On the last day of the year 1541 this voyage was commenced, and to such straits were the explorers reduced ere it ended, that they had recourse to boiling their leathern girdles and their shoes, to eat with the herbs upon which they had to subsist. At length the sound of a drum was heard, and four canoes were seen, when Orellana, landing his men, attacked the Indians with the impetuosity of wolves. The plunder of their property supplied the explorers for the present with food, and a further stock was obtained for the voyage. By means of an Indian language some verbal intercourse took place between Orellana and his hosts, and from this arose the name by which the river they were descending was destined to be ever afterwards known. Further down the stream—so the Indians said—there was a country inhabited by a tribe of female warriors. The Spaniards made themselves another boat and descended the river, passing by the mouths of numerous affluents and through the territories of many caciques. They landed at several places, and formally took possession of them for their monarch. They had at length to fight a battle, in which, it was affirmed, ten or twelve females took part. These women, of whom, according to the priest of the explorers, the Spaniards slew seven or eight, were tall and well formed; they were of fair complexion; they wore but a girdle; and they fought with desperation.
1542.
This voyage extended until the 26th of August 1542, when the triumphant Spaniards emerged at the mouth of the river, and courageously committed their frail barques to the currents and waves of the sea. Steering northwards, they desired to reach the island of Cubagua. The newly discovered river was at first named after Orellana, but soon afterwards took its enduring name from the real or imaginary female warriors,—“The Amazons.”
1542.
To return to Gonzalo Pizarro: After in vain awaiting during several miserable weeks the return of Orellana, Gonzalo determined to set out on the same journey by land; but two months were expended in toiling through the forest ere they reached the spot of the junction of the Napo with the Coca, which distance had been accomplished by Orellana by water in three days. There they found Vargas, who had been set on shore, and from him they learned that they had been deserted by their comrades. Their situation was now indeed deplorable, but they did not give way to despair, and after a toilsome return march, which occupied more than a year, a portion of the wayworn band arrived again at Quito. Their absence had extended over two years and a half. Their horses were no more; their clothing was replaced by the skins of wild animals; and they themselves from civilized beings had become transformed into wild men of the woods, with wasted frames, blackened faces, and tangled locks. Of the four thousand Indians who had accompanied them, one-half of the number alone returned, whilst the three hundred and fifty Spaniards were now represented by eighty.
There is but one more event to be recorded in order to complete this sketch of the origin of Spanish Peru. Among men of such hot blood and of such lawless manners as were the conquerors, it was scarcely probable that the followers of Almagro would await tamely whatever retribution for his death might be exacted in Spain; and in order that Almagro’s youthful son might be the more harmless, he was deprived by Pizarro in great part of his property, and likewise of the government of Chili. A conspiracy against the life of the marquis was the result, and the news of an appointment of a colleague with Pizarro in the government gave confidence to his enemies. The arrival of this officer being delayed by severe weather, the conspirators resolved no longer to await for public justice, but to take the law into their own hands. A band of eighteen formed themselves into a committee for its execution. They attacked Pizarro in his palace, and, after a desperate defence on his part and on that of the friends who surrounded him, consigned him to the fate which formed the appropriate close of his stormy career.
CHAPTER VIII.
CHILI.
1535-1550.
The authentic history of Chili, according to the Abbé Molina, does not go further back than to about the fifteenth century. The earliest accounts of the Chilians are contained in the Peruvian annals. The Incas had extended their empire from the equator to the tropic of Capricorn and thence to the desirable land of Chili, which extends for twelve hundred and sixty miles along the Pacific Ocean. The chain of the Cordilleras, which bounds it to the east, supplies it with an abundance of streams, moderating its climate and fertilizing its soil. At the time when the devastating presence of the Spaniards first appeared upon the land, the population is supposed to have been numerous. It had not been without severe fighting that the ascendancy of the Peruvians over this region was obtained; and, in like manner, the early Spaniards had to feel the force of the arm of the native tribes. Chili, indeed, had become divided into two parts; the one free, the other subject to Peruvian domination.
According to the author above quoted, the Chilians at the date of the Spaniards’ arrival were by no means so rude in manners as is usually supposed. They had long since passed from the state of the hunter, which is that of the Patagonian of to-day, to the more advanced state of the shepherd. This second stage in civilization, too, they had surmounted, and were now a race of husbandmen; they had not attained to the more advanced condition of merchants. In a country where game was not abundant, and where domestic animals were likewise rare, the transition to the condition of cultivators of the soil was probably of necessity rapid. It will be remembered that when Hernando Pizarro proceeded to Spain after the capture of the Inca Atahualpa, the territory for two hundred leagues to the south of his brother’s government had been assigned to Almagro, who had undertaken the march across the Andes to Chili.
When the difficulties of this terrible passage had been surmounted, Almagro and his men found themselves in a country supplied with abundance of provisions. The Chilians in fact, we are told, possessed maize, pulse of various kinds, the potato, the pumpkin, the pepper plant, the strawberry, and numerous other elements of vegetable food. Of animals they possessed the rabbit and the Araucanian camel, and, as tradition relates, the hog and the domestic fowl. The country may be assumed to have been well peopled, from the fact that one language prevailed throughout it, rather than the various dialects of several separate tribes. It possessed, in many parts, skilfully constructed aqueducts for watering the fields. Of these one remains in the vicinity of the capital, remarkable alike for its extent and solidity. The Chilians ate their grain cooked, either using earthen pots for the purpose of cooking it, or roasting it in hot sand. They likewise made of it two distinct kinds of meal,—the parched, which was used for gruel; and the raw, from which bread and cakes were baked in small holes formed like ovens. They made use of a kind of sieve, and they were so far civilized as to employ leaven. They were also in possession of several kinds of spirituous liquors derived from grain or berries.