FRANCISCO PIZARRO:
CONQUEROR OF PERU.
(1475-1538)
THERE was a Spaniard once, who lived in Panama and who had the high sounding name of Vasco Nuñez de Balboa.
Like all of the adventurers in the early days, he was ever on the lookout for gold. Do you wonder, therefore, that his brown eyes glittered and gleamed when an Indian chief came to him and said:
“If this yellow gold is what you prize so greatly that you are willing to leave your home and risk even life itself, for it, then I can tell you of a land where they eat and drink out of golden vessels, and gold is as common with the natives as iron is with you.”
It is unnecessary to add that the keen Balboa eagerly inquired where this place was to be found. And the Indian, sweeping his hand toward the South, said: “It is there,—Peru, the land of the Incas!”
The Spaniard did not forget what the native had said, and he told it to some of his friends, among whom was a young adventurer by the name of Francisco Pizarro, who had been sent to Panama to traffic with the natives for pearls. This fellow, who was a distant kinsman of Hernando Cortés, conqueror of Mexico, was a true adventurer; but he was the least educated of all the Spaniards who have made names for themselves in the New World. He had, indeed, been employed as a swine-herd near the city of Truxillo, in Spain, where he had been born. He could neither read nor write with any fluency. From childhood he had been neglected and had been left to make a living as best he might.