Narrative and Critical History of America, Vol. 2 (of 8) / Spanish Explorations and Settlements in America from the Fifteenth to the Seventeenth Century

by Unknown

CHAPTER VIII.

PIZARRO, AND THE CONQUEST AND SETTLEMENT OF PERU AND CHILI.

BY CLEMENTS R. MARKHAM, F.R.S.

Honorary Secretary of the Hakluyt Society.

WHEN the Isthmus of Darien was discovered by Vasco Nuñez de Balbóa, during the six years between 1511 and 1517, there can be little doubt that tidings, perhaps only in the form of vague rumors, were received of the greatness and the riches of the Empire of the Yncas. The speech which the son of the Cacique Comogre is said to have made to the gold-seeking followers of the discoverer of the South Sea most probably had reference to Peru; and still more certainly, when the Cacique of Tumaco told Vasco Nuñez of the country far to the south which abounded in gold, and moulded the figure of a llama in clay, he gave tidings of the land of the Yncas. There was a chief in the territory to the south of the Gulf of San Miguel, on the Pacific coast, named Biru, and this country was visited by Gaspar de Morales and Francisco Pizarro in 1515. For the next ten years Biru was the most southern land known to the Spaniards; and the consequence was that the unknown regions farther south, including the rumored empire abounding in gold, came to be designated as Biru, or Peru. It was thus that the land of the Yncas got the name of Peru from the Spaniards, some years before it was actually discovered.[1467]

Pedro Arias de Avila, the governor of the mainland called Castilla del Oro, founded the city of Panamá. He went there from the Pearl Islands, in the vessels which had been built by his victim Vasco Nuñez, while Gaspar de Espinosa, the Alcalde Mayor, led the rest of the colony by land. The city was founded in 1519. The governor divided the land among four hundred settlers from Darien. Among them were Pascual de Andagoya, Hernando Luque (a priest), Francisco Pizarro, and Diego de Almagro. Nombre de Dios, on the Atlantic side of the isthmus, was settled towards the end of the same year by a captain named Diego Alviles, in obedience to orders from Pedro Arias.[1468]

In the year 1522 Pascual de Andagoya, who had come out to Darien with Pedro Arias in 1514 and was a cavalier of good family from the province of Alava, was appointed inspector-general of the Indians on the isthmus. He made a journey to a district called Chuchama, south of the Gulf of San Miguel, where the chief told him that a certain people from a province called Biru, farther south, came to make war upon them in canoes at every full moon. Andagoya sent to Panamá for reinforcements, in order to comply with the prayer of the people of Chuchama that he would defend them, as well as to discover what there was farther south. Having received an addition to his forces, he set out with the chief of Chuchama, and in six days arrived at the province called Biru. It had already been visited by Morales and Pizarro. After capturing their principal stronghold, several chiefs of Biru made their submission to Andagoya. From these people he collected information respecting the great empire of the Yncas, and he then descended a river and continued the examination of the coast in a small vessel which had followed him from Chuchama. But he was attacked by a severe illness caused by having been capsized in a canoe, and then kept for several hours in his wet clothes. He therefore returned to Panamá, to report the knowledge he had acquired, giving up his intention of conducting discovery to the southward in person. It was fully three years before Andagoya had so far recovered as to be able to ride on horseback.

The governor, Pedro Arias, therefore requested Andagoya to hand over the enterprise to three partners who formed a company at Panamá. These were Pizarro, Almagro, and Luque.

Francisco Pizarro was born about the year 1470[1469] in the province of Estremadura, and was the illegitimate son of Gonzalo Pizarro, a soldier who had served under the Great Captain in Italy. He had arrived at Darien in the expedition of Alonzo de Ojeda in 1509. During fifteen years he had been diligently serving as a brave, steady, much-enduring man-at-arms; and on two or three occasions he found himself in important and responsible positions. In 1524 he was a citizen of Panamá with very limited means, but endowed with indomitable energy and perseverance, and fifty-four years of age. Diego Almagro is said to have been a foundling. At all events his parentage is unknown. He had probably served for some years on the isthmus, but his name does not occur until he entered into this partnership. Almagro is described as a man of short stature, with a very plain face, and was at least as old as Pizarro. He was hasty in temper, but generous and warm-hearted, and his fine qualities attracted to him many faithfully attached adherents. Luque had been schoolmaster at Darien, and was now the principal parochial clergyman at Panamá, holding valuable property on the adjacent island of Taboga, and in an influential position in the colony.

Pizarro was to command the expedition; Almagro was to keep open communications with Panamá and bring supplies; while Luque acted as agent, and obtained the needful funds.

One of the small vessels which had been built for Vasco Nuñez was obtained, and a force of eighty men (one hundred and twelve, according to Xeres) and four horses was collected. Pizarro prepared to sail with this single vessel and two canoes, having received all the information and instructions that Andagoya could give him, and taking with him the interpreters brought from Biru by that officer. It was arranged that large trees near the sea-shore should be blazed, as guides to the course taken by Pizarro, when his partner Almagro should follow with supplies.

Pizarro sailed from Panamá Nov. 14, 1524, and after enduring terrible sufferings on the coast of Biru, including famine, and losing twenty-seven of his men, he went back to Chuchama, and sent the treasurer Nicolas de Ribera to Panamá with the gold which he had collected. Meanwhile Almagro had followed in another vessel with provisions, and went on the traces of his companion by means of the trees that had been marked, until he reached the Rio San Juan in 4° north. Finding no further traces of Pizarro he returned, having lost an eye in an encounter with natives. He also lost upwards of seventy men;[1470] but he obtained some gold.

After this failure it was more difficult to obtain money and recruits for a second attempt. Fortunately, the Alcalde Mayor, who was impressed with the promising character of the undertaking, came forward with the necessary funds, which he advanced through the agency of Luque. Gaspar de Espinosa thus became one of the partners. The agreement between the partners was signed March 10, 1526. Luque signed as the agent of Espinosa. Pizarro and Almagro could neither read nor write. One Juan de Pares signed on the part of Pizarro, and Alvaro del Quiro for Almagro.

The second expedition sailed in 1526. It consisted of two vessels commanded by Pizarro and Almagro respectively, with a very able and gallant sailor named Bartolomé Ruiz, of Moguer, as pilot. There were one hundred and sixty men all told. The adventurers made direct for the river of San Juan, the farthest point reached by Almagro during the previous voyage. Here Pizarro landed with his troops. Almagro returned to Panamá in one vessel, for recruits and provisions, while Ruiz proceeded on a voyage of discovery to the southward in the other.

Ruiz made a remarkable voyage, having rounded Cape Passado and reached 1° south. He was thus the first European to cross the equator on the southern passage. He also fell in with a raft under sail, which belonged to Tumbez in Peru, and thus obtained several curious specimens of Ynca art, and some additional information. Almagro made a prosperous voyage back to Panamá, and returned with supplies.

NATIVE RAFTS.

[This is Benzoni’s sketch of the rafts and boats used by the native on the Pacific coast of the northern parts of South America. Edition of 1572, p. 165.—Ed.]

Pizarro had been left on a forest-covered, fever-haunted coast, which has changed very little from that day to this. Hoping to find a better country inland, he undertook long marches through the tangled forest; but many of his men perished, and his party returned to the coast, suffering from disease and famine. In this sorry plight the all-enduring Pizarro was found, when Almagro and Ruiz returned.

Almagro had found a new governor installed at Panamá. Pedro de los Rios had superseded Pedro Arias, who was transferred to Nicaragua, where he died in 1532. With the new governor’s sanction, about eighty recruits were collected, and with these and a fresh supply of stores Almagro returned to the Rio de San Juan.

SKETCH MAP OF THE CONQUEST OF PERU.

[This map and map No. 2 show the modern geography. The development of the cartography of Peru may be traced in Ramusio (1556) in the map of the parts of the world newly discovered; in Ortelius (1584 and 1592) and De Bry, part iii. (1592, a map of South America corrected in 1624); in Wytfliet, 1597 (see map on a later page); in Van Baerle’s edition of Herrera (1622); in Sanson, with the course of the Amazon (1656); in Dudley’s Arcano del mare (carta xxviii. 1647), for the coast; in Vander Aa (1679), and in Boudouin’s translation of Garcilasso de la Vega, published at Amsterdam in 1737. Markham, in his Reports on the Discovery of Peru, gives a map showing the marches of Francisco and Hernando Pizarro, May, 1532, to May, 1533. Other maps are given by Prescott, H. H. Bancroft, and Helps. The best, however, is in Markham’s Travels of Cieza de Leon.—Ed.]

The two partners then embarked, and under the guidance of the pilot Ruiz they advanced along the coast as far as Atacames. They were now in the province of Quito, a part of the Ynca empire. Here were large towns, much ground under cultivation, and a formidable array of well-armed troops to oppose their depredations. It was evident that the Spanish force was too weak to make a successful settlement. Pizarro proposed a return; Almagro opposed him, and there was a violent quarrel, which was outwardly reconciled, leaving a permanent feeling of suppressed jealousy and ill-will on both sides. Finally it was resolved that Pizarro and part of the force should remain on the island of Gallo, which had been discovered by Ruiz in 1° 57´ north, while Almagro should return once more for recruits. The arrangements caused much discontent. The men complained that they were being left to starve. Some wrote letters home to Panamá, full of complaints, which were seized by Almagro. One, however, named Saravia, concealed a note in a large ball of cotton sent as a present to the governor’s wife. It contained the following lines:—

“Pues Señor Gobernador,
Mírelo bien por entero,
Que allá va el recogedor,
Y acá queda el carnicero.”[1471]

Pizarro, soon after Almagro’s departure, sent off the other ship with the most mutinous of his followers. But the governor, Los Rios, was much incensed at the result of the expedition. He refused to give any further countenance to the enterprise, and sent two vessels, under the command of Don Pedro Tafur, of Cordova, to Gallo, with orders to take every Spaniard off the island and bring them back to Panamá. Meanwhile Pizarro and his people were suffering from famine and disease, and from the incessant rains. Nearly all had lost every feeling of desire for hazardous adventures. They longed only to be relieved from their sufferings, and hailed the arrival of Tafur with unconcealed joy.

Then it was that Pizarro displayed that heroic resolution which has made the famous act of himself and his sixteen companions immortal. The story is differently told. Herrera says that Tafur stationed himself in one part of the vessel, and drawing a line, placed Pizarro and his soldiers on the other side of it. He then told those who wished to return to Panamá to come over to him, and those who would remain, to stay on Pizarro’s side of the line. But Garcilasso de la Vega tells us that when Pizarro saw his men electing to return in the ship, he drew his sword and made a long line with the point along the sand. Then, turning to his men, he said, “Gentlemen! This line signifies labor, hunger, thirst, fatigue, wounds, sickness, and every other kind of danger that must be encountered in this conquest until life is ended. Let those who have the courage to meet and overcome the dangers of this heroic achievement cross the line, in token of their resolution, and as a testimony that they will be my faithful companions. And let those who feel unworthy, return to Panamá; for I do not wish to put force upon any man. I trust in God that, for his greater honor and glory, his Eternal Majesty will help those who remain with me, though they be few, and that we shall not miss those who forsake us.” Of the two accounts, that of Garcilasso is probably nearer the truth, because it is unlikely that the embarkation would have taken place before the election was made. It would naturally be made on the beach, before going on board. Most of the authorities give the number of those who crossed the line at thirteen. Xeres, Pizarro’s secretary, says there were sixteen. Herrera gives the names of thirteen heroic men, Garcilasso supplying the remaining three; and they deserve to be held in memory.[1472]

Nothing could shake the resolution of Pizarro. He would not return until he had achieved greatness, and he found sixteen good men and true to stand by him in his great need. They removed from Gallo to the island of Gorgona, where there was some game and better water; while the others returned with Tafur to Panamá.

The governor looked upon Pizarro’s conduct as an act of madness, and refused all succor; but at length yielding to the entreaties of Luque and Almagro, he allowed one vessel to be sent to Gorgona, with strict orders to return in six months. So a small vessel was fitted out under the command of the pilot Ruiz, and after seven weary months the little forlorn hope at Gorgona descried the white sail, and joyfully welcomed their friends with a supply of food and stores. Full of hope, Pizarro and his gallant friends embarked; and the expert Ruiz, guided by information obtained from the Peruvian sailors on the raft, made direct for the Gulf of Guayaquil, performing the voyage in twenty days. The year 1527 was now well advanced. Anchoring off the island of Santa Clara, they stood across to the town of Tumbez on the following day. Here they saw the undoubted signs of a great civilization, betokening the existence of a powerful empire. Their impressions were confirmed by a subsequent cruise along the Peruvian coast as far as Santa, in 9° south latitude. They learned enough to justify a return to Panamá with the report of a great discovery, the importance of which would justify an application to the Spanish Government for some valuable concession to Pizarro and his partners. Pizarro took with him, from Tumbez, a lad who was to act as interpreter,—called Felipillo by the Spaniards,—and also a few llamas. He then made the best of his way back to Panamá; and it was agreed that he should proceed to Spain and make a direct application to the Crown for authority to undertake the conquest of the empire of the Yncas. In the spring of 1528, after having collected the necessary funds with much difficulty, Pizarro set out for Spain, accompanied by Pedro de Candia. Luque and Almagro waited at Panamá for the result.

EMBARKING.

[Fac-simile of a cut made to do duty in various connections in Antwerp publications of the last half of the sixteenth century. It is copied in this case from fol. 23 of De Wonderlijcke ende warachtighe Historie (Zarate), published by Willem Silvius in 1573.—Ed.]

Francisco Pizarro was well received by the Emperor Charles V. in an interview at Toledo; but the sovereign set out for Italy immediately afterwards, and subsequent arrangements were made with the Government of the queen-mother. The capitulation was signed on the 26th of July, 1529. Pizarro was appointed captain-general and adelantado, and was decorated with the order of Santiago. He was also granted a coat-of-arms, and thirteen out of the sixteen who crossed the line at Gallo were ennobled by name. Almagro was made governor of Tumbez, and afterwards received the title of marshal. Luque was to be bishop of Tumbez, and protector of the Indians. Ruiz received the title of grand pilot of the South Sea. Candia was appointed commander of the artillery. Pizarro visited Estremadura, and from his home took back with him to Peru his four brothers. Hernando, the eldest and only legitimate son of his father, was a big tall man, with thick lips and very red nose, brave and proud, with an uncompromising temper, and ruthlessly cruel. Juan and Gonzalo were illegitimate, like Francisco, and Francisco Martin de Alcantara was a uterine brother. His young cousin Pedro Pizarro, the future historian, then only fifteen, went out as the conqueror’s page; Fray Vicente de Valverde, a fanatical Dominican, also went out; and Pizarro set sail from San Lucar on the 19th of January, 1530. On arriving at Panamá, he was upbraided by Almagro for not having attended fairly to his (Almagro’s) interests, while careful to secure everything for himself. From that time the old partners were never really friends, and there was ill-concealed enmity between Almagro and Hernando Pizarro. Meanwhile preparations for the expedition were busily proceeded with at Panamá; and, as on former occasions, Almagro was to follow with supplies and reinforcements.

PIZARRO’S DISCOVERIES.

[The map given in Ruge’s Zeitalter der Entdeckungen, p. 436.—Ed.]

Pizarro sailed from Panamá on the 28th of December, 1531, with three small vessels carrying one hundred and eighty-three men and thirty-seven horses. In thirteen days he arrived at the bay of San Mateo, where he landed the horses and soldiers to march along the shore, sending back the ships to get more men and horses at Panamá and Nicaragua. They returned with twenty-six horses and thirty more men. With this force Pizarro continued his march along the sea-coast, which was well peopled; and on arriving at the bay of Guayaquil, he crossed over in the ships to the island of Puna. Here a devastating war was waged with the unfortunate natives, and from Puna the conqueror proceeded again in his ships to the Peruvian town of Tumbez. The country was in a state of confusion, owing to a long and desolating war of succession between Huascar and Atahualpa, the two sons of the great Ynca Huayna Capac, and was thus an easy prey to the invaders. Huascar had been defeated and made prisoner by the generals of his brother, and Atahualpa was on his way from Quito to Cusco, the capital of the empire, to enjoy the fruits of his victory. He was reported to be at Caxamarca, on the eastern side of the mountains; and Pizarro, with his small force, set out from Tumbez on the 18th of May, 1532.

NATIVE HUTS IN TREES.

[Benzoni’s sketch of the native habitations on the coast towards Peru. Edition of 1572, p. 161.—Ed.]

The coast of Peru is a rainless region of desert, crossed at intervals by fertile valleys which follow the courses of the streams from the Andes to the sea. Parallel with this coast region, to the eastward, is the sierra, or mountainous country of the cordilleras of the Andes, the cradle and centre of the civilized tribes of Peru. Still farther to the eastward are the great rivers and vast forests or montaña of the basin of the Amazons.[1473] Thus the length of Peru is divided into three very different and distinctly marked regions,—the coast, the sierra, and the montaña.

ATAHUALPA.

[From Herrera (1728), vol. iii. p. 5. Quaritch in 1870 (Catalogue, 259, no. 651) held at £105 the original oil paintings from which the likenesses of thirteen Incas in Herrera’s Hechos de los Castellanos were engraved, in 1599, with an extra one of Atahualpa, which was not given in Herrera. The previous thirteen are given in small marginal engravings in the border of the frontispiece of Herrera’s fifth and sixth Decades, and copied in the edition of Barcia, who throws discredit on the engravings which De Bry had given. These last are reproduced in Tschudi’s Antiquedades Peruanas. Cf. Catalogue of Gallery of the New York Historical Society, No. 378.—Ed.]

The first part of Pizarro’s march was southward from Tumbez, in the rainless coast region. After crossing a vast desert he came to Tangarara, in the fertile valleys of the Chira, where he founded the city of San Miguel, the site of which was afterwards removed to the valley of Piura. The accountant Antonio Navarro and the royal treasurer Riquelme were left in command at San Miguel, and Pizarro resumed his march in search of the Ynca Atahualpa on the 24th of September, 1532. He detached the gallant cavalier, Hernando de Soto, into the sierra of Huancabamba, to reconnoitre, and pacify the country. De Soto rejoined the main body after an absence of about ten days. The brother of Atahualpa, named Titu Atauchi, arrived as an envoy, with presents, and a message to the effect that the Ynca desired friendship with the strangers.

ATAHUALPA.

[Fac-simile of the copperplate in the English edition of Thevet’s Pourtraitures and Lives appended to North’s Plutarch, Cambridge, England, 1676, p. 66. A somewhat famous picture by a Peruvian artist, Monteros, representing the Spanish soldiers hustling the wailing women out of the hall while the funeral rites over Atahualpa were in progress, is heliotyped in the second volume of Hutchinson’s Two Years in Peru.—Ed.]

Crossing the vast desert of Sechura, Pizarro reached the fertile valley of Motupe, and marched thence to the foot of the cordilleras in the valley of the Jequetepeque. Here he rested for a day or two, to arrange the order for the ascent. He took with him forty horses and sixty foot, instructing Hernando de Soto to follow him with the main body and the baggage. News arrived that the Ynca Atahualpa had reached the neighborhood of Caxamarca about three days before, and that he desired peace. Pizarro pressed forward, crossed the cordillera, and on Friday, the 15th of November, 1532, he entered Caxamarca with his whole force. Here he found excellent accommodation in the large masonry buildings, and was well satisfied with the strategic position. Atahualpa was established in a large camp outside, where Hernando de Soto had an interview with him. Atahualpa announced his intention of visiting the Christian commander, and Pizarro arranged and perpetrated a black act of treachery. He kept all his men under arms. The Ynca, suspecting nothing, came into the great square, walking in grand regal procession. He was suddenly attacked and made prisoner, and his people were massacred.

The Ynca offered a ransom, which he described as gold enough to fill a room twenty-two feet long and seventeen wide, to a height equal to a man’s stature and a half. He undertook to do this in two months, and sent orders for the collection of golden vases and ornaments in all parts of the empire.[1474] Soon the treasure began to arrive, while Atahualpa was deceived by false promises; and he beguiled his captivity by acquiring Spanish and learning to play at chess and cards.

Meanwhile Pizarro sent an expedition under his brother Hernando, to visit the famous temple of Pachacamac on the coast; and three soldiers were also despatched to Cusco, the capital of the empire, to hurry forward the treasure. They set out in February, 1533, but behaved with so much imprudence and insolence at Cusco as to endanger their own lives and the success of their mission. Pizarro therefore ordered two officers of distinction, Hernando de Soto and Pedro del Barco, to follow them and remedy the mischief which they were doing. On Easter eve, being the 14th of April, 1533, Almagro arrived at Caxamarca with a reinforcement of one hundred and fifty Spaniards and eighty-four horses.

On the 3d of May it was ordered that the gold already arrived should be melted down for distribution; but another large instalment came on the 14th of June. An immense quantity consisted of slabs, with holes at the corners, which had been torn off the walls of temples and palaces; and there were vessels and ornaments of all shapes and sizes. After the royal fifth had been deducted, the rest was divided among the conquerors. The total sum of 4,605,670 ducats would be equal to about £3,500,000 of modern money.[1475] After the partition of the treasure, the murder of the Ynca was seriously proposed as a measure of good policy. The crime was committed by order of Pizarro, and with the concurrence of Almagro and the friar Valverde.[1476] It was expected that the sovereign’s death would be followed by the dispersion of his army, and the submission of the people. This judicial murder was committed in the square of Caxamarca on the 29th of August, 1533. Hernando de Soto was absent at the time, and on his return he expressed the warmest indignation. Several other honorable cavaliers protested against the execution. Their names are even more worthy of being remembered than those of the heroic sixteen who crossed the line on the sea-shore at Gallo.[1477]

DIEGO DE ALMAGRO.

[From Herrera (1728) vol. ii. p. 285. An original manuscript letter of Almagro, Jan. 1, 1535, addressed to the Emperor, and asking for a province beyond Pizarro’s, is noted in Stevens, Bibliotheca geographica, no. 109.—Ed.]

Pizarro at first set up a son of Atahualpa as his successor; but the boy died within two months. A more important matter was the despatch of the treasure to Spain, with tidings of the conquest. The first ship, laden with Peruvian gold, arrived at Seville on the 5th of December, 1534. The second ship followed in January, having on board, besides the treasure, Hernando Pizarro, the conqueror’s brother. The excitement caused by these arrivals was intense; and there was an eager desire among adventurers, both of high and low degree, to become settlers in this land of promise.

SKETCH MAP OF THE CONQUEST OF PERU. NO. 2.

In September Pizarro began his march from Caxamarca to Cusco, the capital of the empire, with five hundred Spaniards and about one hundred and fifty horses. The artilleryman Candia had charge of two falconets. The march was along the lofty valleys and over the passes of the sierra, by Huamachuco, Huánuco, Xauxa, and Huamanga. The rear-guard was attacked by Titu Atauchi, brother of Atahualpa, with six thousand men; and eight Spaniards were taken prisoners, among them Francisco de Chaves and Hernando de Haro, who had protested against the murder of the Ynca Atahualpa, and Sancho de Cuellar, who had been clerk to the court at the mock trial. They were taken to Caxamarca, which had been abandoned by the Spaniards. Chaves and Haro were treated with the greatest kindness. Cuellar was strangled on the spot where Atahualpa was put to death. Hernando de Soto and Almagro led the van of the Spanish army, and they had to fight a well-contested battle beyond the Apurimac, with a native army led by one of the generals of Atahualpa. Leaving a garrison at Xauxa, Pizarro followed more leisurely; and on forming a junction with Almagro on the great plain of Sacsahuana, near Cusco, he perpetrated another great crime. Challcuchima, one of Atahualpa’s ablest generals, who had been taken prisoner, was burned alive. Soon afterward the Ynca Manco, son of Huayna Capac, and the rightful heir to the sovereignty, arrived at the Spanish camp to make his submission and claim protection. His rights were recognized; and on the 15th of November, 1533, the conqueror Pizarro entered the city of Cusco in company with the rightful sovereign. The Ynca Manco was inaugurated with the usual ceremonies and rejoicings; but in March, 1534, his beloved city of Cusco was converted into a Spanish town, and a municipality was established. The palaces and spacious halls were appropriated as churches and private houses of the conquerors. The Dominicans received the great Temple of the Sun as their monastery; and Friar Valverde, who became the first bishop of Cusco, in 1538, took the spacious palace of the Ynca Uira-ccocha, in the great square, for his cathedral.

PLAN OF YNCA FORTRESS NEAR CUSCO.
(From Markham’s Royal Commentaries of the Yncas, vol. ii. p. 305.)

It was not long before the fame of the riches of Peru brought more conquerors to seek for a share of the spoils. In March, 1534, Pedro de Alvarado, one of the conquerors of Mexico, landed at Puerto Viejo, close to the equator, with five hundred Spaniards, half of whom were mounted. Among them was the noble cavalier Garcilasso de la Vega, father of the future historian. After suffering dreadful hardships in passing through the forests of the coast, the adventurers reached Riobamba, with a loss of one fourth of their number. Pizarro, leaving a garrison of ninety men under his brother Juan at Cusco, proceeded to the sea-coast, where he had an interview with Alvarado at Pachacamac. It was agreed that Alvarado should return to his government of Guatemala, while many of his surviving followers attached themselves to the fortunes of Pizarro.

The conqueror now resolved to fix the principal seat of his government within a short distance of some convenient seaport. He finally selected a site in the valley of the Rimac, six miles from the shores of the Pacific Ocean. Here Pizarro founded the city of Lima on the festival of Epiphany, the 6th of January, 1535. It was called “Ciudad de los Reyes” (the city of the kings) in honor of Charles V. and his mother Juana, and also in memory of the day. The city was laid out on a regular plan, which has been little altered down to the present time, with broad streets, at right angles, and a spacious square near the centre, one side of which was to be occupied by the cathedral and another by the palace. Pizarro appointed municipal officers, collected laborers, and with great energy pushed on the work of building.

BUILDING OF A TOWN.

[Fac-simile of a cut made to do duty in various Antwerp imprints on Peru of the latter half of the sixteenth century. It is copied in this case from folio eighteen (reverse) of De Wonderlijcke ende Warachtighe Historie (Zarate), published by Willem Silvius, 1573.—Ed.]

Hernando Pizarro, arriving with such welcome treasure, was very graciously received in Spain. Charles V. confirmed all his brother’s previous grants, and created him a marquis;[1478] while Almagro, with the title of marshal, was empowered to discover and occupy territory for two hundred leagues, beginning from the southern boundary of Pizarro’s government. Hernando himself was created a knight of Santiago, and was authorized to enlist recruits, and equip a fleet for his return to Peru. The return of Hernando was the signal for the breaking out of a feud between the old partners. Almagro and his friends declared that Cusco itself was to the south of the boundary assigned to the territory of Pizarro. The conqueror hurried from his work of building at Lima to Cusco, and made a solemn reconciliation with Almagro, by a written agreement dated June 12, 1535.

GABRIEL DE ROJAS.

[Fac-simile of an engraving in Herrera, vol. iv. p. 260. He was one of the distinguished cavaliers of the Conquest, to whom Muñoz—erroneously, as Prescott thinks—assigned the authorship of the Relacion primera of Ondegardo. He was distinguished at the defence of Cusco, when that town was besieged by the Indians. Later, as governor of Cusco for Almagro, he had charge of Gonzalo Pizarro while he was held a prisoner, and had, later still, command of the artillery under Gasca. He died at Charcas.—Ed.]

Almagro was induced to undertake an expedition for the discovery and conquest of Chili. He was accompanied by a large army of Indians, led by two Yncas of the blood royal; and he had with him about two hundred Spaniards. He set out from Cusco in the autumn. Pizarro then returned to the coast, to push forward the building of Lima, and to found the cities of Truxillo (1535), Chachapoyas (1536), Huamanga (1539), and Arequipa (1540). Hernando Pizarro, on his return, was sent to join his brothers Juan and Gonzalo at Cusco, and to take command of that city and fortress.

SKETCH MAP OF THE CONQUEST OF CHILI.

The Spaniards had already begun to look upon the natives as their slaves, and the young Ynca Manco was not only treated with neglect, but exposed to every kind of humiliating insult. He escaped from Cusco, and put himself at the head of a great army of his subjects in the valley of Yucay. This was a signal; and immediately the whole country was in revolt against the invaders. Juan Pizarro was driven back into Cusco, and the city was closely besieged by the armies of the Ynca from February, 1536. The besiegers succeeded in setting the thatched roofs of the halls and palaces on fire, and the Spanish garrison was reduced to the greatest straits. The Yncas had occupied the fortress which commands the town, and Juan Pizarro was killed in an attempt to carry it by storm. Finally Hernando Pizarro himself captured the fortress, after a heroic defence by the Ynca garrison. Still the close siege of the city continued, and the garrison was reduced to the last straits by famine. Month after month passed away without tidings. At last the season for planting arrived, and in August the Ynca was obliged to raise the siege.

Chili, the long strip of land along the west coast of South America, to the south of Peru, had been conquered by the Yncas as far as the river Maule. Beyond that limit were the indomitable tribes of Araucanian Indians. Bounded on one side by the cordillera of the Andes, and on the other by the sea, the country enjoys a temperate climate, suited for the cultivation of wheat and the rearing of cattle. It can be approached from Peru either by traversing the great desert of Atacama on the coast, or by marching over the snowy plateaus and rocky passes of the Andes. Almagro chose the latter route. The Indian auxiliaries, led by Paullu, the brother of Ynca Manco, and by the Uillac Umu, or high-priest, marched first, carrying provisions and making arrangements for their supply, taking the road through the Collao and Charcas (the modern republic of Bolivia). The Indian contingent was followed by one hundred Spaniards under Don Juan Saavedra; and this advanced party waited at Paria, in the south of Charcas, for the main body. This was commanded by Don Rodrigo Orgoñez, a native of Oropesa, who had served under the constable Bourbon at the sack of Rome. He was a brave and experienced commander, ever faithful to his chief, the marshal Almagro. The whole force, when united in the distant valley of Jujuy, consisted of five hundred Spaniards, with two hundred horses. The march across the Andes to Coquimbo, in Chili, during the winter of 1536, was a time of intense suffering and hardship bravely endured; but it was stained by the most revolting cruelties to the people of Charcas and Jujuy.

Almagro advanced from Coquimbo to the southward, and his Peruvian contingent suffered a defeat from an army of Promauca Indians. He was reinforced by Orgoñez and Juan Rada, another faithful adherent, who brought with them the royal order appointing Almagro to be adelantado, or governor, of New Toledo, which was to extend two hundred leagues from the southern limit of Pizarro’s government of New Castile. The explorers now desired to return and occupy this new government, which they claimed to include the city of Cusco itself. Almagro had arranged that three small vessels should sail from Callao, the port of Lima, for the Chilian coast, with provisions. Only one ever sailed, named the “Santiaguillo,” having a cargo of food, clothing, and horse-shoes. She arrived in a port on the coast of Chili; and when the tidings reached Almagro, he sent the gallant Juan de Saavedra, the leader of his vanguard, with thirty horsemen, to communicate with her. Saavedra found the little vessel anchored in a bay surrounded by rugged hills covered with an undergrowth of shrubs, and having a distant view of the snowy cordillera. In some way it reminded him of his distant Spanish home. Saavedra was a native of the village of Valparaiso, near Cuenca, in Castile. He named the bay, where the principal seaport of Chili was destined to be established, Valparaiso. This was in September, 1536. Landing the much-needed supplies, Saavedra rejoined his chief, and the expedition of Almagro began its painful return journey by the desert of Atacama. On arriving at Arequipa, Almagro first heard of the great insurrection of the Yncas. Marching rapidly to Cusco, his lieutenant, Orgoñez, defeated the Ynca Manco in the valley of Yucay; and Almagro entered the ancient city, claiming to be its lawful governor.

The royal grant had given Pizarro all the territory for two hundred and seventy leagues southward from the river of Santiago, in 1° 20´ north, and to Almagro two hundred leagues extending from Pizarro’s southern limit. Herrera says that there were seventeen and one half leagues in a degree. This would bring Pizarro’s boundary as far south as 14° 50´, and would leave Cusco (13° 30´ 55″ south) well within it. But neither the latitudes of the river Santiago nor of Cusco had been fixed, and the question was open to dispute.

Almagro seized upon Cusco on the 8th of April, 1537, and placed the brothers Hernando and Gonzalo Pizarro, who had defended the place against the Yncas, in confinement. News then came that a large body of men under Alonzo de Alvarado, sent by the governor Pizarro from Lima, was approaching Cusco. Alvarado, with about five hundred men, had advanced as far as the river Abancay, where he was surprised and defeated by Orgoñez on the 12th of July, 1537. Meanwhile some reinforcements were arriving at Lima, in reply to the appeals of Pizarro for help against the native insurrection.

The ecclesiastic Luque had died; but the other partner who advanced the money for the original expedition, the licentiate Gaspar de Espinosa, still lived; and he now joined Pizarro at Lima, with a force of two hundred and fifty men. Cortés also despatched a vessel with supplies and military stores from Mexico.

The Marquis—as Pizarro was now styled—sent an embassy to Almagro at Cusco, under the licentiate Espinosa, in the hope of settling the dispute amicably. Almagro, elated by his successes, was in no mood for moderating his demands; and, unfortunately, Espinosa died very suddenly in the midst of the negotiation. It was broken off; and Almagro declared his intention of retaining Cusco and marching to the coast, in order to establish for himself a seaport. Orgoñez had again defeated the Ynca Manco, dispersed his army, and forced him to take refuge, with his family and little court, in the mountainous fastness of Vilcabamba. Leaving Gonzalo Pizarro in prison at Cusco, Almagro marched to the valley of Chincha, on the sea-coast, taking Hernando Pizarro with him. At Chincha he began to lay out a city, to be called Almagro, which was to rival Lima, one hundred miles to the northward. Chincha is nearly in the same latitude as Cusco.

While he was at Chincha, Almagro received news that Gonzalo Pizarro and Alonzo de Alvarado had escaped from their Cusco prison, and reached the camp of the marquis, near Lima. After some correspondence, it was agreed that a friar named Francisco de Bobadilla should arbitrate, and that Pizarro and Almagro should have a personal interview in the little town of Mala, near the coast, between Lima and Chincha. The meeting took place on the 13th of November, 1537. There was a furious altercation. They parted in anger; indeed Almagro, fearing treachery, rode off very hastily. A cavalier of Pizarro’s party had hummed two lines of an old song in his hearing,—

“Tiempo es el cavallero,
Tiempo es de andar de aqui.”

It was the last time the old partners ever saw each other. The friar’s award was that a skilful pilot should be sent to fix the latitude of the river of Santiago, and that meanwhile Almagro should deliver up Cusco, and Hernando Pizarro should be set at liberty. But in order to secure the safety of his brother, the marquis made the concession that Almagro should hold Cusco until the boundaries were fixed. Hernando was then allowed to leave the camp of Almagro.

But the marquis had no intention of allowing his rival to retain Cusco. Too old to take the field himself, he intrusted the command of his army to his brother Hernando. His rival was also broken down by age and infirmities, and Rodrigo de Orgoñez became the actual commander of Almagro’s forces. He retreated by short marches towards Cusco, the old marshal being carried in a litter, and requiring long intervals of rest. The marquis led his army down the coast to Yca, where he took leave of it, and returned to Lima. His brother Hernando then proceeded still farther along the coast to Nasca, and ascended the cordilleras by way of Lucanas, reaching the neighborhood of Cusco in April, 1538. Almagro had arrived at Cusco ten days before.

Orgoñez took up a position at a place called Salinas, about three miles from Cusco, with a force of five hundred men and about two hundred horses. His artillery consisted of six falconets, which, with the cavalry, he stationed on the flanks of his infantry. On Saturday, the 26th of April, 1538 (or the 6th, the day of Saint Lazarus, according to Garcilasso), Hernando Pizarro began the attack. The infantry was led by his brother Gonzalo, and by Pedro de Valdivia, the future governor of Chili. Crowds of Indians watched the battle, and rejoiced to see their oppressors destroying one another. The cavalry charged at full gallop, the infantry fought desperately; but Orgoñez was killed, and after an hour the fortune of the day turned against the marshal. His soldiers fled to Cusco, followed by the victorious party, and Almagro himself was put in chains and confined in the same prison where he had put the Pizarros. His young son Diego,—by an Indian girl of Panamá,—to whom the old man was devotedly attached, was sent at once to the camp of the marquis at Lima, in charge of Alcantara, the half-brother of the Pizarros. Hernando then prepared a long string of accusations against his defeated foe, obtained his condemnation, and caused him to be garroted in the prison. Almagro was buried in the church of La Merced at Cusco, in July, 1538.

The Marquis Francisco Pizarro received the young Almagro with kindness, and sent him to Lima, ordering him to be treated as his son. The governor himself remained for some time at Xauxa, and then proceeded to Cusco, where he confiscated the property of Almagro’s followers. He sent his brother Gonzalo to conquer the people of Charcas. In 1539 Hernando Pizarro set out for Spain; but the friends of Almagro were before him. He was coldly received, and eventually committed to prison for his conduct at Cusco, and lingered in captivity for upwards of twenty years.

Pizarro returned to Lima, and despatched numerous expeditions in various directions for discovery and conquest. Gomez de Alvarado was intrusted with the settlement of Huánuco; Francisco de Chaves, of Conchucos; Vergara and Mercadillo were to explore Bracamoras and Chachapoyas; and Pedro de Candia was to settle the Collao. Gonzalo Pizarro himself undertook an expedition to the land of cinnamon,—the forest-covered region to the eastward of Quito. Leaving Pedro de Puelles in command at Quito, Gonzalo entered the forests with three hundred and fifty Spaniards and four thousand Indians on Christmas Day, 1539. The hardships and sufferings of these dauntless explorers have seldom been equalled by any body of men on record. Descending the rivers Coca and Napo, Gonzalo intrusted the command of a small vessel to Francisco de Orellana to go on in advance and seek for supplies. But Orellana deserted his starving comrades, discovered the whole course of the river Amazon, and returned to Spain. Out of the three hundred and fifty Spaniards that started, fifty deserted with Orellana, two hundred and ten died of hunger and disease, and the miserable remnant eventually returned to Quito with their intrepid leader, Gonzalo Pizarro, in June, 1542.

The marquis had also resolved to renew the attempt to conquer Chili, which had been abandoned by Almagro. A cavalier had actually been sent out from Spain, named Pedro Sanchez de Hoz, to undertake this service. The marquis associated with him a commander on whose judgment, resolution, and fidelity he could better rely. Pedro de Valdivia was a native of Serena in Estremadura. He had seen much service in Italy; was at the taking of Milan and at the battle of Pavia. He had arrived in Peru in 1535, having been sent from Mexico by Hernando Cortés when the governor of Peru appealed for help to resist the Ynca revolt. He did important service for the Pizarros at the battle of Salinas.

Having collected one hundred and fifty soldiers at Cusco, Valdivia began his march for Chili in March, 1540. His camp-master was Pedro Gomez; his standard-bearer, Pedro de Mayor; his chief of the staff, Alonso Monroy. Francisco de Aguirre and Jeronimo de Alderete were his captains of cavalry; Francisco de Villagran led the arquebusiers, and Rodrigo de Quiroga the pikemen. Two priests, named Bartolomé Rodrigo and Gonzalo Marmolejo, accompanied the expedition. Before starting, Valdivia went to the cathedral of Cusco, and swore, in presence of Bishop Valverde, that the first church he built should be dedicated to Our Lady of the Assumption, the patroness of Cusco, and that the first city he founded should be named Santiago, after the patron of Spain. Valdivia marched by way of the desert of Atacama, and at the very outset he made an agreement with Sanchez de Hoz that the sole command should rest with himself.

Valdivia had for a guide the friar Antonio Rondon, who had accompanied Almagro’s expedition; and with his aid he overcame all the difficulties of the march, and safely reached Copiapo in Chili. Advancing by Huasco and Coquimbo, he defeated a large army of natives in the valley of Chili or Aconcagua, and eventually selected a site for the foundation of a new city on the banks of the river Mapocho, in the territory of the Cacique Huelen-Guala. The foundation of the church, dedicated to the Assumption, in accordance with the vow made at Cusco, was laid on the 12th of February, 1541. The plan of the city was laid out, and it received the name of Santiago. The officers of the municipality were elected on the 7th of March, to remain in office for one year.

PEDRO DE VALDIVIA.

[From Herrera (1728), iv. 200.—Ed.]

It was not long before the natives of Chili took up arms to oppose the intruders. Valdivia marched against a large body, leaving Monroy in command at Santiago. But another force of Indians attacked the city itself, with desperate valor, during fifteen days, killing four Spaniards and twenty-three horses, and setting fire to the houses. Valdivia hastily returned; and although the whole country was in insurrection, Monroy nobly volunteered to make his way to Peru and return with reinforcements and supplies. He set out Jan. 28, 1542. Valdivia began to cultivate the land near Santiago, and to sow wheat, in the hope of raising crops; and on the hill of Santa Lucia he constructed a fort where provisions and valuables could be stored. But the little colony continued to suffer much from scarcity of provisions. Monroy, hiding in the woods during the day and travelling at night, escaped from Chili and reached Cusco in safety. He succeeded in getting a small vessel sent from the port of Arequipa to Valparaiso, while he himself returned by the desert of Atacama, reaching Santiago in December, 1543. Valdivia was now able to assume the offensive, and the armed Indians retired to a distance from Santiago.

VALDIVIA.

[Fac-simile of a part of a copperplate, which appears in Ovalle’s Historica Relacion de Chile, Rome, 1648.—Ed.]

The chief pilot of Panamá, an experienced Genoese seaman named Juan Bautista Pastene, with Juan Calderon de la Barca, was ordered to undertake a voyage of discovery along the coast of Chili at about the same time. He sailed from Callao in July, 1544, and arrived at the port of Valparaiso in August, in his little vessel the “San Pablo.”

PASTENE.

[Fac-simile of part of a copperplate in Ovalle’s Hist. Rela. de Chile, Rome, 1648.—Ed.]

Here he was visited by Valdivia, who confirmed the name of Valparaiso and officially declared it to be the port of Santiago. Valdivia proclaimed the foundation of the town of Valparaiso on the 3d of September, 1544, and appointed Pastene his lieutenant in command of the Chilian seas. The two little vessels “San Pedro” and “Santiaguillo” then took some men-at-arms on board, and proceeded on a voyage of discovery to the southward on the 4th of September. Pastene went as far as 41° south, discovering a harbor which was named Valdivia, the mouths of several rivers, the island of Mocha and the Bay of Penco. He returned to Valparaiso on the 30th of September, and reported his success to the governor, who now had two hundred Spaniards at Santiago, besides women and children. In the same year Valdivia sent a captain named Bohan to found a town in the valley of Coquimbo, to serve as a refuge and resting-place on the road between Santiago and Peru. It was named La Serena, after the native place of Valdivia. The “San Pedro” was sent to Coquimbo to be caulked and otherwise repaired.

PIZARRO.

[Fac-simile of engraving in Herrera, vol. ii. p. 280. De Bry (part vi.) gives a small medallion likeness. Cf. Verne’s La Découverte de la Terre. Prescott (vol. i.) gives an engraving after a painting in the series of the line of the viceroys, preserved at that time in the viceregal palace at Lima. It gives the conqueror in civic costume, with cap and cloak, and a letter in one hand and a glove in the other. A colored representation of the royal standard borne by Pizarro is given in El General San Martin, Buenos Ayres, 1863. They continue to show, or did exhibit till recently, a body claimed to be that of Pizarro, in the cathedral at Lima. (Hutchinson’s Two Years in Peru, vol. i. p. 309.)—Ed.]

The governor then undertook an expedition to the south, crossed the river Maule, defeated a large body of Indians at a place called Quilacara, and advanced as far as the banks of the river Biobio, returning to Santiago, after an absence of forty days, in March, 1546. Pastene had made another voyage to Callao, taking with him the gallant Alonso Monroy, who died on the passage. He returned to Valparaiso, with a melancholy account of the disturbed state of Peru, Dec. 1, 1547; and Valdivia determined, after much deliberation, to take up arms against Gonzalo Pizarro, as a loyal servant of the Spanish Crown. He went on board Pastene’s ship, made sail Dec. 10, 1547, and arrived at Callao, the port of Lima. He had founded a new colony, and left it securely established in Chili.

PIZARRO.

[Fac-simile of the engraving as given in Montanus and Ogilby.—Ed.]

During the seven years of Valdivia’s absence in Chili, stirring events had occurred in the land of the Yncas. The marquis returned to Lima, where he was busily engaged in the work of building, and in administering the affairs of his vast command. Many of the ruined followers of Almagro were there also, driven to desperation by the confiscation of their property. They were called, in derision, the “men of Chili.” Pizarro treated them with contemptuous indifference, and expelled the young Almagro from his house.

The most conspicuous of the malcontents was Juan de Rada; and he matured a plot for the assassination of the governor. On the 26th of June, 1541, the conspirators, headed by Rada, ran across the great square during the dinner hour, and entered the court of Pizarro’s house.[1479] The marquis had just dined, and his brother Martin de Alcantara, the judge Velasquez, Francisco de Chaves, and others were with him. Being unarmed, several of those present, on hearing the outcry, let themselves down into a garden from the corridor, and escaped. Chaves went out on the stairs, where he was murdered by the conspirators, who were running up. The marquis had thrown off his robe, put on a cuirass, and seized a spear. He was past seventy. His brother, a cavalier named Gomez de Luna, and two pages were with him. The assassins numbered nineteen strong men. Pizarro fought valiantly, until Rada thrust one of his companions on the spear and rushed in. Alcantara, Luna, and the two pages were despatched. Pizarro continued to defend himself until a wound in the throat brought him to the ground. He made the sign of the cross on the floor, and kissed it. He then breathed his last. The conspirators rushed into the street shouting, “The tyrant is dead!” The houses of the governor and his secretary were pillaged. Juan de Rada coerced the municipality and proclaimed Diego Almagro, the young half-caste lad, governor of Peru. The body of Pizarro was buried in the cathedral, by stealth, and at night.

But the colonists did not immediately submit to the new rule. Alvarez de Holguin, one of Pizarro’s captains, held Cusco with a small force, and Alonzo de Alvarado opposed the conspiracy in the north of Peru. The bishop Valverde, of Cusco, and the judge Velasquez were allowed to embark at Callao in November, 1541; but they fell into the hands of the Indians on the island of Puna, in the Gulf of Guayaquil, and were both killed.

VACA DE CASTRO.

[From Herrera (1728), vol. iv. p. 1.—Ed.]

The followers of Almagro the lad, as he was called, determined to march from Lima in the direction of Cusco, so as to get between Alvarado and Holguin. At Xauxa the youthful adventurer had the misfortune to lose his most trusty adherent. Juan de Rada died of fever. The two most influential of his supporters who remained were Cristóval de Sotelo and Garcia de Alvarado,—and they had quarrelled with one another. Their delays enabled Holguin to pass to the north, and unite his forces with Alvarado’s. Almagro then established himself at Cusco, where Sotelo was murdered by his rival Alvarado; and the latter was put to death by the young Almagro, who assumed the direction of his own affairs. He was barely twenty-two years of age.

The Emperor Charles V., long before the death of Pizarro, had decided upon sending out a royal judge to act as the old conqueror’s coadjutor and adviser, especially with regard to the treatment of the Indians. For this delicate post the emperor’s choice fell upon Dr. Don Cristóval Vaca de Castro, a Judge of the Audience of Valladolid. After a long voyage the new judge had landed at Buenaventura, a town recently founded by Pascual de Andagoya, near that river San Juan where Pizarro had waited in such dire distress during his first voyage. He had a royal order to assume the post of governor of Peru in the event of Pizarro’s death; and on arriving at Popayan he received tidings of the assassination. He then proclaimed his commission as governor, and advanced southwards, by way of Quito, along the Peruvian coast. At Huara he was joined by Alvarado and Holguin with their forces. He entered Lima, and then proceeded, by way of Xauxa, in search of the assassins. Young Almagro had a force of five hundred Spaniards, with two hundred horses; and he had a park of artillery consisting of sixteen pieces under the direction of the veteran Pedro de Candia. With this force he left Cusco in July, 1542. Vaca de Castro marched in great haste to Guamanga, in order to secure that important post before Almagro could reach it from Cusco. The rebels, as they must be called, took a route along the skirts of the cordillera, until they reached an elevated plateau called Chupas, above and a little to the south of the newly built town of Guamanga. Their object appears to have been to cut off the communications of Vaca de Castro with the coast. In order to approach them, it was necessary for the royal army to evacuate Guamanga, and ascend a very steep slope to the terrace-like plateau where Almagro’s army was posted. It was the 16th of September, 1542, and the ascent from Guamanga must have occupied the greater part of the day. The army of Vaca de Castro was marshalled by the veteran Francisco de Carbajal, an old soldier who had seen forty years’ service in Italy before he crossed the Atlantic. Carbajal led the troops into action with such skill that they were protected by intervening ground until they were close to the enemy; and when Almagro’s artillery opened fire on them, the guns were so elevated as to do no execution. This led young Almagro to suspect Pedro de Candia of treachery, and he there and then ran the old gunner through the body, and pointed one of the guns himself with good effect. The royal army now began to suffer severely from the better-directed artillery fire. Then the opposing bodies of cavalry charged, while Carbajal led a desperate attack with the infantry, and captured Almagro’s guns. Holguin fell dead; Alvarado was driven back, and young Almagro behaved with heroic valor. Yet when night closed in, the army of Vaca de Castro was completely victorious, and five hundred were left dead on the field. It was a desperately contested action. Almagro fled to Cusco with a few followers, where he was arrested by the magistrates. Vaca de Castro followed closely, and on arriving in the city he condemned the lad to death. Almagro suffered in the great square, and was buried by the side of his father in the church of La Merced.

Vaca de Castro assumed the administration of affairs in Peru as royal governor. In the same year the Dominican Friar Geronimo de Loaysa, a native of Talavera, became bishop of Lima. He was promoted to the rank of archbishop in 1545. Another Dominican, Juan de Solano, succeeded Valverde as bishop of Cusco in 1543. Gonzalo Pizarro, when he returned from his terrible expedition in the forests east of Quito, was induced by the governor to retire peaceably to his estates in Charcas. The efforts of Vaca de Castro as an administrator were directed to regulating the employment of the natives, and to improving communications.

When the good Bartolomé Las Casas returned to Spain, in 1538, he published his famous work on the destruction of the native race of America. He protested against the Indians being given to the Spaniards in encomienda, or vassalage for personal service.[1480] At last the emperor appointed a committee consisting of churchmen and lawyers of the highest position, to sit at Valladolid in 1542, and to consider the whole subject. The result was the promulgation of what were called the “New Laws.”

I. After the death of the conquerors, the repartimientos of Indians, given to them in encomienda, were not to pass to their heirs, but be placed directly under the king. Officers of his majesty were to renounce the repartimientos at once.

II. All encomenderos in Peru who had been engaged in the factious wars between the Pizarros and Almagros were to be deprived.

III. Personal service of the Indians was to be entirely abolished.

Blasco Nuñez Vela was appointed viceroy of Peru to enforce the “New Laws,” assisted by a court of justice, of which he was president, called the Audiencia of Lima. There were four other judges, called oidores, or auditors, named Cepeda, Zarate, Alvarez, and Tejada. The viceroy and his colleagues embarked at San Lucar on the 3d of November, 1543. Leaving the judges sick at Panamá, the viceroy landed at Tumbez on the 4th of March, 1544, with great magnificence, and proceeded by land to Lima, proclaiming the “New Laws” as he advanced. The Spanish conquerors were thrown into a state of dismay and exasperation. They entreated Gonzalo Pizarro to leave his retirement and protect their interests, and when he entered Cusco he was hailed as procurator-general of Peru. He seized the artillery at Guamanga, and assembled a force of four hundred men, while old Francisco de Carbajal, the hero of the battle of Chupas, became his lieutenant.

The viceroy was a headstrong, violent man, without judgment or capacity for affairs. His first act after entering Lima was to imprison the late governor, Vaca de Castro. The principal citizens entreated him not to enforce the “New Laws” with imprudent haste. But he would listen to no arguments; and when the auditors arrived from Panamá, he quarrelled with them, and acted in defiance of their protests. At last the auditors ventured upon the bold step of arresting the viceroy in his palace, and placing him in confinement. He was sent to the island of San Lorenzo, and a government was formed with the auditor Cepeda as president, who suspended the “New Laws” until further instructions could be received from Spain. The auditor Alvarez was commissioned to embark on board a vessel with the viceroy, and take him to Panamá.

Meanwhile Gonzalo Pizarro was approaching Lima by rapid marches, and he entered the capital on the 28th of October, 1544, at the head of twelve hundred Spaniards and several thousand Indians dragging the artillery, which had formed the special strength of young Almagro. The Audiencia submitted; the judges administered the oaths, and Gonzalo was declared governor and captain-general of Peru. At the same time Vaca de Castro persuaded the captain of a vessel on board of which he was confined in Callao Bay to get under way and convey him to Panamá. Accusations were brought against him in Spain, and he was kept in prison for twelve years, but was eventually acquitted and reinstated.

As soon as the ship conveying the viceroy to Panamá was at sea, the judge Alvarez liberated him. He landed at Tumbez in October, 1544, denounced Gonzalo Pizarro and the judge Cepeda as traitors, and called upon all loyal subjects to support him. Volunteers arrived, and Blasco Nuñez raised his standard at San Miguel de Piura. Gonzalo Pizarro assembled a rival force at Truxillo; but the viceroy retreated before him towards Quito, Carbajal pressing closely on his rear. The retreat was almost a rout. Passing through Quito, the viceroy took refuge at Pasto, within the jurisdiction of Sebastian Benalcazar, the governor of Popayan. Early in January, 1546, having received reinforcements, Blasco Nuñez ventured to advance once more towards Quito. Gonzalo Pizarro took up a strong position outside; but the viceroy, now accompanied by Benalcazar, made a detour and entered Quito. On the 18th of January, 1546, the viceroy led his followers to the plains of Anaquito, near the town, where his enemy was posted, seven hundred strong. The battle was not long doubtful. Alvarez the judge was mortally wounded. Benalcazar was left for dead on the field. The viceroy was unhorsed and wounded, and while lying on the ground his head was struck off by order of Pedro de Puelles, Pizarro’s governor of Quito. The slaughter was terrific. Cruel old Carbajal never showed any mercy, and no quarter was given. Benalcazar, when he recovered, was allowed to return to Popayan; and Gonzalo Pizarro attended as chief mourner at the funeral of the viceroy in the cathedral of Quito.

Leaving a garrison at Quito, under Puelles, Gonzalo began his journey southwards in July, 1546, and entered Lima in triumph. The only resistance throughout Peru was from an officer in Charcas named Diego Centeno, a native of Ciudad Rodrigo, who had come to Peru in 1534 with Pedro Alvarado. He declared in favor of the viceroy at Chucuito; but Alonzo Toro, who had been left in command at Cusco by Gonzalo Pizarro, marched against him, and he fled into the fastnesses of Chichas, in the far south. Pizarro was undisputed master of Peru, and his lieutenant Carbajal retired to Charcas to work the silver mines.

GASCA.

[This follows the engraving given by Prescott (History of the Conquest of Peru) of the portrait hanging in the sacristy of Saint Mary Magdalene at Valladolid,—an inscription on which says that Gasca died in 1567 at the age of seventy-one.—Ed.]

News of the revolt had reached Spain, and the licentiate Pedro de la Gasca, an astute and very able ecclesiastic, was appointed to proceed to Peru, and mediate between the viceroy and the malcontents. He received very full powers, with large discretion, and was entitled president of the Audiencia. He was very ugly, with a dwarfish body and exceedingly long, ungainly legs. The president sailed from Spain on the 26th of May, 1546, and received the news of the viceroy’s death on his arrival at the isthmus. He brought out with him the announcement of the revocation of the “New Laws,” owing to the dangerous spirit of discontent they had caused throughout the Indies. They were withdrawn by a decree dated at Malines on the 20th of October, 1545.

PEDRO DE LA GASCA.

[From Herrera (1728), vol. iv. p. 215.—Ed.]

The president arrived at Panamá on the 11th of August, 1546, where he found the fleet of Gonzalo Pizarro, under the command of Pedro de Hinojosa. Soon afterward Lorenzo de Aldana arrived as an envoy from Pizarro, but was induced to submit to the president’s authority. Hinojosa followed the example, and thus Gasca gained possession of the fleet. When the offer of pardon reached Lima, Gonzalo was advised by his lieutenant Carbajal to accept the terms; but the auditor Cepeda, who had turned against the viceroy and administered the oaths of office to a rebel, felt that there could be no pardon for him. The mad ambition of Pizarro induced him to listen to Cepeda rather than to Carbajal, and he finally rejected the offer of pardon; but many of his old followers deserted him.

Lorenzo de Aldana was despatched from Panamá, with several vessels, in February, 1547, and arrived in Callao Bay; while Diego Centeno once more rose in the south, and began to collect troops. Gonzalo Pizarro resolved to abandon Lima and march to Arequipa with only five hundred men, so numerous had been the desertions from his ranks. Aldana then entered the capital, while Gasca himself sailed from Panamá on the 10th of April, 1547, landing at Tumbez on the 13th of June. He advanced to Xauxa, and great numbers flocked to his standard. Pedro de Valdivia, the governor of Chili, had landed at Callao, and overtook the president, on his march towards Cusco, at Andahuaylas.

Gonzalo Pizarro, despairing of being able to make head against the president Gasca with all the prestige of royal approval on his side, had determined to retreat into Chili. But he feared to leave Centeno hanging on his rear, and thought it necessary first to disperse his forces. Centeno occupied a position near Huarina, at the southeastern angle of Lake Titicaca, upwards of twelve thousand feet above the level of the sea. Pizarro’s troops advanced to the attack over an open plain. He had about four hundred and eighty men, the strength of his army being in his infantry armed with arquebuses, and disciplined under the direct supervision of Carbajal. Centeno had a larger force, and was accompanied by Solano, the bishop of Cusco. Carbajal waited for the attack of the enemy, and then poured a deadly volley into their ranks. Centeno’s footmen broke and fled; but his cavalry defeated Pizarro, and would have won the day, if they too had not been repelled and broken by the admirable steadiness of Carbajal’s arquebusiers. As it was, Pizarro’s victory was complete, and three hundred and fifty of Centeno’s followers were killed. All fugitives taken by Carbajal were put to death without mercy.

The doomed Pizarro now abandoned all idea of retreating into Chili. He marched in triumph to Cusco, while the president Gasca approached by leisurely marches, gathering reinforcements by the way. With him were the bishops of Lima and Cusco, the marshal Alonzo de Alvarado, the veteran Hinojosa, Pascual de Andagoya the first adventurer in search of Peru, Valdivia the governor of Chili, Centeno, escaped from Huarina, Cieza de Leon the future historian, and many others well known to fame. The president’s army crossed the river Apurimac, and advanced to the plain of Sacsahuana, near Cusco, whither Gonzalo Pizarro came out to meet him. On the morning of the 9th of April, 1548, the commanders of both armies made ready for battle. But soon there were symptoms of desertion on Pizarro’s side. An important cavalier, Garcilasso de la Vega, galloped across to the army of Gasca. He was followed by the treacherous auditor Cepeda. Soldiers began to follow in small parties. Old Carbajal was humming two lines of an old song,—

“Estos mis cabellicos madre,
Dos á dos me los lleva el ayre.”

Then desertions took place by companies and squadrons. Pizarro sorrowfully took his way to the royal camp and gave himself up. Carbajal was seized by the soldiers. He was hanged and quartered the following day, and soon afterwards Gonzalo Pizarro was executed in presence of the army.

The president entered Cusco on the 12th of April, and began a bloody assize. Scarcely a day passed without followers of Gonzalo Pizarro being hanged, flogged, or sent in large batches to the galleys. Two priests were executed. A canon of Quito, who was tutor to Gonzalo Pizarro’s little son, was hanged for writing a book called De bello justo. At length, sated with blood, the president left Cusco on the 11th of July with Archbishop Loaysa, and went to a small village called Huayna-rimac in the neighborhood. He retired into this seclusion to escape the importunities of his partisans. Here he proceeded to arrange the distribution of encomiendas, or grants of lands and Indians, among his followers. He allowed a tenth of the Indians to be employed on forced labor in the mines, thus reversing the humane legislation advocated by Las Casas. Having completed his work, the president sent the archbishop to announce his awards at Cusco, and they caused a howl of rage and disappointed greed. Gasca himself went down to Lima by the unfrequented route of Nasca, and when a positive order from the emperor arrived, that all personal service among the Indians should be abolished, he suspended its publication until he was safe out of Peru. In January, 1550, the president Gasca sailed for Panamá, leaving the country in the greatest confusion, and all the most difficult administrative points to be solved by his successors. The municipality of Lima wrote a complaint to the emperor, representing the untimely departure of the president. His abilities and his services have been much overstated. He himself is the witness to his own revolting cruelties at Cusco.

Gasca left the government of Peru, with none of the difficulties settled, in the hands of the auditors or judges of the royal Audiencia, of which Don Andres de Cianca was president. His colleagues were Melchor Bravo de Sarabia, Hernando de Santillan, and Pedro Maldonado. The judges were in charge of the executive from January, 1550, to the 23d of September, 1551, when Don Antonio de Mendoza arrived from Mexico as viceroy. They had taken steps to organize a systematic plan for the instruction of the natives, under the auspices of Archbishop Loaysa, Friar Thomas de San Martin, and the indefatigable friar Domingo de Santo Tomas, the first Quichua scholar. They worked harmoniously under the viceroy Mendoza, who was a statesman of high rank and great experience. He promulgated the royal order against the enforced personal service of Indians, anticipating serious discontents and troubles, which he was resolved to meet and overcome. But his premature death at Lima, on the 21st of July, 1552, left the country once more in the hands of the judges, who had to meet a storm which would sorely test their administrative abilities.

The ringleader of the malcontents was a cavalier of good family named Francisco Hernandez Giron. Born at Caceres, in Estremadura, he crossed the Atlantic in 1535, and joined the unfortunate viceroy Blasco Nuñez de Vela at Quito, fighting under his banner in the fatal battle of Anaquito. He also did good service in the army of President Gasca, and was in the left wing at the rout of Sacsahuana. Gasca had assigned the plain of Sacsahuana to him, as his repartimiento; but he grumbled loudly, and all the malcontents looked upon him as their leader. The promulgation of the abolition of personal service was received with a howl of execration among the conquerors, who looked forward to the accumulation of wealth by the use of forced labor in the silver mines. Troubles broke out in Charcas, and Giron resolved to raise the standard of revolt at Cusco.

The 12th of November, 1553, was the wedding day of Don Alonzo de Loaysa, a nephew of the archbishop, who married a young lady named Maria de Castilla. The corregidor of Cusco and most of the leading citizens were at the supper. Suddenly Giron presented himself in cuirass and helmet, with his sword drawn, and a crowd of conspirators behind him. The street was occupied by a body of cavalry under his lieutenant, Tomas Vasquez. The guests sprang from their seats, but Giron told them not to fear, as he only wished to arrest the corregidor. He and the others then put out the lights and drew their swords. The corregidor took refuge with the ladies in the drawing-room, and shut the doors. Two guests were stabbed. Many escaped by the windows and climbed a wall at the back of the house. The corregidor and other officials were seized and imprisoned. Giron issued a proclamation declaring that the conquerors would not be robbed of the fruits of their labors. He soon had a respectable force under his command; but most of the leading citizens fled to Lima. The rebel declared that his object was the public good, and to induce the king to listen to the prayers of his subjects. The Audiencia was called upon to restore matters to the state they were in at the time of Gasca’s departure. Tomas Vasquez was sent to Arequipa, and Guamanga also declared in favor of Giron.

The governing judges were in great perplexity at Lima. After some hesitation they put the archbishop Loaysa in command of their army, with the judge Bravo de Saravia as his colleague. The marshal Alonzo de Alvarado was in upper Peru, and he also got some loyal cavaliers round him, and assembled a small force. Giron entered Guamanga Jan. 27, 1554, where he was joined by Tomas Vasquez, from Arequipa; and he then marched down to the coast. The judges encamped at Até, outside Lima, with five hundred arquebusiers, four hundred and fifty pikemen, three hundred cavalry, and fourteen field-pieces. Giron arrived at Pachacamac on the shores of the Pacific, and the judges advanced to Surco. But instead of boldly attacking, the rebels turned their backs and marched southwards along the coast to Yca, followed by a detachment under an officer named Meneses. Giron turned, and defeated his pursuers at Villacuri, in the desert between Pisco and Yca, but continued his retreat to Nasca. He had lost a great opportunity.

ALONZO DE ALVARADO.

[Fac-simile of engraving in Herrera, iii. 235.—Ed.]

The royal army advanced to Chincha; but the archbishop quarrelled with Bravo de Saravia, and where so many commanded, and none were military men, efficient operations were impossible. Meanwhile Alvarado had assembled an army for the judges, of seven hundred men, the rendezvous being La Paz in upper Peru. With this force he entered Cusco on the 30th of March, 1554, and continued his march in search of Giron, who remained at Nasca, on the coast, until the 8th of May. On that day the rebels once more ascended the wild passes of the cordillera to Lucanas, and were soon in the neighborhood of Alvarado’s army, which now numbered eleven hundred men. The rebels encamped at Chuquinga, in the wildest part of the Andes, on a mountain terrace by the side of a deep ravine, with the river Abancay in front. The marshal Alvarado was on the other side of the ravine, and was advised not to attack, but to harass the retreat of Giron. But on the 21st of May, under every possible disadvantage, he ordered the river to be forded, and an attack to be made. The river was crossed, but the men could not form on the other side in the face of an active enemy. They fell back, and the retreat was soon converted into a rout. Alvarado was wounded, but contrived to escape with Lorenzo de Aldana and the learned Polo de Ondegardo who accompanied him, leaving seventy dead on the field, and two hundred and eighty wounded.

Giron entered Cusco in triumph. The judges, on receiving news of the disastrous battle of Chuquinga, decided that their army should advance to Xauxa, and eventually towards Cusco. The Audiencia now consisted of Dr. Melchor Bravo de Saravia, Hernando de Santillan, Diego Gonzalez Altamirano, and Martin Mercado. Altamirano was to remain in charge of the government at Lima, while the other judges marched with the army, preceded by their officer Pablo de Meneses with the royal standard. In July, 1554, the three judges, Saravia, Santillan, and Mercado reached Guamanga, and in August they entered Cusco, having met with no opposition. Giron had retreated to Pucara, near Lake Titicaca, a very strong position consisting of a lofty rock rising out of the plain. The royal army encamped in front of the rock, and the judges sent promises of pardon to all who would return to their allegiance. Giron hoped that the royal army would attack him, repeating the error at Chuquinga; but the judges had resolved to play a waiting game. A night attack led by Giron was repulsed. Then desertions began, Tomas Vasquez setting the example. The unfortunate rebel could trust no one. He feared treachery. He bade a heart-rending farewell to his noble-minded wife, Doña Mencia, leaving her to the care of the judge Saravia. He rode away in the dead of night, almost alone, and Pucara was surrendered. Meneses was sent in chase of Giron, who was captured near Xauxa. He was brought to Lima, Dec. 6, 1554, and beheaded. His head was put in an iron cage, and nailed up by the side of those of Gonzalo Pizarro and Carbajal. Ten years afterward a friend of his wife secretly took all three down, and they were buried in a convent. Doña Mencia, the widow of Giron, founded the first nunnery in Lima,—that of “La Encarnacion,”—and died there as abbess.

Thus the judges succeeded in putting down this formidable insurrection, and were able to hand over the country, in a state of outward tranquillity, to the great viceroy who now came out to establish order in Peru.

Don Andrea Hurtado de Mendoza, Marquis of Cañete, was nominated by Charles V., at Brussels, to be viceroy of Peru for six years. He came out with the intention of checking with a firm hand the turbulence of the military adventurers who were swarming over the country. Writing to the emperor before he sailed, May 9, 1555, he said that there were eight thousand Spaniards in Peru, of whom four hundred and eighty-nine held repartimientos, and about one thousand were employed officially or otherwise. A large portion desired to live in idleness. He proposed to employ them on expeditions into unknown regions, and he submitted that no more Spaniards ought to be allowed to come to Peru without good cause assigned. In a letter to his daughter, the governess Juana, the emperor approved the policy sketched out by the new viceroy.

The Marquis of Cañete landed at Payta, and travelling by land, entered Lima on the 29th of June, 1556. He assumed office with unprecedented state and solemnity. He was fully resolved to put down sedition once and for all. He ordered that no Spaniard should leave his town without permission of the authorities, and for good cause. As regards the Audiencia, he reported to the emperor that the judges were hostile to each other, and that they lived in such discord that all peace was hopeless. He spoke favorably of two, and requested that the others might be recalled. He also reported that the corregidors maintained quantities of idle soldiers waiting for opportunities of mischief. He estimated the number of the idlers at three thousand, and said that the peace of the country was endangered by the immorality, license, and excesses of these men. The viceroy kept all the artillery in the country under his own eye, ordering guns to be seized and brought to him wherever they could be found; and he formed a permanent guard of four hundred arquebusiers. He then sent for a number of settlers, of turbulent antecedents, who came to Lima joyfully, expecting that they were about to receive repartimientos. But he disarmed them, shipped them at Callao, and sent them out of the country. Among these banished men were included the most notorious disturbers of the peace in the late civil wars. Altogether thirty-seven were sent to Spain. Tomas Vasquez and Juan Piedrahita, the chief supporters of Giron, were beheaded, and the corregidors were authorized to seize and execute any turbulent or dangerous persons within their jurisdictions. These were very strong measures, but they were necessary. The intolerable anarchy under which Peru had groaned for so many years was thus stamped out. Moderate encomiendas were then granted to deserving officers.

While the turbulence and cruelty of the Spanish conquerors were checked with relentless severity, the policy of the Marquis of Cañete towards the people and their ancient rulers was liberal and conciliatory. In both courses of action there was wisdom. After the siege of Cusco, the Ynca Manco, with his family and chief nobles, had taken refuge in the mountain fastness of Vilcabamba, and there he met his death in 1553, after a disastrous reign of twenty years. He was succeeded by his son Sayri Tupac, who continued in his secluded hiding-place. The viceroy thought it important, for the tranquillity of the country and the peace of mind of the Indians, that the descendant of their ancient kings should be induced to reside among the Spaniards. The negotiation was intrusted to the Ynca’s aunt, a princess who had married a Spanish cavalier, and to Juan de Betanzos, an excellent Quichua scholar. It was settled that the Ynca should receive the encomienda forfeited by Giron (the valley of Yucay near Cusco, where he was to reside), together with a large pension. All was finally arranged, and on the 6th of January, 1558, the Ynca entered Lima, and was most cordially received by the viceroy. From that time he resided in the valley of Yucay, surrounded by his family and courtiers, until his death in 1560.

Several of the Spanish conquerors had married Ynca ladies of the blood royal, and a number of half-caste youths were growing up in the principal cities of Peru, who formed links between the Yncas and their conquerors. There was a school at Cusco where they were educated, and the Ynca Garcilasso de la Vega records many anecdotes of his early days, and enumerates the names of most of his school-fellows. The Marquis of Cañete also founded schools at Lima and Truxillo, and took great pains to supply the Indians with parochial clergy of good conduct, who were strictly prohibited from trading. In 1558 the curacas, or native chiefs, who had proved their rights by descent before the Audiencia, were allowed to exercise jurisdiction as magistrates.

The Marquis of Cañete founded the towns of Cuenca in the province of Quito, of Santa on the coast to the north of Lima, and of Cañete in a rich and fertile valley to the south. He also established the hospital of San Andres at Lima, and built the first bridge over the Rimac. Very great activity was shown in the introduction of useful plants and domestic animals. Vines were sent out from Spain and the Canaries, and a harvest of grapes was reaped near Cusco in 1555. Wheat was first reaped in the valley of Cañete by a lady named Maria de Escobar, and olives were planted in 1560. Other fruit trees and garden vegetables soon followed.

The king, Philip II., determined to supersede this able viceroy in 1560, appointing a young nobleman named Diego Lopez de Zuñiga y Velasco, Conde de Nieva, in his place. But the Marquis of Cañete died at Lima before his successor arrived, on the 30th of March, 1561, having governed nearly five years. He was buried in the church of San Francisco, but his bones were afterwards taken to Spain and deposited with those of his ancestors at Cuenca. The Conde de Nieva entered Lima on the 27th of April,—a month after the death of the marquis. He was a handsome young cavalier, of loose morals, and fond of every sort of pleasure. There is very little doubt that he lost his life owing to a powerful husband’s jealousy. He was set upon in the street, after leaving the lady’s house, in the dead of night. He was found dead on the 20th of February, 1564, and the matter was hushed up to prevent scandal. The judges of the Audiencia took charge of the government until the arrival of a successor.

During this period the Chilian colony was holding its own, with difficulty, against the indomitable Araucanian Indians. After the rout of Sacsahuana, the governor Valdivia took his leave of the president Gasca, and embarked at Arica on the 21st of January, 1549, with two hundred men. His lieutenant, Francisco de Villagra, had ruled at Santiago in his absence, vigilantly thwarting a plot of Alonzo de Hoz, whom he executed, and suppressing a revolt of the Indians of Coquimbo and Copiapo. He met Valdivia on his landing at Valparaiso and accompanied him to the capital. The first expedition of the governor, after his return, was undertaken with a view to establishing Spanish influence in the south of Chili. In January, 1550, with two hundred men, he crossed the Biobio, and intrenched himself in the valley of the Penco, where he founded the town of Concepcion, repulsing an attack from a large army of Indians with great slaughter. In the following year he founded the towns of Imperial and Valdivia still farther south.

CONCEPTION BAY.

[Fac-simile of a cut in Ovalle’s Historica Relacion de Chile, Rome, 1648.—Ed.]

The Araucanians now flew to arms in defence of their fatherland, at the call of their aged chief, Colo-colo. A younger but equally brave leader, named Caupolican, was elected toqui, or general, of the army; and they began operations by attempting to destroy a Spanish fort at Tucapel. Valdivia hurried from Concepcion, at the head of fifty cavalry, and attacked the Araucanian host. The governor had with him a young Indian lad of eighteen, named Lautaro, as groom. There was great slaughter among the Araucanians, and they were beginning to give way, when all the best feelings of Lautaro were aroused at the sight of his countrymen in peril. On the instant he felt the glow of ardent patriotism. He went over to the enemy, exhorted them to rally, and led them once more to the attack. The Spanish force was annihilated, and the governor was taken prisoner. Led before the toqui, young Lautaro interceded for his master, and the generous Caupolican listened favorably; but the savage chief Leucaton protested, and felled Valdivia by a deadly blow with a club on the back of the head. This disaster took place on the last day of December, 1553. Don Pedro de Valdivia was in his fifty-sixth year, and by his conquest and settlement of Chili he won a place in history side by side with Cortés and Pizarro. He was childless.

Francisco de Villagra succeeded his old chief as governor of Chili, and made preparations to repair the disaster. Lautaro became the second leader of his countrymen, under Caupolican. Their tactics were to allow the Spaniards to penetrate into their country as far as they pleased, but to cut off supplies, and harass their retreat. Thus Villagra easily marched from Arauco to Tucapel; but he was attacked by an immense army under Lautaro, which stopped his retreat, and he suffered such severe loss in the battle of Mariguanu that the town of Concepcion was abandoned in November, 1555. There was hard fighting again in 1556, in defence of the garrisons at Imperial and Valdivia. Early in the following year Lautaro was intrenched with an army on the banks of the Mataquito, when he was surprised at dawn by Villagra. He made a gallant defence, but was killed; and six hundred warriors fell with him. Thus died one of the noblest patriots of the American race.

In the same year the viceroy, Marquis of Cañete, appointed his son, Don Garcia Hurtado de Mendoza, a youth barely twenty-two years of age, to be governor of Chili. His cavalry, under Luis de Toledo, marched by land over the desert of Atacama, while the young governor embarked at Callao, and sailed for Chili with three vessels conveying seven hundred infantry. Among the officers was Don Alonso de Ercilla, whose epic poem records the events of this famous war. Don Garcia landed at Coquimbo on the 25th of April, 1557, and the cavalry arrived on the following day. After having assumed the government at Santiago, and ungratefully dismissed Villagra, to secure the tranquillity of his own rule, he continued the interminable war. His first operation was to occupy the island of Quiriquina, off Talcahuano, and to build the fort of Pinto on the west side of the valley of the Penco. Here he was attacked by Caupolican with a great army. There were marvellous individual acts of bravery on both sides; Don Garcia himself was wounded, and two thousand Araucanians were slain. The governor then crossed the river Biobio and fought another great battle, Caupolican retreating with heavy loss. Don Garcia disgraced his victory by hanging twelve captive chiefs, including the heroic Galvarino.

GARCIA HURTADO DE MENDOZA.

[Fac-simile of a copperplate in Ovalle’s Historica Relacion de Chile, Rome, 1648.—Ed.]

Penetrating far to the south, the town of Osorno was founded beyond Valdivia, and the archipelago of Chiloe was discovered. During the governor’s absence in the far south, the toqui Caupolican was betrayed into the hands of Alonso de Reinosa, the captain in command at Tucapel, who put him to a horrible death by impalement.

PERUVIANS WORSHIPPING THE SUN.

[After the sketch in Benzoni, edition of 1572, p. 168.—Ed.]

There was now a brief interval of peace. Don Garcia had brought with him to Chili the good licentiate Gonzalez Marmolejo, afterwards first bishop of Santiago, who prepared rules for the humane treatment of the peaceful natives. Only a sixth were allowed to be employed at the mines; no one was to work who was under eighteen or over fifty; no laborer was to be forced to work on feast days, and all were to be paid and supplied with food. On the 5th of February, 1561, Don Garcia Hurtado de Mendoza embarked at Valparaiso and left Chili, being succeeded by Francisco de Villagra, the old companion in arms of Valdivia. Villagra died in 1563, and was succeeded by Rodrigo de Quiroga. In 1563 the bishopric of Santiago was founded, and in 1565 the royal Audiencia of Chili was instituted, with Dr. Melchor Bravo de Saravia as its first president. Its seat was fixed in the city of Concepcion.

We must now return to the course of events in Peru. The scandalous death of the viceroy Conde de Nieva seems to have induced the king to choose his successor from among men learned in the law rather than from the nobility, and to drop the title of viceroy. Lope Garcia de Castro had been a judge of the Audiencia of Valladolid, and afterwards a member of the council of the Indies. He was appointed governor and captain-general of Peru, and president of the Audiencia of Lima, where he made his public entry Sept. 22, 1564. To avoid scandal, the belief had been encouraged that the Conde de Nieva had been murdered in bed. But everybody knew that he had been struck to the ground by several stout negroes with bags full of sand; that the blows had been continued until life was extinct; and that after the murder people came out of the house of the Zarates, and carried the body to the palace. The culprit was Don Rodrigo Manrique de Lara, a powerful citizen of proud lineage, who had discovered love passages between his young wife and her near relative the viceroy. But the judges thought there would be grave scandal if the delinquent was brought to justice, and the new governor took the same view. The affair was hushed up.

Lope de Castro established a mint, imposed the almojarifazgo, or customs dues, and organized the work at the newly-discovered quicksilver mines of Huancavelica, and at the silver mines. In 1567 the Jesuits arrived in Peru, and in the same year the second council of Lima was convoked by Archbishop Loaysa, the governor assisting as representative of the king. The first council was in 1552. At the second the decisions of the council of Trent were accepted, and the parochial arrangements were made; while the governor proceeded with the work of fixing the divisions of land among the Indians, and marking out the country into corregimientos, or provinces, under corregidors. In 1567 Castro despatched an expedition from Callao, under the command of his nephew, Alvaro de Mendaña, who discovered the Solomon Islands. Lope Garcia de Castro governed Peru for five years, handing over his charge to his successor, in 1569, to return to Spain and resume his seat at the council board of the Indies.

Don Francisco de Toledo, second son of the third Count of Oropesa, was the king’s major-domo, and was advanced in years when he was selected to succeed the licentiate Lope de Castro. In his case the title of viceroy was revived, and was retained by his successors until the independence. Landing at Payta, the viceroy Toledo travelled along the coast, closely observing the condition both of Spaniards and Indians; and he then made up his mind to visit every province within his government. He made his public entrance into Lima on the 26th of November, 1569.

Toledo was assisted by statesmen of great ability and experience, who warmly sympathized with the aboriginal races, and were anxious for their welfare. Chief among his advisers was the licentiate Polo de Ondegardo, who had now been several years in Peru, had filled important administrative posts,—especially as corregidor of Charcas and of Cusco,—and had studied the system of the government and civilization of the Yncas with minute attention, especially as regards the tenures of land, and always with a view to securing justice to the natives. The licentiate Juan Matienzo was another upright and learned minister who had studied the indigenous civilization and the requirements of colonial policy with great care; while in affairs relating to religion and the instruction of the people, the viceroy consulted the accomplished Jesuit author, José de Acosta.

But the conduct of Toledo with regard to the Ynca royal family was dictated by a narrow view of political expediency, and was alike unwise and iniquitous. He reversed the generous and enlightened policy of the Marquis of Cañete. After the death of Sayri Tupac, the Ynca court had again retired into the mountain fastnesses of Vilcabamba, where the late Ynca’s two brothers, Titu Cusi Yupanqui and Tupac Amaru, resided with many native chiefs and followers. When the new viceroy arrived at Cusco, in January, 1571, the Ynca Titu Cusi sent an embassy to him, and requested that ministers of religion might be sent to Vilcabamba. Accordingly, the friar Diego Ortiz arrived at the Ynca court; but almost immediately afterward Titu Cusi sickened and died, and the superstitious people, believing that it was the work of the friar, put him to death. The youthful Tupac Amaru was then proclaimed Ynca, as successor to his brother. This gave the viceroy the pretext he sought. He despatched a strong force into Vilcabamba, under the command of Martin Garcia Loyola, who was married to an Ynca princess, the daughter of Sayri Tupac. Loyola penetrated into Vilcabamba, and took young Tupac Amaru prisoner on the 4th of October, 1571. He was brought to Cusco and confined in a palace, under the shadow of the great fortress, which until now had belonged to the family of his uncle, the Ynca Paullu. But the viceroy had seized it as a strong position to be held by Spanish troops under his uncle Don Luis de Toledo. There was a trial for the murder of the friar; several chiefs were sentenced to be strangled, and Tupac Amaru, who was perfectly innocent and against whom there was no evidence, was to be beheaded.

The young sovereign was instructed for several days by two monks who were excellent Quichua scholars, and who spoke the language with grace and elegance. He was then taken to a scaffold, which had been erected in the great square. The open spaces and the hills above the town were covered with dense crowds of people. When the executioner produced his knife, there was such a shout of grief and horror that the Spaniards were amazed, and there were few of them with a dry eye. The boy was perfectly calm. He raised his right arm, and there was profound silence. He spoke a few simple words of resignation, and the scene was so heart-rending that the hardest of the conquerors lost self-control. Led by the bishop and the heads of the monasteries, they rushed to the house of the viceroy and threw themselves on their knees, praying for mercy and entreating him to send the Ynca to Spain to be judged by the king. Toledo was a laborious administrator, but his heart was harder than the nether millstone. He sent off the chief Alguazil, of Cusco, to cause the sentence to be executed without delay. The crime was perpetrated amid deafening shouts of grief and horror, while the great bell of the cathedral was tolled. The body was taken to the palace of the Ynca’s mother, and was afterward interred in the principal chapel of the cathedral, after a solemn service performed by the bishop and the chapter. Toledo caused the head to be cut off and stuck on a pike beside the scaffold; but such vast crowds came to worship before it every day, that it was taken down and interred with the body.

TEMPLE OF CUSCO.

[Fac-simile of the engraving as given in Montanus and in Ogilby. Garcilasso de la Vega describes Cusco soon after the Conquest, and explains the distribution of buildings which was made among the conquerors. A plan of the ancient and modern city, showing the conquerors’ houses, is given in Markham’s Royal Commentaries of De la Vega, vol. ii., and in the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, 1871, p. 281. A plan of the ancient and modern town, by E. G. Squier, is given in that author’s Peru, Land of the Incas (New York), 1877, p. 428. The house of Pizarro is delineated in Charton’s Voyageurs, vol. iii. p. 367; and the remains of the palace of the first Inca, in Squier’s Land of the Incas, p. 451.

Cieza de Leon says: “Cusco was grand and stately; it must have been founded by a people of great intelligence.” (Markham’s edition. Travels, pp. 322, 327.)

Early plans or views of Cusco are given in Ramusio, vol. iii. p. 412 (see ante, p. 554); in Münster’s Cosmographia, 1572 and 1598; in Braun and Hogenberg’s Civitates orbis terrarum; in De Bry, part vi., and in Herrera (1728), vol. iii. p. 161. There is a large woodcut map of Cusco, in Ant. du Pinet’s Plantz, Pourtraitz et Descriptions de plusieurs Villes, etc., Lyons, 1564.

Vander Aa published a view at Leyden, and another is in Rycaut’s translation of Garcilasso de la Vega, p. 12. Accounts of the modern town are given by Markham, Squier, and others, and there is a view of it in Tour du Monde, 1863, p. 265.—Ed.]

The judicial murder of Tupac Amaru was part of a settled policy. Toledo intended to crush out all remains of reverence and loyalty for the ancient family among the people. He confiscated the property of the Yncas, deprived them of most of the privileges they had hitherto been allowed to retain, and even banished the numerous half-caste children of Spaniards by Ynca princesses.

At the same time he labored diligently to formulate and establish a colonial policy and system of government on the ruins of the civilization of the Yncas.

The instructions of the kings of Spain, through their council of the Indies, were remarkable for beneficence and liberality in all that concerned the natives. Strict orders were given for their instruction and kind treatment, and special officers were appointed for their protection. But at the same time there were incessant demands for increased supplies of treasure from the mines. It was like the orders of the directors of the East India Company to Warren Hastings,—justice to the natives, but more money. The two orders were incompatible. In spite of their beneficent rules and good intentions, the Spanish kings must share the guilt of their colonial officers, as regards the treatment of the natives. It is right, however, that the names of those conquerors should be recorded who displayed feelings of sympathy and kindness for their Indian vassals. Lorenzo de Aldana, who took a prominent and important part in the civil wars, died at Arequipa in 1556, and left all his property to the Indians whom he had received in repartimiento, for the payment of their tribute in future years. Marcio Sierra de Leguizamo described the happy condition of the people when the Spaniards arrived, and in his will expressed deep contrition at having taken part in their destruction. Garcilasso de la Vega was ever kind and considerate to his Indian vassals. Cieza de Leon in his writings[1481] shows the warmest sympathy for the Ynca people. There were, however, too many of the first conquerors of a different stamp.

The viceroy Toledo wisely based his legislation on the system of the Yncas. His elaborate code, called the Libro de Tasas, was the text-book for all future viceroys. He fixed the amount of tribute to be paid by the Indians, wholly exempting all males under the age of eighteen, and over that of fifty. He recognized the positions of hereditary nobles or curacas, assigning them magisterial functions, and the duty of collecting the tribute and paying it to the Spanish corregidors. He enacted that one seventh part of the population of every village should be subject to the mita, or forced labor in mines or factories; at the same time fixing the distance they might be taken from their homes, and the payment they were to receive. It was the abuse of the mita system, and the habitual infraction of the rules established by Toledo, which caused all the subsequent misery and the depopulation of the country. Humane treatment of the people was incompatible with the annual despatch of vast treasure to Spain. Toledo also fixed the tenures of land, organized local government by corregidors, and specified the duties of all officials, in his voluminous code of ordinances.

In the days of this viceroy the Inquisition was introduced into Peru, but the natives were exempted from its penalties as catechumens. Heretical Europeans or Creoles were alone exposed to its terrible jurisdiction. The first auto da fé took place at Lima on November 19, 1573, when a crazy old hermit, suspected of Lutheranism, was burned. Another was celebrated with great pomp on the 13th of April, 1578, the viceroy and judges of the Audiencia being present in a covered stand on the great square of Lima. There were sixteen victims to suffer various punishments, but none were put to death.

During the government of Toledo, in 1579, Sir Francis Drake appeared on the coast of Peru,[1482] and in the following year the viceroy despatched an important surveying expedition to the Straits of Magellan under Sarmiento. After a long and eventful period of office, extending over upwards of twelve years, Don Francisco de Toledo returned to Spain. He was coldly received by Philip II., who said that he had not been sent to Peru to kill kings, and dismissed him. He was a hard-hearted man, but a conscientious and able administrator, and a devoted public servant.

Don Martin Henriquez, second son of the Marquis of Alcanizes, was then viceroy of Mexico, whence he was removed to Peru as successor to Toledo. He entered Lima on the 28th of September, 1581. He worked assiduously to carry out the ordinances of his able predecessor in all branches of administration; but his career was cut short by death after holding office for eighteen months. He died on the 15th of March, 1583, and was buried in the church of San Francisco. In 1582 he had founded the college of San Martin, to be under the rule of Jesuits, and on the 15th of August of the same year the second council of Lima assembled under the presidency of the archbishop.

PERU (after Wytfliet, 1597).

CHILI (after Wytfliet, 1597).

Loaysa, the first archbishop of Lima, died in 1575, and the see was vacant for six years. Toribio de Mogrovejo was consecrated at Seville in 1580, and entered Lima May 24, 1581, at the age of forty-three. He at once began the study of the Quichua language, to prepare for his tours of inspection. He had a mule, but generally travelled on foot, stopping in villages and at wayside huts, instructing, catechising, and administering the sacraments. He penetrated into the most inaccessible fastnesses of the Andes and visited all the coast valleys, journeying over burning deserts, along snowy heights, and through dense forests, year after year untiringly. He founded the seminary at Lima, for the education of priests, which is now known by his name. Besides the council of 1582, he celebrated two other provincial councils in 1592 and 1601, and ten diocesan synods. The principal work of these assemblies was to draw up catechisms and questions for the use of priests, with a view to the extirpation of idolatry, and to regulate parochial work. The good archbishop died at Saña on the coast, during one of his laborious visitations, on the 23d of March, 1606. He was canonized in 1680, and is revered as Saint Toribio. During his archiepiscopate a girl was born at Lima, of very poor and honest Spanish parents, named Rosa Flores, and was baptized by Saint Toribio in 1586. Her goodness and charity were equalled by her surpassing beauty, which she dedicated to God; and after her death, in 1617, a conclave of theologians decided that she had never strayed from the right path in thought or deed. She was canonized in 1671, and Santa Rosa is the patron saint of Lima, with her festival on the 30th of August.[1483]

Don Fernando de Torres y Portugal, Conde de Villar Don Pardo, the successor of Henriquez, did not reach Lima until the 20th of November, 1586. He endeavored to prevent abuses in taking Indians for the mita, and ordered that none should be sent to unsuitable climates. During the previous forty years negroes had been imported into the coast valleys of Peru in considerable numbers as slaves, and supplied labor for the rich cotton and sugar estates. The Conde de Villar was an old man, with good intentions but limited capacity. He allowed abuses to creep into the financial accounts, which were in great confusion when he was superseded in the year 1590.

Don Garcia Hurtado de Mendoza, the fourth marquis of Cañete, had already served in Peru, when his father was viceroy, and had won renown in his war with the Araucanians. He had also seen service in Germany and Italy. Married to Doña Teresa de Castro y de la Cueva, granddaughter of the proud Duke of Albuquerque, he was the first viceroy who had been allowed to take a vice-queen with him to Peru, and he was also accompanied by her brother, the gallant and chivalrous Don Beltran de Castro y Cueva, as commander of the forces. On the 6th of January, 1590, the new viceroy made his solemn entry into Lima, in a magnificent procession of richly adorned Indian nobles, arquebusiers and pikemen, gentlemen of the household, judges of the Audiencia, professors and students of the University of San Marcos, and kings-at-arms. The marquis came out with the usual injunctions to enforce the kindly treatment of Indians, but he received urgent demands from the king for more and more money. In 1591 he imposed the alcabala, or duties on sales in markets, and on coca. He was obliged to send increasing numbers of victims to the silver mines, and to the quicksilver mines of Huancavelica. He made numerous ordinances for the regulation of industries and of markets, the suppression of gambling, and the punishment of fugitive slaves. He founded the college of San Felipe and San Marcos at Lima in 1592. He despatched an important expedition under Mandaña, which discovered the Marquesas Islands. He was an active and intelligent ruler; but all the good he attempted to do was counterbalanced by the calls for treasure from Spain. He sent home 1,500,000 ducats, besides value in jewels and plate.

After having governed Peru for six years and a half, the Marquis of Cañete begged to be allowed to return home. He was succeeded by Don Luis de Velasco, Marquis of Salinas, who came from Mexico, where he had been the viceroy. The Marquis of Salinas entered Lima on the 24th of July, 1596, and governed Peru until the end of 1604.

Chili had been comparatively quiet under the immediate successors of Don Garcia Hurtado de Mendoza, although the war with the Araucanians had never actually ceased. In 1583 Philip II. selected a military officer of great experience and approved valor as governor of Chili. Don Alonso de Sotomayor left Spain for Buenos Ayres with seven hundred men, and made the journey across the Pampas and over the pass of Uspallata, reaching Santiago on the 22d of September, 1583. He and his brother Luis carried on a desultory war against the Araucanians for several years. During 1588 the attacks of the Indians were led by an intrepid heroine named Janequeo, who was resolved to avenge the death of her husband. The governor was superseded in 1592 and proceeded to Callao, where he commanded a ship, under Don Beltran de Cueva, in the fleet which attacked and captured Sir Richard Hawkins and his ship. Sotomayor then returned to Spain.

The new governor of Chili was Don Martin Garcia Oñez de Loyola, the same cavalier who married an Ynca princess, and captured young Tupac Amaru. He was a Basque, of the province of Guipuzcoa, and a near relative of Saint Ignatius. He arrived at Valparaiso, with four hundred soldiers and abundant supplies of warlike stores, on the 23d of September, 1592, reaching Santiago on the 6th of October. The Araucanians had elected the aged chief Paillamacu as their toqui, with two younger warriors named Pelantaru and Millacalquin as his lieutenants. Believing the subjugation of Araucaria to be practicable, the new governor traversed the country between Imperial and Villarica during the year 1597, but failed to discover his astute foes. In the spring of 1598 Loyola was at Imperial, where he received a letter from his wife, the Ynca princess Doña Beatriz Coya, urging him to retreat to Concepcion, as the Araucanians were rising. He set out for Angol, accompanied by only sixty officers, on the 21st of November, 1598, and stopped for the night in the valley of Curalaba. When all were wrapped in sleep, the tents were attacked by five hundred native warriors, and the governor was killed, with all his companions. His widow, the Ynca princess, went to Spain with a young daughter, who was given in marriage by Philip III. to Juan Henriquez de Borja, heir of the house of Gandia, and was at the same time created Marquesa de Oropesa.

SOTOMAYOR.

[Fac-simile of a part of a copperplate in Ovalle’s Historica Relacion de Chili. Rome, 1648.—Ed.]

The death of the governor was a signal for a general rising. Within forty-eight hours there were thirty thousand Araucanian warriors in the field under the toqui Paillamacu. All the Spanish towns south of the river Biobio were taken and destroyed, the invasion was hurled back beyond Concepcion, and the Spaniards were placed on the defensive.

The seventeenth century opened in Peru with a period of peace, during which the system of government elaborated by the viceroy Toledo was to be worked out to its consequences,—and in Chili, with the prospect of a prolonged contest and an impoverished treasury. In both countries the future of the native races was melancholy and without hope.

[CRITICAL ESSAY ON THE SOURCES OF INFORMATION.]

THE king of Spain instituted the office of historiographer of the Indies, and that post was held for upwards of half a century by the learned Antonio de Herrera, who died in 1625. All the official reports and correspondence were placed in his hands, and he had the use of a great deal of material which is now lost; so that he is indispensable as an authority.[1484] His great work, Historia General de las Indias Occidentales, covers the whole ground from 1492 to 1554, and is divided into eight decades, in strict chronological order. The history of the conquest of Peru and of the subsequent civil wars is recorded with reference to chronological order as bearing on events in other parts of the Indies, and not connectedly. The work first appeared in 1601 and 1615, in five folio volumes, and was republished in 1730. The English version by Stevens, in six octavo volumes (1725), is worthless. The episode relating to the descent of the river Amazon by Francisco de Orellana (Herrera, dec. vi. lib. ix.), was translated by Clements R. Markham, C. B., and printed for the Hakluyt Society in 1859 as a part of the volume called Expeditions into the Valley of the Amazons.

Francisco Lopez de Gomara was another compiler, who never personally visited Peru, and is best known for his history of the conquest of Mexico. His narrative of the conquest of Peru forms an important part of his work entitled Historia de las Indias. Although he was a contemporary, and had peculiarly good opportunities for obtaining trustworthy information, he was careless in his statements, and is an unsafe authority.[1485]

Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdés, born in 1478 of an old Asturian family, was an eye-witness of the events on the isthmus which directly led to the discovery of Peru. He went out with the governor Pedro Arias in 1513, and was at Panamá when Pizarro and Almagro were fitting out their first expedition. He afterwards resided for many years in Hispaniola, and at his death, in 1557, he was chronicler of the Indies, the predecessor of Herrera. He was devoted to historical composition, interspersing his narrative with anecdotes and personal reminiscences; but most of his works long remained in manuscript. His two chapters on the conquest of Peru cover the ground from the landing of Pizarro to the return of Almagro from Chili.[1486]

It is, however, a relief to escape from compilers, and to be able to read the narratives of the actual actors in the events they describe. The first adventurer who attempted to discover Peru was the adelantado Pascual de Andagoya, and he has recorded the story of his failures. Born of a good stock in the province of Alava, Pascual went out to Darien when very young, with the governor Pedro Arias, in 1514. After the failure of his first attempt he was in Panamá for some years, and in 1540 received the government of the country round the Rio San Juan, the scene of Pizarro’s early sufferings. Here he founded the town of Buenaventura; but having got into a dispute with Benalcazar respecting the boundaries of their jurisdictions, Andagoya returned to Spain, where he remained five years. He accompanied the president Gasca to Peru, and died at Cusco on the 18th of June, 1548. He had broken his leg, but was recovering, when fever supervened, which carried him off. Gasca reported that his death was mourned by all, because he was such a good man, and so zealous in the service of his country. The historian Oviedo, who knew him well in the early days of the Darien colony, speaks of Andagoya as a noble-minded and virtuous person. He was a man of some education; and his humane treatment of the Indians entitles his name to honorable mention. His interesting narrative long remained in manuscript at Seville, but it was at length published by Navarrete.[1487] An English translation,[1488] by Clements R. Markham, C. B., with notes and an introduction, was printed for the Hakluyt Society in 1865.[1489]

Francisco de Xeres, the secretary of Pizarro, wrote his account of the early days of the conquest of Peru on the spot, by order (March, 1533) of his master. He left Spain with Pizarro in January, 1530, returned to Seville with the first instalment of gold from Caxamarca in July, 1534; and his narrative, which embraces the period between these dates, was printed at Seville in the same year.[1490] This edition and that of 1547, printed somewhat carelessly at Salamanca, are extremely rare.[1491] The third and best-known edition was published at Madrid in 1749 in the Barcia Collection, Historiadores primitivos de las Indias. Italian editions appeared in 1535,[1492] and in 1556 in Ramusio;[1493] and a French version was published at Paris by M. Ternaux-Compans in 1837.[1494] An English translation, with notes and an introduction by Clements R. Markham, C. B., was printed for the Hakluyt Society in 1872. There is a freshness and reality in the story told by Xeres, owing to his having been an eye-witness of all the events he describes, which the more elaborate accounts of compilers cannot impart. Xeres has increased the value of his book by inserting the narrative of Miguel Astete, who accompanied Hernando Pizarro on his expedition to Pachacamac.

TITLE OF XERES. VENICE, 1535.

Hernando Pizarro wrote a letter to the royal Audiencia of Santo Domingo, which goes over the same ground as the narratives of Xeres and Astete, but is of course much briefer. It is peculiarly valuable as containing the observations of the man of highest rank in the expedition who was able to write.[1495] The letter is dated November, 1533, and was written on his way to Spain with the treasure. Oviedo gives it in his Historic General,[1496] and it is printed by Quintana in his Vidas de Españoles celebres.[1497] It was translated into English by Clements R. Markham, C. B., and printed for the Hakluyt Society in 1872 in the volume of Reports on the Discovery of Peru.

Pedro Sancho, the notary, wrote a note of the distribution of the ransom of Atahualpa, with a list of the conquerors and the amount each received. It is contained in the inedited work of Francisco Lopez de Caravantes, and was reprinted by Quintana in his Vidas de Españoles celebres. An English translation by Clements R. Markham, C. B., was printed for the Hakluyt Society in 1872, in the volume already cited. See also Ramusio, vol. iii. p. 414, for an Italian version, in which form it was used by Robertson and Prescott.[1498]

Vicente de Valverde, the Dominican friar who accompanied Pizarro in the conquest of Peru and took part in the imprisonment and murder of Atahualpa, was made bishop of Cusco in 1536. On his way to Spain, in 1541, he landed on the island of Puna, in the Bay of Guayaquil, was seized by the natives, and put to death with his brother-in-law and twenty-six other Spaniards. He wrote a detailed Carta-relacion on the affairs of Peru, which is still inedited. He also addressed letters to the emperor Charles V., which contain original information of great value. A copy of one, dated Cusco, April 2, 1539, was among Sir Thomas Phillipps’s collection of manuscripts. It is frequently quoted by Helps.

Pedro Pizarro, a cousin of the conqueror, went out as his page in 1530, when only fifteen. He was an eye-witness of all the events of the Conquest, and of the subsequent civil wars, having retired to Arequipa after the assassination of his patron. Here he probably wrote his Relaciones del Descubrimiento y Conquista de los Reynos del Peru, finished in 1571. It is a plain, unadorned statement of facts, but of the highest value as an authority. It remained in manuscript for centuries, but was at length printed in the Coleccion de documentos inéditos para la historia de Espana, v. 201-388.[1499]

The death-struggle between the Pizarros and the old marshal Almagro is fully told in the above general histories; but light is also thrown upon the story from other directions. Among the manuscripts in the National Library at Madrid[1500] there is an autobiography by a young scapegrace of noble birth named Alonzo Enriquez de Guzman, comprising a period from 1518 to 1543, from his nineteenth to his forty-fourth year. The early part reminds one of the adventures of Gil Blas; but in 1534 he went to Peru, and was a principal actor in the events which took place between the departure of Almagro for Chili in 1535 and his execution in 1538. Don Alonzo seems to have quarrelled with Hernando Pizarro during the siege of Cusco, and warmly espoused the cause of Almagro, who made him one of his executors. The latter portion of the autobiography, including a long letter to the emperor on the conduct of Hernando Pizarro, is very interesting, while the frankness of Don Alonzo’s confessions as regards his own motives is most entertaining. The Life and Acts of Don Alonzo Enriquez de Guzman was translated and edited by Clements R. Markham, C. B., and printed by the Hakluyt Society in 1862. It had up to this time escaped notice.

The last years of the marquis Pizarro were occupied in laying out and building the capital of Peru, and we are indebted to the researches of the learned Peruvian, Don Manuel Gonzalez de la Rosa, for having discovered the most detailed account of the founding and early history of Lima among the manuscripts in the Biblioteca Colombina at Seville. The Historia de la Fundacion de Lima was written by the Jesuit Bernabé Cobo between 1610 and 1629, and was first printed under the superintendence of Dr. De la Rosa in the Revista Peruana.[1501]

The story of the murder of Pizarro is told in the general histories, and there are some additional particulars in Montesinos. A very laudatory life of the marquis, which, however, contains the results of original research, is contained in the Varones Ilustres del Nuevo Mundo, by Fernando Pizarro y Orellana (Madrid, 1639). This work also contains Lives of Pizarro’s brothers and of Almagro.[1502]

But by far the best life of Pizarro, both as regards literary merit and conscientious research, is contained in the Vidas de Españoles Celebres by Don Manuel Josef Quintana.[1503] Quintana also gives the texts of the original agreement (1526) between Pizarro, Almagro, and Luque, and of the capitulation (July 26, 1529, at Toledo) between Queen Juana and Pizarro. These documents are also given by Prescott in the Appendix to the second volume of his Conquest of Peru.[1504]

After the assassination of Pizarro, the licentiate Vaca de Castro, having defeated the younger Almagro, succeeded as governor of Peru, and the history of his rule is told in his own letters. The first is to the emperor, reporting his arrival at Santo Domingo, and is very brief. The second, also to the emperor, is from Quito, and announces the assassination of Pizarro and the rebellion of Almagro the lad. The third is addressed to the emperor from Cusco, after the battle of Chupas, and is a straightforward statement of his proceedings. The fourth is a long letter from Cusco to his wife on private affairs. There is also a long letter on the revolt of young Almagro and the battle of Chupas from the municipality of Cusco to the emperor. These letters are included in the great official volume of Cartas de Indias published at Madrid in 1877, pp. 463-521. The Vida y elojio del licenciado Vaca de Castro, Gobernador del Peru, was written by Antonio de Herrera, the chronicler of the Indies.[1505]

A good historian accompanied the ill-fated viceroy Blasco Nuñez de Vela to Lima. Augustin de Zarate was comptroller of accounts for Castile, and was sent out with the first viceroy to examine into the financial affairs of Peru. He collected notes and materials during his residence at Lima, and began the compilation of a history from the discovery by Pizarro to the departure of Gasca, when he returned to Spain. He had access to the best official sources of information, and his work is not without value; but he was strongly prejudiced, and his style is tedious and inelegant. He assigns as the reason for not having begun his narrative in Peru, that Carbajal had threatened any one who should attempt to record his exploits. In the earlier portions he relied on the testimony of the actors still living; but for the later part he was himself a spectator and actor. He had not intended to publish it in his lifetime; but the commendation of the emperor, to whom it was shown, induced him to depart from his purpose. The original manuscript of Zarate is or was preserved at Simancas; and Muñoz has disclosed how the printed volume differs considerably from it, in suppressing things too frankly stated, and in taking on a literary flavor not in the draft. Muñoz supposed that Florian d’Ocampo performed this critical office in passing the book through the press.[1506] His Historia del Descubrimiento y Conquista de la Provincia del Peru was printed at Antwerp in 1555,[1507] and a folio edition appeared at Seville in 1577;[1508] but the best edition of Zarate is in the Barcia Collection, vol. iii. It was included in 1853 in the Biblioteca de Autores Españoles, vol. xxvi.[1509]

A more important narrative of the civil war, which ended with the death of the viceroy Blasco Nuñez, was written by Pedro de Cieza de Leon, and has been recently published. Cieza de Leon landed in South America when he was barely fifteen, in the year 1534, and during his military service he conceived a strong desire to write an account of the strange things that were to be seen in the new world. “Oftentimes,” he wrote, “when the other soldiers were reposing, I was tiring myself by writing. Neither fatigue, nor the ruggedness of the country, nor the mountains and rivers, nor intolerable hunger and suffering have ever been sufficient to obstruct my two duties; namely, writing, and following my flag and my captain without fault.” In 1547 he joined the president Gasca, and was present at the final rout of Gonzalo Pizarro. He was many years in Peru, and he is certainly one of the most important authorities on Ynca history and civilization, whether we consider his peculiar advantages in collecting information, or his character as a conscientious historian. He lived to complete a great work, but unfortunately only a small portion of it has seen the light. The first and second parts of the Chronicle of Cieza de Leon have been published, but they relate to Ynca civilization and are discussed in a chapter in the first volume of the present work. The third part, treating of the discovery and conquest of Peru by Pizarro, is inedited, though the manuscript is believed to have been preserved. Part IV. was divided into five books relating the history of the civil wars of the conquerors. Only the third book has been published in the Biblioteca Hispano-Ultramarina. It was very ably edited by Don Márcos Jiménez de la Espada (Madrid, 1877), and is entitled La Guerra de Quito. The volume begins with the departure of the viceroy Blasco Nuñez de Vela from Spain, and consists of fifty-three chapters in the first part, the concluding portion forming a subsequent volume.[1510]

The proceedings of the president, Pedro de la Gasca, were recorded by himself in very full reports to the Council of the Indies, which almost amount to official diaries. The first, dated at Santa Marta on his way out, July 12, 1546, has been published in the official volume of Cartas de Indias (Madrid, 1877). Other published correspondence throws light on the astute proceedings of the president while he was at Panamá. His instructions to Lorenzo de Aldana, his letters to Gonzalo Pizarro, and the detailed report of his agent Paniagua have been published in the Revista de Lima, 1880. His report to the Council of the Indies, when on his way to attack Gonzalo Pizarro at Cusco (dated Andahuaylas, March 7, 1548), has not been edited. But the Chilian historian Don Diego Barros Arana has published[1511] the long despatch from Gasca to the Council, dated at Cusco, May 7, 1548, in which he describes the rout of Sacsahuana, the executions of Gonzalo Pizarro and Carbajal, and the subsequent bloody assize at Cusco. The document frequently quoted by Prescott (in book v. chap. iii. of his history)[1512] as Relacion del Licenciado Gasca MS. is an abridged and mutilated copy of this despatch of May 7, 1548, from the Muñoz Collection,[1513] and is preserved at Simancas. The sentence pronounced on Gonzalo Pizarro is published in the Revista Peruana (1880), from the original manuscript of Zarate’s Chronicle.[1514] Gasca continues his narrative in the despatches to the Council, dated at Lima, Sept. 25 and Nov. 26, 1548, which are also published by Barros Arana.[1515] There are six other despatches of the president from Lima, dated in 1549, in the Cartas de Indias. The invaluable papers of the president Gasca are not in the Archives at Seville, but have been preserved by his family.[1516]

But the best-known historian of the period during which the president Gasca was in Peru was Diego Fernandez de Palencia, usually called “el Palentino,” from the place of his birth. He went out to Peru, served in the army which was raised to put down the rebellion of Giron, and having collected materials for a history, he was appointed chronicler of Peru by the viceroy Marquis of Cañete. Fernandez first wrote the history of the rebellion of Giron, in the suppression of which he was personally engaged; and afterwards he undertook to write a similar account of the rebellion of Gonzalo Pizarro and the administration of Gasca. Fernandez is a very painstaking writer, and no history of the time enters so fully into detail; yet it is pleasantly written, and the graver narrative is frequently relieved by anecdotes of personal adventures, and by amusing incidents. He is however a thorough-going partisan, and can see no redeeming feature in a rebellion, nothing but evil in the acts of rebels. His book is called Primera y Secunda Parte de la Historia del Peru, que se mando escrebir á Diego Fernandez, vecino de la ciudad de Palencia. It was published at Seville in 1571 (folio; primera parte, pp. 142; segunda parte, pp. 130). This is the only edition.[1517]

The first part of the work of the Ynca Garcilasso de la Vega relates to the history and civilization of the Yncas, and is discussed in the first volume of the present work. But the second part is a general history of the discovery of Peru, and of the civil wars down to the termination of the administration of the viceroy Toledo in Peru, and to the death of the governor Loyola in Chili. Like the first part, the second is rather a commentary than a history, for the Ynca quotes largely from other writers, especially from the Palentino, always carefully indicating the quotations and naming the authors. But his memory was well stored with anecdotes that he had heard when a boy; and with these he enlivens the narrative, while often a recollection of the personal appearance or of some peculiarity of the historical character whose deeds he is recording enables him to give a finishing touch to a picture. His father was a conqueror and an actor in most of the chief events of the time;[1518] his mother, an Ynca princess, and born in the city of Cusco; so the future author had special advantages for storing up information. He was born in 1539, but a few years after the conquest and one year after the death of Almagro. He passed his school days at Cusco, with many other half-caste sons of the conquerors, and went to Spain in 1560, dying at Cordova in 1616. The first part of his great work on Peru originally appeared at Lisbon in 1609, the second part at Cordova in 1617. The second and best edition of the two parts appeared at Madrid in 1723. The English translation of Sir Paul Rycaut (1688) is worthless, and there has never been a complete English version of the second part, which is entitled Historia General del Peru. The episode of the expedition of Gonzalo Pizarro to the land of cinnamon (part ii. lib. iii.) was translated by Clements R. Markham, C.B., and printed for the Hakluyt Society in 1859.[1519]

The licentiate Fernando Montesinos is an authority of some reputation, but chiefly valuable for his studies of native lore. He was altogether upwards of fifteen years in Peru. He was there a century after the conquest. His Memorias Antiguas Historiales exclusively relate to Ynca history; but his Annales contain a history of the conquest and of subsequent events, and include some original documents, and a few anecdotes which are not to be found elsewhere.[1520]

The authorities for the final settlement of Peru, after the crushing of the spirit of revolt by the Marquis of Cañete, are a good deal scattered. A learned account of the life and administration of Andres Marquis of Cañete himself will be found in the admirable Diccionario Histórico-Biografico del Peru by General Mendiburu, published at Lima in 1880; which also contains a Life of his successor, the licentiate Lope Garcia de Castro.

The viceroy Don Francisco de Toledo has left a deeper mark on the history of Peru by his Libro de Tasas and Ordenanzas relating to mines and the treatment of Indians. The transactions with reference to the judicial murder of Tupac Amaru and the persecution of the Ynca family are briefly related by Garcilasso de la Vega; but there is a much more detailed account in the Coronica Moralizada del Orden de San Augustin en el Peru by Fray Antonio de la Calancha, published at Barcelona in 1638.[1521] Calancha also gives the remorseful will of Mancio Sierra de Leguizamo, whose life-story is fully related by Don José Rosendo Gutierrez in the Revista Peruana (tomo ii. 1880).

The story of the capture and execution of Tupac Amaru by the viceroy Toledo is told in very full detail by Baltasar d’Ocampo, who was an eye-witness. His narrative has all the charm of honest truthfulness; and yet the incidents, thus simply related, are as interesting as the most ingeniously constructed romance. Unfortunately the story, as told by Ocampo (Descripcion de la Provincia de San Francisco de Villcapampa), has never been printed. It is among the manuscripts of the British Museum.[1522]

Polo de Ondegardo, the learned lawyer, was the principal adviser of the viceroy Toledo. He arrived in Peru before the president Gasca, and held the important posts of corregidor of Potosi and of Cusco. He had a profound knowledge of the Ynca system of government, and his two Relaciones,[1523] addressed to the Marquis of Cañete and the Conde de Nieva, discuss the land tenures, colonial policy, and social legislation of the natives. His labors were all undertaken with a view to adapting the best parts of the Ynca system to the new polity to be instituted by the Spanish conquerors; and his numerous suggestions, from this standpoint, are wise and judicious. A feeling of sympathy for the Indians, and the evidence of a warm desire for their welfare pervade all his writings. There is another rough draft of a report by Polo de Ondegardo, a manuscript in the National Library at Madrid,[1524] which contains much information respecting the administrative system of the Yncas; and here, also, he occasionally points out the way in which native legislation might usefully be imitated by the conquerors. This report of Polo de Ondegardo was translated by Clements R. Markham, C.B., and printed for the Hakluyt Society in 1873 in the volume called Rites and Laws of the Incas. It is believed that Polo de Ondegardo died at Potosi in about the year 1580.

The other adviser of the viceroy Toledo was a man of a very different character, a hard, relentless politician, indifferent alike to the feelings and the physical well-being of the conquered people. Judge Matienzo wrote a work in two parts on the condition of the people, the mita, or forced labor, the tribute, the mining laws, and on the duties of the several grades of Spanish officials. The Gobierno de el Peru of Matienzo is a manuscript in the British Museum.[1525]

The whole body of ordinances and regulations relating to the aboriginal people and their treatment by the conquerors is fully explained and discussed by Dr. Don Juan de Solorzano, a profoundly learned jurist, and member of the Council of the Indies, in his Politica Indiana (Madrid, 1648). The history of encomiendas in Peru is well and ably discussed by Enrique Torres Saldamando in the Revista Peruana (vol. ii. 1880).[1526]

The second Marquis of Cañete, who was viceroy of Peru in the last decade of the sixteenth century, was best known for his conduct of the Araucanian war, when, as a young man, he was governor of Chili. That famous war formed the subject of the epic poem of Alonzo de Ercilla, the warrior-poet. Born at Bermeo on the shores of the Bay of Biscay, where the house of his ancestors is still standing, Ercilla began life as a page to the prince of Spain, and volunteered to go out and serve against the Araucanians, when news arrived of an outbreak and the death of Valdivia. Born in 1533, he was only twenty-one when he set out for Chili under the command of the youthful governor Garcia Hurtado de Mendoza. Ercilla was present at seven regular battles, and suffered much from hardships during the harassing campaigns. He returned to Spain in 1562, after an absence of eight years. His Araucana[1527] is a versified history of the war, in which he describes all the events in their order, enumerates the contending chiefs, with a few lines to denote the character or special characteristic of each, and is minutely accurate even in his geographical details. He tells us that much of the poem was composed in the country, and that by the light of the camp-fires at night he wrote down what had occurred during the day. Ticknor looks upon the Araucana as an historical rather than an epic poem;[1528] and he considers the descriptive powers of Ercillo—except in relation to natural scenery—to be remarkable, the speeches he puts in the mouths of Araucanian chiefs often excellent, and his characters to be drawn with force and distinctness. Pedro de Oña, in his Arauco Domado,[1529] praises the governor, Hurtado de Mendoza, the future Marquis of Cañete; and Lope de Vega made his Araucanian war the subject of one of his plays.

The Life of the viceroy Marquis of Cañete (Garcia) was written by Don Cristóval Suarez de Figueroa, a man of some literary fame in his day. When the marquis returned from Peru broken in health, he was treated with neglect and ingratitude; nor had he received full justice from Ercilla for his youthful exploits,—at least so thought his heirs when he died in 1599; and they applied to Suarez de Figueroa to undertake his biography, placing all the viceroy’s family and official papers in the author’s hands. The result was the Hechos de Don Garcia Hurtado de Mendoza, cuarto Marques de Cañete, which was printed in 1613.[1530] It was reprinted in the Coleccion de Historiadores de Chile,—a work published in seven volumes at Santiago in 1864, edited by Don Diego Barros Arana. This work contains a very full account of the administration of the marquis while he was viceroy of Peru.

Pedro de Valdivia has written his own history of his conquest and settlement of Chili, in his letters to the emperor, Charles V. They are preserved in the Archives at Seville among the documents sent from Simancas, and have been published by Claudio Gaye in his Historia de Chile (Paris, 1846), and also in the first volume of the Coleccion de Historiadores de Chile (Santiago, 1864). The first of Valdivia’s despatches is dated from La Serena, Sept. 4, 1545, and the second from Lima, June 15, 1548. In the third he reports fully on the state of affairs in Chili, and refers to his own previous career. It is dated from Concepcion, Oct. 15, 1550. There are two others, dated Concepcion, Sept. 25, 1551, and Santiago, Oct. 26, 1552, which are short, and not so interesting.

Some discontented soldiers brought a series of fifty-seven accusations against Valdivia, which were considered by the president Gasca at Lima in October, 1548,—the result being acquittal. The Acta de Accusacion was published at Santiago in 1873 by Barros Arana, together with Valdivia’s defence and several other important historical documents. That accomplished Chilian historian has also edited a very interesting letter from Pedro de Valdivia to Hernando Pizarro, dated at La Serena on the 4th of September, 1545, which fell into the hands of the president Gasca, and remained among his papers; and when he was at Seville in 1859, he discovered one more unimportant letter from the Chilian conqueror to Charles V., dated at Santiago, July 9, 1549. The first book of the records of the Santiago municipality, called the Libro Becerro, embraces the years from 1541 to 1557. It has been published in the first volume of the Coleccion de Historiadores de Chile, etc. (Santiago, 1861), and contains the appointment of Valdivia as governor of Chili, the founding of Santiago, with the nomination of the first municipal officers, ordinances for mines, and other important entries.

There is thus ample original material for the opening chapter of the history of Chili. Moreover, the first connected work on the subject was written by one of the early conquerors. Gongora Marmolejo served under Valdivia, and was an eye-witness of all the stirring events of the time. His history begins at the discovery of Chili, in 1536, and is brought down to the year 1575. Written in Santiago, it is addressed to the president of the Council of the Indies; and though the style is confused, and often obscure, the narrative has the merit of impartiality, and supplies many interesting details. It also has annexed documents, including a letter from Gonzalo Pizarro to Valdivia giving an account of events in Peru, down to the death of Blasco Nuñez de Vela. The Historia de Chile of Gongora Marmolejo remained in manuscript in the Biblioteca de Salazar (H. 45) until it was edited by Don Pascual de Gayangos, in 1850, for the fourth volume of the Memorial Histórico Español. It has since been published in the Coleccion de Historiadores de Chile.

The story of the surprise and death of the governor, Martin Garcia de Loyola, and of the subsequent formidable rising of the Araucanians in 1598, was written in the form of a poem by Captain Fernando Alvarez de Toledo. The work has no literary merit, and is only valuable as an historical narrative. The manuscript is in the National Library at Madrid, and it was published by Don Diego Barros Arana, in the Collection d’Ouvrages inédits ou rares sur L’Amérique (Paris, 1861). An interesting modern account of the death of the governor Loyola, entitled La sorpresa de Curalava, was written by the accomplished Chilian, Miguel Luis Amunátegui, and published as one of his Naraciones Históricas (Santiago, 1876).[1531]

The history of Chili, which follows Marmolejo in point of time, is by Cordova y Figueroa, a native of the country, and a descendant of Juan de Negrete, one of the followers of Valdivia. Cordova y Figueroa was born at Concepcion in 1692, served with credit in a war with the Araucanians, and is believed to have written the history between 1740 and 1745. Beginning with the expedition of Almagro, it comes down to the year 1717, and is the most complete history that had been written up to that date. The manuscript was in the National Library at Madrid, and a copy was made for the Chilian government, under the auspices of Don Francisco S. Astaburriaga, who was then minister to Spain. It was published in the Coleccion de Historiadores de Chile.

In this review of works on the conquest and first settlement of Peru and Chili, those which refer only to the history and civilization of the Yncas, or to geography and natural history, have been omitted, as they receive notice in the chapter on ancient Peru in the first volume of this History.

[EDITORIAL NOTES.]

A. Cieza de Leon.—It does not seem desirable to divide the bibliographical record of Cieza de Leon between the present and the first volume. His work was separated into four parts,—the first relating to the geography and description of Peru; the second, to the period of the Incas; the third, to the Spanish Conquest; the fourth, to the civil wars of the conquerors. The fate of each part has been distinct.

Part I. Prescott (Peru, vol. ii. p. 306) speaks of this as more properly an itinerary or geography of Peru, presenting the country in its moral and physical relations as it appeared to the eye of the conquerors; and not many of them, it is probable, were so impressed as Cieza de Leon was with the grandeur of the cordilleras. This, as Parte primera de la chronica del Peru, was published in folio at Seville, in 1553. In Rich’s time (1832) it was worth £5 5s.[1532] It was reprinted the next year (1554) at Antwerp in two distinct editions. One, La chronica del Peru, in duodecimo, has the imprint of Nucio; the other, likewise in duodecimo, is printed in an inferior manner, and sometimes has the name of Bellero, and sometimes that of Steelsio, as publisher. This last edition has the larger title, Parte primera de la chronica del Peru, etc., and was the one used by Prescott, and followed by Markham in the translation, Travels of Cieza de Leon, published by the Hakluyt Society in 1864.[1533]

In 1555 an Italian translation, La prima parte de la cronica del ... Peru, appeared at Rome, made by Agostino Cravaliz, or Augustino di Gravalis.[1534] A second edition—La prima parte dell’istorie del Peru—appeared the next year (1556) at Rome, and is found with the names of two different publishers.[1535]

At Venice, in 1560, appeared the Cronica del gran regno del Peru. This makes a work of which the first volume is a reprint of Gravaliz’ version of Cieza, and volumes ii. and iii. contain an Italian version of Gomara in continuation offered by the same publisher, Ziletti, under the title, La seconda, terza parte delle historie dell India.[1536]

The English translation of Stevens (The Seventeen Years’ Travels of Peter de Cieza through the mighty Kingdom of Peru and the large Provinces of Cartagena and Popayan in South America, from the City of Panama on the Isthmus to the Frontiers of Chile) was printed at London in 1709, and appeared both separately and as a part of his collection of Voyages. It gives only ninety-four of the one hundred and nineteen chapters.

Part II. Rich, though he had heard of this part, supposed it to have disappeared; and it is spoken of as missing by Markham in 1864, and by Harrisse in his Bibl. Amer. Vet. (p. 319). The manuscript of it was meanwhile in the Escurial, preserved in a bad copy made about the middle or end of the sixteenth century; but it is deficient in chapters i. and ii. and in part of chapter iii. Another manuscript copy not well done is in the Academy of History at Madrid. Lord Kingsborough had a copy, and from this Rich had a fifth copy made, which was used by Prescott; but it does not appear that any of these students suspected it to be the second part of Cieza de Leon. Prescott, supposing it to be written by the president of the Council of the Indies, Sarmiento, instead of for that officer, ascribed it to him; but Kirk, Prescott’s editor (Peru, vol. ii. p. 308), has recognized its identity, which Dr. Manuel Gonzales de la Rosa established when he edited the Escurial manuscript in 1873. This edition, though wholly printed in London, has not been made public. Following another transcript, and correcting the spelling, etc., Márcos Jiménez de la Espada printed it at Madrid in 1880 as vol. v. of the Biblioteca Hispano-Ultramarina. An English translation of it was made by Mr. Markham, and published by the Hakluyt Society in 1883.

Part III. Markham reports that Espada says that this part is in existence, but inaccessible.

Part IV. Espada is cited as asserting that books i. and ii. of this part are in existence, but inaccessible.

A manuscript of book iii. is in the Royal Library at Madrid, in handwriting of the middle of the sixteenth century. It covers the period from the appointment of Blasco Nuñez as viceroy in 1543 to a period just previous to Gasca’s departure from Panamá for Peru in 1547. A copy of this manuscript, belonging to Uguina, passed to Ternaux, thence to Rich, who sold it for £600 to Mr. Lenox; and it is now in the Lenox Library.

It has since been included under Espada’s editing in the Biblioteca Hispano-Ultramarina, and was published at Madrid in 1877 as Tercero libro de las Guerras Civiles del Peru.[1537]

Books iv. (war of Huarina) and v. (war of Xaquixaguana), and two appended commentaries on events from the founding of the Audiencia to the departure of the president, and on events extending to the arrival of the viceroy Mendoza, are not known to exist, though Cieza refers to them as written. These would complete the fourth part, and end the work.

What we know of Cieza is mainly derived from himself and the brief notice in Antonio’s Bibliotheca Hispana Nova (Madrid, 1788). The writer of the foregoing chapter gives an account of Cieza’s career, as well as it could be made out, in his translation of the Travels; but he supplements that story in the introduction to his version of Part II.

B. Garcilasso de la Vega.—The Primera parte de los Commentarios reales seems to have been printed—according to the colophon at Lisbon—in 1608, but to have been published in 1609. It has incidental notices of Spanish-American history, though concerned mainly with chronicles of the Incas.[1538]

The second part, called Historia General del Peru, was printed at Cordova in 1616, though most copies are dated 1617. The titles of the two dates slightly vary. This volume is of larger size than that of 1609.[1539]

The two parts were reprinted by Barcia at Madrid in 1722-1723.[1540] There have been later editions of the Spanish at Madrid in 1800, and in 1829, in four volumes, as a part of a series; Conquista del Nuevo Mondo, in nine volumes, which embraced also Solis’s Mexico, Garcilasso de la Vega’s Florida, and the Florida of Cardenas y Cano.

Rycaut’s English Royal Commentaries of Peru (London, 1688) was priced by Rich (no. 420) in 1832 at £1 4s., and is not worth more now.[1541] Markham’s English version of the first part was issued in two volumes by the Hakluyt Society in 1869-1871.

The French version (by J. Baudoin) of the first part was printed at Paris in 1633 as Le Commentaire Royal,[1542] and of the second part as Histoire des Guerres Civiles in 1650, and again in 1658 and 1672,[1543] and at Amsterdam in 1706.[1544] A French version of the first part was also printed at Amsterdam in 1715,[1545] and joined with the book on Florida; another French edition appeared at Amsterdam in 1737.[1546] A new translation of this first part, made by Dalibard, was printed in Paris in 1744.[1547] Baudoin’s version of both parts was reissued in Paris in 1830.[1548] There was a German translation in 1798.

An account of Garcilasso de la Vega and his ancestry is given by Markham in the introduction to his version of the Royal Commentaries of the Yncas. Another account is in the Documentos inéditos (España), vol. xvi.[1549]

The estimate held of him by Robertson has been largely shared among the older of the modern writers, who seem to think that Garcilasso added little to what he borrowed from others, though we find some traces in him of authorities now lost. The later writers are more generous in their praise of him. Prescott quotes him more than twice as often as he cites any other of the contemporary sources. (Cf. his Peru, vol. i. p. 289.)

Helps says that “with the exception of Bernal Diaz and Las Casas, there is not perhaps any historical writer of that period, on the subject of the Indies, whose loss would be more felt than that of Garcilasso de la Vega.”

C. Memoranda.—An early voyage to the coast is supposed to be indicated in an Italian tract of 1521, mentioned in the catalogue of the Biblioteca Colombina. It is not now known, except in what is supposed to be a German version.[1550] The first tidings (March 15, 1533) which Europe got of Pizarro’s success came from a letter which was addressed to the emperor, probably in Spanish, though we have no copy of it in that tongue; but it is preserved in Italian, Copia delle lettere del prefetto della India, la Nuova Spagna detta, a plaquette of two leaves, of which there is a copy in the Lenox Library. It is supposed to have been printed at Venice.[1551] This version is also included in the Libro di Benedetto (Venice, 1534). A German translation was printed at Nuremberg, February, 1534, as Newe Zeitung aus Hispanien, of four leaves.[1552] A French issue, Nouvelles certaines des isles du Peru, dated 1534, is in the British Museum.[1553] Ticknor[1554] cites Gayangos’ references to a tractate of four leaves, La Conquista del Peru, which he found in the British Museum.[1555]

It is not very clear to what city reference is made in a plaquette, Letera de la nobil cipta, novamente ritrouvata alle Indie ... data in Peru adi. xxv de novembre, de MDXXXIIII. An edition of the next year (1535) is “data in Zhaual.”[1556] Marco Guazzo’s Historie di tutte le cose degne di memoria qual del anno MDXXIIII., etc., published at Venice in 1540, gives another early account.[1557] It was repeated in the edition of 1545 and 1546.

The De Peruviæ regionis, inter novi orbis provincias celeberrimæ inventione of Levinus Apollonius of Ghent was published at Antwerp in 1565, 1566, 1567, for copies with these respective dates are found;[1558] though Sabin thinks Rich and Ternaux are in error in assigning an edition to 1565. It covers events from the discovery to the time of Gasca and the death of Gonzalo Pizarro.[1559] It also appeared as a third part to the German translation of Benzoni (Basle 1582).

Ternaux-Compans in his Voyages has preserved in a French version several early chronicles of minor importance. Such is Miguel Carello Balbóa’s Histoire du Peru (in vol. xvii.), the work of one who went to Bogota in 1566, and finished his work at Quito in 1586. It rehearses the story of the Inca rule, not always agreeing with Garcilasso, and only touches the Spanish Conquest as it had proceeded before the murder of Atahualpa.[1560] Another work is the Histoire du Pérou of Father Anello Oliva, a Jesuit, who was born at Naples in 1593, came to Peru as a Jesuit in 1597, and died at Lima in 1642. It was apparently written before 1631; but what Ternaux affords us is only the first of the four books which constitute the completed work.[1561] Juan de Velasco’s Histoire de Quito, a work of a later day but based on the early sources, makes volumes xviii. and xix. of Ternaux’s collection.

Alonso de Ovalle’s historical account of Chili was issued at Rome in 1646, in Italian, as Historica Relatione del Regno di Cile, and the same year at the same place in Spanish, as Histórica Relacion del Reyne de Chile. Six of the eight books are given in English in Churchill’s Voyages (1732), and in Pinkerton.[1562]

Among the minor documentary sources there is much of interest to be found in the Documentos inéditos (España), vols. v., xiii., xxvi., xlix., l., and li.

The Ministerio de Fomento of Peru printed at Madrid in 1881 the first volumes—edited by Jiménez de la Espada—of Relaciones geográficas de Indias. The editor supplied a learned introduction, and the volume contained twelve documents of the sixteenth century, which were then published for the first time;[1563] and they contribute to our knowledge of the condition of the country during that period.

There are other documents covering the whole course of Peruvian history in the collection of Documentos históricos del Peru en las epocas del coloniage despues de la conquista y de la independencia hasta a presente, colectados y arreglados por el coronel Manuel Odriozola, the first volume of which was published at Lima about twenty-five years ago (1863).

Harrisse (Bibl. Amer. Vet., pp. 320-322) enumerates many copies of manuscripts preserved in New York and Boston, some of which have since been printed. There is record of other manuscripts in New York in the Magazine of American History, i. 254.

The Varias relaciones del Peru y Chile y Conquista de la isla de Santa Catalina, 1535-1658 (Madrid, 1879)[1564] constitutes vol. xiii. of Coleccion de libros raros ó curiosos, which includes anonymous manuscripts in “Relacion del sitio del Cusco, 1537-1539,” in the “Rebelion de Giron, 1553,” and in some others of the seventeenth century. Vol. xvi. of the same Coleccion is edited by Jiménes de la Espada, and is entitled Memorias antiguas historiales y políticas del Perú, por D. Fernando Montesinos, seguidas de las Informaciones acerca del señorío de los Incas, hechas por mandado de D. Francisco de Toledo, virey del Perú [1570-1572]. Madrid, 1882. An account of the original which this edition of the work of Montesinos follows is given in the preface. The editor criticises the translation by Henri Ternaux-Compans in his Mémoires historiques sur l’ancien Pérou (forming part of his Voyages), Paris, 1840.[1565]

PRESCOTT’S LIBRARY.

Leclerc in 1878[1566] offered for 2,500 francs an unprinted manuscript containing the military Lives of Pedro Alvarez de Holguin and Martin de Almendral (Almendras), consisting of depositions respecting their services by eye-witnesses, taken in pursuance of a claim by their families for the possession of titles and property, their ancestors having been among the conquerors.

The most conspicuous writers upon Peruvian history in English are Prescott, Helps, and Markham,—the first two as the historians of the Conquest, and the third as an annotator of the original sources and an elucidator of controverted points. Prescott’s Conquest of Peru was published in 1843. He had been fortunate enough to secure copies from the manuscript stores which Muñoz had gathered, and Navarrete allowed his collections to be gleaned for the American’s use. He did not fail of the sympathy and support of Ternaux and of Gayangos. The ingenious and active assistance of Obadiah Rich secured him a good share of the manuscripts of the Kingsborough Collection when that was scattered. The Conquest of Peru was promptly translated into Spanish, and published at Madrid in 1847-1848; and again in a version supposed to have been made by Icazbalceta. It was printed at Mexico in 1849. A French translation was introduced to the world by Amédée Pichot, and the English on the continent were soon able to read it in their own tongue under a Paris imprint. The Dutch and German people were not long without versions in their vernaculars. Since Mr. Prescott’s death the revision, which the American reader was long kept from (owing to the obstructions to textual improvements imposed by the practice of stereotyping), was made by Mr. Kirk, who had been Prescott’s secretary; and the new edition, with that gentleman’s elucidatory and corrective notes, appeared at Philadelphia in 1874.

As was the case with the hero of Mexico, the chapters in Helps’s Spanish Conquest on the conqueror of Peru have, since the publication of that book, been extracted and fitted newly together under the title of The Life of Pizarro, with some account of his Associates in the Conquest of Peru, published in London in 1869. Pizarro is not, under Helps’s brush, the abhorrent figure of some other historians. “He is always calm, polite, dignified,” he says. “He was not one of the least admirable of the conquerors.”

Mr. Markham, referring to a visit which he made to Prescott, says: “He it was who encouraged me to undertake my Peruvian investigations and to persevere in them. To his kindly advice and assistance I owe more than I can say, and to him is due, in no small degree, the value of anything I have since been able to do in furtherance of Peruvian research.” The first fruit of Mr. Markham’s study was his Cusco and Lima in 1856. Three years later (1859) he was sent by the British Government to superintend the collection of cinchona plants and seeds (quinine) in Peru, and to introduce them into India. In pursuit of this mission, he formed the acquaintance with the country which was made public in his Travels in Peru and India in 1862. In 1880 he epitomized his great knowledge in a useful little handbook on Peru, which was published in London in the series of Foreign Countries and British Colonies. His greatest aid to the historian has come, however, from the annotations given by him to numerous volumes of the Hakluyt Society, which he has edited, and in his communications to the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society.

The Peruvian story is but an incidental feature of Hubert H. Bancroft’s Central America, where Alvarado’s report of May 12, 1535, and other documents which fell into that author’s hands with the Squier manuscripts afford in part the basis of his narrative, vol. ii. chap. vii. Bancroft accounts Pizarro himself the most detestable man in the Indies after Pedrárias. He collates the authorities on many disputed points, and is a valuable assistant, particularly for the relations of operations on the isthmus to those in Peru,—such as the efforts of Gonzalo Pizarro to make the isthmus the frontier of his Peruvian government, and Gasca’s method of breaking through it. In his chapter on “Mines and Mining” in his Mexico (vol. iii.) he incidentally recapitulates the story of the wealth which was extracted from Peru.

The dignified and well-balanced story as told in Robertson’s America (book vi.) is not without use to-day, and his judgment upon authorities (note cxxv.) is usually sound. He has of course fallen behind that sufficiency which Dr. Smyth found in him, when he gave his Lectures on Modern History (lecture xxi.). The latter writer reflected an opinion not yet outgrown when he says that “Pizarro was, after all, a vulgar conqueror, and is from the first detested, though he seizes upon our respect, and retains it in defiance of ourselves, from the powerful and decisive nature of his courage and of his understanding.”

The latest English summarized view of the Conquest will be found in R. G. Watson’s Spanish and Portuguese South America during the Colonial Period (London, 1884). The author lived in South America about twenty years ago, in various parts, as a diplomatic agent of the English government.

[THE]

AMAZON AND ELDORADO.

BY THE EDITOR.

IN 1528, in order to follow up the explorations of Ojeda and others on the coast of Venezuela the Emperor had agreed with the great German mercantile house of the Velsers to protect a colony to be sent by them to found cities and to mine on this northern coast.[1567] This was the origin of the expedition led by Ambrosio de Alfinger to find a fabulous golden city, of which reports of one kind and another pervaded the Spanish settlements along the coast. It was in 1530 that Alfinger started inland. This march produced the usual story of perfidy and cruelty practised upon the natives, and of attack and misery experienced by the invaders. Alfinger died on the way, and after two years (in 1532) what was left of his followers found their way back to the coast.

Meanwhile an expedition inland had started under Diego Ordaz in 1531, by way of the Orinoco; but it had failed, its leader being made the victim of a mutiny. One of his officers, Martinez, being expelled from the force for misbehavior, wandered away until he fell into the hands of people who blindfolded him and led him a great way to a city, where the bandage was removed from his eyes. Here they led him for a day and night through its streets till they came to the palace of Inga their Emperor, with whom being handsomely entertained he stayed eight months, when, being allowed to return, he came down the Orinoco to Trinidad, and thence to Porto Rico, where, when dying, he told this tale of Manoa, as he called the city. He was the first, the story goes, to apply the name of Eldorado to the alluring kingdom in the depths of the continent. This is the pretended story as Raleigh sixty years later learned from a manuscript which Berreo the Governor of Trinidad showed to him.[1568]

Again, the Germans made another attempt to penetrate the country and its mystery. George of Spires, under the imperial sanction, coming from Spain with four hundred men, started inland from Coro in 1534. He succeeded in penetrating about fifteen hundred miles, and returned with the survivors in 1538.

A lieutenant had played him false. Nicolaus Federmann[1569] had been disappointed in not getting the command of the expedition, but being made second, was instructed to follow after his chief with supplies. Federmann avoided making a junction with George, and wandered at the head of about two hundred men, who were faithful to him, seeking glory on his own account, till after three years of labor he emerged in April, 1539, from the mountain passes upon the plains of Bogotá. Two years before this (in 1537) Gonzalo Ximenes Quesada, following up the Magdalena River, had arrived on the same plateau, and completed the conquest of New Granada. The year following (1538), Sebastian de Belalcazar, marching north from Quito, had reached the same point.[1570]

QUESADA.

Cf. Markham’s Travels of Cieza de Leon, p. 110; and his Narrative of Andagoya, p. xxv.

Thus the three explorers from three directions came together. They joined forces and descended the Magdalena to Santa Martha, where Pedro Fernandez de Lugo, the associate of Quesada, died, while Quesada himself proceeded to Spain to obtain the government of the newly discovered region. Meanwhile Hernan Perez, a brother of Quesada, being left in command in Bogotá, committed the usual cruel excesses upon the Chibchas, but finally left them, to follow another adventurer who had arrived in the track of Federmann, with the same stories of the golden city. So the recreant Governor joined the new-comer Montalvo de Lugo, and together they marched eastward on their golden quest. He returned to Bogotá in a year’s time, wiser but not happier.

Meanwhile a new expedition was forming on the Venezuela side. Among the followers of George of Spires had been one Philip von Huten,[1571] who after George’s death, and when Rodrigo Bastidas had succeeded him, was made the commander of an expedition which left Coro in 1541 by vessels, and, prepared for an inland march, landed at Barburata. The next spring he got on the track of Quesada and resolved to follow it; but the expedition only journeyed in a circle, and after suffering all sorts of hardships found itself at the point of setting out. Huten, undaunted, again started with a smaller force. He encountered and made friends of the Uaupe Indians, and under their guidance proceeded against the towns of the Omaguas, where they encountered resistance; and Huten being wounded, the invaders retreated, and brought to an end another search for Eldorado. The expedition had added a new synonym, Omaguas, for the attractive lure.

SKETCH MAP, AMAZON AND ELDORADO.

Huten, on his return to Coro, found that Carbajal had seized the government. This brutal soldier now executed Huten, and held his iniquitous sway until the licentiate Juan Perez de Tolosa arrived with the imperial authority in 1546, when Carbajal was in turn put to death. Thus ended the German efforts at South American discovery on this side of the continent.

Meanwhile Gonzalo Ximenes Quesada’s visit to Spain had failed in making him the Governor of New Granada, as he had hoped. Luis Alonzo de Lugo, the son of Quesada’s associate, was the successful applicant for the position. The new Governor arrived in 1542, but a residencia interrupted his career, and Pedro de Ursua, a nephew of Armendariz, the judge who had taken the residencia, was sent to Bogotá to take charge. Thence his patron sent him on the old quest for the rivers flowing over golden sands. He failed to find Eldorado; but he founded the city of Pampluna in the wilds, and ruled its stately lots for two years. Then Armendariz had his downfall in turn, and Pedro de Ursua in 1549 found favor enough with those who then administered the government to get command of another expedition to Eldorado, during which he founded another city, which he had to abandon in 1552 because the natives attacked it so persistently. Next, Pedro was put in command of Santa Martha, and began to fight the Indians thereabout; but seeking a larger field, he started for Peru. His fame was sufficient to induce the authorities at Panamá to engage him to quell the Cimarrones, who infested the Isthmus. In two years Ursua accomplished this task, and then went on to Peru, where at Lima, in 1559, the new viceroy Cañete appointed him to lead a well-equipped expedition to Eldorado and the Omaguas. If the fabled city should not be reached, the quest for it would draw away from Cañete’s province the prowling ruffians whom the cessation of the civil wars had left among the settlements. But it was thought the quest was more likely to be successful than any previous one had been, since Viraratu, a coast chieftain of Brazil, had with two Portuguese recently ascended the Amazon, and had confirmed to Cañete the old stories of a hidden lake and its golden city.

Pedro de Ursua started in boats down the Huallaga to the Marañon, and so on to the neighborhood of Machiparo. At this point, on New Year’s day, 1561, conspirators murdered Ursua, threw off allegiance to Spain, and made Fernando de Guzman their sovereign. One Lope de Aguirre was the leader of the insurrection, and it was not long before Guzman paid the penalty of his life in turn, and Aguirre became supreme. The conspirators went on to the mouth of the Negro, but from this point authorities differ as to their course. Humboldt and Southey supposed they still kept to the Amazon until they reached the sea. Acuña, Simon, Acosta, and among the moderns Markham, suppose they ascended the Negro, crossed by the Cassiquiari canal to the Orinoco, and so passed on to the ocean; or if not by this route, by some of the rivers of Guiana. Mr. Markham[1572] balances the testimony. Once on the ocean, at whatever point, Aguirre steered his vessels for the north and west till they came to the island of Margarita, then colonized by the Spanish. Having seized this settlement, Aguirre led his followers across the intervening waters to Venezuela, with the aim of invading and conquering New Granada; but in due time a Spanish force led by Gutierrez de la Peña confronted the traitor and his host, and overthrew them. Many of Aguirre’s men had deserted him; when killing his own daughter, that she might not survive to be stigmatized as a traitor’s child, he was set upon and despatched by his conquerors.

The earliest account of the expedition of Ursua and Aguirre is a manuscript in the Royal library at Madrid written by one of the company, Francisco Vasquez, who remained with Aguirre under protest till he reached Margarita. Vasquez’s story was a main dependence of Pedro Simon, in the sixth of the Primera parte de las Noticias historiales de las Conquistas de Tierra Firme en las Indias Occidentales, published at Cuenca in 1627. Simon, who was born in Spain in 1574, had come to Bogotá in 1604, in time to glean much from men still living. After many years of gathering notes, he began to write his book in 1623. Only one part, which included the affairs of Venezuela and the expedition of Ursua and Aguirre, was printed. Two other parts are in existence; and Colonel J. Acosta, in his Compendio histórico del descubrimiento y colonizacion de la Nueva Granada en el siglo décimo sexto, published at Paris in 1848, made use of them, and says they are the most valuable recital of the sixteenth century in existence which relates to these regions.[1573] The account of Simon, so far as it relates to the expedition of Ursua, has been translated by William Bollaert, and properly annotated by Mr. Markham; it constitutes the volume published by the Hakluyt Society in 1861, called The Expedition of Pedro de Ursua and Lope de Aguirre in search of Eldorado and Omagua in 1560-1561. It has a map which marks the alternative courses of Aguirre.[1574]

CASTELLANOS.

A fac-simile of the portrait in his Elegias, p. 10.

The main dependence of Simon, besides the manuscript of Vasquez, was a metrical chronicle by Juan de Castellanos, Elegias de Varones ilustres de Indias, the first part of which, containing, besides the accounts of Ursua and Aguirre, the exploits of Columbus, Ponce de Leon, Garay, and others, was printed at Madrid in 1589.[1575] De Bry makes use of this versified narrative in the eighth part of his Grand Voyages. Castellanos’ first part is reprinted in the Biblioteca de Autores Españoles, 1847-1850, where are also to be found the second and third parts, printed there for the first time. The text is there edited by Buenaventura Carlos Aribau. Ercilla has recorded his opinion of the faithfulness of Castellanos, but Colonel Acosta thinks him inexact. These second and third parts recount the adventures of the Germans in their search for Eldorado, and record the conquests of Cartagena by Lugo, of Popayan by Belalcazar, and of Antischia. A fourth part, which gave the conquest of New Granada, though used by Piedrahita, is no longer known.

Castellanos could well have derived his information, as he doubtless did, from men who had made part of the exploits which he celebrates; and as regards the mad pranks of Aguirre, such is also the case with another contemporary account, preserved in the National Library at Madrid, which was written by Toribio de Ortiguera, who was at Nombre de Dios in 1561, and sent forces against Aguirre when that conspirator was on his Venezuela raid. The story written from the survivors’ recitals does not materially differ from that of Vasquez. He gives also a short account of the expedition of Gonzalo Pizarro and Orellana, later to be mentioned.

Lucas Fernandez Piedrahita was a native of Bogotá, and, like Garcilasso de la Vega, had the blood of the Incas in his veins. He became a priest, and was successively Bishop of Santa Martha and of Panamá, and after having lived a life of asceticism, and been at one time a captive of the buccaneers, he died at Panamá in 1688, at the age of seventy. He depended chiefly in his Historia General de las Conquistas del nuevo Reyno de Granada,[1576] on the Compendio of Ximenes de Quesada, no longer known, the Elegias of Castellanos, and the Noticia of Simon. He borrows liberally from Simon, and says but little of Aguirre till he lands in Venezuela. Aguirre’s career in the Historia de la Conquista y poblacion de Venezuela of Oviedo y Baños is in like manner condensed from Simon, and is confined also to his final invasion of the main. The book is rare, and Markham says that in 1861 even the British Museum had no copy.[1577] The general historians, De la Vega, Herrera, and Acosta, give but scant accounts of the Ursua expedition. Markham[1578] points out the purely imaginative additions given to Aguirre’s story in Gomberville’s translation of Acuña, misleading thereby not a few later writers. Much the same incorrectness characterizes the recitals in the Viage of the Ulloas, in Velasco’s Historia de Quito (1789).

The faithlessness of Orellana and his fifty followers in deserting Gonzalo Pizarro in 1540, while this leader was exploring the forests of the Cinnamon country, is told in another place. Orellana, as has been said, was sent forward in an improvised bark to secure food for Pizarro’s famished followers, but was tempted to pursue the phantom of golden discovery. This impulse led him to follow the course of the river to the sea. It gave him the distinction of being the discoverer of the weary course of the great Amazon. In his intercourse with some of the river Indians he heard or professed to hear of a tribe of women warriors whom it was easy, in recognition of the classic story, to name the Amazons. At one of the native villages on the river the deserters built themselves a stancher craft than they had escaped in; and so they sailed on in a pair of adventurous barks, fighting their way past hostile villages, and repelling attacks of canoes, or bartering with such of the Indians as were more peaceful. In one of the fights, when Orellana landed his men for the conflict, it is affirmed that women led the native horde. From a prisoner they got signs which they interpreted to mean that they were now in the region of the female warriors, and not far from all the fabled wealth of which they were in search. But the marks of the tide on the banks lured them on with the hope of nearing the sea. They soon got unmistakable signs of the great water, and then began to prepare their frail crafts for encountering its perils. They made sails of their cloaks. On the 26th of August they passed into the Atlantic. They had left the spot where the river Napo flows into the Amazon on the last day of December, 1541; and now, after a voyage of nearly eight months, they spread their sails and followed the coast northward. The vessels parted company one night, but they reached the island of Cubagua within two days of each other. Here they found a Spanish colony, and Orellana was not long in finding a passage to Spain. The story he had to tell was a thrilling one for ears eager for adventure, and a joyous one for such as listened for the tales of wealth. Orellana might be trusted to entrap both sorts of listeners.

The King was the best of listeners. He gave Orellana a commission to conquer these fabulous countries, and in May, 1544, Orellana sailed with four ships and four hundred men. Misfortune followed him speedily, and only two of his vessels reached the river. Up they went for a hundred leagues or so; but it was quite different making headway against the current from floating down it, as he had done before. His men died; his vessels were stranded or broken up; he himself became ill, and at last died. This ended the attempt; and such of his followers as could, made their way back to Spain; and New Andalusia, as the country was to be named, remained without a master.

Of the expedition of Gonzalo Pizarro there is no account by any one engaged in it; but we have the traditions of the story told by Garcilasso de la Vega in the second part, book third, of the Royal Commentaries, and this account is put into English and annotated by Mr. Markham in the Expeditions into the Valley of the Amazons, published by the Hakluyt Society in 1859,—and to this book its editor contributes a summary of the later explorations of the valley. Orellana’s desertion and his experiences are told by Herrera in his Historia General; and this, which Markham calls the best account possessed by us, is also translated by him in the same publication. Wallace, in his Amazon and Rio Negro, has of late years suggested that the woman-like apparel of the men, still to be found among the tribes of the upper Amazon, gave rise to the belief in the story of the female warriors.[1579]

The form which the story of Eldorado oftener took, and which it preserved for many years, gave representation of a large inland sea, called finally Parima, and of a golden city upon it called Manoa, the reminiscences of Martinez’s tale. Somehow, as Mr. Markham thinks, these details were evolved in part out of a custom prevalent on the plains of Bogotá, where a native chief is said to have gilded himself yearly, and performed some rites in a large lake. All this array of wealth was clustered, in the imagination of the conquerors of northern Peru, about the fabled empire of the Omaguas; and farther south the beckoning names were Paytiti and Enim. Whatever the names or details, the inevitable greed for gold in the mind of the Spanish invaders was quite sufficient to evolve the phantom from every impenetrable region of the New World. In 1566 Martin de Proveda followed in the track of Ursua; but sweeping north, his men dropped by the way, and a remnant only reached Bogotá. He brought back the same rumors of rich but receding provinces.

In 1568 the Spanish Government mapped out all this unknown region between two would-be governors. Pedro Malaver de Silva was to have the western part, and Diego Fernando de Cerpa to have the eastern as far as the mouths of the Orinoco. Both of the expeditions which these ambitious heroes led came to nothing beyond their due share of trials and aimless wandering; and one of the leaders, Silva, made a second attempt in 1574, equally abortive, as the one survivor’s story proved it to be.

THE MOUTHS OF THE ORINOCO.

This is a portion of the map given by Schomburgk in his edition of Raleigh’s Discovery of Guiana, published by the Hakluyt Society in 1848.

Markham says that the last expedition to achieve any important geographical discovery was that of Antonio de Berreo in 1582. He had received by right the adventurous impulse, through his marriage with the daughter or heiress of Gonzalo Ximenes de Quesada. He followed down the Cassanare and the Meta, and pursued the Orinoco to its mouth. The English took up the quest when Raleigh sent Jacob Whiddon in 1594 to explore the Orinoco. Berreo, who was now the Spanish governor of Trinidad, threw what obstacles in the way he could; and when Raleigh arrived with his fleet in 1595, the English leader captured the troublesome Spaniard, and was confirmed in his belief, by what Berreo told him, that he could reach the goal. This lure was the lying account of Juan Martinez, already mentioned. The fortunes of Raleigh have been told elsewhere,[1580] and the expeditions which he conducted or planned, says Markham, may be said to close the long roll of searches after the fabulous Eldorado.

Nearly the whole of the northern parts of South America had now been thridded by numerous adventuring parties, but without success in this fascinating search. There still remained an unknown region in Central Guiana, where were plains periodically inundated by the overflow of the Rupununi, Essequibo, and Branco (Parima) rivers. Here must Eldorado be; and here the maps, shortly after this, placed the mysterious lake and its auriferous towers of Manoa down to a comparatively recent time. According to Humboldt[1581] and Schomburgk,[1582] it was after the return of Raleigh’s and Keymis’s expedition that Hondius was the first in his Nieuwe Caerte van het goudreyke landt Guiana (1599),[1583] to introduce the Laguna Parima with its city Manoa in a map. He placed it between 1° 45´ and 2° north latitude, and made it larger than the Caspian Sea.

We find the lake also in the Nieuwe Wereldt of De Laet in 1630, and in the editions of that year in other languages. Another Dutch geographer, Jannson, also represented it. Sanson, the French geographer, puts it one degree north of the equator in his Terre Ferme in 1656, and is particular enough to place Manoa at the northwest corner of a squarish inland sea; but he omits it in his chart of the Amazons in 1680. We find the lake again in Heylin’s Cosmographie of 1663, and later editions; in Blaeu’s Atlas in 1685. Delisle omits the lake in 1703, but gives a legend in French, as Homann does in his map in Latin, “In hac regione aliqui ponunt lacum Parima urbemque Manoa del Dorado.” In another of Delisle’s maps a small lake appears with the legend: “Guiane proprement dite ou Dorado, dans laquelle quelques-uns mettent le lac Parime.” We have it again in the map in Herrera, edition of 1728; and in 1729. Moll, the English geographer, likewise shows it. In the middle of the century (1760) the maps of Danville preserve the lake, though he had omitted it in an earlier edition; and the English edition, improved by Bolton in 1755, still continues it, as does an Italian edition (Venice) in 1779. The original Spanish of Gumilla’s El Orinoco (2d edition, Madrid, 1745) has a map which gives the lake, and it is repeated in the French edition at Avignon in 1758, and in a later Spanish one at Barcelona in 1781. Kitchen’s map, which was prepared for Robertson’s History of America, again shows it; and it is in the centre of a great water system in the large map of La Cruz, made by order of the King of Spain in 1775, which was re-engraved in London the same year. It is also represented in the maps in the Historia de la nueva Andalucia, of Antonio Caulin,[1584] Madrid, 1779, and in the Saggio di Storia Americana, Rome, 1780. Conrad Mannert’s map, published at Nuremberg in 1803, gives it; as do the various editions of François Depons’ Voyage dans l’Amerique méridionale, Paris, 1806. The lake here is given under thirty degrees north latitude, and Manoa is put at the northeast corner of it.

DE LAET, 1630.

The same plate was used for the English version “by an American gentleman,” published in New York in 1806; while the translation published in London in 1807, apparently the same with a few verbal changes, has a like configuration on a map of reduced scale. One of the latest preservations of the myth is the large map published in London by Faden in 1807, purporting to be based on the studies of D’Arcy de la Rochette, where the inland sea is explained by a legend: “Golden Lake, or Lake Parime, called likewise Parana Pitinga,—that is, White Sea,—on the banks of which the discoverers of the sixteenth century did place the imaginary city of Manoa del Dorado.” I have seen it in German maps as late as 1814, and the English geographer, Arrowsmith, kept it in his maps in his day.[1585]

It was left for Humboldt to set the seal of disbelief firmly upon the story.[1586] Schomburgk says that the inundations of extensive savannas during the tropical winter gave rise, no doubt, to the fable of the White Sea, assisted by an ignorance of the Indian language. Nevertheless, as late as 1844, Jacob A. van Heuvel, in his Eldorado, being a Narrative of the Circumstances which gave rise to Reports in the Sixteenth Century of the Existence of a Rich and Splendid City in South America, published in New York, clung to the idea; and he represents the lake somewhat doubtingly as in 4° north, and between 60° and 63° west, in the map accompanying his book.

Later in the seventeenth century the marvellous story took on another guise. It was remembered that after the conquest of Peru a great emigration of Inca Indians had taken place easterly beyond the mountains, and in the distant forests it was reputed they had established a new empire; and the names of Paytiti and Enim, already mentioned, were attached to these new theatres of Inca magnificence. Stories of this fabulous kingdom continued to be hatched well on into the eighteenth century, and not a few expeditions of more or less imposing strength were sent to find this kingdom. It never has been found; but, as Mr. Markham thinks, there is some reason to believe that the Inca Indians who fled with Tapac Amaru into the forests may for a considerable period have kept up their civilization somewhere in those vast plains east of the Andes. The same writer says that the belief was not without supporters when he was in Peru in 1853; and he adds that it is a pleasant reflection that this story may possibly be true.[1587]

The most considerable attempt of the seventeenth century to make better known the course of the Amazon was the expedition under Texeira, sent in 1639 to see if a practicable way could be found to transport the treasure from Peru by the Amazon to the Atlantic coast. Acuña’s book on this expedition, Nuevo descubrimiento del gran Rio de las Amazons,[1588] published at Madrid in 1641, is translated in Markham’s Valley of the Amazons, published by the Hakluyt Society. It was not till 1707, when Samuel Fritz, a Bohemian and a missionary, published his map of the Amazons at Quito, that we find something better than the vaguest delineation of the course of the great river.[1589]

It is not the purpose of the present essay to continue the story of the explorations of the Amazon into more recent times; but a word may be spared for the strange and sorrowful adventures along its stream, which came in the train of the expedition that was sent out by the French Government in 1735 to measure an arc of the meridian in Peru, for comparing the result with a similar measurement in Lapland. The object was to prove or to disprove the theory of Sir Isaac Newton that the earth was flattened at the poles. The commissioners—Bouguer, La Condamine, and Godin (the last accompanied by his wife)—arrived at Quito in June, 1736. The arc was measured; but the task did not permit them to think of returning before 1743, when La Condamine resolved to return by descending the Amazon and then making his way to the French colony of Cayenne. He and his companion, a Spanish gentleman seeking some adventure, had their full content of it, but safely accomplished the journey.

Another of the commissioners, Godin, having tarried a few years longer in Peru, had finally proceeded to Cayenne, where he made arrangements for embarking for France. Through the favor of the Portuguese Government he had been provided with a galiot of sixteen to twenty oars on a side, to ascend the river and meet his wife, who on receiving a message from him was to leave Peru with an escort and come down the river and meet him. Illness finally prevented the husband from proceeding; but he despatched the vessel, having on board one Tristan, who was charged with a letter to send ahead. By some faithlessness in Tristan, the letter miscarried; but Madame Godin sent a trusty messenger in anticipation, who found the galiot at Loreto awaiting her arrival, and returned with the tidings. The lady now started with her father and two brothers; and they allowed a certain Frenchman who called himself a physician to accompany them, while her negro servant, who had just returned over the route, attended them, as well as three Indian women and thirty Indian men to carry burdens. They encountered the small-pox among the river Indians, when their native porters deserted them. They found two other natives, who assisted them in building a boat; but after two days upon it these Indians also deserted them. They found another native, but he was shortly drowned. Then their boat began to leak and was abandoned. On pretext of sending assistance back, the French physician, taking with him the negro, pushed on to a settlement; but he forgot his promise, and the faithful black was so impeded in attempting alone the task of rescue, that he arrived at the camp only to find unrecognizable corpses. All but the lady had succumbed. She pushed on alone through the wilderness, encountering perils that appall as we read; but in the end, falling in with two Indians, she passed on from one mission station to another, and reached the galiot.

Thus a hundred years later than Orellana, the great river still flowed with a story of fearful hazards and treachery.

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