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$Unique_ID{bob00713}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{History Of The Conquest Of Peru
Chapter II: Part II}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Prescott, William H.}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{pizarro
spaniards
de
coast
place
vessel
yet
found
gold
present}
$Date{1864}
$Log{}
Title:       History Of The Conquest Of Peru
Book:        Book II: Discovery Of Peru
Author:      Prescott, William H.
Date:        1864

Chapter II: Part II

     Entirely discouraged by the aspect of the country, the Spaniards began
to comprehend that they had gained nothing by changing their quarters from
sea to shore, and they felt the most serious apprehensions of perishing from
famine in a region which afforded nothing but such unwholesome berries as
they could pick up here and there in the woods.  They loudly complained of
their hard lot, accusing their commander as the author of all their troubles,
and as deluding them with promises of a fairy land, which seemed to recede
in proportion as they advanced.  It was of no use, they said, to contend
against fate, and it was better to take their chance of regaining the port
of Panama in time to save their lives, than to wait where they were to die
of hunger.

     But Pizarro was prepared to encounter much greater evils than these,
before returning to Panama, bankrupt in credit, an object of derision as a
vainglorious dreamer, who had persuaded others to embark in an adventure which
he had not the courage to carry through himself.  The present was his only
chance.  To return would be ruin.  He used every argument, therefore, that
mortified pride or avarice could suggest to turn his followers from their
purpose; represented to them that these were the troubles that necessarily lay
in the path of the discoverer; and called to mind the brilliant successes of
their countrymen in other quarters, and the repeated reports, which they had
themselves received, of the rich regions along this coast, of which it
required only courage and constancy on their part to become the masters.  Yet,
as their present exigencies were pressing, he resolved to send back the vessel
to the Isle of Pearls, to lay in a fresh stock of provisions for his company,
which might enable them to go forward with renewed confidence.  The distance
was not great, and in a few days they would all be relieved from their
perilous position.  The officer detached on this service was named Montenegro;
and taking with him nearly half the company, after receiving Pizarro's
directions, he instantly weighed anchor, and steered for the Isle of Pearls.

     On the departure of his vessel, the Spanish commander made an attempt
to explore the country, and see if some Indian settlement might not be found,
where he could procure refreshments for his followers.  But his efforts were
vain, and no trace was visible of a human dwelling; though, in the dense and
impenetrable foliage of the equatorial regions, the distance of a few rods
might suffice to screen a city from observation.  The only means of
nourishment left to the unfortunate adventurers were such shell-fish as they
occasionally picked up on the shore, or the bitter buds of the palm-tree, and
such berries and unsavoury herbs as grew wild in the woods.  Some of these
were so poisonous, that the bodies of those who ate them swelled up and were
tormented with racking pains.  Others, preferring famine to this miserable
diet, pined away from weakness and actually died of starvation.  Yet their
resolute leader strove to maintain his own cheerfulness and to keep up the
drooping spirits of his men.  He freely shared with them his scanty stock of
provisions, was unwearied in his endeavours to procure them sustenance,
tended the sick, and ordered barracks to be constructed for their
accommodation, which might, at least, shelter them from the drenching storms
of the season.  By this ready sympathy with his followers in their
sufferings, he obtained an ascendency over their rough natures, which the
assertion of authority, at least in the present extremity, could never have
secured to him.

     Day after day, week after week, had now passed away, and no tidings were
heard of the vessel that was to bring relief to the wanderers.  In vain did
they strain their eyes over the distant waters to catch a glimpse of their
coming friends.  Not a speck was to be seen in the blue distance, where the
canoe of the savage dared not venture, and the sail of the white man was not
yet spread.  Those who had borne up bravely at first now gave way to
despondency, as they felt themselves abandoned by their countrymen on this
desolate shore.  They pined under that sad feeling which "maketh the heart
sick." More than twenty of the little band had already died, and the
survivors seemed to be rapidly following. ^14

[Footnote 14: Ibid., ubi supra. - Relacion del Primer.  Descub., Ms. - Xerez,
Conq. del Peru, ubi supra.]

     At this crisis reports were brought to Pizarro of a light having been
seen through a distant opening in the woods.  He hailed the tidings with
eagerness, as intimating the existence of some settlement in the
neighbourhood; and, putting himself at the head of a small party, went in the
direction pointed out, to reconnoitre.  He was not disappointed, and, after
extricating himself from a dense wilderness of underbrush and foliage, he
emerged into an open space, where a small Indian village was planted.  The
timid inhabitants, on the sudden apparition of the strangers, quitted their
huts in dismay; and the famished Spaniards, rushing in, eagerly made
themselves masters of their contents.  These consisted of different articles
of food, chiefly maize and cocoanuts.  The supply, though small, was too
seasonable not to fill them with rapture.

     The astonished natives made no attempt at resistance.  But, gathering
more confidence as no violence was offered to their persons, they drew nearer
the white men, and inquired, "Why they did not stay at home and till their
own lands, instead of roaming about to rob others who had never harmed
them?" ^15 Whatever may have been their opinion as to the question of right,
the Spaniards, no doubt, felt then that it would have been wiser to do so.
But the savages wore about their persons gold ornaments of some size, though
of clumsy workmanship.  This furnished the best reply to their demand.  It
was the golden bait which lured the Spanish adventurer to forsake his
pleasant home for the trials of the wilderness.  From the Indians Pizarro
gathered a confirmation of the reports he had so often received of a rich
country lying farther south; and at the distance of ten days' journey across
the mountains, they told him, there dwelt a mighty monarch whose dominions
had been invaded by another still more powerful, the Child of the Sun. ^16 It
may have been the invasion of Quito that was meant, by the valiant Inca
Huayna Capac, which took place some years previous to Pizarro's expedition.

[Footnote 15: "Porque decian a los Castellanos, que por que no sembraban. i
cogian, sin andar tomando los Bastimentos agenos, pasando tantos trabajos?"
Herrera, Hist. General, loc. cit.]

[Footnote 16: "Dioles noticia el viejo por medio del lengua, como diez soles
de alli habia un Rey muy poderoso yendo por espesas montanas, y que otro mas
poderoso hijo del sol habia venido de milagro a quitarle el Reino sobre que
tenian mui sangrientas batallas." (Montesinos, Annales, Ms., ano 1525.) The
conquest of Quito by Huayna Capac took place more than thirty years before
this period in our history.  But the particulars of this revolution, its time
or precise theatre, were, probably, but very vaguely comprehended by the rude
nations in the neighbourhood of Panama: and their allusion to it in an
unknown dialect was as little comprehended by the Spanish voyagers, who must
have collected their information from signs much more than words.]

     At length, after the expiration of more than six weeks, the Spaniards
beheld with delight the return of the wandering bark that had borne away
their comrades, and Montenegro sailed into port with an ample supply of
provisions for his famishing countrymen.  Great was his horror at the aspect
presented by the latter, their wild and haggard countenances and wasted
frames, - so wasted by hunger and disease, that their old companions found
it difficult to recognize them.  Montenegro accounted for his delay by
incessant head winds and bad weather; and he himself had also a doleful tale
to tell of the distress to which he and his crew had been reduced by hunger,
on their passage to the Isle of Pearls. - It is minute incidents like these
with which we have been occupied, that enable one to comprehend the extremity
of suffering to which the Spanish adventurer was subjected in the prosecution
of his great work of discovery.

     Revived by the substantial nourishment to which they had so long been
strangers, the Spanish cavaliers, with the buoyancy that belongs to men of
a hazardous and roving life, forgot their past distresses in their eagerness
to prosecute their enterprise.  Reembarking therefore on board his vessel,
Pizarro bade adieu to the scene of so much suffering, which he branded with
the appropriate name of Puerto de la Hambre, the Port of Famine, and again
opened his sails to a favorable breeze that bore him onwards towards the
south.

     Had he struck boldly out into the deep, instead of hugging the
inhospitable shore, where he had hitherto found so little to recompense him,
he might have spared himself the repetition of wearisome and unprofitable
adventures, and reached by a shorter route the point of his destination.  But
the Spanish mariner groped his way along these unknown coasts, landing at
every convenient headland, as if fearful lest some fruitful region or
precious mine might be overlooked, should a single break occur in the line
of survey.  Yet it should be remembered, that, though the true point of
Pizarro's destination is obvious to us, familiar with the topography of these
countries, he was wandering in the dark, feeling his way along, inch by inch,
as it were, without chart to guide him, without knowledge of the seas or of
the bearings of the coast, and even with no better defined idea of the object
at which he aimed than that of a land, teeming with gold, that lay somewhere
at the south!  It was a hunt after an El Dorado; on information scarcely more
circumstantial or authentic than that which furnished the basis of so many
chimerical enterprises in this land of wonders.  Success only, the best
argument with the multitude, redeemed the expeditions of Pizarro from a
similar imputation of extravagance.

     Holding on his southerly course under the lee of the shore, Pizarro,
after a short run, found himself abreast of an open reach of country, or at
least one less encumbered with wood, which rose by a gradual swell, as it
receded from the coast.  He landed with a small body of men, and, advancing
a short distance into the interior, fell in with an Indian hamlet.  It was
abandoned by the inhabitants, who, on the approach of the invaders, had
betaken themselves to the mountains; and the Spaniards, entering their
deserted dwellings, found there a good store of maize and other articles of
food, and rude ornaments of gold of considerable value.  Food was not more
necessary for their bodies than was the sight of gold, from time to time, to
stimulate their appetite for adventure.  One spectacle, however, chilled
their blood with horror.  This was the sight of human flesh, which they found
roasting before the fire, as the barbarians had left it, preparatory to their
obscene repast.  The Spaniards, conceiving that they had fallen in with a
tribe of Caribs, the only race in that part of the New World known to be
cannibals, retreated precipitately to their vessel. ^17 They were not steeled
by sad familiarity with the spectacle, like the Conquerors of Mexico.

[Footnote 17: "I en las Ollas de la comida, que estaban al Fuego, entre la
Carne, que sacaban, havia Pies i Manos de Hombres, de donde conocieron, que
aquellos Indios eran Caribes." Herrera, Hist. General dec. 3, lib. 8, cap.
11.]

     The weather, which had been favorable, new set in tempestuous, with
heavy squalls, accompanied by incessant thunder and lightning, and the rain,
as usual in these tropical tempests, descended not so much in drops as in
unbroken sheets of water.  The Spaniards, however, preferred to take their
chance on the raging element rather than remain in the scene of such brutal
abominations.  But the fury of the storm gradually subsided, and the little
vessel held on her way along the coast, till, coming abreast of a bold point
of land named by Pizarro Punta Quemada, he gave orders to anchor.  The margin
of the shore was fringed with a deep belt of mangrove-trees, the long roots
of which, interlacing one another, formed a kind of submarine lattice-work
that made the place difficult of approach.  Several avenues, opening through
this tangled thicket, led Pizarro to conclude that the country must be
inhabited, and he disembarked, with the greater part of his force, to explore
the interior.

     He had not penetrated more than a league, when he found his conjecture
verified by the sight of an Indian town of larger size than those he had
hitherto seen, occupying the brow of an eminence, and well defended by
palisades.  The inhabitants, as usual, had fled; but left in their dwellings
a good supply of provisions and some gold trinkets, which the Spaniards made
no difficulty of appropriating to themselves.  Pizarro's flimsy bark had been
strained by the heavy gales it had of late encountered, so that it was unsafe
to prosecute the voyage further without more thorough repairs than could be
given to her on this desolate coast.  He accordingly determined to send her
back with a few hands to be careened at Panama, and meanwhile to establish
his quarters in his present position, which was so favorable for defence.
But first he despatched a small party under Montenegro to reconnoitre the
country, and, if possible, to open a communication with the natives.

     The latter were a warlike race.  They had left their habitations in
order to place their wives and children in safety.  But they had kept an eye
on the movements of the invaders, and, when they saw their forces divided,
they resolved to fall upon each body singly before it could communicate with
the other.  So soon, therefore, as Montenegro had penetrated through the
defiles of the lofty hills, which shoot out like spurs of the Cordilleras
along this part of the coast, the Indian warriors, springing from their
ambush, sent off a cloud of arrows and other missiles that darkened the air,
while they made the forest ring with their shrill war-whoop.  The Spaniards,
astonished at the appearance of the savages, with their naked bodies gaudily
painted, and brandishing their weapons as they glanced among the trees and
straggling underbrush that choked up the defile, were taken by surprise and
thrown for a moment into disarray.  Three of their number were killed and
several wounded.  Yet, speedily rallying, they returned the discharge of the
assailants with their cross-bows, - for Pizarro's troops do not seem to have
been provided with muskets on this expedition, - and then gallantly charging
the enemy, sword in hand, succeeded in driving them back into the fastnesses
of the mountains.  But it only led them to shift their operations to another
quarter, and make an assault on Pizarro before he could be relieved by his
lieutenant.

     Availing themselves of their superior knowledge of the passes, they
reached that commander's quarters long before Montenegro, who had commenced
a countermarch in the same direction.  And issuing from the woods, the bold
savages saluted the Spanish garrison with a tempest of darts and arrows, some
of which found their way through the joints of the harness and the quilted
mail of the cavaliers.  But Pizarro was too well practised a soldier to be
off his guard.  Calling his men about him, he resolved not to abide the
assault tamely in the works, but to sally out, and meet the enemy on their
own ground.  The barbarians, who had advanced near the defences, fell back
as the Spaniards burst forth with their valiant leader at their head.  But,
soon returning with admirable ferocity to the charge, they singled out
Pizarro, whom, by his bold bearing and air of authority, they easily
recognized as the chief; and, hurling at him a storm of missiles, wounded
him, in spite of his armour, in no less than seven places. ^18

[Footnote 18: Naharro, Relacion Sumaria, Ms. - Xerez, Conq. del Peru, ap.
Barcia, tom. III. p. 180. - Zarate, Conq. del Peru, lib. 1, cap. 1. - Balboa,
Hist. du Perou, chap. 15.]

     Driven back by the fury of the assault directed against his own person,
the Spanish commander retreated down the slope of the hill, still defending
himself as he could with sword and buckler, when his foot slipped and he
fell.  The enemy set up a fierce yell of triumph, and some of the boldest
sprang forward to despatch him.  But Pizarro was on his feet in an instant,
and, striking down two of the foremost with his strong arm, held the rest at
bay till his soldiers could come to the rescue.  The barbarians, struck with
admiration at his valor, began to falter, when Montenegro luckily coming on
the ground at the moment, and falling on their rear, completed their
confusion; and, abandoning the field, they made the best of their way into
the recesses of the mountains.  The ground was covered with their slain; but
the victory was dearly purchased by the death of two more Spaniards and a
long list of wounded.

     A council of war was then called.  The position had lost its charm in
the eyes of the Spaniards, who had met here with the first resistance they
had yet experienced on their expedition.  It was necessary to place the
wounded in some secure spot, where their injuries could be attended to.  Yet
it was not safe to proceed farther, in the crippled state of their vessel.
On the whole, it was decided to return and report their proceedings to the
governor; and, though the magnificent hopes of the adventurers had not been
realized, Pizarro trusted that enough had been done to vindicate the
importance of the enterprise, and to secure the countenance of Pedrarias for
the further prosecution of it. ^19

[Footnote 19: Herrera, Hist. General, dec. 3, lib. 8, cap. 11. - Xerez, ubi
supra.]

     Yet Pizarro could not make up his mind to present himself, in the
present state of the undertaking, before the governor.  He determined,
therefore, to be set on shore with the principal part of his company at
Chicama, a place on the main land, at a short distance west of Panama.  From
this place, which he reached without any further accident, he despatched the
vessel, and in it his treasurer, Nicolas de Ribera, with the gold he had
collected, and with instructions to lay before the governor a full account
of his discoveries, and the result of the expedition.

     While these events were passing, Pizarro's associate, Almagro, had been
busily employed in fitting out another vessel for the expedition at the port
of Panama.  It was not till long after his friend's departure that he was
prepared to follow him.  With the assistance of Luque, he at length succeeded
in equipping a small caravel and embarking a body of between sixty and
seventy adventurers, mostly of the lowest order of the colonists.  He steered
in the track of his comrade, with the intention of overtaking him as soon as
possible.  By a signal previously concerted of notching the trees, he was
able to identify the spots visited by Pizarro, - Puerto de Pinas, Puerto de
la Hambre, Pueblo Quemado, - touching successively at every point of the
coast explored by his countrymen, though in a much shorter time.  At the
last-mentioned place he was received by the fierce natives with the same
hostile demonstrations as Pizarro, though in the present encounter the
Indians did not venture beyond their defences.  But the hot blood of Almagro
was so exasperated by this check, that he assaulted the place and carried it
sword in hand, setting fire to the outworks and dwellings, and driving the
wretched inhabitants into the forests.

     His victory cost him dear.  A wound from a javelin on the head caused
an inflammation in one of his eyes, which, after great anguish, ended in the
loss of it.  Yet the intrepid adventurer did not hesitate to pursue his
voyage, and, after touching at several places on the coast, some of which
rewarded him with a considerable booty in gold, he reached the mouth of the
Rio de San Juan, about the fourth degree of north latitude.  He was struck
with the beauty of the stream, and with the cultivation on its borders, which
were sprinkled with Indian cottages showing some skill in their construction,
and altogether intimating a higher civilization than any thing he had yet
seen.

     Still his mind was filled with anxiety for the fate of Pizarro and his
followers.  No trace of them had been found on the coast for a long time, and
it was evident they must have foundered at sea, or made their way back to
Panama.  This last he deemed most probable; as the vessel might have passed
him unnoticed under the cover of the night, or of the dense fogs that
sometimes hang over the coast.

     Impressed with this belief, he felt no heart to continue his voyage of
discovery, for which, indeed, his single bark, with its small complement of
men, was altogether inadequate.  He proposed, therefore, to return without
delay.  On his way, he touched at the Isle of Pearls, and there learned the
result of his friend's expedition, and the place of his present residence.
Directing his course, at once, to Chicama, the two cavaliers soon had the
satisfaction of embracing each other, and recounting their several exploits
and escapes.  Almagro returned even better freighted with gold than his
confederate, and at every step of his progress he had collected fresh
confirmation of the existence of some great and opulent empire in the South.
The confidence of the two friends was much strengthened by their discoveries;
and they unhesitatingly pledged themselves to one another to die rather than
abandon the enterprise. ^20

[Footnote 20: Xerez, ubi supra. - Naharro, Relacion Sumaria, Ms. - Zarate,
Conq. del Peru, loc. cit. - Balboa, Hist. du Perou, chap. 15. - Relacion del
Primer. Descub., Ms. - Herrera, Hist. General, dec. 3, lib. 8, cap. 13. -
Levinus Apollonius, fol. 12. - Gomara, Hist. de las Ind., cap. 108.]

     The best means of obtaining the levies requisite for so formidable an
undertaking - more formidable, as it now appeared to them, than before - were
made the subject of long and serious discussion.  It was at length decided
that Pizarro should remain in his present quarters, inconvenient and even
unwholesome as they were rendered by the humidity of the climate, and the
pestilent swarms of insects that filled the atmosphere.  Almagro would pass
over to Panama, lay the case before the governor, and secure, if possible,
his good-will towards the prosecution of the enterprise.  If no obstacle were
thrown in their way from this quarter, they might hope, with the assistance
of Luque, to raise the necessary supplies; while the results of the recent
expedition were sufficiently encouraging to draw adventurers to their
standard in a community which had a craving for excitement that gave even
danger a charm, and which held life cheap in comparison with gold.