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.