They saw the ships containing their comrades sail away without them; Ruiz also returned, pledged to bring assistance to his companions left behind; while Pizarro remained with his twelve Spaniards, and three or four Indian captives whom he had made friends, on the desolate island.
Not even a ship was left them, and they had to build a raft to convey them to a less inhospitable island, that of Gorgona, farther north. There they lived seven months, subsisting on small game brought down by their cross-bows, and shell-fish found on the shores, until Ruiz, after weary delays, returned in a small vessel, bringing supplies, but not the expected reinforcement of troops.
In this frail craft the dauntless rovers put to sea. Pizarro pursued his explorations southward, beyond the point where he afterward founded Truxillo, named after his native town; visited several Peruvian ports, and learned much of the country he proposed to subjugate. He then returned to Panama, which he reached after an absence of eighteen months. The reappearance of the little group of wanderers bringing news of their discoveries, was the cause of great astonishment in the colony, and of joyful enthusiasm among their friends, who had long given them up for dead.
The governor, however, resenting Pizarro's disobedience of his orders at the isle of Gallo, refused to sanction another expedition; and Pizarro resolved upon the bold course of returning to Spain and appealing to the Crown. This was in the spring of 1528.
Arriving at Seville, he was immediately thrown into prison for a debt incurred at Darien. But he was released by order of the emperor, Charles V., who received him graciously at Toledo, heard the wondrous story of his wanderings, which Pizarro knew how to tell, and saw the vessels of gold and silver, the fine fabrics, the llamas, and other evidences of the Peruvian civilization, which were displayed before his royal eyes. He was also, no doubt influenced by the recent achievements of Cortes, who was then at court, and who perhaps spoke for his kinsman a friendly word.
The monarch turned over Pizarro and his enterprise, with his recommendation, to the Council of the Indies. Yet a year passed, and nothing was done. Pizarro was fast sinking into obscurity, and he would likewise have sunk into despair, if he had been less stout of heart. Then, as Queen Isabella had aided Columbus, so the queen of Charles V. came to the assistance of Pizarro, and caused to be executed the extraordinary instrument which bestowed on him, with the rights of discovery and conquest, the titles of Governor and Captain-General of New Castile, as Peru was then called, and a salary of 725,000 maravedis, to be drawn however from the conquered country. Almagro and Luque were also provided for, but in a more modest way, which proved the beginning of a long, bitter, and deadly feud between Almagro and his chief. Nor did the instrument fail to make the usual provision for the conversion to Christianity of the nations to be subjugated and plundered.
In mustering his recruits Pizarro had the satisfaction of revisiting his native town of Truxillo, where he had lived in degradation, and to which he now returned a renowned discoverer and soldier, and a titled magnate. There he found his three brothers, the Pizarros, all poor and proud and eager for adventure; and a fourth brother, on his mother's side. With these and other followers, hardly exceeding one hundred, he sailed from Seville, in January, 1530; and a year later, namely, in January, 1531, after a solemn consecration of his enterprise in the cathedral of Panama, he put forth from that port with one hundred and eighty men and twenty-seven horses, on his fourth, last, and finally successful expedition, to overthrow a populous empire.
That empire lay in the bosom and on both sides of the mighty ranges of the Andes, occupying thirty-seven degrees of the coast south of the equator, and extending eastward far over the valleys of the Amazon and its numerous tributaries. It was under the rule of the Incas, a parental despotism, which spread an iron network of laws over millions of subjects of different races and languages. Its mountain slopes, table-lands, sea-coasts, and plains comprised every variety of climate and almost every diversity of physical features. Its capital was Cuzco, where dwelt the adored Incas; there also was the famous Temple of the Sun, with its gorgeous decorations of gold and gems. Canals, aqueducts, complete systems of irrigation for the rainless regions; magnificent mountain roads, built to endure for centuries; fine textile fabrics, utensils of clay and copper, vessels and ornaments of silver and gold; bridges, fortresses, and edifices of a rude but massy and symmetrical architecture, well adapted to the climate and the needs of the inhabitants; armies, magistrates, courts of justice,—such were some of the tokens of a wide semi-civilized prosperity, which less than two hundred Spanish adventurers were proceeding ruthlessly to destroy.
With incredible difficulties still to overcome, Pizarro had in his favor a circumstance of immense importance. The country was at that time distracted by civil war. Two brothers, Huascar and Atahualpa, sons of the last Inca, were engaged in a fratricidal strife for the imperial power, and their armies were turned against each other.
Pizarro resolved to strike his first blow at Tumbez; but was constrained by baffling winds to put into the Bay St. Matthew. There he landed his force, and soon fell upon a peaceful village, putting the inhabitants to flight and pillaging their dwellings. A considerable treasure thus obtained was sent back to Panama, where it had the desired effect of rallying new recruits for the conquest. A most welcome reinforcement was headed by Hernando de Soto, afterwards famed as the discoverer of the Mississippi, who sailed to join Pizarro with one hundred men and a number of horses.