had most to fear, suffered to live?  Why, in short, is the wonderful tale
+not recorded by others before the time of Garcilasso, and nearer by half a
+century to the events themselves?15
+
+That Atahuallpa may have been guilty of excesses, and abused the rights
+of conquest by some gratuitous acts of cruelty, may be readily believed;
+for no one, who calls to mind his treatment of the Canaris,-which his own
+apologists do not affect to deny,16--will doubt that he had a full measure
+of the vindictive temper which belongs to
+
+"Those souls of fire, and Children of the Sun,
+With whom revenge was virtue."
+
+But there is a wide difference between this and the monstrous and most
+unprovoked atrocities imputed to him; implying a diabolical nature not to
+be admitted on the evidence of an Indian partisan, the sworn foe of his
+house, and repeated by Castilian chroniclers, who may naturally seek, by
+blazoning the enormities of Atahuallpa, to find some apology for the
+cruelty of their countrymen towards him.
+
+The news of the great victory was borne on the wings of the wind to
+Caxamalca; and loud and long was the rejoicing, not only in the camp of
+Atahuallpa, but in the town and surrounding country; for all now came
+in, eager to offer their congratulations to the victor, and do him homage.
+The prince of Quito no longer hesitated to assume the scarlet borla, the
+diadem of the Incas.  His triumph was complete.  He had beaten his
+enemies on their own ground; had taken their capital; had set his foot on
+the neck of his rival, and won for himself the ancient sceptre of the
+Children of the Sun.  But the hour of triumph was destined to be that of
+his deepest humiliation.  Atahuallpa was not one of those to whom, in the
+language of the Grecian bard, "the Gods are willing to reveal
+themselves." 17  He had not read the handwriting on the heavens.  The
+small speck, which the clear-sighted eye of his father had discerned on
+the distant verge of the horizon, though little noticed by Atahuallpa,
+intent on the deadly strife with his brother, had now risen high towards
+the zenith, spreading wider and wider, till it wrapped the skies in
+darkness, and was ready to burst in thunders on the devoted nation.
+
+
+
+Book3
+
+Chapter 3
+
+The Spaniards Land At Tumbez--Pizarro Reconnoitres The Country--
+Foundation Of San Miguel--March Into The Interior-
+Embassy From The Inca--Adventures On The March-
+Reach The Foot Of The Andes
+
+1532
+
+We left the Spaniards at the island of Puna, preparing to make their
+descent on the neighboring continent at Tumbez.  This port was but a
+few leagues distant, and Pizarro, with the greater part of his followers,
+passed over in the ships, while a few others were to transport the
+commander's baggage and the military stores on some of the Indian
+balsas.  One of the latter vessels which first touched the shore was
+surrounded, and three persons who were on the raft were carried off by
+the natives to the adjacent woods and there massacred.  The Indians then
+got possession of another of the balsas containing Pizarro's wardrobe;
+but, as the men who defended it raised loud cries for help, they reached
+the ears of Hernando Pizarro, who, with a small body of horse, had
+effected a landing some way farther down the shore.  A broad tract of
+miry ground, overflowed at high water, lay between him and the party
+thus rudely assailed by the natives.  The tide was out, and the bottom was
+soft and dangerous.  With little regard to the danger, however, the bold
+cavalier spurred his horse into the slimy depths, and followed by his
+men, with the mud up to their saddle-girths, they plunged forward until
+they came into the midst of the marauders, who, terrified by the strange
+apparition of the horsemen, fled precipitately, without show of fight, to
+the neighboring forests.
+
+This conduct of the natives of Tumbez is not easy to be explained;
+considering the friendly relations maintained with the Spaniards on their
+preceding visit, and lately renewed in the island of Puna.  But Pizarro
+was still more astonished, on entering their town, to find it not only
+deserted, but, with the exception of a few buildings, entirely demolished.
+Four or five of the most substantial private dwellings, the great temple,
+and the fortress--and these greatly damaged, and wholly despoiled of
+their interior decorations--alone survived to mark the site of the city, and
+attest its former splendor.1  The scene of desolation filled the conquerors
+with dismay; for even the raw recruits, who had never visited the coast
+before, had heard the marvellous stories of the golden treasures of
+Tumbez, and they had confidently looked forward to them as an easy
+spoil after all their fatigues.  But the gold of Peru seemed only like a
+deceitful phantom, which, after beckoning them on through toil and
+danger, vanished the moment they attempted to grasp it.
+
+Pizarro despatched a small body of troops in pursuit of the fugitives;
+and, after some slight skirmishing, they got possession of several of the
+natives, and among them, as it chanced, the curaca of the place.  When
+brought before the Spanish commander, he exonerated himself from any
+share in the violence offered to the white men, saying that it was done by
+a lawless party of his people, without his knowledge at the time; and he
+expressed his willingness to deliver them up to punishment, if they could
+be detected.  He explained the dilapidated condition of the town by the
+long wars carried on with the fierce tribes of Puna, who had at length
+succeeded in getting possession of the place, and driving the inhabitants
+into the neighboring woods and mountains.  The Inca, to whose cause
+they were attached, was too much occupied with his own feuds to protect
+them against their enemies.
+
+Whether Pizarro gave any credit to the cacique's exculpation of himself
+may be doubted.  He dissembled his suspicions, however, and, as the
+Indian lord promised obedience in his own name, and that of his vassals,
+the Spanish general consented to take no further notice of the affair.  He
+seems now to have felt for the first time, in its full force, that it was his
+policy to gain the good-will of the people among whom he had thrown
+himself in the face of such tremendous odds.  It was, perhaps, the
+excesses of which his men had been guilty in the earlier stages of the
+expedition that had shaken the confidence of the people of Tumbez, and
+incited them to this treacherous retaliation.
+
+Pizarro inquired of the natives who now, under promise of impunity,
+came into the camp, what had become of his two followers that remained
+with them in the former expedition.  The answers they gave were obscure
+and contradictory.  Some said, they had died of an epidemic; others, that
+they had perished in the war with Puna; and others intimated, that they
+had lost their lives in consequence of some outrage attempted on the
+Indian women.  It was impossible to arrive at the truth.  The last account
+was not the least probable.  But, whatever might be the cause, there was
+no doubt they had both perished.
+
+This intelligence spread an additional gloom over the Spaniards; which
+was not dispelled by the flaming pictures now given by the natives of the
+riches of the land, and of the state and magnificence of the monarch in
+his distant capital among the mountains.  Nor did they credit the
+authenticity of a scroll of paper, which Pizzaro had obtained from an
+Indian, to whom it had been delivered by one of the white men left in the
+country.  "Know, whoever you may be," said the writing, "that may
+chance to set foot in this country, that it contains more gold and silver
+than there is iron in Biscay." This paper, when shown to the soldiers,
+excited only their ridicule, as a device of their captain to keep alive their
+chimerical hopes.2
+
+Pizarro now saw that it was not politic to protract his stay in his present
+quarters, where a spirit of disaffection would soon creep into the ranks of
+his followers, unless their spirits were stimulated by novelty or a life of
+incessant action.  Yet he felt deeply anxious to obtain more particulars
+than he had hitherto gathered of the actual condition of the Peruvian
+empire, of its strength and resources, of the monarch who ruled over it,
+and of his present situation.  He was also desirous, before taking any
+decisive step for penetrating the country, to seek out some commodious
+place for a settlement, which might afford him the means of a regular
+communication with the colonies, and a place of strength, on which he
+himself might retreat in case of disaster.
+
+He decided, therefore, to leave part of his company at Tumbez, including
+those who, from the state of their health, were least able to take the field,
+and with the remainder to make an excursion into the interior, and
+reconnoitre the land, before deciding on any plan of operations.  He set
+out early in May, 1532; and, keeping along the more level regions
+himself, sent a small detachment under the command of Hernando de
+Soto to explore the skirts of the vast sierra.
+
+He maintained a rigid discipline on the march, commanding his soldiers
+to abstain from all acts of violence, and punishing disobedience in the
+most prompt and resolute manner.3  The natives rarely offered
+resistance.  When they did so, they were soon reduced, and Pizarro, far
+from vindictive measures, was open to the first demonstrations of
+submission.  By this lenient and liberal policy, he soon acquired a name
+among the inhabitants which effaced the unfavorable impressions made
+of him in the earlier part of the campaign.  The natives, as he marched
+through the thick-settled hamlets which sprinkled the level region
+between the Cordilleras and the ocean, welcomed him with rustic
+hospitality, providing good quarters for his troops, and abundant
+supplies, which cost but little in the prolific soil of the tierra caliente.
+Everywhere Pizarro made proclamation that he came in the name of the
+Holy Vicar of God and of the sovereign of Spain, requiring the
+obedience of the inhabitants as true children of the Church, and vassals
+of his lord and master.  And as the simple people made no opposition to
+a formula, of which they could not comprehend a syllable, they were
+admitted as good subjects of the Crown of Castile, and their act of
+homage--or what was readily interpreted as such--was duly recorded and
+attested by the notary.4
+
+At the expiration of some three or four weeks spent in reconnoitring the
+country, Pizarro came to the conclusion that the most eligible site for his
+new settlement was in the rich valley of Tangarala, thirty leagues south
+of Tumbez, traversed by more than one stream that opens a
+communication with the ocean.  To this spot, accordingly, he ordered the
+men left at Tumbez to repair at once in their vessels; and no sooner had
+they arrived, than busy preparations were made for building up the town
+in a manner suited to the wants of the colony.  Timber was procured
+from the neighboring woods.  Stones were dragged from their quarries,
+and edifices gradually rose, some of which made pretensions to strength,
+if not to elegance.  Among them were a church, a magazine for public
+stores, a hall of justice, and a fortress.  A municipal government was
+organized, consisting of regidores, alcaldes, and the usual civic
+functionaries.  The adjacent territory was parcelled out among the
+residents, and each colonist had a certain number of the natives allotted
+to assist him in his labors; for, as Pizarro's secretary remarks, "it being
+evident that the colonists could not support themselves without the
+services of the Indians, the ecclesiastics and the leaders of the expedition
+all agreed that a repartimiento of the natives would serve the cause of
+religion, and tend greatly to their spiritual welfare, since they would thus
+have the opportunity of being initiated in the true faith." 5
+
+Having made these arrangements with such conscientious regard to the
+welfare of the benighted heathen, Pizarro gave his infant city the name of
+San Miguel, in acknowledgment of the service rendered him by that saint
+in his battles with the Indians of Puna.  The site originally occupied by
+the settlement was afterward found to be so unhealthy, that it was
+abandoned for another on the banks of the beautiful Piura.  The town is
+still of some note for its manufactures, though dwindled from its ancient
+importance; but the name of San Miguel de Piura, which it bears, still
+commemorates the foundation of the first European colony in the empire
+of the Incas.
+
+Before quitting the new settlement, Pizarro caused the gold and silver
+ornaments which he had obtained in different parts of the country to be
+melted down into one mass, and a fifth to be deducted for the Crown.
+The remainder, which belonged to the troops, he persuaded them to
+relinquish for the present; under the assurance of being repaid from the
+first spoils that fell into their hands.6  With these funds, and other
+articles collected in the course of the campaign, he sent back the vessels
+to Panama.  The gold was applied to paying off the ship-owners, and
+those who had furnished the stores for the expedition.  That he should so
+easily have persuaded his men to resign present possession for a future
+contingency is proof that the spirit of enterprise was renewed in their
+bosoms in all its former vigor, and that they looked forward with the
+same buoyant confidence to the results.
+
+In his late tour of observation, the Spanish commander had gathered
+much important intelligence in regard to the state of the kingdom.  He
+had ascertained the result of the struggle between the Inca brothers, and
+that the victor now lay with his army encamped at the distance of only
+ten or twelve days' journey from San Miguel.  The accounts he heard of
+the opulence and power of that monarch, and of his great southern
+capital, perfectly corresponded with the general rumors before received;
+and contained, therefore, something to stagger the confidence, as well as
+to stimulate the cupidity, of the invaders.
+
+Pizarro would gladly have seen his little army strengthened by
+reinforcements, however small the amount; and on that account
+postponed his departure for several weeks.  But no reinforcement
+arrived; and, as he received no further tidings from his associates, he
+judged that longer delay would, probably, be attended with evils greater
+than those to be encountered on the march; that discontents would
+inevitably spring up in a life of inaction, and the strength and spirits of
+the soldier sink under the enervating influence of a tropical climate.  Yet
+the force at his command, amounting to less than two hundred soldiers in
+all, after reserving fifty for the protection of the new settlement, seemed
+but a small one for the conquest of an empire.  He might, indeed, instead
+of marching against the Inca, take a southerly direction towards the rich
+capital of Cuzco.  But this would only be to postpone the hour of
+reckoning.  For in what quarter of the empire could he hope to set his
+foot, where the arm of its master would not reach him? By such a course,
+moreover, he would show his own distrust of himself.  He would shake
+that opinion of his invincible prowess, which he had hitherto endeavored
+to impress on the natives, and which constituted a great secret of his
+strength; which, in short, held sterner sway over the mind than the
+display of numbers and mere physical force.  Worse than all, such a
+course would impair the confidence of his troops in themselves and their
+reliance on himself.  This would be to palsy the arm of enterprise at
+once.  It was not to be thought of.
+
+But while Pizarro decided to march into the interior, it is doubtful
+whether he had formed any more definite plan of action.  We have no
+means of knowing his intentions, at this distance of time, otherwise than
+as they are shown by his actions.  Unfortunately, he could not write, and
+he has left no record, like the inestimable Commentaries of Cortes, to
+enlighten us as to his motives.  His secretary, and some of his
+companions in arms, have recited his actions in detail; but the motives
+which led to them they were not always so competent to disclose.
+
+It is possible that the Spanish general, even so early as the period of his
+residence at San Miguel, may have meditated some daring stroke, some
+effective coup-de-main, which, like that of Cortes, when he carried off
+the Aztec monarch to his quarters, might strike terror into the hearts of
+the people, and at once decide the fortunes of the day.  It is more
+probable, however, that he now only proposed to present himself before
+the Inca, as the peaceful representative of a brother monarch, and, by
+these friendly demonstrations, disarm any feeling of hostility, or even of
+suspicion.  When once in communication with the Indian prince, he
+could regulate his future course by circumstances.
+
+On the 24th of September, 1532, five months after landing at Tumbez,
+Pizarro marched out at the head of his little body of adventurers from the
+gates of San Miguel, having enjoined it on the colonists to treat their
+Indian vassals with humanity, and to conduct themselves in such a
+manner as would secure the good-will of the surrounding tribes.  Their
+own existence, and with it the safety of the army and the success of the
+undertaking, depended on this course.  In the place were to remain the
+royal treasurer, the veedor, or inspector of metals, and other officers of
+the crown; and the command of the garrison was intrusted to the
+contador, Antonio Nayafro.7  Then putting himself at the head of his
+troops, the chief struck boldly into the heart of the country in the
+direction where, as he was informed, lay the camp of the Inca.  It was a
+daring enterprise, thus to venture with a handful of followers into the
+heart of a powerful empire, to present himself, face to face, before the
+Indian monarch in his own camp, encompassed by the flower of his
+victorious army!  Pizarro had already experienced more than once the
+difficulty of maintaining his ground against the rude tribes of the north,
+so much inferior in strength and numbers to the warlike legions of Peru.
+But the hazard of the game, as I have already more than once had
+occasion to remark, constituted its great charm with the Spaniard.  The
+brilliant achievements of his countrymen, on the like occasions, with
+means so inadequate, inspired him with confidence in his own good star;
+and this confidence was one source of his success.  Had he faltered for a
+moment, had he stopped to calculate chances, he must inevitably have
+failed; for the odds were too great to be combated by sober reason.  They
+were only to be met triumphantly by the spirit of the knight-errant.
+
+After crossing the smooth waters of the Piura, the little army continued
+to advance over a level district intersected by streams that descended
+from the neighboring Cordilleras.  The face of the country was shagged
+over with forests of gigantic growth, and occasionally traversed by ridges
+of barren land, that seemed like shoots of the adjacent Andes breaking up
+the surface of the region into little sequestered valleys of singular
+loveliness.  The soil, though rarely watered by the rains of heaven, was
+naturally rich, and wherever it was refreshed with moisture, as on the
+margins of the streams, it was enamelled with the brightest verdure.  The
+industry of the inhabitants, moreover, had turned these streams to the
+best account, and canals and aqueducts were seen crossing the low lands
+in all directions, and spreading over the country, like a vast network,
+diffusing fertility and beauty around them.  The air was scented with the
+sweet odors of flowers, and everywhere the eye was refreshed by the
+sight of orchards laden with unknown fruits, and of fields waving with
+yellow grain and rich in luscious vegetables of every description that
+teem in the sunny clime of the equator.  The Spaniards were among a
+people who had carried the refinements of husbandry to a greater extent
+than any yet found on the American continent; and, as they journeyed
+through this paradise of plenty, their condition formed a pleasing
+contrast to what they had before endured in the dreary wilderness of the
+mangroves.
+
+Everywhere, too, they were received with confiding hospitality by the
+simple people; for which they were no doubt indebted, in a great
+measure, to their own inoffensive deportment.  Every Spaniard seemed
+to be aware, that his only chance of success lay in conciliating the good
+opinion of the inhabitants, among whom he had so recklessly cast his
+fortunes.  In most of the hamlets, and in every place of considerable size,
+some fortress was to be found, or royal caravansary, destined for the Inca
+on his progresses, the ample halls of which furnished abundant
+accommodations for the Spaniards; who were thus provided with
+quarters along their route at the charge of the very government which
+they were preparing to overturn.8
+
+On the fifth day after leaving San Miguel, Pizarro halted in one of these
+delicious valleys, to give his troops repose, and to make a more complete
+inspection of them.  Their number amounted in all to one hundred and
+seventy-seven, of which sixty-seven were cavalry.  He mustered only
+three arquebusiers in his whole company, and a few crossbow-men,
+altogether not exceeding twenty.9  The troops were tolerably well
+equipped, and in good condition.  But the watchful eye of their
+commander noticed with uneasiness, that, notwithstanding the general
+heartiness, in the cause manifested by his followers, there were some
+among them whose countenances lowered with discontent, and who,
+although they did not give vent to it in open murmurs, were far from
+moving with their wonted alacrity.
+
+He was aware, that, if this spirit became contagious, it would be the ruin
+of the enterprise; and he thought it best to exterminate the gangrene; at
+once, and at whatever cost, than to wait until it had infected the whole
+system.  He came to an extraordinary resolution.
+
+Calling his men together, he told them that "a crisis had now arrived in
+their affairs, which it demanded all their courage to meet.  No man
+should think of going forward in the expedition, who could not do so
+with his whole heart, or who had the least misgiving as to its success.  If
+any repented of his share in it, it was not too late to turn back.  San
+Miguel was but poorly garrisoned, and he should be glad to see it in
+greater strength.  Those who chose might return to this place, and they
+should be entitled to the same proportion of lands and Indian vassals as
+the present residents.  With the rest, were they few or many, who chose
+to take their chance with him, he should pursue the adventure to the
+end."10
+
+It was certainly a remarkable proposal for a commander, who was
+ignorant of the amount of disaffection in his ranks, and who could not
+safely spare a single man from his force, already far too feeble for the
+undertaking.  Yet, by insisting on the wants of the little colony of San
+Miguel, he afforded a decent pretext for the secession of the
+malecontents, and swept away the barrier of shame which might have
+still held them in the camp.  Notwithstanding the fair opening thus
+afforded, there were but few, nine in all, who availed themselves of the
+general's permission.  Four of these belonged to the infantry, and five to
+the horse.  The rest loudly declared their resolve to go forward with their
+brave leader; and, if there were some whose voices were faint amidst the
+general acclamation, they, at least, relinquished the right of complaining
+hereafter, since they had voluntarily rejected the permission to return.11
+This stroke of policy in their sagacious captain was attended with the
+best effects.  He had winnowed out the few grains of discontent, which,
+if left to themselves, might have fermented in secret till the whole mass
+had swelled into mutiny.  Cortes had compelled his men to go forward
+heartily in his enterprise, by burning their vessels, and thus cutting off
+the only means of retreat.  Pizarro, on the other hand, threw open the
+gates to the disaffected and facilitated their departure.  Both judged right,
+under their peculiar circumstances, and both were perfectly successful.
+
+Feeling himself strengthened, instead of weakened, by his loss, Pizarro
+now resumed his march, and, on the second day, arrived before a place
+called Zaran, situated in a fruitful valley among the mountains.  Some of
+the inhabitants had been drawn off to swell the levies of Atahuallpa.  The
+Spaniards had repeated experience on their march of the oppressive
+exactions of the Inca, who had almost depopulated some of the valleys to
+obtain reinforcements for his army.  The curaca of the Indian town where
+Pizarro now arrived, received him with kindness and hospitality, and the
+troops were quartered as usual in one of the royal tambos or
+caravansaries, which were found in all the principal places.12
+
+Yet the Spaniards saw no signs of their approach to the royal
+encampment, though more time had already elapsed than was originally
+allowed for reaching it.  Shortly before entering Zaran, Pizarro had heard
+that a Peruvian garrison was established in a place called Caxas, lying
+among the hills, at no great distance from his present quarters.  He
+immediately despatched a small party under Hernando de Soto in that
+direction, to reconnoitre the ground, and bring him intelligence of the
+actual state of things, at Zaran, where he would halt until his officer's
+return.
+
+Day after day passed on, and a week had elapsed before tidings were
+received of his companions, and Pizarro was becoming seriously alarmed
+for their fate, when on the eighth morning Soto appeared, bringing with
+him an envoy from the Inca himself.  He was a person of rank, and was
+attended by several followers of inferior condition.  He had met the
+Spaniards at Caxas, and now accompanied them on their return, to
+deliver his sovereign's message, with a present to the Spanish
+commander.  The present consisted of two fountains, made of stone, in
+the form of fortresses; some fine stuffs of woollen embroidered with gold
+and silver; and a quantity of goose-flesh, dried and seasoned in a peculiar
+manner, and much used as a perfume, in a pulverized state, by the
+Peruvian nobles.13  The Indian ambassador came charged also with his
+master's greeting to the strangers, whom Atahuallpa welcomed to his
+country, and invited to visit him in his camp among the mountains.14
+
+Pizarro well understood that the Inca's object in this diplomatic visit was
+less to do him courtesy, than to inform himself of the strength and
+condition of the invaders.  But he was well pleased with the embassy,
+and dissembled his consciousness of its real purpose.  He caused the
+Peruvian to be entertained in the best manner the camp could afford, and
+paid him the respect, says one of the Conquerors, due to the ambassador
+of so great a monarch.15  Pizarro urged him to prolong his visit for some
+days, which the Indian envoy declined, but made the most of his time
+while there, by gleaning all the information he could in respect to the
+uses of every strange article which he saw, as well as the object of the
+white men's visit to the land, and the quarter whence they came.
+
+The Spanish captain satisfied his curiosity in all these particulars.  The
+intercourse with the natives, it may be here remarked, was maintained by
+means of two of the youths who had accompanied the Conquerors on
+their return home from their preceding voyage.  They had been taken by
+Pizarro to Spain, and, as much pains had been bestowed on teaching
+them the Castilian, they now filled the office of interpreters, and opened
+an easy communication with their countrymen.  It was of inestimable
+service; and well did the Spanish commander reap the fruits of his
+forecast.16
+
+On the departure of the Peruvian messenger, Pizarro presented him with
+a cap of crimson cloth, some cheap but showy ornaments of glass, and
+other toys, which he had brought for the purpose from Castile.  He
+charged the envoy to tell his master, that the Spaniards came from a
+powerful prince, who dwelt far beyond the waters; that they had heard
+much of the fame of Atahuallpa's victories, and were come to pay their
+respects to him, and to offer their services by aiding him with their arms
+against his enemies; and he might be assured, they would not halt on the
+road, longer than was necessary, before presenting themselves before
+him.
+
+Pizarro now received from Soto a full account of his late expedition.
+That chief, on entering Caxas, found the inhabitants mustered in hostile
+array, as if to dispute his passage.  But the cavalier soon convinced them
+of his pacific intentions, and, laying aside their menacing attitude, they
+received the Spaniards with the same courtesy which had been shown
+them in most places on their march.
+
+Here Soto found one of the royal officers, employed in collecting the
+tribute for the government.  From this functionary he learned that the
+Inca was quartered with a large army at Caxamalca, a place of
+considerable size on the other side of the Cordillera, where he was
+enjoying the luxury of the warm baths, supplied by natural springs, for
+which it was then famous, as it is at the present day.  The cavalier
+gathered, also, much important information in regard to the resources
+and the general policy of government, the state maintained by the Inca,
+and the stern severity with which obedience to the law was everywhere
+enforced.  He had some opportunity of observing this for himself, as, on
+entering the village, he saw several Indians hanging dead by their heels,
+having been executed for some violence offered to the Virgins of the
+Sun, of whom there was a convent in the neighborhood.17
+
+From Caxas, De Soto had passed to the adjacent town of Guancabamba,
+much larger, more populous, and better built than the preceding.  The
+houses, instead of being made of clay baked in the sun, were many of
+them constructed of solid stone, so nicely put together, that it was
+impossible to detect the line of junction.  A river, which passed through
+the town, was traversed by a bridge, and the high road of the Incas,
+which crossed this district, was far superior to that which the Spaniards
+had seen on the sea-board.  It was raised in many places, like a
+causeway, paved with heavy stone flags, and bordered by trees that
+afforded a grateful shade to the passenger, while streams of water were
+conducted through aqueducts along the sides to slake his thirst. At
+certain distances, also, they noticed small houses, which, they were told,
+were for the accommodation of the traveller, who might thus pass,
+without inconvenience, from one end of the kingdom to the other.18  In
+another quarter they beheld one of those magazines destined for the
+army, filled with grain, and with articles of clothing; and at the entrance
+of the town was a stone building, occupied by a public officer, whose
+business it was to collect the toils or duties on various commodities
+brought into the place, or carried out of it.19  These accounts of De Soto
+not only confirmed all that the Spaniards had heard of the Indian empire,
+but greatly raised their ideas of its resources and domestic policy.  They
+might well have shaken the confidence of hearts less courageous.
+
+Pizarro, before leaving his present quarters, despatched a messenger to
+San Miguel with particulars of his movements, sending, at the same time,
+the articles received from the Inca, as well as those obtained at different
+places on the route.  The skill shown in the execution of some of these
+fabrics excited great admiration, when sent to Castile.  The fine woollen
+cloths, especially, with their rich embroidery, were pronounced equal to
+silk, from which it was not easy to distinguish them.  It was probably the
+delicate wool of the vicuna, none of which had then been seen in
+Europe.20
+
+Pizarro, having now acquainted himself with the most direct route to
+Caxamalca,--the Caxamarca of the present day,--resumed his march,
+taking a direction nearly south.  The first place of any size at which he
+halted was Motupe, pleasantly situated in a fruitful valley, among hills of
+no great elevation, which cluster round the base of the Cordilleras.  The
+place was deserted by its curaca, who, with three hundred of its warriors,
+had gone to join the standard of their Inca.  Here the general,
+notwithstanding his avowed purpose to push forward without delay,
+halted four days.  The tardiness of his movements can be explained only
+by the hope, which he may have still entertained of being joined by
+further reinforcements before crossing the Cordilleras.  None such
+appeared, however; and advancing across a country in which tracts of
+sandy plain were occasionally relieved by a broad expanse of verdant
+meadow, watered by natural streams and still more abundantly by those
+brought through artificial channels, the troops at length arrived at the
+borders of a river.  It was broad and deep, and the rapidity of the current
+opposed more than ordinary difficulty to the passage.  Pizarro,
+apprehensive lest this might be disputed by the natives on the opposite
+bank, ordered his brother Hernando to cross over with a small
+detachement under cover of night, and secure a safe landing for the rest
+of the troops.  At break of day Pizarro made preparations for his own
+passage, by hewing timber in the neighboring woods, and constructing a
+sort of floating bridge, on which before nightfall the whole company
+passed in safety, the horses swimming, being led by the bridle.  It was a
+day of severe labor, and Pizarro took his own share in it freely, like a
+common soldier, having ever a word of encouragement to say to his
+followers.
+
+On reaching the opposite side, they learned from their comrades that the
+people of the country, instead of offering resistance, had fled in dismay.
+One of them, having been taken and brought before Hernando Pizarro,
+refused to answer the questions put to him respecting the Inca and his
+army; till, being put to the torture, he stated that Atahuallpa was
+encamped, with his whole force, in three separate divisions, occupying
+the high grounds and plains of Caxamalca.  He further stated, that the
+Inca was aware of the approach of the white men and of their small
+number, and that he was purposely decoying them into his own quarters,
+that he might have them more completely in his power.
+
+This account, when reported by Hernando to his brother, caused the
+latter much anxiety.  As the timidity of the peasantry, however, gradually
+wore off, some of them mingled with the troops, and among them the
+curaca or principal person of the village.  He had himself visited the
+royal camp, and he informed the general that Atahuallpa lay at the strong
+town of Guamachucho, twenty leagues or more south of Caxamalca, with
+an army of at least fifty thousand men.
+
+These contradictory statements greatly perplexed the chieftain; and he
+proposed to one of the Indians who had borne him company during a
+great part of the march, to go as a spy into the Inca's quarters, and bring
+him intelligence of his actual position, and, as far as he could learn them,
+of his intentions towards the Spaniards.  But the man positively declined
+this dangerous service, though he professed his willingness to go as an
+authorized messenger of the Spanish commander.
+
+Pizarro acquiesced in this proposal, and instructed his envoy to assure
+the Inca that he was advancing with all convenient speed to meet him.
+He was to acquaint the monarch with the uniformly considerate conduct
+of the Spaniards towards his subjects, in their progress through the land,
+and to assure him that they were now coming in full confidence of
+finding in him the same amicable feelings towards themselves.  The
+emissary was particularly instructed to observe if the strong passes on the
+road were defended, or if any preparations of a hostile character were to
+be discerned.  This last intelligence he was to communicate to the
+general by means of two or three nimble-footed attendants, who were to
+accompany him on his mission.21
+
+Having taken this precaution, the wary commander again resumed his
+march, and at the end of three days reached the base of the mountain
+rampart, behind which lay the ancient town of Caxamalca.  Before him
+rose the stupendous Andes, rock piled upon rock, their skirts below dark
+with evergreen forests, varied here and there by terraced patches of
+cultivated garden, with the peasant's cottage clinging to their shaggy
+sides, and their crests of snow glittering high in the heavens,--presenting
+altogether such a wild chaos of magnificence and beauty as no other
+mountain scenery in the world can show.  Across this tremendous
+rampart, through a labyrinth of passes, easily capable of defence by a
+handful of men against an army, the troops were now to march.  To the
+right ran a broad and level road, with its border of friendly shades, and
+wide enough for two carriages to pass abreast. It was one of the great
+routes leading to Cuzco, and seemed by its pleasant and easy access to
+invite the wayworn soldier to choose it in preference to the dangerous
+mountain defiles.  Many were accordingly of opinion that the army
+should take this course, and abandon the original destination to
+Caxamalca.  But such was not the decision of Pizarro.
+
+The Spaniards had everywhere proclaimed their purpose, he said, to visit
+the Inca in his camp.  This purpose had been communicated to the Inca
+himself.  To take an opposite direction now would only be to draw on
+them the imputation of cowardice, and to incur Atahuallpa's contempt.
+No alternative remained but to march straight across the sierra to his
+quarters "Let every one of you," said the bold cavalier, "take heart and
+go forward like a good soldier, nothing daunted by the smallness of your
+numbers.  For in the greatest extremity God ever fights for his own; and
+doubt not he will humble the pride of the heathen, and bring him to the
+knowledge of the true faith, the great end and object of the Conquest."
+22
+
+Pizarro, like Cortes, possessed a good share of that frank and manly
+eloquence which touches the heart of the soldier more than the parade of
+rhetoric or the finest flow of elocution.  He was a soldier himself, and
+partook in all the feelings of the soldier, his joys, his hopes, and his
+disappointments.  He was not raised by rank and education above
+sympathy with the humblest of his followers.  Every chord in their
+bosoms vibrated with the same pulsations as his own, and the conviction
+of this gave him a mastery over them.  "Lead on," they shouted, as he
+finished his brief but animating address, "lead on wherever you think
+best. We will follow with good-will, and you shall see that we can do our
+duty in the cause of God and the King!" 23  There was no longer
+hesitation.  All thoughts were now bent on the instant passage of the
+Cordilleras.
+
+
+
+Book 3
+
+Chapter 4
+
+Severe Passage Of The Andes--Embassies From Atahuallpa--
+The Spaniards Reach Caxamalca--Embassy To The Inca--
+Interview With The Inca--Despondency Of The Spaniards
+
+1532
+
+That night Pizarro held a council of his principal officers, and it was
+determined that he should lead the advance, consisting of forty horse and
+sixty foot, and reconnoitre the ground; while the rest of the company,
+under his brother Hernando, should occupy their present position till they
+received further orders.
+
+At early dawn the Spanish general and his detachment were under arms,
+and prepared to breast the difficulties of the sierra.  These proved even
+greater than had been foreseen.  The path had been conducted in the
+most judicious manner round the rugged and precipitous sides of the
+mountains, so as best to avoid the natural impediments presented by the
+ground.  But it was necessarily so steep, in many places, that the cavalry
+were obliged to dismount, and, scrambling up as they could, to lead their
+horses by the bridle.  In many places, too, where some huge crag or
+eminence overhung the road, this was driven to the very verge of the
+precipice; and the traveller was compelled to wind along the narrow
+ledge of rock, scarcely wide enough for his single steed, where a misstep
+would precipitate him hundreds, nay, thousands, of feet into the dreadful
+abyss!  The wild passes of the sierra, practicable for the half-naked
+Indian, and even for the sure and circumspect mule,--an animal that
+seems to have been created for the roads of the Cordilleras,--were
+formidable to the man-at-arms encumbered with his panoply of mail.
+The tremendous fissures or quebradas, so frightful in this mountain
+chain, yawned open, as if the Andes had been split asunder by some
+terrible convulsion, showing a broad expanse of the primitive rock on
+their sides, partially mantled over with the spontaneous vegetation of
+ages; while their obscure depths furnished a channel for the torrents, that,
+rising in the heart of the sierra, worked their way gradually into light, and
+spread over the savannas and green valleys of the tierra caliente on their
+way to the great ocean.
+
+Many of these passes afforded obvious points of defence; and the
+Spaniards, as they entered the rocky defiles, looked with apprehension
+lest they might rouse some foe from his ambush.  This apprehension was
+heightened, as, at the summit of a steep and narrow gorge, in which they
+were engaged, they beheld a strong work, rising like a fortress, and
+frowning, as it were, in gloomy defiance on the invaders.  As they drew
+near this building, which was of solid stone, commanding an angle of the
+road, they almost expected to see the dusky forms of the warriors rise
+over the battlements, and to receive their tempest of missiles on their
+bucklers; for it was in so strong a position, that a few resolute men might
+easily have held there an army at bay.  But they had the satisfaction to
+find the place untenanted, and their spirits were greatly raised by the
+conviction that the Indian monarch did not intend to dispute their
+passage, when it would have been easy to do so with success.
+
+Pizarro now sent orders to his brother to follow without delay; and, after
+refreshing his men, continued his toilsome ascent, and before nightfall
+reached an eminence crowned by another fortress, of even greater
+strength than the preceding.  It was built of solid masonry, the lower part
+excavated from the living rock, and the whole work executed with skill
+not inferior to that of the European architect.1
+
+Here Pizarro took up his quarters for the night.  Without waiting for the
+arrival of the rear, on the following morning he resumed his march,
+leading still deeper into the intricate gorges of the sierra.  The climate
+had gradually changed, and the men and horses, especially the latter,
+suffered severely from the cold, so long accustomed as they had been to
+the sultry climate of the tropics.2  The vegetation also had changed its
+character; and the magnificent timber which covered the lower level of
+the country had gradually given way to the funereal forest of pine, and,
+as they rose still higher, to the stunted growth of numberless Alpine
+plants, whose hardy natures found a congenial temperature in the icy
+atmosphere of the more elevated regions.  These dreary solitudes seemed
+to be nearly abandoned by the brute creation as well as by man.  The
+light-footed vicuna, roaming in its native state, might be sometimes seen
+looking down from some airy cliff, where the foot of the hunter dared not
+venture.  But instead of the feathered tribes whose gay plumage sparkled
+in the deep glooms of the tropical forests, the adventurers now beheld
+only the great bird of the Andes, the loathsome condor, who, sailing high
+above the clouds, followed with doleful cries in the track of the army, as
+if guided by instinct in the path of blood and carnage.
+
+At length they reached the crest of the Cordillera, where it spreads out
+into a bold and bleak expanse, with scarce the vestige of vegetation,
+except what is afforded by the pajonal, a dried yellow grass, which, as it
+is seen from below, encircling the base of the snow-covered peaks,
+looks, with its brilliant straw-color lighted up in the rays of an ardent
+sun, like a setting of gold round pinnacles of burnished silver.  The land
+was sterile, as usual in mining districts, and they were drawing near the
+once famous gold quarries on the way to Caxamalca;
+
+"Rocks rich in gems, and mountains big with mines,
+That on the high equator ridgy rise."
+
+Here Pizarro halted for the coming up of the rear.  The air was sharp and
+frosty; and the soldiers, spreading their tents, lighted fires, and, huddling
+round them, endeavored to find some repose after their laborious
+march.3
+
+They had not been long in these quarters, when a messenger arrived, one
+of those who had accompanied the Indian envoy sent by Pizarro to
+Atahuallpa.  He informed the general that the road was free from
+enemies, and that an embassy from the Inca was on its way to the
+Castilian camp.  Pizarro now sent back to quicken the march of the rear,
+as he was unwilling that the Peruvian envoy should find him with his
+present diminished numbers.  The rest of the army were not far distant,
+and not long after reached the encampment.
+
+In a short time the Indian embassy also arrived, which consisted of one
+of the Inca nobles and several attendants, bringing a welcome present of
+llamas to the Spanish commander.  The Peruvian bore, also, the
+greetings of his master, who wished to know when the Spaniards would
+arrive at Caxamalca, that he might provide suitable refreshments for
+them.  Pizarro learned that the Inca had left Guamachucho, and was now
+lying with a small force in the neighborhood of Caxamalca, at a place
+celebrated for its natural springs of warm water.  The Peruvian was an
+intelligent person, and the Spanish commander gathered from him many
+particulars respecting the late contests which had distracted the empire.
+
+As the envoy vaunted in lofty terms the military prowess and resources
+of his sovereign, Pizarro thought it politic to show that it had no power to
+overawe him.  He expressed his satisfaction at the triumphs of
+Atahuallpa, who, he acknowledged, had raised himself high in the rank
+of Indian warriors.  But he was as inferior, he added with more policy
+than politeness, to the monarch who ruled over the white men, as the
+petty curacas of the country were inferior to him.  This was evident from
+the ease with which a few Spaniards had overrun this great continent,
+subduing one nation after another, that had offered resistance to their
+arms.  He had been led by the fame of Atahuallpa to visit his dominions,
+and to offer him his services in his wars; and, if he were received by the
+Inca in the same friendly spirit with which he came, he was willing, for
+the aid he could render him, to postpone awhile his passage across the
+country to the opposite seas.  The Indian, according to the Castilian
+accounts, listened with awe to this strain of glorification from the
+Spanish commander.  Yet it is possible that the envoy was a better
+diplomatist than they imagined; and that he understood it was only the
+game of brag at which he was playing with his more civilized
+antagonist.4
+
+On the succeeding morning, at an early hour, the troops were again on
+their march, and for two days were occupied in threading the airy defiles
+of the Cordilleras.  Soon after beginning their descent on the eastern
+side, another emissary arrived from the Inca, bearing a message of
+similar import to the preceding, and a present, in like manner, of
+Peruvian sheep.  This was the same noble that had visited Pizarro in the
+valley.  He now came in more state, quaffing chicha--the fermented juice
+of the maize-from golden goblets borne by his attendants, which sparkled
+in the eyes of the rapacious adventurers.5
+
+While he was in the camp, the Indian messenger, originally sent by
+Pizarro to the Inca, returned, and no sooner did he behold the Peruvian,
+and the honorable reception which he met with from the Spaniards, than
+he was filled with wrath, which would have vented itself in personal
+violence, but for the interposition of the by-standers.  It was hard, he
+said, that this Peruvian dog should be thus courteously treated, when he
+himself had nearly lost his life on a similar mission among his
+countrymen.  On reaching the Inca's camp, he had been refused
+admission to his presence, on the ground that he was keeping a fast and
+could not be seen.  They had paid no respect to his assertion that he came
+as an envoy from the white men, and would, probably, not have suffered
+him to escape with life, if he had not assured them that any violence
+offered to him would be retaliated in full measure on the persons of the
+Peruvian envoys, now in the Spanish quarters.  There was no doubt, he
+continued of the hostile intentions of Atahuallpa; for he was surrounded
+with a powerful army, strongly encamped about a league from
+Caxamalca, while that city was entirely evacuated by its inhabitants.
+
+To all this the Inca's envoy coolly replied, that Pizarro's messenger might
+have reckoned on such a reception as he had found, since he seemed to
+have taken with him no credentials of his mission.  As to the Inca's fast,
+that was true; and, although he would doubtless have seen the messenger,
+had he known there was one from the strangers, yet it was not safe to
+disturb him at these solemn seasons, when engaged in his religious
+duties.  The troops by whom he was surrounded were not numerous,
+considering that the Inca was at that time carrying on an important war;
+and as to Caxamalca, it was abandoned by the inhabitants in order to
+make room for the white men, who were so soon to occupy it.6
+
+This explanation, however plausible, did not altogether satisfy the
+general; for he had too deep a conviction of the cunning of Atahuallpa,
+whose intentions towards the Spaniards he had long greatly distrusted. As
+he proposed, however, to keep on friendly relations with the monarch for
+the present, it was obviously not his cue to manifest suspicion.
+Affecting, therefore, to give full credit to the explanation of the envoy,
+he dismissed him with reiterated assurances of speedily presenting
+himself before the Inca.
+
+The descent of the sierra, though the Andes are less precipitous on their
+eastern side than towards the west, was attended with difficulties almost
+equal to those of the upward march; and the Spaniards felt no little
+satisfaction, when, on the seventh day, they arrived in view of the valley
+of Caxamalca, which, enamelled with all the beauties of cultivation, lay
+unrolled like a rich and variegated carpet of verdure, in strong contrast
+with the dark forms of the Andes, that rose up everywhere around it.
+The valley is of an oval shape, extending about five leagues in length by
+three in breadth.  It was inhabited by a population of a superior character
+to any which the Spaniards had met on the other side of the mountains,
+as was argued by the superior style of their attire, and the greater
+cleanliness and comfort visible both in their persons and dwellings.7  As
+far as the eye could reach, the level tract exhibited the show of a diligent
+and thrifty husbandry.  A broad river rolled through the meadows,
+supplying facilities for copious irrigation by means of the usual canals
+and subterraneous aqueducts.  The land, intersected by verdant hedge-
+rows, was checkered with patches of various cultivation; for the soil was
+rich, and the climate, if less stimulating than that of the sultry regions of
+the coast, was more favorable to the hardy products of the temperate
+latitudes.  Below the adventurers, with its white houses glittering in the
+sun, lay the little city of Caxamalca, like a sparkling gem on the dark
+skirts of the sierra.  At the distance of about a league farther, across the
+valley, might be seen columns of vapor rising up towards the heavens,
+indicating the place of the famous hot baths, much frequented by the
+Peruvian princes.  And here, too, was a spectacle less grateful to the eyes
+of the Spaniards; for along the slope of the hills a white cloud of
+pavilions was seen covering the ground, as thick as snow-flakes, for the
+space, apparently, of several miles.  "It filled us all with amazement,"
+exclaims one of the Conquerors, "to behold the Indians occupying so
+proud a position!  So many tents, so well appointed, as were never seen
+in the Indies till now!  The spectacle caused something like confusion
+and even fear in the stoutest bosom.  But it was too late to turn back, or
+to betray the least sign of weakness, since the natives in our own
+company would, in such case, have been the first to rise upon us.  So,
+with as bold a countenance as we could, after coolly surveying the
+ground, we prepared for our entrance into Caxamalca."8
+
+What were the feelings of the Peruvian monarch we are not informed,
+when he gazed on the martial cavalcade of the Christians, as, with
+banners streaming, and bright panoplies glistening in the rays of the
+evening sun, it emerged from the dark depths of the sierra, and advanced
+in hostile array over the fair domain, which, to this period, had never
+been trodden by other foot than that of the red man.  It might be, as
+several of the reports had stated, that the Inca had purposely decoyed the
+adventurers into the heart of his populous empire, that he might envelope
+them with his legions, and the more easily become master of their
+property and persons.9  Or was it from a natural feeling of curiosity, and
+relying on their professions of friendship, that he had thus allowed them,
+without any attempt at resistance, to come into his presence?  At all
+events, he could hardly have felt such confidence in himself, as not to
+look with apprehension, mingled with awe, on the mysterious strangers,
+who, coming from an unknown world, and possessed of such wonderful
+gifts, had made their way across mountain and valley, in spite of every
+obstacle which man and nature had opposed to them.
+
+Pizarro, meanwhile, forming his little corps into three divisions, now
+moved forward, at a more measured pace, and in order of battle, down
+the slopes that led towards the Indian city.  As he drew near, no one
+came out to welcome him; and he rode through the streets without
+meeting with a living thing, or hearing a sound, except the echoes, sent
+back from the deserted dwellings, of the tramp of the soldiery.
+
+It was a place of considerable size, containing about ten thousand
+inhabitants, somewhat more, probably, than the population assembled at
+this day within the walls of the modern city of Caxamalca.10  The
+houses, for the most part, were built of clay, hardened in the sun; the
+roofs thatched, or of timber.  Some of the more ambitious dwellings were
+of hewn stone; and there was a convent in the place, occupied by the
+Virgins of the Sun, and a temple dedicated to the same tutelar deity,
+which last was hidden in the deep embowering shades of a grove on the
+skirts of the city.  On the quarter towards the Indian camp was a square--
+if square it might be called, which was almost triangular in form---of an
+immense size, surrounded by low buildings.  These consisted of
+capacious halls, with wide doors or openings communicating with the
+square.  They were probably intended as a sort of barracks for the Inca's
+soldiers.11  At the end of the plaza, looking towards the country, was a
+fortress of stones with a stairway leading from the city, and a private
+entrance from the adjoining suburbs.  There was still another fortress on
+the rising ground which commanded the town, built of hewn stone, and
+encompassed by three circular walls,--or rather one and the same wall,
+which wound up spirally around it.  It was a place of great strength, and
+the workmanship showed a better knowledge of masonry, and gave a
+higher impression of the architectural science of the people, than
+anything the Spaniards had yet seen.12
+
+It was late in the afternoon of the fifteenth of November, 1532, when the
+Conquerors entered the city of Caxamalca.  The weather, which had been
+fair during the day, now threatened a storm, and some rain mingled with
+hail--for it was unusually cold--began to fall.13  Pizarro, however, was
+so anxious to ascertain the dispositions of the Inca, that he determined to
+send an embassy, at once, to his quarters.  He selected for this, Hernando
+de Soto with fifteen horse, and, after his departure, conceiving that the
+number was too small, in case of any unfriendly demonstrations by the
+Indians, he ordered his brother Hernando to follow with twenty
+additional troopers.  This captain and one other of his party have left us
+an account of the excursion.14
+
+Between the city and the imperial camp was a causeway, built in a
+substantial manner across the meadow land that intervened.  Over this
+the cavalry galloped at a rapid pace, and, before they had gone a league,
+they came in front of the Peruvian encampment, where it spread along
+the gentle slope of the mountains.  The lances of the warriors were fixed
+in the ground before their tents, and the Indian soldiers were loitering
+without, gazing with silent astonishment at the Christian cavalcade, as
+with clangor of arms and shrill blast of trumpet it swept by, like some
+fearful apparition, on the wings of the wind.
+
+The party soon came to a broad but shallow stream, which, winding
+through the meadow, formed a defence for the Inca's position.  Across it
+was a wooden bridge; but the cavaliers, distrusting its strength, preferred
+to dash through the waters, and without difficulty gained the opposite
+bank.  A battalion of Indian warriors was drawn up under arms on the
+farther side of the bridge, but they offered no molestation to the
+Spaniards; and these latter had strict orders from Pizarro--scarcely
+necessary in their present circumstances--to treat the natives with
+courtesy.  One of the Indians pointed out the quarter occupied by the
+Inca.15
+
+It was an open court-yard, with a light building or pleasure-house in the
+centre, having galleries running around it, and opening in the rear on a
+garden.  The walls were covered with a shining plaster, both white and
+colored, and in the area before the edifice was seen a spacious tank or
+reservoir of stone, fed by aqueducts that supplied it with both warm and
+cold water.16  A basin of hewn stone--it may be of a more recent
+construction--still bears, on the spot, the name of the "Inca's bath." 17
+The court was filled with Indian nobles, dressed in gayly ornamented
+attire, in attendance on the monarch, and with women of the royal
+household.  Amidst this assembly it was not difficult to distinguish the
+person of Atahuallpa, though his dress was simpler than that of his
+attendants.  But he wore on his head the crimson borla or fringe, which,
+surrounding the forehead, hung down as low as the eyebrow.  This was
+the well-known badge of Peruvian sovereignty, and had been assumed by
+the monarch only since the defeat of his brother Huascar.  He was seated
+on a low stool or cushion, somewhat after the Morisco or Turkish
+fashion, and his nobles and principal officers stood around him, with
+great ceremony, holding the stations suited to their rank.18
+
+The Spaniards gazed with much interest on the prince, of whose cruelty
+and cunning they had heard so much, and whose valor had secured to
+him the possession of the empire.  But his countenance exhibited
+neither the fierce passions nor the sagacity which had been ascribed to
+him; and, though in his bearing he showed a gravity and a calm
+consciousness of authority well becoming a king, he seemed to discharge
+all expression from his features, and to discover only the apathy so
+characteristic of the American races.  On the present occasion, this must
+have been in part, at least, assumed.  For it is impossible that the Indian
+prince should not have contemplated with curious interest a spectacle so
+strange, and, in some respects, appalling, as that of these mysterious
+strangers, for which no previous description could have prepared him.
+
+Hernando Pizarro and Soto, with two or three only of their followers,
+slowly rode up in front of the Inca; and the former, making a respectful
+obeisance, but without dismounting, informed Atahuallpa that he came
+as an ambassador from his brother, the commander of the white men, to
+acquaint the monarch with their arrival in his city of Caxamalca.  They
+were the subjects of a mighty prince across the waters, and had come, he
+said, drawn thither by the report of his great victories, to offer their
+services, and to impart to him the doctrines of the true faith which they
+professed; and he brought an invitation from the general to Atahuallpa
+that the latter would be pleased to visit the Spaniards in their present
+quarters.
+
+To all this the Inca answered not a word; nor did he make even a sign of
+acknowledgment that he comprehended it; though it was translated for
+him by Felipillo, one of the interpreters already noticed.  He remained
+silent, with his eyes fastened on the ground; but one of his nobles,
+standing by his side, answered, "It is well." 19  This was an embarrassing
+situation for the Spaniards, who seemed to be as wide from ascertaining
+the real disposition of the Peruvian monarch towards themselves, as
+when the mountains were between them.
+
+In a courteous and respectful manner, Hernando Pizarro again broke the
+silence by requesting the Inca to speak to them himself, and to inform
+them what was his pleasure.20  To this Atahuallpa condescended to
+reply, while a faint smile passed over his features,--"Tell your captain
+that I am keeping a fast, which will end tomorrow morning.  I will then
+visit him, with my chieftains.  In the meantime, let him occupy the public
+buildings on the square, and no other, till I come, when I will order what
+shall be done." 21
+
+Soto, one of the party present at this interview, as before noticed, was the
+best mounted and perhaps the best rider in Pizarro's troop.  Observing
+that Atahuallpa looked with some interest on the fiery steed that stood
+before him, champing the bit and pawing the ground with the natural
+impatience of a war-horse, the Spaniard gave him the rein, and, striking
+his iron heel into his side, dashed furiously over the plain; then, wheeling
+him round and round, displayed all the beautiful movements of his
+charger, and his own excellent horsemanship.  Suddenly checking him in
+full career, he brought the animal almost on his haunches, so near the
+person of the Inca, that some of the foam that flecked his horse's sides
+was thrown on the royal garments.  But Atahuallpa maintained the same
+marble composure as before, though several of his soldiers, whom De
+Soto passed in the course, were so much disconcerted by it, that they
+drew back in manifest terror; an act of timidity for which they paid
+dearly, if, as the Spaniards assert, Atahuallpa caused them to be put to
+death that same evening for betraying such unworthy weakness to the
+strangers.22
+
+Refreshments were now offered by the royal attendants to the Spaniards,
+which they declined, being unwilling to dismount.  They did not refuse,
+however, to quaff the sparkling chicha from golden vases of
+extraordinary size, presented to them by the dark-eyed beauties of the
+harem.23  Taking then a respectful leave of the Inca, the cavaliers rode
+back to Caxamalca, with many moody speculations on what they had
+seen; on the state and opulence of the Indian monarch; on the strength of
+his military array, their excellent appointments, and the apparent
+discipline in their ranks,--all arguing a much higher degree of
+civilization, and consequently of power, than anything they had
+witnessed in the lower regions of the country.  As they contrasted all
+this with their own diminutive force, too far advanced, as they now were,
+for succour to reach them, they felt they had done rashly in throwing
+themselves into the midst of so formidable an empire, and were filled
+with gloomy forebodings of the result.24  Their comrades in the camp
+soon caught the infectious spirit of despondency, which was not lessened
+as night came on, and they beheld the watch-fires of the Peruvians
+lighting up the sides of the mountains, and glittering in the darkness, "as
+thick," says one who saw them, "as the stars of heaven." 25
+
+Yet there was one bosom in that little host which was not touched with
+the feeling either of fear or dejection.  That was Pizarro's, who secretly
+rejoiced that he had now brought matters to the issue for which he had so
+long panted.  He saw the necessity of kindling a similar feeling in his
+followers, or all would be lost.  Without unfolding his plans, he went
+round among his men, beseeching them not to show faint hearts at this
+crisis, when they stood face to face with the foe whom they had been so
+long seeking.  "They were to rely on themselves, and on that Providence
+which had carried them safe through so many fearful trials.  It would not
+now desert them; and if numbers, however great, were on the side of
+their enemy, it mattered little when the arm of Heaven was on theirs." 26
+The Spanish cavalier acted under the combined influence of chivalrous
+adventure and religious zeal.  The latter was the most effective in the
+hour of peril; and Pizarro, who understood well the characters he had to
+deal with, by presenting the enterprise as a crusade, kindled the dying
+embers of enthusiasm in the bosoms of his followers, and restored their
+faltering courage.
+
+He then summoned a council of his officers, to consider the plan of
+operations, or rather to propose to them the extraordinary plan on which
+he had himself decided.  This was to lay an ambuscade for the Inca, and
+take him prisoner in the face of his whole army!  It was a project full of
+peril,--bordering, as it might well seem, on desperation.  But the
+circumstances of the Spaniards were desperate.  Whichever way they
+turned, they were menaced by the most appalling dangers; and better was
+it bravely to confront the danger, than weakly to shrink from it, when
+there was no avenue for escape.
+
+To fly was now too late.  Whither could they fly? At the first signal of
+retreat, the whole army of the Inca would be upon them.  Their
+movements would be anticipated by a foe far better acquainted with the
+intricacies of the sierra than themselves; the passes would be occupied,
+and they would be hemmed in on all sides; while the mere fact of this
+retrograde movement would diminish the confidence and with it the
+effective strength of his own men, while it doubled that of his enemy.
+
+Yet to remain long inactive in his present position seemed almost equally
+perilous.  Even supposing that Atahuallpa should entertain friendly
+feelings towards the Christians, they could not confide in the continuance
+of such feelings.  Familiarity with the white men would soon destroy the
+idea of anything supernatural, or even superior, in their natures.  He
+would feel contempt for their diminutive numbers.  Their horses, their
+arms and showy appointments, would be an attractive bait in the eye of
+the barbaric monarch, and when conscious that he had the power to crush
+their possessors, he would not be slow in finding a pretext for it.  A
+sufficient one had already occurred in the high-handed measures of the
+Conquerors, on their march through his dominions.
+
+But what reason had they to flatter themselves that the Inca cherished
+such a disposition towards them? He was a crafty and unscrupulous
+prince, and, if the accounts they had repeatedly received on their march
+were true, had ever regarded the coming of the Spaniards with an evil
+eye.  It was scarcely possible he should do otherwise.  His soft messages
+had only been intended to decoy them across the mountains, where, with
+the aid of his warriors, he might readily overpower them.  They were
+entangled in the toils which the cunning monarch had spread for them.
+
+Their only remedy, then, was to turn the Inca's arts against himself; to
+take him, if possible, in his own snare.  There was no time to be lost; for
+any day might bring back the victorious legions who had recently won
+his battles at the south, and thus make the odds against the Spaniards far
+greater than now.
+
+Yet to encounter Atahuallpa in the open field would be attended with
+great hazard; and even if victorious, there would be little probability that
+the person of the Inca, of so much importance, would fall into the hands
+of the victors.  The invitation he had so unsuspiciously accepted to visit
+them in their quarters afforded the best means for securing this desirable
+prize.  Nor was the enterprise so desperate, considering the great
+advantages afforded by the character and weapons of the invaders, and
+the unexpectedness of the assault.  The mere circumstance of acting on a
+concerted plan would alone make a small number more than a match for
+a much larger one.  But it was not necessary to admit the whole of the
+Indian force into the city before the attack; and the person of the Inca
+once secured, his followers, astounded by so strange an event, were they
+few or many, would have no heart for further resistance;--and with the
+Inca once in his power, Pizarro might dictate laws to the empire.
+
+In this daring project of the Spanish chief, it was easy to see that he had
+the brilliant exploit of Cortes in his mind, when he carried off the Aztec
+monarch in his capital.  But that was not by violence,--at least not by
+open violence,--and it received the sanction, compulsory though it were,
+of the monarch himself.  It was also true that the results in that case did
+not altogether justify a repetition of the experiment; since the people rose
+in a body to sacrifice both the prince and his kidnappers.  Yet this was
+owing, in part, at least, to the indiscretion of the latter.  The experiment
+in the outset was perfectly successful; and, could Pizarro once become
+master of the person of Atahuallpa, he trusted to his own discretion for
+the rest.  It would, at least, extricate him from his present critical
+position, by placing in his power an inestimable guaranty for his safety;
+and if he could not make his own terms with the Inca at once, the arrival
+of reinforcements from home would, in all probability, soon enable him
+to do so.
+
+Pizarro having concerted his plans for the following day, the council
+broke up, and the chief occupied himself with providing for the security
+of the camp during the night.  The approaches to the town were
+defended; sentinels were posted at different points, especially on the
+summit of the fortress, where they were to observe the position of the
+enemy, and to report any movement that menaced the tranquillity of the
+night.  After these precautions, the Spanish commander and his followers
+withdrew to their appointed quarters,--but not to sleep.  At least, sleep
+must have come late to those who were aware of the decisive plan for the
+morrow; that morrow which was to be the crisis of their fate,--to crown
+their ambitious schemes with full success, or consign them to
+irretrievable ruin!
+
+
+
+Book 3
+
+Chapter 5
+
+Desperate Plan Of Pizarro--Atahuallpa Visits The Spaniards--
+Horrible Massacre--The Inca A Prisoner--Conduct Of The Conquerors--
+Splendid Promises Of The Inca--Death Of Huascar
+
+1532
+
+The clouds of the evening had passed away, and the sun rose bright on
+the following morning, the most memorable epoch in the annals of Peru.
+It was Saturday, the sixteenth of November, 1532.  The loud cry of the
+trumpet called the Spaniards to arms with the first streak of dawn; and
+Pizarro, briefly acquainting them with the plan of the assault, made the
+necessary dispositions.
+
+The plaza, as mentioned in the preceding chapter, was defended on its
+three sides by low ranges of buildings, consisting of spacious halls with
+wide doors or vomitories opening into the square.  In these halls he
+stationed his cavalry in two divisions, one under his brother Hernando,
+the other under De Soto.  The infantry he placed in another of the
+buildings, reserving twenty chosen men to act with himself as occasion
+might require.  Pedro de Candia, with a few soldiers and the artillery,--
+comprehending under this imposing name two small pieces of ordnance,
+called falconers,---he established in the fortress.  All received orders to
+wait at their posts till the arrival of the Inca.  After his entrance into the
+great square, they were still to remain under cover, withdrawn from
+observation, till the signal was given by the discharge of a gun, when
+they were to cry their war-cries, to rush out in a body from their covert,
+and, putting the Peruvians to the sword, bear off the person of the Inca.
+The arrangement of the immense halls, opening on a level with the plaza,
+seemed to be contrived on purpose for a coup de theatre.  Pizarro
+particularly inculcated order and implicit obedience, that in the hurry of
+the moment there should be no confusion.  Everything depended on their
+acting with concert, coolness, and celerity.1
+
+The chief next saw that their arms were in good order; and that the
+breastplates of their horses were garnished with bells, to add by their
+noise to the consternation of the Indians.  Refreshments were, also,
+liberally provided, that the troops should be in condition for the conflict.
+These arrangements being completed, mass was performed with great
+solemnity by the ecclesiastics who attended the expedition; the God of
+battles was invoked to spread his shield over the soldiers who were
+fighting to extend the empire of the Cross; and all joined with enthusiasm
+in the chant, "Exsurge, Domine," "Rise, O Lord! and judge thine own
+cause."2  One might have supposed them a company of martyrs, about to
+lay down their lives in defence of their faith, instead of a licentious band
+of adventurers, meditating one of the most atrocious acts of perfidy on
+the record of history!  Yet, whatever were the vices of the Castilian
+cavalier, hypocrisy was not among the number.  He felt that he was
+battling for the Cross, and under this conviction, exalted as it was at such
+a moment as this into the predominant impulse, he was blind to the baser
+motives which mingled with the enterprise.  With feelings thus kindled to
+a flame of religious ardor, the soldiers of Pizarro looked forward with
+renovated spirits to the coming conflict; and the chieftain saw with
+satisfaction, that in the hour of trial his men would be true to their leader
+and themselves.
+
+It was late in the day before any movement was visible in the Peruvian
+camp, where much preparation was making to approach the Christian
+quarters with due state and ceremony.  A message was received from
+Atahuallpa, informing the Spanish commander that he should come with
+his warriors fully armed, in the same manner as the Spaniards had come
+to his quarters the night preceding.  This was not an agreeable intimation
+to Pizarro, though he had no reason, probably, to expect the contrary.
+But to object might imply distrust, or, perhaps, disclose, in some
+measure, his own designs.  He expressed his satisfaction, therefore, at the
+intelligence, assuring the Inca, that, come as he would, he would be
+received by him as a friend and brother.3
+
+It was noon before the Indian procession was on its march, when it was
+seen occupying the great causeway for a long extent.  In front came a
+large body of attendants, whose office seemed to be to sweep away every
+particle of rubbish from the road.  High above the crowd appeared the
+Inca, borne on the shoulders of his principal nobles, while others of the
+same rank marched by the sides of his litter, displaying such a dazzling
+show of ornaments on their persons, that, in the language of one of the
+Conquerors, "they blazed like the sun." 4  But the greater part of the
+Inca's forces mustered along the fields that lined the road, and were
+spread over the broad meadows as far as the eye could reach.5
+
+When the royal procession had arrived within half a mile of the city, it
+came to a halt; and Pizarro saw with surprise that Atahuallpa was
+preparing to pitch his tents, as if to encamp there.  A messenger soon
+after arrived, informing the Spaniards that the Inca would occupy his
+present station the ensuing night, and enter the city on the following
+morning.
+
+This intelligence greatly disturbed Pizarro, who had shared in the general
+impatience of his men at the tardy movements of the Peruvians.  The
+troops had been under arms since daylight, the cavalry mounted, and the
+infantry at their post, waiting in silence the coming of the Inca.  A
+profound stillness reigned throughout the town, broken only at intervals by
+the cry of the sentinel from the summit of the fortress, as he proclaimed
+the movements of the Indian army.  Nothing, Pizarro well knew, was so
+trying to the soldier as prolonged suspense, in a critical situation like the
+present; and he feared lest his ardor might evaporate, and be succeeded
+by that nervous feeling natural to the bravest soul at such a crisis, and
+which, if not fear, is near akin to it.6  He returned an answer, therefore,
+to Atahuallpa, deprecating his change of purpose; and adding that he had
+provided everything for his entertainment, and expected him that night to
+sup with him.7
+
+This message turned the Inca from his purpose; and, striking his tents
+again, he resumed his march, first advising the general that he should
+leave the greater part of his warriors behind, and enter the place with
+only a few of them, and without arms,8 as he preferred to pass the night
+at Caxamalca.  At the same time he ordered accommodations to be
+provided for himself, and his retinue in one of the large stone buildings,
+called, from a serpent sculptured on the walls, "the House of the
+Serpent."9 --No tidings could have been more grateful to the Spaniards.
+It seemed as if the Indian monarch was eager to rush into the snare that
+had been spread for him! The fanatical cavalier could not fail to discern
+in it the immediate finger of Providence.
+
+It is difficult to account for this wavering conduct of Atahuallpa, so
+different from the bold and decided character which history ascribes to
+him.  There is no doubt that he made his visit to the white men in perfect
+good faith; though Pizarro was probably right in conjecturing that this
+amiable disposition stood on a very precarious footing.  There is as little
+reason to suppose that he distrusted the sincerity of the strangers; or he
+would not thus unnecessarily have proposed to visit them unarmed.  His
+original purpose of coming with all his force was doubtless to display his
+royal state, and perhaps, also, to show greater respect for the Spaniards;
+but when he consented to accept their hospitality, and pass the night in
+their quarters, he was willing to dispense with a great part of his armed
+soldiery, and visit them in a manner that implied entire confidence in
+their good faith.  He was too absolute in his own empire easily to
+suspect; and he probably could not comprehend the audacity with which
+a few men, like those now assembled in Caxamalca, meditated an assault
+on a powerful monarch in the midst of his victorious army.  He did not
+know the character of the Spaniard.
+
+It was not long before sunset, when the van of the royal procession
+entered the gates of the city.  First came some hundreds of the menials,
+employed to clear the path from every obstacle, and singing songs of
+triumph as they came, "which, in our ears," says one of the Conquerors,
+"sounded like the songs of hell!" 10  Then followed other bodies of
+different ranks, and dressed in different liveries.  Some wore a showy
+stuff, checkered white and red, like the squares of a chess-board.11
+Others were clad in pure white, bearing hammers or maces of silver or
+copper; 12 and the guards, together with those in immediate attendance
+on the prince, were distinguished by a rich azure livery, and a profusion
+of gay ornaments, while the large pendants attached to the ears indicated
+the Peruvian noble.
+
+Elevated high above his vassals came the Inca Atahuallpa, borne on a
+sedan or open litter, on which was a sort of throne made of massive gold
+of inestimable value.13  The palanquin was lined with the richly colored
+plumes of tropical birds, and studded with shining plates of gold and
+silver.14  The monarch's attire was much richer than on the preceding
+evening.  Round his neck was suspended a collar of emeralds of
+uncommon size and brilliancy.15  His short hair was decorated with
+golden ornaments, and the imperial borla encircled his temples.  The
+bearing of the Inca was sedate and dignified; and from his lofty station
+he looked down on the multitudes below with an air of composure, like
+one accustomed to command.
+
+As the leading files of the procession entered the great square, larger,
+says an old chronicler, than any square in Spain, they opened to the right
+and left for the royal retinue to pass.  Everything was conducted with
+admirable order.  The monarch was permitted to traverse the plaza in
+silence, and not a Spaniard was to be seen.  When some five or six
+thousand of his people had entered the place, Atahuallpa halted, and,
+turning round with an inquiring look, demanded, "Where are the
+strangers?"
+
+At this moment Fray Vicente de Valverde, a Dominican friar, Pizarro's
+chaplain, and afterward Bishop of Cuzco, came forward with his
+brevidry, or, as other accounts say, a Bible, in one hand, and a crucifix in
+the other, and, approaching the Inca, told him, that he came by order of
+his commander to expound to him the doctrines of the true faith, for
+which purpose the Spaniards had come from a great distance to his
+country.  The friar then explained, as clearly as he could, the mysterious
+doctrine of the Trinity, and, ascending high in his account, began with
+the creation of man, thence passed to his fall, to his subsequent
+redemption by Jesus Christ, to the crucifixion, and the ascension, when
+the Saviour left the Apostle Peter as his Vicegerent upon earth.  This
+power had been transmitted to the successors of the Apostle, good and
+wise men, who, under the title of Popes, held authority over all powers
+and potentates on earth.  One of the last of these Popes had
+commissioned the Spanish emperor, the most mighty monarch in the
+world, to conquer and convert the natives in this western hemisphere;
+and his general, Francisco Pizarro, had now come to execute this
+important mission.  The friar concluded with beseeching the Peruvian
+monarch to receive him kindly; to abjure the errors of his own faith, and
+embrace that of the Christians now proffered to him, the only one by
+which he could hope for salvation; and, furthermore, to acknowledge
+himself a tributary of the Emperor Charles the Fifth, who, in that event,
+would aid and protect him as his loyal vassal.16
+
+Whether Atahuallpa possessed himself of every link in the curious chain
+of argument by which the monk connected Pizarro with St. Peter, may be
+doubted.  It is certain, however, that he must have had very incorrect
+notions of the Trinity, if, as Garcilasso states, the interpreter Felipillo
+explained it by saying, that "the Christians believed in three Gods and
+one God, and that made four." 17  But there is no doubt he perfectly
+comprehended that the drift of the discourse was to persuade him to
+resign his sceptre and acknowledge the supremacy of another.
+
+The eyes of the Indian monarch flashed fire, and his dark brow grew
+darker as he replied,--"I will be no man's tributary.  I am greater than any
+prince upon earth.  Your emperor may be a great prince; I do not doubt
+it, when I see that he has sent his subjects so far across the waters; and I
+am willing to hold him as a brother.  As for the Pope of whom you
+speak, he must be crazy to talk of giving away countries which do not
+belong to him.  For my faith," he continued, "I will not change it.  Your
+own God, as you say, was put to death by the very men whom he created.
+But mine," he concluded, pointing to his Deity,--then, alas! sinking in
+glory behind the mountains,--"my God still lives in the heavens, and
+looks down on his children." 18
+
+He then demanded of Valverde by what authority he had said these
+things.  The friar pointed to the book which he held, as his authority.
+Atahuallpa, taking it, turned over the pages a moment, then, as the insuit
+he had received probably flashed across his mind, he threw it down with
+vehemence, and exclaimed,--"Tell your comrades that they shall give me
+an account of their doings in my land.  I will not go from here, till they
+have made me full satisfaction for all the wrongs they have committed."
+19
+
+The friar, greatly scandalized by the indignity offered to the sacred
+volume, stayed only to pick it up, and, hastening to Pizarro, informed
+him of what had been done, exclaiming, at the same time,--"Do you not
+see, that, while we stand here wasting our breath in talking with this dog,
+full of pride as he is, the fields are filling with Indians? Set on, at once; I
+absolve you." 20  Pizarro saw that the hour had come.  He waved a white
+scarf in the air, the appointed signal.  The fatal gun was fired from the
+fortress.  Then, springing into the square, the Spanish captain and his
+followers shouted the old war-cry of "St. Jago and at them." It was
+answered by the battle-cry of every Spaniard in the city, as, rushing from
+the avenues of the great halls in which they were concealed, they poured
+into the plaza, horse and foot, each in his own dark column, and threw
+themselves into the midst of the Indian crowd.  The latter, taken by
+surprise, stunned by the report of artillery and muskets, the echoes of
+which reverberated like thunder from the surrounding buildings, and
+blinded by the smoke which rolled in sulphurous volumes along the
+square, were seized with a panic.  They knew not whither to fly for
+refuge from the coming ruin.  Nobles and commoners,--all were trampled
+down under the fierce charge of the cavalry, who dealt their blows, right
+and left, without sparing; while their swords, flashing through.  the thick
+gloom, carried dismay into the hearts of the wretched natives, who now,
+for the first time, saw the horse and his rider in all their terrors.  They
+made no resistance,--as, indeed, they had no weapons with which to
+make it.  Every avenue to escape was closed, for the entrance to the
+square was choked up with the dead bodies of men who had perished in
+vain efforts to fly; and, such was the agony of the survivors under the
+terrible pressure of their assailants, that a large body of Indians, by their
+convulsive struggles, burst through the wall of stone and dried clay
+which formed part of the boundary of the plaza!  It fell, leaving an
+opening of more than a hundred paces, through which multitudes now
+found their way into the country, still hotly pursued by the cavalry, who,
+leaping the fallen rubbish, hung on the rear of the fugitives, striking them
+down in all directions.21
+
+Meanwhile the fight, or rather massacre, continued hot around the Inca,
+whose person was the great object of the assault.  His faithful nobles,
+rallying about him, threw themselves in the way of the assailants, and
+strove, by tearing them from their saddles, or, at least, by offering their
+own bosoms as a mark for their vengeance, to shield their beloved
+master.  It is said by some authorities, that they carried weapons
+concealed under their clothes.  If so, it availed them little, as it is not
+pretended that they used them.  But the most timid animal will defend
+itself when at bay.  That they did not so in the present instance is proof
+that they had no weapons to use.22  Yet they still continued to force back
+the cavaliers, clinging to their horses with dying grasp, and, as one was
+cut down, another taking the place of his fallen comrade with a loyalty
+truly affecting.
+
+The Indian monarch, stunned and bewildered, saw his faithful subjects
+falling round him without fully comprehending his situation.  The litter
+on which he rode heaved to and fro, as the mighty press swayed
+backwards and forwards; and he gazed on the overwhelming ruin, like
+some forlorn mariner, who, tossed about in his bark by the furious
+elements, sees the lightning's flash and hears the thunder bursting around
+him with the consciousness that he can do nothing to avert his fate.  At
+length, weary with the work of destruction, the Spaniards, as the shades
+of evening grew deeper, felt afraid that the royal prize might, after all,
+elude them; and some of the cavaliers made a desperate attempt to end
+the affray at once by taking Atahuallpa's life.  But Pizarro, who was
+nearest his person, called out with stentorian voice, "Let no one, who
+values his life, strike at the Inca"; 23 and, stretching out his arm to shield
+him, received a wound on the hand from one of his own men,--the only
+wound received by a Spaniard in the action.24
+
+The struggle now became fiercer than ever round the royal litter.  It
+reeled more and more, and at length, several of the nobles who supported
+it having been slain, it was overturned, and the Indian prince would have
+come with violence to the ground, had not his fall been broken by the
+efforts of Pizarro and some other of the cavaliers, who caught him in
+their arms.  The imperial borla was instantly snatched from his temples
+by a soldier named Estete,25 and the unhappy monarch, strongly
+secured, was removed to a neighboring building, where he was carefully
+guarded.
+
+All attempt at resistance now ceased.  The fate of the Inca soon spread
+over town and country.  The charm which might have held the Peruvians
+together was dissolved.  Every man thought only of his own safety.  Even
+the soldiery encamped on the adjacent fields took the alarm, and,
+learning the fatal tidings, were seen flying in every direction before their
+pursuers, who in the heat of triumph showed no touch of mercy.  At
+length night, more pitiful than man, threw her friendly mantle over the
+fugitives, and the scattered troops of Pizarro rallied once more at the
+sound of the trumpet in the bloody square of Caxamalca.
+
+The number of slain is reported, as usual, with great discrepancy.
+Pizarro's secretary says two thousand natives fell.26  A descendant of the
+Incas--a safer authority than Garcilasso---swells the number to ten
+thousand.27  Truth is generally found somewhere between the extremes.
+The slaughter was incessant, for there was nothing to check it.  That
+there should have been no resistance will not appear strange, when we
+consider the fact, that the wretched victims were without arms, and that
+their senses must have been completely overwhelmed by the strange and
+appalling spectacle which burst on them so unexpectedly.  "What wonder
+was it," said an ancient Inca to a Spaniard, who repeats it, "what wonder
+that our countrymen lost their wits, seeing blood run like water, and the
+Inca, whose person we all of us adore, seized and carried off by a
+handful of men?" 28  Yet though the massacre was incessant, it was short
+in duration.  The whole time consumed by it, the brief twilight of the
+tropics, did not much exceed half an hour; a short period, indeed,---yet
+long enough to decide the fate of Peru, and to subvert the dynasty of the
+Incas.
+
+That night Pizarro kept his engagement with the Inca, since he had
+Atahuallpa to sup with him.  The banquet was served in one of the halls
+facing the great square, which a few hours before had been the scene of
+slaughter, and the pavement of which was still encumbered with the dead
+bodies of the Inca's subjects.  The captive monarch was placed next his
+conqueror.  He seemed like one who did not yet fully comprehend the
+extent of his calamity.  If he did, he showed an amazing fortitude.  "It is
+the fortune of war," he said; 29 and, if we may credit the Spaniards, he
+expressed his admiration of the adroitness with which they had contrived
+to entrap him in the midst of his own troops.30  He added, that he had
+been made acquainted with the progress of the white men from the hour
+of their landing; but that he had been led to undervalue their strength
+from the insignificance of their numbers.  He had no doubt he should be
+easily able to overpower them, on their arrival at Caxamalca, by his
+superior strength; and, as he wished to see for himself what manner of
+men they were, he had suffered them to cross the mountains, meaning to
+select such as he chose for his own service, and, getting possession of
+their wonderful arms and horses, put the rest to death.31
+
+That such may have been Atahuallpa's purpose is not improbable.  It
+explains his conduct in not occupying the mountain passes, which
+afforded such strong points of defence against invasion.  But that a
+prince so astute, as by the general testimony of the Conquerors he is
+represented to have been, should have made so impolitic a disclosure of
+his hidden motives is not so probable.  The intercourse with the Inca was
+carried on chiefly by means of the interpreter Felipillo, or little Philip, as
+he was called, from his assumed Christian name,---a malicious youth, as
+it appears, who bore no good-will to Atahuallpa, and whose
+interpretations were readily admitted by the Conquerors, eager to find
+some pretext for their bloody reprisals.
+
+Atahuallpa, as elsewhere noticed, was, at this time, about thirty years of
+age.  He was well made, and more robust than usual with his
+countrymen.  His head was large, and his countenance might have been
+called handsome, but that his eyes, which were bloodshot, gave a fierce
+expression to his features.  He was deliberate in speech, grave in manner,
+and towards his own people stern even to severity; though with the
+Spaniards he showed himself affable, sometimes even indulging in
+sallies of mirth.32
+
+Pizarro paid every attention to his royal captive, and endeavored to
+lighten, if he could not dispel, the gloom which, in spite of his assumed
+equanimity, hung over the monarch's brow.  He besought him not to be
+cast down by his reverses, for his lot had only been that of every prince
+who had resisted the white men.  They had come into the country to
+proclaim the gospel, the religion of Jesus Christ; and it was no wonder
+they had prevailed, when his shield was over them.  Heaven had
+permitted that Atahuallpa's pride should be humbled, because of his
+hostile intentions towards the Spaniards, and the insults he had offered to
+the sacred volume.  But he bade the Inca take courage and confide in
+him, for the Spaniards were a generous race, warring only against those
+who made war on them, and showing grace to all who submitted! 33--
+Atahuallpa may have thought the massacre of that day an indifferent
+commentary on this vaunted lenity.
+
+Before retiring for the night, Pizarro briefly addressed his troops on their
+present situation.  When he had ascertained that not a man was wounded,
+he bade them offer up thanksgivings to Providence for so great a miracle;
+without its care, they could never have prevailed so easily over the host
+of their enemies; and he trusted their lives had been reserved for still
+greater things.  But if they would succeed, they had much to do for
+themselves.  They were in the heart of a powerful kingdom,
+encompassed by foes deeply attached to their own sovereign.  They must
+be ever on their guard, therefore, and be prepared at any hour to be
+roused from their slumbers by the call of the trumpet.34--Having then
+posted his sentinels, placed a strong guard over the apartment of
+Atahuallpa, and taken all the precautions of a careful commander,
+Pizarro withdrew to repose; and, if he could really feel, that, in the
+bloody scenes of the past day, he had been fighting only the good fight of
+the Cross, he doubtless slept sounder than on the night preceding the
+seizure of the Inca.
+
+On the following morning, the first commands of the Spanish chief were
+to have the city cleansed of its impurities; and the prisoners, of whom
+there were many in the camp, were employed to remove the dead, and
+give them decent burial.  His next care was to despatch a body of about
+thirty horse to the quarters lately occupied by Atahuallpa at the baths, to
+take possession of the spoil, and disperse the remnant of the Peruvian
+forces which still hung about the place.
+
+Before noon, the party which he had detached on this service returned
+with a large troop of Indians, men and women, among the latter of whom
+were many of the wives and attendants of the Inca.  The Spaniards had
+met with no resistance; since the Peruvian warriors, though so superior in
+number, excellent in appointments, and consisting mostly of ablebodied
+young men,--for the greater part of the veteran forces were with the
+Inca's generals at the south,--lost all heart from the moment of their
+sovereign's captivity.  There was no leader to take his place; for they
+recognized no authority but that of the Child of the Sun, and they seemed
+to be held by a sort of invisible charm near the place of his confinement;
+while they gazed with superstitious awe on the white men, who could
+achieve so audacious an enterprise.35
+
+The number of Indian prisoners was so great, that some of the
+Conquerors were for putting them all to death, or, at least, cutting off
+their hands, to disable them from acts of violence, and to strike terror
+into their countrymen.36  The proposition, doubtless, came from the
+lowest and most ferocious of the soldiery.  But that it should have been
+made at all shows what materials entered into the composition of
+Pizarro's company.  The chief rejected it at once, as no less impolitic
+than inhuman, and dismissed the Indians to their several homes, with the
+assurance that none should be harmed who did not offer resistance to the
+white men.  A sufficient number, however, were retained to wait on the
+Conquerors who were so well provided, in this respect, that the most
+common soldier was attended by a retinue of menials that would have
+better suited the establishment of a noble.37
+
+The Spaniards had found immense droves of llamas under the care of
+their shepherds in the neighborhood of the baths, destined for the
+consumption of the Court.  Many of them were now suffered to roam
+abroad among their native mountains; though Pizarro caused a
+considerable number to be reserved for the use of the army.  And this
+was no small quantity, if, as one of the Conquerors says, a hundred and
+fifty of the Peruvian sheep were frequently slaughtered in a day.38
+Indeed, the Spaniards were so improvident in their destruction of these
+animals, that, in a few years, the superb flocks, nurtured with so much
+care by the Peruvian government, had almost disappeared from the
+land.39
+
+The party sent to pillage the Inca's pleasure-house brought back a rich
+booty in gold and silver, consisting chiefly of plate for the royal table,
+which greatly astonished the Spaniards by their size and weight.  These,
+as well as some large emeralds obtained there, together with the precious
+spoils found on the bodies of the Indian nobles who had perished in the
+massacre, were placed in safe custody, to be hereafter divided.  In the
+city of Caxamalca, the troops also found magazines stored with goods,
+both cotton and woollen, far superior to any they had seen, for fineness
+of texture, and the skill with which the various colors were blended.
+They were piled from the floors to the very roofs of the buildings, and in
+such quantity, that, after every soldier had provided himself with what he
+desired, it made no sensible diminution of the whole amount.40
+
+Pizarro would now gladly have directed his march on the Peruvian
+capital.  But the distance was great, and his force was small.  This must
+have been still further crippled by the guard required for the Inca, and
+the chief feared to involve himself deeper in a hostile empire so
+populous and powerful, with a prize so precious in his keeping.  With
+much anxiety, therefore, he looked for reinforcements from the colonies;
+and he despatched a courier to San Miguel, to inform the Spaniards there
+of his recent successes, and to ascertain if there had been any arrival
+from Panama.  Meanwhile he employed his men in making Caxamalca a
+more suitable residence for a Christian host, by erecting a church, or,
+perhaps, appropriating some Indian edifice to this use, in which mass
+was regularly performed by the Dominican fathers, with great solemnity.
+The dilapidated walls of the city were also restored in a more substantial
+manner than before, and every vestige was soon effaced of the hurricane
+that had so recently swept over it.
+
+It was not long before Atahuallpa discovered, amidst all the show of
+religious zeal in his Conquerors, a lurking appetite more potent in most
+of their bosoms than either religion or ambition.  This was the love of
+gold.  He determined to avail himself of it to procure his own freedom.
+The critical posture of his affairs made it important that this should not
+be long delayed.  His brother, Huascar, ever since his defeat, had been
+detained as a prisoner, subject to the victor's orders.  He was now at
+Andamarca, at no great distance from Caxamalca; and Atahuallpa feared,
+with good reason, that, when his own imprisonment was known, Huascar
+would find it easy to corrupt his guards, make his escape, and put himself
+at the head of the contested empire, without a rival to dispute it.
+
+In the hope, therefore, to effect his purpose by appealing to the avarice
+of his keepers, he one day told Pizarro, that, if he would set him free, he
+would engage to cover the floor of the apartment on which they stood
+with gold.  Those present listened with an incredulous smile; and, as the
+Inca received no answer, he said, with some emphasis, that "he would
+not merely cover the floor, but would fill the room with gold as high as
+he could reach"; and, standing on tiptoe, he stretched out his hand
+against the wall.  All stared with amazement; while they regarded it as
+the insane boast of a man too eager to procure his liberty to weigh the
+meaning of his words.  Yet Pizarro was sorely perplexed.  As he had
+advanced into the country, much that he had seen, and all that he had
+heard, had confirmed the dazzling reports first received of the riches of
+Peru.  Atahuallpa himself had given him the most glowing picture of the
+wealth of the capital, where the roofs of the temples were plated with
+gold, while the walls were hung with tapestry and the floors inlaid with
+tiles of the same precious metal.  There must be some foundation for all
+this.  At all events, it was safe to accede to the Inca's proposition; since,
+by so doing, he could collect, at once, all the gold at his disposal, and
+thus prevent its being purloined or secreted by the natives.  He therefore
+acquiesced in Atahuallpa's offer, and, drawing a red line along the wall at
+the height which the Inca had indicated, he caused the terms of the
+proposal to be duly recorded by the notary.  The apartment was about
+seventeen feet broad, by twenty-two feet long, and the line round the
+walls was nine feet from the floor.41  This space was to be filled with
+gold; but it was understood that the gold was not to be melted down into
+ingots, but to retain the original form of the articles into which it was
+manufactured, that the Inca might have the benefit of the space which
+they occupied.  He further agreed to fill an adjoining room of smaller
+dimensions twice full with silver, in like manner; and he demanded two
+months to accomplish all this.42
+
+No sooner was this arrangement made, than the Inca despatched couriers
+to Cuzco and the other principal places in the kingdom, with orders that
+the gold ornaments and utensils should be removed from the royal
+palaces, and from the temples and other public buildings, and transported
+without loss of time to Caxamalca.  Meanwhile he continued to live in
+the Spanish quarters, treated with the respect due to his rank, and
+enjoying all the freedom that was compatible with the security of his
+person.  Though not permitted to go abroad, his limbs were unshackled,
+and he had the range of his own apartments under the jealous
+surveillance of a guard, who knew too well the value of the royal captive
+to be remiss.  He was allowed the society of his favorite wives, and
+Pizarro took care that his domestic privacy should not be violated.  His
+subjects had free access to their sovereign, and every day he received
+visits from the Indian nobles, who came to bring presents, and offer
+condolence to their unfortunate master.  On such occasions, the most
+potent of these great vassals never ventured into his presence, without
+first stripping off their sandals, and bearing a load on their backs in token
+of reverence.  The Spaniards gazed with curious eyes on these acts of
+homage, or rather of slavish submission, on the one side, and on the air
+of perfect indifference with which they were received, as a matter of
+course, on the other; and they conceived high ideas of the character of a
+prince who, even in his present helpless condition, could inspire such
+feelings of awe in his subjects.  The royal levee was so well attended,
+and such devotion was shown by his vassals to the captive monarch, as
+did not fail, in the end, to excite some feelings of distrust in his
+keepers.43
+
+Pizarro did not neglect the opportunity afforded him of communicating
+the truths of revelation to his prisoner, and both he and his chaplain,
+Father Valverde, labored in the same good work.  Atahuallpa listened
+with composure and apparent attention.  But nothing seemed to move
+him so much as the argument with which the military polemic closed his
+discourse,--that it could not be the true God whom Atahuallpa
+worshipped, since he had suffered him to fall into the hands of his
+enemies.  The unhappy monarch assented to the force of this,
+acknowledging that his Deity had indeed deserted him in his utmost
+need.44
+
+Yet his conduct towards his brother Huascar, at this time, too clearly
+proves, that, whatever respect he may have shown for the teachers, the
+doctrines of Christianity had made little impression on his heart.  No
+sooner had Huascar been informed of the capture of his rival, and of the
+large ransom he had offered for his deliverance, than, as the latter had
+foreseen, he made every effort to regain his liberty, and sent, or
+attempted to send, a message to the Spanish commander, that he would
+pay a much larger ransom than that promised by Atahuallpa, who, never
+having dwelt in Cuzco, was ignorant of the quantity of treasure there, and
+where it was deposited.
+
+Intelligence of all this was secretly communicated to Atahuallpa by the
+persons who had his brother in charge; and his jealousy, thus roused, was
+further heightened by Pizarro's declaration, that he intended to have
+Huascar brought to Caxamalca, where he would himself examine into the
+controversy, and determine which of the two had best title to the sceptre
+of the Incas.  Pizarro perceived, from the first, the advantages of a
+competition which would enable him, by throwing his sword into the
+scale he preferred, to give it a preponderance.  The party who held the
+sceptre by his nomination would henceforth be a tool in his hands, with
+which to work his pleasure more effectually than he could well do in his
+own name.  It was the game, as every reader knows, played by Edward
+the First in the affairs of Scotland, and by many a monarch, both before
+and since,--and though their examples may not have been familiar to the
+unlettered soldier, Pizarro was too quick in his perceptions to require, in
+this matter, at least, the teachings of history.
+
+Atahuallpa was much alarmed by the Spanish commander's
+determination to have the suit between the rival candidates brought
+before him; for he feared, that, independently of the merits of the case,
+the decision would be likely to go in favor of Huascar, whose mild and
+ductile temper would make him a convenient instrument in the hands of
+his conquerors.  Without further hesitation, he determined to remove this
+cause of jealousy for ever, by the death of his brother.
+
+His orders were immediately executed, and the unhappy prince was
+drowned, as was commonly reported, in the river of Andamarca,
+declaring with his dying breath that the white men would avenge his
+murder, and that his rival would not long survive him.45--Thus perished
+the unfortunate Huascar, the legitimate heir of the throne of the Incas, in
+the very morning of life, and the commencement of his reign; a reign,
+however, which had been long enough to call forth the display of many
+excellent and amiable qualities, though his nature was too gentle to cope
+with the bold and fiercer temper of his brother.  Such is the portrait we
+have of him from the Indian and Castilian chroniclers, though the former,
+it should be added, were the kinsmen of Huascar, and the latter certainly
+bore no good-will to Atahuallpa.46
+
+That prince received the tidings of Huascar's death with every mark of
+surprise and indignation.  He immediately sent for Pizarro, and
+communicated the event to him with expressions of the deepest sorrow.
+The Spanish commander refused, at first, to credit the unwelcome news,
+and bluntly told the Inca, that his brother could not be dead, and that he
+should be answerable for his life.47  To this Atahuallpa replied by
+renewed assurances of the fact, adding that the deed had been
+perpetrated, without his privity, by Huascar's keepers, fearful that he
+might take advantage of the troubles of the country to make his escape.
+Pizarro, on making further inquiries, found that the report of his death
+was but too true.  That it should have been brought about by Atahuallpa's
+officers, without his express command, would only show, that, by so
+doing, they had probably anticipated their master's wishes.  The crime,
+which assumes in our eyes a deeper dye from the relation of the parties,
+had not the same estimation among the Incas, in whose multitudinous
+families the bonds of brotherhood must have sat loosely,--much too
+loosely to restrain the arm of the despot from sweeping away any
+obstacle that lay in his path.
+
+
+
+Book 3
+
+Chapter 6
+
+Gold Arrives For The Ransom--Visit To Pachacamac--
+Demolition Of The Idol-- The Inca's Favorite General--
+The Inca's Life In Confinement--Envoys' Conduct In Cuzco--
+Arrival Of Almagro
+
+1533
+
+Several weeks had now passed since Atahuallpa's emissaries had been
+despatched for the gold and silver that were to furnish his ransom to the
+Spaniards.  But the distances were great, and the returns came in slowly.
+They consisted, for the most part, of massive pieces of plate, some of
+which weighed two or three arrobas,--a Spanish weight of twenty-five
+pounds.  On some days, articles of the value of thirty or forty thousand
+pesos de oro were brought in, and, occasionally, of the value of fifty or
+even sixty thousand pesos.  The greedy eyes of the Conquerors gloated
+on the shining heaps of treasure, which were transported on the shoulders
+of the Indian porters, and, after being carefully registered, were placed in
+safe deposit under a strong guard.  They now began to believe that the
+magnificent promises of the Inca would be fulfilled.  But, as their avarice
+was sharpened by the ravishing display of wealth, such as they had
+hardly dared to imagine, they became more craving and impatient.  They
+made no allowance for the distance and the difficulties of the way, and
+loudly inveighed against the tardiness with which the royal commands
+were executed.  They even suspected Atahuallpa of devising this scheme
+only to gain a pretext for communicating with his subjects in distant
+places, and of proceeding as dilatorily as possible, in order to secure
+time for the execution of his plans.  Rumors of a rising among the
+Peruvians were circulated, and the Spaniards were in apprehension of
+some general and sudden assault on their quarters.  Their new
+acquisitions gave them additional cause for solicitude; like a miser, they
+trembled in the midst of their treasures.1
+
+Pizarro reported to his captive the rumors that were in circulation among
+the soldiers, naming, as one of the places pointed out for the rendezvous
+of the Indians, the neighboring city of Guamachucho.  Atahuallpa
+listened with undisguised astonishment, and indignantly repelled the
+charge, as false from beginning to end.  "No one of my subjects," said
+he, "would dare to appear in arms, or to raise his finger, without my
+orders.  You have me," he continued, "in your power.  Is not my life at
+your disposal?  And what better security can you have for my fidelity?"
+He then represented to the Spanish commander that the distances of
+many of the places were very great; that to Cuzco, the capital, although a
+message might be sent by post, through a succession of couriers, in five
+days from Caxamalca, it would require weeks for a porter to travel over
+the same ground, with a heavy load on his back.  "But that you may be
+satisfied I am proceeding in good faith," he added, "I desire you will
+send some of your own people to Cuzco.  I will give them a safe-
+conduct, and, when there, they can superintend the execution of the
+commission, and see with their own eyes that no hostile movements are
+intended."  It was a fair offer, and Pizarro, anxious to get more precise
+and authentic information of the state of the country, gladly availed
+himself of it.2
+
+Before the departure of these emissaries, the general had despatched his
+brother Hernando with about twenty horse and a small body of infantry
+to the neighboring town of Guamachucho, in order to reconnoitre the
+country, and ascertain if there was any truth in the report of an armed
+force having assembled there.  Hernando found every thing quiet, and
+met with a kind reception from the natives.  But before leaving the place,
+he received further orders from his brother to continue his march to
+Pachacamac, a town situated on the coast, at least a hundred leagues
+distant from Caxamalca.  It was consecrated at the seat of the great
+temple of the deity of that name, whom the Peruvians worshipped as the
+Creator of the world.  It is said that they found there altars raised to this
+god, on their first occupation of the country; and, such was the
+veneration in which he was held by the natives, that the Incas, instead of
+attempting to abolish his worship, deemed it more prudent to sanction it
+conjointly with that of their own deity, the Sun.  Side by side, the two
+temples rose on the heights that overlooked the city of Pachacamac, and
+prospered in the offerings of their respective votaries.  "It was a cunning
+arrangement," says an ancient writer, "by which the great enemy of man
+secured to himself a double harvest of souls." 3
+
+But the temple of Pachacamac continued to maintain its ascendency; and
+the oracles, delivered from its dark and mysterious shrine, were held in
+no less repute among the natives of Tavantinsuyu, (or "the four quarters
+of the world," as Peru under the Incas was called,) than the oracles of
+Delphi obtained among the Greeks.  Pilgrimages were made to the
+hallowed spot from the most distant regions, and the city of Pachacamac
+became among the Peruvians what Mecca was among the Mahometans,
+or Cholula with the people of Anahuac.  The shrine of the deity, enriched
+by the tributes of the pilgrims, gradually became one of the most opulent
+in the land; and Atahuallpa, anxious to collect his ransom as speedily as
+possible, urged Pizarro to send a detachment in that direction, to secure
+the treasures before they could be secreted by the priests of the temple.
+
+It was a journey of considerable difficulty.  Two thirds of the route lay
+along the table-land of the Cordilleras, intersected occasionally by crests
+of the mountain range, that imposed no slight impediment to their
+progress.  Fortunately, much of the way, they had the benefit of the great
+road to Cuzco, and "nothing in Christendom," exclaims Hernando
+Pizarro, "equals the magnificence of this road across the sierra."4  In
+some places, the rocky ridges were so precipitous, that steps were cut in
+them for the travellers; and though the sides were protected by heavy
+stone balustrades or parapets, it was with the greatest difficulty that the
+horses were enabled to scale them.  The road was frequently crossed by
+streams, over which bridges of wood and sometimes of stone were
+thrown; though occasionally, along the declivities of the mountains, the
+waters swept down in such furious torrents, that the only method of
+passing them was by the swinging bridges of osier, of which, till now, the
+Spaniards had had little experience.  They were secured on either bank to
+heavy buttresses of stone.  But as they were originally designed for
+nothing heavier than the foot-passenger and the llama, and, as they had
+something exceedingly fragile in their appearance, the Spaniards
+hesitated to venture on them with their horses.  Experience, however,
+soon showed they were capable of bearing a much greater weight; and
+though the traveller, made giddy by the vibration of the long avenue,
+looked with a reeling brain into the torrent that was tumbling at the depth
+of a hundred feet or more below him, the whole of the cavalry effected
+their passage without an accident.  At these bridges, it may be remarked,
+they found persons stationed whose business it was to collect toll for the
+government from all travellers.5
+
+The Spaniards were amazed by the number as well as magnitude of the
+flocks of llamas which they saw browsing on the stunted herbage that
+grows in the elevated regions of the Andes.  Sometimes they were
+gathered in inclosures, but more usually were roaming at large under the
+conduct of their Indian shepherds; and the Conquerors now learned, for
+the first time, that these animals were tended with as much care, and their
+migrations as nicely regulated, as those of the vast flocks of merinos in
+their own country.6
+
+The table-land and its declivities were thickly sprinkled with hamlets and
+towns, some of them of considerable size; and the country in every
+direction bore the marks of a thrifty husbandry.  Fields of Indian corn
+were to be seen in all its different stages, from the green and tender ear
+to the yellow ripeness of harvest time.  As they descended into the
+valleys and deep ravines that divided the crests of the Cordilleras, they
+were surrounded by the vegetation of a warmer climate, which delighted
+the eye with the gay livery of a thousand bright colors, and intoxicated
+the senses with its perfumes.  Everywhere the natural capacities of the
+soil were stimulated by a minute system of irrigation, which drew the
+fertilizing moisture from every stream and rivulet that rolled down the
+declivities of the Andes; while the terraced sides of the mountains were
+clothed with gardens and orchards that teemed with fruits of various
+latitudes.  The Spaniards could not sufficiently admire the industry with
+which the natives had availed themselves of the bounty of Nature, or had
+supplied the deficiency where she had dealt with a more parsimonious
+hand.
+
+Whether from the commands of the Inca, or from the awe which their
+achievements had spread throughout the land, the Conquerors were
+received, in every place through which they passed, with hospitable
+kindness.  Lodgings were provided for them, with ample refreshments
+from the well-stored magazines, distributed at intervals along the route.
+In many of the towns the inhabitants came out to welcome them with
+singing and dancing; and, when they resumed their march, a number of
+ablebodied porters were furnished to carry forward their baggage.7
+
+At length, after some weeks of travel, severe even with all these
+appliances, Hernando Pizarro arrived before the city of Pachacamac.  It
+was a place of considerable population, and the edifices were, many of
+them, substantially built.  The temple of the tutelar deity consisted of a
+vast stone building, or rather pile of buildings, which, clustering around a
+conical hill, had the air of a fortress rather than a religious establishment.
+But, though the walls were of stone, the roof was composed of a light
+thatch, as usual in countries where rain seldom or never falls, and where
+defence, consequently, is wanted chiefly against the rays of the sun.
+
+Presenting himself at the lower entrance of the temple, Hernando Pizarro
+was refused admittance by the guardians of the portal.  But, exclaiming
+that "he had come too far to be stayed by the arm of an Indian priest," he
+forced his way into the passage, and, followed by his men, wound up the
+gallery which led to an area on the summit of the mount, at one end of
+which stood a sort of chapel.  This was the sanctuary of the dread deity.
+The door was garnished with ornaments of crystal, and with turquoises
+and bits of coral.8  Here again the Indians would have dissuaded Pizarro
+from violating the consecrated precincts, when, at that moment, the
+shock of an earthquake, that made the ancient walls tremble to their
+foundation, so alarmed the natives, both those of Pizarro's own company
+and the people of the place, that they fled in dismay, nothing doubting
+that their incensed deity would bury the invaders under the ruins, or
+consume them with his lightnings.  But no such terror found its way into
+the breast of the Conquerors, who felt that here, at least, they were
+fighting the good fight of the Faith.
+
+Tearing open the door, Pizarro and his party entered.  But instead of a
+hall blazing, as they had fondly imagined, with gold and precious stones,
+offerings of the worshippers of Pachacamac, they found themselves in a
+small and obscure apartment, or rather den, from the floor and sides of
+which steamed up the most offensive odors,--like those of a
+slaughterhouse.  It was the place of sacrifice.  A few pieces of gold and
+some emeralds were discovered on the ground, and, as their eyes became
+accommodated to the darkness, they discerned in the most retired corner
+of the room the figure of the deity.  It was an uncouth monster, made of
+wood, with the head resembling that of a man.  This was the god,
+through whose lips Satan had breathed forth the far-famed oracles which
+had deluded his Indian votaries! 9
+
+Tearing the idol from its recess, the indignant Spaniards dragged it into
+the open air, and there broke it into a hundred fragments.  The place was
+then purified, and a large cross, made of stone and plaster, was erected
+on the spot.  In a few years the walls of the temple were pulled down by
+the Spanish settlers, who found there a convenient quarry for their own
+edifices.  But the cross still remained spreading its broad arms over the
+ruins.  It stood where it was planted in the very heart of the stronghold of
+Heathendom; and, while all was in ruins around it, it proclaimed the
+permanent triumphs of the Faith.
+
+The simple natives, finding that Heaven had no bolts in store for the
+Conquerors, and that their god had no power to prevent the profanation
+of his shrine, came in gradually and tendered their homage to the
+strangers, whom they now regarded with feelings of superstitious awe.
+Pizarro profited by this temper to wean them, if possible, from their
+idolatry; and though no preacher himself, as he tells us, he delivered a
+discourse as edifying, doubtless, as could be expected from the mouth of
+a soldier;10 and, in conclusion, he taught them the sign of the cross, as
+an inestimable talisman to secure them against the future machinations of
+the Devil.11
+
+But the Spanish commander was not so absorbed in his spiritual labors
+as not to have an eye to those temporal concerns for which he came into
+this quarter.  He now found, to his chagrin, that he had come somewhat
+too late; and that the priests of Pachacamac, being advised of his
+mission, had secured much the greater part of the gold, and decamped
+with it before his arrival.  A quantity was afterwards discovered buried in
+the grounds adjoining.12  Still the amount obtained was considerable,
+falling little short of eighty thousand castellanos, a sum which once
+would have been deemed a compensation for greater fatigues than they
+had encountered.  But the Spaniards had become familiar with gold; and
+their imaginations, kindled by the romantic adventures in which they had
+of late been engaged, indulged in visions which all the gold of Peru
+would scarcely have realized.
+
+One prize, however, Hernando obtained by his expedition, which went
+far to console him for the loss of his treasure.  While at Pachacamac, he
+learned that the Indian commander Challcuchima lay with a large force
+in the neighborhood of Xauxa, a town of some strength at a considerable
+distance among the mountains.  This man, who was nearly related to
+Atahuallpa, was his most experienced general, and together with
+Quizquiz, now at Cuzco, had achieved those victories at the south which
+placed the Inca on the throne.  From his birth, his talents, and his large
+experience, he was accounted second to no subject in the kingdom.
+Pizarro was aware of the importance of securing his person.  Finding that
+the Indian noble declined to meet him on his return, he determined to
+march at once on Xauxa and take the chief in his own quarters.  Such a
+scheme, considering the enormous disparity of numbers, might seem
+desperate even for Spaniards.  But success had given them such
+confidence, that they hardly condescended to calculate chances.
+
+The road across the mountains presented greater difficulties than those
+on the former march.  To add to the troubles of the cavalry, the shoes of
+their horses were used up, and their hoofs suffered severely on the rough
+and stony ground.  There was no iron at hand, nothing but gold and
+silver.  In the present emergency they turned even these to account; and
+Pizarro caused the horses of the whole troop to be shod with silver The
+work was done by the Indian smiths, and it answered so well, that in this
+precious material they found a substitute for iron during the remainder of
+the march.13
+
+Xauxa was a large and populous place; though we shall hardly credit the
+assertion of the Conquerors, that a hundred thousand persons assembled
+habitually in the great square of the city.14  The Peruvian commander
+was encamped, it was said, with an army of five-and-thirty thousand men
+at only a few miles' distance from the town.  With some difficulty he was
+persuaded to an interview with Pizarro.  The latter addressed him
+courteously, and urged his return with him to the Castilian quarters in
+Caxamalca, representing it as the command of the Inca.  Ever since the
+capture of his master, Challcuchima had remained uncertain what course
+to take.  The capture of the Inca in this sudden and mysterious manner by
+a race of beings who seemed to have dropped from the clouds, and that
+too in the very hour of his triumph, had entirely bewildered the Peruvian
+chief.  He had concerted no plan for the rescue of Atahuallpa, nor,
+indeed, did he know whether any such movement would be acceptable to
+him.  He now acquiesced in his commands, and was willing, at all events,
+to have a personal interview with his sovereign.  Pizarro gained his end
+without being obliged to strike a single blow to effect it.  The barbarian,
+when brought into contact with the white man, would seem to have been
+rebuked by his superior genius, in the same manner as the wild animal of
+the forest is said to quail before the steady glance of the hunter.
+
+Challcuchima came attended by a numerous retinue.  He was borne in his
+sedan on the shoulders of his vassals; and, as he accompanied the
+Spaniards on their return through the country, received everywhere from
+the inhabitants the homage paid only to the favorite of a monarch.  Yet
+all this pomp vanished on his entering the presence of the Inca, whom he
+approached with his feet bare, while a light burden, which he had taken
+from one of the attendants, was laid on his back.  As he drew near, the
+old warrior, raising his hands to heaven, exclaimed,--"Would that I had
+been here!--this would not then have happened"; then, kneeling down, he
+kissed the hands and feet of his royal master, and bathed them with his
+tears.  Atahuallpa, on his part, betrayed not the least emotion, and
+showed no other sign of satisfaction at the presence of his favorite
+counsellor than by simply bidding him welcome.  The cold demeanor of
+the monarch contrasted strangely with the loyal sensibility of the
+subject.15
+
+The rank of the Inca placed him at an immeasurable distance above the
+proudest of his vassals; and the Spaniards had repeated occasion to
+admire the ascendency which, even in his present fallen fortunes, he
+maintained over his people, and the awe with which they approached
+him.  Pedro Pizarro records an interview, at which he was present,
+between Atahuallpa and one of his great nobles, who had obtained leave
+to visit some remote part of the country on condition of returning by a
+certain day.  He was detained somewhat beyond the appointed time, and,
+on entering the presence with a small propitiatory gift for his sovereign,
+his knees shook so violently, that it seemed, says the chronicler, as if he
+would have fallen to the ground.  His master, however, received him
+kindly, and dismissed him without a word of rebuke.16
+
+Atahuallpa in his confinement continued to receive the same respectful
+treatment from the Spaniards as hitherto.  They taught him to play with
+dice, and the more intricate game of chess, in which the royal captive
+became expert, and loved to beguile with it the tedious hours of his
+imprisonment.  Towards his own people he maintained as far as possible
+his wonted state and ceremonial.  He was attended by his wives and the
+girls of his harem, who, as was customary, waited on him at table and
+discharged the other menial offices about his person.  A body of Indian
+nobles were stationed in the antechamber, but never entered the presence
+unbidden; and when they did enter it, they submitted to the same
+humiliating ceremonies imposed on the greatest of his subjects.  The
+service of his table was gold and silver plate.  His dress, which he often
+changed, was composed of the wool of the vicuna wrought into mantles,
+so fine that it had the appearance of silk.  He sometimes exchanged these
+for a robe made of the skins of bats, as soft and sleek as velvet.  Round
+his head he wore the llautu, a woollen turban or shawl of the most,
+delicate texture, wreathed in folds of various bright colors; and he still
+continued to encircle his temples with the borla, the crimson threads of
+which, mingled with gold, descended so as partly to conceal his eyes.
+The image of royalty had charms for him, when its substance had
+departed.  No garment or utensil that had once belonged to the Peruvian
+sovereign could ever be used by another.  When he laid it aside, it was
+carefully deposited in a chest, kept for the purpose, and afterwards
+burned.  It would have been sacrilege to apply to vulgar uses that which
+had been consecrated by the touch of the Inca.17
+
+Not long after the arrival of the party from Pachacamac, in the latter part
+of May, the three emissaries returned from Cuzco.  They had been very
+successful in their mission.  Owing to the Inca's order, and the awe which
+the white men now inspired throughout the country, the Spaniards had
+everywhere met with a kind reception.  They had been carried on the
+shoulders of the natives in the hamacas, or sedans, of the country; and, as
+they had travelled all the way to the capital on the great imperial road,
+along which relays of Indian carriers were established at stated intervals,
+they performed this journey of more than six hundred miles, not only
+without inconvenience, but with the most luxurious ease.  They passed
+through many populous towns, and always found the simple natives
+disposed to venerate them as beings of a superior nature.  In Cuzco they
+were received with public festivities, were sumptuously lodged, and had
+every want anticipated by the obsequious devotion of the inhabitants.
+
+Their accounts of the capital confirmed all that Pizarro had before heard
+of the wealth and population of the city.  Though they had remained
+more than a week in this place, the emissaries had not seen the whole of
+it.  The great temple of the Sun they found literally covered with plates
+of gold.  They had entered the interior and beheld the royal mummies,
+seated each in his gold-embossed chair, and in robes profusely covered
+with ornaments.  The Spaniards had the grace to respect these, as they
+had been previously enjoined by the Inca; but they required that the
+plates which garnished the walls should be all removed.  The Peruvians
+most reluctantly acquiesced in the commands of their sovereign to
+desecrate the national temple, which every inhabitant of the city regarded
+with peculiar pride and veneration.  With less reluctance they assisted the
+Conquerors in stripping the ornaments from some of the other edifices,
+where the gold, however, being mixed with a large proportion of alloy,
+was of much less value.18
+
+The number of plates they tore from the temple of the Sun was seven
+hundred; and though of no great thickness, probably, they are compared
+in size to the lid of a chest, ten or twelve inches wide.19  A cornice of
+pure gold encircled the edifice, but so strongly set in the stone, that it
+fortunately defied the efforts of the spoilers.  The Spaniards complained
+of the want of alacrity shown by the Indians in the work of destruction,
+and said that there were other parts of the city containing buildings rich
+in gold and silver which they had not been allowed to see.  In truth, their
+mission, which, at best, was a most ungrateful one, had been rendered
+doubly annoying by the manner in which they had executed it.  The
+emissaries were men of a very low stamp, and, puffed up by the honors
+conceded to them by the natives, they looked on themselves as entitled to
+these, and condemned the poor Indians as a race immeasurably beneath
+the European.  They not only showed the most disgusting rapacity, but
+treated the highest nobles with wanton insolence.  They even went so far,
+it is said, as to violate the privacy of the convents, and to outrage the
+religious sentiments of the Peruvians by their scandalous amours with the
+Virgins of the Sun.  The people of Cuzco were so exasperated, that they
+would have laid violent hands on them, but for their habitual reverence
+for the Inca, in whose name the Spaniards had come there.  As it was, the
+Indians collected as much gold as was necessary to satisfy their unworthy
+visitors, and got rid of them as speedily as possible.20  It was a great
+mistake in Pizarro to send such men.  There were persons, even in his
+company, who, as other occasions showed, had some sense of self-
+respect, if not respect for the natives.
+
+The messengers brought with them, besides silver, full two hundred
+cargas or loads of gold.21  This was an important accession to the
+contributions of Atahuallpa; and, although the treasure was still
+considerably below the mark prescribed, the monarch saw with
+satisfaction the time drawing nearer for the completion of his ransom.
+
+Not long before this, an event had occurred which changed the condition
+of the Spaniards, and had an unfavorable influence on the fortunes of the
+Inca.  This was the arrival of Almagro at Caxamalca, with a strong
+reinforcement.  That chief had succeeded, after great efforts, in
+equipping three vessels, and assembling a body of one hundred and fifty
+men, with which he sailed from Panama, the latter part of the preceding
+year.  On his voyage, he was joined by a small additional force from
+Nicaragua, so that his whole strength amounted to one hundred and fifty
+foot and fifty horse, well provided with the munitions of war.  His
+vessels were steered by the old pilot Ruiz; but after making the Bay of
+St. Matthew, he crept slowly along the coast, baffled as usual by winds
+and currents, and experiencing all the hardships incident to that
+protracted navigation.  From some cause or other, he was not so
+fortunate as to obtain tidings of Pizarro; and so disheartened were his
+followers, most of whom were raw adventurers, that, when arrived at
+Puerto Viejo, they proposed to abandon the expedition, and return at
+once to Panama.  Fortunately, one of the little squadron which Almagro
+had sent forward to Tumbez brought intelligence of Pizarro and of the
+colony he had planted at San Miguel.  Cheered by the tidings, the
+cavalier resumed his voyage, and succeeded, at length, towards the close
+of December, 1532, in bringing his whole party safe to the Spanish
+settlement.
+
+He there received the account of Pizarro's march across the mountains,
+his seizure of the Inca, and, soon afterwards, of the enormous ransom
+offered for his liberation.  Almagro and his companions listened with
+undisguised amazement to this account of his associate, and of a change
+in his fortunes so rapid and wonderful that it seemed little less than
+magic.  At the same time, he received a caution from some of the
+colonists not to trust himself in the power of Pizarro, who was known to
+bear him no good-will.
+
+Not long after Almagro's arrival at San Miguel, advices were sent of it to
+Caxamalca, and a private note from his secretary Perez informed Pizarro
+that his associate had come with no purpose of cooperating with him, but
+with the intention to establish an independent government.  Both of the
+Spanish captains seem to have been surrounded by mean and turbulent
+spirits, who sought to embroil them with each other, trusting, doubtless,
+to find their own account in the rupture.  For once, however, their
+malicious machinations failed.
+
+Pizarro was overjoyed at the arrival of so considerable a reinforcement,
+which would enable him to push his fortunes as he had desired, and go
+forward with the conquest of the country.  He laid little stress on the
+secretary's communication, since, whatever might have been Almagro's
+original purpose, Pizarro knew that the richness of the vein he had now
+opened in the land would be certain to secure his cooperation in working
+it.  He had the magnanimity, therefore,--for there is something
+magnanimous in being able to stifle the suggestions of a petty rivalry in
+obedience to sound policy,--to send at once to his ancient comrade, and
+invite him, with many assurances of friendship, to Caxamalca.  Almagro,
+who was of a frank and careless nature, received the communication in
+the spirit in which it was made, and, after some necessary delay, directed
+his march into the interior.  But before leaving San Miguel, having
+become acquainted with the treacherous conduct of his secretary, he
+recompensed his treason by hanging him on the spot.22
+
+Almagro reached Caxamalca about the middle of February, 1533.  The
+soldiers of Pizarro came out to welcome their countrymen, and the two
+captains embraced each other with every mark of cordial satisfaction.
+All past differences were buried in oblivion, and they seemed only
+prepared to aid one another in following up the brilliant career now
+opened to them in the conquest of an empire.
+
+There was one person in Caxamalca on whom this arrival of the
+Spaniards produced a very different impression from that made on their
+own countrymen.  This was the Inca Atahuallpa.  He saw in the new-
+comers only a new swarm of locusts to devour his unhappy country; and
+he felt, that, with his enemies thus multiplying around him, the chances
+were diminished of recovering his freedom, or of maintaining it, if
+recovered.  A little circumstance, insignificant in itself, but magnified by
+superstition into something formidable, occurred at this time to cast an
+additional gloom over his situation.
+
+A remarkable appearance, somewhat of the nature of a meteor, or it may
+have been a comet, was seen in the heavens by some soldiers and pointed
+out to Atahuallpa.  He gazed on it with fixed attention for some minutes,
+and then exclaimed, with a dejected air, that "a similar sign had been
+seen in the skies a short time before the death of his father Huayna
+Capac." 23  From this day a sadness seemed to take possession of him,
+as he looked with doubt and undefined dread to the future.  Thus it is,
+that, in seasons of danger, the mind, like the senses, becomes morbidly
+acute in its perceptions; and the least departure from the regular course
+of nature, that would have passed unheeded in ordinary times, to the
+superstitious eye seems pregnant with meaning, as in some way or other
+connected with the destiny of the individual.
+
+
+
+Book 3
+
+Chapter 7
+
+Immense Amount Of Treasure--Its Division Among The Troops--
+Rumors Of A Rising--Trial Of The Inca--His Execution--Reflections
+
+1533
+
+The arrival of Almagro produced a considerable change in Pizarro's
+prospects, since it enabled him to resume active operations, and push
+forward his conquests in the interior.  The only obstacle in his way was
+the Inca's ransom, and the Spaniards had patiently waited, till the return
+of the emissaries from Cuzco swelled the treasure to a large amount,
+though still below the stipulated limit.  But now their avarice got the
+better of their forbearance, and they called loudly for the immediate
+division of the gold.  To wait longer would only be to invite the assault
+of their enemies, allured by a bait so attractive.  While the treasure
+remained uncounted, no man knew its value, nor what was to be his own
+portion.  It was better to distribute it at once, and let every one possess
+and defend his own.  Several, moreover, were now disposed to return
+home, and take their share of the gold with them, where they could place
+it in safety.  But these were few, while much the larger part were only
+anxious to leave their present quarters, and march at once to Cuzco.
+More gold, they thought, awaited them in that capital, than they could get
+here by prolonging their stay; while every hour was precious, to prevent
+the inhabitants from secreting their treasures, of which design they had
+already given indication.
+
+Pizarro was especially moved by the last consideration; and he felt, that,
+without the capital, he could not hope to become master of the empire.
+Without further delay, the division of the treasure was agreed upon.
+
+Yet, before making this, it was necessary to reduce the whole to ingots of
+a uniform standard, for the spoil was composed of an infinite variety of
+articles, in which the gold was of very different degrees of purity.  These
+articles consisted of goblets, ewers, salvers, vases of every shape and
+size, ornaments and utensils for the temples and the royal palaces, tiles
+and plates for the decoration of the public edifices, curious imitations of
+different plants and animals.  Among the plants, the most beautiful was
+the Indian corn, in which the golden ear was sheathed in its broad leaves
+of silver, from which hung a rich tassel of threads of the same precious
+metal.  A fountain was also much admired, which sent up a sparkling jet
+of gold, while birds and animals of the same material played in the
+waters at its base.  The delicacy of the workmanship of some of these,
+and the beauty and ingenuity of the design, attracted the admiration of
+better judges than the rude Conquerors of Peru.1
+
+Before breaking up these specimens of Indian art, it was determined to
+send a quantity, which should be deducted from the royal fifth, to the
+Emperor.  It would serve as a sample of the ingenuity of the natives, and
+would show him the value of his conquests.  A number of the most
+beautiful articles was selected, to the amount of a hundred thousand
+ducats, and Hernando Pizarro was appointed to be the bearer of them to
+Spain.  He was to obtain an audience of Charles, and, at the same time
+that he laid the treasures before him, he was to give an account of the
+proceedings of the Conquerors, and to seek a further augmentation of
+their powers and dignities.
+
+No man in the army was better qualified for this mission, by his address
+and knowledge of affairs, than Hernando Pizarro; no one would be so
+likely to urge his suit with effect at the haughty Castilian court.  But
+other reasons influenced the selection of him at the present juncture.
+
+His former jealousy of Almagro still rankled in his bosom, and he had
+beheld that chief's arrival at the camp with feelings of disgust, which he
+did not care to conceal.  He looked on him as coming to share the spoils
+of victory, and defraud his brother of his legitimate honors.  Instead of
+exchanging the cordial greeting proffered by Almagro at their first
+interview, the arrogant cavalier held back in sullen silence.  His brother
+Francis was greatly displeased at a conduct which threatened to renew
+their ancient feud, and he induced Hernando to accompany him to
+Almagro's quarters, and make some acknowledgment for his uncourteous
+behavior.2  But, notwithstanding this show of reconciliation, the general
+thought the present a favorable opportunity to remove his brother from
+the scene of operations, where his factious spirit more than
+counterbalanced his eminent services.3
+
+The business of melting down the plate was intrusted to the Indian
+goldsmiths, who were thus required to undo the work of their own hands,
+They toiled day and night, but such was the quantity to be recast, that it
+consumed a full month.  When the whole was reduced to bars of a
+uniform standard, they were nicely weighed, under the superintendence
+of the royal inspectors.  The total amount of the gold was found to be
+one million, three hundred and twenty-six thousand, five hundred and
+thirty nine pesos de oro, which, allowing for the greater value of money
+in the sixteenth century, would be equivalent, probably, at the present
+time, to near three millions and a half of pounds sterling, or somewhat
+less than fifteen millions and a half of dollars.4  The quantity of silver
+was estimated at fifty-one thousand six hundred and ten marks.  History
+affords no parallel of such a booty--and that, too, in the most convertible
+form, in ready money, as it were--having fallen to the lot of a little band
+of military adventurers, like the Conquerors of Peru.  The great object of
+the Spanish expeditions in the New World was gold.  It is remarkable
+that their success should have been so complete.  Had they taken the
+track of the English, the French, or the Dutch, on the shores of the
+northern continent, how different would have been the result!  It is
+equally worthy of remark, that the wealth thus suddenly acquired, by
+diverting them from the slow but surer and more permanent sources of
+national prosperity, has in the end glided from their grasp, and left them
+among the poorest of the nations of Christendom.
+
+A new difficulty now arose in respect to the division of the treasure.
+Almagro's followers claimed to be admitted to a share of it; which, as
+they equalled, and indeed, somewhat exceeded in number Pizarro's
+company, would reduce the gains of these last very materially.  "We
+were not here, it is true," said Almagro's soldiers to their comrades, "at
+the seizure of the Inca, but we have taken our turn in mounting guard
+over him since his capture, have helped you to defend your treasures, and
+now give you the means of going forward and securing your conquests.
+It is a common cause," they urged, "in which all are equally embarked,
+and the gains should be shared equally between us."
+
+But this way of viewing the matter was not at all palatable to Pizarro's
+company, who alleged that Atahuallpa's contract had been made
+exclusively with them; that they had seized the Inca, had secured the
+ransom, had incurred, in short, all the risk of the enterprise, and were not
+now disposed to share the fruits of it with every one who came after
+them.  There was much force, it could not be denied, in this reasoning,
+and it was finally settled between the leaders, that Almagro's followers
+should resign their pretensions for a stipulated sum of no great amount,
+and look to the career now opened to them for carving out their fortunes
+for themselves.
+
+This delicate affair being thus harmoniously adjusted, Pizarro prepared,
+with all solemnity, for a division of the imperial spoil.  The troops were
+called together in the great square, and the Spanish commander, "with
+the fear of God before his eyes," says the record, "invoked the assistance
+of Heaven to do the work before him conscientiously and justly."5  The
+appeal may seem somewhat out of place at the distribution of spoil so
+unrighteously acquired; yet, in truth, considering the magnitude of the
+treasure, and the power assumed by Pizarro to distribute it according to
+the respective deserts of the individuals, there were few acts of his life
+involving a heavier responsibility.  On his present decision might be said
+to hang the future fortunes of each one of his followers,--poverty or
+independence during the remainder of his days.
+
+The royal fifth was first deducted, including the remittance already sent
+to Spain.  The share appropriated by Pizarro amounted to fifty-seven
+thousand two hundred and twenty-two pesos of gold, and two thousand
+three hundred and fifty marks of silver.  He had besides this the great
+chair or throne of the Inca, of solid gold, and valued at twenty-five
+thousand pesos de oro.  To his brother Hernando were paid thirty-one
+thousand and eighty pesos of gold, and two thousand three hundred and
+fifty marks of silver.  De Soto received seventeen thousand seven
+hundred and forty pesos of gold, and seven hundred and twenty-four
+marks of silver.  Most of the remaining cavalry, sixty in number,
+received each eight thousand eight hundred and eighty pesos of gold, and
+three hundred and sixty-two marks of silver, though some had more, and
+a few considerably less.  The infantry mustered in all one hundred and
+five men.  Almost one fifth of them were allowed, each, four thousand
+four hundred and forty pesos of gold, and one hundred and eighty marks
+of silver, half of the compensation of the troopers.  The remainder
+received one fourth part less; though here again there were exceptions,
+and some were obliged to content themselves with a much smaller share
+of the spoil.6
+
+The new church of San Francisco, the first Christian temple in Peru, was
+endowed with two thousand two hundred and twenty pesos of gold.  The
+amount assigned to Almagro's company was not excessive, if it was not
+more than twenty thousand pesos; 7 and that reserved for the colonists of
+San Miguel, which amounted only to fifteen thousand pesos, was
+unaccountably small.8  There were among them certain soldiers, who at
+an early period of the expedition, as the reader may remember,
+abandoned the march, and returned to San Miguel.  These, certainly, had
+little claim to be remembered in the division of booty.  But the greater
+part of the colony consisted of invalids, men whose health had been
+broken by their previous hardships, but who still, with a stout and willing
+heart, did good service in their military post on the sea-coast.  On what
+grounds they had forfeited their claims to a more ample remuneration, it
+is not easy to explain.
+
+Nothing is said, in the partition, of Almagro himself, who, by the terms
+of the original contract, might claim an equal share of the spoil with his
+associate.  As little notice is taken of Luque, the remaining partner.
+Luque himself, was, indeed, no longer to be benefited by worldly
+treasure.  He had died a short time before Almagro's departure from
+Panama;9 too soon to learn the full success of the enterprise, which, but
+for his exertions, must have failed; too soon to become acquainted with
+the achievements and the crimes of Pizarro.  But the Licentiate Espinosa,
+whom he represented, and who, it appears, had advanced the funds for
+the expedition, was still living at St. Domingo, and Luque's pretensions
+were explicitly transferred to him.  Yet it is unsafe to pronounce, at this
+distance of time, on the authority of mere negative testimony; and it must
+be admitted to form a strong presumption in favor of Pizarro's general
+equity in the distribution, that no complaint of it has reached us from any
+of the parties present, nor from contemporary chroniclers.10
+
+The division of the ransom being completed by the Spaniards, there
+seemed to be no further obstacle to their resuming active operations, and
+commencing the march to Cuzco.  But what was to be done with
+Atahuallpa? In the determination of this question, whatever was
+expedient was just.11  To liberate him would be to set at large the very
+man who might prove their most dangerous enemy; one whose birth and
+royal station would rally round him the whole nation, place all the
+machinery of government at his control, and all its resources,--one, in
+short, whose bare word might concentrate all the energies of his people
+against the Spaniards, and thus delay for a long period, if not wholly
+defeat, the conquest of the country.  Yet to hold him in captivity was
+attended with scarcely less difficulty; since to guard so important a prize
+would require such a division of their force as must greatly cripple its
+strength, and how could they expect, by any vigilance, to secure their
+prisoner against rescue in the perilous passes of the mountains?
+
+The Inca himself now loudly demanded his freedom.  The proposed
+amount of the ransom had, indeed, not been fully paid.  It may be
+doubted whether it ever would have been, considering the
+embarrassments thrown in the way by the guardians of the temples, who
+seemed disposed to secrete the treasures, rather than despoil these sacred
+depositories to satisfy the cupidity of the strangers.  It was unlucky, too,
+for the Indian monarch, that much of the gold, and that of the best
+quality, consisted of flat plates or tiles, which, however valuable, lay in a
+compact form that did little towards swelling the heap.  But an immense
+amount had been already realized, and it would have been a still greater
+one, the Inca might allege, but for the impatience of the Spaniards.  At
+all events, it was a magnificent ransom, such as was never paid by prince
+or potentate before.
+
+These considerations Atahuallpa urged on several of the cavaliers, and
+especially on Hernando de Soto, who was on terms of more familiarity
+with him than Pizarro.  De Soto reported Atahuallpa's demands to his
+leader; but the latter evaded a direct reply.  He did not disclose the dark
+purposes over which his mind was brooding.12  Not long afterward he
+caused the notary to prepare an instrument, in which he fully acquitted
+the Inca of further obligation in respect to the ransom.  This he
+commanded to be publicly proclaimed in the camp, while at the same
+time he openly declared that the safety of the Spaniards required, that the
+Inca should be detained in confinement until they were strengthened by
+additional reinforcements.13
+
+Meanwhile the old rumors of a meditated attack by the natives began to
+be current among the soldiers.  They were repeated from one to another,
+gaining something by every repetition.  An immense army, it was
+reported, was mustering at Quito, the land of Atahuallpa's birth, and
+thirty thousand Caribs were on their way to support it.14  The Caribs
+were distributed by the early Spaniards rather indiscriminately over the
+different parts of America, being invested with peculiar horrors as a race
+of cannibals.
+
+It was not easy to trace the origin of these rumors.  There was in the
+camp a considerable number of Indians, who belonged to the party of
+Huascar, and who were, of course, hostile to Atahuallpa.  But his worst
+enemy was Felipillo, the interpreter from Tumbez, already mentioned in
+these pages.  This youth had conceived a passion, or, as some say, had
+been detected in an intrigue with, one of the royal concubines.15  The
+circumstance had reached the ears of Atahuallpa, who felt himself deeply
+outraged by it.  "That such an insult should have been offered by so base
+a person was an indignity," he said, "more difficult to bear than his
+imprisonment";16 and he told Pizarro, "that, by the Peruvian law, it
+could be expiated, not by the criminal's own death alone, but by that of
+his whole family and kindred." 17  But Felipillo was too important to the
+Spaniards to be dealt with so summarily; nor did they probably attach
+such consequence to an offence which, if report be true, they had
+countenanced by their own example.18  Felipillo, however, soon learned
+the state of the Inca's feelings towards himself, and from that moment he
+regarded him with deadly hatred.  Unfortunately, his malignant temper
+found ready means for its indulgence.
+
+The rumors of a rising among the natives pointed to Atahuallpa as the
+author of it.  Challcuchima was examined on the subject, but avowed his
+entire ignorance of any such design, which he pronounced a malicious
+slander.  Pizarro next laid the matter before the Inca himself, repeating to
+him the stories in circulation, with the air of one who believed them
+"What treason is this," said the general, "that you have meditated against
+me,--me, who have ever treated you with honor, confiding in your words,
+as in those of a brother?"  "You jest," replied the Inca, who, perhaps, did
+not feel the weight of this confidence; "you are always jesting with me.
+How could I or my people think of conspiring against men so valiant as
+the Spaniards? Do not jest with me thus, I beseech you."19  "This,"
+continues Pizarro's secretary, "he said in the most composed and natural
+manner, smiling all the while to dissemble his falsehood, so that we were
+all amazed to find such cunning in a barbarian." 20
+
+But it was not with cunning, but with the consciousness of innocence, as
+the event afterwards proved, that Atahuallpa thus spoke to Pizarro.  He
+readily discerned, however, the causes, perhaps the consequences, of the
+accusation.  He saw a dark gulf opening beneath his feet; and he was
+surrounded by strangers, on none of whom he could lean for counsel or
+protection.  The life of the captive monarch is usually short; and
+Atahuallpa might have learned the truth of this, when he thought of
+Huascar.  Bitterly did he now lament the absence of Hernando Pizarro,
+for, strange as it may seem, the haughty spirit of this cavalier had been
+touched by the condition of the royal prisoner, and he had treated him
+with a deference which won for him the peculiar regard and confidence
+of the Indian.  Yet the latter lost no time in endeavoring to efface the
+general's suspicions, and to establish his own innocence.  "Am I not,"
+said he to Pizarro, "a poor captive in your hands? How could I harbor the
+designs you impute to me, when I should be the first victim of the
+outbreak? And you little know my people, if you think that such a
+movement would be made without my orders; when the very birds in my
+dominions," said he, with somewhat of an hyperbole, "would scarcely
+venture to fly contrary to my will." 21
+
+But these protestations of innocence had little effect on the troops;
+among whom the story of a general rising of the natives continued to
+gain credit every hour.  A large force, it was said, was already gathered
+at Guamachucho, not a hundred miles from the camp, and their assault
+might be hourly expected.  The treasure which the Spaniards had
+acquired afforded a tempting prize, and their own alarm was increased
+by the apprehension of losing it.  The patroles were doubled.  The horses
+were kept saddled and bridled.  The soldiers slept on their arms; Pizarro
+went the rounds regularly to see that every sentinel was on his post.  The
+little army, in short, was in a state of preparation for instant attack.
+
+Men suffering from fear are not likely to be too scrupulous as to the
+means of removing the cause of it.  Murmurs, mingled with gloomy
+menaces, were now heard against the Inca, the author of these
+machinations.  Many began to demand his life as necessary to the safety
+of the army.  Among these, the most vehement were Almagro and his
+followers.  They had not witnessed the seizure of Atahuallpa.  They had
+no sympathy with him in his fallen state.  They regarded him only as an
+incumbrance, and their desire now was to push their fortunes in the
+country, since they had got so little of the gold of Caxamalca.  They were
+supported by Riquelme, the treasurer, and by the rest of the royal
+officers.  These men had been left at San Miguel by Pizarro, who did not
+care to have such official spies on his movements.  But they had come to
+the camp with Almagro, and they loudly demanded the Inca's death, as
+indispensable to the tranquillity of the country, and the interests of the
+Crown.22
+
+To these dark suggestions Pizarro turned--or seemed to turn--an
+unwilling ear, showing visible reluctance to proceed to extreme measures
+with his prisoner.23  There were some few, and among others Hernando
+de Soto, who supported him in these views, and who regarded such
+measures as not at all justified by the evidence of Atahuallpa's guilt.  In
+this state of things, the Spanish commander determined to send a small
+detachment to Guamachucho, to reconnoitre the country and ascertain
+what ground there was for the rumors of an insurrection.  De Soto was
+placed at the head of the expedition, which, as the distance was not great,
+would occupy but a few days.
+
+After that cavalier's departure, the agitation among the soldiers, instead
+of diminishing, increased to such a degree, that Pizarro, unable to resist
+their importunities, consented to bring Atahuallpa to instant trial.  It was
+but decent, and certainly safer, to have the forms of a trial.  A court was
+organized, over which the two captains, Pizarro and Almagro were to
+preside as judges.  An attorney-general was named to prosecute for the
+Crown, and counsel was assigned to the prisoner.
+
+The charges preferred against the Inca, drawn up in the form of
+interrogatories, were twelve in number.  The most important were, that
+he had usurped the crown and assassinated his brother Huascar; that he
+had squandered the public revenues since the conquest of the country by
+the Spaniards, and lavished them on his kindred and his minions; that he
+was guilty of idolatry, and of adulterous practices, indulging openly in a
+plurality of wives; finally, that he had attempted to excite an insurrection
+against the Spaniards.24
+
+These charges, most of which had reference to national usages, or to the
+personal relations of the Inca, over which the Spanish conquerors had
+clearly no jurisdiction, are so absurd, that they might well provoke a
+smile, did they not excite a deeper feeling.  The last of the charges was
+the only one of moment in such a trial; and the weakness of this may be
+inferred from the care taken to bolster it up with the others.  The mere
+specification of the articles must have been sufficient to show that the
+doom of the Inca was already sealed.
+
+A number of Indian witnesses were examined, and their testimony,
+filtrated through the interpretation of Felipillo, received, it is said, when
+necessary, a very different coloring from that of the original.  The
+examination was soon ended, and "a warm discussion," as we are assured
+by one of Pizarro's own secretaries, "took place in respect to the
+probable good or evil that would result from the death of Atahuallpa." 25
+It was a question of expediency.  He was found guilty,--whether of all the
+crimes alleged we are not informed,--and he was sentenced to be burnt
+alive in the great square of Caxamalca.  The sentence was to be carried
+into execution that very night.  They were not even to wait for the return
+of De Soto, when the information he would bring would go far to
+establish the truth or the falsehood of the reports respecting the
+insurrection of the natives.  It was desirable to obtain the countenance of
+Father Valverde to these proceedings, and a copy of the judgment was
+submitted to the friar for his signature, which he gave without hesitation,
+declaring, that, "in his opinion, the Inca, at all events, deserved death."
+26
+
+Yet there were some few in that martial conclave who resisted these
+high-handed measures.  They considered them as a poor requital of all
+the favors bestowed on them by the Inca, who hitherto had received at
+their hands nothing but wrong.  They objected to the evidence as wholly
+insufficient; and they denied the authority of such a tribunal to sit in
+judgment on a sovereign prince in the heart of his own dominions.  If he
+were to be tried, he should be sent to Spain, and his cause brought before
+the Emperor, who alone had power to determine it.
+
+But the great majority--and they were ten to one--overruled these
+objections, by declaring there was no doubt of Atahuallpa's guilt, and
+they were willing to assume the responsibility of his punishment.  A full
+account of the proceedings would be sent to Castile, and the Emperor
+should be informed who were the loyal servants of the Crown, and who
+were its enemies.  The dispute ran so high, that for a time it menaced an
+open and violent rupture; till, at length, convinced that resistance was
+fruitless, the weaker party, silenced, but not satisfied, contented
+themselves with entering a written protest against these proceedings,
+which would leave an indelible stain on the names of all concerned in
+them.27
+
+When the sentence was communicated to the Inca, he was greatly
+overcome by it.  He had, indeed, for some time, looked to such an issue
+as probable, and had been heard to intimate as much to those about him.
+But the probability of such an event is very different from its certainty, --
+and that, too, so sudden and speedy.  For a moment, the overwhelming
+conviction of it unmanned him, and he exclaimed, with tears in his eyes,-
+-"What have I done, or my children, that I should meet such a fate? And
+from your hands, too," said he, addressing Pizarro; "you, who have met
+with friendship and kindness from my people, with whom I have shared
+my treasures, who have received nothing but benefits from my hands!" In
+the most piteous tones, he then implored that his life might be spared,
+promising any guaranty that might be required for the safety of every
+Spaniard in the army,--promising double the ransom he had already paid,
+if time were only given him to obtain it.28
+
+An eyewitness assures us that Pizarro was visibly affected, as he turned
+away from the Inca, to whose appeal he had no power to listen, in
+opposition to the voice of the army, and to his own sense of what was
+due to the security of the country.29  Atahuallpa, finding he had no
+power to turn his Conqueror from his purpose, recovered his habitual
+self-possession, and from that moment submitted himself to his fate with
+the courage of an Indian warrior.
+
+The doom of the Inca was proclaimed by sound of trumpet in the great
+square of Caxamalca; and, two hours after sunset, the Spanish soldiery
+assembled by torch-light in the plaza to witness the execution of the
+sentence.  It was on the twenty-ninth of August, 1533- Atahuallpa was
+led out chained hand and foot,--for he had been kept in irons ever since
+the great excitement had prevailed in the army respecting an assault.
+Father Vicente de Valverde was at his side, striving to administer
+consolation, and, if possible, to persuade him at this last hour to abjure
+his superstition and embrace the religion of his Conquerors.  He was
+willing to save the soul of his victim from the terrible expiation in the
+next world, to which he had so cheerfully consigned his mortal part in
+this.
+
+During Atahuallpa's confinement, the friar had repeatedly expounded to
+him the Christian doctrines, and the Indian monarch discovered much
+acuteness in apprehending the discourse of his teacher.  But it had not
+carried conviction to his mind, and though he listened with patience, he
+had shown no disposition to renounce the faith of his fathers.  The
+Dominican made a last appeal to him in this solemn hour; and, when
+Atahuallpa was bound to the stake, with the fagots that were to kindle his
+funeral pile lying around him, Valverde, holding up the cross, besought
+him to embrace it and be baptized, promising that, by so doing, the
+painful death to which he had been sentenced should be commuted for
+the milder form of the garrote,--a mode of punishment by strangulation,
+used for criminals in Spain.30
+
+The unhappy monarch asked if this were really so, and, on its being
+confirmed by Pizarro, he consented to abjure his own religion, and
+receive baptism.  The ceremony was performed by Father Valverde, and
+the new convert received the name of Juan de Atahuallpa,--the name of
+Juan being conferred in honor of John the Baptist, on whose day the
+event took place.31
+
+Atahuallpa expressed a desire that his remains might be transported to
+Quito, the place of his birth, to be preserved with those of his maternal
+ancestors.  Then turning to Pizarro, as a last request, he implored him to
+take compassion on his young children, and receive them under his
+protection.  Was there no other one in that dark company who stood
+grimly around him, to whom he could look for the protection of his
+offspring?  Perhaps he thought there was no other so competent to afford
+it, and that the wishes so solemnly expressed in that hour might meet
+with respect even from his Conqueror.  Then, recovering his stoical
+bearing, which for a moment had been shaken, he submitted himself
+calmly to his fate,-while the Spaniards, gathering around, muttered their
+credos for the salvation of his soul!32  Thus by the death of a vile
+malefactor perished the last of the Incas!
+
+I have already spoken of the person and the qualities of Atahuallpa.  He
+had a handsome countenance, though with an expression somewhat too
+fierce to be pleasing.  His frame was muscular and well-proportioned; his
+air commanding; and his deportment in the Spanish quarters had a
+degree of refinement, the more interesting that it was touched with
+melancholy.  He is accused of having been cruel in his wars, and bloody
+in his revenge.33  It may be true, but the pencil of an enemy would be
+likely to overcharge the shadows of the portrait.  He is allowed to have
+been bold, high-minded, and liberal.34  All agree that he showed
+singular penetration and quickness of perception.  His exploits as a
+warrior had placed his valor beyond dispute.  The best homage to it is
+the reluctance shown by the Spaniards to restore him to freedom.  They
+dreaded him as an enemy, and they had done him too many wrongs to
+think that he could be their friend.  Yet his conduct towards them from
+the first had been most friendly; and they repaid it with imprisonment,
+robbery, and death.
+
+The body of the Inca remained on the place of execution through the
+night.  The following morning it was removed to the church of San
+Francisco, where his funeral obsequies were performed with great
+solemnity.  Pizarro and the principal cavaliers went into mourning, and
+the troops listened with devout attention to the service of the dead from
+the lips of Father Valverde.35  The ceremony was interrupted by the
+sound of loud cries and wailing, as of many voices at the doors of the
+church.  These were suddenly thrown open, and a number of Indian
+women, the wives and sisters of the deceased, rushing up the great aisle,
+surrounded the corpse.  This was not the way, they cried, to celebrate the
+funeral rites of an Inca; and they declared their intention to sacrifice
+themselves on his tomb, and bear him company to the land of spirits.
+The audience, outraged by this frantic behaviour, told the intruders that
+Atahuallpa had died in the faith of a Christian, and that the God of the
+Christians abhorred such sacrifices.  They then caused the women to be
+excluded from the church, and several, retiring to their own quarters, laid
+violent hands on themselves, in the vain hope of accompanying their
+beloved lord to the bright mansions of the Sun.36
+
+Atahuallpa's remains, notwithstanding his request, were laid in the
+cemetery of San Francisco.37  But from thence, as is reported, after the
+Spaniards left Caxamalca, they were secretly removed, and carried, as he
+had desired, to Quito.  The colonists of a later time supposed that some
+treasures might have been buried with the body.  But, on excavating the
+ground, neither treasure nor remains were to be discovered.38
+
+A day or two after these tragic events, Hernando de Soto returned from
+his excursion.  Great was his astonishment and indignation at learning
+what had been done in his absence.  He sought out Pizarro at once, and
+found him, says the chronicler, "with a great felt hat, by way of
+mourning, slouched over his eyes," and in his dress and demeanor
+exhibiting all the show of sorrow.39  "You have acted rashly," said De
+Soto to him bluntly; "Atahuallpa has been basely slandered.  There was
+no enemy at Guamachucho; no rising among the natives.  I have met with
+nothing on the road but demonstrations of good-will, and all is quiet.  If
+it was necessary to bring the Inca to trial, he should have been taken to
+Castile and judged by the Emperor.  I would have pledged myself to see
+him safe on board the vessel." 40  Pizarro confessed that he had been
+precipitate, and said that he had been deceived by Riquelme, Valverde,
+and the others.  These charges soon reached the ears of the treasurer and
+the Dominican, who, in their turn, exculpated themselves, and upbraided
+Pizarro to his face, as the only one responsible for the deed.  The dispute
+ran high; and the parties were heard by the by-slanders to give one
+another the lie! 41  This vulgar squabble among the leaders, so soon after
+the event, is the best commentary on the iniquity of their own
+proceedings and the innocence of the Inca.
+
+The treatment of Atahuallpa, from first to last, forms undoubtedly one of
+the darkest chapters in Spanish colonial history.  There may have been
+massacres perpetrated on a more extended scale, and executions
+accompanied with a greater refinement of cruelty.  But the blood-stained
+annals of the Conquest afford no such example of cold-hearted and
+systematic persecution, not of an enemy, but of one whose whole
+deportment had been that of a friend and a benefactor.
+
+From the hour that Pizarro and his followers had entered within the
+sphere of Atahuallpa's influence, the hand of friendship had been
+extended to them by the natives.  Their first act, on crossing the
+mountains, was to kidnap the monarch and massacre his people.  The
+seizure of his person might be vindicated, by those who considered the
+end as justifying the means, on the ground that it was indispensable to
+secure the triumphs of the Cross.  But no such apology can be urged for
+the massacre of the unarmed and helpless population,--as wanton as it
+was wicked.
+
+The long confinement of the Inca had been used by the Conquerors to
+wring from him his treasures with the hard gripe of avarice.  During the
+whole of this dismal period, he had conducted himself with singular
+generosity and good faith.  He had opened a free passage to the
+Spaniards through every part of his empire; and had furnished every
+facility for the execution of their plans.  When these were accomplished,
+and he remained an encumbrance on their hands, notwithstanding their
+engagement, expressed or implied, to release him,--and Pizarro, as we
+have seen, by a formal act, acquitted his captive of any further obligation
+on the score of the ransom,--he was arraigned before a mock tribunal,
+and, under pretences equally false and frivolous, was condemned to an
+excruciating death.  From first to last, the policy of the Spanish
+conquerors towards their unhappy victim is stamped with barbarity and
+fraud.
+
+It is not easy to acquit Pizarro of being in a great degree responsible for
+this policy.  His partisans have labored to show, that it was forced on him
+by the necessity of the case, and that in the death of the Inca, especially,
+he yielded reluctantly to the importunities of others.42  But weak as is
+this apology, the historian who has the means of comparing the various
+testimony of the period will come to a different conclusion.  To him it
+will appear, that Pizarro had probably long felt the removal of
+Atahuallpa as essential to the success of his enterprise.  He foresaw the
+odium that would be incurred by the death of his royal captive without
+sufficient grounds; while he labored to establish these, he still shrunk
+from the responsibility of the deed, and preferred to perpetrate it in
+obedience to the suggestions of others, rather than his own.  Like many
+an unprincipled politician, he wished to reap the benefit of a bad act, and
+let others take the blame of it.
+
+Almagro and his followers are reported by Pizarro's secretaries to have
+first insisted on the Inca's death.  They were loudly supported by the
+treasurer and the royal officers, who considered it as indispensable to the
+interests of the Crown; and, finally, the rumors of a conspiracy raised the
+same cry among the soldiers, and Pizarro, with all his tenderness for his
+prisoner, could not refuse to bring him to trial.--The form of a trial was
+necessary to give an appearance of fairness to the proceedings.  That it
+was only form is evident from the indecent haste with which it was
+conducted,--the examination of evidence, the sentence, and the
+execution, being all on the same day.  The multiplication of the charges,
+designed to place the guilt of the accused on the strongest ground, had,
+from their very number, the opposite effect, proving only the
+determination to convict him.  If Pizarro had felt the reluctance to his
+conviction which he pretended, why did he send De Soto, Atahuallpa's
+best friend, away, when the inquiry was to be instituted? Why was the
+sentence so summarily executed, as not to afford opportunity, by that
+cavalier's return, of disproving the truth of the principal charge,--the only
+one, in fact, with which the Spaniards had any concern? The solemn
+farce of mourning and deep sorrow affected by Pizarro, who by these
+honors to the dead would intimate the sincere regard he had entertained
+for the living, was too thin a veil to impose on the most credulous.
+
+It is not intended by these reflections to exculpate the rest of the army,
+and especially its officers, from their share in the infamy of the
+transaction.  But Pizarro, as commander of the army, was mainly
+responsible for its measures.  For he was not a man to allow his own
+authority to be wrested from his grasp, or to yield timidly to the impulses
+of others.  He did not even yield to his own.  His whole career shows
+him, whether for good or for evil, to have acted with a cool and
+calculating policy.
+
+A story has been often repeated, which refers the motives of Pizarro's
+conduct, in some degree at least, to personal resentment.  The Inca had
+requested one of the Spanish soldiers to write the name of God on his
+nail.  This the monarch showed to several of his guards successively,
+and, as they read it, and each pronounced the same word, the sagacious
+mind of the barbarian was delighted with what seemed to him little short
+of a miracle,--to which the science of his own nation afforded no
+analogy.  On showing the writing to Pizarro, that chief remained silent;
+and the Inca, finding he could not read, conceived a contempt for the
+commander who was even less informed than his soldiers.  This he did
+not wholly conceal, and Pizarro aware of the cause of it, neither forgot
+nor forgave it.43  The anecdote is reported not on the highest authority.
+It may be true; but it is unnecessary to look for the motives of Pizarro's
+conduct in personal pique, when so many proofs are to be discerned of a
+dark and deliberate policy.
+
+Yet the arts of the Spanish chieftain failed to reconcile his countrymen to
+the atrocity of his proceedings.  It is singular to observe the difference
+between the tone assumed by the first chroniclers of the transaction,
+while it was yet fresh, and that of those who wrote when the lapse of a
+few years had shown the tendency of public opinion.  The first boldly
+avow the deed as demanded by expediency, if not necessity; while they
+deal in no measured terms of reproach with the character of their
+unfortunate victim.44  The latter, on the other hand, while they extenuate
+the errors of the Inca, and do justice to his good faith, are unreserved in
+their condemnation of the Conquerors, on whose conduct, they say,
+Heaven set the seal of its own reprobation, by bringing them all to an
+untimely and miserable end.45  The sentence of contemporaries has been
+fully ratified by that of posterity;46 and the persecution of Atahuallpa is
+regarded with justice as having left a stain, never to be effaced, on the
+Spanish arms in the New World.
+
+
+
+Book 3
+
+Chapter 8
+
+Disorders In Peru--March To Cuzco--Encounter With The Natives--
+Challcuchima Burnt--Arrival In Cuzco--Description Of The City--
+Treasure Found There
+
+1533--1534
+
+The Inca of Peru was its sovereign in a peculiar sense.  He received an
+obedience from his vassals more implicit than that of any despot; for his
+authority reached to the most secret conduct,--to the thoughts of the
+individual.  He was reverenced as more than human.1  He was not
+merely the head of the state, but the point to which all its institutions
+converged, as to a common centre,--the keystone of the political fabric,
+which must fall to pieces by its own weight when that was withdrawn.
+So it fared on the death of Atahuallpa.2  His death not only left the
+throne vacant, without any certain successor, but the manner of it
+announced to the Peruvian people that a hand stronger than that of their
+Incas had now seized the sceptre, and that the dynasty of the Children of
+the Sun had passed away for ever.
+
+The natural consequences of such a conviction followed.  The beautiful
+order of the ancient institutions was broken up, as the authority which
+controlled it was withdrawn.  The Indians broke out into greater excesses
+from the uncommon restraint to which they had been before subjected.
+Villages were burnt, temples and palaces were plundered, and the gold
+they contained was scattered or secreted.  Gold and silver acquired an
+importance in the eyes of the Peruvian, when he saw the importance
+attached to them by his conquerors.  The precious metals, which before
+served only for purposes of state or religious decoration, were now
+hoarded up and buried in caves and forests.  The gold and silver
+concealed by the natives were affirmed greatly to exceed in quantity that
+which fell into the hands of the Spaniards.3  The remote provinces now
+shook off their allegiance to the Incas.  Their great captains, at the head
+of distant armies, set up for themselves.  Ruminavi, a commander on the
+borders of Quito, sought to detach that kingdom from the Peruvian
+empire, and to reassert its ancient independence.  The country, in short,
+was in that state, in which old things are passing away, and the new order
+of things has not yet been established.  It was in a state of revolution.
+
+The authors of the revolution, Pizarro and his followers, remained
+meanwhile at Caxamalca.  But the first step of the Spanish commander
+was to name a successor to Atahuallpa.  It would be easier to govern
+under the venerated authority to which the homage of the Indians had
+been so long paid; and it was not difficult to find a successor.  The true
+heir to the crown was a second son of Huayna Capac, named Manco, a
+legitimate brother of the unfortunate Huascar.  But Pizarro had too little
+knowledge of the dispositions of this prince; and he made no scruple to
+prefer a brother of Atahuallpa, and to present him to the Indian nobles as
+their future Inca.  We know nothing of the character of the young
+Toparca, who probably resigned himself without reluctance to a destiny
+which, however humiliating in some points of view, was more exalted
+than he could have hoped to obtain in the regular course of events.  The
+ceremonies attending a Peruvian coronation were observed, as well as
+time would allow; the brows of the young Inca were encircled with the
+imperial borla by the hands of his conqueror, and he received the
+homage of his Indian vassals.  They were the less reluctant to pay it, as
+most of those in the camp belonged to the faction of Quito.
+
+All thoughts were now eagerly turned towards Cuzco, of which the most
+glowing accounts were circulated among the soldiers, and whose temples
+and royal palaces were represented as blazing with gold and silver.  With
+imaginations thus excited, Pizarro and his entire company, amounting to
+almost five hundred men, of whom nearly a third, probably, were
+cavalry, took their departure early in September from Caxamalca,--a
+place ever memorable as the theatre of some of the most strange and
+sanguinary scenes recorded in history.  All set forward in high spirits,--
+the soldiers of Pizarro from the expectation of doubling their present
+riches, and Almagro's followers from the prospect of sharing equally in
+the spoil with "the first conquerors." 4  The young Inca and the old chief
+Challcuchima accompanied the march in their litters, attended by a
+numerous retinue of vassals, and moving in as much state and ceremony
+as if in the possession of real power.5
+
+Their course lay along the great road of the Incas, which stretched across
+the elevated regions of the Cordilleras, all the way to Cuzco.  It was of
+nearly a uniform breadth, though constructed with different degrees of
+care, according to the ground.6  Sometimes it crossed smooth and level
+valleys, which offered of themselves little impediment to the traveller; at
+other times, it followed the course of a mountain stream that wound
+round the base of some beetling cliff, leaving small space for the
+foothold; at others, again, where the sierra was so precipitous that it
+seemed to preclude all further progress, the road, accommodated to the
+natural sinuosities of the ground, wound round the heights which it
+would have been impossible to scale directly.7
+
+But although managed with great address, it was a formidable passage
+for the cavalry.  The mountain was hewn into steps, but the rocky ledges
+cut up the hoofs of the horses; and, though the troopers dismounted and
+led them by the bridle, they suffered severely in their efforts to keep their
+footing.8  The road was constructed for man and the light-fooled llama;
+and the only heavy beast of burden at all suited to it was the sagacious
+and sure-footed mule, with which the Spanish adventurers were not then
+provided.  It was a singular chance that Spain was the land of the mule;
+and thus the country was speedily supplied with the very animal which
+seems to have been created for the difficult passes of the Cordilleras.
+
+Another obstacle, often occurring, was the deep torrents that rushed
+down in fury from the Andes.  They were traversed by the hanging
+bridges of osier, whose frail materials were after a time broken up by the
+heavy tread of the cavalry, and the holes made in them added materially
+to the dangers of the passage.  On such occasions, the Spaniards
+contrived to work their way across the rivers on rafts, swimming their
+horses by the bridle.9
+
+All along the route, they found post-houses for the accommodation of the
+royal couriers, established at regular intervals; and magazines of grain
+and other commodities, provided in the principal towns for the Indian
+armies.  The Spaniards profited by the prudent forecast of the Peruvian
+government.
+
+Passing through several hamlets and towns of some note, the principal of
+which were Guamachucho and Guanuco, Pizarro, after a tedious march,
+came in sight of the rich valley of Xauxa.  The march, though tedious,
+had been attended with little suffering, except in crossing the bristling
+crests of the Cordilleras, which occasionally obstructed their path,--a
+rough setting to the beautiful valleys, that lay scattered like gems along
+this elevated region.  In the mountain passes they found some
+inconvenience from the cold; since, to move more quickly, they had
+disencumbered themselves of all superfluous baggage, and were even
+unprovided with tents.10  The bleak winds of the mountains penetrated
+the thick harness of the soldiers; but the poor Indians, more scantily
+clothed and accustomed to a tropical climate, suffered most severely.
+The Spaniard seemed to have a hardihood of body, as of soul, that
+rendered him almost indifferent to climate.
+
+On the march they had not been molested by enemies.  But more than
+once they had seen vestiges of them in smoking hamlets and ruined
+bridges.  Reports, from time to time, had reached Pizarro of warriors on
+his track; and small bodies of Indians were occasionally seen like dusky
+clouds on the verge of the horizon, which vanished as the Spaniards
+approached.  On reaching Xauxa, however, these clouds gathered into
+one dark mass of warriors, which formed on the opposite bank of the
+river that flowed through the valley.
+
+The Spaniards advanced to the stream, which, swollen by the melting of
+the snows, was now of considerable width, though not deep.  The bridge
+had been destroyed; but the Conquerors, without hesitation, dashing
+boldly in, advanced, swimming and wading, as they best could, to the
+opposite bank.  The Indians, disconcerted by this decided movement, as
+they had relied on their watery defences, took to flight, after letting off
+an impotent volley of missiles.  Fear gave wings to the fugitives; but the
+horse and his rider were swifter, and the victorious pursuers took bloody
+vengeance on their enemy for having dared even to meditate resistance.
+
+Xauxa was a considerable town.  It was the place already noticed as
+having been visited by Hernando Pizarro.  It was seated in the midst of a
+verdant valley, fertilized by a thousand little rills, which the thrifty
+Indian husbandman drew from the parent river that rolled sluggishly
+through the meadows.  There were several capacious buildings of rough
+stone in the town, and a temple of some note in the times of the Incas.
+But the strong arm of Father Valverde and his countrymen soon tumbled
+the heathen deities from their pride of place, and established, in their
+stead, the sacred effigies of the Virgin and Child.
+
+Here Pizarro proposed to halt for some days, and to found a Spanish
+colony.  It was a favorable position, he thought, for holding the Indian
+mountaineers in check, while, at the same time, it afforded an easy
+communication with the sea-coast.  Meanwhile he determined to send
+forward De Soto, with a detachment of sixty horse, to reconnoitre the
+country in advance, and to restore the bridges where demolished by the
+enemy.11
+
+That active cavalier set forward at once, but found considerable
+impediments to his progress.  The traces of an enemy became more
+frequent as he advanced.  The villages were burnt, the bridges destroyed,
+and heavy rocks and trees strewed in the path to impede the march of the
+cavalry.  As he drew near to Bilcas, once an important place, though now
+effaced from the map, he had a sharp encounter with the natives, in a
+mountain defile, which cost him the lives of two or three troopers.  The
+loss was light; but any loss was felt by the Spaniards, so little
+accustomed as they had been of late, to resistance.
+
+Still pressing forward, the Spanish captain crossed the river Abancay,
+and the broad waters of the Apurimac; and, as he drew near the sierra of
+Vilcaconga, he learned that a considerable body of Indians lay in wait for
+him in the dangerous passes of the mountains.  The sierra was several
+leagues from Cuzco; and the cavalier, desirous to reach the further side
+of it before nightfall, incautiously pushed on his wearied horses.  When
+he was fairly entangled in its rocky defiles, a multitude of armed
+warriors, springing, as it seemed, from every cavern and thicket of the
+sierra, filled the air with their war-cries, and rushed down, like one of
+their own mountain torrents, on the invaders, as they were painfully
+toiling up the steeps.  Men and horses were overturned in the fury of the
+assault, and the foremost files, rolling back on those below, spread ruin
+and consternation in their ranks.  De Soto in vain endeavored to restore
+order, and, if possible, to charge the assailants.  The horses were blinded
+and maddened by the missiles, while the desperate natives, clinging to
+their legs, strove to prevent their ascent up the rocky pathway.  De Soto
+saw, that, unless he gained a level ground which opened at some distance
+before him, all must be lost.  Cheering on his men with the old battle-cry,
+that always went to the heart of a Spaniard, he struck his spurs deep into
+the sides of his wearied charger, and, gallantly supported by his troop,
+broke through the dark array of warriors, and, shaking them off to the
+right and left, at length succeeded in placing himself on the broad level.
+
+Here both parties paused, as if by mutual consent, for a few moments.  A
+little stream ran through the plain, at which the Spaniards watered their
+horses;12 and the animals, having recovered wind, De Soto and his men
+made a desperate charge on their assailants.  The undaunted Indians
+sustained the shock with firmness; and the result of the combat was still
+doubtful, when the shades of evening, falling thicker around them,
+separated the combatants.
+
+Both parties then withdrew from the field, taking up their respective
+stations within bow-shot of each other, so that the voices of the warriors
+on either side could be distinctly heard in the stillness of the night.  But
+very different were the reflections of the two hosts.  The Indians,
+exulting in their temporary triumph, looked with confidence to the
+morrow to complete it.  The Spaniards, on the other hand, were
+proportionably discouraged.  They were not prepared for this spirit of
+resistance in an enemy hitherto so tame.  Several cavaliers had fallen;
+one of them by a blow from a Peruvian battle-axe, which clove his head
+to the chin, attesting the power of the weapon, and of the arm that used
+it.13  Several horses, too, had been killed; and the loss of these was
+almost as severely felt as that of their riders, considering the great cost
+and difficulty of transporting them to these distant regions.  Few either of
+the men or horses escaped without wounds, and the Indian allies suffered
+still more severely.
+
+It seemed probable, from the pertinacity and a certain order maintained
+in the assault, that it was directed by some leader of military experience;
+perhaps the Indian commander Quizquiz, who was said to be hanging
+round the environs of Cuzco with a considerable force.
+
+Notwithstanding the reasonable cause of apprehension for the morrow,
+De Soto, like a stout-hearted cavalier, as he was, strove to keep up the
+spirits of his followers.  If they had beaten off the enemy when their
+horses were jaded, and their own strength nearly exhausted, how much
+easier it would be to come off victorious when both were restored by a
+night's rest; and he told them to "trust in the Almighty, who would never
+desert his faithful followers in their extremity."  The event justified De
+Soto's confidence in this seasonable succour.
+
+From time to time, on his march, he had sent advices to Pizarro of the
+menacing state of the country, till his commander, becoming seriously
+alarmed, was apprehensive that the cavalier might be overpowered by the
+superior numbers of the enemy.  He accordingly detached Almagro with
+nearly all the remaining horse, to his support,--unencumbered by
+infantry, that he might move the lighter.  That efficient leader advanced
+by forced marches, stimulated by the tidings which met him on the road;
+and was so fortunate as to reach the foot of the sierra of Vilcaconga the
+very night of the engagement.
+
+There hearing of the encounter, he pushed forward without halting,
+though his horses were spent with travel.  The night was exceedingly
+dark, and Almagro, afraid of stumbling on the enemy's bivouac, and
+desirous to give De Soto information of his approach, commanded his
+trumpets to sound, till the notes, winding through the defiles of the
+mountains, broke the slumbers of his countrymen, sounding like blithest
+music in their ears.  They quickly replied with their own bugles, and
+soon had the satisfaction to embrace their deliverers.14
+
+Great was the dismay of the Peruvian host, when the morning light
+discovered the fresh reinforcement of the ranks of the Spaniards.  There
+was no use in contending with an enemy who gathered strength from the
+conflict, and who seemed to multiply his numbers at will.  Without
+further attempt to renew the fight, they availed themselves of a thick fog,
+which hung over the lower slopes of the hills, to effect their retreat, and
+left the passes open to the invaders.  The two cavaliers then continued
+their march until they extricated their forces from the sierra, when, taking
+up a secure position, they proposed to await there the arrival of
+Pizarro.15
+
+The commander-in-chief, meanwhile, lay at Xauxa, where he was greatly
+disturbed by the rumors which reached him of the state of the country.
+His enterprise, thus far, had gone forward so smoothly, that he was no
+better prepared than his lieutenant to meet with resistance from the
+natives.  He did not seem to comprehend that the mildest nature might at
+last be roused by oppression; and that the massacre of their Inca, whom
+they regarded with such awful veneration, would be likely, if any thing
+could do it, to wake them from their apathy.
+
+The tidings which he now received of the retreat of the Peruvians were
+most welcome; and he caused mass to be said, and thanksgivings to be
+offered up to Heaven, "which had shown itself thus favorable to the
+Christians throughout this mighty enterprise." The Spaniard was ever a
+Crusader.  He was, in the sixteenth century, what Coeur de Lion and his
+brave knights were in the twelfth, with this difference; the cavalier of that
+day fought for the Cross and for glory, while gold and the Cross were the
+watchwords of the Spaniard.  The spirit of chivalry had waned somewhat
+before the spirit of trade; but the fire of religious enthusiasm still burned
+as bright under the quilted mail of the American Conqueror, as it did of
+yore under the iron panoply of the soldier of Palestine.
+
+It seemed probable that some man of authority had organized, or at least
+countenanced, this resistance of the natives, and suspicion fell on the
+captive chief Challcuchima, who was accused of maintaining a secret
+correspondence with his confederate, Quizquiz.  Pizarro waited on the
+Indian noble, and, charging him with the conspiracy, reproached him, as
+he had formerly done his royal master, with ingratitude towards the
+Spaniards, who had dealt with him so liberally.  He concluded by the
+assurance, that, if he did not cause the Peruvians to lay down their arms,
+and tender their submission at once, he should be burnt alive, so soon as
+they reached Almagro's quarters.16
+
+The Indian chief listened to the terrible menace with the utmost
+composure.  He denied having had any communication with his countrymen,
+and said, that, in his present state of confinement, at least,
+he could have no power to bring them to submission.  He then remained
+doggedly silent, and Pizarro did not press the matter further.17  But he
+placed a strong guard over his prisoner, and caused him to be put in
+irons.  It was an ominous proceeding, and had been the precursor of the
+death of Atahuallpa.
+
+Before quitting Xauxa, a misfortune befell the Spaniards in the death of
+their creature, the young Inca Toparca.  Suspicion, of course, fell on
+Challcuchima, now selected as the scape-goat for all the offences of his
+nation.18  It was a disappointment to Pizarro, who hoped to find a
+convenient shelter for his future proceedings under this shadow of
+royalty.19
+
+The general considered it most prudent not to hazard the loss of his
+treasures by taking them on the march, and he accordingly left them at
+Xauxa, under a guard of forty soldiers, who remained there in garrison.
+No event of importance occurred on the road, and Pizarro, having
+effected a junction with Almagro, their united forces soon entered the
+vale of Xaquixaguana, about five leagues from Cuzco.  This was one of
+those bright spots, so often found embosomed amidst the Andes, the
+more beautiful from contrast with the savage character of the scenery
+around it.  A river flowed through the valley, affording the means of
+irrigating the soil, and clothing it in perpetual verdure; and the rich and
+flowering vegetation spread out like a cultivated garden.  The beauty of
+the place and its delicious coolness commended it as a residence for the
+Peruvian nobles, and the sides of the hills were dotted with their villas,
+which afforded them a grateful retreat in the heats of summer.20  Yet
+the centre of the valley was disfigured by a quagmire of some extent,
+occasioned by the frequent overflowing of the waters; but the industry of
+the Indian architects had constructed a solid causeway, faced with heavy
+stone, and connected with the great road, which traversed the whole
+breadth of the morass.21
+
+In this valley Pizarro halted for several days, while he refreshed his
+troops from the well-stored magazines of the Incas.  His first act was to
+bring Challcuchima to trial; if trial that could be called, where sentence
+may be said to have gone hand in hand with accusation.  We are not
+informed of the nature of the evidence.  It was sufficient to satisfy the
+Spanish captains of the chieftain's guilt.  Nor is it at all incredible that
+Challcuchima should have secretly encouraged a movement among the
+people, designed to secure his country's freedom and his own.  He was
+condemned to be burnt alive on the spot.  "Some thought it a hard
+measure," says Herrera; "but those who are governed by reasons of state
+policy are apt to shut their eyes against every thing else." 22  Why this
+cruel mode of execution was so often adopted by the Spanish
+Conquerors is not obvious; unless it was that the Indian was an infidel,
+and fire, from ancient date, seems to have been considered the fitting
+doom of the infidel, as the type of that inextinguishable flame which
+awaited him in the regions of the damned.
+
+Father Valverde accompanied the Peruvian chieftain to the stake.  He
+seems always to have been present at this dreary moment, anxious to
+profit by it, if possible, to work the conversion of the victim.  He painted
+in gloomy colors the dreadful doom of the unbeliever, to whom the
+waters of baptism could alone secure the ineffable glories of paradise.23
+It does not appear that he promised any commutation of punishment in
+this world.  But his arguments fell on a stony heart, and the chief coldly
+replied, he "did not understand the religion of the white men." 24  He
+might be pardoned for not comprehending the beauty of a faith which, as
+it would seem, had borne so bitter fruits to him.  In the midst of his
+tortures, he showed the characteristic courage of the American Indian,
+whose power of endurance triumphs over the power of persecution in his
+enemies, and he died with his last breath invoking the name of
+Pachacamac.  His own followers brought the fagots to feed the flames
+that consumed him .25
+
+Soon after this tragic event, Pizarro was surprised by a visit from a
+Peruvian noble, who came in great state, attended by a numerous and
+showy retinue.  It was the young prince Manco, brother of the
+unfortunate Huascar, and the rightful successor to the crown.  Being
+brought before the Spanish commander, he announced his pretensions to
+the throne, and claimed the protection of the strangers.  It is said he had
+meditated resisting them by arms, and had encouraged the assaults made
+on them on their march; but, finding resistance ineffectual, he had taken
+this politic course, greatly to the displeasure of his more resolute nobles.
+However this may be, Pizarro listened to his application with singular
+contentment, for he saw in this new scion of the true royal stock, a more
+effectual instrument for his purposes than he could have found in the
+family of Quito, with whom the Peruvians had but little sympathy.  He
+received the young man, therefore, with great cordiality, and did not
+hesitate to assure him that he had been sent into the country by his
+master, the Castilian sovereign, in order to vindicate the claims of
+Huascar to the crown, and to punish the usurpation of his rival.26
+
+Taking with him the Indian prince, Pizarro now resumed his march.  It
+was interrupted for a few hours by a party of the natives, who lay in wait
+for him in the neighboring sierra.  A sharp skirmish ensued, in which the
+Indians behaved with great spirit, and inflicted some little injury on the
+Spaniards; but the latter, at length, shaking them off, made good their
+passage through the defile, and the enemy did not care to follow them
+into the open country.
+
+It was late in the afternoon when the Conquerors came in sight of
+Cuzco.27  The descending sun was streaming his broad rays full on the
+imperial city, where many an altar was dedicated to his worship.  The
+low ranges of buildings, showing in his beams like so many lines of
+silvery light, filled up the bosom of the valley and the lower slopes of the
+mountains, whose shadowy forms hung darkly over the fair city, as if to
+shield it from the menaced profanation.  It was so late, that Pizarro
+resolved to defer his entrance till the following morning.
+
+That night vigilant guard was kept in the camp, and the soldiers slept on
+their arms.  But it passed away without annoyance from the enemy, and
+early on the following day, November 15, 1533, Pizarro prepared for his
+entrance into the Peruvian capital.28
+
+The little army was formed into three divisions, of which the centre, or
+"battle," as it was called, was led by the general.  The suburbs were
+thronged with a countless multitude of the natives, who had flocked from
+the city and the surrounding country to witness the showy, and, to them,
+startling pageant.  All looked with eager curiosity on the strangers, the
+fame of whose terrible exploits had spread to the remotest parts of the
+empire.  They gazed with astonishment on their dazzling arms and fair
+complexions, which seemed to proclaim them the true Children of the
+Sun; and they listened with feelings of mysterious dread, as the trumpet
+sent forth its prolonged notes through the streets of the capital, and the
+solid ground shook under the heavy tramp of the cavalry.
+
+The Spanish commander rode directly up the great square.  It was
+surrounded by low piles of buildings, among which were several palaces
+of the Incas.  One of these, erected by Huayna Capac, was surmounted
+by a tower, while the ground-floor was occupied by one or more
+immense halls, like those described in Caxamalca, where the Peruvian
+nobles held their fetes in stormy weather.  These buildings afforded
+convenient barracks for the troops, though, during the first few weeks,
+they remained under their tents in the open plaza, with their horses
+picketed by their side, ready to repulse any insurrection of the
+inhabitants.29
+
+The capital of the Incas, though falling short of the El Dorado which had
+engaged their credulous fancies, astonished the Spaniards by the beauty
+of its edifices, the length and regularity of its streets, and the good order
+and appearance of comfort, even luxury, visible in its numerous
+population.  It far surpassed all they had yet seen in the New World.  The
+population of the city is computed by one of the Conquerors at two
+hundred thousand inhabitants, and that of the suburbs at as many
+more.30  This account is not confirmed, as far as I have seen, by any
+other writer.  But however it may be exaggerated, it is certain that Cuzco
+was the metropolis of a great empire, the residence of the Court and the
+chief nobility; frequented by the most skilful mechanics and artisans of
+every description, who found a demand for their ingenuity in the royal
+precincts; while the place was garrisoned by a numerous soldiery, and
+was the resort, finally, of emigrants from the most distant provinces.  The
+quarters whence this motley population came were indicated by their
+peculiar dress, and especially their head-gear, so rarely found at all on
+the American Indian, which, with its variegated colors, gave a
+picturesque effect to the groups and masses in the streets.  The habitual
+order and decorum maintained in this multifarious assembly showed the
+excellent police of the capital, where the only sounds that disturbed the
+repose of the Spaniards were the noises of feasting and dancing, which
+the natives, with happy insensibility, constantly prolonged to a late hour
+of the night.31
+
+The edifices of the better sort--and they were very numerous--were of
+stone, or faced with stone.32  Among the principal were the royal
+residences; as each sovereign built a new palace for himself, covering,
+though low, a large extent of ground.  The walls were sometimes stained
+or painted with gaudy tints, and the gates, we are assured, were
+sometimes of colored marble.33  "In the delicacy of the stone-work,"
+says another of the Conquerors, "the natives far excelled the Spaniards,
+though the roofs of their dwellings, instead of tiles, were only of thatch,
+but put together with the nicest art." 34  The sunny climate of Cuzco did
+not require a very substantial material for defence against the weather.
+
+The most important building was the fortress, planted on a solid rock,
+that rose boldly above the city.  It was built of hewn stone, so finely
+wrought that it was impossible to detect the line of junction between the
+blocks; and the approaches to it were defended by three semicircular
+parapets, composed of such heavy masses of rock, that it bore
+resemblance to the kind of work known to architects as the Cyclopean.
+The fortress was raised to a height rare in Peruvian architecture; and
+from the summit of the tower the eye of the-spectator ranged over a
+magnificent prospect, in which the wild features of the mountain scenery,
+rocks, woods, and waterfalls, were mingled with the rich verdure of the
+valley, and the shining city filling up the foreground,--all blended in
+sweet harmony under the deep azure of a tropical sky.
+
+The streets were long and narrow.  They were arranged with perfect
+regularity, crossing one another at right angles; and from the great square
+diverged four principal streets connecting with the high roads of the
+empire.  The square itself, and many parts of the city, were paved with a
+fine pebble.35  Through the heart of the capital ran a river of pure water,
+if it might not be rather termed a canal, the banks or sides of which, for
+the distance of twenty leagues, were faced with stone.36  Across this
+stream, bridges, constructed of similar broad flags, were thrown, at
+intervals, so as to afford an easy communication between the different
+quarters of the capital.37
+
+The most sumptuous edifice in Cuzco, in the times of the Incas, was
+undoubtedly the great temple dedicated to the Sun, which, studded with
+gold plates, as already noticed, was surrounded by convents and
+dormitories for the priests, with their gardens and broad parterres
+sparkling with gold.  The exterior ornaments had been already removed
+by the Conquerors,--all but the frieze of gold, which, imbedded in the
+stones, still encircled the principal building.  It is probable that the tales
+of wealth, so greedily circulated among the Spaniards, greatly exceeded
+the truth.  If they did not, the natives must have been very successful in
+concealing their treasures from the invaders.  Yet much still remained,
+not only in the great House of the Sun, but in the inferior temples which
+swarmed in the capital.
+
+Pizarro, on entering Cuzco, had issued an order forbidding any soldier to
+offer violence to the dwellings of the inhabitants.38  But the palaces
+were numerous, and the troops lost no time in plundering them of their
+contents, as well as in despoiling the religious edifices.  The interior
+decorations supplied them with considerable booty.  They stripped off
+the jewels and rich ornaments that garnished the royal mummies in the
+temple of Coricancha.  Indignant at the concealment of their treasures,
+they put the inhabitants, in some instances, to the torture, and endeavored
+to extort from them a confession of their hiding-places.39  They invaded
+the repose of the sepulchres, in which the Peruvians often deposited their
+valuable effects, and compelled the grave to give up its dead.  No place
+was left unexplored by the rapacious Conquerors, and they occasionally
+stumbled on a mine of wealth that rewarded their labors.
+
+In a cavern near the city they found a number of vases of pure gold,
+richly embossed with the figures of serpents, locusts, and other animals.
+Among the spoil were four golden llamas and ten or twelve statues of
+women, some of gold, others of silver, "which merely to see," says one
+of the Conquerors, with some naivete, "was truly a great satisfaction."
+The gold was probably thin, for the figures were all as large as life; and
+several of them, being reserved for the royal fifth, were not recast, but
+sent in their original form to Spain.40  The magazines were stored with
+curious commodities; richly tinted robes of cotton and feather-work, gold
+sandals, and slippers of the same material, for the women, and dresses
+composed entirely of beads of gold.41  The grain and other articles of
+food, with which the magazines were filled, were held in contempt by the
+Conquerors, intent only on gratifying their lust for gold.42  The time
+came when the grain would have been of far more value.
+
+Yet the amount of treasure in the capital did not equal the sanguine
+expectations that had been formed by the Spaniards.  But the deficiency
+was supplied by the plunder which they had collected at various places
+on their march.  In one place, for example, they met with ten planks or
+bars of solid silver, each piece being twenty feet in length, one foot in
+breadth, and two or three inches thick.  They were intended to decorate
+the dwelling of an Inca noble.43
+
+The whole mass of treasure was brought into a common heap, as in
+Caxamalca; and after some of the finer specimens had been deducted for
+the Crown, the remainder was delivered to the Indian goldsmiths to be
+melted down into ingots of a uniform standard.  The division of the spoil
+was made on the same principle as before.  There were four hundred and
+eighty soldiers, including the garrison of Xauxa, who were each to
+receive a share, that of the cavalry being double that of the infantry.  The
+amount of booty is stated variously by those present at the division of it.
+According to some it considerably exceeded the ransom of Atahuallpa.
+Others state it as less.  Pedro Pizarro says that each horseman got six
+thousand pesos de oro, and each one of the infantry half that sum; 44
+though the same discrimination was made by Pizarro as before, in
+respect to the rank of the parties, and their relative services.  But Sancho,
+the royal notary, and secretary of the commander, estimates the whole
+amount as far less,--not exceeding five hundred and eighty thousand and
+two hundred pesos de oro, and two hundred and fifteen thousand marks
+of silver.45  In the absence of the official returns, it is impossible to
+determine which is correct.  But Sancho's narrative is countersigned, it
+may be remembered, by Pizarro and the royal treasurer Riquelme, and
+doubtless therefore, shows the actual amount for which the Conquerors
+accounted to the Crown.
+
+Whichever statement we receive, the sum, combined with that obtained
+at Caxamalca, might well have satisfied the cravings of the most
+avaricious.  The sudden influx of so much wealth, and that, too, in so
+transferable a form, among a party of reckless adventurers little
+accustomed to the possession of money, had its natural effect.  it
+supplied them with the means of gaming, so strong and common a
+passion with the Spaniards, that it may be considered a national vice.
+Fortunes were lost and won in a single day, sufficient to render the
+proprietors independent for life; and many a desperate gamester, by an
+unlucky throw of the dice or turn of the cards, saw himself stripped in a
+few hours of the fruits of years of toil, and obliged to begin over again
+the business of rapine.  Among these, one in the cavalry service is
+mentioned, named Leguizano, who had received as his share of the booty
+the image of the Sun, which, raised on a plate of burnished gold, spread
+over the walls in a recess of the great temple, and which, for some reason
+or other,--perhaps because of its superior fineness,--was not recast like
+the other ornaments.  This rich prize the spendthrift lost in a single night;
+whence it came to be a proverb in Spain, Juega el Sol antes que
+amanezca, "Play away the Sun before sunrise." 46
+
+The effect of such a surfeit of the precious metals was instantly felt on
+prices.  The most ordinary articles were only to be had for exorbitant
+sums.  A quire of paper sold for ten pesos de oro; a bottle of wine, for
+sixty; a sword, for forty or fifty; a cloak, for a hundred,--sometimes
+more; a pair of shoes cost thirty or forty pesos de oro, and a good horse
+could not be had for less than twenty-five hundred.47  Some brought a
+still higher price.  Every article rose in value, as gold and silver, the
+representatives of all, declined.  Gold and silver, in short, seemed to be
+the only things in Cuzco that were not wealth.  Yet there were some few
+wise enough to return contented with their present gains to their native
+country.  Here their riches brought them consideration and competence,
+and while they excited the envy of their countrymen, stimulated them to
+seek their own fortunes in the like path of adventure.
+
+
+
+Book 3
+
+Chapter 9
+
+New Inca Crowned--Municipal Regulations--Terrible March Of Alvarado--
+Interview With Pizarro--Foundation Of Lima--
+Hernando Pizarro Reaches Spain--Sensation At Court--
+Feuds Of Almagro And The Pizarros
+
+1534--1535
+
+The first care of the Spanish general, after the division of the booty, was
+to place Manco on the throne, and to obtain for him the recognition of
+his countrymen.  He, accordingly, presented the young prince to them as
+their future sovereign, the legitimate son of Huayna Capac, and the true
+heir of the Peruvian sceptre.  The annunciation was received with
+enthusiasm by the people, attached to the memory of his illustrious
+father, and pleased that they were still to have a monarch rule over them
+of the ancient line of Cuzco.
+
+Everything was done to maintain the illusion with the Indian population.
+The ceremonies of a coronation were studiously observed.  The young
+prince kept the prescribed fasts and vigils; and on the appointed day, the
+nobles and the people, with the whole Spanish soldiery, assembled in the
+great square of Cuzco to witness the concluding ceremony.  Mass was
+publicly performed by Father Valverde, and the Inca Manco received the
+fringed diadem of Peru, not from the hand of the high-priest of his
+nation, but from his Conqueror, Pizarro.  The Indian lords then tendered
+their obeisance in the customary form; after which the royal notary read
+aloud the instrument asserting the supremacy of the Castilian Crown, and
+requiring the homage of all present to its authority.  This address was
+explained by an interpreter, and the ceremony of homage was performed
+by each one of the parties waving the royal banner of Castile twice or
+thrice with his hands.  Manco then pledged the Spanish commander in a
+golden goblet of the sparkling chicha; and, the latter having cordially
+embraced the new monarch, the trumpets announced the conclusion of
+the ceremony.1  But it was not the note of triumph, but of humiliation;
+for it proclaimed that the armed foot of the stranger was in the halls of
+the Peruvian Incas; that the ceremony of coronation was a miserable
+pageant; that their prince himself was but a puppet in the hands of his
+Conquerors; and that the glory of the Children of the Sun had departed
+forever!
+
+Yet the people readily gave in to the illusion, and seemed willing to
+accept this image of their ancient independence.  The accession of the
+young monarch was greeted by all the usual fetes and rejoicings.  The
+mummies of his royal ancestors, with such ornaments as were still left to
+them, were paraded in the great square.  They were attended each by his
+own numerous retinue, who performed all the menial offices, as if the
+object of them were alive and could feel their import.  Each ghostly form
+took its seat at the banquet-table--now, alas!  stripped of the magnificent
+service with which it was wont to blaze at these high festivals--and the
+guests drank deep to the illustrious dead.  Dancing succeeded the
+carousal, and the festivities, prolonged to a late hour, were continued
+night after night by the giddy population, as if their conquerors had not
+been intrenched in the capital!2  --What a contrast to the Aztecs in the
+conquest of Mexico!
+
+Pizarro's next concern was to organize a municipal government for
+Cuzco, like those in the cities of the parent country.  Two alcaldes were
+appointed, and eight regidores, among which last functionaries were his
+brothers Gonzalo and Juan.  The oaths of office were administered with
+great solemnity, on the twenty-fourth of March, 1534, in presence both
+of Spaniards and Peruvians, in the public square; as if the general were
+willing by this ceremony to intimate to the latter, that, while they
+retained the semblance of their ancient institutions, the real power was
+henceforth vested in their conquerors.3  He invited Spaniards to settle in
+the place by liberal grants of land and houses, for which means were
+afforded by the numerous palaces and public buildings of the Incas; and
+many a cavalier, who had been too poor in his own country to find a
+place to rest in, now saw himself the proprietor of a spacious mansion
+that might have entertained the retinue of a prince.4  From this time, says
+an old chronicler, Pizarro, who had hitherto been distinguished by his
+military title of "Captain-General," was addressed by that of "Governor."
+5  Both had been bestowed on him by the royal grant.
+
+Nor did the chief neglect the interests of religion.  Father Valverde,
+whose nomination as Bishop of Cuzco not long afterwards received the
+Papal sanction, prepared to enter on the duties of his office.  A place was
+selected for the cathedral of his diocese, facing the plaza.  A spacious
+monastery subsequently rose on the ruins of the gorgeous House of the
+Sun; its walls were constructed of the ancient stones; the altar was raised
+on the spot where shone the bright image of the Peruvian deity, and the
+cloisters of the Indian temple were trodden by the friars of St. Dominic.6
+To make the metamorphosis more complete, the House of the Virgins of
+the Sun was replaced by a Roman Catholic nunnery.7  Christian churches
+and monasteries gradually supplanted the ancient edifices, and such of
+the latter as were suffered to remain, despoiled of their heathen insignia,
+were placed under the protection of the Cross.
+
+The Fathers of St. Dominic, the Brethren of the Order of Mercy, and
+other missionaries, now busied themselves in the good work of
+conversion.  We have seen that Pizarro was required by the Crown to
+bring out a certain number of these holy men in his own vessels; and
+every succeeding vessel brought an additional reinforcement of
+ecclesiastics.  They were not all like the Bishop of Cuzco, with hearts so
+seared by fanaticism as to be closed against sympathy with the
+unfortunate natives.8  They were, many of them, men of singular
+humility, who followed in the track of the conqueror to scatter the seeds
+of spiritual truth, and, with disinterested zeal, devoted themselves to the
+propagation of the Gospel.  Thus did their pious labors prove them the
+true soldiers of the Cross, and showed that the object so ostentatiously
+avowed of carrying its banner among the heathen nations was not an
+empty vaunt.
+
+The effort to Christianize the heathen is an honorable characteristic of
+the Spanish conquests.  The Puritan, with equal religious zeal, did
+comparatively little for the conversion of the Indian, content, as it would
+seem, with having secured to himself the inestimable privilege of
+worshipping God in his own way.  Other adventurers who have occupied
+the New World have often had too little regard for religion themselves,
+to be very solicitous about spreading it among the savages.  But the
+Spanish missionary, from first to last, has shown a keen interest in the
+spiritual welfare of the natives.  Under his auspices, churches on a
+magnificent scale have been erected, schools for elementary instruction
+founded, and every rational means taken to spread the knowledge of
+religious truth, while he has carried his solitary mission into remote and
+almost inaccessible regions, or gathered his Indian disciples into
+communities, like the good Las Casas in Cumana, or the Jesuits in
+California and Paraguay.  At all times, the courageous ecclesiastic has
+been ready to lift his voice against the cruelty of the conqueror, and the
+no less wasting cupidity of the colonist; and when his remonstrances, as
+was too often the case, have proved unavailing, he has still followed to
+bind up the broken-hearted, to teach the poor Indian resignation under
+his lot, and light up his dark intellect with the revelation of a holier and
+happier existence.--In reviewing the blood-stained records of Spanish
+colonial history, it is but fair, and at the same time cheering, to reflect,
+that the same nation which sent forth the hard-hearted conqueror from its
+bosom sent forth the missionary to do the work of beneficence, and
+spread the light of Christian civilization over the farthest regions of the
+New World.
+
+While the governor, as we are henceforth to style him, lay at Cuzco, he
+received repeated accounts of a considerable force in the neighborhood,
+under the command of Atahuallpa's officer, Quizquiz.  He accordingly
+detached Almagro, with a small body of horse and a large Indian force
+under the Inca Manco, to disperse the enemy, and, if possible, to capture
+their leader.  Manco was the more ready to take part in the expedition, as
+the enemy were soldiers of Quito, who, with their commander, bore no
+good-will to himself.
+
+Almagro, moving with his characteristic rapidity, was not long in coming
+up with the Indian chieftain.  Several sharp encounters followed, as the
+army of Quito fell back on Xauxa, near which a general engagement
+decided the fate of the war by the total discomfiture of the natives.
+Quizquiz fled to the elevated plains of Quito, where he still held out with
+undaunted spirit against a Spanish force in that quarter, till at length his
+own soldiers, wearied by these long and ineffectual hostilities, massacred
+their commander in cold blood.9  Thus fell the last of the two great
+officers of Atahuallpa, who, if their nation had been animated by a spirit
+equal to their own, might long have successfully maintained their soil
+against the invader.
+
+Some time before this occurrence, the Spanish governor, while in Cuzco,
+received tidings of an event much more alarming to him than any Indian
+hostilities.  This was the arrival on the coast of a strong Spanish force,
+under command of Don Pedro de Alvarado, the gallant officer who had
+served under Cortes with such renown in the war of Mexico.  That
+cavalier, after forming a brilliant alliance in Spain, to which he was
+entitled by his birth and military rank, had returned to his government of
+Guatemala, where his avarice had been roused by the magnificent reports
+he daily received of Pizarro's conquests.  These conquests, he learned,
+had been confined to Peru; while the northern kingdom of Quito, the
+ancient residence of Atahuallpa, and, no doubt, the principal depository
+of his treasures, yet remained untouched.  Affecting to consider this
+country as falling without the governor's jurisdiction, he immediately
+turned a large fleet, which he had intended for the Spice Islands, in the
+direction of South America; and in March, 1534, he landed in the bay of
+Caraques, with five hundred followers, of whom half were mounted, and
+all admirably provided with arms and ammunition.  It was the best
+equipped and the most formidable array that had yet appeared in the
+southern seas.10
+
+Although manifestly an invasion of the territory conceded to Pizarro by
+the Crown, the reckless cavalier determined to march at once on Quito.
+With the assistance of an Indian guide, he proposed to take the direct
+route across the mountains, a passage of exceeding difficulty, even at the
+most favorable season.
+
+After crossing the Rio Dable, Alvarado's guide deserted him, so that he
+was soon entangled in the intricate mazes of the sierra; and, as he rose
+higher and higher into the regions of winter, he became surrounded with
+ice and snow, for which his men, taken from the warm countries of
+Guatemala, were but ill prepared.  As the cold grew more intense, many
+of them were so benumbed, that it was with difficulty they could
+proceed.  The infantry, compelled to make exertions, fared best.  Many
+of the troopers were frozen stiff in their saddles.  The Indians, still more
+sensible to the cold, perished by hundreds.  As the Spaniards huddled
+round their wretched bivouacs, with such scanty fuel as they could glean,
+and almost without food, they waited in gloomy silence the approach of
+morning.  Yet the morning light, which gleamed coldly on the cheerless
+waste, brought no joy to them.  It only revealed more clearly the extent
+of their wretchedness.  Still struggling on through the winding Puertos
+Nevados, or Snowy Passes, their track was dismally marked by
+fragments of dress, broken harness, golden ornaments, and other
+valuables plundered on their march,--by the dead bodies of men, or by
+those less fortunate, who were left to die alone in the wilderness.  As for
+the horses, their carcasses were not suffered long to cumber the ground,
+as they were quickly seized and devoured half raw by the starving
+soldiers, who, like the famished condors, now hovering in troops above
+their heads, greedily banqueted on the most offensive offal to satisfy the
+gnawings of hunger.
+
+Alvarado, anxious to secure the booty which had fallen into his hands at
+an earlier part of his march, encouraged every man to take what gold he
+wanted from the common heap, reserving only the royal fifth.  But they
+only answered, with a ghastly smile of derision, "that food was the only
+gold for them." Yet in this extremity, which might seem to have
+dissolved the very ties of nature, there are some affecting instances
+recorded of self-devotion; of comrades who lost their lives in assisting
+others, and of parents and husbands (for some of the cavaliers were
+accompanied by their wives) who, instead of seeking their own safety,
+chose to remain and perish in the snows with the objects of their love.
+
+To add to their distress, the air was filled for several days with thick
+clouds of earthy particles and cinders, which blinded the men, and made
+respiration exceedingly difficult.11  This phenomenon, it seems
+probable, was caused by an eruption of the distant Cotopaxi, which,
+about twelve leagues southeast of Quito, rears up its colossal and
+perfectly symmetrical cone far above the limits of eternal snow,--the
+most beautiful and the most terrible of the American volcanoes.12  At
+the time of Alvarado's expedition, it was in a state of eruption, the
+earliest instance of the kind on record, though doubtless not the
+earliest.13  Since that period, it has been in frequent commotion, sending
+up its sheets of flame to the height of half a mile, spouting forth cataracts
+of lava that have overwhelmed towns and villages in their career, and
+shaking the earth with subterraneous thunders, that, at the distance of
+more than a hundred leagues, sounded like the reports of artillery!14
+Alvarado's followers, unacquainted with the cause of the phenomenon, as
+they wandered over tracts buried in snow,--the sight of which was
+strange to them,--in an atmosphere laden with ashes, became bewildered
+by this confusion of the elements, which Nature seemed to have
+contrived purposely for their destruction.  Some of these men were the
+soldiers of Cortes, steeled by many a painful march, and many a sharp
+encounter with the Aztecs.  But this war of the elements, they now
+confessed, was mightier than all.
+
+At length, Alvarado, after sufferings, which even the most hardy,
+probably, could have endured but a few days longer, emerged from the
+Snowy Pass, and came on the elevated table-land, which spreads out, at
+the height of more than nine thousand feet above the ocean, in the
+neighborhood of Riobamba.  But one fourth of his gallant army had been
+left to feed the condor in the wilderness, besides the greater part, at least
+two thousand, of his Indian auxiliaries.  A great number of his horses,
+too, had perished; and the men and horses that escaped were all of them
+more or less injured by the cold and the extremity of suffering.--Such
+was the terrible passage of the Puertos Nevados, which I have only
+briefly noticed as an episode to the Peruvian conquest, but the account of
+which, in all its details, though it occupied but a few weeks in duration,
+would give one a better idea of the difficulties encountered by the
+Spanish cavaliers, than volumes of ordinary narrative.15
+
+As Alvarado, after halting some time to restore his exhausted troops,
+began his march across the broad plateau, he was astonished by seeing
+the prints of horses' hoofs on the soil.  Spaniards, then, had been there
+before him, and, after all his toil and suffering, others had forestalled him
+in the enterprise against Quito!  It is necessary to say a few words in
+explanation of this.
+
+When Pizarro quitted Caxamalca, being sensible of the growing
+importance of San Miguel, the only port of entry then in the country, he
+despatched a person in whom he had great confidence to take charge of
+it.  This person was Sebastian Benalcazar, a cavalier who afterwards
+placed his name in the first rank of the South American conquerors, for
+courage, capacity,--and cruelty.  But this cavalier had hardly reached his
+government, when, like Alvarado, he received such accounts of the
+riches of Quito, that he determined, with the force at his command,
+though without orders, to undertake its reduction.
+
+At the head of about a hundred and forty soldiers, horse and foot, and a
+stout body of Indian auxiliaries, he marched up the broad range of the
+Andes, to where it spreads out into the table-land of Quito, by a road
+safer and more expeditious than that taken by Alvarado.  On the plains of
+Riobamba, he encountered the Indian general Ruminavi.  Several
+engagements followed, with doubtful success, when, in the end, science
+prevailed where courage was well matched, and the victorious
+Benalcazar planted the standard of Castile on the ancient towers of
+Atahuallpa.  The city, in honor of his general, Francis Pizarro, he named
+San Francisco del Quito.  But great was his mortification on finding that
+either the stories of its riches had been fabricated, or that these riches
+were secreted by the natives.  The city was all that he gained by his
+victories,--the shell without the pearl of price which gave it its value.
+While devouring his chagrin, as he best could, the Spanish captain
+received tidings of the approach of his superior, Almagro.16
+
+No sooner had the news of Alvarado's expedition reached Cuzco, than
+Almagro left the place with a small force for San Miguel, proposing to
+strengthen himself by a reinforcement from that quarter, and to march at
+once against the invaders.  Greatly was he astonished, on his arrival in
+that city, to learn the departure of its commander.  Doubting the loyalty
+of his motives, Almagro, with the buoyancy of spirit which belongs to
+youth, though in truth somewhat enfeebled by the infirmities of age, did
+not hesitate to follow Benalcazar at once across the mountains.
+
+With his wonted energy, the intrepid veteran, overcoming all the
+difficulties of his march, in a few weeks placed himself and his little
+company on the lofty plains which spread around the Indian city of
+Riobamba; though in his progress he had more than one hot encounter
+with the natives, whose courage and perseverance formed a contrast
+sufficiently striking to the apathy of the Peruvians.  But the fire only
+slumbered in the bosom of the Peruvian.  His hour had not yet come.
+
+At Riobamba, Almagro was soon joined by the commander of San
+Miguel, who disclaimed, perhaps sincerely, any disloyal intent in his
+unauthorized expedition.  Thus reinforced, the Spanish captain coolly
+awaited the coming of Alvarado.  The forces of the latter, though in a
+less serviceable condition, were much superior in number and
+appointments to those of his rival.  As they confronted each other on the
+broad plains of Riobamba, it seemed probable that a fierce struggle must
+immediately follow, and the natives of the country have the satisfaction
+to see their wrongs avenged by the very hands that inflicted them.  But it
+was Almagro's policy to avoid such an issue.
+
+Negotiations were set on foot, in which each party stated his claims to
+the country.  Meanwhile Alvarado's men mingled freely with their
+countrymen in the opposite army, and heard there such magnificent
+reports of the wealth and wonders of Cuzco, that many of them were
+inclined to change their present service for that of Pizarro.  Their own
+leader, too, satisfied that Quito held out no recompense worth the
+sacrifices he had made, and was like to make, by insisting on his claim,
+became now more sensible of the rashness of a course which must
+doubtless incur the censure of his sovereign.  In this temper, it was not
+difficult for them to effect an adjustment of difficulties; and it was
+agreed, as the basis of it, that the governor should pay one hundred
+thousand pesos de oro to Alvarado, in consideration of which the latter
+was to resign to him his fleet, his forces, and all his stores and munitions.
+His vessels, great and small, amounted to twelve in number, and the sum
+he received, though large, did not cover his expenses.  This treaty being
+settled, Alvarado proposed, before leaving the country, to have an
+interview with Pizarro.17
+
+The governor, meanwhile, had quitted the Peruvian capital for the
+seacoast, from his desire to repel any invasion that might be attempted in
+that direction by Alvarado, with whose real movements he was still
+unacquainted.  He left Cuzco in charge of his brother Juan, a cavalier
+whose manners were such as, he thought, would be likely to gain the
+good-will of the native population.  Pizarro also left ninety of his troops,
+as the garrison of the capital, and the nucleus of his future colony.  Then,
+taking the Inca Manco with him, he proceeded as far as Xauxa.  At this
+place he was entertained by the Indian prince with the exhibition of a
+great national hunt,--such as has been already described in these pages,--
+in which immense numbers of wild animals were slaughtered, and the
+vicunas, and other races of Peruvian sheep, which roam over the
+mountains, driven into inclosures and relieved of their delicate fleeces.18
+
+The Spanish governor then proceeded to Pachacamac, where he received
+the grateful intelligence of the accommodation with Alvarado; and not
+long afterward he was visited by that cavalier himself, previously to his
+embarkation.
+
+The meeting was conducted with courtesy and a show, at least, of
+goodwill, on both sides, as there was no longer real cause for jealousy
+between the parties; and each, as may be imagined, looked on the other
+with no little interest, as having achieved such distinction in the bold
+path of adventure.  In the comparison, Alvarado had somewhat the
+advantage; for Pizarro, though of commanding presence, had not the
+brilliant exterior, the free and joyous manner, which, no less than his
+fresh complexion and sunny locks, had won for the conqueror of
+Guatemala, in his campaigns against the Aztecs, the sobriquet of
+Tonatiuh, or "Child of the Sun."
+
+Blithe were the revels that now rang through the ancient city of
+Pachacamac; where, instead of songs, and of the sacrifices so often seen
+there in honor of the Indian deity, the walls echoed to the noise of
+tourneys and Moorish tilts of reeds, with which the martial adventurers
+loved to recall the sports of their native land.  When these were
+concluded, Alvarado reembarked for his government of Guatemala,
+where his restless spirit soon involved him in other enterprises that cut
+short his adventurous career.  His expedition to Peru was eminently
+characteristic of the man.  It was founded in injustice, conducted with
+rashness, and ended in disaster.19
+
+The reduction of Peru might now be considered as, in a manner,
+accomplished.  Some barbarous tribes in the interior, it is true, still held
+out, and Alonso de Alvarado, a prudent and able officer, was employed
+to bring them into subjection.  Benalcazar was still at Quito, of which he
+was subsequently appointed governor by the Crown.  There he was
+laying deeper the foundation of the Spanish power, while he advanced
+the line of conquest still higher towards the north.  But Cuzco, the
+ancient capital of the Indian monarchy, had submitted.  The armies of
+Atahuallpa had been beaten and scattered.  The empire of the Incas was
+dissolved; and the prince who now wore the Peruvian diadem was but
+the shadow of a king, who held his commission from his conqueror.
+
+The first act of the governor was to determine on the site of the future
+capital of this vast colonial empire.  Cuzco, withdrawn among the
+mountains, was altogether too far removed from the sea-coast for a
+commercial people.  The little settlement of San Miguel lay too far to the
+north.  It was desirable to select some more central position, which could
+be easily found in one of the fruitful valleys that bordered the Pacific.
+Such was that of Pachacamac, which Pizarro now occupied.  But, on
+further examination, he preferred the neighboring valley of Rimac, which
+lay to the north, and which took its name, signifying in the Quichua
+tongue "one who speaks," from a celebrated idol, whose shrine was
+much frequented by the Indians for the oracles it delivered.  Through the
+valley flowed a broad stream, which, like a great artery, was made, as
+usual by the natives, to supply a thousand finer veins that meandered
+through the beautiful meadows.
+
+On this river Pizarro fixed the site of his new capital, at somewhat less
+than two leagues' distance from its mouth, which expanded into a
+commodious haven for the commerce that the prophetic eye of the
+founder saw would one day--and no very distant one---float on its waters.
+The central situation of the spot recommended it as a suitable residence
+for the Peruvian viceroy, whence he might hold easy communication
+with the different parts of the country, and keep vigilant watch over his
+Indian vassals.  The climate was delightful, and, though only twelve
+degrees south of the line, was so far tempered by the cool breezes that
+generally blow from the Pacific, or from the opposite quarter down the
+frozen sides of the Cordilleras, that the heat was less than in
+corresponding latitudes on the continent.  It never rained on the coast;
+but this dryness was corrected by a vaporous cloud, which, through the
+summer months, hung like a curtain over the valley, sheltering it from the
+rays of a tropical sun, and imperceptibly distilling a refreshing moisture,
+that clothed the fields in the brightest verdure.
+
+The name bestowed on the infant capital was Ciudad de los Reyes, or
+City of the Kings, in honor of the day, being the sixth of January, 1535, -
+-the festival of Epiphany,--when it was said to have been founded, or
+more probably when its site was determined, as its actual foundation
+seems to have been twelve days later.20  But the Castilian name ceased
+to be used even within the first generation, and was supplanted by that of
+Lima, into which the original Indian name of Rimac was corrupted by the
+Spaniards.21
+
+The city was laid out on a very regular plan.  The streets were to be
+much wider than usual in Spanish towns, and perfectly straight, crossing
+one another at right angles, and so far asunder as to afford ample space
+for gardens to the dwellings, and for public squares.  It was arranged in a
+triangular form, having the river for its base, the waters of which were to
+be carried, by means of stone conduits, through all the principal streets,
+affording facilities for irrigating the grounds around the houses.
+
+No sooner had the governor decided on the site and on the plan of the
+city, than he commenced operations with his characteristic energy.  The
+Indians were collected from the distance of more than a hundred miles to
+aid in the work.  The Spaniards applied themselves with vigor to the
+task, under the eye of their chief.  The sword was exchanged for the tool
+of the artisan.  The camp was converted into a hive of diligent laborers;
+and the sounds of war were succeeded by the peaceful hum of a busy
+population.  The plaza, which was extensive, was to be surrounded by
+the cathedral, the palace of the viceroy, that of the municipality, and
+other public buildings; and their foundations were laid on a scale, and
+with a solidity, which defied the assaults of time, and, in some instances,
+even the more formidable shock of earthquakes, that, at different periods,
+have laid portions of the fair capital in ruins.22
+
+While these events were going on, Almagro, the Marshal, as he is usually
+termed by chroniclers of the time, had gone to Cuzco, whither he was
+sent by Pizarro to take command of that capital.  He received also
+instructions to undertake, either by himself or by his captains, the
+conquest of the countries towards the south, forming part of Chili.
+Almagro, since his arrival at Caxamalca, had seemed willing to smother
+his ancient feelings of resentment towards his associate, or, at least, to
+conceal the expression of them, and had consented to take command
+under him in obedience to the royal mandate.  He had even, in his
+despatches, the magnanimity to make honorable mention of Pizarro, as
+one anxious to promote the interests of government.  Yet he did not so
+far trust his companion, as to neglect the precaution of sending a
+confidential agent to represent his own services, when Hernando Pizarro
+undertook his mission to the mother-country.
+
+That cavalier, after touching at St. Domingo, had arrived without
+accident at Seville, in January, 1534.  Besides the royal fifth, he took
+with him gold, to the value of half a million of pesos, together with a
+large quantity of silver, the property of private adventurers, some of
+whom, satisfied with their gains, had returned to Spain in the same vessel
+with himself.  The custom-house was filled with solid ingots, and with
+vases of different forms, imitations of animals, flowers, fountains, and
+other objects, executed with more or less skill, and all of pure gold, to
+the astonishment of the spectators, who flocked from the neighboring
+country to gaze on these marvellous productions of Indian art.23  Most
+of the manufactured articles were the property of the Crown; and
+Hernando Pizarro, after a short stay at Seville, selected some of the most
+gorgeous specimens, and crossed the country to Calatayud, where the
+emperor was holding the cortes of Aragon.
+
+Hernando was instantly admitted to the royal presence, and obtained a
+gracious audience.  He was more conversant with courts than either of
+his brothers, and his manners, when in situations that imposed a restraint
+on the natural arrogance of his temper, were graceful and even attractive.
+In a respectful tone, he now recited the stirring adventures of his brother
+and his little troop of followers, the fatigues they had endured, the
+difficulties they had overcome, their capture of the Peruvian Inca, and
+his magnificent ransom.  He had not to tell of the massacre of the
+unfortunate prince, for that tragic event, which had occurred since his
+departure from the country, was still unknown to him.  The cavalier
+expatiated on the productiveness of the soil, and on the civilization of the
+people, evinced by their proficiency in various mechanic arts; in proof of
+which he displayed the manufactures of wool and cotton, and the rich
+ornaments of gold and silver.  The monarch's eyes sparkled with delight
+as he gazed on these last.  He was too sagacious not to appreciate the
+advantages of a conquest which secured to him a country so rich in
+agricultural resources.  But the returns from these must necessarily be
+gradual and long deferred; and he may be excused for listening with still
+greater satisfaction to Pizarro's tales of its mineral stores; for his
+ambitious projects had drained the imperial treasury, and he saw in the
+golden tide thus unexpectedly poured in upon him the immediate means
+of replenishing it.
+
+Charles made no difficulty, therefore, in granting the petitions of the
+fortunate adventurer.  All the previous grants to Francis Pizarro and his
+associates were confirmed in the fullest manner; and the boundaries of
+the governor's jurisdiction were extended seventy leagues further
+towards the south.  Nor did Almagro's services, this time, go unrequited.
+He was empowered to discover and occupy the country for the distance
+of two hundred leagues, beginning at the southern limit of Pizarro's
+territory.24  Charles, in proof, still further, of his satisfaction, was
+graciously pleased to address a letter to the two commanders, in which
+he complimented them on their prowess, and thanked them for their
+services.  This act of justice to Almagro would have been highly
+honorable to Hernando Pizarro, considering the unfriendly relations in
+which they stood to each other, had it not been made necessary by the
+presence of the marshal's own agents at court, who, as already noticed,
+stood ready to supply any deficiency in the statements of the emissary.
+
+In this display of the royal bounty, the envoy, as will readily be believed,
+did not go without his reward.  He was lodged as an attendant of the
+Court; was made a knight of Santiago, the most prized of the chivalric
+orders in Spain; was empowered to equip an armament, and to take
+command of it; and the royal officers at Seville were required to aid him
+in his views and facilitate his embarkation for the Indies.25
+
+The arrival of Hernando Pizarro in the country, and the reports spread by
+him and his followers, created a sensation among the Spaniards such as
+had not been felt since the first voyage of Columbus.  The discovery of
+the New World had filled the minds of men with indefinite expectations
+of wealth, of which almost every succeeding expedition had proved the
+fallacy.  The conquest of Mexico, though calling forth general
+admiration as a brilliant and wonderful exploit, had as yet failed to
+produce those golden results which had been so fondly anticipated.  The
+splendid promises held out by Francis Pizarro on his recent visit to the
+country had not revived the confidence of his countrymen, made
+incredulous by repeated disappointment.  All that they were assured of
+was the difficulties of the enterprise; and their distrust of its results was
+sufficiently shown by the small number of followers, and those only of
+the most desperate stamp, who were willing to take their chance in the
+adventure.
+
+But now these promises were realized.  It was no longer the golden
+reports that they were to trust; but the gold itself, which was displayed in
+such profusion before them.  All eyes were now turned towards the West.
+The broken spendthrift saw in it the quarter where he was to repair his
+fortunes as speedily as he had ruined them.  The merchant, instead of
+seeking the precious commodities of the East, looked in the opposite
+direction, and counted on far higher gains, where the most common
+articles of life commanded so exorbitant prices.  The cavalier, eager to
+win both gold and glory at the point of his lance, thought to find a fair
+field for his prowess on the mountain plains of the Andes.  Ferdinand
+Pizarro found that his brother had judged rightly in allowing as many of
+his company as chose to return home, confident that the display of their
+wealth would draw ten to his banner for every one that quitted it.
+
+In a short time that cavalier saw himself at the head of one of the most
+numerous and well-appointed armaments, probably, that had left the
+shores of Spain since the great fleet of Ovando, in the time of Ferdinand
+and Isabella.  It was scarcely more fortunate that this.  Hardly had
+Ferdinand put to sea, when a violent tempest fell on the squadron, and
+compelled him to return to port and refit.  At length he crossed the
+ocean, and reached the little harbor of Nombre de Dios in safety.  But no
+preparations had been made for his coming, and, as he was detained here
+some time before he could pass the mountains, his company suffered
+greatly from scarcity of food.  In their extremity, the most unwholesome
+articles were greedily devoured, and many a cavalier spent his little
+savings to procure himself a miserable subsistence.  Disease, as usual,
+trod closely in the track of famine, and numbers of the unfortunate
+adventurers, sinking under the unaccustomed heats of the climate,
+perished on the very threshold of discovery.
+
+It was the tale often repeated in the history of Spanish enterprise.  A few,
+more lucky than the rest, stumble on some unexpected prize, and
+hundreds, attracted by their success, press forward in the same path.  But
+the rich spoil which lay on the surface has been already swept away by
+the first comers, and those who follow are to win their treasure by long-
+protracted and painful exertion.--Broken in spirit and in fortune, many
+returned in disgust to their native shores, while others remained where
+they were, to die in despair.  They thought to dig for gold; but they dug
+only their graves.
+
+Yet it fared not thus with all Pizarro's company.  Many of them, crossing
+the Isthmus with him to Panama, came in time to Peru, where, in the
+desperate chances of its revolutionary struggles, some few arrived at
+posts of profit and distinction.  Among those who first reached the
+Peruvian shore was an emissary sent by Almagro's agents to inform him
+of the important grant made to him by the Crown.  The tidings reached
+him just as he was making his entry into Cuzco, where he was received
+with all respect by Juan and Gonzalo Pizarro, who, in obedience to their
+brother's commands, instantly resigned the government of the capital into
+the marshal's hands.  But Almagro was greatly elated on finding himself
+now placed by his sovereign in a command that made him independent
+of the man who had so deeply wronged him; and he intimated that in the
+exercise of his present authority he acknowledged no superior.  In this
+lordly humor he was confirmed by several of his followers, who insisted
+that Cuzco fell to the south of the territory ceded to Pizarro, and
+consequently came within that now granted to the marshal.  Among
+these followers were several of Alvarado's men, who, though of better
+condition than the soldiers of Pizarro, were under much worse discipline,
+and had acquired, indeed, a spirit of unbridled license under that
+unscrupulous chief.26  They now evinced little concern for the native
+population of Cuzco; and, not content with the public edifices, seized on
+the dwellings of individuals, where it suited their conveniences,
+appropriating their contents without ceremony,--showing as little respect,
+in short, for person or property, as if the place had been taken by
+storm.27
+
+While these events were passing in the ancient Peruvian capital, the
+governor was still at Lima, where he was greatly disturbed by the
+accounts he received of the new honors conferred on his associate.  He
+did not know that his own jurisdiction had been extended seventy
+leagues further to the south, and he entertained the same suspicion with
+Almagro, that the capital of the Incas did not rightly come within his
+present limits.  He saw all the mischief likely to result from this opulent
+city falling into the hands of his rival, who would thus have an almost in
+definite means of gratifying his own cupidity, and that of his followers.
+He felt, that, under the present circumstances, it was not safe to allow
+Almagro to anticipate the possession of power, to which, as yet, he had
+no legitimate right; for the despatches containing the warrant for it still
+remained with Hernando Pizarro, at Panama, and all that had reached
+Peru was a copy of a garbled extract.
+
+Without loss of time, therefore, he sent instructions to Cuzco for his
+brothers to resume the government, while he defended the measure to
+Almagro on the ground, that, when he should hereafter receive his
+credentials, it would be unbecoming to be found already in possession of
+the post.  He concluded by urging him to go forward without delay in his
+expedition to the south.
+
+But neither the marshal nor his friends were pleased with the idea of so
+soon relinquishing the authority which they now considered as his right.
+The Pizarros, on the other hand, were pertinacious in reclaiming it.  The
+dispute grew warmer and warmer.  Each party had its supporters; the city
+was split into factions; and the municipality, the soldiers, and even the
+Indian population, took sides in the struggle for power.  Matters were
+proceeding to extremity, menacing the capital with violence and
+bloodshed, when Pizarro himself appeared among them.28
+
+On receiving tidings of the fatal consequences of his mandates, he had
+posted in all haste to Cuzco, where he was greeted with undisguised joy
+by the natives, as well as by the more temperate Spaniards, anxious to
+avert the impending storm.  The governor's first interview was with
+Almagro, whom he embraced with a seeming cordiality in his manner;
+and, without any show of resentment, inquired into the cause of the
+present disturbances.  To this the marshal replied, by throwing the blame
+on Pizarro's brothers; but, although the governor reprimanded them with
+some asperity for their violence, it was soon evident that his sympathies
+were on their side, and the dangers of a feud between the two associates
+seemed greater than ever.  Happily, it was postponed by the intervention
+of some common friends, who showed more discretion than their leaders.
+With their aid a reconciliation was at length effected, on the grounds
+substantially of their ancient compact.
+
+It was agreed that their friendship should be maintained inviolate; and,
+by a stipulation that reflects no great credit on the parties, it was
+provided that neither should malign nor disparage the other, especially in
+their despatches to the emperor; and that neither should hold
+communication with the government without the knowledge of his
+confederate; lastly, that both the expenditures and the profits of future
+discovery should be shared equally by the associates.  The wrath of
+Heaven was invoked by the most solemn imprecations on the head of
+whichever should violate this compact, and the Almighty was implored
+to visit the offender with loss of property and of life in this world, and
+with eternal perdition in that to come! 29  The parties further bound
+themselves to the observance of this contract by a solemn oath taken on
+the sacrament, as it was held in the hands of Father Bartolome de
+Segovia, who concluded the ceremony by performing mass.  The whole
+proceeding, and the articles of agreement, were carefully recorded by the
+notary, in an instrument bearing date June 12, 1535, and attested by a
+long list of witnesses.30
+
+Thus did these two ancient comrades, after trampling on the ties of
+friendship and honor, hope to knit themselves to each other by the holy
+bands of religion.  That it should have been necessary to resort to so
+extraordinary a measure might have furnished them with the best proof
+of its inefficacy.
+
+Not long after this accommodation of their differences, the marshal
+raised his standard for Chili; and numbers, won by his popular manners,
+and by his liberal largesses,--liberal to prodigality,--eagerly joined in the
+enterprise, which they fondly trusted would lead even to greater riches
+than they had found in Peru.  Two Indians, Paullo Topa, a brother of the
+Inca Manco, and Villac Umu, the high-priest of the nation, were sent in
+advance, with three Spaniards, to prepare the way for the little army.  A
+detachment of a hundred and fifty men, under an officer named
+Saavedra, next followed.  Almagro remained behind to collect further
+recruits; but before his levies were completed, he began his march,
+feeling himself insecure, with his diminished strength, in the
+neighborhood of Pizarro!  31  The remainder of his forces, when
+mustered, were to follow him.
+
+Thus relieved of the presence of his rival, the governor returned without
+further delay to the coast, to resume his labors in the settlement of the
+country.  Besides the principal city of "The Kings," he established others
+along the Pacific, destined to become hereafter the flourishing marts of
+commerce.  The most important of these, in honor of his birthplace, he
+named Truxillo, planting it on a site already indicated by Almagro.32
+He made also numerous repartimientos both of lands and Indians among
+his followers, in the usual manner of the Spanish Conquerors; 33--though
+here the ignorance of the real resources of the country led to very
+different results from what he had intended, as the territory smallest in
+extent, not unfrequently, from the hidden treasures in its bosom, turned
+out greatest in value.34
+
+But nothing claimed so much of Pizarro's care as the rising metropolis of
+Lima; and, so eagerly did he press forward the work, and so well was he
+seconded by the multitude of laborers at his command, that he had the
+satisfaction to see his young capital, with its stately edifices and its pomp
+of gardens, rapidly advancing towards completion.  It is pleasing to
+contemplate the softer features in the character of the rude soldier, as he
+was thus occupied with healing up the ravages of war, and laying broad
+the foundations of an empire more civilized than that which he had
+overthrown.  This peaceful occupation formed a contrast to the life of
+incessant turmoil in which he had been hitherto engaged.  It seemed, too,
+better suited to his own advancing age, which naturally invited to repose.
+And, if we may trust his chroniclers, there was no part of his career in
+which he took greater satisfaction.  It is certain there is no part which has
+been viewed with greater satisfaction by posterity; and, amidst the woe
+and desolation which Pizarro and his followers brought on the devoted
+land of the Incas, Lima, the beautiful City of the Kings, still survives as
+the most glorious work of his creation, the fairest gem on the shores of
+the Pacific.
+
+
+
+Book 3
+
+Chapter 10
+
+Escape Of The Inca--Return Of Hernando Pizarro-
+Rising Of The Peruvians--Siege And Burning Of Cuzco-
+Distresses Of The Spaniards--Storming Of The Fortress-
+Pizarro's Dismay--The Inca Raises The Siege
+
+1535--1536
+
+While the absence of his rival Almagro relieved Pizarro from all
+immediate disquietude from that quarter, his authority was menaced in
+another, where he had least expected it.  This was from the native
+population of the country.  Hitherto the Peruvians had shown only a tame
+and submissive temper, that inspired their conquerors with too much
+contempt to leave room for apprehension.  They had passively
+acquiesced in the usurpation of the invaders; had seen one monarch
+butchered, another placed on the vacant throne, their temples despoiled
+of their treasures, their capital and country appropriated and parcelled
+out among the Spaniards; but, with the exception of an occasional
+skirmish in the mountain passes, not a blow had been struck in defence
+of their rights.  Yet this was the warlike nation which had spread its
+conquests over so large a part of the continent!
+
+In his career, Pizarro, though he scrupled at nothing to effect his object,
+had not usually countenanced such superfluous acts of cruelty as had too
+often stained the arms of his countrymen in other parts of the continent,
+and which, in the course of a few years, had exterminated nearly a whole
+population in Hispaniola.  He had struck one astounding blow, by the
+seizure of Atahuallpa; and he seemed willing to rely on this to strike
+terror into the natives.  He even affected some respect for the institutions
+of the country, and had replaced the monarch he had murdered by
+another of the legitimate line.  Yet this was but a pretext.  The kingdom
+had experienced a revolution of the most decisive kind.  Its ancient
+institutions were subverted.  Its heaven-descended aristocracy was
+levelled almost to the condition of the peasant.  The people became the
+serfs of the Conquerors.  Their dwellings in the capital---at least, after
+the arrival of Alvarado's officers--were seized and appropriated.  The
+temples were turned into stables; the royal residences into barracks for
+the troops.  The sanctity of the religious houses was violated.  Thousands
+of matrons and maidens, who, however erroneous their faith, lived in
+chaste seclusion in the conventual establishments, were now turned
+inroad, and became the prey of a licentious soldiery.1  A favorite wife of
+the young Inca was debauched by the Castilian officers.  The Inca,
+himself treated with contemptuous indifference, found that he was a poor
+dependant, if not a tool, in the hands of his conquerors.2
+
+Yet the Inca Manco was a man of a lofty spirit and a courageous heart;
+such a one as might have challenged comparison with the bravest of his
+ancestors in the prouder days of the empire.  Stung to the quick by the
+humiliations to which he was exposed, he repeatedly urged Pizarro to
+restore him to the real exercise of power, as well as to the show of it.
+But Pizarro evaded a request so incompatible with his own ambitious
+schemes, or, indeed, with the policy of Spain, and the young Inca and his
+nobles were left to brood over their injuries in secret, and await patiently
+the hour of vengeance.
+
+The dissensions among the Spaniards themselves seemed to afford a
+favorable opportunity for this.  The Peruvian chiefs held many
+conferences together on the subject, and the high-priest Villac Umu
+urged the necessity of a rising so soon as Almagro had withdrawn his
+forces from the city.  It would then be comparatively easy, by assaulting
+the invaders on their several posts, scattered as they were over the
+country, to overpower them by superior numbers, and shake off their
+detested yoke before the arrival of fresh reinforcements should rivet it
+forever on the necks of his countrymen.  A plan for a general rising was
+formed, and it was in conformity to it that the priest was selected by the
+Inca to bear Almagro company on the march, that he might secure the
+cooperation of the natives in the country, and then secretly return--as in
+fact he did--to take a part in the insurrection.
+
+To carry their plans into effect, it became necessary that the Inca Manco
+should leave the city and present himself among his people.  He found no
+difficulty in withdrawing from Cuzco, where his presence was scarcely
+heeded by the Spaniards, as his nominal power was held in little
+deference by the haughty and confident Conquerors.  But in the capital
+there was a body of Indian allies more jealous of his movements.  These
+were from the tribe of the Canares, a warlike race of the north, too
+recently reduced by the Incas to have much sympathy with them or their
+institutions.  There were about a thousand of this people in the place,
+and, as they had conceived some suspicion of the Inca's purposes, they
+kept an eye on his movements, and speedily reported his absence to Juan
+Pizarro.
+
+That cavalier, at the head of a small body of horse, instantly marched in
+pursuit of the fugitive, whom he was so fortunate as to discover in a
+thicket of reeds, in which he sought to conceal himself, at no great
+distance from the city.  Manco was arrested, brought back a prisoner to
+Cuzco, and placed under a strong guard in the fortress.  The conspiracy
+seemed now at an end; and nothing was left to the unfortunate Peruvians
+but to bewail their ruined hopes, and to give utterance to their
+disappointment in doleful ballads, which rehearsed the captivity of their
+Inca, and the downfall of his royal house.3
+
+While these things were in progress, Hernando Pizarro returned to
+Ciudad de los Reyes, bearing with him the royal commission for the
+extension of his brother's powers, as well as of those conceded to
+Almagro.  The envoy also brought the royal patent conferring on
+Francisco Pizarro the title of marques de los Atavillos,--a province in
+Peru.  Thus was the fortunate adventurer placed in the ranks of the proud
+aristocracy of Castile, few of whose members could boast--if they had
+the courage to boast --their elevation from so humble an origin, as still
+fewer could justify it by a show of greater services to the Crown.
+
+The new marquess resolved not to forward the commission, at present, to
+the marshal, whom he designed to engage still deeper in the conquest of
+Chili, that his attention might be diverted from Cuzco which, however,
+his brother assured him, now fell, without doubt, within the newly
+extended limits of his own territory.  To make more sure of this
+important prize, he despatched Hernando to take the government of the
+capital into his own hands, as the one of his brothers on whose talents
+and practical experience he placed greatest reliance.
+
+Hernando, notwithstanding his arrogant bearing towards his countrymen,
+had ever manifested a more than ordinary sympathy with the Indians.  He
+had been the friend of Atahuallpa; to such a degree, indeed, that it was
+said, if he had been in the camp at the time, the fate of that unhappy
+monarch would probably have been averted.  He now showed a similar
+friendly disposition towards his successor, Manco.  He caused the
+Peruvian prince to be liberated from confinement, and gradually
+admitted him into some intimacy with himself.  The crafty Indian availed
+himself of his freedom to mature his plans for the rising, but with so
+much caution, that no suspicion of them crossed the mind of Hernando.
+Secrecy and silence are characteristic of the American, almost as
+invariably as the peculiar color of his skin.  Manco disclosed to his
+conqueror the existence of several heaps of treasure, and the places
+where they had been secreted; and, when he had thus won his
+confidence, he stimulated his cupidity still further by an account of a
+statue of pure gold of his father Huayna Capac, which the wily Peruvian
+requested leave to bring from a secret cave in which it was deposited,
+among the neighboring Andes.  Hernando, blinded by his avarice,
+consented to the Inca's departure.
+
+He sent with him two Spanish soldiers, less as a guard than to aid him in
+the object of his expedition.  A week elapsed, and yet he did not return,
+nor were there any tidings to be gathered of him.  Hernando now saw his
+error, especially as his own suspicions were confirmed by the
+unfavorable reports of his Indian allies.  Without further delay, he
+despatched his brother Juan, at the head of sixty horse, in quest of the
+Peruvian prince, with orders to bring him back once more a prisoner to
+his capital.
+
+That cavalier, with his well-armed troops, soon traversed the environs of
+Cuzco without discovering any vestige of the fugitive.  The country was
+remarkably silent and deserted, until, as he approached the mountain
+range that hems in the valley of Yucay, about six leagues from the city,
+he was met by the two Spaniards who had accompanied Manco.  They
+informed Pizarro that it was only at the point of the sword he could
+recover the Inca, for the country was all in arms, and the Peruvian chief
+at its head was preparing to march on the capital.  Yet he had offered no
+violence to their persons, but had allowed them to return in safety.
+
+The Spanish captain found this story fully confirmed when he arrived at
+the river Yucay, on the opposite bank of which were drawn up the Indian
+battalions to the number of many thousand men, who, with their young
+monarch at their head, prepared to dispute his passage.  It seemed that
+they could not feel their position sufficiently strong, without placing a
+river, as usual, between them and their enemy.  The Spaniards were not
+checked by this obstacle.  The stream, though deep, was narrow; and
+plunging in, they swam their horses boldly across, amidst a tempest of
+stones and arrows that rattled thick as hail on their harness, finding
+occasionally some crevice or vulnerable point,--although the wounds
+thus received only goaded them to more desperate efforts.  The
+barbarians fell back as the cavaliers made good their landing; but,
+without allowing the latter time to form, they returned with a spirit which
+they had hitherto seldom displayed, and enveloped them on all sides with
+their greatly superior numbers.  The fight now raged fiercely.  Many of
+the Indians were armed with lances headed with copper tempered almost
+to the hardness of steel, and with huge maces and battle-axes of the same
+metal.  Their defensive armour, also, was in many respects excellent,
+consisting of stout doublets of quilted cotton.  shields covered with skins,
+and casques richly ornamented with gold and jewels, or sometimes made
+like those of the Mexicans, in the fantastic shape of the heads of wild
+animals, garnished with rows of teeth that grinned horribly above the
+visage of the warrior.4   The whole army wore an aspect of martial
+ferocity, under the control of much higher military discipline than the
+Spaniards had before seen in the country.
+
+The little band of cavaliers, shaken by the fury of the Indian assault, were
+thrown at first into some disorder, but at length, cheering on one another
+with the old war-cry of "St. Jago," they formed in solid column, and
+charged boldly into the thick of the enemy.  The latter, incapable of
+withstanding the shock, gave way, or were trampled down under the feet
+of the horses, or pierced by the lances of the riders.  Yet their flight was
+conducted with some order; and they turned at intervals, to let off a
+volley of arrows, or to deal furious blows with their pole-axes and
+warclubs.  They fought as if conscious that they were under the eye of
+their Inca.
+
+It was evening before they had entirely quitted the level ground, and
+withdrawn into the fastnesses of the lofty range of hills which belt round
+the beautiful valley of Yucay.  Juan Pizarro and his little troop encamped
+on the level at the base of the mountains.  He had gained a victory, as
+usual, over immense odds; but he had never seen a field so well disputed,
+and his victory had cost him the lives of several men and horses, while
+many more had been wounded, and were nearly disabled by the fatigues
+of the day.  But he trusted the severe lesson he had inflicted on the
+enemy, whose slaughter was great, would crush the spirit of resistance.
+He was deceived.
+
+The following morning, great was his dismay to see the passes of the
+mountains filled up with dark lines of warriors, stretching as far as the
+eye could penetrate into the depths of the sierra, while dense masses of
+the enemy were gathered like thunder-clouds along the slopes and
+sumrafts, as if ready to pour down in fury on the assailants.  The ground,
+altogether unfavorable to the manoeuvres of cavalry, gave every
+advantage to the Peruvians, who rolled down huge rocks from their
+elevated position, and sent off incessant showers of missiles on the heads
+of the Spaniards.  Juan Pizarro did not care to entangle himself further in
+the perilous defile; and, though he repeatedly charged the enemy, and
+drove them back with considerable loss, the second night found him with
+men and horses wearied and wounded, and as little advanced in the
+object of his expedition as on the preceding evening.  From this
+embarrassing position, after a day or two more spent in unprofitable
+hostilities, he was surprised by a summons from his brother to return
+with all expedition to Cuzco, which was now besieged by the enemy!
+
+Without delay, he began his retreat, recrossed the valley, the recent scene
+of slaughter, swam the river Yucay, and, by a rapid countermarch,
+closely followed by the victorious enemy, who celebrated their success
+with songs or rather yells of triumph, he arrived before nightfall in sight
+of the capital.
+
+But very different was the sight which there met his eye from what he
+had beheld on leaving it a few days before.  The extensive environs, as
+far as the eye could reach, were occupied by a mighty host, which an
+indefinite computation swelled to the number of two hundred thousand
+warriors.5  The dusky lines of the Indian battalions stretched out to the
+very verge of the mountains; while, all around, the eye saw only the
+crests and waving banners of chieftains, mingled with rich panoplies of
+feather-work, which reminded some few who had served under Cortes of
+the military costume of the Aztecs.  Above all rose a forest of long lances
+and battle-axes edged with copper, which, tossed to and fro in wild
+confusion, glittered in the rays of the setting sun, like light playing on the
+surface of a dark and troubled ocean.  It was the first time that the
+Spaniards had beheld an Indian army in all its terrors; such an army as
+the Incas led to battle, when the banner of the Sun was borne triumphant
+over the land.
+
+Yet the bold hearts of the cavaliers, if for a moment dismayed by the
+sight, soon gathered courage as they closed up their files, and prepared to
+open a way for themselves through the beleaguering host.  But the enemy
+seemed to shun the encounter; and, falling back at their approach, left a
+free entrance into the capital.  The Peruvians were, probably, not willing
+to draw as many victims as they could into the toils, conscious that, the
+greater the number, the sooner they would become sensible to the
+approaches of famine.6
+
+Hernando Pizarro greeted his brother with no little satisfaction; for he
+brought an important addition to his force, which now, when all were
+united, did not exceed two hundred, horse and foot,7 besides a thousand
+Indian auxiliaries; an insignificant number, in comparison with the
+countless multitudes that were swarming at the gates.  That night was
+passed by the Spaniards with feelings of the deepest anxiety, as they
+looked forward with natural apprehension to the morrow.  It was early in
+February, 1536, when the siege of Cuzco commenced; a siege
+memorable as calling out the most heroic displays of Indian and
+European valor, and bringing the two races in deadlier conflict with each
+other than had yet occurred in the conquest of Peru.
+
+The numbers of the enemy seemed no less formidable during the night
+than by the light of day; far and wide their watch-fires were to be seen
+gleaming over valley and hill-top, as thickly scattered, says an
+eyewitness, as "the stars of heaven in a cloudless summer night." 8
+Before these fires had become pale in the light of the morning, the
+Spaniards were roused by the hideous clamor of conch, trumpet, and
+atabal, mingled with the fierce war-cries of the barbarians, as they let off
+volleys of missiles of every description, most of which fell harmless
+within the city.  But others did more serious execution.  These were
+burning arrows, and redhot stones wrapped in cotton that had been
+steeped in some bituminous substance, which, scattered long trains of
+light through the air, fell on the roofs of the buildings, and speedily set
+them on fire.9  These roofs, even of the better sort of edifices, were
+uniformly of thatch, and were ignited as easily as tinder.  In a moment
+the flames burst forth from the most opposite quarters of the city.  They
+quickly communicated to the wood-work in the interior of the buildings,
+and broad sheets of flame mingled with smoke rose up towards the
+heavens, throwing a fearful glare over every object.  The rarefied
+atmosphere heightened the previous impetuosity of the wind, which,
+fanning the rising flames, they rapidly spread from dwelling to dwelling,
+till the whole fiery mass, swayed to and fro by the tempest, surged and
+roared with the fury of a volcano.  The heat became intense, and clouds
+of smoke, gathering like a dark pall over the city, produced a sense of
+suffocation and almost blindness in those quarters where it was driven by
+the winds.10
+
+The Spaniards were encamped in the great square, partly under awnings,
+and partly in the hall of the Inca Viracocha, on the ground since covered
+by the cathedral.  Three times in the course of that dreadful day, the roof
+of the building was on fire; but, although no efforts were made to
+extinguish it, the flames went out without doing much injury.  This
+miracle was ascribed to the Blessed Virgin, who was distinctly seen by
+several of the Christian combatants, hovering over the spot on which was
+to be raised the temple dedicated to her worship.11
+
+Fortunately, the open space around Hernando's little company separated
+them from the immediate scene of conflagration.  It afforded a means of
+preservation similar to that employed by the American hunter, who
+endeavors to surround himself with a belt of wasted land, when
+overtaken by a conflagration in the prairies.  All day the fire continued to
+rage, and at night the effect was even more appalling; for by the lurid
+flames the unfortunate Spaniards could read the consternation depicted
+in each others' ghastly countenances, while in the suburbs, along the
+slopes of the surrounding hills, might be seen the throng of besiegers,
+gazing with fiendish exultation on the work of destruction.  High above
+the town to the north, rose the gray fortress, which now showed ruddy in
+the glare, looking grimly down on the ruins of the fair city which it was
+no longer able to protect; and in the distance were to be discerned the
+shadowy forms of the Andes, soaring up in solitary grandeur into the
+regions of eternal silence, far beyond the wild tumult that raged so
+fearfully at their base.
+
+Such was the extent of the city, that it was several days before the fury of
+the fire was spent.  Tower and temple, hut, palace, and hall, went down
+before it.  Fortunately, among the buildings that escaped were the
+magnificent House of the Sun and the neighboring Convent of the
+Virgins.  Their insulated position afforded the means, of which the
+Indians from motives of piety were willing to avail themselves, for their
+preservation.12  Full one half of the capital, so long the chosen seat of
+Western civilization, the pride of the Incas, and the bright abode of their
+tutelar deity, was laid in ashes by the hands of his own children.  It was
+some consolation for them to reflect, that it burned over the heads of its
+conquerors,-their trophy and their tomb!
+
+During the long period of the conflagration, the Spaniards made no
+attempt to extinguish the flames.  Such an attempt would have availed
+nothing.  Yet they did not tamely submit to the assaults of the enemy,
+and they sallied forth from time to time to repel them.  But the fallen
+timbers and scattered rubbish of the houses presented serious
+impediments to the movements of horse; and, when these were partially
+cleared away by the efforts of the infantry and the Indian allies, the
+Peruvians planted stakes and threw barricades across the path, which
+proved equally embarrassing.13  To remove them was a work of time
+and no little danger, as the pioneers were exposed to the whole brunt of
+the enemy's archery, and the aim of the Peruvian was sure.  When at
+length the obstacles were cleared away, and a free course was opened to
+the cavalry, they rushed with irresistible impetuosity on their foes, who,
+falling back in confusion, were cut to pieces by the riders, or pierced
+through with their lances.  The slaughter on these occasions was great;
+but the Indians, nothing disheartened, usually returned with renewed
+courage to the attack, and, while fresh reinforcements met the Spaniards
+in front, others, lying in ambush among the ruins, threw the troops into
+disorder by assailing them on the flanks.  The Peruvians were expert
+both with bow and sling; and these encounters, notwithstanding the
+superiority of their arms, cost the Spaniards more lives than in their
+crippled condition they could afford to spare,--a loss poorly compensated
+by that of tenfold the number of the enemy.  One weapon, peculiar to
+South American warfare, was used with some effect by the Peruvians.
+This was the lasso, a long rope with a noose at the end, which they
+adroitly threw over the rider, or entangled with it the legs of his horse, so
+as to bring them both to the ground.  More than one Spaniard fell into the
+hands of the enemy by this expedient.14
+
+Thus harassed, sleeping on their arms, with their horses picketed by their
+side, ready for action at any and every hour, the Spaniards had no rest by
+night or by day.  To add to their troubles, the fortress which overlooked
+the city, and completely commanded the great square in which they were
+quartered, had been so feebly garrisoned in their false sense of security,
+that, on the approach of the Peruvians, it had been abandoned without a
+blow in its defence.  It was now occupied by a strong body of the enemy,
+who, from his elevated position, sent down showers of missiles, from
+time to time, which added greatly to the annoyance of the besieged.
+Bitterly did their captain now repent the improvident security which had
+led him to neglect a post so important.
+
+Their distresses were still further aggravated by the rumors, which
+continually reached their ears, of the state of the country.  The rising, it
+was said, was general throughout the land; the Spaniards living on their
+insulated plantations had all been massacred; Lima and Truxillo and the
+principal cities were besieged, and must soon fall into the enemy's hands;
+the Peruvians were in possession of the passes, and all communications
+were cut off, so that no relief was to be expected from their countrymen
+on the coast.  Such were the dismal stories, (which, however
+exaggerated, had too much foundation in fact,) that now found their way
+into the city from the camp of the besiegers.  And to give greater credit
+to the rumors, eight or ten human heads were rolled into the plaza, in
+whose blood-stained visages the Spaniards recognized with horror the
+lineaments of their companions, who they knew had been dwelling in
+solitude on their estates! 15
+
+Overcome by these horrors, many were for abandoning the place at once,
+as no longer tenable, and for opening a passage for themselves to the
+coast with their own good swords.  There was a daring in the enterprise
+which had a charm for the adventurous spirit of the Castilian.  Better,
+they said, to perish in a manly struggle for life, than to die thus
+ignominiously, pent up like foxes in their holes, to be suffocated by the
+hunter!
+
+But the Pizarros, De Rojas, and some other of the principal cavaliers,
+refused to acquiesce in a measure which, they said, must cover them with
+dishonor.16  Cuzco had been the great prize for which they had
+contended; it was the ancient seat of empire, and, though now in ashes,
+would again rise from its ruins as glorious as before.  All eyes would be
+turned on them, as its defenders, and their failure, by giving confidence
+to the enemy, might decide the fate of their countrymen throughout the
+land.  They were placed in that post as the post of honor, and better
+would it be to die there than to desert it.
+
+There seemed, indeed, no alternative; for every avenue to escape was cut
+off by an enemy who had perfect knowledge of the country, and
+possession of all its passes.  But this state of things could not last long.
+The Indian could not, in the long run, contend with the white man.  The
+spirit of insurrection would die out of itself.  Their great army would
+melt away, unaccustomed as the natives were to the privations incident to
+a protracted campaign.  Reinforcements would be daily coming in from
+the colonies; and, if the Castilians would be but true to themselves for a
+season, they would be relieved by their own countrymen, who would
+never suffer them to die like outcasts among the mountains.
+
+The cheering words and courageous bearing of the cavaliers went to the
+hearts of their followers; for the soul of the Spaniard readily responded
+to the call of honor, if not of humanity.  All now agreed to stand by their
+leader to the last.  But, if they would remain longer in their present
+position, it was absolutely necessary to dislodge the enemy from the
+fortress; and, before venturing on this dangerous service, Hernando
+Pizarro resolved to strike such a blow as should intimidate the besiegers
+from further attempt to molest his present quarters.
+
+He communicated his plan of attack to his officers; and, forming his little
+troop into three divisions, he placed them under command of his brother
+Gonzalo, of Gabriel de Rojas, an officer in whom he reposed great
+confidence, and Hernan Ponce de Leon.  The Indian pioneers were sent
+forward to clear away the rubbish, and the several divisions moved
+simultaneously up the principal avenues towards the camp of the
+besiegers.  Such stragglers as they met in their way were easily cut to
+pieces, and the three bodies, bursting impetuously on the disordered lines
+of the Peruvians, took them completely by surprise.  For some moments
+there was little resistance, and the slaughter was terrible.  But the Indians
+gradually rallied, and, coming into something like order, returned to the
+fight with the courage of men who had long been familiar with danger.
+They fought hand to hand with their copper-headed war-clubs and pole-
+axes, while a storm of darts, stones, and arrows rained on the well-
+defended bodies of the Christians.
+
+The barbarians showed more discipline than was to have been expected;
+for which, it is said, they were indebted to some Spanish prisoners, from
+several of whom, the Inca, having generously spared their lives, took
+occasional lessons in the art of war.  The Peruvians had, also, learned to
+manage with some degree of skill the weapons of their conquerors; and
+they were seen armed with bucklers, helmets, and swords of European
+workmanship, and even, in a few instances, mounted on the horses which
+they had taken from the white men.17  The young Inca, in particular,
+accoutred in the European fashion, rode a war-horse which he managed
+with considerable address, and, with a long lance in his hand led on his
+followers to the attack.--This readiness to adopt the superior arms and
+tactics of the Conquerors intimates a higher civilization than that which
+belonged to the Aztec, who, in his long collision with the Spaniards, was
+never so far divested of his terrors for the horse as to venture to mount
+him.
+
+But a few days or weeks of training were not enough to give familiarity
+with weapons, still less with tactics, so unlike those to which the
+Peruvians had been hitherto accustomed.  The fight, on the present
+occasion, though hotly contested, was not of long duration.  After a
+gallant struggle in which the natives threw themselves fearlessly on the
+horse men, endeavoring to tear them from their saddles, they were
+obliged to give way before the repeated shock of their chargers.  Many
+were trampled under foot, others cut down by the Spanish broadswords,
+while the arquebusiers, supporting the cavalry, kept up a running fire that
+did terrible execution on the flanks and rear of the fugitives.  At length,
+sated with slaughter, and trusting that the chastisement he had inflicted
+on the enemy would secure him from further annoyance for the present,
+the Castilian general drew back his forces to their quarters in the
+capital.18
+
+His next step was the recovery of the citadel.  It was an enterprise of
+danger.  The fortress, which overlooked the northern section of the city,
+stood high on a rocky eminence, so steep as to be inaccessible on this
+quarter, where it was defended only by a single wall.  Towards the open
+country, it was more easy of approach; but there it was protected by two
+semicircular walls, each about twelve hundred feet in length, and of great
+thickness.  They were built of massive stones, or rather rocks, put
+together without cement, so as to form a kind of rustic-work.  The level
+of the ground between these lines of defence was raised up so as to
+enable the garrison to discharge its arrows at the assailants, while their
+own persons were protected by the parapet.  Within the interior wall was
+the fortress, consisting of three strong towers, one of great height, which,
+with a smaller one, was now held by the enemy, under the command of
+an Inca noble, a warrior of well-tried valor, prepared to defend it to the
+last extremity.
+
+The perilous enterprise was intrusted by Hernando Pizarro to his brother
+Juan, a cavalier in whose bosom burned the adventurous spirit of a
+knight-errant of romance.  As the fortress was to be approached through
+the mountain passes, it became necessary to divert the enemy's attention
+to another quarter.  A little while before sunset Juan Pizarro left the city
+with a picked corps of horsemen, and took a direction opposite to that of
+the fortress, that the besieging army might suppose the object was a
+foraging expedition.  But secretly countermarching in the night, he
+fortunately found the passes unprotected, and arrived before the outer
+wall of the fortress, without giving the alarm to the garrison.19
+
+The entrance was through a narrow opening in the centre of the rampart;
+but this was now closed up with heavy stones, that seemed to form one
+solid work with the rest of the masonry.  It was an affair of time to
+dislodge these huge masses, in such a manner as not to rouse the
+garrison.  The Indian nations, who rarely attacked in the night, were not
+sufficiently acquainted with the art of war even to provide against
+surprise by posting sentinels.  When the task was accomplished, Juan
+Pizarro and his gallant troop rode through the gateway, and advanced
+towards the second parapet.
+
+But their movements had not been conducted so secretly as to escape
+notice, and they now found the interior court swarming with warriors,
+who- as the Spaniards drew near, let off clouds of missiles that
+compelled them to come to a halt.  Juan Pizarro, aware that no time was
+to be lost, ordered one half of his corps to dismount, and, putting himself
+at their head, prepared to make a breach as before in the fortifications.
+He had been wounded some days previously in the jaw, so that, finding
+his helmet caused him pain, he rashly dispensed with it, and trusted for
+protection to his buckler.20  Leading on his men, he encouraged them in
+the work of demolition, in the face of such a storm of stones, javelins,
+and arrows, as might have made the stoutest heart shrink from
+encountering it.  The good mail of the Spaniards did not always protect
+them; but others took the place of such as fell, until a-breach was made,
+and the cavalry, pouring in, rode down all who opposed them.
+
+The parapet was now abandoned, and the enemy, hurrying with
+disorderly flight across the inclosure, took refuge on a kind of platform
+or terrace, commanded by the principal tower.  Here rallying, they shot
+off fresh volleys of missiles against the Spaniards, while the garrison in
+the fortress hurled down fragments of rock and timber on their heads.
+Juan Pizarro, still among the foremost, sprang forward on the terrace,
+cheering on his men by his voice and example; but at this moment he
+was struck by a large stone on the head, not then protected by his
+buckler, and was stretched on the ground.  The dauntless chief still
+continued to animate his followers by his voice, till the terrace was
+carried, and its miserable defenders were put to the sword.  His
+sufferings were then too much for him, and he was removed to the town
+below, where, notwithstanding every exertion to save him, he survived
+the injury but a fortnight, and died in great agony.21--To say that he was
+a Pizarro is enough to attest his claim to valor.  But it is his praise, that
+his valor was tempered by courtesy.  His own nature appeared mild by
+contrast with the haughty temper of his brothers, and his manners made
+him a favorite of the army.  He had served in the conquest of Peru from
+the first, and no name on the roll of its conquerors is less tarnished by the
+reproach of cruelty, or stands higher in all the attributes of a true and
+valiant knight.22
+
+Though deeply sensible to his brother's disaster, Hernando Pizarro saw
+that no time was to be lost in profiting by the advantages already gained.
+Committing the charge of the town to Gonzalo, he put himself at the
+head of the assailants, and laid vigorous siege to the fortresses.
+
+One surrendered after a short resistance.  The other and more formidable
+of the two still held out under the brave Inca noble who commanded it.
+He was a man of an athletic frame, and might be seen striding along the
+battlements, armed with a Spanish buckler and cuirass, and in his hand
+wielding a formidable mace, garnished with points or knobs of copper.
+With this terrible weapon he struck down all who attempted to force a
+passage into the fortress.  Some of his own followers who proposed a
+surrender he is said to have slain with his own hand.  Hernando prepared
+to carry the place by escalade.  Ladders were planted against the walls,
+but no sooner did a Spaniard gain the topmost round, than he was hurled
+to the ground by the strong arm of the Indian warrior.  His activity was
+equal to his strength; and he seemed to be at every point the moment that
+his presence was needed.
+
+The Spanish commander was filled with admiration at this display of
+valor; for he could admire valor even in an enemy.  He gave orders that
+the chief should not be injured, but be taken alive, if possible.23  This
+was not easy.  At length, numerous ladders having been planted against
+the tower, the Spaniards scaled it on several quarters at the same time,
+and, leaping into the place, overpowered the few combatants who still
+made a show of resistance.  But the Inca chieftain was not to be taken;
+and, finding further resistance ineffectual, he sprang to the edge of the
+battlements, and, casting away his war-club, wrapped his mantle around
+him and threw himself headlong from the summit.24  He died like an
+ancient Roman.  He had struck his last stroke for the freedom of his
+country, and he scorned to survive her dishonor.--The Castilian
+commander left a small force in garrison to secure his conquest, and
+returned in triumph to his quarters.
+
+Week after week rolled away, and no relief came to the beleaguered
+Spaniards.  They had long since begun to feel the approaches of famine.
+Fortunately, they were provided with water from the streams which
+flowed through the city.  But, though they had well husbanded their
+resources, their provisions were exhausted, and they had for some time
+depended on such scanty supplies of grain as they could gather from the
+ruined magazines and dwellings, mostly consumed by the fire, or from
+the produce of some successful foray.25  This latter resource was
+attended with no little difficulty; for every expedition led to a fierce
+encounter with the enemy, which usually cost the lives of several
+Spaniards, and inflicted a much heavier injury on the Indian allies.  Yet it
+was at least one good result of such loss, that it left fewer to provide for.
+But the whole number of the besieged was so small, that any loss greatly
+increased the difficulties of defence by the remainder.
+
+As months passed away without bringing any tidings of their
+countrymen, their minds were haunted with still gloomier apprehensions
+as to their fate.  They well knew that the governor would make every
+effort to rescue them from their desperate condition.  That he had not
+succeeded in this made it probable, that his own situation was no better
+than theirs, or, perhaps, he and his followers had already fallen victims to
+the fury of the insurgents.  It was a dismal thought, that they alone were
+left in the land, far from all human succour, to perish miserably by the
+hands of the barbarians among the mountains.
+
+Yet the actual state of things, though gloomy in the extreme, was not
+quite so desperate as their imaginations had painted it.  The insurrection,
+it is true, had been general throughout the country, at least that portion of
+it occupied by the Spaniards.  It had been so well concerted, that it broke
+out almost simultaneously, and the Conquerors, who were living in
+careless security on their estates, had been massacred to the number of
+several hundreds.  An Indian force had sat down before Xauxa, and a
+considerable army had occupied the valley of Rimac and laid siege to
+Lima.  But the country around that capital was of an open, level
+character, very favorable to the action of cavalry.  Pizarro no sooner saw
+himself menaced by the hostile array, than he sent such a force against
+the Peruvians as speedily put them to flight; and, following up his
+advantage, he inflicted on them such a severe chastisement, that,
+although they still continued to hover in the distance and cut off his
+communications with the interior, they did not care to trust themselves
+on the other side of the Rimac.
+
+The accounts that the Spanish commander now received of the state of
+the country filled him with the most serious alarm.  He was particularly
+solicitous for the fate of the garrison at Cuzco, and he made repeated
+efforts to relieve that capital.  Four several detachments, amounting to
+more than four hundred men in all, half of them cavalry, were sent by
+him at different times, under some of his bravest officers.  But none of
+them reached their place of destination.  The wily natives permitted them
+to march into the interior of the country, until they were fairly entangled
+in the passes of the Cordilleras.  They then enveloped them with greatly
+superior numbers, and, occupying the heights, showered down their fatal
+missiles on the heads of the Spaniards, or crushed them under the weight
+of fragments of rock which they rolled on them from the mountains.  In
+some instances, the whole detachment was cut off to a man.  In others, a
+few stragglers only survived to return and tell the bloody tale to their
+countrymen at Lima.26
+
+Pizarro was now filled with consternation.  He had the most dismal
+forebodings of the fate of the Spaniards dispersed throughout the
+country, and even doubted the possibility of maintaining his own
+foothold in it without assistance from abroad.  He despatched a vessel to
+the neighboring colony at Truxillo, urging them to abandon the place,
+with all their effects, and to repair to him at Lima.  The measure was,
+fortunately, not adopted.  Many of his men were for availing themselves
+of the vessels which rode at anchor in the port to make their escape from
+the country at once, and take refuge in Panama.  Pizarro would not
+hearken to so dastardly a counsel, which involved the desertion of the
+brave men in the interior who still looked to him for protection.  He cut
+off the hopes of these timid spirits by despatching all the vessels then in
+port on a very different mission.  He sent letters by them to the governors
+of Panama, Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Mexico, representing the gloomy
+state of his affairs, and invoking their aid.  His epistle to Alvarado, then
+established at Guatemala, is preserved.  He conjures him by every
+sentiment of honor and patriotism to come to his assistance, and this
+before it was too late.  Without assistance, the Spaniards could no longer
+maintain their footing in Peru, and that great empire would be lost to the
+Castilian Crown.  He finally engages to share with him such conquests as
+they may make with their united arms.27--Such concessions, to the very
+man whose absence from the country, but a few months before, Pizarro
+would have been willing to secure at almost any price, are sufficient
+evidence of the extremity of his distress.  The succours thus earnestly
+solicited arrived in time, not to quell the Indian insurrection, but to aid
+him in a struggle quite as formidable with his own countrymen.
+
+It was now August.  More than five months had elapsed since the
+commencement of the siege of Cuzco, yet the Peruvian legions still lay
+encamped around the city.  The siege had been protracted much beyond
+what was usual in Indian warfare, and showed the resolution of the
+natives to exterminate the white men.  But the Peruvians themselves had
+for some time been straitened by the want of provisions.  It was no easy
+matter to feed so numerous a host; and the obvious resource of the
+magazines of grain, so providently prepared by the Incas, did them but
+little service, since their contents had been most prodigally used, and
+even dissipated, by the Spaniards, on their first occupation of the
+country.28  The season for planting had now arrived, and the Inca well
+knew, that, if his followers were to neglect it, they would be visited by a
+scourge even more formidable than their invaders.  Disbanding the
+greater part of his forces, therefore, he ordered them to withdraw to their
+homes, and, after the labors of the field were over, to return and resume
+the blockade of the capital.  The Inca reserved a considerable force to
+attend on his own person, with which he retired to Tambo, a strongly
+fortified place south of the valley of Yucay, the favorite residence of his
+ancestors.  He also posted a large body as a corps of observation in the
+environs of Cuzco, to watch the movements of the enemy, and to
+intercept supplies.
+
+The Spaniards beheld with joy the mighty host, which had so long
+encompassed the city, now melting away.  They were not slow in
+profiting by the circumstance, and Hernando Pizarro took advantage of
+the temporary absence to send out foraging parties to scour the country,
+and bring back supplies to his famishing soldiers.  In this he was so
+successful that on one occasion no less than two thousand head of cattle-
+-the Peruvian sheep--were swept away from the Indian plantations and
+brought safely to Cuzco.29 This placed the army above all apprehensions
+on the score of want for the present.
+
+Yet these forays were made at the point of the lance, and many a
+desperate contest ensued, in which the best blood of the Spanish chivalry
+was shed.  The contests, indeed, were not confined to large bodies of
+troops, but skirmishes took place between smaller parties, which
+sometimes took the form of personal combats.  Nor were the parties so
+unequally matched as might have been supposed in these single
+rencontres; and the Peruvian warrior, with his sling, his bow, and his
+lasso, proved no contemptible antagonist for the mailed horseman, whom
+he sometimes even ventured to encounter, hand to hand, with his
+formidable battle-axe.  The ground around Cuzco became a battle-field,
+like the vega of Granada, in which Christian and Pagan displayed the
+characteristics of their peculiar warfare; and many a deed of heroism was
+performed, which wanted only the song of the minstrel to shed around it
+a glory like that which rested on the last days of the Moslem of Spain.30
+
+But Hernando Pizarro was not content to act wholly on the defensive;
+and he meditated a bold stroke, by which at once to put an end to the
+war.  This was the capture of the Inca Manco, whom he hoped to surprise
+in his quarters at Tambo.
+
+For this service he selected about eighty of his best-mounted cavalry,
+with a small body of foot; and, making a large detour through the less
+frequented mountain defiles, he arrived before Tambo without alarm to
+the enemy.  He found the place more strongly fortified than he had
+imagined.  The palace, or rather fortress, of the Incas stood on a lofty
+eminence, the steep sides of which, on the quarter where the Spaniards
+approached, were cut into terraces, defended by strong walls of stone and
+sunburnt brick.31  The place was impregnable on this side.  On the
+opposite, it looked towards the Yucay, and the ground descended by a
+gradual declivity towards the plain through which rolled its deep but
+narrow current.32  This was the quarter on which to make the assault.
+
+Crossing the stream without much difficulty, the Spanish commander
+advanced up the smooth glacis with as little noise as possible.  The
+morning light had hardly broken on the mountains; and Pizarro, as he
+drew near the outer defences, which, as in the fortress of Cuzco,
+consisted of a stone parapet of great strength drawn round the inclosure,
+moved quickly forward, confident that the garrison were still buried in
+sleep.  But thousands of eyes were upon him; and as the Spaniards came
+within bowshot, a multitude of dark forms suddenly rose above the
+rampart, while the Inca, with his lance in hand, was seen on horseback in
+the inclosure, directing the operations of his troops.33  At the same
+moment the air was darkened with innumerable missiles, stones, javelins,
+and arrows, which fell like a hurricane on the troops, and the mountains
+rang to the wild war-whoop of the enemy.  The Spaniards, taken by
+surprise, and many of them sorely wounded, were staggered; and, though
+they quickly rallied, and made two attempts to renew the assault, they
+were at length obliged to fall back, unable to endure the violence of the
+storm.  To add to their confusion, the lower level in their rear was
+flooded by the waters, which the natives, by opening the sluices, had
+diverted from the bed of the river, so that their position was no longer
+tenable.34  A council of war was then held, and it was decided to
+abandon the attack as desperate, and to retreat in as good order as
+possible.
+
+The day had been consumed in these ineffectual operations; and
+Hernando, under cover of the friendly darkness, sent forward his infantry
+and baggage, taking command of the centre himself, and trusting the rear
+to his brother Gonzalo.  The river was happily recrossed without
+accident, although the enemy, now confident in their strength, rushed out
+of their defences, and followed up the retreating Spaniards, whom they
+annoyed with repeated discharges of arrows.  More than once they
+pressed so closely on the fugitives, that Gonzalo and his chivalry were
+compelled to turn and make one of those desperate charges that
+effectually punished their audacity, and stayed the tide of pursuit.  Yet
+the victorious foe still hung on the rear of the discomfited cavaliers, till
+they had emerged from the mountain passes, and come within sight of
+the blackened walls of the capital.  It was the last triumph of the Inca.35
+
+
+Among the manuscripts for which I am indebted to the liberality of that
+illustrious Spanish scholar, the lamented Navarrete, the most remarkable,
+in connection with this history, is the work of Pedro Pizarro; Relaciones
+del Descubrimiento y Conquista de los Reynos del Peru.  But a single
+copy of this important document appears to have been preserved, the
+existence of which was but little known till it came into the hands of
+Senior de Navarrete; though it did not escape the indefatigable
+researches of Herrera, as is evident from the mention of several
+incidents, some of them having personal relation to Pedro Pizarro
+himself, which the historian of the Indies could have derived through no
+other channel.  The manuscript has lately been given to the public as part
+of the inestimable collection of historical documents now in process of
+publication at Madrid, under auspices which, we may trust, will insure its
+success.  As the printed work did not reach me till my present labors
+were far advanced, I have preferred to rely on the manuscript copy for
+the brief remainder of my narrative, as I had been compelled to do for
+the previous portion of it.
+
+Nothing, that I am aware of, is known respecting the author, but what is
+to be gleaned from incidental notices of himself in his own history.  He
+was born at Toledo in Estremadura, the fruitful province of adventurers
+to the New World, whence the family of Francis Pizarro, to which Pedro
+was allied, also emigrated.  When that chief came over to undertake the
+conquest of Peru, after receiving his commission from the emperor in
+1529, Pedro Pizarro, then only fifteen years of age, accompanied him in
+quality of page.  For three years he remained attached to the house hold
+of his commander, and afterwards continued to follow his banner as a
+soldier of fortune.  He was present at most of the memorable events of
+the Conquest, and seems to have possessed in a great degree the
+confidence of his leader, who employed him on some difficult missions,
+in which he displayed coolness and gallantry.  It is true, we must take the
+author's own word for all this.  But he tells his exploits with an air of
+honesty, and without any extraordinary effort to set them off in undue
+relief.  He speaks of himself in the third person, and, as his manuscript
+was not intended solely for posterity, he would hardly have ventured
+on great misrepresentation, where fraud could so easily have been
+exposed.
+
+After the Conquest, our author still remained attached to the fortunes of
+his commander, and stood by him through all the troubles which ensued;
+and on the assassination of that chief, he withdrew to Arequipa, to enjoy
+in quiet the repartimiento of lands and Indians, which had been bestowed
+on him as the recompense of his services.  He was there on the breaking
+out of the great rebellion under Gonzalo Pizarro.  But he was true to his
+allegiance, and chose rather, as he tells us, to be false to his name and his
+lineage than to his loyalty.  Gonzalo, in retaliation, seized his estates, and
+would have proceeded to still further extremities against him, when
+Pedro Pizarro had fallen into his hands at Lima, but for the interposition
+of his lieutenant, the famous Francisco de Carbajal, to whom the
+chronicler had once the good fortune to render an important service.
+This, Carbajal requited by sparing his life on two occasions,--but on the
+second coolly remarked, "No man has a right to a brace of lives; and if
+you fall into my hands a third time, God only can grant you another."
+Happily, Pizarro did not find occasion to put this menace to the test.
+After the pacification of the country, he again retired to Arequipa; but,
+from the querulous tone of his remarks, it would seem he was not fully
+reinstated in the possessions he had sacrificed by his loyal devotion to
+government.  The last we hear of him is in 1571, the date which he
+assigns as that of the completion of his history.
+
+Pedro Pizarro's narrative covers the whole ground of the Conquest, from
+the date of the first expedition that sallied out from Panama, to the
+troubles that ensued on the departure of President Gasca.  The first part
+of the work was gathered from the testimony of others, and, of course,
+cannot claim the distinction of rising to the highest class of evidence.
+But all that follows the return of Francis Pizarro from Castile, all, in
+short, which constitutes the conquest of the country, may be said to be
+reported on his own observation, as an eyewitness and an actor.  This
+gives to his narrative a value to which it could have no pretensions on the
+score of its literary execution.  Pizarro was a soldier, with as little
+education, probably, as usually falls to those who have been trained from
+youth in this rough school,--the most unpropitious in the world to both
+mental and moral progress.  He had the good sense, moreover, not to
+aspire to an excellence which he could not reach.  There is no ambition
+of fine writing in his chronicle; there are none of those affectations of
+ornament which only make more glaring the beggarly condition of him
+who assumes them.  His object was simply to tell the story of the
+Conquest, as he had seen it.  He was to deal with facts, not with words,
+which he wisely left to those who came into the field after the laborers
+had quitted it, to garner up what they could at second hand.
+
+Pizarro's situation may be thought to have necessarily exposed him to
+party influences, and thus given an undue bias to his narrative.  It is not
+difficult, indeed, to determine under whose banner he had enlisted.  He
+writes like a partisan, and yet like an honest one, who is no further
+warped from a correct judgment of passing affairs than must necessarily
+come from preconceived opinions.  There is no management to work a
+conviction in his reader on this side or the other, still less any obvious
+perversion of fact.  He evidently believes what he says, and this is the
+great point to be desired.  We can make allowance for the natural
+influences of his position.  Were he more impartial than this, the critic of
+the present day, by making allowance for a greater amount of prejudice
+and partiality, might only be led into error.
+
+Pizarro is not only independent, but occasionally caustic in his
+condemnation of those under whom he acted.  This is particularly the
+case where their measures bear too unfavorably on his own interests, or
+those of the army.  As to the unfortunate natives, he no more regards
+their sufferings than the Jews of old did those of the Philistines, whom
+they considered as delivered up to their swords, and whose lands they
+regarded as their lawful heritage.  There is no mercy shown by the hard
+Conqueror in his treatment of the infidel.
+
+Pizarro was the representative of the age in which he lived.  Yet it is too
+much to cast such obloquy on the age.  He represented more truly the
+spirit of the fierce warriors who overturned the dynasty of the Incas.  He
+was not merely a crusader, fighting to extend the empire of the Cross
+over the darkened heathen.  Gold was his great object; the estimate by
+which he judged of the value of the Conquest; the recompense that he
+asked for a life of toil and danger.  It was with these golden visions, far
+more than with visions of glory, above all, of celestial glory, that the
+Peruvian adventurer fed his gross and worldly imagination.  Pizarro did
+not rise above his caste.  Neither did he rise above it in a mental view,
+any more than in a moral.  His history displays no great penetration, or
+vigor and comprehension of thought.  It is the work of a soldier, telling
+simply his tale of blood.  Its value is, that it is told by him who acted it.
+And this, to the modern compiler, renders it of higher worth than far
+abler productions at second hand.  It is the rude ore, which, submitted to
+the regular process of purification and refinement, may receive the
+current stamp that fits it for general circulation.
+
+Another authority, to whom I have occasionally referred, and whose
+writings still slumber in manuscript, is the Licentiate Fernando
+Montesinos.  He is, in every respect, the opposite of the military
+chronicler who has just come under our notice.  He flourished about a
+century after the Conquest.  Of course, the value of his writings as an
+authority for historical facts must depend on his superior opportunities
+for consulting original documents.  For this his advantages were great.
+He was twice sent in an official capacity to Peru, which required him to
+visit the different parts of the country.  These two missions occupied
+fifteen years; so that, while his position gave him access to the colonial
+archives and literary repositories, he was enabled to verify his
+researches, to some extent, by actual observation of the country.
+
+The result was his two historical works, Memorias Antiguas Historiales
+del Peru, and his Annales, sometimes cited in these pages.  The former is
+taken up with the early history of the country,--very early, it must be
+admitted, since it goes back to the deluge.  The first part of this treatise is
+chiefly occupied with an argument to show the identity of Peru with the
+golden Ophir of Solomon's time!  This hypothesis, by no means original
+with the author, may give no unfair notion of the character of his mind.
+In the progress of his work he follows down the line of Inca princes,
+whose exploits, and names even, by no means coincide with Garcilasso's
+catalogue; a circumstance, however, far from establishing their
+inaccuracy.  But one will have little doubt of the writer's title to this
+reproach, that reads the absurd legends told in the grave tone of reliance
+by Montesinos, who shared largely in the credulity and the love of the
+marvellous which belong to an earlier and less enlightened age.
+
+These same traits are visible in his Annals, which are devoted
+exclusively to the Conquest.  Here, indeed, the author, after his cloudy
+flight, has descended on firm ground, where gross violations of truth, or,
+at least, of probability, are not to be expected.  But any one who has
+occasion to compare his narrative with that of contemporary writers will
+find frequent cause to distrust it.  Yet Montesinos has one merit.  In his
+extensive researches, he became acquainted with original instruments,
+which he has occasionally transferred to his own pages, and which it
+would be now difficult to meet elsewhere.
+
+His writings have been commended by some of his learned countrymen,
+as showing diligent research and information.  My own experience
+would not assign them a high rank as historical vouchers.  They seem to
+me entitled to little praise, either for the accuracy of their statements, or
+the sagacity of their reflections.  The spirit of cold indifference which
+they manifest to the sufferings of the natives is an odious feature, for
+which there is less apology in a writer of the seventeenth century than in
+one of the primitive Conquerors, whose passions had been inflamed by
+longprotracted hostility.  M. Ternaux-Compans has translated the
+Memorias Antiguas with his usual elegance and precision, for his
+collection of original documents relating to the New World.  He speaks
+in the Preface of doing the same kind office to the Annales, at a future
+time.  I am not aware that he has done this; and I cannot but think that
+the excellent translator may find a better subject for his labors in some of
+the rich collection of the Munoz manuscripts in his possession.
+
+
+
+History of the Conquest of Peru
+
+by William Hickling Prescott
+
+Book 4
+
+Civil Wars Of The Conquerors
+
+Chapter 1
+
+Almagro's March To Chili--Suffering Of The Troops-
+He Returns And Seizes Cuzco--Action Of Abancay-
+Gaspar De Espinosa--Almagro Leaves Cuzco-
+Negotiations With Pizarro
+
+1535--1537
+
+While the events recorded in the preceding chapter were passing, the
+Marshal Almagro was engaged in his memorable expedition to Chili.  He
+had set out, as we have seen, with only part of his forces, leaving his
+lieutenant to follow him with the remainder.  During the first part of the
+way, he profited by the great military road of the Incas, which stretched
+across the table-land far towards the south.  But as he drew near to Chili,
+the Spanish commander became entangled in the defiles of the
+mountains, where no vestige of a road was to be discerned.  Here his
+progress was impeded by all the obstacles which belong to the wild
+scenery of the Cordilleras; deep and ragged ravines, round whose sides a
+slender sheep-path wound up to a dizzy height over the precipices below;
+rivers rushing in fury down the slopes of the mountains, and throwing
+themselves in stupendous cataracts into the yawning abyss; dark forests
+of pine that seemed to have no end, and then again long reaches of
+desolate tableland, without so much as a bush or shrub to shelter the
+shivering traveller from the blast that swept down from the frozen
+summits of the sierra.
+
+The cold was so intense, that many lost the nails of their fingers, their
+fingers themselves, and sometimes their limbs.  Others were blinded by
+the dazzling waste of snow, reflecting the rays of a sun made intolerably
+brilliant in the thin atmosphere of these elevated regions.  Hunger came,
+as usual, in the train of woes; for in these dismal solitudes no vegetation
+that would suffice for the food of man was visible, and no living thing,
+except only the great bird of the Andes, hovering over their heads in
+expectation of his banquet.  This was too frequently afforded by the
+number of wretched Indians, who, unable, from the scantiness of their
+clothing, to encounter the severity of the climate, perished by the way.
+Such was the pressure of hunger, that the miserable survivors fed on the
+dead bodies of their countrymen, and the Spaniards forced a similar
+sustenance from the carcasses of their horses, literally frozen to death in
+the mountain passes.1--Such were the terrible penalties which Nature
+imposed on those who rashly intruded on these her solitary and most
+savage haunts.
+
+Yet their own sufferings do not seem to have touched the hearts of the
+Spaniards with any feeling of compassion for the weaker natives.  Their
+path was everywhere marked by burnt and desolated hamlets, the
+inhabitants of which were compelled to do them service as beasts of
+burden.  They were chained together in gangs of ten or twelve, and no
+infirmity or feebleness of body excused the unfortunate captive from his
+full share of the common toil, till he sometimes dropped dead, in his very
+chains, from mere exhaustion! 2  Alvarado's company are accused of
+having been more cruel than Pizarro's; and many of Almagro's men, it
+may be remembered, were recruited from that source.  The commander
+looked with displeasure, it is said, on these enormities, and did what he
+could to repress them.  Yet he did not set a good example in his own
+conduct, if it be true that he caused no less than thirty Indian chiefs to be
+burnt alive, for the massacre of three of his followers! 3  The heart
+sickens at the recital of such atrocities perpetrated on an unoffending
+people, or, at least, guilty of no other crime than that of defending their
+own soil too well.
+
+There is something in the possession of superior strength most
+dangerous, in a moral view, to its possessor.  Brought in contact with
+semicivilized man, the European, with his endowments and effective
+force so immeasurably superior, holds him as little higher than the brute,
+and as born equally for his service.  He feels that he has a natural right,
+as it were, to his obedience, and that this obedience is to be measured,
+not by the powers of the barbarian, but by the will of his conqueror.
+Resistance becomes a crime to be washed out only in the blood of the
+victim.  The tale of such atrocities is not confined to the Spaniard.
+Wherever the civilized man and the savage have come in contact, in the
+East or in the West, the story has been too often written in blood.
+
+From the wild chaos of mountain scenery the Spaniards emerged on the
+green vale of Coquimbo, about the thirtieth degree of south latitude.
+Here they halted to refresh themselves in its abundant plains, after their
+unexampled sufferings and fatigues.  Meanwhile Almagro despatched an
+officer with a strong party in advance, to ascertain the character of the
+country towards the south.  Not long after, he was cheered by the arrival
+of the remainder of his forces under his lieutenant Rodrigo de Orgonez.
+This was a remarkable person, and intimately connected with the
+subsequent fortunes of Almagro.
+
+He was a native of Oropesa, had been trained in the Italian wars, and
+held the rank of ensign in the army of the Constable of Bourbon at the
+famous sack of Rome.  It was a good school in which to learn his iron
+trade, and to steel the heart against any too ready sensibility to human
+suffering.  Orgonez was an excellent soldier; true to his commander,
+prompt, fearless, and unflinching in the execution of his orders.  His
+services attracted the notice of the Crown, and, shortly after this period,
+he was raised to the rank of Marshal of New Toledo.  Yet it may be
+doubted whether his character did not qualify him for an executive and
+subordinate station rather than for one of higher responsibility.
+
+Almagro received also the royal warrant, conferring on him his new
+powers and territorial jurisdiction.  The instrument had been detained by
+the Pizarros to the very last moment.  His troops, long since disgusted
+with their toilsome and unprofitable march, were now clamorous to
+return.  Cuzco, they said, undoubtedly fell within the limits of his
+government, and it was better to take possession of its comfortable
+quarters than to wander like outcasts in this dreary wilderness.  They
+reminded their commander that thus only could he provide for the
+interests of his son Diego.  This was an illegitimate son of Almagro, on
+whom his father doated with extravagant fondness, justified more than
+usual by the promising character of the youth.
+
+After an absence of about two months, the officer sent on the exploring
+expedition returned, bringing unpromising accounts of the southern
+regions of Chili.  The only land of promise for the Castilian was one that
+teemed with gold.4  He had penetrated to the distance of a hundred
+leagues, to the limits, probably, of the conquests of the Incas on the river
+Maule.5  The Spaniards had fortunately stopped short of the land of
+Arauco, where the blood of their countrymen was soon after to be poured
+out like water, and which still maintains a proud independence amidst
+the general humiliation of the Indian races around it.
+
+Almagro now yielded, with little reluctance, to the renewed importunities
+of the soldiers, and turned his face towards the North.  It is unnecessary
+to follow his march in detail.  Disheartened by the difficulty of the
+mountain passage, he took the road along the coast, which led him across
+the great desert of Atacama.  In crossing this dreary waste, which
+stretches for nearly a hundred leagues to the northern borders of Chili,
+with hardly a green spot in its expanse to relieve the fainting traveller,
+Almagro and his men experienced as great sufferings, though not of the
+same kind, as those which they had encountered in the passes of the
+Cordilleras.  Indeed, the captain would not easily be found at this day,
+who would venture to lead his army across this dreary region.  But the
+Spaniard of the sixteenth century had a strength of limb and a buoyancy
+of spirit which raised him to a contempt of obstacles, almost justifying
+the boast of the historian, that "he contended indifferently, at the same
+time, with man, with the elements, and with famine!" 6
+
+After traversing the terrible desert, Almagro reached the ancient town of
+Arequipa, about sixty leagues from Cuzco.  Here he learned with
+astonishment the insurrection of the Peruvians, and further, that the
+young Inca Manco still lay with a formidable force at no great distance
+from the capital.  He had once been on friendly terms with the Peruvian
+prince, and he now resolved, before proceeding farther, to send an
+embassy to his camp, and arrange an interview with him in the
+neighborhood of Cuzco.
+
+Almagro's emissaries were well received by the Inca, who alleged his
+grounds of complaint against the Pizarros, and named the vale of Yucay
+as the place where he would confer with the marshal.  The Spanish
+commander accordingly resumed his march, and, taking one half of his
+force, whose whole number fell somewhat short of five hundred men, he
+repaired in person to the place of rendezvous; while the remainder of his
+army established their quarters at Urcos, about six leagues from the
+capital.7
+
+The Spaniards in Cuzco, startled by the appearance of this fresh body of
+troops in their neighborhood, doubted, when they learned the quarter
+whence they came, whether it betided them good or evil.  Hernando
+Pizarro marched out of the city with a small force, and, drawing near to
+Urcos, heard with no little uneasiness of Almagro's purpose to insist on
+his pretensions to Cuzco.  Though much inferior in strength to his rival,
+he determined to resist him.
+
+Meanwhile, the Peruvians, who had witnessed the conference between
+the soldiers of the opposite camps, suspected some secret understanding
+between the parties, which would compromise the safety of the Inca.
+They communicated their distrust to Manco, and the latter, adopting the
+same sentiments, or perhaps, from the first, meditating a surprise of the
+Spaniards, suddenly fell upon the latter in the valley of Yucay with a
+body of fifteen thousand men.  But the veterans of Chili were too
+familiar with Indian tactics to be taken by surprise.  And though a sharp
+engagement ensued, which lasted more than an hour, in which Orgonez
+had a horse killed under him, the natives were finally driven back with
+great slaughter, and the Inca was so far crippled by the blow, that he was
+not likely for the present to give further molestation.8
+
+Almagro, now joining the division left at Urcos, saw no further
+impediment to his operations on Cuzco.  He sent, at once, an embassy to
+the municipality of the place, requiring the recognition of him as its
+lawful governor, and presenting at the same time a copy of his
+credentials from the Crown.  But the question of jurisdiction was not one
+easy to be settled, depending, as it did, on a knowledge of the true
+parallels of latitude, not very likely to be possessed by the rude followers
+of Pizarro.  The royal grant had placed under his jurisdiction all the
+country extending two hundred and seventy leagues south of the river at
+Santiago, situated one degree and twenty minutes north of the equator.
+Two hundred and seventy leagues on the meridian, by our measurement,
+would fall more than a degree short of Cuzco, and, indeed, would barely
+include the city of Lima itself.  But the Spanish leagues, of only
+seventeen and a half to a degree,9 would remove the southern boundary
+to nearly half a degree beyond the capital of the Incas, which would thus
+fall within the jurisdiction of Pizarro.10  Yet the division-line ran so
+close to the disputed ground, that the true result might reasonably be
+doubted, where no careful scientific observations had been made to
+obtain it; and each party was prompt to assert, as they always are in such
+cases, that its own claim was clear and unquestionable.11
+
+Thus summoned by Almagro, the authorities of Cuzco, unwilling to give
+umbrage to either of the contending chiefs, decided that they must wait
+until they could take counsel--which they promised to do at once--with
+certain pilots better instructed than themselves in the position of the
+Santiago.  Meanwhile, a truce was arranged between the parties, each
+solemnly engaging to abstain from hostile measures, and to remain quiet
+in their present quarters.
+
+The weather now set in cold and rainy.  Almagro's soldiers, greatly
+discontented with their position, flooded as it was by the waters, were
+quick to discover that Hernando Pizarro was busily employed in
+strengthening himself in the city, contrary to agreement.  They also
+learned with dismay, that a large body of men, sent by the governor from
+Lima, under command of Alonso de Alvarado, was on the march to
+relieve Cuzco.  They exclaimed that they were betrayed, and that the
+truce had been only an artifice to secure their inactivity until the arrival
+of the expected succours.  In this state of excitement, it was not very
+difficult to persuade their commander--too ready to surrender his own
+judgment to the rash advisers around him--to violate the treaty, and take
+possession of the capital.12
+
+Under cover of a dark and stormy night (April 8th, 1537), he entered the
+place without opposition, made himself master of the principal church,
+established strong parties of cavalry at the head of the great avenues to
+prevent surprise, and detached Orgonez with a body of infantry to force
+the dwelling of Hernando Pizarro.  "That captain was lodged with his
+brother Gonzalo in one of the large halls built by the Incas for public
+diversions, with immense doors of entrance that opened on the plaza.  It
+was garrisoned by about twenty soldiers, who, as the gates were burst
+open, stood stoutly to the defence of their leader.  A smart struggle
+ensued, in which some lives were lost, till at length Orgonez, provoked
+by the obstinate resistance, set fire to the combustible roof of the
+building.  It was speedily in flames, and the burning rafters falling on the
+heads of the inmates, they forced their reluctant leader to an
+unconditional surrender.  Scarcely had the Spaniards left the building,
+when the whole roof fell in with a tremendous crash.13
+
+Almagro was now master of Cuzco.  He ordered the Pizarros, with
+fifteen or twenty of the principal cavaliers, to be secured and placed in
+confinement.  Except so far as required for securing his authority, he
+does not seem to have been guilty of acts of violence to the
+inhabitants,14 and he installed one of Pizarro's most able officers,
+Gabriel de Rojas, in the government of the city.  The municipality,
+whose eyes were now open to the validity of Almagro's pretensions,
+made no further scruple to recognize his title to Cuzco.
+
+The marshal's first step was to send a message to Alonso de Alvarado's
+camp, advising that officer of his occupation of the city, and requiring
+his obedience to him as its legitimate master.  Alvarado was lying, with a
+body of five hundred men, horse and foot, at Xauxa, about thirteen
+leagues from the capital.  He had been detached several months
+previously for the relief of Cuzco; but had, most unaccountably, and, as
+it proved, most unfortunately for the Peruvian capital, remained at Xauxa
+with the alleged motive of protecting that settlement and the surrounding
+country against the insurgents.15  He now showed himself loyal to his
+commander; and, when Almagro's ambassadors reached his camp, he put
+them in irons, and sent advice of what had been done to the governor at
+Lima.
+
+Almagro, offended by the detention of his emissaries, prepared at once to
+march against Alonso de Alvarado, and take more effectual means to
+bring him to submission.  His lieutenant, Orgonez, strongly urged him
+before his departure to strike off the heads of the Pizarros, alleging,
+"that, while they lived, his commander's life would never be safe"; and
+concluding with the Spanish proverb, "Dead men never bite." 16  But the
+marshal, though he detested Hernando in his heart, shrunk from so
+violent a measure; and, independently of other considerations, he had
+still an attachment for his old associate, Francis Pizarro, and was
+unwilling to sever the ties between them for ever.  Contenting himself,
+therefore, with placing his prisoners under strong guard in one of the
+stone buildings belonging to the House of the Sun, he put himself at the
+head of his forces, and left the capital in quest of Alvarado.
+
+That officer had now taken up a position on the farther side of the Rio de
+Abancay, where he lay, with the strength of his little army, in front of a
+bridge, by which its rapid waters are traversed, while a strong
+detachment occupied a spot commanding a ford lower down the river.
+But in this detachment was a cavalier of much consideration in the army,
+Pedro de Lerma, who, from some pique against his commander, had
+entered into treasonable correspondence with the opposite party.  By his
+advice, Almagro, on reaching the border of the river, established himself
+against the bridge in face of Alvarado, as if prepared to force a passage,
+thus concentrating his adversary's attention on that point.  But, when
+darkness had set in, he detached a large body under Orgonez to pass the
+ford, and operate in concert with Lerma.  Orgonez executed this
+commission with his usual promptness.  The ford was crossed, though
+the current ran so swiftly, that several of his men were swept away by it,
+and perished in the waters.  Their leader received a severe wound
+himself in the mouth, as he was gaining the opposite bank, but, nothing
+daunted, he cheered on his men, and fell with fury on the enemy.  He was
+speedily joined by Lerma, and such of the soldiers as he had gained over,
+and, unable to distinguish friend from foe, the enemy's confusion was
+complete.
+
+Meanwhile, Alvarado, roused by the noise of the attack on this quarter,
+hastened to the support of his officer, when Almagro, seizing the
+occasion, pushed across the bridge, dispersed the small body left to
+defend it, and, falling on Alvarado's rear, that general saw himself
+hemmed in on all sides.  The struggle did not last long; and the
+unfortunate chief, uncertain on whom he could rely, surrendered with all
+his force,--those only excepted who had already-deserted to the enemy.
+Such was the battle of Abancay, as it was called, from the river on whose
+banks it was fought, on the twelfth of July, 1537.- Never was a victory
+more complete, or achieved with less cost of life; and Almagro marched
+back, with an array of prisoners scarcely inferior to his own army in
+number, in triumph to Cuzco.17
+
+While the events related in the preceding pages were passing, Francisco
+Pizarro had remained at Lima, anxiously awaiting the arrival of the
+reinforcements which he had requested, to enable him to march to the
+relief of the beleaguered capital of the Incas.  His appeal had not been
+unanswered.  Among the rest was a corps of two hundred and fifty men,
+led by the Licentiate Gaspar de Espinosa, one of the three original
+associates, it may be remembered, who engaged in the conquest of Peru.
+He had now left his own residence at Panama, and came in person, for
+the first time, it would seem, to revive the drooping fortunes of his
+confederates.  Pizarro received also a vessel laden with provisions,
+military stores, and other necessary supplies, besides a rich wardrobe for
+himself, from Cortes, the Conqueror of Mexico, who generously
+stretched forth his hand to aid his kinsman in the hour of need.18
+
+With a force amounting to four hundred and fifty men, half of them
+cavalry, the governor quitted Lima, and began his march on the Inca
+capital.  He had not advanced far, when he received tidings of the return
+of Almagro, the seizure of Cuzco, and the imprisonment of his brothers;
+and, before he had time to recover from this astounding intelligence, he
+learned the total defeat and capture of Alvarado.  Filled with
+consternation at these rapid successes of his rival, he now returned in all
+haste to Lima, which he put in the best posture of defence, to secure it
+against the hostile movements, not unlikely, as he thought, to be directed
+against that capital itself.  Meanwhile, far from indulging in impotent
+sallies of resentment, or in complaints of his ancient comrade, he only
+lamented that Almagro should have resorted to these violent measures
+for the settlement of their dispute, and this less-if we may take his word
+for it--from personal considerations than from the prejudice it might do
+to the interests of the Crown.19
+
+But, while busily occupied with warlike preparations, he did not omit to
+try the effect of negotiation.  He sent an embassy to Cuzco, consisting of
+several persons in whose discretion he placed the greatest confidence,
+with Espinosa at their head, as the party most interested in an amicable
+arrangement.
+
+The licentiate, on his arrival, did not find Almagro in as favorable a
+mood for an accommodation as he could have wished.  Elated by his
+recent successes, he now aspired not only to the possession of Cuzco, but
+of Lima itself, as falling within the limits of his jurisdiction.  It was in
+vain that Espinosa urged the propriety, by every argument which
+prudence could suggest, of moderating his demands.  His claims upon
+Cuzco, at least, were not to be shaken, and he declared himself ready to
+peril his life in maintaining them.  The licentiate coolly replied by
+quoting the pithy Castilian proverb, El vencido vencido, y el vencidor
+perdido; "The vanquished vanquished, and the victor undone."
+
+What influence the temperate arguments of the licentiate might
+eventually have had on the heated imagination of the soldier is doubtful;
+but unfortunately for the negotiation, it was abruptly terminated by the
+death of Espinosa himself, which took place most unexpectedly, though,
+strange to say, in those times, without the imputation of poison.20  He
+was a great loss to the parties in the existing fermentation of their minds;
+for he had the weight of character which belongs to wise and moderate
+counsels, and a deeper interest than any other man in recommending
+them.
+
+The name of Espinosa is memorable in history from his early connection
+with the expedition to Peru, which, but for the seasonable, though secret,
+application of his funds, could not then have been compassed.  He had
+long been a resident in the Spanish colonies of Tierra Firme and Panama,
+where he had served in various capacities, sometimes as a legal
+functionary presiding in the courts of justice,21 and not unfrequently as
+an efficient leader in the early expeditions of conquest and discovery.  In
+these manifold vocations he acquired high reputation for probity,
+intelligence, and courage, and his death at the present crisis was
+undoubtedly the most unfortunate event that could befall the country.
+
+All attempt at negotiation was now abandoned; and Almagro announced
+his purpose to descend to the sea-coast, where he could plant a colony
+and establish a port for himself.  This would secure him the means, so
+essential, of communication with the mother-country, and here he would
+resume negotiations for the settlement of his dispute with Pizarro.
+Before quitting Cuzco, he sent Orgonez with a strong force against the
+Inca, not caring to leave the capital exposed in his absence to further
+annoyance from that quarter.
+
+But the Inca, discouraged by his late discomfiture, and unable, perhaps,
+to rally in sufficient strength for resistance, abandoned his stronghold at
+Tambo, and retreated across the mountains.  He was hotly pursued by
+Orgonez over hill and valley, till, deserted by his followers, and with
+only one of his wives to bear him company, the royal fugitive took
+shelter in the remote fastnesses of the Andes.22
+
+Before leaving the capital, Orgonez again urged his commander to strike
+off the heads of the Pizarros, and then march at once upon Lima.  By this
+decisive step he would bring the war to an issue, and forever secure
+himself from the insidious machinations of his enemies.  But, in the mean
+time, a new friend had risen up to the captive brothers.  This was Diego
+de Alvarado, brother of that Pedro, who, as mentioned in a preceding
+chapter, had conducted the unfortunate expedition to Quito.  After his
+brother's departure, Diego had attached himself to the fortunes of
+Almagro, had accompanied him to Chili, and, as he was a cavalier of
+birth, and possessed of some truly noble qualities, he had gained
+deserved ascendency over his commander.  Alvarado had frequently
+visited Hernando Pizarro in his confinement, where, to beguile the
+tediousness of captivity, he amused himself with gaming,--the passion of
+the Spaniard.  They played deep, and Alvarado lost the enormous sum of
+eighty thousand gold castellanos.  He was prompt in paying the debt, but
+Hernando Pizarro peremptorily declined to receive the money.  By this
+politic generosity, he secured an important advocate in the council of
+Almagro.  It stood him now in good stead.  Alvarado represented to the
+marshal, that such a measure as that urged by Orgonez would not only
+outrage the feelings of his followers, but would ruin his fortunes by the
+indignation it must excite at court.  When Almagro acquiesced in these
+views, as in truth most grateful to his own nature, Orgonez, chagrined at
+his determination, declared that the day would come when he would
+repent this mistaken lenity.  "A Pizarro," he said, "was never known to
+forget an injury; and that which they had already received from Almagro
+was too deep for them to forgive."  Prophetic words!
+
+On leaving Cuzco, the marshal gave orders that Gonzalo Pizarro and the
+other prisoners should be detained in strict custody.  Hernando he took
+with him, closely guarded, on his march.  Descending rapidly towards
+the coast, he reached the pleasant vale of Chincha in the latter part of
+August.  Here he occupied himself with laying the foundations of a town
+bearing his own name, which might serve as a counterpart to the City of
+the Kings,--thus bidding defiance, as it were, to his rival on his own
+borders.  While occupied in this manner, he received the unwelcome
+tidings, that Gonzalo Pizarro, Alonso de Alvarado, and the other
+prisoners, having tampered with their guards, had effected their escape
+from Cuzco, and he soon after heard of their safe arrival in the camp of
+Pizarro.
+
+Chafed by this intelligence, the marshal was not soothed by the
+insinuations of Orgonez, that it was owing to his ill-advised lenity; that it
+might have gone hard with Hernando, but that Almagro's attention was
+diverted by the negotiation which Francisco Pizarro now proposed to
+resume.
+
+After some correspondence between the parties, it was agreed to submit
+the arbitration of the dispute to a single individual, Fray Francisco de
+Bovadilla, a Brother of the Order of Mercy.  Though living in Lima, and,
+as might be supposed, under the influence of Pizarro, he had a reputation
+for integrity that disposed Almagro to confide the settlement of the
+question exclusively to him.  In this implicit confidence in the friar's
+impartiality, Orgonez, of a less sanguine temper than his chief, did not
+participate.23
+
+An interview was arranged between the rival chiefs.  It took place at
+Mala, November 13th, 1537; but very different was the deportment of
+the two commanders towards each other from that which they had
+exhibited at their former meetings.  Almagro, indeed, doffing his bonnet,
+advanced in his usual open manner to salute his ancient comrade; but
+Pizarro, hardly condescending to return the salute, haughtily demanded
+why the marshal had seized upon his city of Cuzco, and imprisoned his
+brothers.  This led to a recrimination on the part of his associate.  The
+discussion assumed the tone of an angry altercation, till Almagro, taking
+a hint--or what he conceived to be such--from an attendant, that some
+treachery was intended, abruptly quitted the apartment, mounted his
+horse, and galloped back to his quarters at Chincha.24  The conference
+closed, as might have been anticipated from the heated temper of their
+minds when they began it, by widening the breach it was intended to
+heal.  The friar, now left wholly to himself, after some deliberation, gave
+his award.  He decided that a vessel, with a skilful pilot on board, should
+be sent to determine the exact latitude of the river of Santiago, the
+northern boundary of Pizarro's territory, by which all the measurements
+were to be regulated.  In the mean time, Cuzco was to be delivered up by
+Almagro, and Hernando Pizarro to be set at liberty, on condition of his
+leaving the country in six weeks for Spain.  Both parties were to retire
+within their undisputed territories, and to abandon all further
+hostilities.25
+
+This award, as may be supposed, highly satisfactory to Pizarro, was
+received by Almagro's men with indignation and scorn.  They had been
+sold, they cried, by their general, broken, as he was, by age and
+infirmities.  Their enemies were to occupy Cuzco and its pleasant places,
+while they were to be turned over to the barren wilderness of Charcas.
+Little did they dream that under this poor exterior were hidden the rich
+treasures of Potosi.  They denounced the umpire as a hireling of the
+governor, and murmurs were heard among the troops, stimulated by
+Orgonez, demanding the head of Hernando.  Never was that cavalier in
+greater danger.  But his good genius in the form of Alvarado again
+interposed to protect him.  His life in captivity was a succession of
+reprieves.26
+
+Yet his brother, the governor, was not disposed to abandon him to his
+fate.  On the contrary, he was now prepared to make every concession to
+secure his freedom.  Confessions, that politic chief well knew, cost little
+to those who are not concerned to abide by them.  After some
+preliminary negotiation, another award, more equitable, or, at all events,
+more to the satisfaction of the discontented party, was given.  The
+principal articles of it were, that, until the arrival of some definitive
+instructions on the point from Castile, the city of Cuzco, with its
+territory, should remain in the hands of Almagro; and that Hernando
+Pizarro should be set at liberty, on the condition, above stipulated, of
+leaving the country in six weeks.--When the terms of this agreement
+were communicated to Orgonez, that officer intimated his opinion of
+them, by passing his finger across his throat, and exclaiming, "What has
+my fidelity to my commander cost me!" 27
+
+Almagro, in order to do greater honor to his prisoner, visited him in
+person, and announced to him that he was from that moment free.  He
+expressed a hope, at the same time, that "all past differences would be
+buried in oblivion, and that henceforth they should live only in the
+recollection of their ancient friendship." Hernando replied, with apparent
+cordiality, that "he desired nothing better for himself." He then swore in
+the most solemn manner, and pledged his knightly honor,--the latter,
+perhaps, a pledge of quite as much weight in his own mind as the
+former,--that he would faithfully comply with the terms stipulated in the
+treaty.  He was next conducted by the marshal to his quarters, where he
+partook of a collation in company with the principal officers; several of
+whom, together with Diego Almagro, the general's son, afterward
+escorted the cavalier to his brother's camp, which had been transferred to
+the neighboring town of Mala.  Here the party received a most cordial
+greeting from the governor, who entertained them with a courtly
+hospitality, and lavished many attentions, in particular, on the son of his
+ancient associate.  In short, such, on their return, was the account of their
+reception, that it left no doubt in the mind of Almagro that all was at
+length amicably settled.28--He did not know Pizarro.
+
+
+
+Book 4
+
+Chapter 2
+
+First Civil War--Almagro Retreats To Cuzco--Battle Of Las Salinas--
+Cruelty Of The Conquerors--Trial And Execution Of Almagro-
+His Character
+
+1537--1538
+
+Scarcely had Almagro's officers left the governor's quarters, when the
+latter, calling his little army together, briefly recapitulated the many
+wrongs which had been done him by his rival, the seizure of his capital,
+the imprisonment of his brothers, the assault and defeat of his troops; and
+he concluded with the declaration,--heartily echoed back by his military
+audience,--that the time had now come for revenge.  All the while that
+the negotiations were pending, Pizarro had been busily occupied with
+military preparations.  He had mustered a force considerably larger than
+that of his rival, drawn from various quarters, but most of them familiar
+with service.  He now declared, that, as he was too old to take charge of
+the campaign himself, he should devolve that duty on his brothers; and
+he released Hernando from all his engagements to Almagro, as a
+measure justified by necessity.  That cavalier, with graceful pertinacity,
+intimated his design to abide by the pledges he had given, but, at length,
+yielded a reluctant assent to the commands of his brother, as to a
+measure imperatively demanded by his duty to the Crown.1
+
+The governor's next step was to advise Almagro that the treaty was at an
+end.  At the same time, he warned him to relinquish his pretensions to
+Cuzco, and withdraw into his own territory, or the responsibility of the
+consequences would lie on his own head.
+
+Reposing in his false security, Almagro was now fully awakened to the
+consciousness of the error he had committed; and the warning voice of
+his lieutenant may have risen to his recollection.  The first part of the
+prediction was fulfilled.  And what should prevent the latter from being
+so?  To add to his distress, he was laboring at this time under a grievous
+malady, the result of early excesses, which shattered his constitution, and
+made him incapable alike of mental and bodily exertion.2
+
+In this forlorn condition, he confided the management of his affairs to
+Orgonez, on whose loyalty and courage he knew he might implicitly rely.
+The first step was to secure the passes of the Guaitara, a chain of hills
+that hemmed in the valley of Zangalla, where Almagro was at present
+established.  But, by some miscalculation, the passes were not secured in
+season; and the active enemy, threading the dangerous defiles, effected a
+passage across the sierra, where a much inferior force to his own might
+have taken him at advantage.  The fortunes of Almagro were on the
+wane.
+
+His thoughts were now turned towards Cuzco, and he was anxious to get
+possession of this capital before the arrival of the enemy.  Too feeble to
+sit on horseback, he was obliged to be carried in a litter; and, when he
+reached the ancient town of Bilcas, not far from Guamanga, his
+indisposition was so severe that he was compelled to halt and remain
+there three weeks before resuming his march.
+
+The governor and his brothers, in the mean time, after traversing the pass
+of Guaitara, descended into the valley of Ica, where Pizarro remained a
+considerable while, to get his troops in order and complete his
+preparations for the campaign.  Then, taking leave of the army, he
+returned to Lima, committing the prosecution of the war, as he had
+before announced, to his younger and more active brothers.  Hernando,
+soon after quitting Ica, kept along the coast as far as Nasca, proposing to
+penetrate the country by a circuitous route in order to elude the enemy,
+who might have greatly embarrassed him in some of the passes of the
+Cordilleras.  But unhappily for him, this plan of operations, which would
+have given him such manifest advantage, was not adopted by Almagro;
+and his adversary, without any other impediment than that arising from
+the natural difficulties of the march, arrived, in the latter part of April,
+1538, in the neighborhood of Cuzco.
+
+But Almagro was already in possession of that capital, which he had
+reached ten days before.  A council of war was held by him respecting
+the course to be pursued.  Some were for making good the defence of the
+city.  Almagro would have tried what could be done by negotiation.  But
+Orgonez bluntly replied,--"It is too late; you have liberated Hernando
+Pizarro, and nothing remains but to fight him."  The opinion of Orgonez
+finally prevailed, to march out and give the enemy battle on the plains.
+The marshal, still disabled by illness from taking the command, devolved
+it on his trusty lieutenant, who, mustering his forces, left the city, and
+took up a position at Las Salinas, less than a league distant from Cuzco.
+The place received its name from certain pits or vats in the ground, used
+for the preparation of salt, that was obtained from a natural spring in the
+neighborhood.  It was an injudicious choice of ground, since its broken
+character was most unfavorable to the free action of cavalry, in which the
+strength of Almagro's force consisted.  But, although repeatedly urged by
+the officers to advance into the open country, Orgonez persisted in his
+position, as the most favorable for defence, since the front was protected
+by a marsh, and by a little stream that flowed over the plain.  His forces
+amounted in all to about five hundred, more than half of them horse.  His
+infantry was deficient in firearms, the place of which was supplied by the
+long pike.  He had also six small cannon, or falconets, as they were
+called, which, with his cavalry, formed into two equal divisions, he
+disposed on the flanks of his infantry.  Thus prepared, he calmly awaited
+the approach of the enemy.
+
+It was not long before the bright arms and banners of the Spaniards
+under Hernando Pizarro were seen emerging from the mountain passes,
+The troops came forward in good order, and like men whose steady step
+showed that they had been spared in the march, and were now fresh for
+action.  They advanced slowly across the plain, and halted on the
+opposite border of the little stream which covered the front of Orgonez.
+Here Hernando, as the sun had set, took up his quarters for the night,
+proposing to defer the engagement till daylight.3
+
+The rumors of the approaching battle had spread far and wide over the
+country; and the mountains and rocky heights around were thronged with
+multitudes of natives, eager to feast their eyes on a spectacle, where,
+whichever side were victorious, the defeat would fall on their enemies.4
+The Castilian women and children, too, with still deeper anxiety, had
+thronged out from Cuzco to witness the deadly strife in which brethren
+and kindred were to contend for mastery.5  The whole number of the
+combatants was insignificant; though not as compared with those usually
+engaged in these American wars.  It is not, however, the number of the
+players, but the magnitude of the stake, that gives importance and
+interest to the game; and in this bloody game, they were to play for the
+possession of an empire.
+
+The night passed away in silence, unbroken by the vast assembly which
+covered the surrounding hill-tops.  Nor did the soldiers of the hostile
+camps, although keeping watch within hearing of one another, and with
+the same blood flowing in their veins, attempt any communication.  So
+deadly was the hate in their bosoms! 6
+
+The sun rose bright, as usual in this beautiful climate, on Saturday, the
+twenty-sixth day of April, 1538.7  But long before his beams were on the
+plain, the trumpet of Hernando Pizarro had called his men to arms.  His
+forces amounted in all to about seven hundred.  They were drawn from
+various quarters, the veterans of Pizarro, the followers of Alonso de
+Alvarado,--many of whom, since their defeat, had found their way back
+to Lima,--and the late reinforcement from the isles, most of them
+seasoned by many a toilsome march in the Indian campaigns, and many a
+hard-fought field.  His mounted troops were inferior to those of
+Almagro; but this was more than compensated by the strength of his
+infantry, comprehending a well-trained corps of arquebusiers, sent from
+St. Domingo, whose weapons were of the improved construction
+recently introduced from Flanders.  They were of a large calibre, and
+threw double-headed shot, consisting of bullets linked together by an
+iron chain.  It was doubtless a clumsy weapon compared with modern
+firearms, but, in hands accustomed to wield it, proved a destructive
+instrument.8
+
+Hernando Pizarro drew up his men in the same order of battle as that
+presented by the enemy,--throwing his infantry into the centre, and
+disposing his horse on the flanks; one corps of which he placed under
+command of Alonso de Alvarado, and took charge of the other himself.
+The infantry was headed by his brother Gonzalo, supported by Pedro de
+Valdivia, the future hero of Arauco, whose disastrous story forms the
+burden of romance as well as of chronicle.9
+
+Mass was said, as if the Spaniards were about to fight what they deemed
+the good fight of the faith, instead of imbruing their hands in the blood of
+their countrymen.  Hernando Pizarro then made a brief address to his
+soldiers.  He touched on the personal injuries he and his family had
+received from Almagro; reminded his brother's veterans that Cuzco had
+been wrested from their possession; called up the glow of shame on the
+brows of Alvarado's men as he talked of the rout of Abancay, and,
+pointing out the Inca metropolis that sparkled in the morning sunshine,
+he told them that there was the prize of the victor.  They answered his
+appeal with acclamations; and the signal being given, Gonzalo Pizarro,
+heading his battalion of infantry, led it straight across the river.  The
+water was neither broad nor deep, and the soldiers found no difficulty in
+gaining a landing, as the enemy's horse was prevented by the marshy
+ground from approaching the borders.  But, as they worked their way
+across the morass, the heavy guns of Orgonez played with effect on the
+leading files, and threw them into disorder.  Gonzalo and Valdivia threw
+themselves into the midst of their followers, menacing some,
+encouraging others, and at length led them gallantly forward to the firm
+ground.  Here the arquebusiers, detaching themselves from the rest of the
+infantry, gained a small eminence, whence, in their turn, they opened a
+galling fire on Orgonez, scattering his array of spearmen, and sorely
+annoying the cavalry on the flanks.
+
+Meanwhile, Hernando, forming his two squadrons of horse into one
+column, crossed under cover of this well-sustained fire, and, reaching the
+firm ground, rode at once against the enemy.  Orgonez, whose infantry
+was already much crippled, advancing his horse, formed the two
+squadrons into one body, like his antagonist, and spurred at full gallop
+against the assailants.  The shock was terrible; and it was hailed by the
+swarms of Indian spectators on the surrounding heights with a fiendish
+yell of triumph, that rose far above the din of battle, till it was lost in
+distant echoes among the mountains.10
+
+The struggle was desperate.  For it was not that of the white man against
+the defenceless Indian, but of Spaniard against Spaniard; both parties
+cheering on their comrades with their battlecries of "El Rey y Almagro,"
+or "El Rey y Pizarro,"--while they fought with a hate, to which national
+antipathy was as nothing; a hate strong in proportion to the strength of
+the ties that had been rent asunder.
+
+In this bloody field well did Orgonez do his duty, fighting like one to
+whom battle was the natural element.  Singling out a cavalier, whom,
+from the color of the sobre-vest on his armour, he erroneously supposed
+to be Hernando Pizarro, he charged him in full career, and overthrew
+him with his lance.  Another he ran through in like manner, and a third
+he struck down with his sword as he was prematurely shouting
+"Victory!"  But while thus doing the deeds of a paladin of romance, he
+was hit by a chain-shot from an arquebuse, which, penetrating the bars of
+his visor, grazed his forehead, and deprived him for a moment of reason.
+Before he had fully recovered, his horse was killed under him, and
+though the fallen cavalier succeeded in extricating himself from the
+stirrups, he was surrounded, and soon overpowered by numbers.  Still
+refusing to deliver up his sword, he asked "if there was no knight to
+whom he could surrender."  One Fuentes, a menial of Pizarro, presenting
+himself as such, Orgonez gave his sword into his hands,--and the dastard,
+drawing his dagger, stabbed his defenceless prisoner to the heart!  His
+head, then struck off, was stuck on a pike, and displayed, a bloody
+trophy, in the great square of Cuzco, as the head of a traitor.11  Thus
+perished as loyal a cavalier, as decided in council, and as bold in action,
+as ever crossed to the shores of America.
+
+The fight had now lasted more than an hour, and the fortune of the day
+was turning against the followers of Almagro.  Orgonez being down,
+their confusion increased.  The infantry, unable to endure the fire of the
+arquebusiers, scattered and took refuge behind the stone-walls, that here
+and there straggled across the country.  Pedro de Lerma, vainly striving
+to rally the cavalry, spurred his horse against Hernando Pizarro, with
+whom he had a personal feud.  Pizarro did not shrink from the encounter.
+The lances of both the knights took effect.  That of Hernando penetrated
+the thigh of his opponent, while Lerma's weapon, glancing by his
+adversary's saddle-bow, struck him with such force above the groin, that
+it pierced the joints of his mail, slightly wounding the cavalier, and
+forcing his horse back on his haunches.  But the press of the fight soon
+parted the combatants, and, in the turmoil that ensued, Lerma was
+unhorsed, and left on the field covered with wounds.12
+
+There was no longer order, and scarcely resistance, among the followers
+of Almagro.  They fled, making the best of their way to Cuzco, and
+happy was the man who obtained quarter when he asked it.  Almagro
+himself, too feeble to sit so long on his horse, reclined on a litter, and
+from a neighboring eminence surveyed the battle, watching its
+fluctuations with all the interest of one who felt that honor, fortune, life
+itself, hung on the issue.  With agony not to be described, he had seen
+his faithful followers, after their hard struggle, borne down by their
+opponents, till, convinced that all was lost, he succeeded in mounting a
+mule, and rode off for a temporary refuge to the fortress of Cuzco.
+Thither he was speedily followed, taken, and brought in triumph to the
+capital, where, ill as he was, he was thrown into irons, and confined in
+the same apartment of the stone building in which he had imprisoned the
+Pizarros.
+
+The action lasted not quite two hours.  The number of killed, variously
+stated, was probably not less than a hundred and fifty,--one of the
+combatants calls it two hundred,13--a great number, considering the
+shortness of the time, and the small amount of forces engaged.  No
+account is given of the wounded.  Wounds were the portion of the
+cavalier.  Pedro de Lerma is said to have received seventeen, and yet was
+taken alive from the field!  The loss fell chiefly on the followers of
+Almagro.  But the slaughter was not confined to the heat of the action.
+Such was the deadly animosity of the parties, that several were murdered
+in cold blood, like Orgonez, after they had surrendered.  Pedro de Lerma
+himself, while lying on his sick couch in the quarters of a friend in
+Cuzco, was visited by a soldier, named Samaniego, whom he had once
+struck for an act of disobedience.  This person entered the solitary
+chamber of the wounded man took his place by his bed-side, and then,
+upbraiding him for the insult, told him that he had come to wash it away
+in his blood!  Lerma in vain assured him, that, when restored to health,
+he would give him the satisfaction he desired.  The miscreant, exclaimed
+"Now is the hour!" plunged his sword into his bosom.  He lived several
+years to vaunt this atrocious exploit, which he proclaimed as a reparation
+to his honor.  It is some satisfaction to know that the insolence of this
+vaunt cost him his life.14 --Such anecdotes, revolting as they are,
+illustrate not merely the spirit of the times, but that peculiarly ferocious
+spirit which is engendered by civil wars,--the most unforgiving in their
+character of any, but wars of religion.
+
+In the hurry of the flight of one party, and the pursuit by the other, all
+pouring towards Cuzco, the field of battle had been deserted.  But it soon
+swarmed with plunderers, as the Indians, descending like vultures from
+the mountains, took possession of the bloody ground, and, despoiling the
+dead, even to the minutest article of dress, left their corpses naked on the
+plain.15  It has been thought strange that the natives should not have
+availed themselves of their superior numbers to fall on the victors after
+they had been exhausted by the battle.  But the scattered bodies of the
+Peruvians were without a leader; they were broken in spirits, moreover,
+by recent reverses, and the Castilians, although weakened for the
+moment by the struggle, were in far greater strength in Cuzco than they
+had ever been before.
+
+Indeed, the number of troops now assembled within its walls, amounting
+to full thirteen hundred, composed, as they were, of the most discordant
+materials, gave great uneasiness to Hernando Pizarro.  For there were
+enemies glaring on each other and on him with deadly though smothered
+rancor, and friends, if not so dangerous, not the less troublesome from
+their craving and unreasonable demands.  He had given the capital up to
+pillage, and his followers found good booty in the quarters of Almagro's
+officers.  But this did not suffice the more ambitious cavaliers; and they
+clamorously urged their services, and demanded to be placed in charge
+of some expedition, nothing doubting that it must prove a golden one.
+All were in quest of an El Dorado.  Hernando Pizarro acquiesced as far
+as possible in these desires, most willing to relieve himself of such
+importunate creditors.  The expeditions, it is true, usually ended in
+disaster; but the country was explored by them.  It was the lottery of
+adventure; the prizes were few, but they were splendid; and in the
+excitement of the game, few Spaniards paused to calculate the chances of
+success.
+
+Among those who left the capital was Diego, the son of Almagro.
+Hernando was mindful to send him, with a careful escort, to his brother
+the governor, desirous to remove him at this crisis from the
+neighborhood of his father.  Meanwhile the marshal himself was pining
+away in prison under the combined influence of bodily illness and
+distress of mind.  Before the battle of Salinas, it had been told to
+Hernando Pizarro that Almagro was like to die.  "Heaven forbid," he
+exclaimed, "that this should come to pass before he falls into my
+hands!"16  Yet the gods seemed now disposed to grant but half of this
+pious prayer, since his captive seemed about to escape him just as he had
+come into his power.  To console the unfortunate chief, Hernando paid
+him a visit in his prison, and cheered him with the assurance that he only
+waited for the governor's arrival to set him at liberty; adding, "that, if
+Pizarro did not come soon to the capital, he himself would assume the
+responsibility of releasing him, and would furnish him with a conveyance
+to his brother's quarters."  At the same time, with considerate attention to
+his comfort, he inquired of the marshal "what mode of conveyance
+would be best suited to his state of health."  After this he continued to
+send him delicacies from his own table to revive his faded appetite.
+Almagro, cheered by these kind attentions, and by the speedy prospect of
+freedom, gradually mended in health and spirits.17
+
+He little dreamed that all this while a process was industriously preparing
+against him.  It had been instituted immediately on his capture, and every
+one, however humble, who had any cause of complaint against the
+unfortunate prisoner, was invited to present it.  The summons was readily
+answered; and many an enemy now appeared in the hour of his fallen
+fortunes, like the base reptiles crawling into light amidst the ruins of
+some noble edifice; and more than one, who had received benefits from
+his hands, were willing to court the favor of his enemy by turning on
+their benefactor.  From these loathsome sources a mass of accusations
+was collected which spread over two thousand folio pages!  Yet Almagro
+was the idol of his soldiers! 18
+
+Having completed the process, (July 8th, 1538,) it was not difficult to
+obtain a verdict against the prisoner.  The principal charges on which he
+was pronounced guilty were those of levying war against the Crown, and
+thereby occasioning the death of many of his Majesty's subjects; of
+entering into conspiracy with the Inca; and finally, of dispossessing the
+royal governor of the city of Cuzco.  On these charges he was
+condemned to suffer death as a traitor, by being publicly beheaded in
+the great square of the city.  Who were the judges, or what was the
+tribunal that condemned him, we are not informed.  Indeed, the whole
+trial was a mockery; if that can be called a trial, where the accused
+himself is not even aware of the accusation.
+
+The sentence was communicated by a friar deputed for the purpose to
+Almagro.  The unhappy man, who all the while had been unconsciously
+slumbering on the brink of a precipice, could not at first comprehend the
+nature of his situation.  Recovering from the first shock, "It was
+impossible," he said, "that such wrong could be done him,--he would not
+believe it."  He then besought Hernando Pizarro to grant him an
+interview.  That cavalier, not unwilling, it would seem, to witness the
+agony of his captive, consented: and Almagro was so humbled by his
+misfortunes, that he condescended to beg for his life with the most
+piteous supplications.  He reminded Hernando of his ancient relations
+with his brother, and the good offices he had rendered him and his family
+in the earlier part of their career.  He touched on his acknowledged
+services to his country, and besought his enemy "to spare his gray hairs,
+and not to deprive him of the short remnant of an existence from which
+he had now nothing more to fear."--To this the other coldly replied, that
+"he was surprised to see Almagro demean himself in a manner so
+unbecoming a brave cavalier; that his fate was no worse than had
+befallen many a soldier before him; and that, since God had given him
+the grace to be a Christian, he should employ his remaining moments in
+making up his account with Heaven!"19
+
+But Almagro was not to be silenced.  He urged the service he had
+rendered Hernando himself.  "This was a hard requital," he said, "for
+having spared his life so recently under similar circumstances, and that,
+too, when he had been urged again and again by those around him to
+take it away."  And he concluded by menacing his enemy with the
+vengeance of the emperor, who would never suffer this outrage on one
+who had rendered such signal services to the Crown to go unrequited.  It
+was all in vain; and Hernando abruptly closed the conference by
+repeating, that "his doom was inevitable, and he must prepare to meet
+it."20
+
+Almagro, finding that no impression was to be made on his ironhearted
+conqueror, now seriously addressed himself to the settlement of his
+affairs.  By the terms of the royal grant he was empowered to name his
+successor.  He accordingly devolved his office on his son, appointing
+Diego de Alvarado, on whose integrity he had great reliance,
+administrator of the province during his minority.  All his property and
+possessions in Peru, of whatever kind, he devised to his master the
+emperor, assuring him that a large balance was still due to him in his
+unsettled accounts with Pizarro.  By this politic bequest, he hoped to
+secure the monarch's protection for his son, as well as a strict scrutiny
+into the affairs of his enemy.
+
+The knowledge of Almagro's sentence produced a deep sensation in the
+community of Cuzco.  All were amazed at the presumption with which
+one, armed with a little brief authority, ventured to sit in judgment on a
+person of Almagro's station.  There were few who did not call to mind
+some generous or good-natured act of the unfortunate veteran.  Even
+those who had furnished materials for the accusation, now startled by the
+tragic result to which it was to lead, were heard to denounce Hernando's
+conduct as that of a tyrant.  Some of the principal cavaliers, and among
+them Diego de Alvarado, to whose intercession, as we have seen,
+Hernando Pizarro, when a captive, had owed his own life, waited on that
+commander, and endeavored to dissuade him from so highhanded and
+atrocious a proceeding.  It was in vain.  But it had the effect of changing
+the mode of execution, which, instead of the public square, was now to
+take place in prison.21
+
+On the day appointed, a strong corps of arquebusiers was drawn up in
+the plaza.  The guards were doubled over the houses where dwelt the
+principal partisans of Almagro.  The executioner, attended by a priest,
+stealthily entered his prison; and the unhappy man, after confessing and
+receiving the sacrament, submitted without resistance to the garrote.
+Thus obscurely, in the gloomy silence of a dungeon, perished the hero of
+a hundred battles!  His corpse was removed to the great square of the
+city, where, in obedience to the sentence, the head was severed from the
+body.  A herald proclaimed aloud the nature of the crimes for which he
+had suffered; and his remains, rolled in their bloody shroud, were borne
+to the house of his friend Hernan Ponce de Leon, and the next day laid
+with all due solemnity in the church of Our Lady of Mercy.  The Pizarros
+appeared among the principal mourners.  It was remarked, that their
+brother had paid similar honors to the memory of Atahuallpa.22
+
+Almagro, at the time of his death, was probably not far from seventy
+years of age.  But this is somewhat uncertain; for Almagro was a
+foundling, and his early history is lost in obscurity.23  He had many
+excellent qualities by nature; and his defects, which were not few, may
+reasonably be palliated by the circumstances of his situation.  For what
+extenuation is not authorized by the position of a foundling,--without
+parents, or early friends, or teacher to direct him,--his little bark set adrift
+on the ocean of life, to take its chance among the rude billows and
+breakers, without one friendly hand stretched forth to steer or to save it!
+The name of "foundling" comprehends an apology for much, very much,
+that is wrong in after life.24
+
+He was a man of strong passions, and not too well used to control
+them.25  But he was neither vindictive nor habitually cruel.  I have
+mentioned one atrocious outrage which he committed on the natives.
+But insensibility to the rights of the Indian he shared with many a better
+instructed Spaniard.  Yet the Indians, after his conviction, bore testimony
+to his general humanity, by declaring that they had no such friend among
+the white men.26  Indeed, far from being vindictive, he was placable and
+easily yielded to others.  The facility with which he yielded, the result of
+good-natured credulity, made him too often the dupe of the crafty; and it
+showed, certainly, a want of that self-reliance which belongs to great
+strength of character.  Yet his facility of temper, and the generosity of his
+nature, made him popular with his followers.  No commander was ever
+more beloved by his soldiers.  His generosity was often carried to
+prodigality.  When he entered on the campaign of Chili, he lent a
+hundred thousand gold ducats to the poorer cavaliers to equip themselves
+and afterwards gave them up the debt.27  He was profuse to ostentation.
+But his extravagance did him no harm among the roving spirits of the
+camp, with whom prodigality is apt to gain more favor than a strict and
+well-regulated economy.
+
+He was a good soldier, careful and judicious in his plans, patient and
+intrepid in their execution.  His body was covered with the scars of his
+battles, till the natural plainness of his person was converted almost into
+deformity.  He must not be judged by his closing campaign, when,
+depressed by disease, he yielded to the superior genius of his rival; but
+by his numerous expeditions by land and by water for the conquest of
+Peru and the remote Chili.  Yet it may be doubted whether he possessed
+those uncommon qualities, either as a warrior or as a man, that, in
+ordinary circumstances, would have raised him to distinction.  He was
+one of the three, or, to speak more strictly, of the two associates, who
+had the good fortune and the glory to make one of the most splendid
+discoveries in the Western World.  He shares largely in the credit of this
+with Pizarro; for, when he did not accompany that leader in his perilous
+expeditions, he contributed no less to their success by his exertions in the
+colonies.
+
+Yet his connection with that chief can hardly be considered a fortunate
+circumstance in his career.  A partnership between individuals for
+discovery and conquest is not likely to be very scrupulously observed,
+especially by men more accustomed to govern others than to govern
+themselves.  If causes for discord do not arise before, they will be sure to
+spring up on division of the spoil.  But this association was particularly
+ill-assorted.  For the free, sanguine, and confiding temper of Almagro
+was no match for the cool and crafty policy of Pizarro; and he was
+invariably circumvented by his companion, whenever their respective
+interests came in collision.
+
+Still the final ruin of Almagro may be fairly imputed to himself.  He
+made two capital blunders.  The first was his appeal to arms by the
+seizure of Cuzco.  The determination of a boundary-line was not to be
+settled by arms.  It was a subject for arbitration; and, if arbitrators could
+not be trusted, it should have been referred to the decision of the Crown.
+But, having once appealed to arms, he should not then have resorted to
+negotiation,--above all, to negotiation with Pizarro.  This was his second
+and greatest error.  He had seen enough of Pizarro to know that he was
+not to be trusted.  Almagro did trust him, and he paid for it with his life.
+
+
+
+Book 4
+
+Chapter 3
+
+Pizarro Revisits Cuzco--Hernando Returns To Castile-
+His Long Imprisonment--Commissioner Sent To Peru-
+Hostilities With The Inca--Pizarro's Active Administration-
+Gonzalo Pizarro
+
+1539--1540
+
+On the departure of his brother in pursuit of Almagro, the Marquess
+Francisco Pizarro, as we have seen, returned to Lima.  There he
+anxiously awaited the result of the campaign; and on receiving the
+welcome tidings of the victory of Las Salinas, he instantly made
+preparations for his march to Cuzco.  At Xauxa, however, he was long
+detained by the distracted state of the country, and still longer, as it
+would seem, by a reluctance to enter the Peruvian capital while the trial
+of Almagro was pending.
+
+He was met at Xauxa by the marshal's son Diego, who had been sent to
+the coast by Hernando Pizarro.  The young man was filled with the most
+gloomy apprehensions respecting his father's fate, and he besought the
+governor not to allow his brother to do him any violence.  Pizarro, who
+received Diego with much apparent kindness, bade him take heart, as no
+harm should come to his father;1 adding, that he trusted their ancient
+friendship would soon be renewed.  The youth, comforted by these
+assurances, took his way to Lima, where, by Pizarro's orders, he was
+received into his house, and treated as a son.
+
+The same assurances respecting the marshal's safety were given by the
+governor to Bishop Valverde, and some of the principal cavaliers who
+interested themselves in behalf of the prisoner.2  Still Pizarro delayed his
+march to the capital; and when he resumed it, he had advanced no farther
+than the Rio de Abancay when he received tidings of the death of his
+rival.  He appeared greatly shocked by the intelligence, his whole frame
+was agitated, and he remained for some time with his eyes bent on the
+ground showing signs of strong emotion.3
+
+Such is the account given by his friends.  A more probable version of the
+matter represents him to have been perfectly aware of the state of things
+at Cuzco.  When the trial was concluded, it is said he received a message
+from Hernando, inquiring what was to be done with the prisoner.  He
+answered in a few words :--"Deal with him so that he shall give us no
+more trouble."4  It is also stated that Hernando, afterwards, when
+laboring under the obloquy caused by Almagro's death, shielded himself
+under instructions affirmed to have been received from the governor.5  It
+is quite certain, that, during his long residence at Xauxa, the latter was in
+constant communication with Cuzco; and that had he, as Valverde
+repeatedly urged him,6 quickened his march to that capital, he might
+easily have prevented the consummation of the tragedy.  As commander-
+in-chief, Almagro's fate was in his hands; and, whatever his own
+partisans may affirm of his innocence, the impartial judgment of history
+must hold him equally accountable with Hernando for the death of his
+associate.
+
+Neither did his subsequent conduct show any remorse for these
+proceedings.  He entered Cuzco, says one who was present there to
+witness it, amidst the flourish of clarions and trumpets, at the head of his
+martial cavalcade, and dressed in the rich suit presented him by Cortes,
+with the proud bearing and joyous mien of a conqueror.7  When Diego
+de Alvarado applied to him for the government of the southern
+provinces, in the name of the young Almagro, whom his father, as we
+have seen, had consigned to his protection, Pizarro answered, that "the
+marshal, by his rebellion, had forfeited all claims to the government."
+And, when he was still further urged by the cavalier, he bluntly broke off
+the conversation by declaring that "his own territory covered all on this
+side of Flanders"!8--intimating, no doubt, by this magnificent vaunt, that
+he would endure no rival on this side of the water.
+
+In the same spirit, he had recently sent to supersede Benalcazar, the
+conqueror of Quito, who, he was informed, aspired to an independent
+government.  Pizarro's emissary had orders to send the offending captain
+to Lima; but Benalcazar, after pushing his victorious career far into the
+north, had returned to Castile to solicit his guerdon from the emperor.
+
+To the complaints of the injured natives, who invoked his protection, he
+showed himself strangely insensible, while the followers of Almagro he
+treated with undisguised contempt.  The estates of the leaders were
+confiscated, and transferred without ceremony to his own partisans.
+Hernando had made attempts to conciliate some of the opposite faction
+by acts of liberality, but they had refused to accept anything from the
+man whose hands were stained with the blood of their commander.9  The
+governor held to them no such encouragement; and many were reduced
+to such abject poverty, that, too proud to expose their wretchedness to
+the eyes of their conquerors, they withdrew from the city, and sought a
+retreat among the neighboring mountains.10
+
+For his own brothers he provided by such ample repartimientos, as
+excited the murmurs of his adherents.  He appointed Gonzalo to the
+command of a strong force destined to act against the natives of Charcas,
+a hardy people occupying the territory assigned by the Crown to
+Almagro.  Gonzalo met with a sturdy resistance, but, after some severe
+fighting, succeeded in reducing the province to obedience.  He was
+recompensed, together with Hernando, who aided him in the conquest,
+by a large grant in the neighborhood of Porco, the productive mines of
+which had been partially wrought under the Incas.  The territory, thus
+situated, embraced part of those silver hills of Potosi which have since
+supplied Europe with such stores of the precious metals.  Hernando
+comprehended the capabilities of the ground, and he began working the
+mines on a more extensive scale than that hitherto adopted, though it
+does not appear that any attempt was then made to penetrate the rich
+crust of Potosi.11  A few years more were to elapse before the Spaniards
+were to bring to light the silver quarries that lay hidden in the bosom of
+its mountains.12
+
+It was now the great business of Hernando to collect a sufficient quantity
+of treasure to take with him to Castile.  Nearly a year had elapsed since
+Almagro's death; and it was full time that he should return and present
+himself at court, where Diego de Alvarado and other friends of the
+marshal, who had long since left Peru, were industriously maintaining
+the claims of the younger Almagro, as well as demanding redress for the
+wrongs done to his father.  But Hernando looked confidently to his gold
+to dispel the accusations against him.
+
+Before his departure, he counselled his brother to beware of the "men of
+Chili," as Almagro's followers were called; desperate men, who would
+stick at nothing, he said, for revenge.  He besought the governor not to
+allow them to consort together in any number within fifty miles of his
+person; if he did, it would be fatal to him.  And he concluded by
+recommending a strong body-guard; "for I," he added, "shall not be here
+to watch over you."  But the governor laughed at the idle fears, as he
+termed them, of his brother, bidding the latter take no thought of him, "as
+every hair in the heads of Almagro's followers was a guaranty for his
+safety.''13  He did not know the character of his enemies so well as
+Hernando.
+
+The latter soon after embarked at Lima in the summer of 1539.  He did
+not take the route of Panama, for he had heard that it was the intention of
+the authorities there to detain him.  He made a circuitous passage,
+therefore, by way of Mexico, landed in the Bay of Tecoantepec, and was
+making his way across the narrow strip that divides the great oceans,
+when he was arrested and taken to the capital.  But the Viceroy Mendoza
+did not consider that he had a right to detain him, and he was suffered to
+embark at Vera Cruz, and to proceed on his voyage.  Still he did not
+deem it safe to trust himself in Spain without further advices.  He
+accordingly put in at one of the Azores, where he remained until he
+could communicate with home.  He had some powerful friends at court,
+and by them he was encouraged to present himself before the emperor.
+He took their advice, and shortly after, reached the Spanish coast in
+safety.14
+
+The Court was at Valladolid; but Hernando, who made his entrance into
+that city, with great pomp and a display of his Indian riches, met with a
+reception colder than he had anticipated.15  For this he was mainly
+indebted to Diego de Alvarado, who was then residing there, and who, as
+a cavalier of honorable standing, and of high connections, had
+considerable influence.  He had formerly, as we have seen, by his timely
+interposition, more than once saved the life of Hernando; and he had
+consented to receive a pecuniary obligation from him to a large amount.
+But all were now forgotten in the recollection of the wrong done to his
+commander; and, true to the trust reposed in him by that chief in his
+dying hour, he had come to Spain to vindicate the claims of the young
+Almagro.
+
+But although coldly received at first, Hernando's presence, and his own
+version of the dispute with Almagro, aided by the golden arguments
+which he dealt with no stinted hand, checked the current of indignation,
+and the opinion of his judges seemed for a time suspended.  Alvarado, a
+cavalier more accustomed to the prompt and decisive action of a camp
+than to the tortuous intrigues of a court, chafed at the delay, and
+challenged Hernando to settle their quarrel by single combat.  But his
+prudent adversary had no desire to leave the issue to such an ordeal;
+and the affair was speedily terminated by the death of Alvarado himself,
+which happened five days after the challenge.  An event so opportune
+naturally suggested the suspicion of poison.16
+
+But his accusations had not wholly fallen to the ground; and Hernando
+Pizarro had carried measures with too high a hand, and too grossly
+outraged public sentiment, to be permitted to escape.  He received no
+formal sentence, but he was imprisoned in the strong fortress of Medina
+del Campo, where he was allowed to remain for twenty years when in
+1560, after a generation had nearly passed away, and time had, in some
+measure, thrown its softening veil over the past, he was suffered to
+regain his liberty.17  But he came forth an aged man, bent down with
+infirmities and broken in spirit,--an object of pity, rather than
+indignation.  Rarely has retributive justice been meted out in fuller
+measure to offenders so high in authority,--most rarely in Castile.18
+
+Yet Hernando bore this long imprisonment with an equanimity which,
+had it been rounded on principle, might command our respect.  He saw
+brothers and kindred, all on whom he leaned for support, cut off one
+after another; his fortune, in part, confiscated, while he was involved in
+expensive litigation for the remainder;19 his fame blighted, his career
+closed in an untimely hour, himself an exile in the heart of his own
+country;--yet he bore it all with the constancy of a courageous spirit.
+Though very old when released, he still survived several years, and
+continued to the extraordinary age of a hundred.20  He lived long
+enough to see friends, rivals, and foes all called away to their account
+before him.
+
+Hernando Pizarro was in many respects a remarkable character.  He was
+the eldest of the brothers, to whom he was related only by the father's
+side, for he was born in wedlock, of honorable parentage on both sides
+of his house.  In his early years, he received a good education,--good for
+the time.  He was taken by his father, while quite young, to Italy, and
+there learned the art of war under the Great Captain.  Little is known of
+his history after his return to Spain; but, when his brother had struck out
+for himself his brilliant career of discovery in Peru, Hernando consented
+to take part in his adventures.
+
+He was much deferred to by Francisco, not only as his elder brother, but
+from his superior education and his knowledge of affairs.  He was ready
+in his perceptions, fruitful in resources, and possessed of great vigor in
+action.  Though courageous, he was cautious; and his counsels, when not
+warped by passion, were wise and wary.  But he had other qualities,
+which more than counterbalanced the good resulting from excellent parts
+and attainments.  His ambition and avarice were insatiable.  He was
+supercilious even to his equals; and he had a vindictive temper, which
+nothing could appease.  Thus, instead of aiding his brother in the
+Conquest, he was the evil genius that blighted his path.  He conceived
+from the first an unwarrantable contempt for Almagro, whom he
+regarded as his brother's rival, instead of what he then was, the faithful
+partner of his fortunes.  He treated him with personal indignity, and, by
+his intrigues at court, had the means of doing him sensible injury.  He
+fell into Almagro's hands, and had nearly paid for these wrongs with his
+life.  This was not to be forgiven by Hernando, and he coolly waited for
+the hour of revenge.  Yet the execution of Almagro was a most impolitic
+act; for an evil passion can rarely be gratified with impunity.  Hernando
+thought to buy off justice with the gold of Peru.  He had studied human
+nature on its weak and wicked side, and he expected to profit by it.
+Fortunately, he was deceived.  He had, indeed, his revenge; but the hour
+of his revenge was that of his ruin.
+
+The disorderly state of Peru was such as to demand the immediate
+interposition of government.  In the general license that prevailed there,
+the rights of the Indian and of the Spaniard were equally trampled under
+foot.  Yet the subject was one of great difficulty; for Pizarro's authority
+was now firmly established over the country, which itself was too remote
+from Castile to be readily controlled at home.  Pizarro, moreover, was a
+man not easy to be approached, confident in his own strength, jealous of
+interference, and possessed of a fiery temper, which would kindle into a
+flame at the least distrust of the government.  It would not answer to send
+out a commission to suspend him from the exercise of his authority until
+his conduct could be investigated, as was done with Cortes, and other
+great colonial officers, on whose rooted loyalty the Crown could
+confidently rely.  Pizarro's loyalty sat, it was feared, too lightly on him to
+be a powerful restraint on his movements; and there were not wanting
+those among his reckless followers, who, in case of extremity, would be
+prompt to urge him to throw off his allegiance altogether, and set up an
+independent government for himself.
+
+Some one was to be sent out, therefore, who should possess, in some
+sort, a controlling, or, at least, concurrent power with the dangerous
+chief, while ostensibly he should act only in subordination to him.  The
+person selected for this delicate mission, was the Licentiate Vaca de
+Castro, a member of the Royal Audience of Valladolid.  He was a
+learned judge, a man of integrity and wisdom, and, though not bred to
+arms, had so much address, and such knowledge of character, as would
+enable him readily to turn the resources of others to his own account.
+
+His commission was guarded in a way which showed the embarrassment
+of the government.  He was to appear before Pizarro in the capacity of a
+royal judge; to consult with him on the redress of grievances, especially
+with reference to the unfortunate natives; to concert measures for the
+prevention of future evils; and above all, to possess himself faithfully of
+the condition of the country in all its details, and to transmit intelligence
+of it to the Court of Castile.  But, in case of Pizarro's death, he was to
+produce his warrant as royal governor, and as such to claim the
+obedience of the authorities throughout the land.--Events showed the
+wisdom of providing for this latter contingency.21
+
+The licentiate, thus commissioned, quitted his quiet residence at
+Valladolid, embarked at Seville, in the autumn of 1540, and, after a
+tedious voyage across the Atlantic, he traversed the Isthmus, and,
+encountering a succession of tempests on the Pacific, that had nearly sent
+his frail bark to the bottom, put in with her, a mere wreck, at the
+northerly port of Buenaventura.22  The affairs of the country were in a
+state to require his presence.
+
+The civil war which had lately distracted the land had left it in so
+unsettled a state, that the agitation continued long after the immediate
+cause had ceased.  This was especially the case among the natives.  In
+the violent transfer of repartimientos, the poor Indian hardly knew to
+whom he was to look as his master.  The fierce struggles between the
+rival chieftains left him equally in doubt whom he was to regard as the
+rulers of the land.  As to the authority of a common sovereign, across the
+waters, paramount over all, he held that in still greater distrust; for what
+was the authority which could not command the obedience even of its
+own vassals?23  The Inca Manco was not slow in taking advantage of
+this state of feeling.  He left his obscure fastnesses in the depths of the
+Andes, and established himself with a strong body of followers in the
+mountain country lying between Cuzco and the coast.  From this retreat,
+he made descents on the neighboring plantations, destroying the houses,
+sweeping off the cattle, and massacring the people.  He fell on travellers,
+as they were journeying singly or in caravans from the coast, and put
+them to death--it is told by his enemies--with cruel tortures.  Single
+detachments were sent against him, from time to time, but without effect.
+Some he eluded, others he defeated; and, on one occasion, cut off a party
+of thirty troopers, to a man.24
+
+At length, Pizarro found it necessary to send a considerable force under
+his brother Gonzalo against the Inca.  The hardy Indian encountered his
+enemy several times in the rough passes of the Cordilleras.  He was
+usually beaten, and sometimes with heavy loss, which he repaired with
+astonishing facility; for he always contrived to make his escape, and so
+true were his followers, that, in defiance of pursuit and ambuscade, he
+found a safe shelter in the secret haunts of the sierra.
+
+Thus baffled, Pizarro determined to try the effect of pacific overtures.
+He sent to the Inca, both in his own name, and in that of the Bishop of
+Cuzco, whom the Peruvian prince held in reverence, to invite him to
+enter into negotiation.25  Manco acquiesced, and indicated, as he had
+formerly done with Almagro, the valley of Yucay, as the scene of it.  The
+governor repaired thither, at the appointed time, well guarded, and, to
+propitiate the barbarian monarch, sent him a rich present by the hands of
+an African slave.  The slave was met on the route by a party of the Inca's
+men, who, whether with or without their master's orders, cruelly
+murdered him, and bore off the spoil to their quarters.  Pizarro resented
+this outrage by another yet more atrocious.
+
+Among the Indian prisoners was one of the Inca's wives, a young and
+beautiful woman, to whom he was said to be fondly attached.  The
+governor ordered her to be stripped naked, bound to a tree, and, in
+presence of the camp, to be scourged with rods, and then shot to death
+with arrows.  The wretched victim bore the execution of the sentence
+with surprising fortitude.  She did not beg for mercy, where none was to
+be found.  Not a complaint, scarcely a groan, escaped her under the
+infliction of these terrible torments.  The iron Conquerors were amazed
+at this power of endurance in a delicate woman, and they expressed their
+admiration, while they condemned the cruelty of their commander,--in
+their hearts.26  Yet constancy under the most excruciating tortures that
+human cruelty can inflict is almost the universal characteristic of the
+American Indian.
+
+Pizarro now prepared, as the most effectual means of checking these
+disorders among the natives, to establish settlements in the heart of the
+disaffected country.  These settlements, which received the dignified
+name of cities, might be regarded in the light of military colonies.  The
+houses were usually built of stone, to which were added the various
+public offices, and sometimes a fortress.  A municipal corporation was
+organized.  Settlers were invited by the distribution of large tracts of land
+in the neighborhood, with a stipulated number of Indian vassals to each.
+The soldiers then gathered there, sometimes accompanied by their wives
+and families; for the women of Castile seem to have disdained the
+impediments of sex, in the ardor of conjugal attachment, or, it may be, of
+romantic adventure.  A populous settlement rapidly grew up in the
+wilderness, affording protection to the surrounding territory, and
+furnishing a commercial depot for the country, and an armed force ready
+at all times to maintain public order.
+
+Such a settlement was that now made at Guamanga, midway between
+Cuzco and Lima, which effectually answered its purpose by guarding the
+communications with the coast.27  Another town was founded in the
+mining district of Charcas, under the appropriate name of the Villa de la
+Plato, the "City of Silver." And Pizarro, as he journeyed by a circuitous
+route along the shores of the southern sea towards Lima, planted there
+the city of Arequipa, since arisen to such commercial celebrity.
+
+Once more in his favorite capital of Lima, the governor found abundant
+occupation in attending to its municipal concerns, and in providing for
+the expansive growth of its population.  Nor was he unmindful of the
+other rising settlements on the Pacific.  He encouraged commerce with
+the remoter colonies north of Peru, and took measures for facilitating
+internal intercourse.  He stimulated industry in all its branches, paying
+great attention to husbandry, and importing seeds of the different
+European grains, which he had the satisfaction, in a short time, to see
+thriving luxuriantly in a country where the variety of soil and climate
+afforded a home for almost every product.28  Above all, he promoted the
+working of the mines, which already began to make such returns, that the
+most common articles of life rose to exorbitant prices, while the precious
+metals themselves seemed the only things of little value.  But they soon
+changed hands, and found their way to the mother-country, where they
+rose to their true level as they mingled with the general currency of
+Europe.  The Spaniards found that they had at length reached the land of
+which they had been so long in search,--the land of gold and silver.
+Emigrants came in greater numbers to the country, and, spreading over
+its surface, formed in the increasing population the most effectual barrier
+against the rightful owners of the soil.29
+
+Pizarro, strengthened by the arrival of fresh adventurers, now turned his
+attention to the remoter quarters of the country.  Pedro de Valdivia was
+sent on his memorable expedition to Chili; and to his own brother
+Gonzalo the governor assigned the territory of Quito, with instructions to
+explore the unknown country towards the east, where, as report said,
+grew the cinnamon.  As this chief, who had hitherto acted but a
+subordinate part in the Conquest, is henceforth to take the most
+conspicuous, it may be well to give some account of him.
+
+Little is known of his early life, for he sprang from the same obscure
+origin with Francisco, and seems to have been as little indebted as his
+eider brother to the fostering care of his parents.  He entered early on the
+career of a soldier; a career to which every man in that iron age, whether
+cavalier or vagabond, seems, if left to himself, to have most readily
+inclined.  Here he soon distinguished himself by his skill in martial
+exercises, was an excellent horseman, and, when he came to the New
+World, was esteemed the best lance in Peru.30
+
+In talent and in expansion of views, he was inferior to his brothers.
+Neither did he discover the same cool and crafty policy; but he was
+equally courageous, and in the execution of his measures quite as
+unscrupulous.  He lied a handsome person, with open, engaging features,
+a free, soldier-like address, and a confiding temper, which endeared him
+to his followers.  His spirit was high and adventurous, and, what was
+equally important, he could inspire others with the same spirit, and thus
+do much to insure the success of his enterprises.  He was an excellent
+captain in guerilla warfare, an admirable leader in doubtful and difficult
+expeditions; but he had not the enlarged capacity for a great military
+chief, still less for a civil ruler.  It was his misfortune to be called to fill
+both situations.
+
+
+
+Book 4
+
+Chapter 4
+
+Gonzalo Pizarro's Expedition--Passage Across The Mountains--
+Discovers The Napo--Incredible Sufferings-
+Orellana Sails Down The Amazon--Despair Of The Spaniards-
+The Survivors Return To Quito
+
+1540--1542
+
+Gonzalo Pizarro received the news of his appointment to the government
+of Quito with undisguised pleasure; not so much for the possession that it
+gave him of this ancient Indian province, as for the field that it opened
+for discovery towards the east,--the fabled land of Oriental spices, which
+had long captivated the imagination of the Conquerors.  He repaired to
+his government without delay, and found no difficulty in awakening a
+kindred enthusiasm to his own in the bosoms of his followers.  In a short
+time, he mustered three hundred and fifty Spaniards, and four thousand
+Indians.  One hundred and fifty of his company were mounted, and all
+were equipped in the most thorough manner for the undertaking.  He
+provided, moreover, against famine by a large stock of provisions, and
+an immense drove of swine which followed in the rear.1
+
+It was the beginning of 1540, when he set out on this celebrated
+expedition.  The first part of the journey was attended with
+comparatively little difficulty, while the Spaniards were yet in the land of
+the Incas; for the distractions of Peru had not been felt in this distant
+province, where the simple people still lived as under the primitive sway
+of the Children of the Sun.  But the scene changed as they entered the
+territory of Quixos, where the character of the inhabitants, as well as of
+the climate, seemed to be of another description.  The country was
+traversed by lofty ranges of the Andes, and the adventurers were soon
+entangled in their deep and intricate passes.  As they rose into the more
+elevated regions, the icy winds that swept down the sides of the
+Cordilleras benumbed their limbs, and many of the natives found a
+wintry grave in the wilderness.  While crossing this formidable barrier,
+they experienced one of those tremendous earthquakes which, in these
+volcanic regions, so often shake the mountains to their base.  In one
+place, the earth was rent asunder by the terrible throes of Nature, while
+streams of sulphurous vapor issued from the cavity, and a village with
+some hundreds of houses was precipitated into the frightful abyss! 2
+
+On descending the eastern slopes, the climate changed; and, as they came
+on the lower level, the fierce cold was succeeded by a suffocating heat,
+while tempests of thunder and lightning, rushing from out the gorges of
+the sierra, poured on their heads with scarcely any intermission day or
+night, as if the offended deities of the place were willing to take
+vengeance on the invaders of their mountain solitudes.  For more than six
+weeks the deluge continued unabated, and the forlorn wanderers, wet,
+and weary with incessant toil, were scarcely able to drag their limbs
+along the soil broken up and saturated with the moisture.  After some
+months of toilsome travel, in which they had to cross many a morass and
+mountain stream, they at length reached Canelas, the Land of
+Cinnamon.3  They saw the trees bearing the precious bark, spreading out
+into broad forests; yet, however valuable an article for commerce it
+might have proved in accessible situations, in these remote regions it was
+of little worth to them.  But, from the wandering tribes of savages whom
+they occasionally met in their path, they learned that at ten days' distance
+was a rich and fruitful land abounding with gold, and inhabited by
+populous nations.  Gonzalo Pizarro had already reached the limits
+originally proposed for the expedition.  But this intelligence renewed his
+hopes, and he resolved to push the adventure farther.  It would have been
+well for him and his followers, had they been content to return on their
+footsteps.
+
+Continuing their march, the country now spread out into broad savannas
+terminated by forests, which, as they drew near, seemed to stretch on
+every side to the very verge of the horizon.  Here they beheld trees of
+that stupendous growth seen only in the equinoctial regions.  Some were
+so large, that sixteen men could hardly encompass them with extended
+arms! 4  The wood was thickly matted with creepers and parasitical
+vines, which hung in gaudy-colored festoons from tree to tree, clothing
+them in a drapery beautiful to the eye, but forming an impenetrable
+network.  At every step of their way, they were obliged to hew open a
+passage with their axes, while their garments, rotting from the effects of
+the drenching rains to which they had been exposed, caught in every
+bush and bramble, and hung about them in shreds.5  Their provisions,
+spoiled by the weather, had long since failed, and the live stock which
+they had taken with them had either been consumed or made their escape
+in the woods and mountain passes.  They had set out with nearly a
+thousand dogs, many of them of the ferocious breed used in hunting
+down the unfortunate natives.  These they now gladly killed, but their
+miserable carcasses furnished a lean banquet for the famishing travellers;
+and, when these were gone, they had only such herbs and dangerous
+roots as they could gather in the forest.6
+
+At length the way-worn company came on a broad expanse of water
+formed by the Napo, one of the great tributaries of the Amazon, and
+which, though only a third or fourth rate river in America, would pass for
+one of the first magnitude in the Old World.  The sight gladdened their
+hearts, as, by winding along its banks, they hoped to find a safer and
+more practicable route.  After traversing its borders for a considerable
+distance, closely beset with thickets which it taxed their strength to the
+utmost to overcome, Gonzalo and his party came within hearing of a
+rushing noise that sounded like subterranean thunder.  The river, lashed
+into fury, tumbled along over rapids with frightful velocity, and
+conducted them to the brink of a magnificent cataract, which, to their
+wondering fancies, rushed down in one vast volume of foam to the depth
+of twelve hundred feet! 7  The appalling sounds which they had heard for
+the distance of six leagues were rendered yet more oppressive to the
+spirits by the gloomy stillness of the surrounding forests.  The rude
+warriors were filled with sentiments of awe.  Not a bark dimpled the
+waters.  No living thing was to be seen but the wild tenants of the
+wilderness, the unwieldy boa, and the loathsome alligator basking on the
+borders of the stream.  The trees towering in wide-spread magnificence
+towards the heavens, the river rolling on in its rocky bed as it had rolled
+for ages, the solitude and silence of the scene, broken only by the hoarse
+fall of waters, or the faint rustling of the woods,--all seemed to spread
+out around them in the same wild and primitive state as when they came
+from the hands of the Creator.
+
+For some distance above and below the falls, the bed of the river
+contracted so that its width did not exceed twenty feet.  Sorely pressed
+by hunger, the adventurers determined, at all hazards, to cross to the
+opposite side, in hopes of finding a country that might afford them
+sustenance.  A frail bridge was constructed by throwing the huge trunks
+of trees across the chasm, where the cliffs, as if split asunder by some
+convulsion of nature, descended sheer down a perpendicular depth of
+several hundred feet.  Over this airy causeway the men and horses
+succeeded in effecting their passage with the loss of a single Spaniard,
+who, made giddy by heedlessly looking down, lost his footing and fell
+into the boiling surges below.
+
+Yet they gained little by the exchange.  The country wore the same
+unpromising aspect, and the river-banks were studded with gigantic
+trees, or fringed with impenetrable thickets.  The tribes of Indians, whom
+they occasionally met in the pathless wilderness, were fierce and
+unfriendly, and they were engaged in perpetual skirmishes with them.
+From these they learned that a fruitful country was to be found down the
+river at the distance of only a few days' journey, and the Spaniards held
+on their weary way, still hoping and still deceived, as the promised land
+flitted before them, like the rainbow, receding as they advanced.
+
+At length, spent with toil and suffering, Gonzalo resolved to construct a
+bark large enough to transport the weaker part of his company and his
+baggage.  The forests furnished him with timber; the shoes of the horses
+which had died on the road or been slaughtered for food, were converted
+into nails; gum distilled from the trees took the place of pitch; and the
+tattered garments of the soldiers supplied a substitute for oakum.  It was
+a work of difficulty; but Gonzalo cheered his men in the task, and set an
+example by taking part in their labors.  At the end of two months a
+brigantine was completed, rudely put together, but strong and of
+sufficient burden to carry half the company,--the first European vessel
+that ever floated on these inland waters.
+
+Gonzalo gave the command to Francisco de Orellana, a cavalier from
+Truxillo, on whose courage and devotion to himself he thought he could
+rely.  The troops now moved forward, still following the descending
+course of the river, while the brigantine kept alongside; and when a bold
+promontory or more impracticable country intervened, it furnished
+timely aid by the transportation of the feebler soldiers.  In this way they
+journeyed, for many a wearisome week, through the dreary wilderness on
+the borders of the Napo.  Every scrap of provisions had been long since
+consumed.  The last of their horses had been devoured.  To appease the
+gnawings of hunger, they were fain to eat the leather of their saddles and
+belts.  The woods supplied them with scanty sustenance, and they
+greedily fed upon toads, serpents, and such other reptiles as they
+occasionally found.8
+
+They were now told of a rich district, inhabited by a populous nation,
+where the Napo emptied into a still greater river that flowed towards the
+east.  It was, as usual, at the distance of several days' journey; and
+Gonzalo Pizarro resolved to halt where he was and send Orellana down
+in his brigantine to the confluence of the waters to procure a stock of
+provisions, with which he might return and put them in condition to
+resume their march.  That cavalier, accordingly, taking with him fifty of
+the adventurers, pushed off into the middle of the river, where the stream
+ran swiftly, and his bark, taken by the current, shot forward with the
+speed of an arrow, and was soon out of sight.
+
+Days and weeks passed away, yet the vessel did not return; and no speck
+was to be seen on the waters, as the Spaniards strained their eyes to the
+farthest point, where the line of light faded away in the dark shadows of
+the foliage on the borders.  Detachments were sent out, and, though
+absent several days, came back without intelligence of their comrades.
+Unable longer to endure this suspense, or, indeed, to maintain
+themselves in their present quarters, Gonzalo and his famishing followers
+now determined to proceed towards the junction of the rivers.  Two
+months elapsed before they accomplished this terrible journey those of
+them who did not perish on the way,--although the distance probably' did
+not exceed two hundred leagues; and they at length reached the spot so
+long desired, where the Napo pours its tide into the Amazon, that mighty
+stream, which, fed by its thousand tributaries, rolls on towards the ocean,
+for many hundred miles, through the heart of the great continent,--the
+most majestic of American rivers.
+
+But the Spaniards gathered no tidings of Orellana, while the country,
+though more populous than the region they had left, was as little inviting
+in its aspect, and was tenanted by a race yet more ferocious.  They now
+abandoned the hope of recovering their comrades, who they supposed
+must have miserably perished by famine or by the hands of the natives.
+But their doubts were at length dispelled by the appearance of a white
+man wandering half-naked in the woods, in whose famine stricken
+countenance they recognized the features of one of their countrymen.  It
+was Sanchez de Vargas, a cavalier of good descent, and much esteemed
+in the army.  He had a dismal tale to tell.
+
+Orellana, borne swiftly down the current of the Napo, had reached the
+point of its confluence with the Amazon in less than three days;
+accomplishing in this brief space of time what had cost Pizarro and his
+company two months.  He had found the country altogether different
+from what had been represented; and, so far from supplies for his
+countrymen, he could barely obtain sustenance for himself.  Nor was it
+possible for him to return as he had come, and make head against the
+current of the river; while the attempt to journey by land was an alternative
+scarcely less formidable.  In this dilemma, an idea flashed across his
+mind.  It was to launch his bark at once on the bosom of the Amazon,
+and descend its waters to its mouth.  He would then visit the rich and
+populous nations that, as report said, lined its borders, sail out on the
+great ocean, cross to the neighboring isles, and return to Spain to claim
+the glory and the guerdon of discovery.  The suggestion was eagerly
+taken up by his reckless companions, welcoming any course that would
+rescue them from the wretchedness of their present existence, and fired
+with the prospect of new and stirring adventure,--for the love of
+adventure was the last feeling to become extinct in the bosom of the
+Castilian cavalier.  They heeded little their unfortunate comrades, whom
+they were to abandon in the wilderness! 9
+
+This is not the place to record the circumstances of Orellana's
+extraordinary expedition.  He succeeded in his enterprise.  But it is
+marvellous that he should have escaped shippwreck in the perilous and
+unknown navigation of that river.  Many times his vessel was nearly
+dashed to pieces on its rocks and in its furious rapids;10 and he was in
+still greater peril from the warlike tribes on its borders, who fell on his
+little troop whenever he attempted to land, and followed in his wake for
+miles in their canoes.  He at length emerged from the great river; and,
+once upon the sea, Orellana made for the isle of Cubagua; thence passing
+over to Spain, he repaired to court, and told the circumstances of his
+voyage,--of the nations of Amazons whom he had found on the banks of
+the river, the El Dorado which report assured him existed in the
+neighborhood, and other marvels,--the exaggeration rather than the
+coinage of a credulous fancy.  His audience listened with willing ears to
+the tales of the traveller; and in an age of wonders, when the mysteries of
+the East and West were hourly coming to light, they might be excused
+for not discerning the true line between romance and reality.11
+
+He found no difficulty in obtaining a commission to conquer and
+colonize the realms he had discovered.  He soon saw himself at the head
+of five hundred followers, prepared to share the perils and the profits of
+his expedition.  But neither he, nor his country, was destined to realize
+these profits.  He died on his outward passage, and the lands washed by
+the Amazon fell within the territories of Portugal.  The unfortunate
+navigator did not even enjoy the undivided honor of giving his name to
+the waters he had discovered.  He enjoyed only the barren glory of the
+discovery, surely not balanced by the iniquitous circumstances which
+attended it.12
+
+One of Orellana's party maintained a stout opposition to his proceedings,
+as repugnant both to humanity and honor.  This was Sanchez de Vargas;
+and the cruel commander was revenged on him by abandoning him to his
+fate in the desolate region where he was now found by his
+countrymen.13
+
+The Spaniards listened with horror to the recital of Vargas, and their
+blood almost froze in their veins as they saw themselves thus deserted in
+the heart of this remote wilderness, and deprived of their only means of
+escape from it.  They made an effort to prosecute their journey along the
+banks, but, after some toilsome days, strength and spirits failed, and they
+gave up in despair!
+
+Then it was that the qualities of Gonzalo Pizarro, as a fit leader in the
+hour of despondency and danger, shone out conspicuous.  To advance
+farther was hopeless.  To stay where they were, without food or raiment,
+without defence from the fierce animals of the forest and the fiercer
+natives, was impossible.  One only course remained; it was to return to
+Quito.  But this brought with it the recollection of the past, of sufferings
+which they could too well estimate,---hardly to be endured even in
+imagination.  They were now at least four hundred leagues from Quito,
+and more than a year had elapsed since they had set out on their painful
+pilgrimage.  How could they encounter these perils again! 14
+
+Yet there was no alternative.  Gonzalo endeavored to reassure his
+followers by dwelling on the invincible constancy they had hitherto
+displayed; adjuring them to show themselves still worthy of the name of
+Castilians.  He reminded them of the glory they would for ever acquire
+by their heroic achievement, when they should reach their own country.
+He would lead them back, he said, by another route, and it could not be
+but that they should meet somewhere with those abundant regions of
+which they had so often heard.  It was something, at least, that every step
+would take them nearer home; and as, at all events, it was clearly the
+only course now left, they should prepare to meet it like men.  The spirit
+would sustain the body; and difficulties encountered in the right spirit
+were half vanquished already!
+
+The soldiers listened eagerly to his words of promise and
+encouragement.  The confidence of their leader gave life to the
+desponding.  They felt the force of his reasoning, and, as they lent a
+willing ear to his assurances, the pride of the old Castilian honor revived
+in their bosoms, and every one caught somewhat of the generous
+enthusiasm of their commander.  He was, in truth, entitled to their
+devotion.  From the first hour of the expedition, he had freely borne his
+part in its privations.  Far from claiming the advantage of his position, he
+had taken his lot with the poorest soldier; ministering to the wants of the
+sick, cheering up the spirits of the desponding, sharing his stinted
+allowance with his famished followers, bearing his full part in the toil
+and burden of the march, ever showing himself their faithful comrade, no
+less than their captain.  He found the benefit of this conduct in a trying
+hour like the present.
+
+I will spare the reader the recapitulation of the sufferings endured by the
+Spaniards on their retrograde march to Quito.  They took a more
+northerly route than that by which they had approached the Amazon;
+and, if it was attended with fewer difficulties, they experienced yet
+greater distresses from their greater inability to overcome them.  Their
+only nourishment was such scanty fare as they could pick up in the
+forest, or happily meet with in some forsaken Indian settlement, or wring
+by violence from the natives.  Some sickened and sank down by the way,
+for there was none to help them.  Intense misery had made them selfish;
+and many a poor wretch was abandoned to his fate, to die alone in the
+wilderness, or, more probably, to be devoured, while living, by the wild
+animals which roamed over it.
+
+At length, in June, 1542, after somewhat more than a year consumed in
+their homeward march, the way-worn company came on the elevated
+plains in the neighborhood of Quito.  But how different their aspect from
+that which they had exhibited on issuing from the gates of the same
+capital, two years and a half before, with high romantic hope and in all
+the pride of military array!  Their horses gone, their arms broken and
+rusted, the skins of wild animals instead of clothes hanging loosely about
+their limbs, their long and matted locks streaming wildly down their
+shoulders, their faces burned and blackened by the tropical sun, their
+bodies wasted by famine and sorely disfigured by scars,--it seemed as if
+the charnel-house had given up its dead, as, with uncertain step, they
+glided slowly onwards like a troop of dismal spectres!  More than half of
+the four thousand Indians who had accompanied the expedition had
+perished, and of the Spaniards only eighty, and many of these
+irretrievably broken in constitution, returned to Quito.15
+
+The few Christian inhabitants of the place, with their wives and children,
+came out to welcome their countrymen.  They ministered to them all the
+relief and refreshment in their power; and, as they listened to the sad
+recital of their sufferings, they mingled their tears with those of the
+wanderers.  The whole company then entered the capital, where their
+first act--to their credit be it mentioned--was to go in a body to the
+church, and offer up thanksgivings to the Almighty for their miraculous
+preservation through their long and perilous pilgrimage.16  Such was the
+end of the expedition to the Amazon; an expedition which, for its
+dangers and hardships, the length of their duration, and the constancy
+with which they were endured, stands, perhaps, unmatched in the annals
+of American discovery.
+
+
+
+Book 4
+
+Chapter 5
+
+The Almagro Faction--Their Desperate Condition-
+Conspiracy Against Francisco Pizarro--Assassination Of Pizarro-
+Acts Of The Conspirators--Pizarro's Character
+
+1541
+
+When Gonzalo Pizarro reached Quito, he received tidings of an event
+which showed that his expedition to the Amazon had been even more
+fatal to his interests than he had imagined.  A revolution had taken place
+during his absence, which had changed the whole condition of things in
+Peru.
+
+In a preceding chapter we have seen, that, when Hernando Pizarro
+returned to Spain, his brother the marquess repaired to Lima, where he
+continued to occupy himself with building up his infant capital, and
+watching over the general interests of the country.  While thus employed,
+he gave little heed to a danger that hourly beset his path, and this, too, in
+despite of repeated warnings from more circumspect friends.
+
+After the execution of Almagro, his followers, to the number of several
+hundred, remained scattered through the country; but, however scattered,
+still united by a common sentiment of indignation against the Pizarros,
+the murderers, as they regarded them, of their leader.  The governor was
+less the object of these feelings than his brother Hernando, as having
+been less instrumental in the perpetration of the deed.  Under these
+circumstances, it was clearly Pizarro's policy to do one of two things; to
+treat the opposite faction either as friends, or as open enemies.  He might
+conciliate the most factious by acts of kindness, efface the remembrance
+of past injury, if he could, by present benefits; in short, prove to them
+that his quarrel had been with their leader, not with themselves, and that
+it was plainly for their interest to come again under his banner.  This
+would have been the most politic, as well as the most magnanimous
+course; and, by augmenting the number of his adherents, would have
+greatly strengthened his power in the land.  But, unhappily, he had not
+the magnanimity to pursue it.  It was not in the nature of a Pizarro to
+forgive an injury, or the man whom he had injured.  As he would not,
+therefore, try to conciliate Almagro's adherents, it was clearly the
+governor's policy to regard them as enemies, not the less so for being in
+disguise,--and to take such measures as should disqualify them for doing
+mischief.  He should have followed the counsel of his more prudent
+brother Hernando, and distributed them in different quarters, taking care
+that no great number should assemble at any one point, or, above all, in
+the neighborhood of his own residence.
+
+But the governor despised the broken followers of Almagro too heartily
+to stoop to precautionary measures.  He suffered the son of his rival to
+remain in Lima, where his quarters soon became the resort of the
+disaffected cavaliers.  The young man was well known to most of
+Almagro's soldiers, having been trained along with them in the camp
+under his father's eye, and, now that his parent was removed, they
+naturally transferred their allegiance to the son who survived him.
+
+That the young Almagro, however, might be less able to maintain this
+retinue of unprofitable followers, he was deprived by Pizarro of a great
+part of his Indians and lands, while he was excluded from the
+government of New Toledo, which had been settled on him by his
+father's testament.1  Stripped of all means of support, without office or
+employment of any kind, the men of Chili, for so Almagro's adherents
+continued to be called, were reduced to the utmost distress.  So poor
+were they, as is the story of the time, that twelve cavaliers, who lodged in
+the same house, could muster only one cloak among them all; and, with
+the usual feeling of pride that belongs to the poor hidalgo, unwilling to
+expose their poverty, they wore this cloak by turns, those who had no
+right to it remaining at home.2  Whether true or not, the anecdote well
+illustrates the extremity to which Almagro's faction was reduced.  And
+this distress was rendered yet more galling by the effrontery of their
+enemies, who, enriched by their forfeitures, displayed before their eyes
+all the insolent bravery of equipage and apparel that could annoy their
+feelings.
+
+Men thus goaded by insult and injury were too dangerous to be lightly
+regarded.  But, although Pizarro received various intimations intended to
+put him on his guard, he gave no heed to them.  "Poor devils!" he would
+exclaim, speaking with contemptuous pity of the men of Chili; "they
+have had bad luck enough.  We will not trouble them further."3  And so
+little did he consider them, that he went freely about, as usual, riding
+without attendants to all parts of the town and to its immediate
+environs.4
+
+News now reached the colony of the appointment of a judge by the
+Crown to take cognizance of the affairs of Peru.  Pizarro, although
+alarmed by the intelligence, sent orders to have him well entertained on
+his landing, and suitable accommodations prepared for him on the route.
+The spirits of Almagro's followers were greatly raised by the tidings.
+They confidently looked to this high functionary for the redress of their
+wrongs; and two of their body, clad in suits of mourning, were chosen to
+go to the north, where the judge was expected to land, and to lay their
+grievances before him.
+
+But months elapsed, and no tidings came of his arrival, till, at length, a
+vessel, coming into port, announced that most of the squadron had
+foundered in the heavy storms on the coast, and that the commissioner
+had probably perished with them.  This was disheartening intelligence to
+the men of Chili, whose "miseries," to use the words of their young
+leader, "had become too grievous to be borne."5  Symptoms of
+disaffection had already begun openly to manifest themselves.  The
+haughty cavaliers did not always doff their bonnets, on meeting the
+governor in the street; and on one occasion, three ropes were found
+suspended from the public gallows, with labels attached to them, bearing
+the names of Pizarro, Velasquez the judge, and Picado the governor's
+secretary.6  This last functionary was peculiarly odious to Almagro and
+his followers.  As his master knew neither how to read nor write, all his
+communications passed through Picado's hands; and, as the latter was of
+a hard and arrogant nature, greatly elated by the consequence which his
+position gave him, he exercised a mischievous influence on the
+governor's measures.  Almagro's poverty-stricken followers were the
+objects of his open ridicule, and he revenged the insult now offered him
+by riding before their young leader's residence, displaying a tawdry
+magnificence in his dress, sparkling with gold and silver, and with the
+inscription, "For the Men of Chili," set in his bonnet.  It was a foolish
+taunt; but the poor cavaliers who were the object of it, made morbidly
+sensitive by their sufferings, had not the philosophy to despise it.7
+
+At length, disheartened by the long protracted coming of Vaca de Castro,
+and still more by the recent reports of his loss, Almagro's faction,
+despairing of redress from a legitimate authority, determined to take it
+into their own hands.  They came to the desperate resolution of
+assassinating Pizarro.  The day named for this was Sunday, the twenty-
+sixth of June, 1541- The conspirators, eighteen or twenty in number,
+were to assemble in Almagro's house, which stood in the great square
+next to the cathedral, and, when the governor was returning from mass,
+they were to issue forth and fall on him in the street.  A white flag,
+unfurled at the same time from an upper window in the house, was to be
+the signal for the rest of their comrades to move to the support of those
+immediately engaged in the execution of the deed.8
+
+These arrangements could hardly have been concealed from Almagro,
+since his own quarters were to be the place of rendezvous.  Yet there is
+no good evidence of his having taken part in the conspiracy.9  He was,
+indeed, too young to make it probable that he took a leading part in it.
+He is represented by contemporary writers to have given promise of
+many good qualities, though, unhappily, he was not placed in a situation
+favorable for their development.  He was the son of an Indian woman of
+Panama; but from early years had followed the troubled fortunes of his
+father, to whom he bore much resemblance in his free and generous
+nature, as well as in the violence of his passions.  His youth and
+inexperience disqualified him from taking the lead in the perplexing
+circumstances in which he was placed, and made him little more than a
+puppet in the hands of others.10
+
+The most conspicuous of his advisers was Juan de Herrada, or Rada, as
+his name is more usually spelt,--a cavalier of respectable family, but
+who, having early enlisted as a common soldier, had gradually risen to
+the highest posts in the army by his military talents.  At this time he was
+well advanced in years; but the fires of youth were not quenched in his
+bosom, and he burned with desire to avenge the wrongs done to his
+ancient commander.  The attachment which he had ever felt for the elder
+Almagro he seems to have transferred in full measure to his son; and it
+was apparently with reference to him, even more than to himself, that he
+devised this audacious plot, and prepared to take the lead in the
+execution of it.
+
+There was one, however, in the band of conspirators who felt some
+compunctions of conscience at the part he was acting, and who relieved
+his bosom by revealing the whole plot to his confessor.  The latter lost no
+time in reporting it to Picado, by whom in turn it was communicated to
+Pizarro.  But, strange to say, it made little more impression on the
+governor's mind than the vague warnings he had so frequently received.
+"It is a device of the priest," said he; "he wants a mitre." 11  Yet he
+repeated the story to the judge Velasquez, who, instead of ordering the
+conspirators to be seized, and the proper steps taken for learning the
+truth of the accusation, seemed to be possessed with the same infatuation
+as Pizarro; and he bade the governor be under no apprehension, "for no
+harm should come to him, while the rod of justice," not a metaphorical
+badge of authority in Castile, "was in his hands." 12  Still, to obviate
+every possibility of danger, it was deemed prudent for Pizarro to abstain
+from going to mass on Sunday, and to remain at home on pretence of
+illness.
+
+On the day appointed, Rada and his companions met in Almagro's house,
+and waited with anxiety for the hour when the governor should issue
+from the church.  But great was their consternation, when they learned
+that he was not there, but was detained at home, as currently reported, by
+illness.  Little doubting that their design was discovered, they felt their
+own ruin to be the inevitable consequence, and that, too, without
+enjoying the melancholy consolation of having struck the blow for which
+they had incurred it.  Greatly perplexed, some were for disbanding, in the
+hope that Pizarro might, after all, be ignorant of their design.  But most
+were for carrying it into execution at once, by assaulting him in his own
+house.  The question was summarily decided by one of the party, who
+felt that in this latter course lay their only chance of safety.  Throwing
+open the doors, he rushed out, calling on his comrades "to follow him, or
+he would proclaim the purpose for which they had met."  There was no
+longer hesitation, and the cavaliers issued forth, with Rada at their head,
+shouting, as they went, "Long live the king!  Death to the tyrant!" 13
+
+It was the hour of dinner, which, in this primitive age of the Spanish
+colonies, was at noon.  Yet numbers, roused by the cries of the
+assailants, came out into the square to inquire the cause.  "They are
+going to kill the marquess," some said very coolly; others replied, "It is
+Picado."  No one stirred in their defence.  The power of Pizarro was not
+seated in the hearts of his people.
+
+As the conspirators traversed the plaza, one of the party made a circuit to
+avoid a little pool of water that lay in their path.  "What!" exclaimed
+Rada, "afraid of wetting your feet, when you are to wade up to your
+knees in blood!"  And he ordered the man to give up the enterprise and
+go home to his quarters.  The anecdote is characteristic.14
+
+The governor's palace stood on the opposite side of the square.  It was
+approached by two courtyards.  The entrance to the outer one was
+protected by a massive gate, capable of being made good against a
+hundred men or more.  But it was left open, and the assailants, hurrying
+through to the inner court, still shouting their fearful battle-cry, were met
+by two domestics loitering in the yard.  One of these they struck down.
+The other, flying in all haste towards the house, called out, "Help, help!
+the men of Chili are all coming to murder the marquess!"
+
+Pizarro at this time was at dinner, or, more probably, had just dined.  He
+was surrounded by a party of friends, who had dropped in, it seems, after
+mass, to inquire after the state of his health, some of whom had remained
+to partake of his repast.  Among these was Don Martinez do Alcantara,
+Pizarro's half-brother by the mother's side, the judge Velasquez, the
+bishop elect of Quito, and several of the principal cavaliers in the place,
+to the number of fifteen or twenty.  Some of them, alarmed by the uproar
+in the court-yard, left the saloon, and, running down to the first landing
+on the stairway, inquired into the cause of the disturbance.  No sooner
+were they informed of it by the cries of the servant, than they retreated
+with precipitation into the house; and, as they had no mind to abide the
+storm unarmed, or at best imperfectly armed, as most of them were, they
+made their way to a corridor that overlooked the gardens, into which
+they easily let themselves down without injury.  Velasquez, the judge,
+the better to have the use of his hands in the descent, held his rod of
+office in his mouth, thus taking care, says a caustic old chronicler, not to
+falsify his assurance, that "no harm should come to Pizarro while the rod
+of justice was in his hands"! 15
+
+Meanwhile, the marquess, learning the nature of the tumult, called out to
+Francisco de Chaves, an officer high in his confidence, and who was in
+the outer apartment opening on the staircase, to secure the door, while he
+and his brother Alcantara buckled on their armour.  Had this order,
+coolly given, been as coolly obeyed, it would have saved them all, since
+the entrance could easily have been maintained against a much larger
+force, till the report of the cavaliers who had fled had brought support to
+Pizarro.  But unfortunately, Chaves, disobeying his commander, half
+opened the door, and attempted to enter into a parley with the
+conspirators.  The latter had now reached the head of the stairs, and cut
+short the debate by running Chaves through the body, and tumbling his
+corpse down into the area below.  For a moment they were kept at bay by
+the attendants of the slaughtered cavalier, but these, too, were quickly
+despatched; and Rada and his companions, entering the apartment,
+hurried across it, shouting out, "Where is the marquess? Death to the
+tyrant!"
+
+Martinez de Alcantara, who in the adjoining room was assisting his
+brother to buckle on his mail, no sooner saw that the entrance to the
+antechamber had been gained, than he sprang to the doorway of the
+apartment, and, assisted by two young men, pages of Pizarro, and by one
+or two cavaliers in attendance, endeavored to resist the approach of the
+assailants.  A desperate struggle now ensued.  Blows were given on both
+sides, some of which proved fatal, and two of the conspirators were
+slain, while Alcantara and his brave companions were repeatedly
+wounded.
+
+At length, Pizarro, unable, in the hurry of the moment, to adjust the
+fastenings of his cuirass, threw it away, and, enveloping one arm in his
+cloak, with the other seized his sword, and sprang to his brother's
+assistance.  It was too late; for Alcantara was already staggering under
+the loss of blood, and soon fell to the ground.  Pizarro threw himself on
+his invaders, like a lion roused in his lair, and dealt his blows with as
+much rapidity and force, as if age had no power to stiffen his limbs.
+"What ho!" he cried, "traitors! have you come to kill me in my own
+house?"  The conspirators drew back for a moment, as two of their body
+fell under Pizarro's sword; but they quickly rallied, and, from their
+superior numbers, fought at great advantage by relieving one another in
+the assault.  Still the passage was narrow, and the struggle lasted for
+some minutes, till both of Pizarro's pages were stretched by his side,
+when Rada, impatient of the delay, called out, "Why are we so long
+about it? Down with the tyrant!" and taking one of his companions,
+Narvaez, in his arms, he thrust him against the marquess.  Pizarro,
+instantly grappling with his opponent, ran him through with his sword.
+But at that moment he received a wound in the throat, and reeling, he
+sank on the floor, while the swords of Rada and several of the
+conspirators were plunged into his body.  "Jesu!" exclaimed the dying
+man, and, tracing a cross with his finger on the bloody floor, he bent
+down his head to kiss it, when a stroke, more friendly than the rest, put
+an end to his existence.16
+
+The conspirators, having accomplished their bloody deed, rushed into
+the street, and, brandishing their dripping weapons, shouted out, "The
+tyrant is dead!  The laws are restored!  Long live our master the emperor,
+and his governor, Almagro!"  The men of Chili, roused by the cheering
+cry, now flocked in from every side to join the banner of Rada, who soon
+found himself at the head of nearly three hundred followers, all armed
+and prepared to support his authority.  A guard was placed over the
+houses of the principal partisans of the late governor, and their persons
+were taken into custody.  Pizarro's house, and that of his secretary
+Picado, were delivered up to pillage and a large booty in gold and silver
+was found in the former.  Picado himself took refuge in the dwelling of
+Riquelme, the treasurer; but his hiding-place was detected, --betrayed,
+according to some accounts, by the looks, though not the words, of the
+treasurer himself,--and he was dragged forth and committed to a secure
+prison.17  The whole city was thrown into consternation, as armed
+bodies hurried to and fro on their several errands, and all who were not
+in the faction of Almagro trembled lest they should be involved in the
+proscription of their enemies.  So great was the disorder, that the
+Brothers of Mercy, turning out in a body, paraded the streets in solemn
+procession, with the host elevated in the air, in hopes by the presence of
+the sacred symbol to calm the passions of the multitude.
+
+But no other violence was offered by Rada and his followers than to
+apprehend a few suspected persons, and to seize upon horses and arms
+wherever they were to be found.  The municipality was then summoned
+to recognize the authority of Almagro; the refractory were ejected
+without ceremony from their offices, and others of the Chili faction were
+substituted.  The claims of the new aspirant were fully recognized; and
+young Almagro, parading the streets on horseback, and escorted by a
+well-armed body of cavaliers, was proclaimed by sound of trumpet
+governor and captain-general of Peru.
+
+Meanwhile, the mangled bodies of Pizarro and his faithful adherents
+were left weltering in their blood.  Some were for dragging forth the
+governor's corpse to the market-place, and fixing his head upon a gibbet.
+But Almagro was secretly prevailed on to grant the entreaties of Pizarro's
+friends, and allow his interment.  This was stealthily and hastily
+performed, in the fear of momentary interruption.  A faithful attendant
+and his wife, with a few black domestics, wrapped the body in a cotton
+cloth and removed it to the cathedral.  A grave was hastily dug in an
+obscure corner, the services were hurried through, and, in secrecy, and in
+darkness dispelled only by the feeble glimmering of a few tapers
+furnished by these humble menials, the remains of Pizarro, rolled in their
+bloody shroud, were consigned to their kindred dust.  Such was the
+miserable end of the Conqueror of Peru,--of the man who but a few
+hours before had lorded it over the land with as absolute a sway as was
+possessed by its hereditary Incas.  Cut off in the broad light of day, in the
+heart of his own capital, in the very midst of those who had been his
+companions in arms and shared with him his triumphs and his spoils, he
+perished like a wretched outcast.  "There was none, even," in the
+expressive language of the chronicler, "to say, God forgive him!" 18
+
+A few years later, when tranquillity was restored to the country, Pizarro's
+remains were placed in a sumptuous coffin and deposited under a
+monument in a conspicuous part of the cathedral.  And in 1607, when
+time had thrown its friendly mantle over the past, and the memory of his
+errors and his crimes was merged in the consideration of the great
+services he had rendered to the Crown by the extension of her colonial
+empire, his bones were removed to the new cathedral, and allowed to
+repose side by side with those of Mendoza, the wise and good viceroy of
+Peru.19
+
+Pizarro was, probably, not far from sixty-five years of age at the time of
+his death; though this, it must be added, is but loose conjecture, since
+there exists no authentic record of the date of his birth.20  He was never
+married; but by an Indian princess of the Inca blood, daughter of
+Atahuallpa and granddaughter of the great Huayna Capac, he had two
+children, a son and a daughter.  Both survived him; but the son did not
+live to manhood.  Their mother, after Pizarro's death, wedded a Spanish
+cavalier, named Ampuero, and removed with him to Spain.  Her
+daughter Francisca accompanied her, and was there subsequently
+married to her uncle Hernando Pizarro, then a prisoner in the Mota del
+Medina.  Neither the title nor estates of the Marquess Francisco
+descended to his illegitimate offspring.  But in the third generation, in the
+reign of Philip the Fourth, the title was revived in favor of Don Juan
+Hernando Pizarro, who, out of gratitude for the services of his ancestor,
+was created Marquess of the Conquest, Marques de la Conquista, with a
+liberal pension from government.  His descendants, bearing the same
+title of nobility, are still to be found, it is said, at Truxillo, in the ancient
+province of Estremadura, the original birthplace of the Pizarros.21
+
+Pizarro's person has been already described.  He was tall in stature, well-
+proportioned, and with a countenance not unpleasing.  Bred in camps,
+with nothing of the polish of a court, he had a soldier-like bearing, and
+the air of one accustomed to command.  But though not polished, there
+was no embarrassment or rusticity in his address, which, where it served
+his purpose, could be plausible and even insinuating.  The proof of it is
+the favorable impression made by him, on presenting himself, after his
+second expedition--stranger as he was to all its forms and usages--at the
+punctilious court of Castile.
+
+Unlike many of his countrymen, he had no passion for ostentatious dress,
+which he regarded as an incumbrance.  The costume which he most
+affected on public occasions was a black cloak, with a white hat, and
+shoes of the same color; the last, it is said, being in imitation of the Great
+Captain, whose character he had early learned to admire in Italy, but to
+which his own, certainly, bore very faint resemblance.22
+
+He was temperate in eating, drank sparingly, and usually rose an hour
+before dawn.  He was punctual in attendance to business, and shrunk
+from no toil.  He had, indeed, great powers of patient endurance.  Like
+most of his nation, he was fond of play, and cared little for the quality of
+those with whom he played; though, when his antagonist could not afford
+to lose, he would allow himself, it is said, to be the loser; a mode of
+conferring an obligation much commended by a Castilian writer, for its
+delicacy.23
+
+Though avaricious, it was in order to spend and not to hoard.  His ample
+treasures, more ample than those, probably, that ever before fell to the
+lot of an adventurer,24 were mostly dissipated in his enterprises, his
+architectural works, and schemes of public improvement, which, in a
+country where gold and silver might be said to have lost their value from
+their abundance, absorbed an incredible amount of money.  While he
+regarded the whole country, in a manner, as his own, and distributed it
+freely among his captains, it is certain that the princely grant of a
+territory with twenty thousand vassals, made to him by the Crown, was
+never carried into effect; nor did his heirs ever reap the benefit of it.25
+
+To a man possessed of the active energies of Pizarro, sloth was the
+greatest evil.  The excitement of play was in a manner necessary to a
+spirit accustomed to the habitual stimulants of war and adventure.  His
+uneducated mind had no relish for more refined, intellectual recreation.
+The deserted foundling had neither been taught to read nor write.  This
+has been disputed by some, but it is attested by unexceptionable
+authorities.26  Montesinos says, indeed, that Pizarro, on his first voyage,
+tried to learn to read; but the impatience of his temper prevented it, and
+he contented himself with learning to sign his name.27  But Montesinos
+was not a contemporary historian.  Pedro Pizarro, his companion in
+arms, expressly tells us he could neither read nor write;28 and Zarate,
+another contemporary, well acquainted with the Conquerors, confirms
+this statement, and adds, that Pizarro could not so much as sign his
+name.29  This was done by his secretary--Picado, in his latter years-
+while the governor merely made the customary rubrica or flourish at the
+sides of his name.  This is the case with the instruments I have examined,
+in which his signature, written probably by his secretary, or his title of
+Marques, in later life substituted for his name, is garnished with a
+flourish at the ends, executed in as bungling a manner as if done by the
+hand of a ploughman.  Yet we must not estimate this deficiency as we
+should in this period of general illumination,--general, at least, in our
+own fortunate country.  Reading and writing, so universal now, in the
+beginning of the sixteenth century might be regarded in the light of
+accomplishments; and all who have occasion to consult the autograph
+memorials of that time will find the execution of them, even by persons
+of the highest rank, too often such as would do little credit to a
+schoolboy of the present day.
+
+Though bold in action and not easily turned from his purpose, Pizarro
+was slow in arriving at a decision.  This gave him an appearance of
+irresolution foreign to his character.30  Perhaps the consciousness of this
+led him to adopt the custom of saying "No," at first, to applicants for
+favor; and afterwards, at leisure, to revise his judgment, and grant what
+seemed to him expedient.  He took the opposite course from his comrade
+Almagro, who, it was observed, generally said "Yes," but too often failed
+to keep his promise.  This was characteristic of the careless and easy
+nature of the latter, governed by impulse rather than principle.31
+
+It is hardly necessary to speak of the courage of a man pledged to such a
+career as that of Pizarro.  Courage, indeed, was a cheap quality among
+the Spanish adventurers, for danger was their element.  But he possessed
+something higher than mere animal courage, in that constancy of purpose
+which was rooted too deeply in his nature to be shaken by the wildest
+storms of fortune.  It was this inflexible constancy which formed the key
+to his character, and constituted the secret of his success.  A remarkable
+evidence of it was given in his first expedition, among the mangroves
+and dreary marshes of Choco.  He saw his followers pining around him
+under the blighting malaria, wasting before an invisible enemy, and
+unable to strike a stroke in their own defence.  Yet his spirit did not
+yield, nor did he falter in his enterprise.
+
+There is something oppressive to the imagination in this war against
+nature.  In the struggle of man against man, the spirits are raised by a
+contest conducted on equal terms; but in a war with the elements, we
+feel, that, however bravely we may contend, we can have no power to
+control.  Nor are we cheered on by the prospect of glory in such a
+contest; for, in the capricious estimate of human glory, the silent
+endurance of privations, however painful, is little, in comparison with the
+ostentatious trophies of victory.  The laurel of the hero---alas for
+humanity that it should be so!--grows best on the battle-field.
+
+This inflexible spirit of Pizarro was shown still more strongly, when, in
+the little island of Gallo, he drew the line on the sand, which was to
+separate him and his handful of followers from their country and from
+civilized man.  He trusted that his own constancy would give strength to
+the feeble, and rally brave hearts around him for the prosecution of his
+enterprise.  He looked with confidence to the future, and he did not
+miscalculate.  This was heroic, and wanted only a nobler motive for its
+object to constitute the true moral sublime.
+
+Yet the same feature in his character was displayed in a manner scarcely
+less remarkable, when, landing on the coast, and ascertaining the real
+strength and civilization of the Incas, he persisted in marching into the
+interior at the head of a force of less than two hundred men.  In this he
+undoubtedly proposed to himself the example of Cortes, so contagious to
+the adventurous spirits of that day, and especially to Pizarro, engaged, as
+he was, in a similar enterprise.  Yet the hazard assumed by Pizarro was
+far greater than that of the Conqueror of Mexico, whose force was nearly
+three times as large, while the terrors of the Inca name--however justified
+by the result--were as widely spread as those of the Aztecs.
+
+It was doubtless in imitation of the same captivating model, that Pizarro
+planned the seizure of Atahuallpa.  But the situations of the two Spanish
+captains were as dissimilar as the manner in which their acts of violence
+were conducted.  The wanton massacre of the Peruvians resembled that
+perpetrated by Alvarado in Mexico, and might have been attended with
+consequences as disastrous, if the Peruvian character had been as fierce
+as that of the Aztecs.32  But the blow which roused the latter to madness
+broke the tamer spirits of the Peruvians.  It was a bold stroke, which left
+so much to chance, that it scarcely merits the name of policy.
+
+When Pizarro landed in the country, he found it distracted by a contest
+for the crown.  It would seem to have been for his interest to play off one
+party against the other, throwing his own weight into the scale that suited
+him.  Instead of this, he resorted to an act of audacious violence which
+crushed them both at a blow.  His subsequent career afforded no scope
+for the profound policy displayed by Cortes, when he gathered
+conflicting nations under his banner, and directed them against a
+common foe.  Still less did he have the opportunity of displaying the
+tactics and admirable strategy of his rival.  Cortes conducted his military
+operations on the scientific principles of a great captain at the head of a
+powerful host.  Pizarro appears only as an adventurer, a fortunate knight-
+errant.  By one bold stroke, he broke the spell which had so long held the
+land under the dominion of the Incas.  The spell was broken, and the airy
+fabric of their empire, built on the superstition of ages, vanished at a
+touch.  This was good fortune, rather than the result of policy.
+
+Pizarro was eminently perfidious, Yet nothing is more opposed to sound
+policy.  One act of perfidy fully established becomes the ruin of its
+author.  The man who relinquishes confidence in his good faith gives up
+the best basis for future operations.  Who will knowingly build on a
+quicksand?  By his perfidious treatment of Almagro, Pizarro alienated the
+minds of the Spaniards.  By his perfidious treatment of Atahuallpa, and
+subsequently of the Inca Manco, he disgusted the Peruvians.  The name
+of Pizarro became a by-word for perfidy.  Almagro took his revenge in a
+civil war; Manco in an insurrection which nearly cost Pizarro his
+dominion.  The civil war terminated in a conspiracy which cost him his
+life.  Such were the fruits of his policy.  Pizarro may be regarded as a
+cunning man; but not, as he has been often eulogized by his countrymen,
+as a politic one.
+
+When Pizarro obtained possession of Cuzco, he found a country well
+advanced in the arts of civilization; institutions under which the people
+lived in tranquillity and personal safety; the mountains and the uplands
+whitened with flocks; the valleys teeming with the fruits of a scientific
+husbandry; the granaries and warehouses filled to overflowing; the whole
+land rejoicing in its abundance; and the character of the nation, softened
+under the influence of the mildest and most innocent form of
+superstition, well prepared for the reception of a higher and a Christian
+civilization.  But, far from introducing this, Pizarro delivered up the
+conquered races to his brutal soldiery; the sacred cloisters were
+abandoned to their lust; the towns and villages were given up to pillage;
+the wretched natives were parcelled out like slaves, to toil for their
+conquerors in the mines; the flocks were scattered, and wantonly
+destroyed, the granaries were dissipated; the beautiful contrivances for
+the more perfect culture of the soil were suffered to fall into decay; the
+paradise was converted into a desert.  Instead of profiting by the ancient
+forms of civilization, Pizarro preferred to efface every vestige of them
+from the land, and on their ruin to erect the institutions of his own
+country.  Yet these institutions did little for the poor Indian, held in iron
+bondage.  It was little to him that the shores of the Pacific were studded
+with rising communities and cities, the marts of a flourishing commerce.
+He had no share in the goodly heritage.  He was an alien in the land of
+his fathers.
+
+The religion of the Peruvian, which directed him to the worship of that
+glorious luminary which is the best representative of the might and
+beneficence of the Creator, is perhaps the purest form of superstition that
+has existed among men.  Yet it was much, that, under the new order of
+things, and through the benevolent zeal of the missionaries, some
+glimmerings of a nobler faith were permitted to dawn on his darkened
+soul.  Pizarro, himself, cannot be charged with manifesting any
+overweening solicitude for the propagation of the Faith.  He was no
+bigot, like Cortes.  Bigotry is the perversion of the religious principle;
+but the principle itself was wanting in Pizarro.  The conversion of the
+heathen was a predominant motive with Cortes in his expedition.  It was
+not a vain boast.  He would have sacrificed his life for it at any time; and
+more than once, by his indiscreet seal, he actually did place his life and
+the success of his enterprise in jeopardy.  It was his great purpose to
+purify the land from the brutish abominations of the Aztecs, by
+substituting the religion of Jesus.  This gave to his expedition the
+character of a crusade.  It furnished the best apology for the Conquest,
+and does more than all other considerations towards enlisting our
+sympathies on the side of the conquerors.
+
+But Pizarro's ruling motives, so far as they can be scanned by human
+judgment, were avarice and ambition.  The good missionaries, indeed,
+followed in his train to scatter the seeds of spiritual truth, and the
+Spanish government, as usual, directed its beneficent legislation to the
+conversion of the natives.  But the moving power with Pizarro and his
+followers was the lust of gold.  This was the real stimulus to their toil,
+the price of perfidy, the true guerdon of their victories.  This gave a base
+and mercenary character to their enterprise; and when we contrast the
+ferocious cupidity of the conquerors with the mild and inoffensive
+manners of the conquered, our sympathies, the sympathies even of the
+Spaniard, are necessarily thrown into the scale of the Indian.33
+
+But as no picture is without its lights, we must not, in justice to Pizarro,
+dwell exclusively on the darker features of his portrait.  There was no
+one of her sons to whom Spain was under larger obligations for extent of
+empire; for his hand won for her the richest of the Indian jewels that
+once sparkled in her imperial diadem.  When we contemplate the perils
+he braved, the sufferings he patiently endured, the incredible obstacles
+he overcame, the magnificent results he effected with his single arm, as it
+were, unaided by the government,--though neither a good, nor a great
+man in the highest sense of that term, it is impossible not to regard him
+as a very extraordinary one.
+
+Nor can we fairly omit to notice, in extenuation of his errors, the
+circumstances of his early life; for, like Almagro, he was the son of sin
+and sorrow, early cast upon the world to seek his fortunes as he might.
+In his young and tender age he was to take the impression of those into
+whose society he was thrown.  And when was it the lot of the needy
+outcast to fall into that of the wise and the virtuous?  His lot was cast
+among the licentious inmates of a camp, the school of rapine, whose only
+law was the sword, and who looked on the wretched Indian and his
+heritage as their rightful spoil.
+
+Who does not shudder at the thought of what his own fate might have
+been, trained in such a school?  The amount of crime does not necessarily
+show the criminality of the agent.  History, indeed, is concerned with the
+former, that it may be recorded as a warning to mankind; but it is He
+alone who knoweth the heart, the strength of the temptations and the
+means of resisting it, that can determine the measure of the guilt.
+
+
+
+Book 4
+
+Chapter 6
+
+Movements Of The Conspirators--Advance Of Vaca De Castro--
+Proceedings Of Almagro--Progress Of The Governor-
+The Forces Approach Each Other--Bloody Plains Of Chupas-
+Conduct Of Vaca De Castro
+
+1541--1543
+
+The first step of the conspirators, after securing possession of the capital,
+was to send to the different cities, proclaiming the revolution which had
+taken place, and demanding the recognition of the young Almagro as
+governor of Peru.  Where the summons was accompanied by a military
+force, as at Truxillo and Arequipa, it was obeyed without much cavil.
+But in other cities a colder assent was given, and in some the requisition
+was treated with contempt.  In Cuzco, the place of most importance next
+to Lima, a considerable number of the Almagro faction secured the
+ascendency of their party; and such of the magistracy as resisted were
+ejected from their offices to make room for others of a more
+accommodating temper.  But the loyal inhabitants of the city, dissatisfied
+with this proceeding, privately sent to one of Pizarro's captains, named
+Alvarez de Holguin, who lay with a considerable force in the
+neighborhood; and that officer, entering the place, soon dispossessed the
+new dignitaries of their honors, and restored the ancient capital to its
+allegiance.
+
+The conspirators experienced a still more determined opposition from
+Alonso de Alvarado, one of the principal captains of Pizarro,-defeated,
+as the reader will remember, by the elder Almagro at the bridge of
+Abancay,--and now lying in the north with a corps of about two hundred
+men, as good troops as any in the land.  That officer, on receiving tidings
+of his general's assassination, instantly wrote to the Licentiate Vaca de
+Castro, advising him of the state of affairs in Peru, and urging him to
+quicken his march towards the south.1
+
+This functionary had been sent out by the Spanish Crown, as noticed in a
+preceding chapter, to cooperate with Pizarro in restoring tranquillity to
+the country, with authority to assume the government himself, in case of
+that commander's death.  After a long and tempestuous voyage, he had
+landed, in the spring of 1541, at the port of Buena Ventura, and,
+disgusted with the dangers of the sea, preferred to continue his
+wearisome journey by land.  But so enfeebled was he by the hardships he
+had undergone, that it was full three months before he reached Popayan
+where he received the astounding tidings of the death of Pizarro.  This
+was the contingency which had been provided for, with such judicious
+forecast, in his instructions.  Yet he was sorely perplexed by the
+difficulties of his situation.  He was a stranger in the land, with a very
+imperfect knowledge of the country, without an armed force to support
+him, without even the military science which might be supposed
+necessary to avail himself of it.  He knew nothing of the degree of
+Almagro's influence, or of the extent to which the insurrection had
+spread,--nothing, in short, of the dispositions of the people among whom
+he was cast.
+
+In such an emergency, a feebler spirit might have listened to the counsels
+of those who advised to return to Panama, and stay there until he had
+mustered a sufficient force to enable him to take the field against the
+insurgents with advantage.  But the courageous heart of Vaca de Castro
+shrunk from a step which would proclaim his incompetency to the task
+assigned him.  He had confidence in his own resources, and in the virtue
+of the commission under which he acted.  He relied, too, on the habitual
+loyalty of the Spaniards; and, after mature deliberation, he determined to
+go forward, and trust to events for accomplishing the objects of his
+mission.
+
+He was confirmed in this purpose by the advices he now received from
+Alvarado; and without longer delay, he continued his march towards
+Quito.  Here he was well received by Gonzalo Pizarro's lieutenant, who
+had charge of the place during his commander's absence on his
+expedition to the Amazon.  The licentiate was also joined by Benalcazar,
+the conqueror of Quito, who brought a small reinforcement, and offered
+personally to assist him in the prosecution of his enterprise.  He now
+displayed the royal commission, empowering him, on Pizarro's death, to
+assume the government.  That contingency had arrived, and Vaca de
+Castro declared his purpose to exercise the authority conferred on him.
+At the same time, he sent emissaries to the principal cities, requiring
+their obedience to him as the lawful representative of the Crown, --taking
+care to employ discreet persons on the mission, whose character would
+have weight with the citizens.  He then continued his march slowly
+towards the south.2
+
+He was willing by his deliberate movements to give time for his
+summons to take effect, and for the fermentation caused by the late
+extraordinary events to subside.  He reckoned confidently on the loyalty
+which made the Spaniard unwilling, unless in cases of the last extremity,
+to come into collision with the royal authority; and, however much this
+popular sentiment might be disturbed by temporary gusts of passion, he
+trusted to the habitual current of their feelings for giving the people a
+right direction.  In this he did not miscalculate; for so deeprooted was the
+principle of loyalty in the ancient Spaniard, that ages of oppression and
+misrule could alone have induced him to shake off his allegiance.  Sad it
+is, but not strange, that the length of time passed under a bad government
+has not qualified him for devising a good one.
+
+While these events were passing in the north, Almagro's faction at Lima
+was daily receiving new accessions of strength.  For, in addition to those
+who, from the first, had been avowedly of his father's party, there were
+many others who, from some cause or other, had conceived a disgust for
+Pizarro, and who now willingly enlisted under the banner of the chief
+that had overthrown him.
+
+The first step of the young general, or rather of Rada, who directed his
+movements, was to secure the necessary supplies for the troops, most of
+whom, having long been in indigent circumstances, were wholly
+unprepared for service.  Funds to a considerable amount were raised, by
+seizing on the moneys of the Crown in the hands of the treasurer.
+Pizarro's secretary, Picado, was also drawn from his prison, and
+interrogated as to the place where his master's treasures were deposited.
+But, although put to the torture, he would not---or, as is probable, could
+not --give information on the subject; and the conspirators, who had a
+long arrear of injuries to settle with him, closed their proceedings by
+publicly beheading him in the great square of Lima.3
+
+Valverde, Bishop of Cuzco, as he himself assures us, vainly interposed in
+his behalf.  It is singular, that, the last time this fanatical prelate appears
+on the stage, it should be in the benevolent character of a supplicant for
+mercy.4  Soon afterwards, he was permitted, with the judge, Velasquez,
+and some other adherents of Pizarro, to embark from the port of Lima.
+We have a letter from him, dated at Tumbez, in November, 1541; almost
+immediately after which he fell into the hands of the Indians, and with
+his companions was massacred at Puna.  A violent death not
+unfrequently closed the stormy career of the American adventurer.
+Valverde was a Dominican friar, and, like Father Olmedo in the suite of
+Cortes, had been by his commander's side throughout the whole of his
+expedition.  But he did not always, like the good Olmedo, use his
+influence to stay the uplifted hand of the warrior.  At least, this was not
+the mild aspect in which he presented himself at the terrible massacre of
+Caxamalca.  Yet some contemporary accounts represent him, after he
+had been installed in his episcopal office, as unwearied in his labors to
+convert the natives, and to ameliorate their condition; and his own
+correspondence with the government, after that period, shows great
+solicitude for these praiseworthy objects.  Trained in the severest school
+of monastic discipline, which too often closes the heart against the
+common charities of life, he could not, like the benevolent Las Casas,
+rise so far above its fanatical tenets as to regard the heathen as his
+brother, while in the state of infidelity; and, in the true spirit of that
+school, he doubtless conceived that the sanctity of the end justified the
+means, however revolting in themselves.  Yet the same man, who thus
+freely shed the blood of the poor native to secure the triumph of his faith,
+would doubtless have as freely poured out his own in its defence.  The
+character was no uncommon one in the sixteenth century.5
+
+Almagro's followers, having supplied themselves with funds, made as
+little scruple to appropriate to their own use such horses and arms, of
+every description, as they could find in the city.  And this they did with
+the less reluctance, as the inhabitants for the most part testified no good-
+will to their cause.  While thus employed, Almagro received intelligence
+that Holguin had left Cuzco with a force of near three hundred men, with
+which he was preparing to effect a junction with Alvarado in the north.
+It was important to Almagro's success that he should defeat this junction.
+If to procrastinate was the policy of Vaca de Castro, it was clearly that of
+Almagro to quicken operations, and to bring matters to as speedy an
+issue as possible; to march at once against Holguin, whom he might
+expect easily to overcome with his superior numbers; then to follow up
+the stroke by the still easier defeat of Alvarado, when the new governor
+would be, in a manner, at his mercy.  It would be easy to beat these
+several bodies in detail, which, once united, would present formidable
+odds.  Almagro and his party had already arrayed themselves against the
+government by a proceeding too atrocious, and which struck too directly
+at the royal authority, for its perpetrators to flatter themselves with the
+hopes of pardon.  Their only chance was boldly to follow up the blow,
+and, by success, to place them, selves in so formidable an attitude as to
+excite the apprehensions of government.  The dread of its too potent
+vassal might extort terms that would never be conceded to his prayers.
+
+But Almagro and his followers shrunk from this open collision with the
+Crown.  They had taken up rebellion because it lay in their path, not
+because they had wished it.  They had meant only to avenge their
+personal wrongs on Pizarro, and not to defy the royal authority.  When,
+therefore, some of the more resolute, who followed things fearlessly to
+their consequences, proposed to march at once against Vaca de Castro,
+and, by striking at the head, settle the contest by a blow, it was almost
+universally rejected; and it was not till after long debate that it was
+finally determined to move against Holguin, and cut off his
+communication with Alonso de Alvarado.
+
+Scarcely had Almagro commenced his march on Xauxa, where he
+proposed to give battle to his enemy, than he met with a severe
+misfortune in the death of Juan de Rada.  He was a man somewhat
+advanced in years; and the late exciting scenes, in which he had taken the
+principal part, had been too much for a frame greatly shattered by a life
+of extraordinary hardship.  He was thrown into a fever, of which he soon
+after died.  By his death, Almagro sustained an inestimable loss; for,
+besides his devoted attachment to his young leader, he was, by his large
+experience, and his cautious though courageous character, better
+qualified than any other cavalier in the army to conduct him safely
+through the stormy sea on which he had led him to embark.
+
+Among the cavaliers of highest consideration after Rada's death, the two
+most aspiring were Christoval de Sotelo, and Garcia de Alvarado; both
+possessed of considerable military talent, but the latter marked by a bold,
+presumptuous manner, which might remind one of his illustrious
+namesake, who achieved much higher renown under the banner of
+Cortes.  Unhappily, a jealousy grew up between these two officers; that
+jealousy, so common among the Spaniards, that it may seem a national
+characteristic; an impatience of equality, founded on a false principle of
+honor, which has ever been the fruitful source of faction among them,
+whether under a monarchy or a republic.
+
+This was peculiarly unfortunate for Almagro, whose inexperience led
+him to lean for support on others, and who, in the present distracted state
+of his council, knew scarcely where to turn for it.  In the delay
+occasioned by these dissensions, his little army did not reach the valley
+of Xauxa till after the enemy had passed it.  Almagro followed close,
+leaving behind his baggage and artillery that he might move the lighter.
+But the golden opportunity was lost.  The rivers, swollen by autumnal
+rains, impeded his pursuit; and, though his light troops came up with a
+few stragglers of the rear-guard, Holguin succeeded in conducting his
+forces through the dangerous passes of the mountains, and in effecting a
+junction with Alonso de Alvarado, near the northern seaport of Huaura.
+
+Disappointed in his object, Almagro prepared to march on Cuzco,-the
+capital, as he regarded it, of his own jurisdiction,--to get possession of
+that city, and there make preparations to meet his adversary in the field.
+Sotelo was sent forward with a small corps in advance.  He experienced
+no opposition from the now defenceless citizens; the government of the
+place was again restored to the hands of the men of Chili, and their
+young leader soon appeared at the head of his battalions, and established
+his winter-quarters in the Inca capital.
+
+Here, the jealousy of the rival captains broke out into an open feud.  It
+was ended by the death of Sotelo, treacherously assassinated in his own
+apartment by Garcia de Alvarado.  Almagro, greatly outraged by this
+atrocity, was the more indignant, as he felt himself too weak to punish
+the offender.  He smothered his resentment for the present, affecting to
+treat the dangerous officer with more distinguished favor.  But Alvarado
+was not the dupe of this specious behaviour.  He felt that he had forfeited
+the confidence of his commander.  In revenge, he laid a plot to betray
+him; and Almagro, driven to the necessity of self-defence, imitated the
+example of his officer, by entering his house with a party of armed men,
+who, laying violent hands on the insurgent, slew him on the spot.6
+
+This irregular proceeding was followed by the best consequences.  The
+seditious schemes of Alvarado perished with him.  The seeds of
+insubordination were eradicated, and from that moment Almagro
+experienced only implicit obedience and the most loyal support from his
+followers.  From that hour, too, his own character seemed to be changed;
+he relied far less on others than on himself, and developed resources not
+to have been anticipated in one of his years; for he had hardly reached
+the age of twenty-two.7  From this time he displayed an energy and
+forecast, which proved him, in despite of his youth, not unequal to the
+trying emergencies of the situation in which it was his unhappy lot to be
+placed.
+
+He instantly set about providing for the wants of his men, and strained
+every nerve to get them in good fighting order for the approaching
+campaign.  He replenished his treasury with a large amount of silver
+which he drew from the mines of La Plata.  Saltpetre, obtained in
+abundance in the neighborhood of Cuzco, furnished the material for
+gunpowder.  He caused cannon, some of large dimensions, to be cast
+under the superintendence of Pedro de Candia, the Greek, who, it may be
+remembered, had first come into the country with Pizarro, and who, with
+a number of his countrymen,--Levantines, as they were called,-was well
+acquainted with this manufacture.  Under their care, fire-arms were
+made, together with cuirasses and helmets, in which silver was mingled
+with copper,8 and of so excellent a quality, that they might vie, says an
+old soldier of the time, with those from the workshops of Milan.9
+Almagro received a seasonable supply, moreover, from a source scarcely
+to have been expected.  This was from Manco, the wandering Inca, who
+detesting the memory of Pizarro, transferred to the young Almagro the
+same friendly feelings which he had formerly borne to his father;
+heightened, it may be, by the consideration that Indian blood flowed in
+the veins of the young commander.  From this quarter Almagro obtained
+a liberal supply of swords, spears, shields, and arms and armour of every
+description, chiefly taken by the Inca at the memorable siege of Cuzco.
+He also received the gratifying assurance, that the latter would support
+him with a detachment of native troops when he opened the campaign.
+
+Before making a final appeal to arms, however, Almagro resolved to try
+the effect of negotiation with the new governor.  In the spring, or early in
+the summer, of 1542, he sent an embassy to the latter, then at Lima, in
+which he deprecated the necessity of taking arms against an officer of the
+Crown.  His only desire, he said, was to vindicate his own rights; to
+secure the possession of New Toledo, the province bequeathed to him by
+his father, and from which he had been most unjustly excluded by
+Pizarro.  He did not dispute the governor's authority over New Castile, as
+the country was designated which had been assigned to the marquess;
+and he concluded by proposing that each party should remain within his
+respective territory until the determination of the Court of Castile could
+be made known to them.  To this application, couched in respectful
+terms, Almagro received no answer.
+
+Frustrated in his hopes of a peaceful accommodation, the young captain
+now saw that nothing was left but the arbitrament of arms.  Assembling
+his troops, preparatory to his departure from the capital, he made them a
+brief address.  He protested that the step which he and his brave
+companions were about to take was not an act of rebellion against the
+Crown.  It was forced on them by the conduct of the governor himself.
+The commission of that officer gave him no authority over the territory
+of New Toledo, settled on Almagro's father, and by his father bequeathed
+to him.  If Vaca de Castro, by exceeding the limits of his authority, drove
+him to hostilities, the blood spill in the quarrel would lie on the head of
+that commander, not on his.  "In the assassination of Pizarro," he
+continued, "we took that justice into our own hands which elsewhere was
+denied us.  It is the same now, in our contest with the royal governor.
+We are as true-hearted and loyal subjects of the Crown as he is." And he
+concluded by invoking his soldiers to stand by him heart and hand in the
+approaching contest, in which they were all equally interested with
+himself.
+
+The appeal was not made to an insensible audience.  There were few
+among them who did not feel that their fortunes were indissolubly
+connected with those of their commander; and while they had little to
+expect from the austere character of the governor, they were warmly
+attached to the person of their young chief, who, with all the popular
+qualities of his father, excited additional sympathy from the
+circumstances of his age and his forlorn condition.  Laying their hands
+on the cross, placed on an altar raised for the purpose, the officers and
+soldiers severally swore to brave every peril with Almagro, and remain
+true to him to the last.
+
+In point of numbers, his forces had not greatly strengthened since his
+departure from Lima.  He mustered but little more than five hundred in
+all; but among them were his father's veterans, well seasoned by many an
+Indian campaign.  He had about two hundred horse, many of them clad
+in complete mail, a circumstance not too common in these wars, where a
+stuffed doublet of cotton was often the only panoply of the warrior.  His
+infantry, formed of pikemen and arquebusiers, was excellently armed.
+But his strength lay in his heavy ordnance, consisting of sixteen pieces,
+eight large and eight smaller guns, or falconets, as they were called,
+forming, says one who saw it, a beautiful park of artillery, that would
+have made a brave show on the citadel of Burgos.10  The little army, in
+short, though not imposing from its numbers, was under as good
+discipline, and as well appointed, as any that ever fought on the fields of
+Peru; much better than any which Almagro's own father or Pizarro ever
+led into the field and won their conquests with.  Putting himself at the
+head of his gallant company, the chieftain sallied forth from the walls of
+Cuzco about midsummer, in 1542, and directed his march towards the
+coast in expectation of meeting the enemy.11
+
+While the events detailed in the preceding pages were passing, Vaca de
+Castro, whom we left at Quito in the preceding year, was advancing
+slowly towards the south.  His first act, after leaving that city, showed his
+resolution to enter into no compromise with the assassins of Pizarro.
+Benalcazar, the distinguished officer whom I have mentioned as having
+early given in his adherence to him, had protected one of the principal
+conspirators, his personal friend, who had come into his power, and had
+facilitated his escape.  The governor, indignant at the proceeding, would
+listen to no explanation, but ordered the offending officer to return to his
+own district of Popayan.  It was a bold step, in the precarious state of his
+own fortunes.
+
+As the governor pursued his march, he was well received by the people
+on the way; and when he entered the cities of San Miguel and of
+Truxillo, he was welcomed with loyal enthusiasm by the inhabitants, who
+readily acknowledged his authority, though they showed little alacrity to
+take their chance with him in the coming struggle.
+
+After lingering a long time in each of these places, he resumed his march
+and reached the camp of Alonso de Alvarado at Huaura, early in 1542.
+Holguin had established his quarters at some little distance from his
+rival; for a jealousy had sprung up, as usual, between these two captains,
+who both aspired to the supreme command of Captain General of the
+army.  The office of governor, conferred on Vaca de Castro, might seem
+to include that of commander-in-chief of the forces.  But De Castro was
+a scholar, bred to the law;.  and, whatever authority he might arrogate to
+himself in civil matters, the two captains imagined that the military
+department he would resign into the hands of others.  They little knew
+the character of the man.
+
+Though possessed of no more military science than belonged to every
+cavalier in that martial age, the governor knew that to avow his
+ignorance, and to resign the management of affairs into the hands of
+others, would greatly impair his authority, if not bring him into contempt
+with the turbulent spirits among whom he was now thrown.  He had both
+sagacity and spirit, and trusted to be able to supply his own deficiencies
+by the experience of others.  His position placed the services of the
+ablest men m the country at his disposal, and with the aid of their
+counsels he felt quite competent to decide on his plan of operations, and
+to enforce the execution of it.  He knew, moreover, that the only way to
+allay the jealousy of the two parties in the present crisis was to assume
+himself the office which was the cause of their dissension.
+
+Still he approached his ambitious officers with great caution; and the
+representations, which he made through some judicious persons who had
+the most intimate access to them, were so successful, that both were in a
+short time prevailed on to relinquish their pretensions in his favor.
+Holguin, the more unreasonable of the two, then waited on him in his
+rival's quarters, where the governor had the further satisfaction to
+reconcile him to Alonso de Alvarado.  It required some address, as their
+jealousy of each other had proceeded to such lengths that a challenge had
+passed between them.
+
+Harmony being thus restored, the licentiate passed over to Holguin's
+camp, where he was greeted with salvoes of artillery, and loud
+acclamations of "Viva el Rey" from the loyal soldiery.  Ascending a
+platform covered with velvet, he made an animated harangue to the
+troops; his commission was read aloud by the secretary; and the little
+army tendered their obedience to him as the representative of the Crown.
+
+Vaca de Castro's next step was to send off the greater part of his force, in
+the direction of Xauxa, while, at the head of a small corps, he directed
+his march towards Lima.  Here he was received with lively
+demonstrations of joy by the citizens, who were generally attached to the
+cause of Pizarro, the founder and constant patron of their capital.
+Indeed, the citizens had lost no time after Almagro's departure in
+expelling his creatures from the municipality, and reasserting their
+allegiance.  With these favorable dispositions towards himself, the
+governor found no difficulty in obtaining a considerable loan of money
+from the wealthier inhabitants, But he was less successful, at first, in his
+application for horses and arms, since the harvest had been too faithfully
+gleaned, already, by the men of Chili.  As, however, he prolonged his
+stay some time in the capital, he obtained important supplies, before he
+left it, both of arms and ammunition, while he added to his force by a
+considerable body of recruits.12
+
+As he was thus employed, he received tidings that the enemy had left
+Cuzco, and was on his march towards the coast.  Quitting Los Reyes,
+therefore, with his trusty followers, Vaca de Castro marched at once to
+Xauxa, the appointed place of rendezvous.  Here he mustered his forces,
+and found that they amounted to about seven hundred men.  The cavalry,
+in which lay his strength, was superior in numbers to that of his
+antagonist, but neither so well mounted or armed.  It included many
+cavaliers of birth, and well-tried soldiers, besides a number who, having
+great interests at stake, as possessed of large estates in the country, had
+left them at the call of government, to enlist under its banners.13  His
+infantry, besides pikes, was indifferently well supplied with firearms; but
+he had nothing to show in the way of artillery except three or four ill-
+mounted falconets.  Yet, notwithstanding these deficiencies, the royal
+army, if so insignificant a force can deserve that name, was so far
+superior in numbers to that of his rival, that the one might be thought, on
+the whole, to be no unequal match for the other.14
+
+The reader, familiar with the large masses employed in European
+warfare, may smile at the paltry forces of the Spaniards.  But in the New
+World, where a countless host of natives went for little, five hundred
+well-trained Europeans were regarded as a formidable body.  No army,
+up to the period before us, had ever risen to a thousand.  Yet it is not
+numbers, as I have already been led to remark, that give importance to a
+conflict; but the consequences that depend on it,--the magnitude of the
+stake, and the skill and courage of the players.  The more limited the
+means, even, the greater may be the science shown in the use of them;
+until, forgetting the poverty of the materials, we fix our attention on the
+conduct of the actors, and the greatness of the results.
+
+While at Xauxa, Vaca de Castro received an embassy from Gonzalo
+Pizarro, returned from his expedition from the "Land of Cinnamon," in
+which that chief made an offer of his services in the approaching contest.
+The governor's answer showed that he was not wholly averse to an
+accommodation with Almagro, provided it could be effected without
+compromising the royal authority.  He was willing, perhaps, to avoid the
+final trial by battle, when he considered, that, from the equality of the
+contending forces, the issue must be extremely doubtful.  He knew that
+the presence of Pizarro in the camp, the detested enemy of the
+Almagrians, would excite distrust in their bosoms that would probably
+baffle every effort at accommodation.  Nor is it likely that the governor
+cared to have so restless a spirit introduced into his own councils.  He
+accordingly sent to Gonzalo, thanking him for the promptness of his
+support, but courteously declined it, while he advised him to remain in
+his province, and repose after the fatigues of his wearisome expedition.
+At the same time, he assured him that he would not fail to call for his
+services when occasion required it.--The haughty cavalier was greatly
+disgusted by the repulse.15
+
+The governor now received such an account of Almagro's movements
+as led him to suppose that he was preparing to occupy Gaumanga, a
+fortified place of considerable strength, about thirty leagues from
+Xauxa.16  Anxious to secure this post, he broke up his encampment, and
+by forced marches, conducted in so irregular a manner as must have
+placed him in great danger if his enemy had been near to profit by it, he
+succeeded in anticipating Almagro, and threw himself into the place
+while his antagonist was at Bilcas, some ten leagues distant.
+
+At Guamanga, Vaca de Castro received another embassy from Almagro,
+of similar import with the former.  The young chief again deprecated the
+existence of hostilities between brethren of the same family, and
+proposed an accommodation of the quarrel on the same basis as before.
+To these proposals the governor now condescended to reply.  It might be
+thought, from his answer, that he felt some compassion for the youth and
+inexperience of Almagro, and that he was willing to distinguish between
+him and the principal conspirators, provided he could detach him from
+their interests.  But it is more probable that he intended only to amuse his
+enemy by a show of negotiation, while he gained time for tampering with
+the fidelity of his troops.
+
+He insisted that Almagro should deliver up to him all those immediately
+implicated in the death of Pizarro, and should then disband his forces.
+On these conditions the government would pass over his treasonable
+practices, and he should be reinstated in the royal favor.  Together with
+this mission, Vaca de Castro, it is reported, sent a Spaniard, disguised as
+an Indian, who was instructed to communicate with certain officers in
+Almagro's camp, and prevail on them, if possible, to abandon his cause
+and return to their allegiance.  Unfortunately, the disguise of the
+emissary was detected.  He was seized, put to the torture, and, having
+confessed the whole of the transaction, was hanged as a spy.
+
+Almagro laid the proceeding before his captains.  The terms proffered by
+the governor were such as no man with a particle of honor in his nature
+could entertain for a moment; and Almagro's indignation, as well as that
+of his companions, was heightened by the duplicity of their enemy, who
+could practise such insidious arts, while ostensibly engaged in a fair and
+open negotiation.  Fearful, perhaps, lest the tempting offers of their
+antagonist might yet prevail over the constancy of some of the weaker
+spirits among them, they demanded that all negotiation should be broken
+off, and that they should be led at once against the enemy.17
+
+The governor, meanwhile, finding the broken country around Guamanga
+unfavorable for his cavalry, on which he mainly relied, drew off his
+forces to the neighboring lowlands, known as the Plains of Chupas.  It
+was the tempestuous season of the year, and for several days the storm
+raged wildly among the hills, and, sweeping along their sides into the
+valley, poured down rain, sleet, and snow on the miserable bivouacs of
+the soldiers, till they were drenched to the skin and nearly stiffened by
+the cold.18  At length, on the sixteenth of September, 1542, the scouts
+brought in tidings that Almagro's troops were advancing, with the
+intention, apparently, of occupying the highlands around Chupas.  The
+war of the elements had at last subsided, and was succeeded by one of
+those brilliant days which are found only in the tropics.  The royal camp
+was early in motion, as Vaca de Castro, desirous to secure the heights
+that commanded the valley, detached a body of arquebusiers on that
+service, supported by a corps of cavalry, which he soon followed with
+the rest of the forces.  On reaching the eminence, news was brought that
+the enemy had come to a halt, and established himself in a strong
+position at less than a league's distance.
+
+It was now late in the afternoon, and the sun was not more than two
+hours above the horizon.  The governor hesitated to begin the action
+when they must so soon be overtaken by night.  But Alonso de Alvarado
+assured him that "now was the time; for the spirits of his men were hot
+for fight, and it was better to take the benefit of it than to damp their
+ardor by delay." The governor acquiesced, exclaiming at the same time, -
+-"O for the might of Joshua, to stay the sun in his course!" 19  He then
+drew up his little army in order of battle, and made his dispositions for
+the attack.
+
+In the centre he placed his infantry, consisting of arquebusiers and
+pikemen, constituting the battle, as it was called.  On the flanks, he
+established his cavalry, placing the right wing, together with the royal
+standard, under charge of Alonso de Alvarado, and the left under
+Holguin, supported by a gallant body of cavaliers.  His artillery, too
+insignificant to be of much account, was also in the centre.  He proposed
+himself to lead the van, and to break the first lance with the enemy; but
+from this chivalrous display he was dissuaded by his officers, who
+reminded him that too much depended on his life to have it thus
+wantonly exposed.  The governor contented himself, therefore, with
+heading a body of reserve, consisting of forty horse, to act on any quarter
+as occasion might require.  This corps, comprising the flower of his
+chivalry, was chiefly drawn from Alvarado's troop, greatly to the
+discontent of that captain.  The governor himself rode a coal-black
+charger, and wore a rich surcoat of brocade over his mail, through which
+the habit and emblems of the knightly order of St. James, conferred on
+him just before his departure from Castile, were conspicuous.20  It was a
+point of honor with the chivalry of the period to court danger by
+displaying their rank in the splendor of their military attire and the
+caparisons of their horses.
+
+Before commencing the assault, Vaca de Castro addressed a few remarks
+to his soldiers, in order to remove any hesitation that some might yet
+feel, who recollected the displeasure shown by the emperor to the victors
+as well as the vanquished after the battle of Salinas.  He told them that
+their enemies were rebels.  They were in arms against him.  the
+representative of the Crown, and it was his duty to quell this rebellion
+and punish the authors of it.  He then caused the law to be read aloud,
+proclaiming the doom of traitors.  By this law, Almagro and his
+followers had forfeited their lives and property, and the governor
+promised to distribute the latter among such of his men as showed the
+best claim to it by their conduct in the battle.  This last politic promise
+vanquished the scruples of the most fastidious; and, having completed
+his dispositions in the most judicious and soldier-like manner, Vaca de
+Castro gave the order to advance.21
+
+As the forces turned a spur of the hills, which had hitherto screened them
+from their enemies, they came in sight of the latter, formed along the
+crest of a gentle eminence, with their snow-white banners, the
+distinguishing color of the Almagrians, floating above their heads, and
+their bright arms flinging back the broad rays of the evening sun.
+Almagro's disposition of his troops was not unlike that of his adversary.
+In the centre was his excellent artillery, covered by his arquebusiers and
+spearmen; while his cavalry rode on the flanks.  The troops on the left he
+proposed to lead in person.  He had chosen his position with judgment,
+as the character of the ground gave full play to his guns, which opened
+an effective fire on the assailants as they drew near.  Shaken by the storm
+of shot, Vaca de Castro saw the difficulty of advancing in open view of
+the hostile battery.  He took the counsel, therefore, of Francisco de
+Carbajal, who undertook to lead the forces by a circuitous, but safer,
+route.  This is the first occasion on which the name of this veteran
+appears in these American wars, where it was afterwards to acquire a
+melancholy notoriety.  He had come to the country after the campaigns
+of forty years in Europe, where he had studied the art of war under the
+Great Captain, Gonsalvo de Cordova.  Though now far advanced in age,
+he possessed all the courage and indomitable energy of youth, and well
+exemplified the lessons he had studied under his great commander.
+
+Taking advantage of a winding route that sloped round the declivity of
+the hills, he conducted the troops in such a manner, that, until they
+approached quite near the enemy, they were protected by the intervening
+ground.  While thus advancing, they were assailed on the left flank by
+the Indian battalions under Paullo, the Inca Manco's brother; but a corps
+of musketeers, directing a scattering fire among them, soon rid the
+Spaniards of this annoyance.  When, at length, the royal troops, rising
+above the hill, again came into view of Almagro's lines, the artillery
+opened on them with fatal effect.  It was but for a moment, however, as,
+from some unaccountable cause, the guns were pointed as such an angle,
+that, although presenting an obvious mark, by far the greater part of the
+shot passed over their heads.  Whether this was the result of treachery, or
+merely of awkwardness, is uncertain.  The artillery was under charge of
+the engineer, Pedro de Candia.  This man, who, it" may be remembered,
+was one of the thirteen that so gallantly stood by Pizarro in the island of
+Gallo, had fought side by side with his leader through the whole of the
+Conquest.  He had lately, however, conceived some disgust with him,
+and had taken part with the faction of Almagro.  The death of his old
+commander, he may perhaps have thought, had settled all their
+differences, and he was now willing to return to his former allegiance.
+At least, it is said, that, at this very time, he was in correspondence with
+Vaca de Castro.  Almagro himself seems to have had no doubt of his
+treachery.  For, after remonstrating in vain with him on his present
+conduct, he ran him through the body, and the unfortunate cavalier fell
+lifeless on the field.  Then, throwing himself on one of the guns,
+Almagro gave it a new direction, and that so successfully, that, when it
+was discharged, it struck down several of the cavalry.22
+
+The firing now took better effect, and by one volley a whole file of the
+royal infantry was swept off, and though others quickly stepped in to fill
+up the ranks, the men, impatient of their sufferings, loudly called on the
+troopers, who had halted for a moment, to quicken their advance.23
+This delay had been caused by Carbajal's desire to bring his own guns to
+bear on the opposite columns.  But the design was quickly abandoned;
+the clumsy ordnance was left on the field, and orders were given to the
+cavalry to charge; the trumpets sounded, and, crying their war-cries, the
+bold cavaliers struck their spurs into their steeds, and rode at full speed
+against the enemy.
+
+Well had it been for Almagro, if he had remained firm on the post which
+gave him such advantage.  But from a false point of honor, he thought it
+derogatory to a brave knight passively to await the assault, and, ordering
+his own men to charge, the hostile squadrons, rapidly advancing against
+each other, met midway on the plain.  The shock was terrible.  Horse and
+rider reeled under the force of it.  The spears flew into shivers;24 and the
+cavaliers, drawing their swords, or wielding their maces and battle-axes,-
+-though some of the royal troopers were armed only with a common
+axe,--dealt their blows with all the fury of civil hate.  It was a fearful
+struggle, not merely of man against man, but, to use the words of an
+eyewitness, of brother against brother, and friend against friend.25  No
+quarter was asked; for the wrench that had been strong enough to tear
+asunder the dearest ties of kindred left no hold for humanity.  The
+excellent arms of the Almagrians counterbalanced the odds of numbers;
+but the royal partisans gained some advantage by striking at the horses
+instead of the mailed bodies of their antagonists.
+
+The infantry, meanwhile, on both sides, kept up a sharp cross-fire from
+their arquebuses, which did execution on the ranks of the cavaliers, as
+well as on one another.  But Almagro's battery of heavy guns, now well
+directed, mowed down the advancing columns of foot.  The latter,
+staggering, began to fall back from the terrible fire, when Francisco de
+Carbajal, throwing himself before them, cried out, "Shame on you, my
+men!  Do you give way now?  I am twice as good a mark for the enemy
+as any of you!" He was a very large man; and, throwing off his steel
+helmet and cuirass, that he might have no advantage over his followers,
+he remained lightly attired in his cotton doublet, when, swinging his
+partisan over his head, he sprang boldly forward through blinding
+volumes of smoke and a tempest of musket-balls, and, supported by the
+bravest of his troops, overpowered the gunners, and made himself master
+of their pieces.
+
+The shades of night had now, for some time been coming thicker and
+thicker over the field.  But still the deadly struggle went on in the
+darkness, as the red and white badges intimated the respective parties,
+and their war-cries rose above the din,--"Vaca de Castro y el Rey,"--
+"Almagro y el Rey,"--while both invoked the aid of their military apostle
+St. James.  Holguin, who commanded the royalists on the left, pierced
+through by two musket-balls, had been slain early in the action.  He had
+made himself conspicuous by a rich sobre-vest of white velvet over his
+armour.  Still a gallant band of cavaliers maintained the fight so valiantly
+on that quarter, that the Almagrians found it difficult to keep their
+ground.26
+
+It fared differently on the right, where Alonso de Alvarado commanded.
+He was there encountered by Almagro in person, who fought worthy of
+his name.  By repeated charges on his opponent, he endeavored to bear
+down his squadrons, so much worse mounted and worse armed than his
+own.  Alvarado resisted with undiminished courage; but his numbers had
+been thinned, as we have seen, before the battle, to supply the governor's
+reserve, and, fairly overpowered by the superior strength of his
+adversary, who had already won two of the royal banners, he was slowly
+giving ground.  "Take, but kill not!" shouted the generous young chief,
+who felt himself sure of victory.27
+
+But at this crisis, Vaca de Castro, who, with his reserve, had occupied a
+rising ground that commanded the field of action, was fully aware that
+the time had now come for him to take part in the struggle.  He had long
+strained his eyes through the gloom to watch the movements of the
+combatants, and received constant tidings how the fight was going.  He
+no longer hesitated, but, calling on his men to follow, led off boldly into
+the thickest of the melee to the support of his stout-hearted officer.  The
+arrival of a new corps on the field, all fresh for action, gave another turn
+to the tide.28  Alvarado's men took heart and rallied.  Almagro's, though
+driven back by the fury of the assault, quickly returned against their
+assailants.  Thirteen of Vaca de Castro's cavaliers fell dead from their
+saddles.  But it was the last effort of the Almagrians.  Their strength,
+though not their spirit, failed them.  They gave way in all directions, and,
+mingling together in the darkness, horse, foot, and artillery, they
+trampled one another down, as they made the best of their way from the
+press of their pursuers.  Almagro used every effort to stay them.  He
+performed miracles of valor, says one who witnessed them; but he was
+borne along by the tide, and, though he seemed to court death, by the
+freedom with which he exposed his person to danger, yet he escaped
+without a wound.
+
+Others there were of his company, and among them a young cavalier
+named Geronimo de Alvarado, who obstinately refused to quit the field;
+and shouting out,--"We slew Pizarro!  we killed the tyrant!" they threw
+themselves on the lances of their conquerors, preferring death on the
+battle-field to the ignominious doom of the gibbet.29
+
+It was nine o'clock when the battle ceased, though the firing was heard at
+intervals over the field at a much later hour, as some straggling party of
+fugitives were overtaken by their pursuers.  Yet many succeeded in
+escaping in the obscurity of night, while some, it is said, contrived to
+elude pursuit in a more singular way; tearing off the badges from the
+corpses of their enemies, they assumed them for themselves, and,
+mingling in the ranks as followers of Vaca de Castro, joined in the
+pursuit.
+
+That commander, at length, fearing some untoward accident, and that the
+fugitives, should they rally again under cover of the darkness, might
+inflict some loss on their pursuers, caused his trumpets to sound, and
+recalled his scattered forces under their banners.  All night they remained
+under arms on the field, which, so lately the scene of noisy strife, was
+now hushed in silence, broken only by the groans of the wounded and the
+dying.  The natives, who had hung, during the fight, like a dark cloud,
+round the skirts of the mountains, contemplating with gloomy
+satisfaction the destruction of their enemies, now availed themselves of
+the obscurity to descend, like a pack of famished wolves, upon the
+plains, where they stripped the bodies of the slain, and even of the living,
+but disabled wretches, who had in vain dragged themselves into the
+bushes for concealment.  The following morning, Vaca de Castro gave
+orders that the wounded--those who had not perished in the cold damps
+of the night--should be committed to the care of the surgeons, while the
+priests were occupied with administering confession and absolution to
+the dying.  Four large graves or pits were dug, in which the bodies of the
+slain--the conquerors and the conquered--were heaped indiscriminately
+together.  But the remains of Alvarez de Holguin and several other
+cavaliers of distinction were transported to Guamanga, where they were
+buried with the solemnities suited to their rank; and the tattered banners
+won from their vanquished countrymen waved over their monuments, the
+melancholy trophies of their victory.
+
+The number of killed is variously reported,--from three hundred to five
+hundred on both sides.30  The mortality was greatest among the
+conquerors, who suffered more from the cannon of the enemy before the
+action, than the latter suffered in the rout that followed it.  The number of
+wounded was still greater; and full half of the survivors of Almagro's
+party were made prisoners.  Many, indeed, escaped from the field to the
+neighboring town of Guamanga, where they took refuge in the churches
+and monasteries.  But their asylum was not respected, and they were
+dragged forth and thrown into prison.  Their brave young commander
+fled with a few followers only to Cuzco, where he was instantly arrested
+by the magistrates whom he had himself placed over the city.31
+
+At Guamanga, Vaca de Castro appointed a commission, with the
+Licentiate de la Gama at its head, for the trial of the prisoners; and
+justice was not satisfied, till forty had been condemned to death, and
+thirty others--some of them with the loss of one or more of their
+members-sent into banishment.32  Such severe reprisals have been too
+common with the Spaniards in their civil feuds.  Strange that they should
+so blindly plunge into these, with this dreadful doom for the vanquished!
+
+From the scene of this bloody tragedy, the governor proceeded to Cuzco,
+which he entered at the head of his victorious battalions, with all the
+pomp and military display of a conqueror.  He maintained a
+corresponding state in his way of living, at the expense of a sneer from
+some, who sarcastically contrasted this ostentatious profusion with the
+economical reforms he subsequently introduced into the finances.33  But
+Vaca de Castro was sensible of the effect of this outward show on the
+people generally, and disdained no means of giving authority to his
+office.  His first act was to determine the fate of his prisoner, Almagro.
+A council of war was held.  Some were for sparing the unfortunate chief,
+in consideration of his youth, and the strong cause of provocation he had
+received.  But the majority were of opinion that such mercy could not be
+extended to the leader of the rebels, and that his death was indispensable
+to the permanent tranquillity of the country.
+When led to execution in the great square of Cuzco,--the same spot
+where his father had suffered but a few years before,---Almagro
+exhibited the most perfect composure, though, as the herald proclaimed
+aloud the doom of the traitor, he indignantly denied that he was one.  He
+made no appeal for mercy to his judges, but simply requested that his
+bones might be laid by the side of his father's.  He objected to having his
+eyes bandaged, as was customary on such occasions, and, after
+confession, he devoutly embraced the cross, and submitted his neck to
+the stroke of the executioner.  His remains, agreeably to his request, were
+transported to the monastery of La Merced, where they were deposited
+side by side with those of his unfortunate parent.34
+
+There have been few names, indeed, in the page of history, more
+unfortunate than that of Almagro.  Yet the fate of the son excites a
+deeper sympathy than that of the father; and this, not merely on account
+of his youth, and the peculiar circumstances of his situation.  He
+possessed many of the good qualities of the elder Almagro, with a frank
+and manly nature, in which the bearing of the soldier was somewhat
+softened by the refinement of a better education than is to be found in the
+license of a camp.  His career, though short, gave promise of
+considerable talent, which required only a fair field for its development.
+But he was the child of misfortune, and his morning of life was overcast
+by clouds and tempests.  If his character, naturally benignant, sometimes
+showed the fiery sparkles of the vindictive Indian temper, some apology
+may be found, not merely in his blood, but in the circumstances of his
+situation.  He was more sinned against than sinning; and, if conspiracy
+could ever find a justification, it must be in a case like his, where, borne
+down by injuries heaped on his parent and himself, he could obtain no
+redress from the only quarter whence he had a right to look for it.  With
+him, the name of Almagro became extinct, and the faction of Chili, so
+long the terror of the land, passed away for ever.
+
+While these events were occurring in Cuzco, the governor learned that
+Gonzalo Pizarro had arrived at Lima, where he showed himself greatly
+discontented with the state of things in Peru.  He loudly complained that
+the government of the country, after his brother's death, had not been
+placed in his hands; and, as reported by some, he was now meditating
+schemes for getting possession of it.  Vaca de Castro well knew that
+there would be no lack of evil counsellors to urge Gonzalo to this
+desperate step; and, anxious to extinguish the spark of insurrection
+before it had been fanned by these turbulent spirits into a flame, he
+detached a strong body to Lima to secure that capital.  At the same time
+he commanded the presence of Gonzalo Pizarro in Cuzco.
+
+That chief did not think it prudent to disregard the summons; and shortly
+after entered the Inca capital, at the head of a well-armed body of
+cavaliers.  He was at once admitted into the governor's presence, when
+the latter dismissed his guard, remarking that he had nothing to fear from
+a brave and loyal knight like Pizarro.  He then questioned him as to his
+late adventures in Canelas, and showed great sympathy for his
+extraordinary sufferings.  He took care not to alarm his jealousy by any
+allusion to his ambitious schemes, and concluded by recommending him,
+now that the tranquillity of the country was reestablished, to retire and
+seek the repose he so much needed, on his valuable estates at Charcas.
+Gonzalo Pizarro, finding no ground opened for a quarrel with the cool
+and politic governor, and probably feeling that he was, at least not now,
+in sufficient strength to warrant it, thought it prudent to take the advice,
+and withdrew to La Plata, where he busied himself in working those rich
+mines of silver that soon put him in condition for more momentous
+enterprise than any he had yet attempted.35
+
+Thus rid of his formidable competitor, Vaca de Castro occupied himself
+with measures for the settlement of the country.  He began with his army,
+a part of which he had disbanded.  But many cavaliers still remained,
+pressing their demands for a suitable recompense for their services.
+These they were not disposed to undervalue, and the governor was happy
+to rid himself of their importunities by employing them on distant
+expeditions, among which was the exploration of the country watered by
+the great Rio de la Plata.  The boiling spirits of the highmettled cavaliers,
+without some such vent, would soon have thrown the whole country
+again into a state of fermentation.
+
+His next concern was to provide laws for the better government of the
+colony.  He gave especial care to the state of the Indian population; and
+established schools for teaching them Christianity.  By various
+provisions, he endeavored to secure them from the exactions of their
+conquerors, and he encouraged the poor natives to transfer their own
+residence to the communities of the white men.  He commanded the
+caciques to provide supplies for the tambos, or houses for the
+accommodation of travellers, which lay in their neighborhood, by which
+regulation he took away from the Spaniards a plausible apology for
+rapine, and greatly promoted facility of intercourse.  He was watchful
+over the finances, much dilapidated in the late troubles, and in several
+instances retrenched what he deemed excessive repartimientos among the
+Conquerors.  This last act exposed him to much odium from the objects
+of it.  But his measures were so just and impartial, that he was supported
+by public opinion.36
+
+Indeed, Vaca de Castro's conduct, from the hour of his arrival in the
+country, had been such as to command respect, and prove him competent
+to the difficult post for which he had been selected.  Without funds,
+without troops, he had found the country, on his landing, in a state of
+anarchy; yet, by courage and address, he had gradually acquired
+sufficient strength to quell the insurrection.  Though no soldier, he had
+shown undaunted spirit and presence of mind in the hour of action, and
+made his military preparations with a forecast and discretion that excited
+the admiration of the most experienced veteran.
+
+If he may be thought to have abused the advantages of victory by cruelty
+towards the conquered, it must be allowed that he was not influenced by
+any motives of a personal nature.  He was a lawyer, bred in high notions
+of royal prerogative.  Rebellion he looked upon as an unpardonable
+crime; and, if his austere nature was unrelenting in the exaction of
+justice, he lived in an iron age, when justice was rarely tempered by
+mercy.
+
+In his subsequent regulations for the settlement of the country, he
+showed equal impartiality and wisdom.  The colonists were deeply
+sensible of the benefits of his administration, and afforded the best
+commentary on his services by petitioning the Court of Castile to
+continue him in the government of Peru.37 Unfortunately, such was not
+the policy of the Crown.
+
+
+
+Book 4
+
+Chapter 7
+
+Abuses By The Conquerors--Code For The Colonies-
+Great Excitement In Peru--Blasco Nunez The Viceroy-
+His Severe Policy--Opposed By Gonzalo Pizarro
+
+1543--1544
+
+Before continuing the narrative of events in Peru, we must turn to the
+mother-country, where important changes were in progress in respect to
+the administration of the colonies.
+
+Since his accession to the Crown, Charles the Fifth had been chiefly
+engrossed by the politics of Europe, where a theatre was opened more
+stimulating to his ambition than could be found in a struggle with the
+barbarian princes of the New World.  In this quarter, therefore, an
+empire almost unheeded, as it were, had been suffered to grow up, until
+it had expanded into dimensions greater than those of his European
+dominions and destined soon to become far more opulent.  A scheme of
+government had, it is true, been devised, and laws enacted from time to
+time for the regulation of the colonies.  But these laws were often
+accommodated less to the interests of the colonies themselves, than to
+those of the parent country; and, when contrived in a better spirit, they
+were but imperfectly executed; for the voice of authority, however loudly
+proclaimed at home, too often died away in feeble echoes before it had
+crossed the waters.
+
+This state of things, and, indeed, the manner in which the Spanish
+territories in the New World had been originally acquired, were most
+unfortunate both for the conquered races and their masters.  Had the
+provinces gained by the Spaniards been the fruit of peaceful acquisition,
+--of barter and negotiation,--or had their conquest been achieved under
+the immediate direction of government, the interests of the natives would
+have been more carefully protected.  From the superior civilization of the
+Indians in the Spanish American colonies, they still continued after the
+Conquest to remain on the ground, and to mingle in the same
+communities, with the white men; in this forming an obvious contrast to
+the condition of our own aborigines, who, shrinking from the contact of
+civilization, have withdrawn, as the latter has advanced, deeper and
+deeper into the heart of the wilderness.  But the South American Indian
+was qualified by his previous institutions for a more refined legislation
+than could be adapted to the wild hunters of the forest; and, had the
+sovereign been there in person to superintend his conquests, he could
+never have suffered so large a portion of his vassals to be wantonly
+sacrificed to the cupidity and cruelty of the handful of adventurers who
+subdued them.
+
+But, as it was, the affair of reducing the country was committed to the
+hands of irresponsible individuals, soldiers of fortune, desperate
+adventurers, who entered on conquest as a game, which they were to play
+in the most unscrupulous manner, with little care but to win it.  Receiving
+small encouragement from the government, they were indebted to their
+own valor for success; and the right of conquest, they conceived,
+extinguished every existing right in the unfortunate natives.  The lands,
+the persons, of the conquered races were parcelled out and appropriated
+by the victors as the legitimate spoils of victory; and outrages were
+perpetrated every day, at the contemplation of which humanity shudders.
+
+These outrages, though nowhere perpetrated on so terrific a scale as in
+the islands, where, in a few years, they had nearly annihilated the native
+population, were yet of sufficient magnitude in Peru to call down the
+vengeance of Heaven on the heads of their authors; and the Indian might
+feel that this vengeance was not long delayed, when he beheld his
+oppressors, wrangling over their miserable spoil, and turning their
+swords against each other.  Peru, as already mentioned, was subdued by
+adventurers, for the most part, of a lower and more ferocious stamp than
+those who followed the banner of Cortes.  The character of the followers
+partook, in some measure, of that of the leaders in their respective
+enterprises.  It was a sad fatality for the Incas; for the reckless soldiers of
+Pizarro were better suited to contend with the fierce Aztec than with the
+more refined and effeminate Peruvian.  Intoxicated by the unaccustomed
+possession of power, and without the least notion of the responsibilities
+which attached to their situation as masters of the land, they too often
+abandoned themselves to the indulgence of every whim which cruelty or
+caprice could dictate.  Not unfrequently, says an unsuspicious witness, I
+have seen the Spaniards, long after the Conquest, amuse themselves by
+hunting down the natives with bloodhounds for mere sport, or in order to
+train their dogs to the game! 1  The most unbounded scope was given to
+licentiousness.  The young maiden was torn without remorse from the
+arms of her family to gratify the passion of her brutal conqueror.2  The
+sacred houses of the Virgins of the Sun were broken open and violated,
+and the cavalier swelled his harem with a troop of Indian girls making it
+seem that the Crescent would have been a much more fitting symbol for
+his banner than the immaculate Cross.3
+
+But the dominant passion of the Spaniard was the lust of gold.  For this
+he shrunk from no toil himself, and was merciless in his exactions of
+labor from his Indian slave.  Unfortunately, Peru abounded in mines
+which too well repaid this labor; and human life was the item of least
+account in the estimate of the Conquerors.  Under his Incas, the Peruvian
+was never suffered to be idle; but the task imposed on him was always
+proportioned to his strength.  He had his seasons of rest and refreshment,
+and was well protected against the inclemency of the weather.  Every
+care was shown for his personal safety.  But the Spaniards, while they
+taxed the strength of the native to the utmost, deprived him of the means
+of repairing it, when exhausted.  They suffered the provident
+arrangements of the Incas to fall into decay.  The granaries were
+emptied; the flocks were wasted in riotous living.  They were slaughtered
+to gratify a mere epicurean whim, and many a llama was destroyed solely
+for the sake of the brains----a dainty morsel, much coveted by the
+Spaniards.4  So reckless was the spirit of destruction after the Conquest,
+says Ondegardo.  the wise governor of Cuzco, that in four years more of
+these animals perished than in four hundred, in the times of the Incas.5
+The flocks, once so numerous over the broad table-lands, were now
+thinned to a scanty number, that sought shelter in the fastnesses of the
+Andes.  The poor Indian, without food, without the warm fleece which
+furnished him a defence against the cold, now wandered half-starved and
+naked over the plateau.  Even those who had aided the Spaniards in the
+conquest fared no better; and many an Inca noble roamed a mendicant
+over the lands where he once held rule, and if driven, perchance, by his
+necessities, to purloin something from the superfluity of his conquerors,
+he expiated it by a miserable death.6
+
+It is true, there were good men, missionaries, faithful to their calling,
+who wrought hard in the spiritual conversion of the native, and who,
+touched by his misfortunes, would gladly have interposed their arm to
+shield him from his oppressors.7  But too often the ecclesiastic became
+infected by the general spirit of licentiousness; and the religious
+fraternities, who led a life of easy indulgence on the lands cultivated by
+their Indian slaves, were apt to think less of the salvation of their souls
+than of profiting by the labor of their bodies.8
+
+Yet still there were not wanting good and wise men in the colonies, who,
+from time to time, raised the voice of remonstrance against these abuses,
+and who carried their complaints to the foot of the throne.  To the credit
+of the government, it must also be confessed, that it was solicitous to
+obtain such information as it could, both from its own officers, and from
+commissioners deputed expressly for the purpose, whose voluminous
+communications throw a flood of light on the internal condition of the
+country, and furnish the best materials for the historian.9  But it was
+found much easier to get this information than to profit by it.
+
+In 1541, Charles the Fifth, who had been much occupied by the affairs of
+Germany, revisited his ancestral dominions, where his attention was
+imperatively called to the state of the colonies.  Several memorials in
+relation to it were laid before him; but no one pressed the matter so
+strongly on the royal conscience as Las Casas, afterwards Bishop of
+Chiapa.  This good ecclesiastic, whose long life had been devoted to
+those benevolent labors which gained him the honorable title of
+Protector of the Indians, had just completed his celebrated treatise on the
+Destruction of the Indies, the most remarkable record, probably, to be
+found, of human wickedness, but which, unfortunately, loses much of its
+effect from the credulity of the writer, and his obvious tendency to
+exaggerate.
+
+In 1542, Las Casas placed his manuscript in the hands of his royal aster.
+That same year, a council was called at Valladolid, composed chiefly of
+jurists and theologians, to devise a system of laws for the regulation of
+the American colonies.
+
+Las Casas appeared before this body, and made an elaborate argument,
+of which a part only has been given to the public.  He there assumes, as a
+fundamental proposition, that the Indians were by the law of nature free;
+that, as vassals of the Crown, they had a right to its protection, and
+should be declared free from that time, without exception and for ever.10
+He sustains this proposition by a great variety of arguments,
+comprehending the substance of most that has been since urged in the
+same cause by the friends of humanity.  He touches on the ground of
+expediency, showing, that, without the interference of government, the
+Indian race must be gradually exterminated by the systematic oppression
+of the Spaniards.  In conclusion, he maintains, that, if the Indians, as it
+was pretended, would not labor unless compelled, the white man would
+still find it for his interest to cultivate the soil; and that if he should not
+be able to do so, that circumstance would give him no right over the
+Indian, since God does not allow evil that good may come of it.11--This
+lofty morality, it will be remembered, was from the lips of a Dominican,
+in the sixteenth century, one of the order that rounded the Inquisition,
+and in the very country where the fiery tribunal was then in most active
+operation!12
+
+The arguments of Las Casas encountered all the opposition naturally to
+be expected from indifference, selfishness, and bigotry.  They were also
+resisted by some persons of just and benevolent views in his audience,
+who, while they admitted the general correctness of his reasoning, and
+felt deep sympathy for the wrongs of the natives, yet doubted whether his
+scheme of reform was not fraught with greater evils than those it was
+intended to correct.  For Las Casas was the uncompromising friend of
+freedom.  He intrenched himself strongly on the ground of natural right;
+and, like some of the reformers of our own day, disdained to calculate
+the consequences of carrying out the principle to its full and unqualified
+extent.  His earnest eloquence, instinct with the generous love of
+humanity, and fortified by a host of facts, which it was not easy to assail,
+prevailed over his auditors.  The result of their deliberations was a code
+of ordinances, which, however, far from being limited to the wants of the
+natives, had particular reference to the European population, and the
+distractions of the country.  It was of general application to all the
+American colonies.  It will be necessary here only to point out some of
+the provisions having immediate reference to Peru.
+
+The Indians were declared true and loyal vassals of the Crown, and their
+freedom as such was fully recognized.  Yet, to maintain inviolate the
+guaranty of the government to the Conquerors, it was decided, that those
+lawfully possessed of slaves might still retain them; but, at the death of
+the present proprietors, they were to revert to the Crown.
+
+It was provided, however, that slaves, in any event, should be forfeited
+by all those who had shown themselves unworthy to hold them by
+neglect or ill-usage; by all public functionaries, or such as had held
+offices under the government; by ecclesiastics and religious
+corporations; and lastly,--a sweeping clause,--by all who had taken a
+criminal part in the feuds of Almagro and Pizarro.
+
+It was further ordered, that the Indians should be moderately taxed; that
+they should not be compelled to labor where they did not choose, and
+that where, from particular circumstances, this was made necessary, they
+should receive a fair compensation.  It was also decreed, that, as the
+repartimientos of land were often excessive, they should in such cases be
+reduced; and that, where proprietors had been guilty of a notorious abuse
+of their slaves, their estates should be forfeited altogether.
+
+As Peru had always shown a spirit of insubordination, which required a
+more vigorous interposition of authority than was necessary in the other
+colonies, it was resolved to send a viceroy to that country, who should
+display a state, and be armed with powers, that might make him a more
+fitting representative of the sovereign.  He was to be accompanied by a
+Royal Audience, consisting of four judges, with extensive powers of
+jurisdiction, both criminal and civil, who, besides a court of justice,
+should constitute a sort of council to advise with and aid the viceroy.
+The Audience of Panama was to be dissolved, and the new tribunal,
+with the vice-king's court, was to be established at Los Reyes, or Lima,
+as it now began to be called,---henceforth the metropolis of the Spanish
+empire on the Pacific.13
+
+Such were some of the principal features of this remarkable code, which,
+touching on the most delicate relations of society, broke up the very
+foundations of property, and, by a stroke of the pen, as it were, converted
+a nation of slaves into freemen.  It would have required, we may
+suppose, but little forecast to divine, that in the remote regions of
+America, and especially in Peru, where the colonists had been hitherto
+accustomed to unbounded license, a reform, so salutary in essential
+points, could be enforced thus summarily only at the price of a
+revolution.  Yet the ordinances received the sanction of the emperor that
+same year, and in November, 1543, were published at Madrid.14
+
+No sooner was their import known than it was conveyed by numerous
+letters to the colonists, from their friends in Spain.  The tidings flew like
+wildfire over the land, from Mexico to Chili.  Men were astounded at the
+prospect of the ruin that awaited them.  In Peru, particularly, there was
+scarcely one that could hope to escape the operation of the law.  Few
+there were who had not taken part, at some time or other, in the civil
+feuds of Almagro and Pizarro; and still fewer of those that remained that
+would not be entangled in some one or other of the insidious clauses that
+seemed spread out, like a web, to ensnare them.
+
+The whole country was thrown into commotion.  Men assembled
+tumultuously in the squares and public places, and, as the regulations
+were made known they were received with universal groans and hisses.
+"Is this the fruit," they cried, "of all our toil?  Is it for this that we have
+poured out our blood like water?  Now that we are broken down by
+hardships and sufferings, to be left at the end of our campaigns as poor
+as at the beginning!  Is this the way government rewards our services in
+winning for it an empire?  The government has done little to aid us in
+making the conquest, and for what we have we may thank our own good
+swords; and with these same swords," they continued, warming into
+menace, "we know how to defend it."  Then, stripping up his sleeve, the
+war-worn veteran bared his arm, or, exposing his naked bosom, pointed
+to his scars, as the best title to his estates.15
+
+The governor, Vaca de Castro, watched the storm thus gathering from all
+quarters, with the deepest concern.  He was himself in the very heart of
+disaffection; for Cuzco, tenanted by a mixed and lawless population was
+so far removed into the depths of the mountains, that it had much less
+intercourse with the parent country, and was consequently much less
+under her influence, than the great towns on the coast.  The people now
+invoked the governor to protect them against the tyranny of the Court;
+but he endeavored to calm the agitation by representing, that by these
+violent measures they would only defeat their own object.  He counselled
+them to name deputies to lay their petition before the Crown, stating the
+impracticability of the present scheme of reform, and praying for the
+repeal of it; and he conjured them to wait patiently for the arrival of the
+viceroy, who might be prevailed on to suspend the ordinances till further
+advices could be received from Castile.
+
+But it was not easy to still the tempest; and the people now eagerly
+looked for some one whose interests and sympathies might lie with
+theirs, and whose position in the community might afford them
+protection.  The person to whom they naturally turned in this crisis was
+Gonzalo Pizarro, the last in the land of that family who had led the
+armies of the Conquest,--a cavalier whose gallantry and popular manners
+had made him always a favorite with the people.  He was now beset with
+applications to interpose in their behalf with the government, and shield
+them from the oppressive ordinances.
+
+But Gonzalo Pizarro was at Charcas, busily occupied in exploring the
+rich veins of Potosi, whose silver fountains, just brought into light, were
+soon to pour such streams of wealth over Europe.  Though gratified with
+this appeal to his protection, the cautious cavalier was more intent on
+providing for the means of enterprise than on plunging prematurely into
+it; and, while he secretly encouraged the malecontents, he did not
+commit himself by taking part in any revolutionary movement.  At the
+same period, he received letters from Vaca de Castro,--whose vigilant
+eye watched all the aspects of the time,---cautioning Gonzalo and his
+friends not to be seduced, by any wild schemes of reform, from their
+allegiance.  And, to check still further these disorderly movements, he
+ordered his alcaldes to arrest every man guilty of seditious language, and
+bring him at once to punishment.  By this firm yet temperate conduct the
+minds of the populace were overawed, and there was a temporary lull in
+the troubled waters, while all looked anxiously for the coming of the
+viceroy.16
+
+The person selected for this critical post was a knight of Avila, named
+Blasco Nunez Vela.  He was a cavalier of ancient family, handsome in
+person, though now somewhat advanced in years, and reputed brave and
+devout.  He had filled some offices of responsibility to the satisfaction of
+Charles the Fifth, by whom he was now appointed to this post in Peru.
+The selection did no credit to the monarch's discernment.
+
+It may seem strange that this important place should not have been
+bestowed on Vaca de Castro, already on the spot, and who had shown
+himself so well qualified to fill it.  But ever since that officer's mission to
+Peru, there had been a series of assassinations, insurrections, and civil
+wars, that menaced the wretched colony with ruin; and, though his wise
+administration had now brought things into order, the communication
+with the Indies was so tardy, that the results of his policy were not yet
+fully disclosed.  As it was designed, moreover, to make important
+innovations in the government, it was thought better to send some one
+who would have no personal prejudices to encounter, from the part he
+had already taken, and who, coming directly from the Court, and clothed
+with extraordinary powers, might present himself with greater authority
+than could one who had become familiar to the people in an inferior
+capacity.  The monarch, however, wrote a letter with his own hand to,
+Vaca de Castro in which he thanked that officer for his past services, and
+directed him, after aiding the new viceroy with the fruits of his large
+experience, to return to Castile, and take his seat in the Royal Council.
+Letters of a similar complimentary kind were sent to the loyal colonists
+who had stood by the governor in the late troubles of the country.
+Freighted with these testimonials, and with the ill-starred ordinances,
+Blasco Nunez embarked at San Lucar, on the 3d of November, 1543.  He
+was attended by the four judges of the Audience, and by a numerous
+retinue, that he might appear in the state befitting his distinguished
+rank.17
+
+About the middle of the following January, 1544, the viceroy, after a
+favorable passage, landed at Nombre de Dios.  He found there a vessel
+laden with silver from the Peruvian mines, ready to sail for Spain.  His
+first act was to lay an embargo on it for the government, as containing
+the proceeds of slave labor.  After this extraordinary measure, taken in
+opposition to the advice of the Audience, he crossed the Isthmus to
+Panama.  Here he gave sure token of his future policy, by causing more
+than three hundred Indians, who had been brought by their owners from
+Peru, to be liberated and sent back to their own country.  This
+highhanded measure created the greatest sensation in the city, and was
+strongly resisted by the judges of the Audience.  They besought him not
+to begin thus precipitately to execute his commission, but to wait till his
+arrival in the colony, when he should have taken time to acquaint himself
+somewhat with the country, and with the temper of the people.  But
+Blasco Nunez coldly replied, that "he had come, not to tamper with the
+laws, nor to discuss their merits, but to execute them,--and execute them
+he would, to the letter, whatever might be the consequence."18  This
+answer, and the peremptory tone in which it was delivered, promptly
+adjourned the debate; for the judges saw that debate was useless with one
+who seemed to consider all remonstrance as an attempt to turn him from
+his duty, and whose ideas of duty precluded all discretionary exercise of
+authority, even where the public good demanded it.
+
+Leaving the Audience, as one of its body was ill, at Panama, the viceroy
+proceeded on his way, and, coasting down the shores of the Pacific, on
+the fourth of March he disembarked at Tumbez.  He was well received
+by the loyal inhabitants; his authority was publicly proclaimed, and the
+people were overawed by the display of a magnificence and state such as
+had not till then been seen in Peru.  He took an early occasion to intimate
+his future line of policy by liberating a number of Indian slaves on the
+application of their caciques.  He then proceeded by land towards the
+south, and showed his determination to conform in his own person to the
+strict letter of the ordinances, by causing his baggage to be carried by
+mules, where it was practicable; and where absolutely necessary to make
+use of Indians, he paid them fairly for their services.19
+
+The whole country was thrown into consternation by reports of the
+proceedings of the viceroy, and of his conversations, most unguarded,
+which were eagerly circulated, and, no doubt, often exaggerated.
+Meetings were again called in the cities.  Discussions were held on the
+expediency of resisting his further progress, and a deputation of citizens
+from Cuzco, who were then in Lima, strongly urged the people to close
+the gates of that capital against him.  But Vaca de Castro had also left
+Cuzco for the latter city, on the earliest intimation of the viceroy's
+approach, and, with some difficulty, he prevailed on the inhabitants not
+to swerve from their loyalty, but to receive their new ruler with suitable
+honors, and trust to his calmer judgment for postponing the execution of
+the law till the case could be laid before the throne.
+
+But the great body of the Spaniards, after what they had heard, had
+slender confidence in the relief to be obtained from this quarter.  They
+now turned with more eagerness than ever towards Gonzalo Pizarro; and
+letters and addresses poured in upon him from all parts of the country,
+inviting him to take on himself the office of their protector.  These
+applications found a more favorable response than on the former
+occasion.
+
+There were, indeed, many motives at work to call Gonzalo into action.  It
+was to his family, mainly, that Spain was indebted for this extension of
+her colonial empire; and he had felt deeply aggrieved that the
+government of the colony should be trusted to other hands than his.  He
+had felt this on the arrival of Vaca de Castro, and much more so when
+the appointment of a viceroy proved it to be the settled policy of the
+Crown to exclude his family from the management of affairs.  His
+brother Hernando still languished in prison, and he himself was now to
+be sacrificed as the principal victim of the fatal ordinances.  For who had
+taken so prominent a part in the civil war with the elder Almagro?  And
+the viceroy was currently reported--it may have been scandal---to have
+intimated that Pizarro would be dealt with accordingly.20  Yet there was
+no one in the country who had so great a stake, who had so much to lose
+by the revolution.  Abandoned thus by the government, he conceived that
+it was now time to take care of himself.
+
+Assembling together some eighteen or twenty cavaliers in whom he most
+trusted, and taking a large amount of silver, drawn from the mines, he
+accepted the invitation to repair to Cuzco.  As he approached this capital,
+he was met by a numerous body of the citizens, who came out to
+welcome him, making the air ring with their shouts, as they saluted him
+with the title of Procurator-General of Peru.  The title was speedily
+confirmed by the municipality of the city, who invited him to head a
+deputation to Lima, in order to state their grievances to the viceroy, and
+solicit the present suspension of the ordinances.
+
+But the spark of ambition was kindled in the bosom of Pizarro.  He felt
+strong in the affections of the people; and, from the more elevated
+position in which he now stood, his desires took a loftier and more
+unbounded range.  Yet, if he harbored a criminal ambition in his breast,
+he skilfully veiled it from others--perhaps from himself.  The only object
+he professed to have in view was the good of the people;21 a suspicious
+phrase, usually meaning the good of the individual.  He now demanded
+permission to raise and organize an armed force, with the further title of
+Captain-General.  His views were entirely pacific; but it was not safe,
+unless strongly protected, to urge them on a person of the viceroy's
+impatient and arbitrary temper.  It was further contended by Pizarro's
+friends, that such a force was demanded, to rid the country of their old
+enemy, the Inca Manco, who hovered in the neighboring mountains with
+a body of warriors, ready, at the first opportunity, to descend on the
+Spaniards.  The municipality of Cuzco hesitated, as well it might, to
+confer powers so far beyond its legitimate authority.  But Pizarro avowed
+his purpose, in case of refusal, to decline the office of Procurator; and
+the efforts of his partisans, backed by those of the people, at length
+silenced the scruples of the magistrates, who bestowed on the ambitious
+chief the military command to which he aspired.  Pizarro accepted it with
+the modest assurance, that he did so "purely from regard to the interests
+of the king, of the Indies, and, above all, of Peru!" 22
+
+
+
+Book 4
+
+Chapter 8
+
+The Viceroy Arrives At Lima--Gonzalo Pizarro Marches From Cuzco--
+Death Of The Inca Manco--Rash Conduct Of The Viceroy--
+Seized And Deposed By The Audience--
+Gonzalo Proclaimed Governor Of Peru
+
+1544
+
+While the events recorded in the preceding pages were in progress,
+Blasco Nunez had been journeying towards Lima.  But the alienation
+which his conduct had already caused in the minds of the colonists was
+shown in the cold reception which he occasionally experienced on the
+route, and in the scanty accommodations provided for him and his
+retinue.  In one place where he took up his quarters, he found an ominous
+inscription over the door:--"He that takes my property must expect to pay
+for it with his life." 1  Neither daunted, nor diverted from his purpose,
+the inflexible viceroy held on his way towards the capital, where the
+inhabitants, preceded by Vaca de Castro and the municipal authorities,
+came out to receive him.  He entered in great state, under a canopy of
+crimson cloth, embroidered with the arms of Spain, and supported by
+stout poles or staves of solid silver, which were borne by the members of
+the municipality.  A cavalier, holding a mace, the emblem of authority,
+rode before him; and after the oaths of office were administered in the
+council-chamber, the procession moved towards the cathedral, where Te
+Deum was sung, and Blasco Nunez was installed in his new dignity of
+viceroy of Peru.2
+
+His first act was to proclaim his determination in respect to the
+ordinances.  He had no warrant to suspend their execution.  He should
+fulfil his commission; but he offered to join the colonists in a memorial
+to the emperor, soliciting the repeal of a code which he now believed
+would be for the interests neither of the country nor of the Crown.3
+With this avowed view of the subject, it may seem strange that Blasco
+Nunez should not have taken the responsibility of suspending the law
+until his sovereign could be assured of the inevitable consequences of
+enforcing it.  The pacha of a Turkish despot, who had allowed himself
+this latitude for the interests of his master, might, indeed, have reckoned
+on the bowstring.  But the example of Mendoza, the prudent viceroy of
+Mexico who adopted this course in a similar crisis, and precisely at the
+same period, showed its propriety under existing circumstances.  The
+ordinances were suspended by him till the Crown could be warned of the
+consequences of enforcing them,--and Mexico was saved from
+revolution.4  But Blasco Nunez had not the wisdom of Mendoza.
+
+The public apprehension was now far from being allayed.  Secret cabals
+were formed in Lima, and communications held with the different towns.
+No distrust, however, was raised in the breast of the viceroy, and, when
+informed of the preparations of Gonzalo Pizarro, he took no other step
+than to send a message to his camp, announcing the extraordinary
+powers with which he was himself invested, and requiring that chief to
+disband his forces.  He seemed to think that a mere word from him
+would be sufficient to dissipate rebellion.  But it required more than a
+breath to scatter the iron soldiery of Peru.
+
+Gonzalo Pizarro, meanwhile, was busily occupied in mustering his army.
+His first step was to order from Guamanga sixteen pieces of artillery,
+sent there by Vaca de Castro, who, in the present state of excitement,
+was unwilling to trust the volatile people of Cuzco with these implements
+of destruction.  Gonzalo, who had no scruples as to Indian labor,
+appropriated six thousand of the natives to the service of transporting
+this train of ordnance across the mountains.5
+
+By his exertions and those of his friends, the active chief soon mustered
+a force of nearly four hundred men, which, if not very imposing in the
+outset, he conceived would be swelled, in his descent to the coast, by
+tributary levies from the towns and villages on the way.  All his own
+funds were expended in equipping his men and providing for the march;
+and, to supply deficiencies, he made no scruple---since, to use his words,
+it was for the public interest--to appropriate the moneys in the royal
+treasury.  With this seasonable aid, his troops, well mounted and
+thoroughly equipped, were put in excellent fighting order; and, after
+making them a brief harangue, in which he was careful to insist on the
+pacific character of his enterprise, somewhat at variance with its military
+preparations, Gonzalo Pizarro sallied forth from the gates of the capital.
+
+Before leaving it, he received an important accession of strength in the
+person of Francisco de Carbajal, the veteran who performed so
+conspicuous a part in the battle of Chupas.  He was at Charcas when the
+news of the ordinances reached Peru; and he instantly resolved to quit
+the country and return to Spain, convinced that the New World would be
+no longer the land for him,--no longer the golden Indies.  Turning his
+effects into money, he prepared to embark them on board the first ship
+that offered.  But no opportunity occurred, and he could have little
+expectation now of escaping the vigilant eye of the viceroy.  Yet, though
+solicited by Pizarro to take command under him in the present
+expedition, the veteran declined, saying, he was eighty years old, and had
+no wish but to return home, and spend his few remaining days in quiet.6
+Well had it been for him, had he persisted in his refusal.  But he yielded
+to the importunities of his friend; and the short space that yet remained to
+him of life proved long enough to brand his memory with perpetual
+infamy.
+
+Soon after quitting Cuzco, Pizarro learned the death of the Inca Manco.
+He was massacred by a party of Spaniards, of the faction of Almagro,
+who, on the defeat of their young leader, had taken refuge in the Indian
+camp.  They, in turn, were all slain by the Peruvians.  It is impossible to
+determine on whom the blame of the quarrel should rest, since no one
+present at the time has recorded it.7
+
+The death of Manco Inca, as he was commonly called, is an event not to
+be silently passed over in Peruvian history; for he was the last of his race
+that may be said to have been animated by the heroic spirit of the ancient
+Incas.  Though placed on the throne by Pizarro, far from remaining a
+mere puppet in his hands, Manco soon showed that his lot was not to be
+cast with that of his conquerors.  With the ancient institutions of his
+country lying a wreck around him, he yet struggled bravely, like
+Guatemozin, the last of the Aztecs, to uphold her tottering fortunes, or to
+bury his oppressors under her ruins.  By the assault on his own capital of
+Cuzco, in which so large a portion of it was demolished, he gave a check
+to the arms of Pizarro, and, for a season, the fate of the Conquerors
+trembled in the balance.  Though foiled, in the end, by the superior
+science of his adversary, the young barbarian still showed the same
+unconquerable spirit as before.  He withdrew into the fastnesses of his
+native mountains, whence sallying forth as occasion offered, he fell on
+the caravan of the traveller, or on some scattered party of the military;
+and, in the event of a civil war, was sure to throw his own weight into the
+weaker scale, thus prolonging the contest of his enemies, and feeding his
+revenge by the sight of their calamities.  Moving lightly from spot to
+spot, he eluded pursuit amidst the wilds of the Cordilleras; and, hovering
+in the neighborhood of the towns, or lying in ambush on the great
+thoroughfares of the country, the Inca Manco made his name a terror to
+the Spaniards.  Often did they hold out to him terms of accommodation;
+and every succeeding ruler, down to Blasco Nunez, bore instructions
+from the Crown to employ every art to conciliate the formidable warrior.
+But Manco did not trust the promises of the white man; and he chose
+rather to maintain his savage independence in the mountains, with the
+few brave spirits around him, than to live a slave in the land which had
+once owned the sway of his ancestors.
+
+The death of the Inca removed one of the great pretexts for Gonzalo
+Pizarro's military preparations; but it had little influence on him, as may
+be readily imagined.  He was much more sensible to the desertion of
+some of his followers, which took place early on the march.  Several of
+the cavaliers of Cuzco, startled by his unceremonious appropriation of
+the public moneys, and by the belligerent aspect of affairs, now for the
+first time seemed to realize that they were in the path of rebellion.  A
+number of these, including some principal men of the city, secretly
+withdrew from the army, and, hastening to Lima, offered their services to
+the viceroy.  The troops were disheartened by this desertion, and even
+Pizarro for a moment faltered in his purpose, and thought of retiring with
+some fifty followers to Charcas, and there making his composition with
+government.  But a little reflection, aided by the remonstrances of the
+courageous Carbajal, who never turned his back on an enterprise which
+he had once assumed, convinced him that he had gone too far to recede,-
+-that his only safety was to advance.
+
+He was reassured by more decided manifestations, which he soon after
+received, of the public opinion.  An officer named Puelles, who
+commanded at Guanuco, joined him, with a body of horse with which he
+had been intrusted by the viceroy.  This defection was followed by that
+of others, and Gonzalo, as he descended the sides of the table-land,
+found his numbers gradually swelled to nearly double the amount with
+which he had left the Indian capital.
+
+As he traversed with a freer step the bloody field of Chupas, Carbajal
+pointed out the various localities of the battle-ground, and Pizarro might
+have found food for anxious reflection, as he meditated on the fortunes
+of a rebel.  At Guamanga he was received with open arms by the
+inhabitants, many of whom eagerly enlisted under his banner; for they
+trembled for their property, as they heard from all quarters of the
+inflexible temper of the viceroy.8
+
+That functionary began now to be convinced that he was in a critical
+position.  Before Puelles's treachery, above noticed, had been
+consummated, the viceroy had received some vague intimation of his
+purpose.  Though scarcely crediting it, he detached one of his company,
+named Diaz, with a force to intercept him.  But, although that cavalier
+undertook the mission with alacrity, he was soon after prevailed on to
+follow the example of his comrade, and, with the greater part of the men
+under his command, went over to the enemy.  In the civil feuds of this
+unhappy land, parties changed sides so lightly, that treachery to a
+commander had almost ceased to be a stain on the honor of a cavalier.
+Yet all, on whichever side they cast their fortunes, loudly proclaimed
+their loyalty to the Crown.
+
+Thus betrayed by his own men, by those apparently most devoted to his
+service, Blasco Nunez became suspicious of every one around him.
+Unfortunately, his suspicions fell on some who were most deserving of
+his confidence.  Among these was his predecessor, Vaca de Castro.  That
+officer had conducted himself, in the delicate situation in which he had
+been placed, with his usual discretion, and with perfect integrity and
+honor.  He had frankly communicated with the viceroy, and well had it
+been for Blasco Nunez, if he had known how to profit by it.  But he was
+too much puffed up by the arrogance of office, and by the conceit of his
+own superior wisdom, to defer much to the counsels of his experienced
+predecessor.  The latter was now suspected by the viceroy of maintaining
+a secret correspondence with his enemies at Cuzco,--a suspicion which
+seems to have had no better foundation than the personal friendship
+which Vaca de Castro was known to entertain for these individuals.  But,
+with Blasco Nunez, to suspect was to be convinced; and he ordered De
+Castro to be placed under arrest, and confined on board of a vessel lying
+in the harbor.  This high-handed measure was followed by the arrest and
+imprisonment of several other cavaliers, probably on grounds equally
+frivolous.9
+
+He now turned his attention towards the enemy.  Notwithstanding his
+former failure, he still did not altogether despair of effecting something
+by negotiation, and he sent another embassy, having the bishop of Lima
+at its head, to Gonzalo Pizarro's camp, with promises of a general
+amnesty, and some proposals of a more tempting character to the
+commander.  But this step, while it proclaimed his own weakness, had no
+better success than the preceding.10
+
+The viceroy now vigorously prepared for war.  His first care was to put
+the capital in a posture of defence, by strengthening its fortifications, and
+throwing barricades across the streets.  He ordered a general enrolment
+of the citizens, and called in levies from the neighboring towns,-a call
+not very promptly answered.  A squadron of eight or ten vessels was got
+ready in the port to act in concert with the land forces.  The bells were
+taken from the churches, and used in the manufacture of muskets;11 and
+funds were procured from the fifths which had accumulated in the royal
+treasury.  The most extravagant bounty was offered to the soldiers, and
+prices were paid for mules and horses, which showed that gold, or rather
+silver, was the commodity of least value in Peru.12  By these efforts, the
+active commander soon assembled a force considerably larger than that
+of his adversary.  But how could he confide in it?
+
+While these preparations were going forward, the judges of the Audience
+arrived at Lima.  They had shown, throughout their progress, no great
+respect either for the ordinances, or the will of the viceroy; for they had
+taxed the poor natives as freely and unscrupulously as any of the
+Conquerors.  We have seen the entire want of cordiality subsisting
+between them and their principal in Panama.  It became more apparent,
+on their landing at Lima.  They disapproved of his proceedings in every
+particular; of his refusal to suspend the ordinances,--although, in fact, he
+had found no opportunity, of late, to enforce them; of his preparations
+for defence, declaring that he ought rather trust to the effect of
+negotiation; and, finally, of his imprisonment of so many loyal cavaliers,
+which they pronounced an arbitrary act, altogether beyond the bounds of
+his authority; and they did not scruple to visit the prison in person, and
+discharge the captives from their confinement.13
+
+This bold proceeding, while it conciliated the good-will of the people,
+severed, at once, all relations with the viceroy.  There was in the
+Audience a lawyer, named Cepeda, a cunning, ambitious man, with
+considerable knowledge in the way of his profession, and with still
+greater talent for intrigue.  He did not disdain the low arts of a
+demagogue to gain the favor of the populace, and trusted to find his own
+account in fomenting a misunderstanding with Blasco Nunez.  The latter,
+it must be confessed, did all in his power to aid his counsellor in this
+laudable design.
+
+A certain cavalier in the place, named Suarez de Carbajal, who had long
+held an office under government, fell under the viceroy's displeasure, on
+suspicion of conniving at the secession of some of his kinsmen, who had
+lately taken part with the malecontents.  The viceroy summoned Carbajal
+to attend him at his palace, late at night; and when conducted to his
+presence, he bluntly charged him with treason.  The latter stoutly denied
+the accusation, in tones as haughty as those of his accuser.  The
+altercation grew warm, until, in the heat of passion, Blasco Nunez struck
+him with his poniard.  In an instant, the attendants, taking this as a signal,
+plunged their swords into the body of the unfortunate man, who fell
+lifeless on the floor.14
+
+Greatly alarmed for the consequences of his rash act,--for Carbajal was
+much beloved in Lima,--Blasco Nunez ordered the corpse of the
+murdered man to be removed by a private stairway from the house, and
+carried to the cathedral, where, rolled in his bloody cloak, it was laid in a
+grave hastily dug to receive it.  So tragic a proceeding, known to so
+many witnesses, could not long be kept secret.  Vague rumors of the fact
+explained the mysterious disappearance of Carbajal.  The grave was
+opened, and the mangled remains of the slaughtered cavalier established
+the guilt of the viceroy.15
+
+From this hour Blasco Nunez was held in universal abhorrence; and his
+crime, in this instance, assumed the deeper dye of ingratitude, since the
+deceased was known to have had the greatest influence in reconciling the
+citizens early to his government.  No one knew where the blow would
+fall next, or how soon he might himself become the victim of the
+ungovernable passions of the viceroy.  In this state of things, some
+looked to the Audience, and yet more to Gonzalo Pizarro, to protect
+them.
+
+That chief was slowly advancing towards Lima, from which, indeed, he
+was removed but a few days' march.  Greatly perplexed, Blasco Nunez
+now felt the loneliness of his condition.  Standing aloof, as it were from
+his own followers, thwarted by the Audience, betrayed by his soldiers, he
+might well feel the consequences of his misconduct.  Yet there seemed
+no other course for him, but either to march out and meet the enemy, or
+to remain in Lima and defend it.  He had placed the town in a posture of
+defence, which argued this last to have been his original purpose.  But he
+felt he could no longer rely on his troops, and he decided on a third
+course, most unexpected.
+
+This was to abandon the capital, and withdraw to Truxillo, about eighty
+leagues distant.  The women would embark on board the squadron, and,
+with the effects of the citizens, be transported by water.  The troops, with
+the rest of the inhabitants, would march by land, laying waste the country
+as they proceeded.  Gonzalo Pizarro, when he arrived at Lima, would
+find it without supplies for his army, and, thus straitened he would not
+care to take a long march across a desert in search of his enemy.16
+
+What the viceroy proposed to effect by this movement is not clear,
+unless it were to gain time; and yet the more time he had gained, thus far,
+the worse it had proved for him.  But he was destined to encounter a
+decided opposition from the judges.  They contended that he had no
+warrant for such an act, and that the Audience could not lawfully hold its
+sessions out of the capital.  Blasco Nunez persisted in his determination,
+menacing that body with force, if necessary.  The judges appealed to the
+citizens to support them in resisting such an arbitrary measure.  They
+mustered a force for their own protection, and that same day passed a
+decree that the viceroy should be arrested.
+
+Late at night, Blasco Nunez was informed of the hostile preparations of
+the judges.  He instantly summoned his followers, to the number of more
+than two hundred, put on his armour, and prepared to march out at the
+head of his troops against the Audience.  This was the true course; for in
+a crisis like that in which he was placed, requiring promptness and
+decision, the presence of the leader is essential to insure success.  But,
+unluckily, he yielded to the remonstrances of his brother and other
+friends, who dissuaded him from rashly exposing his life in such a
+venture.
+
+What Blasco Nunez neglected to do was done by the judges.  They
+sallied forth at the head of their followers, whose number, though small
+at first, they felt confident would be swelled by volunteers as they
+advanced.  Rushing forward, they cried out,--"Liberty!  Liberty!  Long
+live the king and the Audience! " It was early dawn, and the inhabitants,
+startled from their slumbers, ran to the windows and balconies, and,
+learning the object of the movement, some snatched up their arms and
+joined in it, while the women, waving their scarfs and kerchiefs, cheered
+on the assault.
+
+When the mob arrived before the viceroy's palace, they halted for a
+moment, uncertain what to do.  Orders were given to fire on them from
+the windows, and a volley passed over their heads.  No one was injured;
+and the greater part of the viceroy's men, with most of the officers,
+including some of those who had been so anxious for his personal safety,
+--now openly joined the populace.  The palace was then entered, and
+abandoned to pillage.  Blasco Nunez, deserted by all but a few faithful
+adherents, made no resistance.  He surrendered to the assailants, was led
+before the judges, and by them was placed in strict confinement.  The
+citizens, delighted with the result, provided a collation for the soldiers;
+and the affair ended without the loss of a single life.  Never was there so
+bloodless a revolution.17
+
+The first business of the judges was to dispose of the prisoner.  He was
+sent, under a strong guard, to a neighboring island, till some measures
+could be taken respecting him.  He was declared to be deposed from his
+office; a provisional government was established, consisting of their own
+body, with Cepeda at its head, as president; and its first act was to
+pronounce the detested ordinances suspended, till instructions could be
+received from Court.  It was also decided to send Blasco Nunez back to
+Spain with one of their own body, who should explain to the emperor the
+nature of the late disturbances, and vindicate the measures of the
+Audience.  This was soon put in execution.  The Licentiate Alvarez was
+the person selected to bear the viceroy company; and the unfortunate
+commander, after passing several days on the desolate island, with
+scarcely any food, and exposed to all the inclemencies of the weather,
+took his departure for Panama.18
+
+A more formidable adversary yet remained in Gonzalo Pizarro, who had
+now advanced to Xauxa, about ninety miles from Lima.  Here he halted,
+while numbers of the citizens prepared to join his banner, choosing
+rather to take service under him than to remain under the selfconstituted
+authority of the Audience.  The judges, meanwhile, who had tasted the
+sweets of office too short a time to be content to resign them, after
+considerable delay, sent an embassy to the Procurator.  They announced
+to him the revolution that had taken place, and the suspension of the
+ordinances.  The great object of his mission had been thus accomplished;
+and, as a new government was now organized, they called on him to
+show his obedience to it, by disbanding his forces, and withdrawing to
+the unmolested enjoyment of his estates.  It was a bold demand, though
+couched in the most courteous and complimentary phrase,--to make of
+one in Pizarro's position.  It was attempting to scare away the eagle just
+ready to stoop on his prey.  If the chief had faltered, however, he would
+have been reassured by his lion-hearted lieutenant.  "Never show faint
+heart," exclaimed the latter, "when you are so near the goal.  Success has
+followed every step of your path.  You have now only to stretch forth
+your hand, and seize the government.  Every thing else will follow."--
+The envoy who brought the message from the judges was sent back with
+the answer, that "the people had called Gonzalo Pizarro to the
+government of the country, and, if the Audience did not at once invest
+him with it, the city should be delivered up to pillage." 19
+
+The bewildered magistrates were thrown into dismay by this decisive
+answer.  Yet loth to resign, they took counsel in their perplexity of Vaca
+de Castro, still detained on board of one of the vessels.  But that
+commander had received too little favor at the hands of his successors to
+think it necessary to peril his life on their account by thwarting the plans
+of Pizarro.  He maintained a discreet silence, therefore, and left the
+matter to the wisdom of the Audience.
+
+Meanwhile, Carbajal was sent into the city to quicken their deliberations.
+He came at night, attended only by a small party of soldiers, intimating
+his contempt of the power of the judges.  His first act was to seize a
+number of cavaliers, whom he dragged from their beds, and placed under
+arrest.  They were men of Cuzco, the same already noticed as having left
+Pizarro's ranks soon after his departure from that capital.  While the
+Audience still hesitated as to the course they should pursue, Carbajal
+caused three of his prisoners, persons of consideration and property, to
+be placed on the backs of mules, and escorted out of town to the suburbs,
+where, with brief space allowed for confession, he hung them all on the
+branches of a tree.  He superintended the execution himself, and
+tauntingly complimented one of his victims, by telling him, that, "in
+consideration of his higher rank, he should have the privilege of selecting
+the bough on which to be hanged!"20  The ferocious officer would have
+proceeded still further in his executions, it is said, had it not been for
+orders received from his leader.  But enough was done to quicken the
+perceptions of the Audience as to their course, for they felt their own
+lives suspended by a thread in such unscrupulous hands.  Without further
+delay, therefore, they sent to invite Gonzalo Pizarro to enter the city,
+declaring that the security of the country and the general good required
+the government to be placed in his hands.21
+
+That chief had now advanced within half a league of the capital, which
+soon after, on the twenty-eighth of October, 1544, he entered in battle-
+array.  His whole force was little short of twelve hundred Spaniards,
+besides several thousand Indians, who dragged his heavy guns in the
+advance.22  Then came the files of spearmen and arquebusiers, making a
+formidable corps of infantry for a colonial army; and lastly, the cavalry,
+at the head of which rode Pizarro himself, on a powerful charger, gaily
+caparisoned.  The rider was in complete mail, over which floated a richly
+embroidered surcoat, and his head was protected by a crimson cap,
+highly ornamented,--his showy livery setting off his handsome,
+soldierlike person to advantage.23  Before him was borne the royal
+standard of Castile; for every one, royalist or rebel, was careful to fight
+under that sign.  This emblem of loyalty was supported on the right by a
+banner, emblazoned with the arms of Cuzco, and by another on the left,
+displaying the armorial bearings granted by the Crown to the Pizarros.
+As the martial pageant swept through the streets of Lima, the air was rent
+with acclamations from the populace, and from the spectators in the
+balconies.  The cannon sounded at intervals, and the bells of the city--
+those that the viceroy had spared rang out a joyous peal, as if in honor of
+a victory!
+
+The oaths of office were duly administered by the judges of the Royal
+Audience, and Gonzalo Pizarro was proclaimed Governor and Captain
+General of Peru, till his Majesty's pleasure could be known in respect to
+the government.  The new ruler then took up his quarters in the palace of
+his brother,--where the stains of that brother's blood were not yet effaced.
+Fetes, bull-fights, and tournaments graced the ceremony of inauguration,
+and were prolonged for several days, while the giddy populace of the
+capital abandoned themselves to jubilee, as if a new and more auspicious
+order of things had commenced for Peru!  24
+
+
+
+Book 4
+
+Chapter 9
+
+Measures Of Gonzalo Pizarro--Escape Of Vaca De Castro--
+Reappearance Of The Viceroy--His Disastrous Retreat--
+Defeat And Death Of The Viceroy--Gonzalo Pizarro Lord Of Peru
+
+1544--1546
+
+The first act of Gonzalo Pizarro was to cause those persons to be
+apprehended who had taken the most active part against him in the late
+troubles.  Several he condemned to death; but afterwards commuted the
+sentence, and contented himself with driving them into banishment and
+confiscating their estates.1  His next concern was to establish his
+authority on a firm basis.  He filled the municipal government of Lima
+with his own partisans.  He sent his lieutenants to take charge of the
+principal cities.  He caused galleys to be built at Arequipa to secure the
+command of the seas; and brought his forces into the best possible
+condition, to prepare for future emergencies.
+
+The Royal Audience existed only in name; for its powers were speedily
+absorbed by the new ruler, who desired to place the government on the
+same footing as under the marquess, his brother.  Indeed, the Audience
+necessarily fell to pieces, from the position of its several members.
+Alvarez had been sent with the viceroy to Castile.  Cepeda, the most
+aspiring of the court, now that he had failed in his own schemes of
+ambition, was content to become a tool in the hands of the military chief
+who had displaced him.  Zarate, a third judge, who had, from the first,
+protested against the violent measures of his colleagues, was confined to
+his house by a mortal illness;2 and Tepeda, the remaining magistrate,
+Gonzalo now proposed to send back to Castile with such an account of
+the late transactions as should vindicate his own conduct in the eyes of
+the emperor.  This step was opposed by Carbajal, who bluntly told his
+commander that "he had gone too far to expect favor from the Crown;
+and that he had better rely for his vindication on his pikes and muskets!"
+3
+
+But the ship which was to transport Tepeda was found to have suddenly
+disappeared from the port.  It was the same in which Vaca de Castro was
+confined; and that officer, not caring to trust to the forbearance of one
+whose advances, on a former occasion, he had so unceremoniously
+repulsed, and convinced, moreover, that his own presence could profit
+nothing in a land where he held no legitimate authority, had prevailed on
+the captain to sail with him to Panama.  He then crossed the Isthmus, and
+embarked for Spain.  The rumors of his coming had already preceded
+him, and charges were not wanting against him from some of those
+whom he had offended by his administration.  He was accused of having
+carried measures with a high hand, regardless of the rights, both of the
+colonist and of the native; and, above all, of having embezzled the public
+moneys, and of returning with his coffers richly freighted to Castile.
+This last was an unpardonable crime.
+
+No sooner had the governor set foot in his own country than he was
+arrested, and hurried to the fortress of Arevalo; and, though he was
+afterwards removed to better quarters, where he was treated with the
+indulgence due to his rank, he was still kept a prisoner of state for twelve
+years, when the tardy tribunals of Castile pronounced a judgment in his
+favor.  He was acquitted of every charge that had been brought against
+him, and, so far from peculation, was proved to have returned home no
+richer than he went.  He was released from confinement, reinstated in his
+honors and dignities, took his seat anew in the royal council, and Vaca
+de Castro enjoyed, during the remainder of his days, the consideration to
+which he was entitled by his deserts.4  The best eulogium on the wisdom
+of his administration was afforded by the troubles brought on the
+colonies by that of his successor.  The nation became gradually sensible
+of the value of his services; though the manner in which they were
+requited by the government must be allowed to form a cold commentary
+on the gratitude of princes.
+
+Gonzalo Pizarro was doomed to experience a still greater disappointment
+than that caused by the escape of Vaca de Castro, in the return of Blasco
+Nunez.  The vessel which bore him from the country had hardly left the
+shore, when Alvarez, the judge, whether from remorse at the part which
+he had taken, or apprehensive of the consequences of carrying back the
+viceroy to Spain, presented himself before that dignitary, and announced
+that he was no longer a prisoner.  At the same time he excused himself
+for the part he had taken, by his desire to save the life of Blasco Nunez,
+and extricate him from his perilous situation.  He now placed the vessel
+at his disposal, and assured him it should take him wherever he chose.
+
+The viceroy, whatever faith he may have placed in the judge's
+explanation, eagerly availed himself of his offer.  His proud spirit
+revolted at the idea of returning home in disgrace, foiled, as he had been,
+in every object of his mission.  He determined to try his fortune again in
+the land, and his only doubt was, on what point to attempt to rally his
+partisans around him.  At Panama he might remain in safety, while he
+invoked assistance from Nicaragua, and other colonies at the north.  But
+this would be to abandon his government at once; and such a confession
+of weakness would have a bad effect on his followers in Peru.  He
+determined, therefore, to direct his steps towards Quito, which, while it
+was within his jurisdiction, was still removed far enough from the theatre
+of the late troubles to give him time to rally, and make head against his
+enemies.
+
+In pursuance of this purpose, the viceroy and his suite disembarked at
+Tumbez, about the middle of October, 1544.  On landing, he issued a
+manifesto setting forth the violent proceedings of Gonzalo Pizarro and
+his followers, whom he denounced as traitors to their prince, and he
+called on all true subjects in the colony to support him in maintaining the
+royal authority.  The call was not unheeded; and volunteers came in,
+though tardily, from San Miguel, Puerto Viejo, and other places on the
+coast, cheering the heart of the viceroy with the conviction that the
+sentiment of loyalty was not yet extinct in the bosoms of the Spaniards.
+
+But, while thus occupied, he received tidings of the arrival of one of
+Pizarro's captains on the coast, with a force superior to his own.  Their
+number was exaggerated; but Blasco Nunez, without waiting to ascertain
+the truth, abandoned his position at Tumbez, and, with as much
+expedition as he could make across a wild and mountainous country half-
+buried in snow, he marched to Quito.  But this capital, situated at the
+northern extremity of his province, was not a favorable point for the
+rendezvous of his followers; and, after prolonging his stay till he had
+received assurance from Benalcazar, the loyal commander at Popayan,
+that he would support him with all his strength in the coming conflict, he
+made a rapid countermarch to the coast, and took up his position at the
+town of San Miguel.  This was a spot well suited to his purposes, as lying
+on the great high road along the shores of the Pacific, besides being the
+chief mart for commercial intercourse with Panama and the north.
+
+Here the viceroy erected his standard, and in a few weeks found himself
+at the head of a force amounting to nearly five hundred in all, horse and
+foot, ill provided with arms and ammunition, but apparently zealous in
+the cause.  Finding himself in sufficient strength to commence active
+operations, he now sallied forth against several of Pizarro's captains in
+the neighborhood, over whom he obtained some decided advantages,
+which renewed his confidence, and flattered him with the hopes of
+reestablishing his ascendency in the country.5
+
+During this time, Gonzalo Pizarro was not idle.  He had watched with
+anxiety the viceroy's movements; and was now convinced that it was
+time to act, and that, if he would not be unseated himself, he must
+dislodge his formidable rival.  He accordingly placed a strong garrison
+under a faithful officer in Lima, and, after sending forward a force of
+some six hundred men by land to Truxillo, he embarked for the same
+port himself, on the 4th of March, 1545, the very day on which the
+viceroy had marched from Quito.
+
+At Truxillo, Pizarro put himself at the head of his little army, and moved
+without loss of time against San Miguel.  His rival, eager to bring their
+quarrel to an issue, would fain have marched out to give him battle; but
+his soldiers, mostly young and inexperienced levies, hastily brought
+together, were intimidated by the name of Pizarro.  They loudly insisted
+on being led into the upper country, where they would be reinforced by
+Benalcazar; and their unfortunate commander, like the rider of some
+unmanageable steed, to whose humors he is obliged to submit, was
+hurried away in a direction contrary to his wishes.  It was the fate of
+Blasco Nunez to have his purposes baffled alike by his friends and his
+enemies.
+
+On arriving before San Miguel, Gonzalo Pizarro found, to his great
+mortification, that his antagonist had left it.  Without entering the town,
+he quickened his pace, and, after traversing a valley of some extent,
+reached the skirts of a mountain chain, into which Blasco Nunez had
+entered but a few hours before.  It was late in the evening; but Pizarro,
+knowing the importance of despatch, sent forward Carbajal with a party
+of light troops to overtake the fugitives.  That captain succeeded in
+coming up with their lonely bivouac among the mountains at midnight,
+when the weary troops were buried in slumber.  Startled from their
+repose by the blast of the trumpet, which, strange to say, their enemy had
+incautiously sounded,6 the viceroy and his men sprang to their feet,
+mounted their horses, grasped their arquebuses, and poured such a volley
+into the ranks of their assailants, that Carbajal, disconcerted by his
+reception, found it prudent, with his inferior force, to retreat.  The
+viceroy followed, till, fearing an ambuscade in the darkness of the night,
+he withdrew, and allowed his adversary to rejoin the main body of the
+army under Pizarro.
+
+This conduct of Carbajal, by which he allowed the game to slip through
+his hands, from mere carelessness, is inexplicable.  It forms a singular
+exception to the habitual caution and vigilance displayed in his military
+career.  Had it been the act of any other captain, it would have cost him
+his head.  But Pizarro, although greatly incensed, set too high a value on
+the services and well-tried attachment of his lieutenant, to quarrel with
+him.  Still it was considered of the last importance to overtake the
+enemy, before he had advanced much farther to the north, where the
+difficulties of the ground would greatly embarrass the pursuit.  Carbajal,
+anxious to retrieve his error, was accordingly again placed at the head of
+a corps of light troops, with instructions to harass the enemy's march, cut
+off his stores, and keep him in check, if possible, till the arrival of
+Pizarro.7
+
+But the viceroy had profited by the recent delay to gain considerably on
+his pursuers.  His road led across the valley of Caxas, a broad,
+uncultivated district, affording little sustenance for man or beast.  Day
+after day, his troops held on their march through this dreary region,
+intersected with barrancas and rocky ravines that added incredibly to
+their toil.  Their principal food was the parched corn, which usually
+formed the nourishment of the travelling Indians, though held of much
+less account by the Spaniards; and this meagre fare was reinforced by
+such herbs as they found on the way-side, which, for want of better
+utensils, the soldiers were fain to boil in their helmets.8  Carbajal,
+meanwhile, pressed on them so close, that their baggage, ammunition,
+and sometimes their mules, fell into his hands.  The indefatigable warrior
+was always on their track, by day and by night, allowing them scarcely
+any repose.  They spread no tent, and lay down in their arms, with their
+steeds standing saddled beside them; and hardly had the weary soldier
+closed his eyes, when he was startled by the cry that the enemy was upon
+him.9
+
+At length, the harassed followers of Blasco Nunez reached the
+depoblado, or desert of Paltos, which stretches towards the north for
+many a dreary league.  The ground, intersected by numerous streams, has
+the character of a great quagmire, and men and horses floundered about
+in the stagnant waters, or with difficulty worked their way over the
+marsh, or opened a passage through the tangled underwood that shot up
+in rank luxuriance from the surface.  The wayworn horses, without food,
+except such as they could pick up in the wilderness, were often spent
+with travel, and, becoming unserviceable, were left to die on the road,
+with their hamstrings cut, that they might be of no use to the enemy;
+though more frequently they were despatched to afford a miserable
+banquet to their masters.10  Many of the men now fainted by the way
+from mere exhaustion, or loitered in the woods, unable to keep up with
+the march.  And woe to the straggler who fell into the hands of Carbajal,
+at least if he had once belonged to the party of Pizarro.  The mere
+suspicion of treason sealed his doom with the unrelenting soldier.11
+
+The sufferings of Pizarro and his troop were scarcely less than those of
+the viceroy; though they were somewhat mitigated by the natives of the
+country, who, with ready instinct, discerned which party was the
+strongest, and, of course, the most to be feared.  But, with every
+alleviation, the chieftain's sufferings were terrible.  It was repeating the
+dismal scenes of the expedition to the Amazon.  The soldiers of the
+Conquest must be admitted to have purchased their triumphs dearly.
+
+Yet the viceroy had one source of disquietude, greater, perhaps, than any
+arising from physical suffering.  This was the distrust of his own
+followers.  There were several of the principal cavaliers in his suite
+whom he suspected of being in correspondence with the enemy, and even
+of designing to betray him into their hands.  He was so well convinced of
+this, that he caused two of these officers to be put to death on the march;
+and their dead bodies, as they lay by the roadside, meeting the eye of the
+soldier, told him that there were others to be feared in these frightful
+solitudes besides the enemy in his rear.12
+
+Another cavalier, who held the chief command under the viceroy, was
+executed, after a more formal investigation of his case, at the first place
+where the army halted.  At this distance of time, it is impossible to
+determine how far the suspicions of Blasco Nunez were founded on
+truth.  The judgments of contemporaries are at variance.13  In times of
+political ferment, the opinion of the writer is generally determined by the
+complexion of his party.  To judge from the character of Blasco Nunez,
+jealous and irritable, we might suppose him to have acted without
+sufficient cause.  But this consideration is counterbalanced by that of the
+facility with which his followers swerved from their allegiance to their
+commander, who seems to have had so light a hold on their affections,
+that they were shaken off by the least reverse of fortune.  Whether his
+suspicions were well or ill founded, the effect was the same on the mind
+of the viceroy.  With an enemy in his rear whom he dared not fight, and
+followers whom he dared not trust, the cup of his calamities was nearly
+full.
+
+At length, he issued forth on firm ground, and, passing through
+Tomebamba, Blasco Nunez reentered his northern capital of Quito.  But
+his reception was not so cordial as that which he had before experienced.
+He now came as a fugitive, with a formidable enemy in pursuit; and he
+was soon made to feel that the surest way to receive support is not to
+need it.
+
+Shaking from his feet the dust of the disloyal city, whose superstitious
+people were alive to many an omen that boded his approaching ruin,14
+the unfortunate commander held on his way towards Pastos, in the
+jurisdiction of Benalcazar.  Pizarro and his forces entered Quito not long
+after, disappointed, that, with all his diligence, the enemy still eluded his
+pursuit.  He halted only to breathe his men, and, declaring that "he would
+follow up the viceroy to the North Sea but he would overtake him," 15
+he resumed his march.  At Pastos, he nearly accomplished his object.
+His advance-guard came up with Blasco Nunez as the latter was halting
+on the opposite bank of a rivulet.  Pizarro's men, fainting from toil and
+heat, staggered feebly to the water-side, to slake their burning thirst, and
+it would have been easy for the viceroy's troops, refreshed by repose, and
+superior in number to their foes, to have routed them.  But Blasco Nunez
+could not bring his soldiers to the charge.  They had fled so long before
+their enemy, that the mere sight of him filled their hearts with panic, and
+they would have no more thought of turning against him than the hare
+would turn against the hound that pursues her.  Their safety, they felt,
+was to fly, not to fight, and they profited by the exhaustion of their
+pursuers only to quicken their retreat.
+
+Gonzalo Pizarro continued the chase some leagues beyond Pastos; when,
+finding himself carried farther than he desired into the territories of
+Benalcazar, and not caring to encounter this formidable captain at
+disadvantage, he came to a halt, and, notwithstanding his magnificent
+vaunt about the North Sea, ordered a retreat, and made a rapid
+countermarch on Quito.  Here he found occupation in repairing the
+wasted spirits of his troops, and in strengthening himself with fresh
+reinforcements, which much increased his numbers; though these were
+again diminished by a body that he detached under Carbajal to suppress
+an insurrection, which he now learned had broken out in the south.  It
+was headed by Diego Centeno, one of his own officers, whom he had
+established in La Plata, the inhabitants of which place had joined in the
+revolt and raised the standard for the Crown.  With the rest of his forces,
+Pizarro resolved to remain at Quito, waiting the hour when the viceroy
+would reenter his dominions; as the tiger crouches by some spring in the
+wilderness, patiently waiting the return of his victims.
+
+Meanwhile Blasco Nunez had pushed forward his retreat to Popayan, the
+capital of Benalcazar's province.  Here he was kindly received by the
+people; and his soldiers, reduced by desertion and disease to one fifth of
+their original number, rested from the unparalleled fatigues of a march
+which had continued for more than two hundred leagues.16  It was not
+long before he was joined by Cabrera, Benalcazar's lieutenant with a
+stout reinforcement, and, soon after, by that chieftain himself.  His whole
+force now amounted to near four hundred men, most of them in good
+condition, and well trained in the school of American warfare.  His own
+men were sorely deficient both in arms and ammunition; and he set about
+repairing the want by building furnaces for manufacturing arquebuses
+and pikes.17--One familiar with the history of these times is surprised to
+see the readiness with which the Spanish adventurers turned their hands
+to various trades and handicrafts usually requiring a long apprenticeship.
+They displayed the dexterity so necessary to settlers in a new country,
+where every man must become in some degree his own artisan.  But this
+state of things, however favorable to the ingenuity of the artist, is not
+very propitious to the advancement of the art; and there can be little
+doubt that the weapons thus made by the soldiers of Blasco Nunez were
+of the most rude and imperfect construction.
+
+As week after week rolled away, Gonzalo Pizarro, though fortified with
+the patience of a Spanish soldier, felt uneasy at the protracted stay of
+Blasco Nunez in the north, and he resorted to stratagem to decoy him
+from his retreat.  He marched out of Quito with the greater part of his
+forces, pretending that he was going to support his lieutenant in the
+south, while he left a garrison in the city under the command of Puelles,
+the same officer who had formerly deserted from the viceroy.  These
+tidings he took care should be conveyed to the enemy's camp.  The
+artifice succeeded as he wished.  Blasco Nunez and his followers,
+confident in their superiority over Puelles, did not hesitate for a moment
+to profit by the supposed absence of Pizarro.  Abandoning Popayan, the
+viceroy, early in January, 1546, moved by rapid marches towards the
+south.  But before he reached the place of his destination, he became
+appraised of the snare into which he had been drawn.  He communicated
+the fact to his officers; but he had already suffered so much from
+suspense, that his only desire now was, to bring his quarrel with Pizarro
+to the final arbitrament of arms.
+
+That chief, meanwhile, had been well informed, through his spies, of the
+viceroy's movements.  On learning the departure of the latter from
+Popayan, he had reentered Quito, joined his forces with those of Puelles,
+and, issuing from the capital, had taken up a strong position about three
+leagues to the north, on a high ground that commanded a stream, across
+which the enemy must pass.  It was not long before the latter came in
+sight, and Blasco Nunez, as night began to fall, established himself on
+the opposite bank of the rivulet.  It was so near to the enemy's quarters,
+that the voices of the sentinels could be distinctly heard in the opposite
+camps, and they did not fail to salute one another with the epithet of
+"traitors."  In these civil wars, as we have seen, each party claimed for
+itself the exclusive merit of loyalty.18
+
+But Benalcazar soon saw that Pizarro's position was too strong to be
+assailed with any chance of success.  He proposed, therefore, to the
+viceroy, to draw off his forces secretly in the night; and, making a detour
+round the hills, to fall on the enemy's rear, where he would be least
+prepared to receive them.  The counsel was approved; and, no sooner
+were the two hosts shrouded from each other's eyes by the darkness,
+than, leaving his camp-fires burning to deceive the enemy, Blasco Nunez
+broke up his quarters, and began his circuitous march in the direction of
+Quito.  But either he had been misinformed, or his guides misled him; for
+the roads proved so impracticable, that he was compelled to make a
+circuit of such extent, that dawn broke before he drew near the point of
+attack.  Finding that he must now abandon the advantage of a surprise, he
+pressed forward to Quito, where he arrived with men and horses sorely
+fatigued by a night-march of eight leagues, from a point which, by the
+direct route, would not have exceeded three.  It was a fatal error on the
+eve of an engagement.19
+
+He found the capital nearly deserted by the men.  They had all joined the
+standard of Pizarro; for they had now caught the general spirit of
+disaffection, and looked upon that chief as their protector from the
+oppressive ordinances.  Pizarro was the representative of the people.
+Greatly moved at this desertion, the unhappy viceroy, lifting his hands to
+heaven, exclaimed, --"Is it thus, Lord, that you abandonest thy servants?"
+The women and children came out, and in vain offered him food, of
+which he stood obviously in need, asking him, at the same time, "Why he
+had come there to die?"  His followers, with more indifference than their
+commander, entered the houses of the inhabitants, and unceremoniously
+appropriated whatever they could find to appease the cravings of
+appetite.
+
+Benalcazar, who saw the temerity of giving battle, in their present
+condition, recommended the viceroy to try the effect of negotiation, and
+offered himself to go to the enemy's camp, and arrange, if possible, terms
+of accommodation with Pizarro.  But Blasco Nunez, if he desponded for
+a moment, had now recovered his wonted constancy, and he proudly
+replied,--"There is no faith to be kept with traitors.  We have come to
+fight, not to parley; and we must do our duty like good and loyal
+cavaliers.  I will do mine," he continued, "and be assured I will be the
+first man to break a lance with the enemy." 20
+
+He then called his troops together, and addressed to them a few words
+preparatory to marching.  "You are all brave men," he said, "and loyal to
+your sovereign.  For my own part, I hold life as little in comparison with
+my duty to my prince.  Yet let us not distrust our success; the Spaniard,
+in a good cause, has often overcome greater odds than these.  And we are
+fighting for the right; it is the cause of God,--the cause of God," 21 he
+concluded, and the soldiers, kindled by his generous ardor, answered him
+with huzzas that went to the heart of the unfortunate commander, little
+accustomed of late to this display of enthusiasm.
+
+It was the eighteenth of January, 1546, when Blasco Nunez marched out
+at the head of his array, from the ancient city of Quito.  He had
+proceeded but a mile,22 when he came in view of the enemy, formed
+along the crest of some high lands, which, by a gentle swell, rose
+gradually from the plains of Anaquito.  Gonzalo Pizarro, greatly
+chagrined on ascertaining the departure of the viceroy, early in the
+morning, had broken up his camp, and directed his march on the capital,
+fully resolved that his enemy should not escape him.
+
+The viceroy's troops, now coming to a halt, were formed in order of
+battle.  A small body of arquebusiers was stationed in the advance to
+begin the fight.  The remainder of that corps was distributed among the
+spearmen, who occupied the centre, protected on the flanks by the horse
+drawn up in two nearly equal squadrons.  The cavalry amounted to about
+one hundred and forty, being little inferior to that on the other side,
+though the whole number of the viceroy's forces, being less than four
+hundred, did not much exceed the half of his rival's.  On the right, and in
+front of the royal banner, Blasco Nunez, supported by thirteen chosen
+cavaliers, took his station, prepared to head the attack.
+
+Pizarro had formed his troops in a corresponding manner with that of his
+adversary.  They mustered about seven hundred in all, well appointed, in
+good condition, and officered by the best knights in Peru.23  As,
+notwithstanding his superiority of numbers, Pizarro, did not seem
+inclined to abandon his advantageous position, Blasco Nunez gave
+orders to advance.  The action commenced with the arquebusiers, and in
+a few moments the dense clouds of smoke, rolling over the field,
+obscured every object; for it was late in the day when the action began,
+and the light was rapidly fading.
+
+The infantry, now leveling their pikes, advanced under cover of the
+smoke, and were soon hotly engaged with the opposite files of spearmen.
+Then came the charge of the cavalry, which--notwithstanding they were
+thrown into some disorder by the fire of Pizarro's arquebusiers, far
+superior in number to their own--was conducted with such spirit that the
+enemy's horse were compelled to reel and fall back before it.  But it was
+only to recoil with greater violence, as, like an overwhelming wave,
+Pizarro's troopers rushed on their foes, driving them along the slope, and
+bearing down man and horse in indiscriminate ruin.  Yet these, in turn, at
+length rallied, cheered on by the cries and desperate efforts of their
+officers.  The lances were shivered, and they fought hand to hand with
+swords and battle-axes mingled together in wild confusion.  But the
+struggle was of no long duration; for, though the numbers were nearly
+equal, the viceroy's cavalry, jaded by the severe march of the previous
+night,24 were no match for their antagonists.  The ground was strewn
+with the wreck of their bodies; and horses and riders, the dead and the
+dying, lay heaped on one another.  Cabrera, the brave lieutenant of
+Benalcazar, was slain, and that commander was thrown under his horse's
+feet, covered with wounds, and left for dead on the field.  Alvarez, the
+judge, was mortally wounded.  Both he and his colleague Cepeda were in
+the action, though ranged on opposite sides, fighting as if they had been
+bred to arms, not to the peaceful profession of the law.
+
+Yet Blasco Nunez and his companions maintained a brave struggle on
+the right of the field.  The viceroy had kept his word by being the first to
+break his lance against the enemy, and by a well-directed blow had borne
+a cavalier, named Alonso de Montalvo, clean out of his saddle.  But he
+was at length overwhelmed by numbers, and, as his companions, one
+after another, fell by his side, he was left nearly unprotected.  He was
+already wounded, when a blow on the head from the battle-axe of a
+soldier struck him from his horse, and he fell stunned on the ground.
+Had his person been known, he might have been taken alive, but he wore
+a sobre-vest of Indian cotton over his armour, which concealed the
+military order of St. James, and the other badges of his rank.25
+
+His person, however, was soon recognized by one of Pizarro's followers,
+who, not improbably, had once followed the viceroy's banner.  The
+soldier immediately pointed him out to the Licentiate Carbajal.  This
+person was the brother of the cavalier whom, as the reader may
+remember, Blasco Nunez had so rashly put to death in his palace at
+Lima.  The licentiate had afterwards taken service under Pizarro, and,
+with several of his kindred, was pledged to take vengeance on the
+viceroy.  Instantly riding up, he taunted the fallen commander with the
+murder of his brother, and was in the act of dismounting to despatch him
+with his own hand, when Puelles remonstrating on this, as an act of
+degradation, commanded one of his attendants, a black slave, to cut off
+the viceroy's head.  This the fellow executed with a single stroke of his
+sabre, while the wretched man, perhaps then dying of his wounds, uttered
+no word, but with eyes imploringly turned up towards heaven, received
+the fatal blow.26  The head was then borne aloft on a pike, and some
+were brutal enough to pluck out the grey hairs from the beard and set
+them in their caps, as grisly trophies of their victory.27  The fate of the
+day was now decided.  Yet still the infantry made a brave stand, keeping
+Pizarro's horse at bay with their bristling array of pikes.  But their
+numbers were thinned by the arquebusiers; and, thrown into disorder,
+they could no longer resist the onset of the horse, who broke into their
+column, and soon scattered and drove them off the ground.  The pursuit
+was neither long nor bloody; for darkness came on, and Pizarro bade his
+trumpets sound, to call his men together under their banners.
+
+Though the action lasted but a short time, nearly one third of the
+viceroy's troops had perished.  The loss of their opponents was
+inconsiderable.28  Several of the vanquished cavaliers took refuge in the
+churches of Quito.  But they were dragged from the sanctuary, and some
+---probably those who had once espoused the cause of Pizarro--were led
+to execution, and others banished to Chili.  The greater part were
+pardoned by the conqueror.  Benalcazar, who recovered from his
+wounds, was permitted to return to his government, on condition of no
+more bearing arms against Pizarro.  His troops were invited to take
+service under the banner of the victor, who, however, never treated them
+with the confidence shown to his ancient partisans.  He was greatly
+displeased at the indignities offered to the viceroy; whose mangled
+remains he caused to be buried with the honors due to his rank in the
+cathedral of Quito.  Gonzalo Pizarro, attired in black, walked as chief
+mourner in the procession.---It was usual with the Pizarros, as we have
+seen, to pay these obituary honors to their victims.29
+
+Such was the sad end of Blasco Nunez Vela, first viceroy of Peru.  It was
+less than two years since he had set foot in the country, a period of
+unmitigated disaster and disgrace.  His misfortunes may be imputed
+partly to circumstances, and partly to his own character.  The minister of
+an odious and oppressive law, he was intrusted with no discretionary
+power in the execution of it.30  Yet every man may, to a certain extent,
+claim the right to such a power; since, to execute a commission, which
+circumstances show must certainly defeat the object for which it was
+designed, would be absurd.  But it requires sagacity to determine the
+existence of such a contingency, and moral courage to assume the
+responsibility of acting on it.  Such a crisis is the severest test of
+character.  To dare to disobey from a paramount sense of duty is a
+paradox that a little soul can hardly comprehend.  Unfortunately, Blasco
+Nunez was a pedantic martinet, a man of narrow views, who could not
+feel himself authorized under any circumstances to swerve from the letter
+of the law.  Puffed up by his brief authority, moreover, he considered
+opposition to the ordinances as treason to himself; and thus, identifying
+himself with his commission, he was prompted by personal feelings,
+quite as much as by those of a public and patriotic nature.
+
+Neither was the viceroy's character of a kind that tended to mitigate the
+odium of his measures, and reconcile the people to their execution.  It
+afforded a strong contrast to that of his rival, Pizarro, whose frank,
+chivalrous bearing, and generous confidence in his followers, made him
+universally popular, blinding their judgments, and giving to the worse
+the semblance of the better cause.  Blasco Nunez, on the contrary,
+irritable and suspicious, placed himself in a false position with all whom
+he approached; for a suspicious temper creates an atmosphere of distrust
+around it that kills every kindly affection.  His first step was to alienate
+the members of the Audience who were sent to act in concert with him.
+But this was their fault as well as his, since they were as much too lax, as
+he was too severe, in the interpretation of the law.31  He next alienated
+and outraged the people whom he was appointed to govern.  And, lastly,
+he disgusted his own friends, and too often turned them into enemies; so
+that, in his final struggle for power and for existence, he was obliged to
+rely on the arm of the stranger.  Yet in the catalogue of his qualities we
+must not pass in silence over his virtues.  There are two to the credit of
+which he is undeniably entitled,--a loyalty, which shone the brighter
+amidst the general defection around him, and a constancy under
+misfortune, which might challenge the respect even of his enemies.  But
+with the most liberal allowance for his merits, it can scarcely be doubted
+that a person more incompetent to the task assigned him could not have
+been found in Castile.32
+
+The victory of Anaquito was received with general joy in the
+neighboring capital; all the cities of Peru looked on it as sealing the
+downfall of the detested ordinances, and the name of Gonzalo Pizarro
+was sounded from one end of the country to the other as that of its
+deliverer.  That chief continued to prolong his stay in Quito during the
+wet season, dividing his time between the licentious pleasures of the
+reckless adventurer and the cares of business that now pressed on him as
+ruler of the state.  His administration was stained with fewer acts of
+violence than might have been expected from the circumstances of his
+situation.  So long as Carbajal, the counsellor in whom he unfortunately
+placed greatest reliance, was absent, Gonzalo sanctioned no execution, it
+was observed, but according to the forms of law.33  He rewarded his
+followers by new grants of land, and detached several on expeditions, to
+no greater distance, however, than would leave it in his power readily to
+recall them.  He made various provisions for the welfare of the natives,
+and some, in particular, for instructing them in the Christian faith.  He
+paid attention to the faithful collection of the royal dues, urging on the
+colonists that they should deport themselves so as to conciliate the
+goodwill of the Crown, and induce a revocation of the ordinances.  His
+administration, in short, was so conducted, that even the austere Gasca,
+his successor, allowed "it was a good government,--for a tyrant." 34
+
+At length, in July, 1546, the new governor bade adieu to Quito, and,
+leaving there a sufficient garrison under his officer Puelles, began his
+journey to the south.  It was a triumphal progress, and everywhere he
+was received on the road with enthusiasm by the people.  At Truxillo, the
+citizens came out in a body to welcome him, and the clergy chanted
+anthems in his honor, extolling him as the "victorious prince," and
+imploring the Almighty "to lengthen his days, and give him honor."35
+At Lima, it was proposed to clear away some of the buildings, and open
+a new street for his entrance, which might ever after bear the name of the
+victor.  But the politic chieftain declined this flattering tribute, and
+modestly preferred to enter the city by the usual way.  A procession was
+formed of the citizens, the soldiers, and the clergy, and Pizarro made his
+entry into the capital with two of his principal captains on foot, holding
+the reins of his charger, while the archbishop of Lima, and the bishops of
+Cuzco, Quito, and Bogota, the last of whom had lately come to the city
+to be consecrated, rode by his side.  The streets were strewn with
+boughs, the walls of the houses hung with showy tapestries, and
+triumphal arches were thrown over the way in honor of the victor.  Every
+balcony, veranda, and house-top was crowded with spectators, who sent
+up huzzas, loud and long, saluting the victorious soldier with the titles of
+"Liberator, and Protector of the people."  The bells rang out their joyous
+peal, as on his former entrance into the capital; and amidst strains of
+enlivening music, and the blithe sounds of jubilee, Gonzalo held on his
+way to the palace of his brother.  Peru was once more placed under the
+dynasty of the Pizarros.36
+
+Deputies came from different parts of the country, tending the
+congratulations of their respective cities; and every one eagerly urged his
+own claims to consideration for the services he had rendered in the
+revolution.  Pizarro, at the same time, received the welcome intelligence
+of the success of his arms in the south.  Diego Centeno, as before stated,
+had there raised the standard of rebellion, or rather, of loyalty to his
+sovereign.  He had made himself master of La Plata, and the spirit of
+insurrection had spread over the broad province of Charcas.  Carbajal,
+who had been sent against him from Quito, after repairing to Lima, had
+passed at once to Cuzco, and there, strengthening his forces, had
+descended by rapid marches on the refractory district.  Centeno did not
+trust himself in the field against this formidable champion.  He retreated
+with his troops into the fastnesses of the sierra.  Carbajal pursued,
+following on his track with the pertinacity of a bloodhound; over
+mountain and moor, through forests and dangerous ravines, allowing him
+no respite, by day or by night.  Eating, drinking, sleeping in his saddle,
+the veteran, eighty years of age, saw his own followers tire one after
+another, while he urged on the chase, like the wild huntsman of Burger,
+as if endowed with an unearthly frame, incapable of fatigue!  During this
+terrible pursuit, which continued for more than two hundred leagues over
+a savage country, Centeno found himself abandoned by most of his
+followers.  Such of them as fell into Carbajal's hands were sent to speedy
+execution; for that inexorable chief had no mercy on those who had been
+false to their party.37  At length, Centeno, with a handful of men, arrived
+on the borders of the Pacific, and there, separating from one another,
+they provided, each in the best way he could, for their own safety.  Their
+leader found an asylum in a cave in the mountains, where he was secretly
+fed by an Indian curaca, till the time again for him to unfurl the standard
+of revolt.38
+
+Carbajal, after some further decisive movements, which fully established
+the ascendency of Pizarro over the south, returned in triumph to La Plata.
+There he occupied himself with working the silver mines of Potosi, in
+which a vein, recently opened, promised to make richer returns than any
+yet discovered in Mexico or Peru;39 and he was soon enabled to send
+large remittances to Lima, deducting no stinted commission for himself,-
+-for the cupidity of the lieutenant was equal to his cruelty.
+
+Gonzalo Pizarro was now undisputed master of Peru.  From Quito to the
+northern confines of Chili, the whole country acknowledged his
+authority.  His fleet rode triumphant on the Pacific, and gave him the
+command of every city and hamlet on its borders.  His admiral,
+Hinojosa, a discreet and gallant officer, had secured him Panama, and,
+marching across the Isthmus, had since obtained for him the possession
+of Nombre de Dios,--the principal key of communication with Europe.
+His forces were on an excellent footing, including the flower of the
+warriors who had fought under his brother, and who now eagerly rallied
+under the name of Pizarro; while the tide of wealth that flowed in from
+the mines of Potosi supplied him with the resources of an European
+monarch.
+
+The new governor now began to assume a state correspondent with his
+full-blown fortunes.  He was attended by a body-guard of eighty soldiers.
+He dined always in public, and usually with not less than a hundred
+guests at table.  He even affected, it was said, the most decided etiquette
+of royalty, giving his hand to be kissed, and allowing no one, of whatever
+rank, to be seated in his presence.40  But this is denied by others.  It
+would not be strange that a vain man like Pizarro, with a superficial,
+undisciplined mind, when he saw himself thus raised from an humble
+condition to the highest post in the land, should be somewhat intoxicated
+by the possession of power, and treat with superciliousness those whom
+he had once approached with deference.  But one who had often seen
+him in his prosperity assures us, that it was not so, and that the governor
+continued to show the same frank and soldierlike bearing as before his
+elevation, mingling on familiar terms with his comrades, and displaying
+the same qualities which had hitherto endeared him to the people.41
+
+However this may be, it is certain there were not wanting those who
+urged him to throw off his allegiance to the Crown, and set up an
+independent government for himself.  Among these was his lieutenant,
+Carbajal, whose daring spirit never shrunk from following things to their
+consequences.  He plainly counselled Pizarro to renounce his allegiance
+at once.  "In fact, you have already done so," he said.  "You have been in
+arms against a viceroy, have driven him from the country, beaten and
+slain him in battle.  What favor, or even mercy, can you expect from the
+Crown?  You have gone too far either to halt, or to recede.  You must go
+boldly on, proclaim yourself king; the troops, the people, will support
+you."  And he concluded, it is said, by advising him to marry the Coya,
+the female representative of the Incas, that the two races might
+henceforth repose in quiet under a common sceptre! 42
+
+The advice of the bold counsellor was, perhaps, the most politic that
+could have been given to Pizarro under existing circumstances.  For he
+was like one who had heedlessly climbed far up a dizzy precipice,--too
+far to descend safely, while he had no sure hold where he was.  His only
+chance was to climb still higher, till he had gained the summit.  But
+Gonzalo Pizarro shrunk from the attitude, in which this placed him, of
+avowed rebellion.  Notwithstanding the criminal course into which he
+had been, of late, seduced, the sentiment of loyalty was too deeply
+implanted in his bosom to be wholly eradicated.  Though in arms against
+the measures and ministers of his sovereign, he was not prepared to raise
+the sword against the sovereign himself.  He, doubtless, had conflicting
+emotion in his bosom; like Macbeth, and many a less noble nature,
+
+'"Would not play false,
+And yet would wrongly win."
+
+And however grateful to his vanity might be the picture of the airdrawn
+sceptre thus painted to his imagination, he had not the audacity --we
+may, perhaps, say, the criminal ambition--to attempt to grasp it.
+
+Even at this very moment, when urged to this desperate extremity, he
+was preparing a mission to Spain, in order to vindicate the course he had
+taken, and to solicit an amnesty for the past, with a full confirmation of
+his authority, as successor to his brother in the government of Peru.--
+Pizarro did not read the future with the calm, prophetic eye of Carbajal.
+
+Among the biographical notices of the writers on Spanish colonial
+affairs, the name of Herrera, who has done more for this vast subject
+than any other author, should certainly not be omitted.  His account of
+Peru takes its proper place in his great work, the Historia General de las
+lndias, according to the chronological plan on which that history is
+arranged.  But as it suggests reflections not different in character from
+those suggested by other portions of the work, I shall take the liberty to
+refer the reader to the Postscript to Book Third of the Conquest of
+Mexico, for a full account of these volumes and their learned author.
+
+Another chronicler, to whom I have been frequently indebted in the
+progress of the narrative, is Francisco Lopez de Gomara.  The reader
+will also find a notice of this author in the Conquest of Mexico, Book 5,
+Postscript.  But as the remarks on his writings are there confined to his
+Cronica de Nueva Espana, it may be well to add here some reflections on
+his greater work, Historia de las Indias, in which the Peruvian story bears
+a conspicuous part.
+
+The "History of the Indies" is intended to give a brief view of the whole
+range of Spanish conquest in the islands and on the American continent,
+as far as had been achieved by the middle of the sixteenth century.  For
+this account, Gomara, though it does not appear that he ever visited the
+New World, was in a situation that opened to him the best means of
+information.  He was well acquainted with the principal men of the time,
+and gathered the details of their history from their own lips; while, from
+his residence at court, he was in possession of the state of opinion there,
+and of the impression made by passing events on those most competent
+to judge of them.  He was thus enabled to introduce into his work many
+interesting particulars, not to be found in other records of the period.  His
+range of inquiry extended beyond the mere doings of the Conquerors,
+and led him to a survey of the general resources of the countries he
+describes, and especially of their physical aspect and productions.  The
+conduct of his work, no less than its diction, shows the cultivated
+scholar, practised in the art of composition.  Instead of the naivete,
+engaging, but childlike, of the old military chroniclers, Gomara handles
+his various topics with the shrewd and piquant criticism of a man of the
+world; while his descriptions are managed with a comprehensive brevity
+that forms the opposite to the long-winded and rambling paragraphs of
+the monkish annalist.  These literary merits, combined with the
+knowledge of the writer's opportunities for information, secured his
+productions from the oblivion which too often awaits the unpublished
+manuscript; and he had the satisfaction to see them pass into more than
+one edition in his own day.  Yet they do not bear the highest stamp of
+authenticity.  The author too readily admits accounts into his pages
+which are not supported by contemporary testimony.  This he does, not
+from credulity, for his mind rather leans in an opposite direction, but
+from a Want, apparently, of the true spirit of historic conscientiousness.
+The imputation of carelessness in his statements--to use a temperate
+phrase--was brought against Gomara in his own day; and Garcilasso tells
+us, that, when called to account by some of the Peruvian cavaliers for
+misstatements which bore hard on themselves, the historian made but an
+awkward explanation.  This is a great blemish on his productions, and
+renders them of far less value to the modern compiler, who seeks for the
+well of truth undefiled, than many an humbler but less unscrupulous
+chronicle.
+
+There is still another authority used in this work, Gonzalo Fernandez de
+Oviedo, of whom I have given an account elsewhere; and the reader
+curious in the matter will permit me to refer him for a critical notice of
+his life and writings to the Conquest of Mexico, Book 4, Postscript.--His
+account of Peru is incorporated into his great work, Natural & General
+Historia de las lndias, MS., where it forms the forty-sixth and forty-
+seventh books.  It extends from Pizarro's landing at Tumbez to
+Almagro's return from Chili, and thus covers the entire portion of what
+may be called the conquest of the country.  The style of its execution,
+corresponding with that of the residue of the work to which it belongs,
+affords no ground for criticism different from that already passed on the
+general character of Oviedo's writings.
+
+This eminent person was at once a scholar and a man of the world.
+Living much at court, and familiar with persons of the highest distinction
+in Castile, he yet passed much of his time in the colonies, and thus added
+the fruits of personal experience to what he had gained from the reports
+of others.  His curiosity was indefatigable, extending to every department
+of natural science, as well as to the civil and personal history of the
+colonists.  He was, at once, their Pliny and their Tacitus.  His works
+abound in portraitures of character, sketched with freedom and
+animation.  His reflections are piquant, and often rise to a philosophic
+tone, which discards the usual trammels of the age; and the progress of
+the story is varied by a multiplicity of personal anecdotes, that give a
+rapid insight into the characters of the parties.
+
+With his eminent qualifications, and with a social position that
+commanded respect, it is strange that so much of his writings-the whole
+of his great Historia de las Indias, and his curious Quincuagenas--should
+be so long suffered to remain in manuscript.  This is partly chargeable to
+the caprice of fortune; for the History was more than once on the eve of
+publication, and is even now understood to be prepared for the press.
+Yet it has serious defects, which may have contributed to keep it in its
+present form.  In its desultory and episodical style of composition, it
+resembles rather notes for a great history, than history itself.  It may be
+regarded in the light of commentaries, or as illustrations of the times.  In
+that view his pages are of high worth, and have been frequently resorted
+to by writers who have not too scrupulously appropriated the statements
+of the old chronicler, with slight acknowledgments to their author.
+
+It is a pity that Oviedo should have shown more solicitude to tell what
+was new, than to ascertain how much of it was strictly true.  Among his
+merits will scarcely be found that of historical accuracy.  And yet we
+may find an apology for this, to some extent, in the fact, that his writings,
+as already intimated, are not so much in the nature of finished
+compositions, as of loose memoranda, where everything, rumor as well
+as fact,--even the most contradictory rumors,--are all set down at
+random, forming a miscellaneous heap of materials, of which the discreet
+historian may avail himself to rear a symmetrical fabric on foundations
+of greater strength and solidity.
+
+Another author worthy of particular note is Pedro Cieza de Leon.  His
+Cronica del Peru should more properly be styled an Itinerary, or rather
+Geography, of Peru.  It gives a minute topographical view of the country
+at the time of the Conquest; of its provinces and towns, both Indian and
+Spanish; its flourishing sea-coast; its forests, valleys, and interminable
+ranges of mountains in the interior; with many interesting particulars of
+the existing population,--their dress, manners, architectural remains, and
+public works, while, scattered here and there, may be found notices of
+their early history and social polity.  It is, in short, a lively picture of the
+country in its physical and moral relations, as it met the eye at the time of
+the Conquest, and in that transition period when it was first subjected to
+European influences.  The conception of a work, at so early a period, on
+this philosophical plan, reminding us of that of Malte-Brun in our own
+time,--parva componere magnis,-was, of itself, indicative of great
+comprehensiveness of mind in its author.  It was a task of no little
+difficulty, where there was yet no pathway opened by the labors of the
+antiquarian; no hints from the sketch-book of the traveller, or the
+measurements of the scientific explorer.  Yet the distances from place to
+place are all carefully jotted down by the industrious compiler, and the
+bearings of the different places and their peculiar features are exhibited
+with sufficient precision, considering the nature of the obstacles he had
+to encounter.  The literary execution of the work, moreover, is highly
+respectable, sometimes even rich and picturesque; and the author
+describes the grand and beautiful scenery of the Cordilleras with a
+sensibility to its charms, not often found in the tasteless topographer, still
+less often in the rude Conqueror.
+
+Cieza de Leon came to the New World, as he informs us, at the early age
+of thirteen.  But it is not till Gasca's time that we find his name enrolled
+among the actors in the busy scenes of civil strife, when he accompanied
+the president in his campaign against Gonzalo Pizarro.  His Chronicle,
+or, at least, the notes for it, was compiled in such leisure as he could
+snatch from his more stirring avocations; and after ten years from the
+time he undertook it, the First Part--all we have---was completed in
+1550, when the author had reached only the age of thirty-two.  It
+appeared at Seville in 1553, and the following year at Antwerp; while an
+Italian translation, printed at Rome, in 1555, attested the rapid celebrity
+of the work.  The edition of Antwerp--the one used by me in this
+compilation--is in the duodecimo form, exceedingly well printed, and
+garnished with wood-cuts, in which Satan,-for the author had a full
+measure of the ancient credulity,--with his usual bugbear
+accompaniments frequently appears in bodily presence.  In the Preface,
+Cieza announces his purpose to continue the work in three other parts,
+illustrating respectively the ancient history of the country under the
+Incas, its conquest by the Spaniards, and the civil wars which ensued.
+He even gives, with curious minuteness, the contents of the several
+books of the projected history.  But the First Part, as already noticed,
+was alone completed; and the author, having returned to Spain, died
+there in 1560, at the premature age of forty-two, without having covered
+any portion of the magnificent ground-plan which he had thus
+confidently laid out.  The deficiency is much to be regretted, considering
+the talent of the writer, and his opportunities for personal observation.
+But he has done enough to render us grateful for his labors.  By the vivid
+delineation of scenes and scenery, as they were presented fresh to his
+own eyes, he has furnished us with a background to the historic picture,--
+the landscape, as it were, in which the personages of the time might be
+more fitly portrayed.  It would have been impossible to exhibit the
+ancient topography of the land so faithfully at a subsequent period, when
+old things had passed away, and the Conqueror, breaking down the
+landmarks of ancient civilization, had effaced many of the features even
+of the physical aspect of the country, as it existed under the elaborate
+culture of the Incas.
+
+
+
+History of the Conquest of Peru
+
+by William Hickling Prescott
+
+Book 5
+
+Settlement Of The Country
+
+Chapter 1
+
+Great Sensation In Spain--Pedro De La Gasca--His Early Life-
+His Mission To Peru--His Politic Conduct--His Offers To Pizarro-
+Gains The Fleet
+
+1545--1547
+
+While the important revolution detailed in the preceding pages was going
+forward in Peru, rumors of it, from time to time, found their way to the
+mother-country; but the distance was so great, and opportunities for
+communication so rare, that the tidings were usually very long behind the
+occurrence of the events to which they related.  The government heard
+with dismay of the troubles caused by the ordinances and the intemperate
+conduct of the viceroy; and it was not long before it learned that this
+functionary was deposed and driven from his capital, while the whole
+country, under Gonzalo Pizarro, was arrayed in arms against him.  All
+classes were filled with consternation at this alarming intelligence; and
+many that had before approved the ordinances now loudly condemned
+the ministers, who, without considering the inflammable temper of the
+people, had thus rashly fired a train which menaced a general explosion
+throughout the colonies.1  No such rebellion, within the memory of man,
+had occurred in the Spanish empire.  It was compared with the famous
+war of the comunidades, in the beginning of Charles the Fifth's reign.
+But the Peruvian insurrection seemed the more formidable of the two.
+The troubles of Castile, being under the eye of the Court, might be the
+more easily managed; while it was difficult to make the same power felt
+on the remote shores of the Indies.  Lying along the distant Pacific, the
+principle of attraction which held Peru to the parent country was so
+feeble, that this colony might, at any time, with a less impulse than that
+now given to it, fly from its political orbit.
+
+It seemed as if the fairest of its jewels was about to fall from the imperial
+diadem!
+
+Such was the state of things in the summer of 1545, when Charles the
+Fifth was absent in Germany, occupied with the religious troubles of the
+empire.  The government was in the hands of his son, who, under the
+name of Philip the Second, was soon to sway the sceptre over the largest
+portion of his father's dominions, and who was then holding his court at
+Valladolid.  He called together a council of prelates, jurists, and military
+men of greatest experience, to deliberate on the measures to be pursued
+for restoring order in the colonies.  All agreed in regarding Pizarro's
+movement in the light of an audacious rebellion; and there were few, at
+first, who were not willing to employ the whole strength of government
+to vindicate the honor of the Crown,--to quell the insurrection, and bring
+the authors of it to punishment.2
+
+But, however desirable this might appear, a very little reflection showed
+that it was not easy to be done, if, indeed, it were practicable.  The great
+distance of Peru required troops to be transported not merely across the
+ocean, but over the broad extent of the great continent.  And how was
+this to be effected, when the principal posts, the keys of communication
+with the country, were in the hands of the rebels, while their fleet rode in
+the Pacific, the mistress of its waters, cutting off all approach to the
+coast?  Even if a Spanish force could be landed in Peru, what chance
+would it have, unaccustomed, as it would be, to the country and the
+climate, of coping with the veterans of Pizarro, trained to war in the
+Indies and warmly attached to the person of their commander?  The new
+levies thus sent out might become themselves infected with the spirit of
+insurrection, and cast off their own allegiance.3
+
+Nothing remained, therefore, but to try conciliatory measures.  The
+government, however mortifying to its pride, must retrace its steps.  A
+free grace must be extended to those who submitted, and such persuasive
+arguments should be used, and such politic concessions made, as would
+convince the refractory colonists that it was their interest, as well as their
+duty, to return to their allegiance.
+
+But to approach the people in their present state of excitement, and to
+make those concessions without too far compromising the dignity and
+permanent authority of the Crown, was a delicate matter, for the success
+of which they must rely wholly on the character of the agent.  After much
+deliberation, a competent person, as it was thought, was found in an
+ecclesiastic, by the name of Pedro de la Gasca,--a name which, brighter
+by contrast with the gloomy times in which it first appeared, still shines
+with undiminished splendor after the lapse of ages.
+
+Pedro de la Gasca was born, probably, towards the close of the fifteenth
+century, in a small village in Castile named Barco de Avila.  He came,
+both by father and mother's side, from an ancient and noble lineage;
+ancient indeed, if, as his biographers contend, he derived his descent
+from Casca, one of the conspirators against Julius Caesar!4  Having the
+misfortune to lose his father early in life, he was placed by his uncle in
+the famous seminary of Alcala de Henares, rounded by the great
+Ximenes.  Here he made rapid proficiency in liberal studies, especially in
+those connected with his profession, and at length received the degree of
+Master of Theology.
+
+The young man, however, discovered other talents than those demanded
+by his sacred calling.  The war of the comunidades was then raging in the
+country; and the authorities of his college showed a disposition to take
+the popular side.  But Gasca, putting himself at the head of an armed
+force, seized one of the gates of the city, and, with assistance from the
+royal troops, secured the place to the interests of the Crown.  This early
+display of loyalty was probably not lost on his vigilant sovereign.5
+
+From Alcala, Gasca was afterwards removed to Salamanca; where he
+distinguished himself by his skill in scholastic disputation, and obtained
+the highest academic honors in that ancient university, the fruitful
+nursery of scholarship and genius.  He was subsequently intrusted with
+the management of some important affairs of an ecclesiastical nature,
+and made a member of the Council of the Inquisition.
+
+In this latter capacity he was sent to Valencia, about 1540, to examine
+into certain alleged cases of heresy in that quarter of the country.  These
+were involved in great obscurity; and, although Gasca had the assistance
+of several eminent jurists in the investigation, it occupied him nearly two
+years.  In the conduct of this difficult matter, he showed so much
+penetration, and such perfect impartiality, that he was appointed by the
+Cortes of Valencia to the office of visitador of that kingdom; a highly
+responsible post, requiring great discretion in the person who filled it,
+since it was his province to inspect the condition of the courts of justice
+and of finance, throughout the land, with authority to reform abuses.  It
+was proof of extraordinary consideration, that it should have been
+bestowed on Gasca; since it was a departure from the established usage -
+-and that in a nation most wedded to usage--to confer the office on any
+but a subject of the Aragonese crown.6
+
+Gasca executed the task assigned to him with independence and ability.
+While he was thus occupied, the people of Valencia were thrown into
+consternation by a meditated invasion of the French and the Turks, who,
+under the redoubtable Barbarossa, menaced the coast and the
+neighboring Balearic isles.  Fears were generally entertained of a rising
+of the Morisco population; and the Spanish officers who had command
+in that quarter, being left without the protection of a navy, despaired of
+making head against the enemy.  In this season of general panic, Gasca
+alone appeared calm and self-possessed.  He remonstrated with the
+Spanish commanders on their unsoldierlike despondency; encouraged
+them to confide in the loyalty of the Moriscos; and advised the
+immediate erection of fortifications along the shores for their protection.
+He was, in consequence, named one of a commission to superintend
+these works, and to raise levies for defending the sea-coast; and so
+faithfully was the task performed, that Barbarossa, after some ineffectual
+attempts to make good his landing, was baffled at all points, and
+compelled to abandon the enterprise as hopeless.  The chief credit of this
+resistance must be assigned to Gasca, who superintended the
+construction of the defences, and who was enabled to contribute a large
+part of the requisite funds by the economical reforms he had introduced
+into the administration of Valencia.7
+
+It was at this time, the latter part of the year 1545, that the council of
+Philip selected Gasca as the person most competent to undertake the
+perilous mission to Peru.8  His character, indeed, seemed especially
+suited to it.  His loyalty had been shown through his whole life.  With
+great suavity of manners he combined the most intrepid resolution.
+Though his demeanor was humble, as beseemed his calling, it was far
+from abject; for he was sustained by a conscious rectitude of purpose,
+that impressed respect on all with whom he had intercourse.  He was
+acute in his perceptions, had a shrewd knowledge of character, and,
+though bred to the cloister, possessed an acquaintance with affairs, and
+even with military science, such as was to have been expected only from
+one reared in courts and camps.
+
+Without hesitation, therefore, the council unanimously recommended
+him to the emperor, and requested his approbation of their proceedings.
+Charles had not been an inattentive observer of Gasca's course.  His
+attention had been particularly called to the able manner in which he had
+conducted the judicial process against the heretics of Valencia.9  The
+monarch saw, at once, that he was the man for the present emergency;
+and he immediately wrote to him, with his own hand, expressing his
+entire satisfaction at the appointment, and intimating his purpose to
+testify his sense of his worth by preferring him to one of the principal
+sees then vacant.
+
+Gasca accepted the important mission now tendered to him without
+hesitation; and, repairing to Madrid, received the instructions of the
+government as to the course to be pursued.  They were expressed in the
+most benign and conciliatory tone, perfectly in accordance with the
+suggestions of his own benevolent temper.10  But, while he commended
+the tone of the instructions, he considered the powers with which he was
+to be intrusted as wholly incompetent to their object.  They were
+conceived in the jealous spirit with which the Spanish government
+usually limited the authority of its great colonial officers, whose distance
+from home gave peculiar cause for distrust.  On every strange and
+unexpected emergency, Gasca saw that he should be obliged to send
+back for instructions.  This must cause delay, where promptitude was
+essential to success.  The Court, moreover, as he represented to the
+council, was, from its remoteness from the scene of action, utterly
+incompetent to pronounce as to the expediency of the measures to be
+pursued.  Some one should be sent out in whom the king could implicitly
+confide, and who should be invested with powers competent to every
+emergency; powers not merely to decide on what was best, but to carry
+that decision into execution; and he boldly demanded that he should go
+not only as the representative of the sovereign, but clothed with all the
+authority of the sovereign himself.  Less than this would defeat the very
+object for which he was to be sent.  "For myself," he concluded, "I ask
+neither salary nor compensation of any kind.  I covet no display of state
+or military array.  With my stole and breviary I trust to do the work that
+is committed to me.11  Infirm as I am in body, the repose of my own
+home would have been more grateful to me than this dangerous mission;
+but I will not shrink from it at the bidding of my sovereign, and if, as is
+very probable, I may not be permitted again to see my native land, I
+shall, at least, be cheered by the consciousness of having done my best to
+serve its interests." 12
+
+The members of the council, while they listened with admiration to the
+disinterested avowal of Gasca, were astounded by the boldness of his
+demands.  Not that they distrusted the purity of his motives, for these
+were above suspicion.  But the powers for which he stipulated were so
+far beyond those hitherto delegated to a colonial viceroy, that they felt
+they had no warrant to grant them.  They even shrank from soliciting
+them from the emperor, and required that Gasca himself should address
+the monarch, and state precisely the grounds on which demands so
+extraordinary were founded.
+
+Gasca readily adopted the suggestion, and wrote in the most full and
+explicit manner to his sovereign, who had then transferred his residence
+to Flanders.  But Charles was not so tenacious, or, at least, so jealous, of
+authority, as his ministers.  He had been too long in possession of it to
+feel that jealousy; and, indeed, many years were not to elapse, before,
+oppressed by its weight, he was to resign it altogether into the hands of
+his son.  His sagacious mind, moreover, readily comprehended the
+difficulties of Gasca's position.  He felt that the present extraordinary
+crisis was to be met only by extraordinary measures.  He assented to the
+force of his vassal's arguments, and, on the sixteenth of February, 1546,
+wrote him another letter expressive of his approbation, and intimated his
+willingness to grant him powers as absolute as those he had requested.
+
+Gasca was to be styled President of the Royal Audience.  But, under this
+simple title, he was placed at the head of every department in the colony,
+civil, military, and judicial.  He was empowered to make new
+repartimientos, and to confirm those already made.  He might declare
+war, levy troops, appoint to all offices, or remove from them, at pleasure.
+He might exercise the royal prerogative of pardoning offences, and was
+especially authorized to grant an amnesty to all, without exception,
+implicated in the present rebellion.  He was, moreover, to proclaim at
+once the revocation of the odious ordinances.  These two last provisions
+might be said to form the basis of all his operations.
+
+Since ecclesiastics were not to be reached by the secular arm, and yet
+were often found fomenting troubles in the colonies, Gasca was
+permitted to banish from Peru such as he thought fit.  He might even
+send home the viceroy, if the good of the country required it.  Agreeably
+to his own suggestion, he was to receive no specified stipend; but he had
+unlimited orders on the treasuries both of Panama and Peru.  He was
+furnished with letters from the emperor to the principal authorities, not
+only in Peru, but in Mexico and the neighboring colonies, requiring their
+countenance and support; and, lastly, blank letters, bearing the royal
+signature, were delivered to him, which he was to fill up at his
+pleasure.13
+
+While the grant of such unbounded powers excited the warmest
+sentiments of gratitude in Gasca towards the sovereign who could repose
+in him so much confidence, it seems--which is more extraordinary--not
+to have raised corresponding feelings of envy in the courtiers.  They
+knew well that it was not for himself that the good ecclesiastic had
+solicited them.  On the contrary, some of the council were desirous that
+he should be preferred to the bishopric, as already promised him, before
+his departure; conceiving that he would thus go with greater authority
+than as an humble ecclesiastic, and fearing, moreover, that Gasca
+himself, were it omitted, might feel some natural disappointment.  But
+the president hastened to remove these impressions.  "The honor would
+avail me little," he said, "where I am going; and it would be manifestly
+wrong to appoint me to an office in the Church, while I remain at such a
+distance that I cannot discharge the duties of it.  The consciousness of
+my insufficiency," he continued, "should I never return, would lie heavy
+on my soul in my last moments." 14  The politic reluctance to accept the
+mitre has passed into a proverb.  But there was no affectation here; and
+Gasca's friends, yielding to his arguments, forbore to urge the matter
+further.
+
+The new president now went forward with his preparation.  They were
+few and simple; for he was to be accompanied by a slender train of
+followers, among whom the most conspicuous was Alonso de Alvarado,
+the gallant officer who, as the reader may remember, long commanded
+under Francisco Pizarro.  He had resided of late years at court; and now
+at Gasca's request accompanied him to Peru, where his presence might
+facilitate negotiations with the insurgents, while his military experience
+would prove no less valuable in case of an appeal to arms.15  Some
+delay necessarily occurred in getting ready his little squadron, and it was
+not till the 26th of May, 1546, that the president and his suite embarked
+at San Lucar for the New World.
+
+After a prosperous voyage, and not a long one for that day, he landed,
+about the middle of July, at the port of Santa Martha.  Here he received
+the astounding intelligence of the battle of Ariaquito, of the defeat and
+death of the viceroy, and of the manner in which Gonzalo Pizarro had
+since established his absolute rule over the land.  Although these events
+had occurred several months before Gasca's departure from Spain, yet,
+so imperfect was the intercourse, no tidings of them had then reached
+that country.
+
+They now filled the president with great anxiety; as he reflected that the
+insurgents, after so atrocious an act as the slaughter of the viceroy, might
+well despair of grace, and become reckless of consequences.  He was
+careful, therefore, to have it understood, that the date of his commission
+was subsequent to that of the fatal battle, and that it authorized an entire
+amnesty of all offences hitherto committed against the government.16
+
+Yet, in some points of view, the death of Blasco Nunez might be
+regarded as an auspicious circumstance for the settlement of the country.
+Had he lived till Gasca's arrival, the latter would have been greatly
+embarrassed by the necessity of acting in concert with a person so
+generally detested in the colony, or by the unwelcome alternative of
+sending him back to Castile.  The insurgents, moreover, would, in all
+probability, be now more amenable to reason, since all personal
+animosity might naturally be buried in the grave of their enemy.
+
+The president was much embarrassed by deciding in what quarter he
+should attempt to enter Peru.  Every port was in the hands of Pizarro, and
+was placed under the care of his officers, with strict charge to intercept
+any communications from Spain, and to detain such persons as bore a
+commission from that country until his pleasure could be known
+respecting them.  Gasca, at length, decided on crossing over to Nombre
+de Dios, then held with a strong force by Hernan Mexia, an officer to
+whose charge Gonzalo had committed this strong gate to his dominions,
+as to a person on whose attachment to his cause he could confidently
+rely.
+
+Had Gasca appeared off this place in a menacing attitude, with a military
+array, or, indeed, with any display of official pomp that might have
+awakened distrust in the commander, he would doubtless have found it
+no easy matter to effect a landing.  But Mexia saw nothing to apprehend
+in the approach of a poor ecclesiastic, without an armed force, with
+hardly even a retinue to support him, coming solely, as it seemed, on an
+errand of mercy.  No sooner, therefore, was he acquainted with the
+character of the envoy, and his mission, than he prepared to receive him
+with the honors due to his rank, and marched out at the head of his
+soldiers, together with a considerable body of ecclesiastics resident in the
+place.  There was nothing in the person of Gasca, still less in his humble
+clerical attire and modest retinue, to impress the vulgar spectator with
+feelings of awe or reverence.  Indeed, the poverty-stricken aspect, as it
+seemed, of himself and his followers, so different from the usual state
+affected by the Indian viceroys, excited some merriment among the rude
+soldiery, who did not scruple to break their coarse jests on his
+appearance, in hearing of the president himself.17  "If this is the sort of
+governor his Majesty sends over to us," they exclaimed, "Pizarro need
+not trouble his head much about it."
+
+Yet the president, far from being ruffled by this ribaldry, or from
+showing resentment to its authors, submitted to it with the utmost
+humility, and only seemed the more grateful to his own brethren, who, by
+their respectful demeanor, appeared anxious to do him honor.
+
+But, however plain and unpretending the manners of Gasca, Mexia, on
+his first interview with him soon discovered that he had no common man
+to deal with.  The president, after briefly explaining the nature of his
+commission, told him that he had come as a messenger of peace; and that
+it was on peaceful measures he relied for his success.  He then stated the
+general scope of his commission, his authority to grant a free pardon to
+all, without exception, who at once submitted to government, and,
+finally, his purpose to proclaim the revocation of the ordinances.  The
+objects of the revolution were thus attained.  To contend longer would be
+manifest rebellion, and that without a motive; and he urged the
+commander by every principle of loyalty and patriotism to support him
+in settling the distractions of the country, and bringing it back to its
+allegiance.
+
+The candid and conciliatory language of the president, so different from
+the arrogance of Blasco Nunez, and the austere demeanor of Vaca de
+Castro, made a sensible impression on Mexia.  He admitted the force of
+Gasca's reasoning, and flattered himself that Gonzalo Pizarro would not
+be insensible to it.  Though attached to the fortunes of that leader, he was
+loyal in heart, and, like most of the party, had been led by accident,
+rather than by design, into rebellion; and now that so good an
+opportunity occurred to do it with safety, he was not unwilling to retrace
+his steps, and secure the royal favor by thus early returning to his
+allegiance.  This he signified to the president, assuring him of his hearty
+cooperation in the good work of reform.18
+
+This was an important step for Gasca.  It was yet more important for him
+to secure the obedience of Hinojosa, the governor of Panama, in the
+harbor of which city lay Pizarro's navy, consisting of two-and-twenty
+vessels.  But it was not easy to approach this officer.  He was a person of
+much higher character than was usually found among the reckless
+adventurers in the New World.  He was attached to the interests of
+Pizarro, and the latter had requited him by placing him in command of
+his armada and of Panama, the key to his territories on the Pacific.
+
+The president first sent Mexia and Alonso de Alvarado to prepare the
+way for his own coming, by advising Hinojosa of the purport of his
+mission.  He soon after followed, and was received by that commander
+with every show of outward respect.  But while the latter listened with
+deference to the representations of Gasca, they failed to work the change
+in him which they had wrought in Mexia; and he concluded by asking the
+president to show him his powers, and by inquiring whether they gave
+him authority to confirm Pizarro in his present post, to which he was
+entitled no less by his own services than by the general voice of the
+people.
+
+This was an embarrassing question.  Such a concession would have been
+altogether too humiliating to the Crown; but to have openly avowed this
+at the present juncture to so stanch an adherent of Pizarro might have
+precluded all further negotiation.  The president evaded the question,
+therefore, by simply stating, that the time had not yet come for him to
+produce his powers, but that Hinojosa might be assured they were such
+as to secure an ample recompense to every loyal servant of his
+country.19
+
+Hinojosa was not satisfied; and he immediately wrote to Pizarro,
+acquainting him with Gasca's arrival and with the object of his mission,
+at the same time plainly intimating his own conviction that the president
+had no authority to confirm him in the government.  But before the
+departure of the ship, Gasca secured the services of a Dominican friar,
+who had taken his passage on board for one of the towns on the coast.
+This man he intrusted with manifestoes, setting forth the purport of his
+visit, and proclaiming the abolition of the ordinances, with a free pardon
+to all who returned to their obedience.  He wrote, also, to the prelates
+and to the corporations of the different cities.  The former he requested
+to cooperate with him in introducing a spirit of loyalty and subordination
+among the people, while he intimated to the towns his purpose to confer
+with them hereafter, in order to devise some effectual measures for the
+welfare of the country.  These papers the Dominican engaged to
+distribute, himself, among the principal cities of the colony; and he
+faithfully kept his word, though, as it proved, at no little hazard of his
+life.  The seeds thus scattered might many of them fall on barren ground.
+But the greater part, the president trusted, would take root in the hearts
+of the people; and he patiently waited for the harvest.
+
+Meanwhile, though he failed to remove the scruples of Hinojosa, the
+courteous manners of Gasca, and his mild, persuasive discourse, had a
+visible effect on other individuals with whom he had daily intercourse.
+Several of these, and among them some of the principal cavaliers in
+Panama, as well as in the squadron, expressed their willingness to join
+the royal cause, and aid the president in maintaining it.  Gasca profited
+by their assistance to open a communication with the authorities of
+Guatemala and Mexico, whom he advised of his mission, while he
+admonished them to allow no intercourse to be carried on with the
+insurgents on the coast of Peru.  He, at length, also prevailed on the
+governor of Panama to furnish him with the means of entering into
+communication with Gonzalo Pizarro himself; and a ship was despatched
+to Lima, bearing a letter from Charles the Fifth, addressed to that chief,
+with an epistle also from Gasca.
+
+The emperor's communication was couched in the most condescending
+and even conciliatory terms.  Far from taxing Gonzalo with rebellion, his
+royal master affected to regard his conduct as in a manner imposed on
+him by circumstances, especially by the obduracy of the viceroy Nunez
+in denying the colonists the inalienable right of petition.  He gave no
+intimation of an intent to confirm Pizarro in the government, or, indeed,
+to remove him from it; but simply referred him to Gasca as one who
+would acquaint him with the royal pleasure, and with whom he was to
+cooperate in restoring tranquillity to the country.
+
+Gasca's own letter was pitched on the same politic key.  He remarked,
+however, that the exigencies which had hitherto determined Gonzalo's
+line of conduct existed no longer.  All that had been asked was conceded.
+There was nothing now to contend for; and it only remained for Pizarro
+and his followers to show their loyalty and the sincerity of their
+principles by obedience to the Crown.  Hitherto, the president said,
+Pizarro had been in arms against the viceroy; and the people had
+supported him as against a common enemy.  If he prolonged the contest,
+that enemy must be his sovereign.  In such a struggle, the people would
+be sure to desert him; and Gasca conjured him, by his honor as a
+cavalier, and his duty as a loyal vassal, to respect the royal authority, and
+not rashly provoke a contest which must prove to the world that his
+conduct hitherto had been dictated less by patriotic motives than by
+selfish ambition.
+
+This letter, which was conveyed in language the most courteous and
+complimentary to the subject of it, was of great length.  It was
+accompanied by another much more concise, to Cepeda, the intriguing
+lawyer, who, as Gasca knew, had the greatest influence over Pizarro, in
+the absence of Carbajal, then employed in reaping the silver harvest from
+the newly discovered mines of Potosi.20  In this epistle, Gasca affected
+to defer to the cunning politician as a member of the Royal Audience,
+and he conferred with him on the best manner of supplying a vacancy in
+that body.  These several despatches were committed to a cavalier,
+named Paniagua, a faithful adherent of the president, and one of those
+who had accompanied him from Castile.  To this same emissary he also
+gave manifestos and letters, like those intrusted to the Dominican, with
+orders secretly to distribute them in Lima, before he quitted that
+capital.21
+
+Weeks and months rolled away, while the president still remained at
+Panama, where, indeed, as his communications were jealously cut off
+with Peru, he might be said to be detained as a sort of prisoner of state.
+Meanwhile, both he and Hinojosa were looking with anxiety for the
+arrival of some messenger from Pizarro, who should indicate the manner
+in which the president's mission was to be received by that chief.  The
+governor of Panama was not blind to the perilous position in which he
+was himself placed, nor to the madness of provoking a contest with the
+Court of Castile.  But he had a reluctance--not too often shared by the
+cavaliers of Peru--to abandon the fortunes of the commander who had
+reposed in him so great confidence.  Yet he trusted that this commander
+would embrace the opportunity now offered, of placing himself and the
+country in a state of permanent security.
+
+Several of the cavaliers who had given in their adhesion to Gasca,
+displeased by this obstinacy, as they termed it, of Hinojosa, proposed to
+seize his person and then get possession of the armada.  But the president
+at once rejected this offer.  His mission, he said, was one of peace, and
+he would not stain it at the outset by an act of violence.  He even
+respected the scruples of Hinojosa; and a cavalier of so honorable a
+nature, he conceived, if once he could be gained by fair means, would be
+much more likely to be true to his interests, than if overcome either by
+force or fraud.  Gasca thought he might safely abide his time.  There was
+policy, as well as honesty, in this; indeed, they always go together.
+
+Meantime, persons were occasionally arriving from Lima and the
+neighboring places, who gave accounts of Pizarro, varying according to
+the character and situation of the parties.  Some represented him as
+winning all hearts by his open temper and the politic profusion with
+which, though covetous of wealth, he distributed repartimientos and
+favors among his followers.  Others spoke of him as carrying matters
+with a high hand, while the greatest timidity and distrust prevailed
+among the citizens of Lima.  All agreed that his power rested on too
+secure a basis to be shaken; and that, if the president should go to Lima,
+he must either consent to become Pizarro's instrument and confirm him
+in the government, or forfeit his own life.22
+
+It was undoubtedly true, that Gonzalo, while he gave attention, as his
+friends say, to the public business, found time for free indulgence in
+those pleasures which wait on the soldier of fortune in his hour of
+triumph.  He was the object of flattery and homage; courted even by
+those who hated him.  For such as did not love the successful chieftain
+had good cause to fear him; and his exploits were commemorated in
+romances or ballads, as rivalling--it was not far from truth--those of the
+most doughty paladins of chivalry.23
+
+Amidst this burst of adulation, the cup of joy commended to Pizarro's
+lips had one drop of bitterness in it that gave its flavor to all the rest; for,
+notwithstanding his show of confidence, he looked with unceasing
+anxiety to the arrival of tidings that might assure him in what light his
+conduct was regarded by the government at home.  This was proved by
+his jealous precautions to guard the approaches to the coast, and to
+detain the persons of the royal emissaries.  He learned, therefore, with no
+little uneasiness, from Hinojosa, the landing of President Gasca, and the
+purport of his mission.  But his discontent was mitigated, when he
+understood that the new envoy had come without military array, without
+any of the ostentatious trappings of office to impose on the minds of the
+vulgar, but alone, as it were, in the plain garb of an humble
+missionary.24  Pizarro could not discern, that under this modest exterior
+lay a moral power, stronger than his own steel-clad battalions, which,
+operating silently on public opinion,--the more sure than it was silent,--
+was even now undermining his strength, like a subterraneous channel
+eating away the foundations of some stately edifice, that stands secure in
+its pride of place!
+
+But, although Gonzalo Pizarro could not foresee this result, he saw
+enough to satisfy him that it would be safest to exclude the president
+from Peru.  The tidings of his arrival, moreover, quickened his former
+purpose of sending an embassy to Spain to vindicate his late
+proceedings, and request the royal confirmation of his authority.  The
+person placed at the head of this mission was Lorenzo de Aldana, a
+cavalier of discretion as well as courage, and high in the confidence of
+Pizarro, as one of his most devoted partisans.  He had occupied some
+important posts under that chief, one secret of whose successes was the
+sagacity he showed in the selection of his agents.
+
+Besides Aldana and one or two cavaliers, the bishop of Lima was joined
+in the commission, as likely, from his position, to have a favorable
+influence on Gonzalo's fortunes at court.  Together with the despatches
+for the government, the envoys were intrusted with a letter to Gasca from
+the inhabitants of Lima; in which, after civilly congratulating the
+president on his arrival, they announce their regret that he had come too
+late.  The troubles of the country were now settled by the overthrow of
+the viceroy, and the nation was reposing in quiet under the rule of
+Pizarro.  An embassy, they stated, was on its way to Castile, not to solicit
+pardon, for they had committed no crime,25 but to petition the emperor
+to confirm their leader in the government, as the man in Peru best
+entitled to it by his virtues.26  They expressed the conviction that
+Gasca's presence would only serve to renew the distractions of the
+country, and they darkly intimated that his attempt to land would
+probably cost him his life.--The language of this singular document was
+more respectful than might be inferred from its import.  It was dated the
+14th of October, 1546, and was subscribed by seventy of the principal
+cavaliers in the city.  It was not improbably dictated by Cepeda, whose
+hand is visible in most of the intrigues of Pizarro's little court.  It is also
+said, --the authority is somewhat questionable,--that Aldana received
+instructions from Gonzalo secretly to offer a bribe of fifty thousand
+pesos de oro to the president, to prevail on him to return to Castile; and
+in case of his refusal, some darker and more effectual way was to be
+devised to rid the country of his presence.27
+
+Aldana, fortified with his despatches, sped swiftly on his voyage to
+Panama.  Through him the governor learned the actual state of feeling in
+the councils of Pizarro; and he listened with regret to the envoy's
+conviction, that no terms would be admitted by that chief or his
+companions, that did not confirm him in the possession of Peru.28
+
+Aldana was soon admitted to an audience by the president.  It was
+attended with very different results from what had followed from the
+conferences with Hinojosa; for Pizarro's envoy was not armed by nature
+with that stubborn panoply which had hitherto made the other proof
+against all argument.  He now learned with surprise the nature of Gasca's
+powers, and the extent of the royal concessions to the insurgents.  He had
+embarked with Gonzalo Pizarro on a desperate venture, and he found
+that it had proved successful.  The colony had nothing more, in reason,
+to demand; and, though devoted in heart to his leader, he did not feel
+bound by any principle of honor to take part with him, solely to gratify
+his ambition, in a wild contest with the Crown that must end in inevitable
+ruin.  He consequently abandoned his mission to Castile, probably never
+very palatable to him, and announced his purpose to accept the pardon
+proffered by government, and support the president in settling the affairs
+of Peru.  He subsequently wrote, it should be added, to his former
+commander in Lima, stating the course he had taken, and earnestly
+recommending the latter to follow his example.
+
+The influence of this precedent in so important a person as Aldana,
+aided, doubtless, by the conviction that no change was now to be
+expected in Pizarro, while delay would be fatal to himself, at length
+prevailed over Hinojosa's scruples, and he intimated to Gasca his
+willingness to place the fleet under his command.  The act was
+performed with great pomp and ceremony.  Some of Pizarro's stanchest
+partisans were previously removed from the vessels; and on the
+nineteenth of November, 1546, Hinojosa and his captains resigned their
+commissions into the hands of the president.  They next took the oaths of
+allegiance to Castile; a free pardon for all past offences was proclaimed
+by the herald from a scaffold erected in the great square of the city; and
+the president, greeting them as true and loyal vassals of the Crown,
+restored their several commissions to the cavaliers.  The royal standard
+of Spain was then unfurled on board the squadron, and proclaimed that
+this stronghold of Pizarro's power had passed away from him for ever.29
+
+The return of their commissions to the insurgent captains was a politic
+act in Gasca.  It secured the services of the ablest officers in the country,
+and turned against Pizarro the very arm on which he had most leaned for
+support.  Thus was this great step achieved, without force or fraud, by
+Gasca's patience and judicious forecast.  He was content to bide his time;
+and he now might rely with well-grounded confidence on the ultimate
+success of his mission.
+
+
+
+Book 5
+
+Chapter 2
+
+Gasca Assembles His Forces--Defection Of Pizarro's Followers--
+He Musters His Levies--Agitation In Lima--He Abandons The City--
+Gasca Sails From Panama--Bloody Battle Of Huarina
+
+1547
+
+No sooner was Gasca placed in possession of Panama and the fleet, than
+he entered on a more decisive course of policy than he had been hitherto
+allowed to pursue.  He raised levies of men, and drew together supplies
+from all quarters.  He took care to discharge the arrears already due to
+the soldiers, and promised liberal pay for the future; for, though mindful
+that his personal charges should cost little to the Crown, he did not stint
+his expenditure when the public good required it.  As the funds in the
+treasury were exhausted, he obtained loans on the credit of the
+government from the wealthy citizens of Panama, who, relying on his
+good faith, readily made the necessary advances.  He next sent letters to
+the authorities of Guatemala and Mexico, requiring their assistance in
+carrying on hostilities, if necessary, against the insurgents; and he
+despatched a summons, in like manner, to Benalcazar, in the provinces
+north of Peru, to meet him, on his landing in that country, with his whole
+available force.
+
+The greatest enthusiasm was shown by the people of Panama in getting
+the little navy in order for his intended voyage; and prelates and
+commanders did not disdain to prove their loyalty by taking part in the
+good work, along with the soldiers and sailors.1  Before his own
+departure, however, Gasca proposed to send a small squadron of four
+ships under Aldana, to cruise off the port of Lima, with instructions to
+give protection to those well affected to the royal cause, and receive
+them, if need be, on board his vessels.  He was also intrusted with
+authenticated copies of the president's commission, to be delivered to
+Gonzalo Pizarro, that the chief might feel, there was yet time to return
+before the gates of mercy were closed against him.2
+
+While these events were going on, Gasca's proclamations and letters
+were doing their work in Peru.  It required but little sagacity to perceive
+that the nation at large, secured in the protection of person and property,
+had nothing to gain by revolution.  Interest and duty, fortunately, now lay
+on the same side; and the ancient sentiment of loyalty, smothered for a
+time, but not extinguished, revived in the breasts of the people.  Still this
+was not manifested, at once, by any overt act; for, under a strong military
+rule, men dared hardly think for themselves, much less communicate
+their thoughts to one another.  But changes of public opinion, like
+changes in the atmosphere that come on slowly and imperceptibly, make
+themselves more and more widely felt, till, by a sort of silent sympathy,
+they spread to the remotest corners of the land.  Some intimations of
+such a change of sentiment at length found their way to Lima, although
+all accounts of the president's mission had been jealously excluded from
+that capital.  Gonzalo Pizarro himself became sensible of these
+symptoms of disaffection, though almost too faint and feeble, as yet, for
+the most experienced eye to descry in them the coming tempest.
+
+Several of the president's proclamations had been forwarded to Gonzalo
+by his faithful partisans; and Carbajal, who had been summoned from
+Potosi, declared they were "more to be dreaded than the lances of
+Castile." 3  Yet Pizarro did not, for a moment, lose his confidence in his
+own strength; and with a navy like that now in Panama at his command,
+he felt he might bid defiance to any enemy on his coasts.  He had implicit
+confidence in the fidelity of Hinojosa.
+
+It was at this period that Paniagua arrived off the port with Gasca's
+despatches to Pizarro, consisting of the emperor's letter and his own.
+They were instantly submitted by that chieftain to his trusty counsellors,
+Carbajal and Cepeda, and their opinions asked as to the course to be
+pursued.  It was the crisis of Pizarro's fate.
+
+Carbajal, whose sagacious eye fully comprehended the position in which
+they stood, was in favor of accepting the royal grace on the terms
+proposed; and he intimated his sense of their importance by declaring,
+that "he would pave the way for the bearer of them into the capital with
+ingots of gold and silver." 4  Cepeda was of a different way of thinking.
+He was a judge of the Royal Audience; and had been sent to Peru as the
+immediate counsellor of Blasco Nunez.  But he had turned against the
+viceroy, had encountered him in battle, and his garments might be said to
+be yet wet with his blood!  What grace was there, then, for him?
+Whatever respect might be shown to the letter of the royal provisions, in
+point of fact, he must ever live under the Castilian rule a ruined man.  He
+accordingly, strongly urged the rejection of Gasca's offers.  "They will
+cost you your government," he said to Pizarro; "the smooth-tongued
+priest is not so simple a person as you take him to be.  He is deep and
+politic.5  He knows well what promises to make; and, once master of the
+country, he will know, too, how to keep them."
+
+Carbajal was not shaken by the arguments or the sneers of his
+companions; and as the discussion waxed warm, Cepeda taxed his
+opponent with giving counsel suggested by fears for his own safety,--a
+foolish taunt, sufficiently disproved by the whole life of the doughty old
+warrior, Carbajal did not insist further on his own views, however, as he
+found them unwelcome to Pizarro, and contented himself with coolly
+remarking, that "he had, indeed, no relish for rebellion; but he had as
+long a neck for a halter, he believed, as any of his companions; and as he
+could hardly expect to live much longer, at any rate, it was, after all, of
+little moment to him." 6
+
+Pizarro, spurred on by a fiery ambition that overleaped every obstacle,7
+did not condescend to count the desperate chances of a contest with the
+Crown.  He threw his own weight into the scale with Cepeda.  The offer
+of grace was rejected; and he thus cast away the last tie which held him
+to his country, and, by the act, proclaimed himself a rebel.8
+
+It was not long after the departure of Paniagua, that Pizarro received
+tidings of the defection of Aldana and Hinojosa, and of the surrender of
+the fleet, on which he had expended an immense sum, as the chief
+bulwark of his power.  This unwelcome intelligence was followed by
+accounts of the further defection of some of the principal towns in the
+north, and of the assassination of Puelles, the faithful lieutenant to whom
+he had confided the government of Quito.  It was not very long, also,
+before he found his authority assailed in the opposite quarter at Cuzco;
+for Centeno, the loyal chieftain who, as the reader may remember, had
+been driven by Carbajal to take refuge in a cave near Arequipa, had
+issued from his concealment after remaining there a year, and, on
+learning the arrival of Gasca, had again raised the royal standard.  Then
+collecting a small body of followers, and falling on Cuzco by night, he
+made himself master of that capital, defeated the garrison who held it,
+and secured it for the Crown.  Marching soon after into the province of
+Charcas, the bold chief allied himself with the officer who commanded
+for Pizarro in La Plata; and their combined forces, to the number of a
+thousand, took up a position on the borders of Lake Titicaca, where the
+two cavaliers coolly waited an opportunity to take the field against their
+ancient commander.
+
+Gonzalo Pizarro, touched to the heart by the desertion of those in whom
+he most confided, was stunned by the dismal tidings of his losses coming
+so thick upon him.  Yet he did not waste his time in idle crimination or
+complaint; but immediately set about making preparations to meet the
+storm with all his characteristic energy.  He wrote, at once to such of his
+captains as he believed still faithful, commanding them to be ready with
+their troops to march to his assistance at the shortest notice.  He
+reminded them of their obligations to him, and that their interests were
+identical with his own.  The president's commission, he added, had been
+made out before the news had reached Spain of the battle of Ariaquito,
+and could never cover a pardon to those concerned in the death of the
+viceroy.9
+
+Pizarro was equally active in enforcing his levies in the capital, and in
+putting them in the best fighting order.  He soon saw himself at the head
+of a thousand men, beautifully equipped, and complete in all their
+appointments; "as gallant an array," says an old writer, "though so small
+in number, as ever trod the plains of Italy,"--displaying in the excellence
+of their arms, their gorgeous uniforms, and the caparisons of their horses,
+a magnificence that could be furnished only by the silver of Peru.10
+Each company was provided with a new stand of colors, emblazoned
+with its peculiar device.  Some bore the initials and arms of Pizarro, and
+one or two of these were audaciously surmounted by a crown, as if to
+intimate the rank to which their commander might aspire.11
+
+Among the leaders most conspicuous on this occasion was Cepeda,
+"who," in the words of a writer of his time, "had exchanged the robe of
+the licentiate for the plumed casque and mailed harness of the warrior."
+12  But the cavalier to whom Pizarro confided the chief care of
+organizing his battalions was the veteran Carbajal, who had studied the
+art of war under the best captains of Europe, and whose life of adventure
+had been a practical commentary on their early lessons.  It was on his
+arm that Gonzalo most leaned in the hour of danger; and well had it been
+for him, if he had profited by his counsels at an earlier period.
+
+It gives one some idea of the luxurious accommodations of Pizarro's
+forces, that he endeavored to provide each of his musketeers with a
+horse.  The expenses incurred by him were enormous.  The immediate
+cost of his preparations, we are told, was not less than half a million of
+pesos de oro; and his pay to the cavaliers, and, indeed, to the common
+soldiers, in his little army, was on an extravagant scale, nowhere to be
+met with but on the silver soil of Peru.13
+
+When his own funds were exhausted, he supplied the deficiency by fines
+imposed on the rich citizens of Lima as the price of exemption from
+service, by forced loans, and various other schemes of military
+exaction.14  From this time, it is said, the chieftain's temper underwent a
+visible change.15  He became more violent in his passions, more
+impatient of control, and indulged more freely in acts of cruelty and
+license.  The desperate cause in which he was involved made him
+reckless of consequences.  Though naturally frank and confiding, the
+frequent defection of his followers filled him with suspicion.  He knew
+not in whom to confide.  Every one who showed himself indifferent to
+his cause, or was suspected of being so, was dealt with as an open
+enemy.  The greatest distrust prevailed in Lima.  No man dared confide
+in his neighbor.  Some concealed their effects; others contrived to elude
+the vigilance of the sentinels, and hid themselves in the neighboring
+woods and mountains.16  No one was allowed to enter or leave the city
+without a license.  All commerce, all intercourse, with other places was
+cut off.  It was long since the fifth belonging to the Crown had been
+remitted to Castile; as Pizarro had appropriated them for his own use.
+He now took possession of the mints, broke up the royal stamps, and
+issued a debased coin, emblazoned with his own cipher.17  It was the
+most decisive act of sovereignty.
+
+At this gloomy period, the lawyer Cepeda contrived a solemn farce, the
+intent of which was to give a sort of legal sanction to the rebel cause in
+the eyes of the populace.  He caused a process to be prepared against
+Gasca, Hinojosa, and Aldana, in which they were accused of treason
+against the existing government of Peru, were convicted, and condemned
+to death.  This instrument he submitted to a number of jurists in the
+capital, requiring their signatures.  But they had no mind thus inevitably
+to implicate themselves, by affixing their names to such a paper; and
+they evaded it by representing, that it would only serve to cut off all
+chance, should any of the accused be so disposed, of their again
+embracing the cause they had deserted.  Cepeda was the only man who
+signed the document.  Carbajal treated the whole thing with ridicule.
+"What is the object of your process?" said he to Cepeda.  "Its object,"
+replied the latter, "is to prevent delay, that, if taken at any time, the guilty
+party may be at once led to execution." "I cry you mercy," retorted
+Carbajal; "I thought there must be some virtue in the instrument, that
+would have killed them outright.  Let but one of these same traitors fall
+into my hands, and I will march him off to execution, without waiting for
+the sentence of a court, I promise you!" 18
+
+While this paper war was going on, news was brought that Aldana's
+squadron was off the port of Callao.  That commander had sailed from
+Panama, the middle of February, 1547.  On his passage down the coast
+he had landed at Truxillo, where the citizens welcomed him with
+enthusiasm, and eagerly proclaimed their submission to the royal
+authority.  He received, at the same time, messages from several of
+Pizarro's officers in the interior, intimating their return to their duty, and
+their readiness to support the president.  Aldana named Caxamalca as a
+place of rendezvous, where they should concentrate their forces, and wait
+the landing of Gasca.  He then continued his voyage towards Lima.
+
+No sooner was Pizarro informed of his approach, than, fearful lest it
+might have a disastrous effect in seducing his followers from their
+fidelity, he marched them about a league out of the city, and there
+encamped.  He was two leagues from the coast, and he posted a guard on
+the shore to intercept all communication with the vessels.  Before leaving
+the capital, Cepeda resorted to an expedient for securing the inhabitants
+more firmly, as he conceived, in Pizarro's interests.  He caused the
+citizens to be assembled, and made them a studied harangue, in which he
+expatiated on the services of their governor, and the security which the
+country had enjoyed under his rule.  He then told them that every man
+was at liberty to choose for himself; to remain under the protection of
+their present ruler, or, if they preferred, to transfer their allegiance to his
+enemy.  He invited them to speak their minds, but required every one
+who would still continue under Pizarro to take an oath of fidelity to his
+cause, with the assurance, that, if any should be so false hereafter as to
+violate this pledge, he should pay for it with his life.19  There was no
+one found bold enough--with his head thus in the lion's mouth--to swerve
+from his obedience to Pizarro; and every man took the oath prescribed,
+which was administered in the most solemn and imposing form by the
+licentiate.  Carbajal, as usual, made a jest of the whole proceeding.
+"How long," he asked his companion, "do you think these same oaths
+will stand?  The first wind that blows off the coast after we are gone will
+scatter them in air!" His prediction was soon verified.
+
+Meantime, Aldana anchored off the port, where there was no vessel of
+the insurgents to molest him.  By Cepeda's advice, some four or five had
+been burnt a short time before, during the absence of Carbajal, in order
+to cut off all means by which the inhabitants could leave the place.  This
+was deeply deplored by the veteran soldier on his return.  "It was
+destroying," he said, "the guardian angels of Lima." 20  And certainly,
+under such a commander, they might now have stood Pizarro in good
+stead; but his star was on the wane.
+
+The first act of Aldana was to cause the copy of Gasca's powers, with
+which he had been intrusted, to be conveyed to his ancient commander,
+by whom it was indignantly torn in pieces.  Aldana next contrived, by
+means of his agents, to circulate among the citizens, and even the
+soldiers of the camp, the president's manifestoes.  They were not long in
+producing their effect.  Few had been at all aware of the real purport of
+Gasca's mission, of the extent of his powers, or of the generous terms
+offered by government.  They shrunk from the desperate course into
+which they had been thus unwarily seduced, and they sought only in what
+way they could, with least danger, extricate themselves from their
+present position, and return to their allegiance.  Some escaped by night
+from the camp, eluded the vigilance of the sentinels, and effected their
+retreat on board the vessels.  Some were taken, and found no quarter at
+the hands of Carbajal and his merciless ministers.  But, where the spirit
+of disaffection was abroad, means of escape were not wanting.
+
+As the fugitives were cut off from Lima and the neighboring coast, they
+secreted themselves in the forests and mountains, and watched their
+opportunity for making their way to Truxilla and other ports at a
+distance; and so contagious was the example, that it not unfrequently
+happened that the very soldiers sent in pursuit of the deserters joined
+with them.  Among those that fled was the Licentiate Carbajal, who must
+not be confounded with his military namesake.  He was the same cavalier
+whose brother had been put to death in Lima by Blasco Nunez, and who
+revenged himself, as we have seen, by imbruing his own hands in the
+blood of the viceroy.  That a person thus implicated should trust to the
+royal pardon showed that no one need despair of it; and the example
+proved most disastrous to Pizarro.21
+
+Carbajal, who made a jest of every thing, even of the misfortunes which
+pinched him the sharpest, when told of the desertion of his comrades,
+amused himself by humming the words of a popular ditty:--
+
+"The wind blows the hairs off my head, mother; Two at a time, it blows
+them away!" 22
+
+But the defection of his followers made a deeper impression on Pizarro,
+and he was sorely distressed as he beheld the gallant array, to which he
+had so confidently looked for gaining his battles, thus melting away like
+a morning mist.  Bewildered by the treachery of those in whom he had
+most trusted, he knew not where to turn, nor what course to take.  It was
+evident that he must leave his present dangerous quarters without loss of
+time.  But whither should he direct his steps?  In the north, the great
+towns had abandoned his cause, and the president was already marching
+against him; while Centeno held the passes of the south, with a force
+double his own.  In this emergency, he at length resolved to occupy
+Arequipa, a seaport still true to him, where he might remain till he had
+decided on some future course of operations.
+
+After a painful but rapid march, Gonzalo arrived at this place, where he
+was speedily joined by a reinforcement that he had detached for the
+recovery of Cuzco.  But so frequent had been the desertions from both
+companies,--though in Pizarro's corps these had greatly lessened since
+the departure from the neighborhood of Lima,--that his whole number
+did not exceed five hundred men, less than half of the force which he had
+so recently mustered in the capital.  To such humble circumstances was
+the man now reduced, who had so lately lorded it over the land with
+unlimited sway!  Still the chief did not despond.  He had gathered new
+spirit from the excitement of his march and his distance from Lima; and
+he seemed to recover his former confidence, as he exclaimed,--"It is
+misfortune that teaches us who are our friends.  If but ten only remain
+true to me, fear not but I will again be master of Peru!" 23
+
+No sooner had the rebel forces withdrawn from the neighborhood of
+Lima, than the inhabitants of that city, little troubled, as Carbajal had
+predicted, by their compulsory oaths of allegiance to Pizarro, threw open
+their gates to Aldana, who took possession of this important place in the
+name of the president.  That commander, meanwhile, had sailed with his
+whole fleet from Panama, on the tenth of April, 1547.  The first part of
+his voyage was prosperous; but he was soon perplexed by contrary
+currents, and the weather became rough and tempestuous.  The violence
+of the storm continuing day after day, the sea was lashed into fury, and
+the fleet was tossed about on the billows, which ran mountain high, as if
+emulating the wild character of the region they bounded.  The rain
+descended in torrents, and the lightning was so incessant, that the
+vessels, to quote the lively language of the chronicler, "seemed to be
+driving through seas of flame!" 24  The hearts of the stoutest mariners
+were filled with dismay.  They considered it hopeless to struggle against
+the elements, and they loudly demanded to return to the continent, and
+postpone the voyage till a more favorable season of the year.
+
+But the president saw in this the ruin of his cause, as well as of the loyal
+vassals who had engaged, on his landing, to support it.  "I am willing to
+die," he said, "but not to return"; and, regardless of the remonstrances of
+his more timid followers, he insisted on carrying as much sail as the
+ships could possibly bear, at every interval of the storm.25  Meanwhile,
+to divert the minds of the seamen from their present danger, Gasca
+amused them by explaining some of the strange phenomena exhibited by
+the ocean in the tempest, which had filled their superstitious minds with
+mysterious dread.26
+
+Signals had been given for the ships to make the best of their way, each
+for itself, to the island of Gorgona.  Here they arrived, one after another,
+with but a single exception, though all more or less shattered by the
+weather.  The president waited only for the fury of the elements to spend
+itself, when he again embarked, and, on smoother waters, crossed over to
+Manta.  From this place he soon after continued his voyage to Tumbez,
+and landed at that port on the thirteenth of June.  He was everywhere
+received with enthusiasm, and all seemed anxious to efface the
+remembrance of the past by professions of future fidelity to the Crown.
+Gasca received, also, numerous letters of congratulation from cavaliers
+in the interior, most of whom had formerly taken service under Pizarro.
+He made courteous acknowledgments for their offers of assistance, and
+commanded them to repair to Caxamalca, the general place of
+rendezvous.
+
+To this same spot he sent Hinojosa, so soon as that officer had
+disembarked with the land forces from the fleet, ordering him to take
+command of the levies assembled there, and then join him at Xauxa.
+Here he determined to establish his headquarters.  It lay in a rich and
+abundant territory, and by its central position afforded a point for acting
+with greatest advantage against the enemy.
+
+He then moved forward, at the head of a small detachment of cavalry,
+along the level road on the coast towards Truxillo.  After halting for a
+short time in that loyal city, he traversed the mountain range on the
+southeast, and soon entered the fruitful valley of Xauxa.  There he was
+presently joined by reinforcements from the north, as well as from the
+principal places on the coast; and, not long after his arrival, received a
+message from Centeno, informing him that he held the passes by which
+Gonzalo Pizarro was preparing to make his escape from the country, and
+that the insurgent chief must soon fall into his hands.
+
+The royal camp was greatly elated by these tidings.  The war, then, was
+at length terminated, and that without the president having been called
+upon so much as to lift his sword against a Spaniard.  Several of his
+counsellors now advised him to disband the greater part of his forces, as
+burdensome and no longer necessary.  But the president was too wise to
+weaken his strength before he had secured the victory.  He consented,
+however, to countermand the requisition for levies from Mexico and the
+adjoining colonies, as now feeling sufficiently strong in the general
+loyalty of the country.  But, concentrating his forces at Xauxa, he
+established his quarters in that town, as he had first intended, resolved to
+await there tidings of the operations in the south.  The result was
+different from what he had expected.27
+
+Pizarro, meanwhile, whom we left at Arequipa, had decided, after much
+deliberation, to evacuate Peru, and pass into Chili.  In this territory,
+beyond the president's jurisdiction, he might find a safe retreat, The
+fickle people, he thought, would soon weary of their new ruler; and he
+would then rally in sufficient strength to resume active operations for the
+recovery of his domain.  Such were the calculations of the rebel
+chieftain.  But how was he to effect his object, while the passes among
+the mountains, where his route lay, were held by Centeno with a force
+more than double his own?  He resolved to try negotiation; for that
+captain had once served under him, and had, indeed, been most active in
+persuading Pizarro to take on himself the office of procurator.
+Advancing, accordingly, in the direction of Lake Titicaca, in the
+neighborhood of which Centeno had pitched his camp, Gonzalo
+despatched an emissary to his quarters to open a negotiation.  He called
+to his adversary's recollection the friendly relations that had once
+subsisted between them; and reminded him of one occasion in particular,
+in which he had spared his life, when convicted of a conspiracy against
+himself.  He harbored no sentiments of unkindness, he said, for
+Centeno's recent conduct, and had not now come to seek a quarrel with
+him.  His purpose was to abandon Peru; and the only favor he had to
+request of his former associate was to leave him a free passage across the
+mountains.
+
+To this communication Centeno made answer in terms as courtly as
+those of Pizarro himself, that he was not unmindful of their ancient
+friendship.  He was now ready to serve his former commander in any
+way not inconsistent with honor, or obedience to his sovereign.  But he
+was there in arms for the royal cause, and he could not swerve from his
+duty.  If Pizarro would but rely on his faith and surrender himself up, he
+pledged his knightly word to use all his interest with the government, to
+secure as favorable terms for him and his followers as had been granted
+to the rest of their countrymen.--Gonzalo listened to the smooth promises
+of his ancient comrade with bitter scorn depicted in his countenance,
+and, snatching the letter from his secretary, cast it away from him with
+indignation.  There was nothing left but an appeal to arms.28
+
+He at once broke up his encampment, and directed his march on the
+borders of Lake Titicaca, near which lay his rival.  He resorted, however,
+to stratagem, that he might still, if possible, avoid an encounter.  He sent
+forward his scouts in a different direction from that which he intended to
+take, and then quickened his march on Huarina.  This was a small town
+situated on the southeastern extremity of Lake Titicaca, the shores of
+which, the seat of the primitive civilization of the Incas, were soon to
+resound with the murderous strife of their more civilized conquerors!
+
+But Pizarro's movements had been secretly communicated to Centeno,
+and that commander, accordingly, changing his ground, took up a
+position not far from Huarina, on the same day on which Gonzalo
+reached this place.  The videttes of the two camps came in sight of each
+other that evening, and the rival forces, lying on their arms, prepared for
+action on the following morning.
+
+It was the twenty-sixth of October, 1547, when the two commanders,
+having formed their troops in order of battle, advanced to the encounter
+on the plains of Huarina.  The ground, defended on one side by a bold
+spur of the Andes, and not far removed on the other from the waters of
+Titicaca, was an open and level plain, well suited to military
+manoeuvres.  It seemed as if prepared by Nature as the lists for an
+encounter.
+
+Centeno's army amounted to about a thousand men.  His cavalry
+consisted of near two hundred and fifty, well equipped and mounted.
+Among them were several gentlemen of family, some of whom had once
+followed the banners of Pizarro; the whole forming an efficient corps, in
+which rode some of the best lances of Peru.  His arquebusiers were less
+numerous, not exceeding a hundred and fifty, indifferently provided with
+ammunition.  The remainder, and much the larger part of Centeno's
+army, consisted of spearmen, irregular levies hastily drawn together, and
+possessed of little discipline.29
+
+This corps of infantry formed the centre of his line, flanked by the
+arquebusiers in two nearly equal divisions, while his cavalry were also
+disposed in two bodies on the right and left wings.  Unfortunately,
+Centeno had been for the past week ill of a pleurisy,--so ill, indeed, that
+on the preceding day he had been bled several times.  He was now too
+feeble to keep his saddle, but was carried in a litter, and when he had
+seen his men formed in order, he withdrew to a distance from the field,
+unable to take part in the action.  But Solano, the militant bishop of
+Cuzco, who, with several of his followers, took part in the engagement,--
+a circumstance, indeed, of no strange occurrence,--rode along the ranks
+with the crucifix in his hand, bestowing his benediction on the soldiers,
+and exhorting each man to do his duty.
+
+Pizarro's forces were less than half of his rival's, not amounting to more
+than four hundred and eighty men.  The horse did not muster above
+eighty-five in all, and he posted them in a single body on the right of his
+battalion.  The strength of his army lay in his arquebusiers, about three
+hundred and fifty in number.  It was an admirable corps, commanded by
+Carbajal, by whom it had been carefully drilled.  Considering the
+excellence of its arms, and its thorough discipline, this little body of
+infantry might be considered as the flower of the Peruvian soldiery, and
+on it Pizarro mainly relied for the success of the day.30  The remainder
+of his force, consisting of pikemen, not formidable for their numbers,
+though, like the rest of the infantry, under excellent discipline, he
+distributed on the left of his musketeers, so as to repel the enemy's horse.
+
+Pizarro himself had charge of the cavalry, taking his place, as usual, in
+the foremost rank.  He was superbly accoutred.  Over his shining mail he
+wore a sobre-vest of slashed velvet of a rich crimson color; and he rode a
+high-mettled charger, whose gaudy caparisons, with the showy livery of
+his rider, made the fearless commander the most conspicuous object in
+the field.
+
+His lieutenant, Carbajal, was equipped in a very different style.  He wore
+armor of proof of the most homely appearance, but strong and
+serviceable; and his steel bonnet, with its closely barred visor of the
+same material, protected his head from more than one desperate blow on
+that day.  Over his arms he wore a surcoat of a greenish color, and he
+rode an active, strong-boned jennet, which, though capable of enduring
+fatigue, possessed neither grace nor beauty.  It would not have been easy
+to distinguish the veteran from the most ordinary cavalier.
+
+The two hosts arrived within six hundred paces of each other, when they
+both halted.  Carbajal preferred to receive the attack of the enemy, rather
+than advance further; for the ground he now occupied afforded a free
+range for his musketry, unobstructed by the trees or bushes that were
+sprinkled over some other parts of the field.  There was a singular
+motive, in addition, for retaining his present position.  The soldiers were
+encumbered, some with two, some with three, arquebuses each, being the
+arms left by those who, from time to time, had deserted the camp.  This
+uncommon supply of muskets, however serious an impediment on a
+march, might afford great advantage to troops waiting an assault; since,
+from the imperfect knowledge as well as construction of fire-arms at that
+day, much time was wasted in loading them.31
+
+Preferring, therefore, that the enemy should begin the attack, Carbajal
+came to a halt, while the opposite squadron, after a short respite,
+continued their advance a hundred paces farther.  Seeing that they then
+remained immovable.  Carbajal detached a small party of skirmishers to
+the front, in order to provoke them; but it was soon encountered by a
+similar party of the enemy, and some shots were exchanged, though with
+little damage to either side.  Finding this manoeuvre fail, the veteran
+ordered his men to advance a few paces, still hoping to provoke his
+antagonist to the charge.  This succeeded.  "We lose honor," exclaimed
+Centeno's soldiers; who, with a bastard sort of chivalry, belonging to
+undisciplined troops, felt it a disgrace to await an assault.  In vain their
+officers called out to them to remain at their post.  Their commander was
+absent, and they were urged on by the cries of a frantic friar, named
+Damingo Ruiz, who, believing the Philistines were delivered into their
+hands, called out,-- "Now is the time!  Onward, onward, fall on the
+enemy!" 32  There needed nothing further, and the men rushed forward
+in tumultuous haste, the pikemen carrying their levelled weapons so
+heedlessly as to interfere with one another, and in some instances to
+wound their comrades.  The musketeers, at the same time, kept up a
+disorderly fire as they advanced, which, from their rapid motion and the
+distance, did no execution.
+
+Carbajal was well pleased to see his enemies thus wasting their
+ammunition, Though he allowed a few muskets to be discharged, in
+order to stimulate his opponents the more, he commanded the great body
+of his infantry to reserve their fire till every shot could take effect.  As he
+knew the tendency of marksmen to shoot above the mark, he directed his
+men to aim at the girdle, or even a little below it; adding, that a shot that
+fell short might still do damage, while one that passed a hair's breadth
+above the head was wasted.33
+
+The veteran's company stood calm and unmoved, as Centeno's rapidly
+advanced; but when the latter had arrived within a hundred paces of their
+antagonists, Carbajal gave the word to fire.  An instantaneous volley ran
+along the line, and a tempest of balls was poured into the ranks of the
+assailants, with such unerring aim, that more than a hundred fell, dead on
+the field, while a still greater number were wounded.  Before they could
+recover from their disorder, Carbajal's men, snatching up their remaining
+pieces, discharged them with the like dreadful effect into the thick of the
+enemy.  The confusion of the latter was now complete, Unable to sustain
+the incessant shower of balls which fell on them from the scattering fire
+kept up by the arquebusiers, they were seized with a panic, and fled,
+scarcely making a show of further fight, from the field.
+
+But very different was the fortune of the day in the cavalry combat.
+Gonzalo Pizarro had drawn up his troop somewhat in the rear of
+Carbajal's right, in order to give the latter a freer range for the play of his
+musketry.  When the enemy's horse on the left galloped briskly against
+him, Pizarro, still favoring Carbajal,--whose fire, moreover, inflicted
+some loss on the assailants,--advanced but a few rods to receive the
+charge.  Centeno's squadron, accordingly, came thundering on in full
+career, and, notwithstanding the mischief sustained from their enemy's
+musketry, fell with such fury on their adversaries as to overturn them,
+man and horse, in the dust; "riding over their prostrate bodies," says the
+historian, "as if they had been a flock of sheep!" 34  The latter, with
+great difficulty recovering from the first shock, attempted to rally and
+sustain the fight on more equal terms.
+
+Yet the chief could not regain the ground he had lost.  His men were
+driven back at all points.  Many were slain, many more wounded, on
+both sides, and the ground was covered with the dead bodies of men and
+horses.  But the loss fell much the most heavily on Pizarro's troop; and
+the greater part of those who escaped with life were obliged to surrender
+as prisoners.  Cepeda, who fought with the fury of despair, received a
+severe cut from a sabre across the face, which disabled him and forced
+him to yield.35  Pizarro, after seeing his best and bravest fall round him,
+was set upon by three or four cavaliers at once.  Disentangling himself
+from the melee, he put spurs to his horse, and the noble animal, bleeding
+from a severe wound across the back, outstripped all his pursuers except
+one, who stayed him by seizing the bridle.  It would have gone hard with
+Gonzalo, but, grasping a light battle-axe, which hung by his side, he
+dealt such a blow on the head of his enemy's horse that he plunged
+violently, and compelled his rider to release his hold.  A number of
+arquebusiers, in the mean time, seeing Pizarro's distress, sprang forward
+to his rescue, slew two of his assailants who had now come up with him,
+and forced the others to fly in their turn.36
+
+The rout of the cavalry was complete; and Pizarro considered the day as
+lost, as he heard the enemy's trumpet sending forth the note of victory.
+But the sounds had scarcely died away, when they were taken up by the
+opposite side.  Centeno's infantry had been discomfited, as we have seen,
+and driven off the ground.  But his cavalry on the right had charged
+Carbajal's left, consisting of spearmen mingled with arquebusiers.  The
+horse rode straight against this formidable phalanx.  But they were
+unable to break through the dense array of pikes, held by the steady
+hands of troops who stood firm and fearless on their post; while, at the
+same time, the assailants were greatly annoyed by the galling fire of the
+arquebusiers in the rear of the spearmen.  Finding it impracticable to
+make a breach, the horsemen rode round the flanks in much disorder, and
+finally joined themselves with the victorious squadron of Centeno's
+cavalry in the rear.  Both parties now attempted another charge on
+Carbajal's battalion.  But his men facing about with the promptness and
+discipline of well-trained soldiers, the rear was converted into the front.
+The same forest of spears was presented to the attack; while an incessant
+discharge of balls punished the audacity of the cavaliers, who, broken
+and completely dispirited by their ineffectual attempt, at length imitated
+the example of the panic-struck foot, and abandoned the field.
+
+Pizarro and a few of his comrades still fit for action followed up the
+pursuit for a short distance only, as, indeed, they were in no condition
+themselves, nor sufficiently strong in numbers, long to continue it.  The
+victory was complete, and the insurgent chief took possession of the
+deserted tents of the enemy, where an immense booty was obtained in
+silver;37 and where he also found the tables spread for the refreshment
+of Centeno's soldiers after their return from the field.  So confident were
+they of success!  The repast now served the necessities of their
+conquerors.  Such is the fortune of war!  It was, indeed, a most decisive
+action; and Gonzalo Pizarro, as he rode over the field strewed with the
+corpses of his enemies, was observed several times to cross himself and
+exclaim,--"Jesu! What a victory!"
+
+No less than three hundred and fifty of Centeno's followers were killed,
+and the number of wounded was even greater.  More than a hundred of
+these are computed to have perished from exposure during the following
+night; for, although the climate in this elevated region is temperate, yet
+the night winds blowing over the mountains are sharp and piercing, and
+many a wounded wretch, who might have been restored by careful
+treatment, was chilled by the damps, and found a stiffened corpse at
+sunrise.  The victory was not purchased without a heavy loss on the part
+of the conquerors, a hundred or more of whom were left on the field.
+Their bodies lay thick on that part of the ground occupied by Pizarro's
+cavalry, where the fight raged hottest.  In this narrow space were found,
+also, the bodies of more than a hundred horses, the greater part of which,
+as well as those of their riders, usually slain with them, belonged to the
+victorious army.  It was the most fatal battle that had yet been fought on
+the blood-stained soil of Peru.38
+
+The glory of the day--the melancholy glory--must be referred almost
+wholly to Carbajal and his valiant squadron.  The judicious arrangements
+of the old warrior, with the thorough discipline and unflinching courage
+of his followers, retrieved the fortunes of the fight, when it was nearly
+lost by the cavalry, and secured the victory.
+
+Carbajal, proof against all fatigue, followed up the pursuit with those of
+his men that were in condition to join him.  Such of the unhappy
+fugitives as fell into his hands--most of whom had been traitors to the
+cause of Pizarro--were sent to instant execution.  The laurels he had won
+in the field against brave men in arms, like himself, were tarnished by
+cruelty towards his defenceless captives.  Their commander, Centeno,
+more fortunate, made his escape.  Finding the battle lost, he quitted his
+litter, threw himself upon his horse, and, notwithstanding his illness,
+urged on by the dreadful doom that awaited him, if taken, he succeeded
+in making his way into the neighboring sierra.  Here he vanished from
+his pursuers, and, like a wounded stag, with the chase close upon his
+track, he still contrived to elude it, by plunging into the depths of the
+forests, till, by a circuitous route, he miraculously succeeded in effecting
+his escape to Lima.  The bishop of Cuzco, who went off in a different
+direction, was no less fortunate.  Happy for him that he did not fall into
+the hands of the ruthless Carbajal, who, as the bishop had once been a
+partisan of Pizarro, would, to judge from the little respect he usually
+showed those of his cloth, have felt as little compunction in sentencing
+him to the gibbet as if he had been the meanest of the common file.39
+
+On the day following the action, Gonzalo Pizarro caused the bodies of
+the soldiers, still lying side by side on the field where they had been so
+lately engaged together in mortal strife, to be deposited in a common
+sepulchre.  Those of higher rank--for distinctions of rank were not to be
+forgotten in the grave--were removed to the church of the village of
+Huarina, which gave its name to the battle.  There they were interred
+with all fitting solemnity.  But in later times they were transported to the
+cathedral church of La Paz, "The City of Peace," and laid under a
+mausoleum erected by general subscription in that quarter.  For few there
+were who had not to mourn the loss of some friend or relative on that
+fatal day.
+
+The victor now profited by his success to send detachments to Arequipa,
+La Plata, and other cities in that part of the country, to raise funds and
+reinforcements for the war.  His own losses were more than compensated
+by the number of the vanquished party who were content to take service
+under his banner.  Mustering his forces, he directed his march to Cuzco,
+which capital, though occasionally seduced into a display of loyalty to
+the Crown, had early manifested an attachment to his cause.
+
+Here the inhabitants were prepared to receive him in triumph, under
+arches thrown across the streets, with bands of music, and minstrelsy
+commemorating his successes.  But Pizarro, with more discretion,
+declined the honors of an ovation while the country remained in the
+hands of his enemies.  Sending forward the main body of his troops, he
+followed on foot, attended by a slender retinue of friends and citizens,
+and proceeded at once to the cathedral, where thanksgivings were
+offered up, and Te Deum was chanted in honor of his victory.  He then
+withdrew to his residence, announcing his purpose to establish his
+quarters, for the present, in the venerable capital of the Incas.40
+
+All thoughts of a retreat into Chili were abandoned; for his recent
+success had kindled new hopes in his bosom, and revived his ancient
+confidence.  He trusted that it would have a similar effect on the
+vacillating temper of those whose fidelity had been shaken by fears for
+their own safety, and their distrust of his ability to cope with the
+president.  They would now see that his star was still in the ascendant.
+Without further apprehensions for the event, he resolved to remain in
+Cuzco, and there quietly await the hour when a last appeal to arms
+should decide which of the two was to remain master of Peru.
+
+
+
+Book 5
+
+Chapter 3
+
+Dismay In Gasca's Camp--His Winter Quarters--Resumes His March--
+Crosses The Apurimac--Pizarro's Conduct In Cuzco--
+He Encamps Near The City--Rout Of Xaquixaguana
+
+1547--1548
+
+While the events recorded in the preceding chapter were passing,
+President Gasca had remained at Xauxa, awaiting further tidings from
+Centeno, little doubting that they would inform him of the total
+discomfiture of the rebels.  Great was his dismay, therefore, on learning
+the issue of the fatal conflict in Haurina,--that the royalists had been
+scattered far and wide before the sword of Pizarro, while their
+commander had vanished like an apparition,1 leaving the greatest
+uncertainty as to his fate.
+
+The intelligence spread general consternation among the soldiers,
+proportioned to their former confidence; and they felt it was almost
+hopeless to contend with a man who seemed protected by a charm that
+made him invincible against the greatest odds.  The president, however
+sore his disappointment, was careful to conceal it, while he endeavored
+to restore the spirits of his followers.  "They had been too sanguine," he
+said, "and it was in this way that Heaven rebuked their persumption.  Yet
+it was but in the usual course of events that Providence, when it designed
+to humble the guilty, should allow him to reach as high an elevation as
+possible, that his fall might be the greater!"
+
+But while Gasca thus strove to reassure the superstitious and the timid,
+he bent his mind, with his usual energy, to repair the injury which the
+cause had sustained by the defeat at Huarina.  He sent a detachment
+under Alvarado to Lima, to collect such of the royalists as had fled
+thither from the field of battle, and to dismantle the ships of their cannon,
+and bring them to the camp.  Another body was sent to Guamanga, about
+sixty leagues from Cuzco, for the similar purpose of protecting the
+fugitives, and also of preventing the Indian caciques from forwarding
+supplies to the insurgent army in Cuzco.  As his own forces now
+amounted to considerably more than any his opponent could bring
+against him, Gasca determined to break up his camp without further
+delay, and march on the Inca capital.2
+
+Quitting Xauxa, December 29, 1547, he passed through Guamanga, and
+after a severe march, rendered particularly fatiguing by the inclement
+state of the weather and the badness of the roads, he entered the province
+of Andaguaylas.  It was a fair and fruitful country, and since the road
+beyond would take him into the depths of a gloomy sierra, scarcely
+passable in the winter snows, Gasca resolved to remain in his present
+quarters until the severity of the season was mitigated.  As many of the
+troops had already contracted diseases from exposure to the incessant
+rains, he established a camp hospital; and the good president personally
+visited the quarters of the sick, ministering to their wants, and winning
+their hearts by his sympathy.3
+
+Meanwhile, the royal camp was strengthened by the continual arrival of
+reinforcements; for notwithstanding the shock that was caused
+throughout the country by the first tidings of Pizarro's victory, a little
+reflection convinced the people that the right was the strongest, and must
+eventually prevail.  There came, also, with these levies, several of the
+most distinguished captains in the country.  Centeno, burning to retrieve
+his late disgrace, after recovering from his illness, joined the camp with
+his followers from Lima.  Benalcazar, the conqueror of Quito, who, as
+the reader will remember, had shared in the defeat of Blasco Nunez in
+the north, came with another detachment; and was soon after followed by
+Valdivia, the famous conqueror of Chili, who, having returned to Peru to
+gather recruits for his expedition, had learned the state of the country,
+and had thrown himself, without hesitation, into the same scale with the
+president, though it brought him into collision with his old friend and
+comrade, Gonzalo Pizarro.  The arrival of this last ally was greeted with
+general rejoicing by the camp; for Valdivia, schooled in the Italian wars,
+was esteemed the most accomplished soldier in Peru; and Gasca
+complimented him by declaring "he would rather see him than a
+reinforcement of eight hundred men!" 4
+
+Besides these warlike auxiliaries, the president was attended by a train of
+ecclesiastics and civilians, such as was rarely found in the martial fields
+of Peru.  Among them were the bishops of Quito, Cuzco, and Lima, the
+four judges of the new Audience, and a considerable number of
+churchmen and monkish missionaries.5  However little they might serve
+to strengthen his arm in battle, their presence gave authority and
+something of a sacred character to the cause, which had their effect on
+the minds of the soldiers.
+
+The wintry season now began to give way before the mild influence of
+spring, which makes itself early felt in these tropical, but from their
+elevation temperate, regions; and Gasca, after nearly three months
+detention in Andaguaylas, mustered his levies for the final march upon
+Cuzco.6  Their whole number fell little short of two thousand,--the
+largest European force yet assembled in Peru.  Nearly half were provided
+with fire-arms; and infantry were more available than horse in the
+mountain countries which they were to traverse.  But his cavalry was also
+numerous, and he carried with him a train of eleven heavy guns.  The
+equipment and discipline of the troops were good; they were well
+provided with ammunition and military stores; and were led by officers
+whose names were associated with the most memorable achievements in
+the New World.  All who had any real interest in the weal of the country
+were to be found, in short, under the president's banner, making a
+striking contrast to the wild and reckless adventurers who now swelled
+the ranks of Pizarro.
+
+Gasca, who did not affect a greater knowledge of military affairs than he
+really possessed, had given the charge of his forces to Hinojosa, naming
+the Marshal Alvarado as second in command.  Valdivia, who came after
+these dispositions had been made, accepted a colonel's commission, with
+the understanding that he was to be consulted and employed in all
+matters of moment.7--Having completed his arrangements, the president
+broke up his camp in March, 1548, and moved upon Cuzco.
+
+The first obstacle of his progress was the river Abancay, the bridge over
+which had been broken down by the enemy.  But as there was no force to
+annoy them on the opposite bank, the army was not long in preparing a
+new bridge, and throwing it across the stream, which in this place had
+nothing formidable in its character.  The road now struck into the heart
+of a mountain region, where woods, precipices, and ravines were
+mingled together in a sort of chaotic confusion, with here and there a
+green and sheltered valley, glittering like an island of verdure amidst the
+wild breakers of a troubled ocean!  The bold peaks of the Andes, rising
+far above the clouds, were enveloped in snow, which, descending far
+down their sides, gave a piercing coldness to the winds that swept over
+their surface, until men and horses were benumbed and stiffened under
+their influence.  The roads, in these regions, were in some places so
+narrow and broken, as to be nearly impracticable for cavalry.  The
+cavaliers were compelled to dismount; and the president, with the rest,
+performed the journey on foot, so hazardous, that, even in later times, it
+has been no uncommon thing for the sure-footed mule to be precipitated,
+with its cargo of silver, thousands of feet down the sheer sides of a
+precipice.8
+
+By these impediments of the ground, the march was so retarded, that the
+troops seldom accomplished more than two leagues a day.9  Fortunately,
+the distance was not great; and the president looked with more
+apprehension to the passage of the Apurimac, which he was now
+approaching.  This river, one of the most formidable tributaries of the
+Amazon, rolls its broad waters through the gorges of the Cordilleras, that
+rise up like an immense rampart of rock on either side, presenting a
+natural barrier which it would be easy for an enemy to make good
+against a force much superior to his own.  The bridges over this river, as
+Gasca learned before his departure from Andaguaylas, had been all
+destroyed by Pizarro.  The president, accordingly, had sent to explore the
+banks of the stream, and determine the most eligible spot for
+reestablishing communications with the opposite side.
+
+The place selected was near the Indian village of Cotapampa, about nine
+leagues from Cuzco; for the river, though rapid and turbulent from being
+compressed within more narrow limits, was here less than two hundred
+paces in width; a distance, however, not inconsiderable.  Directions had
+been given to collect materials in large quantities in the neighborhood of
+this spot as soon as possible; and at the same time, in order to perplex the
+enemy and compel him to divide his forces, should he be disposed to
+resist, materials in smaller quantities were assembled on three other
+points of the river.  The officer stationed in the neighborhood of
+Cotapampa was instructed not to begin to lay the bridge, till the arrival
+of a sufficient force should accelerate the work, and insure its success.
+
+The structure in question, it should be remembered, was one of those
+suspension bridges formerly employed by the Incas, and still used in
+crossing the deep and turbulent rivers of South America.  They are made
+of osier withes, twisted into enormous cables, which, when stretched
+across the water, are attached to heavy blocks of masonry, or, where it
+will serve, to the natural rock.  Planks are laid transversely across these
+cables, and a passage is thus secured, which, notwithstanding the light
+and fragile appearance of the bridge, as it swings at an elevation
+sometimes of several hundred feet above the abyss, affords a tolerably
+safe means of conveyance for men, and even for such heavy burdens as
+artillery.10
+
+Notwithstanding the peremptory commands of Gasca, the officer
+intrusted with collecting the materials for the bridge was so anxious to
+have the honor of completing the work himself, that he commenced it at
+once.  The president, greatly displeased at learning this, quickened his
+march, in order to cover the work with his whole force.  But, while
+toiling through the mountain labyrinth, tidings were brought him that a
+party of the enemy had demolished the small portion of the bridge
+already made, by cutting the cables on the opposite bank.  Valdivia,
+accordingly, hastened forward at the head of two hundred arquebusiers,
+while the main body of the army followed with as much speed as
+practicable.
+
+That officer, on reaching the spot, found that the interruption had been
+caused by a small party of Pizarro's followers, not exceeding twenty in
+number, assisted by a stronger body of Indians.  He at once caused
+balsas, broad and clumsy barks, or rather rafts, of the country, to be
+provided, and by this means passed his men over, without opposition, to
+the other side of the river.  The enemy, disconcerted by the arrival of
+such a force, retreated and made the best of their way to report the affair
+to their commander at Cuzco.  Meanwhile, Valdivia, who saw the
+Importance of every moment in the present crisis, pushed forward the
+work with the greatest vigor.  Through all that night his weary troops
+continued the labor, which was already well advanced, when the
+president and his battalions, emerging from the passes of the Cordilleras,
+presented themselves at sunrise on the opposite bank.
+
+Little time was given for repose, as all felt assured that the success of
+their enterprise hung on the short respite now given them by the
+improvident enemy.  The president, with his principal officers, took part
+in the labor with the common soldiers;11 and before ten o'clock in the
+evening, Gasca had the satisfaction to see the bridge so well secured, that
+the leading files of the army, unencumbered by their baggage, might
+venture to cross it.  A short time sufficed to place several hundred men
+on the other bank.  But here a new difficulty, not less formidable than
+that of the river, presented itself to the troops.  The ground rose up with
+an abrupt, almost precipitous, swell from the river-side, till, in the
+highest peaks, it reached an elevation of several thousand feet.  This
+steep ascent, though not to its full height, indeed, was now to be
+surmounted.  The difficulties of the ground, broken up into fearful
+chasms and water-courses, and tangled with thickets, were greatly
+increased by the darkness of the night; and the soldiers, as they toiled
+slowly upward, were filled with apprehension, akin to fear, from the
+uncertainty whether each successive step might not bring them into an
+ambuscade, for which the ground was so favorable.  More than once, the
+Spaniards were thrown into a panic by false reports that the enemy were
+upon them.  But Hinojosa and Valdivia were at hand to rally their men,
+and cheer them on, until, at length, before dawn broke, the bold cavaliers
+and their followers placed themselves on the highest point traversed by
+the road, where they waited the arrival of the president.  This was not
+long delayed; and in the course of the following morning, the royalists
+were already in sufficient strength to bid defiance to their enemy.
+
+The passage of the river had been effected with less loss than might have
+been expected, considering the darkness of the night, and the numbers
+that crowded over the aerial causeway.  Some few, indeed, fell into the
+water, and were drowned; and more than sixty horses, in the attempt to
+swim them across the river, were hurried down the current, and dashed
+against the rocks below.12  It still required time to bring up the heavy
+train of ordnance and the military wagons; and the president encamped
+on the strong ground which he now occupied, to await their arrival, and
+to breathe his troops after their extraordinary efforts.  In these quarters
+we must leave him, to acquaint the reader with the state of things in the
+insurgent army, and with the cause of its strange remissness in guarding
+the passes of the Apurimac.13
+
+From the time of Pizarro's occupation of Cuzco, he had lived in careless
+luxury in the midst of his followers, like a soldier of fortune in the hour
+of prosperity; enjoying the present, with as little concern for the future as
+if the crown of Peru were already fixed irrevocably upon his head.  It
+was otherwise with Carbajal.  He looked on the victory at Huarina as the
+commencement, not the close, of the struggle for empire; and he was
+indefatigable in placing his troops in the best condition for maintaining
+their present advantage.  At the first streak of dawn, the veteran might be
+seen mounted on his mule, with the garb and air of a common soldier,
+riding about in the different quarters of the capital, sometimes
+superintending the manufacture of arms, or providing military stores, and
+sometimes drilling his men, for he was most careful always to maintain
+the strictest discipline.14  His restless spirit seemed to find no pleasure
+but in incessant action; living, as he had always done, in the turmoil of
+military adventure, he had no relish for any thing unconnected with war,
+and in the city saw only the materials for a well organized camp.
+
+With these feelings, he was much dissatisfied at the course taken by his
+younger leader, who now professed his intention to abide where he was,
+and, when the enemy advanced, to give him battle.  Carbajal advised a
+very different policy.  He had not that full confidence, it would seem, in
+the loyalty of Pizarro's partisans, at least, not of those who had once
+followed the banner of Centeno.  These men, some three hundred in
+number, had been in a manner compelled to take service under Pizarro.
+They showed no heartiness in the cause, and the veteran strongly urged
+his commander to disband them at once; since it was far better to go to
+battle with a few faithful followers than with a host of the false and faint-
+hearted.
+
+But Carbajal thought, also, that his leader was not sufficiently strong in
+numbers to encounter his opponent, supported as he was by the best
+captains of Peru.  He advised, accordingly, that he should abandon
+Cuzco, carrying off all the treasure, provisions, and stores of every kind
+from the city, which might, in any way, serve the necessities of the
+royalists.  The latter, on their arrival, disappointed by the poverty of a
+place where they had expected to find so much booty, would become
+disgusted with the service.  Pizarro, meanwhile, might take refuge with
+his men in the neighboring fastnesses, where, familiar with the ground, it
+would be easy to elude the enemy; and if the latter persevered in the
+pursuit, with numbers diminished by desertion, it would not be difficult
+in the mountain passes to find an opportunity for assailing him at
+advantage.--Such was the wary counsel of the old warrior.  But it was not
+to the taste of his fiery commander, who preferred to risk the chances of
+a battle, rather than turn his back on a foe.
+
+Neither did Pizarro show more favor to a proposition, said to have been
+made by the Licentiate Cepeda,--that he should avail himself of his late
+success to enter into negotiations with Gasca.  Such advice, from the
+man who had so recently resisted all overtures of the president, could
+only have proceeded from a conviction, that the late victory placed
+Pizarro on a vantage-ground for demanding terms far better than would
+have been before conceded to him.  It may be that subsequent experience
+had also led him to distrust the fidelity of Gonzalo's followers, or,
+possibly, the capacity of their chief to conduct them through the present
+crisis.  Whatever may have been the motives of the slippery counsellor,
+Pizarro gave little heed to the suggestion, and even showed some
+resentment, as the matter was pressed on him.  In every contest, with
+Indian or European, whatever had been the odds, he had come off
+victorious.  He was not now for the first time to despond; and he
+resolved to remain in Cuzco, and hazard all on the chances of a battle.
+There was something in the hazard itself captivating to his bold and
+chivalrous temper.  In this, too, he was confirmed by some of the
+cavaliers who had followed him through all his fortunes; reckless young
+adventurers, who, like himself, would rather risk all on a single throw of
+the dice, than adopt the cautious, and, as it seemed to them, timid, policy
+of graver counsellors.  It was by such advisers, then, that Pizarro's future
+course was to be shaped.15
+
+Such was the state of affairs in Cuzco, when Pizarro's soldiers returned
+with the tidings, that a detachment of the enemy had crossed the
+Apurimac, and were busy in reestablishing the bridge.  Carbajal saw at
+once the absolute necessity of maintaining this pass.  "It is my affair," he
+said; "I claim to be employed on this service.  Give me but a hundred
+picked men, and I will engage to defend the pass against an army, and
+bring back the chaplain--the name by which the president was known in
+the rebel camp---a prisoner to Cuzco." 16  "I cannot spare you, father,"
+said Gonzalo, addressing him by this affectionate epithet, which he
+usually applied to his aged follower,17 "I cannot spare you so far from
+my own person"; and he gave the commission to Juan de Acosta, a
+young cavalier warmly attached to his commander, and who had given
+undoubted evidence of his valor on more than one occasion, but who, as
+the event proved, was signally deficient in the qualities demanded for
+so critical an undertaking as the present.  Acosta, accordingly, was
+placed at the head of two hundred mounted musketeers, and, after much
+wholesome counsel from Carbajal, set out on his expedition.
+
+But he soon forgot the veteran's advice, and moved at so dull a pace over
+the difficult roads, that, although the distance was not more than nine
+leagues, he found, on his arrival, the bridge completed, and so large a
+body of the enemy already crossed, that he was in no strength to attack
+them.  Acosta did, indeed, meditate an ambuscade by night; but the
+design was betrayed by a deserter, and he contented himself with
+retreating to a safe distance, and sending for a further reinforcement from
+Cuzco.  Three hundred men were promptly detached to his support; but
+when they arrived, the enemy was already planted in full force on the
+crest of the eminence.  The golden opportunity was irrecoverably lost;
+and the disconsolate cavalier rode back in all haste to report the failure
+of his enterprise to his commander in Cuzco.18
+
+The only question now to be decided was as to the spot where Gonzalo
+'Pizarro should give battle to his enemies.  He determined at once to
+abandon the capital, and wait for his opponents in the neighboring valley
+of Xaquixaguana.  It was about five leagues distant, and the reader may
+remember it as the place where Francis Pizarro burned the Peruvian
+general Challcuchima, on his first occupation of Cuzco.  The valley,
+fenced round by the lofty rampart of the Andes, was, for the most part,
+green and luxuriant, affording many picturesque points of view; and,
+from the genial temperature of the climate, had been a favorite summer
+residence of the Indian nobles, many of whose pleasure-houses still
+dotted the sides of the mountains.  A river, or rather stream, of no great
+volume, flowed through one end of this inclosure, and the neighboring
+soil was so wet and miry as to have the character of a morass.
+
+Here the rebel commander arrived, after a tedious march over roads not
+easily traversed by his train of heavy wagons and artillery.  His forces
+amounted in all to about nine hundred men, with some half-dozen pieces
+of ordnance.  It was a well-appointed body, and under excellent
+discipline, for it had been schooled by the strictest martinet in the
+Peruvian service.  But it was the misfortune of Pizarro that his army was
+composed, in part, at least, of men on whose attachment to his cause he
+could not confidently rely.  This was a deficiency which no courage nor
+skill in the leader could supply.
+
+On entering the valley, Pizarro selected the eastern quarter of it, towards
+Cuzco, as the most favorable spot for his encampment.  It was crossed by
+the stream above mentioned, and he stationed his army in such a manner,
+that, while one extremity of the camp rested on a natural barrier formed
+by the mountain cliffs that here rose up almost perpendicularly, the other
+was protected by the river.  While it was scarcely possible, therefore, to
+assail his flanks, the approaches in front were so extremely narrowed by
+these obstacles, that it would not be easy to overpower him by numbers
+in that direction.  In the rear, his communications remained open with
+Cuzco, furnishing a ready means for obtaining supplies.  Having secured
+this strong position, he resolved patiently to wait the assault of the
+enemy.19
+
+Meanwhile, the royal army had been toiling up the steep sides of the
+Cordilleras, until, at the close of the third day, the president had the
+satisfaction to find himself surrounded by his whole force, with their
+guns and military stores.  Having now sufficiently refreshed his men, he
+resumed his march, and all went forward with the buoyant confidence of
+bringing their quarrel with the tyrant, as Pizarro was called, to a speedy
+issue.
+
+Their advance was slow, as in the previous part of the march, for the
+ground was equally embarrassing.  It was not long, however, before the
+president learned that his antagonist had pitched his camp in the
+neighboring valley of Xaquixaguana.  Soon afterward, two friars, sent by
+Gonzalo himself, appeared in the army, for the ostensible purpose of
+demanding a sight of the powers with which Gasca was intrusted.  But as
+their conduct gave reason to suspect they were spies, the president
+caused the holy men to be seized, and refused to allowed them to return
+to Pizarro.  By an emissary of his own, whom he despatched to the rebel
+chief, he renewed the assurance of pardon already given him, in case he
+would lay down his arms and submit.  Such an act of generosity, at this
+late hour, must be allowed to be highly creditable to Gasca, believing, as
+he probably did, that the game was in his own hands.--It is a pity that the
+anecdote does not rest on the best authority.20
+
+After a march of a couple of days, the advanced guard of the royalists
+came suddenly on the outposts of the insurgents, from whom they had
+been concealed by a thick mist, and a slight skirmish took place between
+them.  At length, on the morning of the eighth of April, the royal army,
+turning the crest of the lofty range that belts round the lovely valley of
+Xaquixaguana, beheld far below on the opposite side the glittering lines
+of the enemy, with their white pavilions, looking like clusters of wild
+fowl nestling among the cliffs of the mountains.  And still further off
+might be descried a host of Indian warriors, showing gaudily in their
+variegated costumes; for the natives, in this part of the country, with little
+perception of their true interests, manifested great zeal in the cause of
+Pizarro.
+
+Quickening their step, the royal army now hastily descended the steep
+sides of the sierra; and notwithstanding every effort of their officers, they
+moved in so little order, each man picking his way as he could, that the
+straggling column presented many a vulnerable point to the enemy; and
+the descent would not have been accomplished without considerable
+loss, had Pizarro's cannon been planted on any of the favorable positions
+which the ground afforded.  But that commander, far from attempting to
+check the president's approach, remained doggedly in the strong position
+he had occupied, with the full confidence that his adversaries would not
+hesitate to assail it, strong as it was, in the same manner as they had done
+at Huarina.21
+
+Yet he did not omit to detach a corps of arquebusiers to secure a
+neighboring eminence or spur of the Cordilleras, which in the hands of
+the enemy might cause some annoyance to his own camp, while it
+commanded still more effectually the ground soon to be occupied by the
+assailants.  But his manoeuvre was noticed by Hinojosa; and he defeated
+it by sending a stronger detachment of the royal musketeers, who
+repulsed the rebels, and, after a short skirmish, got possession of the
+heights.  Gasca's general profited by this success to plant a small battery
+of cannon on the eminence, from which, although the distance was too
+great for him to do much execution, he threw some shot into the hostile
+camp.  One ball, indeed, struck down two men, one of them Pizarro's
+page, killing a horse, at the same time, which he held by the bridle; and
+the chief instantly ordered the tents to be struck, considering that they
+afforded too obvious a mark for the artillery.22
+
+Meanwhile, the president's forces had descended into the valley, and as
+they came on the plain were formed into line by their officers.  The
+ground occupied by the army was somewhat lower than that of their
+enemy, whose shot, as discharged, from time to time, from his batteries,
+passed over their heads.  Information was now brought by a deserter, one
+of Centeno's old followers, that Pizarro was getting ready for a night
+attack.  The president, in consequence, commanded his whole force to be
+drawn up in battle array, prepared, at any instant, to repulse the assault.
+But if such were meditated by the insurgent chief, he abandoned it,--and,
+as it is said, from a distrust of the fidelity of some of the troops, who,
+under cover of the darkness, he feared, would go over to the opposite
+side.  If this be true, he must have felt the full force of Carbajal's
+admonition, when too late to profit by it.  The unfortunate commander
+was in the situation of some bold, high-mettled cavalier, rushing to battle
+on a war-horse whose tottering joints threaten to give way under him at
+every step, and leave his rider to the mercy of his enemies!
+
+The president's troops stood to their arms the greater part of the night,
+although the air from the mountains was so keen, that it was with
+difficulty they could hold their lances in their hands.23  But before the
+rising sun had kindled into a glow the highest peaks of the sierra, both
+camps were in motion, and busily engaged in preparations for the
+combat.  The royal army was formed into two battalions of infantry, one
+to attack the enemy in front, and the other, if possible, to operate on his
+flank.  These battalions were protected by squadrons of horse on the
+wings and in the rear, while reserves both of horse and arquebusiers were
+stationed to act as occasion might require.  The dispositions were made
+in so masterly a manner, as to draw forth a hearty eulogium from old
+Carbajal, who exclaimed, "Surely the Devil or Valdivia must be among
+them!" an undeniable compliment to the latter, since the speaker was
+ignorant of that commander's presence in the camp.24
+
+Gasca, leaving the conduct of the battle to his officers, withdrew to the
+rear with his train of clergy and licentiates, the last of whom did not
+share in the ambition of their rebel brother, Cepeda, to break a lance in
+the field.
+
+Gonzalo Pizarro formed his squadron in the same manner as he had done
+on the plains of Huarina; except that the increased number of his horse
+now enabled him to cover both flanks of his infantry.  It was still on his
+fire-arms, however, that he chiefly relied.  As the ranks were formed, he
+rode among them, encouraging his men to do their duty like brave
+cavaliers, and true soldiers of the Conquest.  Pizarro was superbly
+armed, as usual, and wore a complete suit of mail, of the finest
+manufacture, which, as well as his helmet, was richly inlaid with gold.25
+He rode a chestnut horse of great strength and spirit, and as he galloped
+along the line, brandishing his lance, and displaying his easy
+horsemanship.  he might be thought to form no bad personification of the
+Genius of Chivalry.  To complete his dispositions he ordered Cepeda to
+lead up the infantry for the licentiate seems to have had a larger share in
+the conduct of his affairs of late, or at least in the present military
+arrangements, than Carbajal.  The latter, indeed, whether from disgust at
+the course taken by his leader, or from a distrust, which, it is said, he did
+not affect to conceal, of the success of the present operations, disclaimed
+all responsibility for them, and chose to serve rather as a private cavalier
+than as a commander.26  Yet Cepeda, as the event showed, was no less
+shrewd in detecting the coming ruin.
+
+When he had received his orders from Pizarro he rode forward as if to
+select the ground for his troops to occupy; and in doing so disappeared
+for a few moments behind a projecting cliff.  He soon reappeared,
+however, and was seen galloping at full speed across the plain.  His men
+looked with astonishment, yet not distrusting his motives, till, as he
+continued his course direct towards the enemy's lines, his treachery
+became apparent.  Several pushed forward to overtake him, and among
+them a cavalier, better mounted than Cepeda.  The latter rode a horse of
+no great strength or speed, quite unfit for this critical manoeuvre of his
+master.  The animal, was, moreover, encumbered by the weight of the
+caparisons with which his ambitious rider had loaded him, so that, on
+reaching a piece of miry ground that lay between the armies, his pace
+was greatly retarded.27  Cepeda's pursuers rapidly gained on him, and
+the cavalier above noticed came, at length, so near as to throw a lance at
+the fugitive, which, wounding him in the thigh, pierced his horse's flank,
+and they both came headlong to the ground.  It would have fared ill with
+the licentiate, in this emergency, but fortunately a small party of troopers
+on the other side, who had watched the chase, now galloped briskly
+forward to the rescue, and, beating off his pursuers, they recovered
+Cepeda from the mire, and bore him to the president's quarters.
+
+He was received by Gasca with the greatest satisfaction,--so great, that,
+according to one chronicler, he did not disdain to show it by saluting the
+licentiate on the cheek.28  The anecdote is scarcely reconcilable with the
+characters and relations of the parties, or with the president's subsequent
+conduct.  Gasca, however, recognized the full value of his prize, and the
+effect which his desertion at such a time must have on the spirits of the
+rebels.  Cepeda's movement, so unexpected by his own party, was the
+result of previous deliberation, as he had secretly given assurance, it is
+said, to the prior of Arequipa, then in the royal camp, that, if Gonzalo
+Pizarro could not be induced to accept the pardon offered him, he would
+renounce his cause.29  The time selected by the crafty counsellor for
+doing so was that most fatal to the interests of his commander.
+
+The example of Cepeda was contagious.  Garcilasso de la Vega, father of
+the historian, a cavalier of old family, and probably of higher
+consideration than any other in Pizarro's party, put spurs to his horse, at
+the same time with the licentiate, and rode over to the enemy.  Ten or a
+dozen of the arquebusiers followed in the same direction, and succeeded
+in placing themselves under the protection of the advanced guard of the
+royalists.
+
+Pizarro stood aghast at this desertion, in so critical a juncture, of those in
+whom he had most trusted.  He was, for a moment, bewildered.  The very
+ground on which he stood seemed to be crumbling beneath him.  With
+this state of feeling among his soldiers, he saw that every minute of delay
+was fatal.  He dared not wait for the assault, as he had intended, in his
+strong position, but instantly gave the word to advance.  Gasca's general,
+Hinojosa, seeing the enemy in motion, gave similar orders to his own
+troops.  Instantly the skirmishers and arquebusiers on the flanks moved
+rapidly forward, the artillery prepared to open their fire, and "the whole
+army," says the president in his own account of the affair, "advanced
+with steady step and perfect determination." 30
+
+But before a shot was fired, a column of arquebusiers, composed chiefly
+of Centeno's followers, abandoned their post, and marched directly over
+to the enemy.  A squadron of horse, sent in pursuit of them, followed
+their example.  The president instantly commanded his men to halt,
+unwilling to spill blood unnecessarily, as the rebel host was like to fall to
+pieces of itself.
+
+Pizarro's faithful adherents were seized with a panic, as they saw
+themselves and their leader thus betrayed into the enemy's hands.
+Further resistance was useless.  Some threw down their arms and fled in
+the direction of Cuzco.  Others sought to escape to the mountains; and
+some crossed to the opposite side, and surrendered themselves prisoners,
+hoping it was not too late to profit by the promises of grace.  The Indian
+allies, on seeing the Spaniards falter, had been the first to go off the
+ground.31
+
+Pizarro, amidst the general wreck, found himself left with only a few
+cavaliers who disdained to fly.  Stunned by the unexpected reverse of
+fortune, the unhappy chief could hardly comprehend his situation.
+"What remains for us?" said he to Acosta, one of those who still adhered
+to him.  "Fall on the enemy, since nothing else is left," answered the non-
+hearted soldier, "and die like Romans!" "Better to die like Christians,"
+replied his commander; and, slowly turning his horse, he rode off in the
+direction of the royal army.32
+
+He had not proceeded far, when he was met by an officer, to whom, after
+ascertaining his name and rank, Pizarro delivered up his sword, and
+yielded himself prisoner.  The officer, overjoyed at his prize, conducted
+him, at once, to the president's quarters.  Gasca was on horseback,
+surrounded by his captains, some of whom, when they recognized the
+person of the captive, had the grace to withdraw, that they might not
+witness his humiliation.33  Even the best of them, with a sense of right
+on their side, may have felt some touch of compunction at the thought
+that their desertion had brought their benefactor to this condition.
+
+Pizarro kept his seat in his saddle, but, as he approached, made a
+respectful obeisance to the president, which the latter acknowledged by a
+cold salute.  Then, addressing his prisoner in a tone of severity, Gasca
+abruptly inquired,--"Why he had thrown the country into such confusion;
+--raising the banner of revolt; killing the viceroy; usurping the
+government; and obstinately refusing the offers of grace that had been
+repeatedly made him?"
+
+Gonzalo attempted to justify himself by referring the fate of the viceroy
+to his misconduct, and his own usurpation, as it was styled, to the free
+election of the people, as well as that of the Royal Audience.  "It was my
+family," he said, "who conquered the country; and, as their
+representative here, I felt I had a right to the government."  To this Gasca
+replied, in a still severer tone, "Your brother did, indeed, conquer the
+land; and for this the emperor was pleased to raise both him and you
+from the dust.  He lived and died a true and loyal subject; and it only
+makes your ingratitude to your sovereign the more heinous."  Then,
+seeing his prisoner about to reply, the president cut short the conference,
+ordering him into close confinement.  He was committed to the charge of
+Centeno, who had sought the office, not from any unworthy desire to
+gratify his revenge,--for he seems to have had a generous nature,--but for
+the honorable purpose of ministering to the comfort of the captive.
+Though held in strict custody by this officer, therefore, Pizarro was
+treated with the deference due to his rank, and allowed every indulgence
+by his keeper, except his freedom.34
+
+In this general wreck of their fortunes, Francisco de Carbajal fared no
+better than his chief.  As he saw the soldiers deserting their posts and
+going over to the enemy, one after another, he coolly hummed the words
+of his favorite old ballad,--
+
+"The wind blows the hairs off my head, mother!"
+
+But when he found the field nearly empty, and his stout-hearted
+followers vanished like a wreath of smoke, he felt it was time to provide
+for his own safety.  He knew there could be no favor for him; and,
+putting spurs to his horse, he betook himself to flight with all the speed
+he could make.  He crossed the stream that flowed, as already
+mentioned, by the camp, but, in scaling the opposite bank, which was
+steep and stony, his horse, somewhat old, and oppressed by the weight of
+his rider, who was large and corpulent, lost his footing and fell with him
+into the water.  Before he could extricate himself, Carbajal was seized by
+some of his own followers, who hoped, by such a prize, to make their
+peace with the victor, and hurried off towards the president's quarters.
+
+The convoy was soon swelled by a number of the common file from the
+royal army, some of whom had long arrears to settle with the prisoner;
+and, not content with heaping reproaches and imprecations on his head,
+they now threatened to proceed to acts of personal violence, which
+Carbajal, far from deprecating, seemed rather to court, as the speediest
+way of ridding himself of life.35  When he approached the president's
+quarters, Centeno, who was near, rebuked the disorderly rabble, and
+compelled them to give way.  Carbajal, on seeing this, with a respectful
+air demanded to whom he was indebted for this courteous protection.  To
+which his ancient comrade replied, "Do you not know me?  Diego
+Centeno!" "I crave your pardon," said the veteran, sarcastically alluding
+to his long flight in the Charcas, and his recent defeat at Huarina; "it is so
+long since I have seen any thing but your back, that I had forgotten your
+face!" 36
+
+Among the president's suite was the martial bishop of Cuzco, who, it will
+be remembered, had shared with Centeno in the disgrace of his defeat.
+His brother had been taken by Carbajal, in his flight from the field, and
+instantly hung up by that fierce chief, who, as we have had more than
+one occasion to see, was no respecter of persons.  The bishop now
+reproached him with his brother's murder, and, incensed by his cool
+replies, was ungenerous enough to strike the prisoner on the face.
+Carbajal made no attempt at resistance.  Nor would he return a word to
+the queries put to him by Gasca; but, looking haughtily round on the
+circle, maintained a contemptuous silence.  The president, seeing that
+nothing further was to be gained from his captive, ordered him, together
+with Acosta, and the other cavaliers who had surrendered, into strict
+custody, until their fate should be decided.37
+
+Gasca's next concern was to send an officer to Cuzco, to restrain his
+partisans from committing excesses in consequence of the late victory, if
+victory that could be called, where not a blow had been struck.  Every
+thing belonging to the vanquished, their tents, arms, ammunition, and
+military stores, became the property of the victors.  Their camp was well
+victualled, furnishing a seasonable supply to the royalists, who had
+nearly expended their own stock of provisions.  There was, moreover,
+considerable booty in the way of plate and money; for Pizarro's men, as
+was not uncommon in those turbulent times, went, many of them, to the
+war with the whole of their worldly wealth, not knowing of any safe
+place in which to bestow it.  An anecdote is told of one of Gasca's
+soldiers, who, seeing a mule running over the field, with a large pack on
+his back, seized the animal, and mounted him, having first thrown away
+the burden, supposing it to contain armour, or something of little worth.
+Another soldier, more shrewd, picked up the parcel, as his share of the
+spoil, and found it contained several thousand gold ducats!   It was the
+fortune of war.38
+
+Thus terminated the battle, or rather rout, of Xaquixaguana.  The number
+of killed and wounded--for some few perished in the pursuit-was not
+great; according to most accounts, not exceeding fifteen killed on the
+rebel side, and one only on that of the royalists!  and that one by the
+carelessness of a comrade.39  Never was there a cheaper victory; so
+bloodless a termination of a fierce and bloody rebellion!  It was gained
+not so much by the strength of the victors as by the weakness of the
+vanquished.  They fell to pieces of their own accord, because they had no
+sure ground to stand on.  The arm, not nerved by the sense of right,
+became powerless in the hour of battle.  It was better that they should
+thus be overcome by moral force than by a brutal appeal to arms.  Such a
+victory was more in harmony with the beneficent character of the
+conqueror and of his cause.  It was the triumph of order; the best homage
+to law and justice.
+
+
+Book 5
+
+Chapter 4
+
+Execution Of Carbajal--Gonzalo Pizarro Beheaded--Spoils Of Victory-
+Wise Reforms By Gasca--He Returns To Spain-
+His Death And Character
+
+1548--1550
+
+It was now necessary to decide on the fate of the prisoners; and Alonso
+de Alvarado, with the Licentiate Cianca, one of the new Royal Audience,
+was instructed to prepare the process.  It did not require a long time.  The
+guilt of the prisoners was too manifest, taken, as they had been, with
+arms in their hands.  They were all sentenced to be executed, and their
+estates were confiscated to the use of the Crown.  Gonzalo Pizarro was
+to be beheaded, and Carbajal to be drawn and quartered.  No mercy was
+shown to him who had shown none to others.  There was some talk of
+deferring the execution till the arrival of the troops in Cuzco; but the fear
+of disturbances from those friendly to Pizarro determined the president
+to carry the sentence into effect the following day, on the field of battle.1
+
+When his doom was communicated to Carbajal, he heard it with his
+casual indifference.  "They can but kill me," he said, as if he had already
+settled the matter in his own mind.2  During the day, many came to see
+him in his confinement; some to upbraid him with his cruelties; but most,
+from curiosity to see the fierce warrior who had made his name so
+terrible through the land.  He showed no unwillingness to talk with them,
+though it was in those sallies of caustic humor in which he usually
+indulged at the expense of his hearer.  Among these visitors was a
+cavalier of no note, whose life, it appears, Carbajal had formerly spared,
+when in his power.  This person expressed to the prisoner his strong
+desire to serve him; and as he reiterated his professions, Carbajal cut
+them short by exclaiming,--"And what service can you do me?  Can you
+set me free?  If you cannot do that, you can do nothing.  If I spared your
+life, as you say, it was probably because I did not think it worth while to
+take it."
+
+Some piously disposed persons urged him to see a priest, if it were only
+to unburden his conscience before leaving the world.  "But of what use
+would that be?" asked Carbajal.  "I have nothing that lies heavy on my
+conscience, unless it be, indeed, the debt of half a real to a shopkeeper in
+Seville, which I forgot to pay before leaving the country!" 3
+
+He was carried to execution on a hurdle, or rather in a basket, drawn by
+two mules.  His arms were pinioned, and, as they forced his bulky body
+into this miserable conveyance, he exclaimed,---"Cradles for infants, and
+a cradle for the old man too, it seems!" 4  Notwithstanding the
+disinclination he had manifested to a confessor, he was attended by
+several ecclesiastics on his way to the gallows; and one of them
+repeatedly urged him to give some token of penitence at this solemn
+hour, if it were only by repeating the Pater Noster and Ave Maria.
+Carbajal, to rid himself of the ghostly father's importunity, replied by
+coolly repeating the words, "Pater Noster," "Ave Maria"!  He then
+remained obstinately silent.  He died, as he had lived, with a jest, or
+rather a scoff, upon his lips.5
+
+Francisco de Carbajal was one of the most extraordinary characters of
+these dark and turbulent times; the more extraordinary from his great
+age; for, at the period of his death, he was in his eighty-fourth year;--an
+age when the bodily powers, and, fortunately, the passions, are usually
+blunted; when, in the witty words of the French moralist, "We flatter
+ourselves we are leaving our vices, whereas it is our vices that are
+leaving us." 6  But the fires of youth glowed fierce and unquenchable in
+the bosom of Carbajal.
+
+The date of his birth carries us back towards the middle of the fifteenth
+century, before the times of Ferdinand and Isabella.  He was of obscure
+parentage, and born, as it is said, at Arevalo.  For forty years he served in
+the Italian wars, under the most illustrious captains of the day, Gonsalvo
+de Cordova, Navarro, and the Colonnas.  He was an ensign at the battle
+of Ravenna; witnessed the capture of Francis the First at Pavia; and
+followed the banner of the ill-starred Bourbon at the sack of Rome.  He
+got no gold for his share of the booty, on this occasion, but simply the
+papers of a notary's office, which, Carbajal shrewdly thought, would be
+worth gold to him.  And so it proved; for the notary was fain to redeem
+them at a price which enabled the adventurer to cross the seas to Mexico,
+and seek his fortune in the New World.  On the insurrection of the
+Peruvians, he was sent to the support of Francis Pizarro, and was
+rewarded by that chief with a grant of land in Cuzco.  Here he remained
+for several years, busily employed in increasing his substance; for the
+love of lucre was a ruling passion in his bosom.  On the arrival of Vaca
+de Castro, we find him doing good service under the royal banner; and at
+the breaking out of the great rebellion under Gonzalo Pizarro, he
+converted his property into gold, and prepared to return to Castile.  He
+seemed to have a presentiment that to remain where he was would be
+fatal.  But, although he made every effort to leave Peru, he was
+unsuccessful, for the viceroy had laid an embargo on the shipping.7  He
+remained in the country, therefore, and took service, as we have seen,
+though reluctantly, under Pizarro.  It was his destiny.
+
+The tumultuous life on which he now entered roused all the slumbering
+passions of his soul, which lay there, perhaps unconsciously to himself;
+cruelty, avarice, revenge.  He found ample exercise for them in the war
+with his countrymen; for civil war is proverbially the most sanguinary
+and ferocious of all.  The atrocities recorded of Carbajal, in his new
+career, and the number of his victims, are scarcely credible.  For the
+honor of humanity, we may trust the accounts are greatly exaggerated;
+but that he should have given rise to them at all is sufficient to consign
+his name to infamy.8
+
+He even took a diabolical pleasure, it is said, in amusing himself with the
+sufferings of his victims, and in the hour of execution would give
+utterance to frightful jests, that made them taste more keenly the
+bitterness of death!  He had a sportive vein, if such it could be called,
+which he freely indulged on every occasion.  Many of his sallies were
+preserved by the soldiery; but they are, for the most part, of a coarse,
+repulsive character, flowing from a mind familiar with the weak and
+wicked side of humanity, and distrusting every other.  He had his jest for
+every thing,--for the misfortunes of others, and for his own.  He looked
+on life as a farce,--though he too often made it a tragedy.
+
+Carbajal must be allowed one virtue; that of fidelity to his party.  This
+made him less tolerant to perfidy in others.  He was never known to
+show mercy to a renegade.  This undeviating fidelity, though to a bad
+cause, may challenge something like a feeling of respect, where fidelity
+was so rare.9
+
+As a military man, Carbajal takes a high rank among the soldiers of the
+New World.  He was strict, even severe, in enforcing discipline, so that
+he was little loved by his followers.  Whether he had the genius for
+military combinations requisite for conducting war on an extended scale
+may be doubted; but in the shifts and turns of guerilla warfare he was
+unrivalled.  Prompt, active, and persevering, he was insensible to danger
+or fatigue, and, after days spent in the saddle, seemed to attach little
+value to the luxury of a bed.10
+
+He knew familiarly every mountain pass, and, such were the sagacity and
+the resources displayed in his roving expeditions, that he was vulgarly
+believed to be attended by a familiar.11  With a character so
+extraordinary, with powers prolonged so far beyond the usual term of
+humanity, and passions so fierce in one tottering on the verge of the
+grave, it was not surprising that many fabulous stories should be eagerly
+circulated respecting him, and that Carbajal should be clothed with
+mysterious terrors as a sort of supernatural being,--the demon of the
+Andes!
+
+Very different were the circumstances attending the closing scene of
+Gonzalo Pizarro.  At his request, no one had been allowed to visit him in
+his confinement.  He was heard pacing his tent during the greater part of
+the day, and when night came, having ascertained from Centeno that his
+execution was to take place on the following noon, he laid himself down
+to rest.  He did not sleep long, however, but soon rose, and continued to
+traverse his apartment, as if buried in meditation, till dawn.  He then sent
+for a confessor, and remained with him till after the hour of noon, taking
+little or no refreshment.  The officers of justice became impatient; but
+their eagerness was sternly rebuked by the soldiery, many of whom,
+having served under Gonzalo's banner, were touched with pity for his
+misfortunes.
+
+When the chieftain came forth to execution, he showed in his dress the
+same love of magnificence and display as in happier days.  Over his
+doublet he wore a superb cloak of yellow velvet, stiff with gold
+embroidery, while his head was protected by a cap of the same materials,
+richly decorated, in like manner, with ornaments of gold.12  In this
+gaudy attire he mounted his mule, and the sentence was so far relaxed
+that his arms were suffered to remain unshackled.  He was escorted by a
+goodly number of priests and friars, who held up the crucifix before his
+eyes, while he carried in his own hand an image of the Virgin.  She had
+ever been the peculiar object of Pizarro's devotion; so much so, that
+those who knew him best in the hour of his prosperity were careful, when
+they had a petition, to prefer it in the name of the blessed Mary.
+
+Pizarro's lips were frequently pressed to the emblem of his divinity,
+while his eyes were bent on the crucifix in apparent devotion, heedless of
+the objects around him.  On reaching the scaffold, he ascended it with a
+firm step, and asked leave to address a few words to the soldiery
+gathered round it.  "There are many among you," said he, "who have
+grown rich on my brother's bounty, and my own.  Yet, of all my riches,
+nothing remains to me but the garments I have on; and even these are not
+mine, but the property of the executioner.  I am without means, therefore,
+to purchase a mass for the welfare of my soul; and I implore you, by the
+remembrance of past benefits, to extend this charity to me when I am
+gone, that it may be well with you in the hour of death."  A profound
+silence reigned throughout the martial multitude, broken only by sighs
+and groans, as they listened to Pizarro's request; and it was faithfully
+responded to, since, after his death, masses were said in many of the
+towns for the welfare of the departed chieftain.
+
+Then, kneeling down before a crucifix placed on a table, Pizarro
+remained for some minutes absorbed in prayer; after which, addressing
+the soldier who was to act as the minister of justice, he calmly bade him
+"do his duty with a steady hand"  He refused to have his eyes bandaged,
+and, bending forward his neck, submitted it to the sword of the
+executioner, who struck off the head with a single blow, so true that the
+body remained for some moments in the same erect posture as in life.13
+The head was taken to Lima, where it was set in a cage or frame, and
+then fixed on a gibbet by the side of Carbajal's.  On it was placed a label,
+bearing,-"This is the head of the traitor Gonzalo Pizarro, who rebelled
+in Peru against his sovereign, and battled in the cause of tyranny and
+treason against the royal standard in the valley of Xaquixaguana." 14
+His large estates, including the rich mines in Potosi, were confiscated;
+his mansion in Lima was razed to the ground, the place strewed with salt,
+and a stone pillar set up, with an inscription interdicting any one from
+building on a spot which had been profaned by the residence of a traitor.
+
+Gonzalo's remains were not exposed to the indignities inflicted on
+Carbajal's, whose quarters were hung in chains on the four great roads
+leading to Cuzco.  Centeno saved Pizarro's body from being stripped, by
+redeeming his costly raiment from the executioner, and in this sumptuous
+shroud it was laid in the chapel of the convent of Our Lady of Mercy in
+Cuzco.  It was the same spot where, side by side, lay the bloody remains
+of the Almagros, father and son, who in like manner had perished by the
+hand of justice, and were indebted to private charity for their burial.  All
+these were now consigned "to the same grave," says the historian, with
+some bitterness, "as if Peru could not afford land enough for a burial-
+place to its conquerors." 15
+
+Gonzalo Pizarro had reached only his forty-second year at the time of his
+death,--being just half the space allotted to his follower Carbajal.  He
+was the youngest of the remarkable family to whom Spain was indebted
+for the acquisition of Peru.  He came over to the country with his brother
+Francisco, on the return of the latter from his visit to Castile.  Gonzalo
+was present in all the remarkable passages of the Conquest.  He
+witnessed the seizure of Atahuallpa, took an active part in suppressing
+the insurrection of the Incas, and especially in the reduction of Charcas.
+He afterwards led the disastrous expedition to the Amazon; and, finally,
+headed the memorable rebellion which ended so fatally to himself.
+There are but few men whose lives abound in such wild and romantic
+adventure, and, for the most part, crowned with success.  The space
+which he occupies in the page of history is altogether disproportioned to
+his talents.  It may be in some measure ascribed to fortune, but still more
+to those showy qualities which form a sort of substitute for mental talent,
+and which secured his popularity with the vulgar.
+
+He had a brilliant exterior; excelled in all martial exercises; rode well,
+fenced well, managed his lance to perfection, was a first-rate marksman
+with the arquebuse, and added the accomplishment of being an excellent
+draughtsman.  He was bold and chivalrous, even to temerity; courted
+adventure, and was always in the front of danger.  He was a knight-
+errant, in short, in the most extravagant sense of the term, and, "mounted
+on his favorite charger," says one who had often seen him, "made no
+more account of a squadron of Indians than of a swarm of flies."16
+
+While thus, by his brilliant exploits and showy manners, he captivated
+the imaginations of his countrymen, he won their hearts no less by his
+soldier-like frankness, his trust in their fidelity,--too often abused,-and
+his liberal largesses; for Pizarro, though avaricious of the property of
+others, was, like the Roman conspirator, prodigal of his own.  This was
+his portrait in happier days, when his heart had not been corrupted by
+success; for that some change was wrought on him by his prosperity is
+well attested.  His head was made giddy by his elevation; and it is proof
+of a want of talent equal to his success, that he knew not how to profit by
+it.  Obeying the dictates of his own rash judgment, he rejected the
+warnings of his wisest counsellors, and relied with blind confidence on
+his destiny.  Garcilasso imputes this to the malignant influence of the
+stars.17  But the superstitious chronicler might have better explained it
+by a common principle of human nature; by the presumption nourished
+by success; the insanity, as the Roman, or rather Grecian, proverb calls
+it, with which the gods afflict men when they design to ruin them.18
+
+Gonzalo was without education, except such as he had picked up in the
+rough school of war.  He had little even of that wisdom which springs
+from natural shrewdness and insight into character.  In all this he was
+inferior to his elder brothers, although he fully equalled them in
+ambition.  Had he possessed a tithe of their sagacity, he would not have
+madly persisted in rebellion, after the coming of the president.  Before
+this period, he represented the people.  Their interests and his were
+united.  He had their support, for he was contending for the redress of
+their wrongs.  When these were redressed by the government, there was
+nothing to contend for.  From that time, he was battling only for himself.
+The people had no part nor interest in the contest.  Without a common
+sympathy to bind them together, was it strange that they should fall off
+from him, like leaves in winter, and leave him exposed, a bare and
+sapless trunk, to the fury of the tempest?
+
+Cepeda, more criminal than Pizarro, since he had both superior
+education and intelligence, which he employed only to mislead his
+commander, did not long survive him.  He had come to the country in an
+office of high responsibility.  His first step was to betray the viceroy
+whom he was sent to support; his next was to betray the Audience with
+whom he should have acted; and lastly, he betrayed the leader whom he
+most affected to serve.  His whole career was treachery to his own
+government.  His life was one long perfidy.
+
+After his surrender, several of the cavaliers, disgusted at his coldblooded
+apostasy, would have persuaded Gasca to send him to execution along
+with his commander; but the president refused, in consideration of the
+signal service he had rendered the Crown by his defection.  He was put
+under arrest, however, and sent to Castile.  There he was arraigned for
+high-treason.  He made a plausible defence, and as he had friends at
+court, it is not improbable he would have been acquitted; but, before the
+trial was terminated, he died in prison.  It was the retributive justice not
+always to be found in the affairs of this world.19
+
+Indeed, it so happened, that several of those who had been most forward
+to abandon the cause of Pizarro survived their commander but a short
+time.  The gallant Centeno, and the Licentiate Carbajal, who deserted
+him near Lima, and bore the royal standard on the field of
+Xaquixaguana, both died within a year after Pizarro.  Hinojosa was
+assassinated but two years later in La Plata; and his old comrade
+Valdivia, after a series of brilliant exploits in Chili, which furnished her
+most glorious theme to the epic Muse of Castile, was cut off by the
+invincible warriors of Arauco.  The Manes of Pizarro were amply
+avenged.
+
+Acosta, and three or four other cavaliers who surrendered with Gonzalo,
+were sent to execution on the same day with their chief; and Gasca, on
+the morning following the dismal tragedy, broke up his quarters and
+marched with his whole army to Cuzco, where he was received by the
+politic people with the same enthusiasm which they had so recently
+shown to his rival.  He found there a number of the rebel army who bad
+taken refuge in the city after their late defeat, where they were
+immediately placed under arrest.  Proceedings, by Gasca's command,
+were instituted against them.  The principal cavaliers, to the number of
+ten or twelve, were executed; others were banished or sent to the galleys.
+The same rigorous decrees were passed against such as had fled and
+were not yet taken; and the estates of all were confiscated.  The estates of
+the rebels supplied a fund for the recompense of the loyal.20  The
+execution of justice may seem to have been severe; but Gasca was
+willing that the rod should fall heavily on those who had so often
+rejected his proffers of grace.  Lenity was wasted on a rude, licentious
+soldiery, who hardly recognized the existence of government, unless they
+felt its rigor.
+
+A new duty now devolved on the president,--that of rewarding his
+faithful followers,--not less difficult, as it proved, than that of punishing
+the guilty.  The applicants were numerous; since every one who had
+raised a finger in behalf of the government claimed his reward.  They
+urged their demands with a clamorous importunity which perplexed the
+good president, and consumed every moment of his time.
+
+Disgusted with this unprofitable state of things, Gasca resolved to rid
+himself of the annoyance at once, by retiring to the valley of
+Guaynarima, about twelve leagues distant from the city, and there
+digesting, in quiet, a scheme of compensation, adjusted to the merits of
+the parties.  He was accompanied only by his secretary, and by Loaysa,
+now archbishop of Lima, a man of sense, and well acquainted with the
+affairs of the country.  In this seclusion the president remained three
+months, making a careful examination into the conflicting claims, and
+apportioning the forfeitures among the parties according to their
+respective services.  The repartimientos, it should be remarked, were
+usually granted only for life, and, on the death of the incumbent, reverted
+to the Crown, to be reassigned or retained at its pleasure.
+
+When his arduous task was completed, Gasca determined to withdraw to
+Lima, leaving the instrument of partition with the archbishop, to be
+communicated to the army.  Notwithstanding all the care that had been
+taken for an equitable adjustment, Gasca was aware that it was
+impossible to satisfy the demands of a jealous and irritable soldiery,
+where each man would be likely to exaggerate his own deserts, while he
+underrated those of his comrades; and he did not care to expose himself
+to importunities and complaints that could serve no other purpose than to
+annoy him.
+
+On his departure, the troops were called together by the archbishop in
+the cathedral, to learn the contents of the schedule intrusted to him.  A
+discourse was first preached by a worthy Dominican, the prior of
+Arequipa, in which the reverend father expatiated on the virtue of
+contentment, the duty of obedience, and the folly, as well as wickedness,
+of an attempt to resist the constituted authorities,--topics, in short, which
+he conceived might best conciliate the good-will and conformity of his
+audience.
+
+A letter from the president was then read from the pulpit.  It was
+addressed to the officers and soldiers of the army.  The writer began with
+briefly exposing the difficulties of his task, owing to the limited amount
+of the gratuities, and the great number and services of the claimants.  He
+had given the matter the most careful consideration, he said, and
+endeavored to assign to each his share, according to his deserts, without
+prejudice or partiality.  He had, no doubt, fallen into errors, but he
+trusted his followers would excuse them, when they reflected that he had
+done according to the best of his poor abilities; and all, he believed,
+would do him the justice to acknowledge he had not been influenced by
+motives of personal interest.  He bore emphatic testimony to the services
+they had rendered to the good cause, and concluded with the most
+affectionate wishes for their future prosperity and happiness.  The letter
+was dated at Guaynarima, August 17, 1548, and bore the simple
+signature of the Licentiate Gasca.21
+
+The archbishop next read the paper containing the president's award.
+The annual rent of the estates to be distributed amounted to a hundred
+and thirty thousand pesos ensayados;22 a large amount, considering the
+worth of money in that day,--in any other country than Peru, where
+money was a drug.23
+
+The repartimientos thus distributed varied in value from one hundred to
+thirty-five hundred pesos of yearly rent; all, apparently, graduated with
+the nicest precision to the merits of the parties.  The number of
+pensioners was about two hundred and fifty; for the fund would not have
+sufficed for general distribution, nor were the services of the greater part
+deemed worthy of such a mark of consideration.24
+
+The effect produced by the document, on men whose minds were filled
+with the most indefinite expectations, was just such as had been
+anticipated by the president.  It was received with a general murmur of
+disapprobation.  Even those who had got more than they expected were
+discontented, on comparing their condition with that of their comrades,
+whom they thought still better remunerated in proportion to their deserts.
+They especially inveighed against the preference shown to the old
+partisans of Gonzalo Pizarro--as Hinojosa, Centeno, and Aldana-over
+those who had always remained loyal to the Crown.  There was some
+ground for such a preference; for none had rendered so essential services
+in crushing the rebellion; and it was these services that Gasca proposed
+to recompense.  To reward every man who had proved himself loyal,
+simply for his loyalty, would have frittered away the donative into
+fractions that would be of little value to any.25
+
+It was in vain, however, that the archbishop, seconded by some of the
+principal cavaliers, endeavored to infuse a more contented spirit into the
+multitude.  They insisted that the award should be rescinded, and a new
+one made on more equitable principles; threatening, moreover, that, if
+this were not done by the president, they would take the redress of the
+matter into their own hands.  Their discontent, fomented by some
+mischievous persons who thought to find their account in it, at length
+proceeded so far as to menace a mutiny; and it was not suppressed till the
+commander of Cuzco sentenced one of the ringleaders to death, and
+several others to banishment.  The iron soldiery of the Conquest required
+an iron hand to rule them.
+
+Meanwhile, the president had continued his journey towards Lima; and
+on the way was everywhere received by the people with an enthusiasm,
+the more grateful to his heart that he felt he had deserved it.  As he drew
+near the capital, the loyal inhabitants prepared to give him a magnificent
+reception.  The whole population came forth from the gates, led by the
+authorities of the city, with Aldana as corregidor at their head.  Gasca
+rode on a mule, dressed in his ecclesiastical robes.  On his right, borne
+on a horse richly caparisoned, was the royal seal, in a box curiously
+chased and ornamented.  A gorgeous canopy of brocade was supported
+above his head by the officers of the municipality, who, in their robes of
+crimson velvet, walked bareheaded by his side.  Gay troops of dancers,
+clothed in fantastic dresses of gaudy-colored silk, followed the
+procession, strewing flowers and chanting verses as they went, in honor
+of the president.  They were designed as emblematical of the different
+cities of the colony; and they bore legends or mottoes in rhyme on their
+caps, intimating their loyal devotion to the Crown, and evincing much
+more loyalty in their composition, it may be added, than poetical
+merit.26  In this way, without beat of drum, or noise of artillery, or any
+of the rude accompaniments of war, the good president made his
+peaceful entry into the City of the Kings, while the air was rent with the
+acclamations of the people, who hailed him as their "Father and
+Deliverer, the Saviour of their country!" 27
+
+But, however grateful was this homage to Gasca's heart, he was not a
+man to waste his time in idle vanities.  He now thought only by what
+means he could eradicate the seeds of disorder which shot up so readily
+in this fruitful soil, and how he could place the authority of the
+government on a permanent basis.  By virtue of his office, he presided
+over the Royal Audience, the great judicial, and, indeed, executive
+tribunal of the colony; and he gave great despatch to the business, which
+had much accumulated during the late disturbances.  In the unsettled
+state of property, there was abundant subject for litigation; but,
+fortunately, the new Audience was composed of able, upright judges,
+who labored diligently with their chief to correct the mischief caused by
+the misrule of their predecessors.
+
+Neither was Gasca unmindful of the unfortunate natives; and he occupied
+himself earnestly with that difficult problem,--the best means practicable
+of ameliorating their condition.  He sent a number of commissioners, as
+visitors, into different parts of the country, whose business it was to
+inspect the encomiendas, and ascertain the manner in which the Indians
+were treated, by conversing not only with the proprietors, but with the
+natives themselves.  They were also to learn the nature and extent of the
+tributes paid in former times by the vassals of the Incas.28
+
+In this way, a large amount of valuable information was obtained, which
+enabled Gasca, with the aid of a council of ecclesiastics and jurists, to
+digest a uniform system of taxation for the natives, lighter even than that
+imposed on them by the Peruvian princes.  The president would gladly
+have relieved the conquered races from the obligations of personal
+service; but, on mature consideration, this was judged impracticable in
+the present state of the country, since the colonists, more especially in
+the tropical regions, looked to the natives for the performance of labor,
+and the latter, it was found from experience, would not work at all,
+unless compelled to do so.  The president, however, limited the amount
+of service to be exacted with great precision, so that it was in the nature
+of a moderate personal tax.  No Peruvian was to be required to change
+his place of residence, from the climate to which he had been
+accustomed, to another; a fruitful source of discomfort, as well as of
+disease, in past times.  By these various regulations, the condition of the
+natives, though not such as had been contemplated by the sanguine
+philanthropy of Las Casas, was improved far more than was compatible
+with the craving demands of the colonists; and all the firmness of the
+Audience was required to enforce provisions so unpalatable to the latter.
+Still they were enforced.  Slavery, in its most odious sense, was no
+longer tolerated in Peru.  The term "slave" was not recognized as having
+relation to her institutions; and the historian of the Indies makes the
+proud boast,--it should have been qualified by the limitations I have
+noticed, --that every Indian vassal might aspire to the rank of a
+freeman.29
+
+Besides these reforms, Gasca introduced several in the municipal
+government of the cities, and others yet more important in the
+management of the finances, and in the mode of keeping the accounts.
+By these and other changes in the internal economy of the colony, he
+placed the administration on a new basis, and greatly facilitated the way
+for a more sure and orderly government by his successors.  As a final
+step, to secure the repose of the country after he was gone, he detached
+some of the more aspiring cavaliers on distant expeditions, trusting that
+they would draw off the light and restless spirits, who might otherwise
+gather together and disturb the public tranquillity; as we sometimes see
+the mists which have been scattered by the genial influence of the sun
+become condensed, and settle into a storm, on his departure.30
+
+Gasca had been now more than fifteen months in Lima, and nearly three
+years had elapsed since his first entrance into Peru.  In that time, he had
+accomplished the great objects of his mission.  When he landed, he
+found the colony in a state of anarchy, or rather organized rebellion
+under a powerful and popular chief.  He came without funds or forces to
+support him.  The former he procured through the credit which he
+established in his good faith; the latter he won over by argument and
+persuasion from the very persons to whom they had been confided by his
+rival.  Thus he turned the arms of that rival against himself.  By a calm
+appeal to reason he wrought a change in the hearts of the people; and,
+without costing a drop of blood to a single loyal subject, he suppressed a
+rebellion which had menaced Spain with the loss of the wealthiest of her
+provinces.  He had punished the guilty, and in their spoils found the
+means to recompense the faithful.  He had, moreover, so well husbanded
+the resources of the country, that he was enabled to pay off the large loan
+he had negotiated with the merchants of the colony, for the expenses of
+the war, exceeding nine hundred thousand pesos de oro.31  Nay, more,
+by his economy he had saved a million and a half of ducats for the
+government, which for some years had received nothing from Peru; and
+he now proposed to carry back this acceptable treasure to swell the royal
+coffers.32  All this had been accomplished without the cost of out-fit or
+salary, or any charge to the Crown except that of his own frugal
+expenditure.33  The country was now in a state of tranquillity.  Gasca
+felt that his work was done; and that he was free to gratify his natural
+longing to return to his native land.
+
+Before his departure, he arranged a distribution of those repartimientos
+which had lapsed to the Crown during the past year by the death of the
+incumbents.  Life was short in Peru; since those who lived by the sword,
+if they did not die by the sword, too often fell early victims to the
+hardships incident to their adventurous career.  Many were the applicants
+for the new bounty of government; and, as among them were some of
+those who had been discontented with the former partition, Gasca was
+assailed by remonstrances, and sometimes by reproaches couched in no
+very decorous or respectful language.  But they had no power to disturb
+his equanimity; he patiently listened, and replied to all in the mild tone of
+expostulation best calculated to turn away wrath; "by this victory over
+himself," says an old writer, "acquiring more real glory, than by all his
+victories over his enemies." 34
+
+An incident occurred on the eve of his departure, touching in itself, and
+honorable to the parties concerned.  The Indian caciques of the
+neighboring country, mindful of the great benefits he had rendered their
+people, presented him with a considerable quantity of plate in token of
+their gratitude.  But Gasca refused to receive it, though in doing so he
+gave much concern to the Peruvians, who feared they had unwittingly
+fallen under his displeasure.
+
+Many of the principal colonists, also, from the same wish to show their
+sense of his important services, sent to him, after he had embarked, a
+magnificent donative of fifty thousand gold castellanos.  "As he had
+taken leave of Peru," they said, "there could be no longer any ground for
+declining it."  But Gasca was as decided in his rejection of this present,
+as he had been of the other.  "He had come to the country," he remarked,
+"to serve the king, and to secure the blessings of peace to the inhabitants;
+and now that, by the favor of Heaven, he had been permitted to
+accomplish this, he would not dishonor the cause by any act that might
+throw suspicion on the purity of his motives."  Notwithstanding his
+refusal, the colonists contrived to secrete the sum of twenty thousand
+castellanos on board his vessel, with the idea, that, once in his own
+country, with his mission concluded, the president's scruples would be
+removed.  Gasca did, indeed, accept the donative; for he felt that it
+would be ungracious to send it back; but it was only till he could
+ascertain the relatives of the donors, when he distributed it among the
+most needy.35
+
+Having now settled all his affairs, the president committed the
+government, until the arrival of a viceroy, to his faithful partners of the
+Royal Audience; and in January, 1550 he embarked with the royal
+treasure on board of a squadron for Panama.  He was accompanied to the
+shore by a numerous crowd of the inhabitants, cavaliers and common
+people, persons of all ages and conditions, who followed to take their
+last look of their benefactor, and watch with straining eyes the vessel that
+bore him away from their land.
+
+His voyage was prosperous, and early in March the president reached his
+destined port.  He stayed there only till he could muster horses and mules
+sufficient to carry the treasure across the mountains; for he knew that this
+part of the country abounded in wild, predatory spirits, who would be
+sorely tempted to some act of violence by a knowledge of the wealth
+which he had with him.  Pushing forward, therefore, he crossed the
+rugged Isthmus, and, after a painful march, arrived in safety at Nombre
+de Dios.
+
+The event justified his apprehensions.  He had been gone but three days,
+when a ruffian horde, after murdering the bishop of Guatemala, broke
+into Panama with the design of inflicting the same fate on the president,
+and of seizing the booty.  No sooner were the tidings communicated to
+Gasca, than, with his usual energy, he levied a force and prepared to
+march to the relief of the invaded capital.  But Fortune--or, to speak
+more correctly, Providence--favored him here, as usual; and, on the eve
+of his departure, he learned that the marauders had been met by the
+citizens, and discomfited with great slaughter.  Disbanding his forces,
+therefore, he equipped a fleet of nineteen vessels to transport himself and
+the royal treasure to Spain, where he arrived in safety, entering the
+harbor of Seville after a little more than four years from the period when
+he had sailed from the same port.36
+
+Great was the sensation throughout the country caused by his arrival.
+Men could hardly believe that results so momentous had been
+accomplished in so short a time by a single individual,--a poor
+ecclesiastic, who, unaided by government, had, by his own strength, as it
+were, put down a rebellion which had so long set the arms of Spain at
+defiance!
+
+The emperor was absent in Flanders.  He was overjoyed on learning the
+complete success of Gasca's mission; and not less satisfied with the
+tidings of the treasure he had brought with him; for the exchequer, rarely
+filled to overflowing, had been exhausted by the recent troubles in
+Germany.  Charles instantly wrote to the president, requiring his
+presence at court, that he might learn from his own lips the particulars of
+his expedition.  Gasca, accordingly, attended by a numerous retinue of
+nobles and cavaliers,--for who does not pay homage to him whom the
+king delighteth to honor?--embarked at Barcelona, and, after a favorable
+voyage, joined the Court in Flanders.
+
+He was received by his royal master, who fully appreciated his services,
+in a manner most grateful to his feelings; and not long afterward he was
+raised to the bishopric of Palencia,--a mode of acknowledgment best
+suited to his character and deserts.  Here he remained till 1561, when he
+was promoted to the vacant see of Siguenza.  The rest of his days he
+passed peacefully in the discharge of his episcopal functions; honored by
+his sovereign, and enjoying the admiration and respect of his
+countrymen.37
+
+In his retirement, he was still consulted by the government in matters of
+importance relating to the Indies.  The disturbances of that unhappy land
+were renewed, though on a much smaller scale than before, soon after
+the president's departure.  They were chiefly caused by discontent with
+the repartimientos, and with the constancy of the Audience in enforcing
+the benevolent restrictions as to the personal services of the natives.  But
+these troubles subsided, after a very few years, under the wise rule of the
+Mendozas,--two successive viceroys of that illustrious house which has
+given so many of its sons to the service of Spain.  Under their rule, the
+mild yet determined policy was pursued, of which Gasca had set the
+example.  The ancient distractions of the country were permanently
+healed.  With peace, prosperity returned within the borders of Peru; and
+the consciousness of the beneficent results of his labors may have shed a
+ray of satisfaction, as it did of glory, over the evening of the president's
+life.
+
+That life was brought to a close in November, 1567, at an age, probably,
+not far from the one fixed by the sacred writer as the term of human
+existence.38  He died at Valladolid, and was buried in the church of
+Santa Maria Magdalena, in that city, which he had built and liberally
+endowed.  His monument, surmounted by the sculptured effigy of a
+priest in his sacerdotal robes, is still to be seen there, attracting the
+admiration of the traveller by the beauty of its execution.  The banners
+taken from Gonzalo Pizarro on the field of Xaquixaguana were
+suspended over his tomb, as the trophies of his memorable mission to
+Peru.39  The banners have long since mouldered into dust, with the
+remains of him who slept beneath them; but the memory of his good
+deeds will endure for ever.40
+
+Gasca was plain in person, and his countenance was far from comely, He
+was awkward and ill-proportioned; for his limbs were too long for his
+body,--so that when he rode, he appeared to be much shorter than he
+really was.41  His dress was humble, his manners simple, and there was
+nothing imposing in his presence.  But, on a nearer intercourse, there was
+a charm in his discourse that effaced every unfavorable impression
+produced by his exterior, and won the hearts of his hearers.
+
+The president's character may be thought to have been sufficiently
+portrayed in the history already given of his life.  It presented a
+combination of qualities which generally serve to neutralize each other,
+but which were mixed in such proportions in him as to give it additional
+strength.  He was gentle, yet resolute; by nature intrepid, yet preferring to
+rely on the softer arts of policy.  He was frugal in his personal
+expenditure, and economical in the public; yet caring nothing for riches
+on his own account, and never stinting his bounty when the public good
+required it.  He was benevolent and placable, yet could deal sternly with
+the impenitent offender; lowly in his deportment, yet with a full measure
+of that self-respect which springs from conscious rectitude of purpose;
+modest and unpretending, yet not shrinking from the most difficult
+enterprises; deferring greatly to others, yet, in the last resort, relying
+mainly on himself; moving with deliberation,--patiently waiting his time;
+but, when that came, bold, prompt, and decisive.
+
+Gasca, was not a man of genius, in the vulgar sense of that term.  At
+least, no one of his intellectual powers seems to have received an
+extraordinary development, beyond what is found in others.  He was not
+a great writer, nor a great orator, nor a great general.  He did not affect to
+be either.  He committed the care of his military matters to military men;
+of ecclesiastical to the clergy; and his civil and judicial concerns he
+reposed on the members of the Audience.  He was not one of those little
+great men who aspire to do every thing themselves, under the conviction
+that nothing can be done so well by others.  But the president was a keen
+judge of character.  Whatever might be the office, he selected the best
+man for it.  He did more.  He assured himself of the fidelity of his agents,
+presided at their deliberations; dictated a general line of policy, and thus
+infused a spirit of unity into their plans, which made all move in concert
+to the accomplishment of one grand result.
+
+A distinguishing feature of his mind was his common sense,--the best
+substitute for genius in a ruler who has the destinies of his fellow-men at
+his disposal, and more indispensable than genius itself.  In Gasca, the
+different qualities were blended in such harmony, that there was no room
+for excess.  They seemed to regulate each other.  While his sympathy
+with mankind taught him the nature of their wants, his reason suggested
+to what extent these were capable of relief, as well as the best mode of
+effecting it.  He did not waste his strength on illusory schemes of
+benevolence, like Las Casas, on the one hand; nor did he countenance
+the selfish policy of the colonists, on the other.  He aimed at the
+practicable,--the greatest good practicable.
+
+In accomplishing his objects, he disclaimed force equally with fraud.  He
+trusted for success to his power over the convictions of his hearers; and
+the source of this power was the confidence he inspired in his own
+integrity.  Amidst all the calumnies of faction, no imputation was ever
+cast on the integrity of Gasca.42  No wonder that a virtue so rare should
+be of high price in Peru.
+
+There are some men whose characters have been so wonderfully adapted
+to the peculiar crisis in which they appeared, that they seem to have been
+specially designed for it by Providence.  Such was Washington, in our
+own country, and Gasca in Peru.  We can conceive of individuals with
+higher qualities, at least with higher intellectual qualities, than belonged
+to either of these great men.  But it was the wonderful conformity of their
+characters to the exigencies of their situation, the perfect adaptation of
+the means to the end, that constituted the secret of their success; that
+enabled Gasca so gloriously to crush revolution, and Washington still
+more gloriously to achieve it.
+
+Gasca's conduct on his first coming to the colonies affords the best
+illustration of his character.  Had he come backed by a military array, or
+even clothed in the paraphernalia of authority, every heart and hand
+would have been closed against him.  But the humble ecclesiastic excited
+no apprehension; and his enemies were already disarmed, before he had
+begun his approaches.  Had Gasca, impatient of Hinojosa's tardiness,
+listened to the suggestions of those who advised his seizure, he would
+have brought his cause into jeopardy by this early display of violence
+But he wisely chose to win over his enemy by operating on his
+conviction.
+
+In like manner, he waited his time for making his entry into Peru.  He
+suffered his communications to do their work in the minds of the people,
+and was careful not to thrust in the sickle before the harvest was ripe.
+
+In this way, wherever he went, every thing was prepared for his coming;
+and when he set foot in Peru, the country was already his own.
+
+After the dark and turbulent spirits with which we have been hitherto
+occupied, it is refreshing to dwell on a character like that of Gasca.  In
+the long procession which has passed in review before us, we have seen
+only the mail-clad cavalier, brandishing his bloody lance, and mounted
+on his war-horse, riding over the helpless natives, or battling with his
+own friends and brothers; fierce, arrogant, and cruel, urged on by the lust
+of gold, or the scarce more honorable love of a bastard glory.  Mingled
+with these qualities, indeed, we have seen sparkles of the chivalrous and
+romantic temper which belongs to the heroic age of Spain.  But, with
+some honorable exceptions, it was the scum of her chivalry that resorted
+to Peru, and took service under the banner of the Pizarros.  At the close
+of this long array of iron warriors, we behold the poor and humble
+missionary coming into the land on an errand of mercy, and everywhere
+proclaiming the glad tidings of peace.  No warlike trumpet heralds his
+approach, nor is his course to be tracked by the groans of the wounded
+and the dying.  The means he employs are in perfect harmony with his
+end.  His weapons are argument and mild persuasion.  It is the reason he
+would conquer, not the body.  He wins his way by conviction, not by
+violence.  It is a moral victory to which he aspires, more potent, and
+happily more permanent, than that of the blood-stained conqueror.  As he
+thus calmly, and imperceptibly, as it were, comes to his great results, he
+may remind us of the slow, insensible manner in which Nature works out
+her great changes in the material world, that are to endure when the
+ravages of the hurricane are passed away and forgotten.
+
+With the mission of Gasca terminates the history of the Conquest of
+Peru.  The Conquest, indeed, strictly terminates with the suppression of
+the Peruvian revolt, when the strength, if not the spirit, of the Inca race
+was crushed for ever.  The reader, however, might feel a natural curiosity
+to follow to its close the fate of the remarkable family who achieved the
+Conquest.  Nor would the story of the invasion itself be complete without
+some account of the civil wars which grew out of it; which serve,
+moreover, as a moral commentary on preceding events, by showing that
+the indulgence of fierce, unbridled passions is sure to recoil, sooner or
+later, even in this life, on the heads of the guilty.
+
+It is true, indeed, that the troubles of the country were renewed on the
+departure of Gasca.  The waters had been too fearfully agitated to be
+stilled, at once, into a calm; but they gradually subsided, under the
+temperate rule of his successors, who wisely profited by his policy and
+example.  Thus the influence of the good president remained after he was
+withdrawn from the scene of his labors; and Peru, hitherto so distracted,
+continued to enjoy as large a share of repose as any portion of the
+colonial empire of Spain.  With the benevolent mission of Gasca, then,
+the historian of the Conquest may be permitted to terminate his labors, -
+with feelings not unlike those of the traveller who, having long journeyed
+among the dreary forests and dangerous defiles of the mountains, at
+length emerges on some pleasant landscape smiling in tranquillity and
+peace.
+
+Augustin de Zarate--a highly respectable authority, frequently cited in
+the later portion of this work--was Contador de Mercedes, Comptroller
+of Accounts, for Castile.  This office he filled for fifteen years; after
+which he was sent by the government to Peru to examine into the state of
+the colonial finances, which had been greatly deranged by the recent
+troubles, and to bring them, if possible, into order.
+
+Zarate went out accordingly in the train of the viceroy Blasco Nunez,
+and found himself, through the passions of his imprudent leader,
+entangled, soon after his arrival, in the inextricable meshes of civil
+discord.  In the struggle which ensued, he remained with the Royal
+Audience; and we find him in Lima, on the approach of Gonzalo Pizarro
+to that capital, when Zarate was deputed by the judges to wait on the
+insurgent chief, and require him to disband his troops and withdraw to
+his own estates.  The historian executed the mission, for which he seems
+to have had little relish, and which certainly was not without danger.
+From this period, we rarely hear of him in the troubled scenes that
+ensued.  He probably took no further part in affairs than was absolutely
+forced on him by circumstances; but the unfavorable bearing of his
+remarks on Gonzalo Pizarro intimates, that, however he may have been
+discontented with the conduct of the viceroy, he did not countenance, for
+a moment, the criminal ambition of his rival.  The times were certainly
+unpropitious to the execution of the financial reforms for which Zarate
+had come to Peru.  But he showed so much real devotion to the interests
+of the Crown, that the emperor, on his return, signified his satisfaction by
+making him Superintendent of the Finances in Flanders.
+
+Soon after his arrival in Peru, he seems to have conceived the idea of
+making his countrymen at home acquainted with the stirring events
+passing in the colony, which, moreover, afforded some striking passages
+for the study of the historian.  Although he collected notes and diaries, as
+he tells us, for this purpose, he did not dare to avail himself of them till
+his return to Castile.  "For to have begun the history in Peru," he says,
+"would have alone been enough to put my life in jeopardy; since a
+certain commander, named Francisco de Carbajal, threatened to take
+vengeance on any one who should be so rash as to attempt the relation of
+his exploits, ---far less deserving, as they were, to be placed on record,
+than to be consigned to eternal oblivion."  In this same commander, the
+reader will readily recognize the veteran lieutenant of Gonzalo Pizarro.
+
+On his return home, Zarate set about the compilation of his work.  His
+first purpose was to confine it to the events that followed the arrival of
+Blasco Nunez; but he soon found, that, to make these intelligible, he
+must trace the stream of history higher up towards its sources.  He
+accordingly enlarged his plan, and, beginning with the discovery of Peru,
+gave an entire view of the conquest and subsequent occupation of the
+country, bringing the narrative down to the close of Gasca's mission.  For
+the earlier portion of the story, he relied on the accounts of persons who
+took a leading part in the events.  He disposes more summarily of this
+portion than of that in which he himself was both a spectator and an
+actor; where his testimony, considering the advantages his position gave
+him for information, is of the highest value.
+
+Alcedo in his Biblioteca Americana, MS., speaks of Zarate's work as
+"containing much that is good, but as not entitled to the praise of
+exactness."  He wrote under the influence of party heat, which
+necessarily operates to warp the fairest mind somewhat from its natural
+bent.  For this we must make allowance, in perusing accounts of
+conflicting parties.  But there is no intention, apparently, to turn the truth
+aside in support of his own cause; and his access to the best sources of
+knowledge often supplies us with particulars not within the reach of
+other chroniclers.  His narrative is seasoned, moreover, with sensible
+reflections and passing comments, that open gleams of light into the dark
+passages of that eventful period.  Yet the style of the author can make
+but moderate pretensions to the praise of elegance or exactness; while
+the sentences run into that tedious, interminable length which belongs to
+the garrulous compositions of the regular thoroughbred chronicler of the
+olden time.
+
+The personalities, necessarily incident, more or less, to such a work, led
+its author to shrink from publication, at least during his life.  By the
+jealous spirit of the Castilian cavalier, "censure," he says, "however
+light, is regarded with indignation, and even praise is rarely dealt out in a
+measure satisfactory to the subject of it."  And he expresses his
+conviction that those do wisely, who allow their accounts of their own
+times to repose in the quiet security of manuscript, till the generation that
+is to be affected by them has passed away.  His own manuscript,
+however, was submitted to the emperor; and it received such
+commendation from this royal authority, that Zarate, plucking up a more
+courageous spirit, consented to give it to the press.  It accordingly
+appeared at Antwerp, in 1555, in octavo; and a second edition was
+printed, in folio, at Seville, in 1577.  It has since been incorporated in
+Barcia's valuable collection; and, whatever indignation or displeasure it
+may have excited among contemporaries, who smarted under the author's
+censure, or felt themselves defrauded of their legitimate guerdon,
+Zarate's work has taken a permanent rank among the most respectable
+authorities for a history of the time.
+
+The name of Zarate naturally suggests that of Fernandez, for both were
+laborers in the same field of history.  Diego Fernandez de Palencia, or
+Palentino, as he is usually called, from the place of his birth, came over
+to Peru, and served as a private in the royal army raised to quell the
+insurrections that broke out after Gasca's return to Castile.  Amidst his
+military occupations, he found leisure to collect materials for a history of
+the period, to which he was further urged by the viceroy, Mendoza,
+Marques de Canete, who bestowed on him, as he tells us, the post of
+Chronicler of Peru.  This mark of confidence in his literary capacity
+intimates higher attainments in Fernandez than might be inferred from
+the humble station that he occupied.  With the fruits of his researches the
+soldier-chronicler returned to Spain, and, after a time, completed his
+narrative of the insurrection of Giron.
+
+The manuscript was seen by the President of the Council of the Indies,
+and he was so much pleased with its execution, that he urged the author
+to write the account, in like manner, of Gonzalo Pizarro's rebellion, and
+of the administration of Gasca.  The historian was further stimulated, as
+he mentions in his dedication to Philip the Second, by the promise of a
+guerdon from that monarch, on the completion of his labors; a very
+proper, as well as politic, promise, but which inevitably suggests the idea
+of an influence not altogether favorable to severe historic impartiality.
+Nor will such an inference be found altogether at variance with truth; for
+while the narrative of Fernandez studiously exhibits the royal cause in
+the most favorable aspect to the reader, it does scanty justice to the
+claims of the opposite party.  It would not be meet, indeed, that an
+apology for rebellion should be found in the pages of a royal pensioner;
+but there are always mitigating circumstances, which, however we may
+condemn the guilt, may serve to lessen our indignation towards the
+guilty.  These circumstances are not to be found in the pages of
+Fernandez.  It is unfortunate for the historian of such events, that it is so
+difficult to find one disposed to do even justice to the claims of the
+unsuccessful rebel.  Yet the Inca Garcilasso has not shrunk from this, in
+the case of Gonzalo Pizarro; and even Gomara, though living under the
+shadow, or rather in the sunshine, of the Court, has occasionally ventured
+a generous protest in his behalf.
+
+The countenance thus afforded to Fernandez from the highest quarter
+opened to him the best fountains of intelligence,--at least, on the
+government side of the quarrel.  Besides personal communication with
+the royalist leaders, he had access to their correspondence, diaries, and
+official documents.  He industriously profited by his opportunities; and
+his narrative, taking up the story of the rebellion from its birth, continues
+it to its final extinction, and the end of Gasca's administration.  Thus the
+First Part of his work, as it was now called, was brought down to the
+commencement of the Second, and the whole presented a complete
+picture of the distractions of the nation, till a new order of things was
+introduced, and tranquillity was permanently established throughout the
+country.
+
+The diction is sufficiently plain, not aspiring to rhetorical beauties
+beyond the reach of its author, and out of keeping with the simple
+character of a chronicle, The sentences are arranged with more art than
+in most of the unwieldy compositions of the time; and, while there is no
+attempt at erudition or philosophic speculation, the current of events
+flows on in an orderly manner, tolerably prolix, it is true, but leaving a
+clear and intelligible impression on the mind of the reader.  No history of
+that period compares with it in the copiousness of its details; and it has
+accordingly been resorted to by later compilers, as an inexhaustible
+reservoir for the supply of their own pages; a circumstance that may be
+thought of itself to bear no slight testimony to the general fidelity, as well
+as fulness, of the narrative.--The Chronicle of Fernandez, thus arranged
+in two parts, under the general title of Historia del Peru, was given to the
+world in the author's lifetime, at Seville, in 1571 in one volume, folio,
+being the edition used in the preparation of this work.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
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