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"The Inca language was spoken throughout the empire. Garrisons were distributed at strategic points and were connected by the famous roads which have been the wonder and admiration of the world.... There was a central highway from Quito to Cuzco, and thence southward, which is thus described by the historian Cieza" : "'I believe that since the history of man has been recorded there has been no account of such grandeur as is to be seen on this road, which passes over deep valleys and lofty mountains, by snowy heights, over falls of water, through the living rocks and along the edges of furious torrents. In all these places it is level and paved, along mountain slopes well excavated, through the living rock cut, along the river banks supported by walls, in the snowy heights with steps and resting places, in all parts clean-swept, clear of stones, with posts and storehouses and temples of the sun at intervals. Oh, what greater thing could be said of Alexander, or of any of the powerful kings that have ruled in the world, than that they had made such a road as this and conceived the works that were required for it! The roads constructed by the Romans in Spain are not to be compared with it.' The post houses were some four or five miles apart and in each were two Indians who carried messages to and from the next house in line, whereby the government was kept constantly informed of what was going on in all parts of its dominions. In this way messages could travel at the rate of nearly a hundred and fifty miles a day."

There was no money or other medium of exchange; gold and silver were used only for purposes of adornment; such trade as there was, was by barter. Every man was obliged to work for the common good at some form of industry or occupation suitable to his strength and age and, if able, to take his turn at the maintenance and extension of the irrigation systems, which in that way were brought to such a state of perfection that modern Peru still lives on the half-ruined fragments of their canals and conduits and reservoirs. Hardly a spot of arable soil was left uncultivated. Whole mountains were terraced for thousands of feet up their sides.

Private ownership in land did not exist; it belonged to the communes. The custom was to divide it into tracts, each large enough to support a family, and parcel it out; for every child born there was an additional allotment, and, at intervals, a general revision and redistribution. The produce was divided into three parts: one for the Inca and his establishment, one for the priesthood, and one for the commune. When one section of the country was impoverished by war or some other casualty, its needs were supplied by assessments levied on the others. The occupations of the women, both in town and country, were essentially domestic. Some were brought up from childhood and specially educated to serve in the religious rites and in the household of the reigning Inca. These were known as Virgins of the Sun.

The capital, Cuzco, was located in a valley about two hundred miles northwest of Lake Titicaca and at a lower elevation, yet still more than two miles up above the level of the sea. A colossal, massive-walled citadel loomed over it from the heights of Sacsahuaman above the town. Strong walls and towers inclosed it on every side. In its midst was a great square, from which started the remarkable roads leading to the four corners of the empire, referred to by Hawthorne. One whole side was occupied by the temple, and near by were the dwellings of the priests and the palaces of the Inca and the Virgins of the Sun. This sacred space was a citadel in itself, protected by five heavy walls.

Describing the temple, the historian of the conquest, Garcilaso de la Vega , says that "All the four walls were covered from roof to floor with plates and slabs of gold. In the side, where we should place the altar, they placed a figure of the Sun, made of a plate of gold of a thickness double that of the other plates which covered the walls. The figure was made with a circular face and rays of fire issuing from it, all of one piece, just as the sun is represented by painters. It was so large as to occupy one side of the temple from one wall to the other." Even the doorposts were of gold. One door, encased in silver, led to a hall dedicated to the Moon-Goddess, where the images and furnishings were all of silver, as were also the decorations of the mummies of the Incas' wives.

Of the palaces of the Incas, Francisco Lopez de Gomara tells us that "all the service of their house, table and kitchen, was of gold and silver, or at least of silver and copper. The Inca had in his chamber hollow statues of gold, which appeared like giants, and others naturally imitated from animals, birds, and trees, from plants produced by the land and from such fish as are yielded by the waters of the kingdom. He also had ropes, baskets and hampers of gold and silver and piles of golden sticks to imitate fuel prepared for burning. In short, there was nothing that his territory produced that he had not got imitated in gold."

Cieza de Leon says of the magnificence of the harvest festivals celebrated in the great plaza of the temple: "We hold it to be very certain that neither in Jerusalem, nor in Rome, nor in Persia, nor in any other part of the world, was such wealth of gold and silver and precious stones collected together." In his later years, while living in Spain, Garcilaso de la Vega, who had been just as enthusiastic in his description, and seemed to fear that he might be suspected of romancing, took occasion to write that "this is not hard for those to believe who have since seen so much gold and silver arrive here from that land. In the year 1595 alone, within the space of eight months, thirty-five millions of gold and silver crossed the bar of San Lucar in three cargoes."

"Many generations of culture and Inca rule had produced men of a very different physical type," Markham tells us, "from the Peruvian Indian of to-day. We see the Incas in the pictures at the church of Santa Ana at Cuzco," he continues.

Mozans, writing of the spot they held most sacred of all, says:

Fortunately for Pizarro, at the time he made his appearance on the scene, it happened that these people were either still engaged in or had only just terminated a civil war that had been brought on by an attempt of Huascar, the then reigning Inca, to impose his will on his half-brother, Atahualpa, a rebellious vassal. It appears that Huascar's father, the Inca Huayna Capac, having completed the subjugation of the Caras and their brave allies in Ecuador, had found it necessary to remain in Quito nearly all the rest of his life, to keep the inhabitants in subjection and suppress revolts that frequently occurred. As a political move, perhaps, he had married the daughter and heiress of the defeated Shiri and by her had had a son. This was Atahualpa. As he, too, had continued to live in Quito, he had come to be regarded rather as a scion of the ancient Shiri dynasty than as a prince of an alien conquering house.

And so when in 1525 Huayna Capac died, he left this northern kingdom to Atahualpa and only the southern to Huascar, his eldest son of the full Inca blood, born of his sister-wife; but, to preserve some sort of unity in the empire, he commanded that Huascar, as the only legitimate heir, should be paramount. Huascar, nevertheless, had declined to acquiesce in any such virtual division of dominions that he regarded as his by right of succession, and at the first opportunity had quarreled with Atahualpa and invaded the territory apportioned to him. In the battles that followed Atahualpa's forces had been uniformly victorious, for, always superior in prowess to the now more effete soldiery that had defeated them in their former less organized state, years of Inca rule had taught these northerners how to make better avail of their energy and courage. Suffering enormous losses in every engagement, the forces of Huascar had been driven farther and farther south, until at last, in spite of reinforcements which, it is said, brought his army up to fully seventy thousand, he was beaten before the walls of his capital and made prisoner.

As soon as his capture had become known, what was left of his army had dispersed, the city had surrendered, and Atahualpa, if we are to believe the chroniclers, had taken a terrible revenge, first causing all Huascar's subjects that were of royal blood, and who could be found, to be put to death, and afterward the captured officers who had fought for him. His cruelty, Garcilaso de la Vega tells us, "was greater than that of the Turks. Not content with the blood of his own two hundred brothers, the sons of the great Huayna Capac, he passed on to drink that of his uncles, nephews, and other relations, so that none of the blood royal might escape, whether legitimate or not. They were all murdered in different ways.... He ordered all the women and children" "to be assembled, of whatever age and condition, reserving only those who were dedicated to the Sun in the convent of Cuzco. He ordered that they should be killed outside the city, by little and little, and by various cruel tortures, so that they might be long in dying."

"On receiving Pizarro's answer to his friendly message, Atahualpa resolved to await the promised visit, apparently suspecting no evil. The audacious Spaniard had, however, conceived the design of capturing the victorious claimant of the throne of the Incas, well knowing that in its actual distracted condition the country would be left without a center about which it could rally. Open war, no matter how overwhelming his first victory might be, could hardly be ultimately successful. Atahualpa, once safe at Cuzco or Quito, and surrounded by the disciplined soldiers who had overthrown Huascar, a defensive campaign might be undertaken in which Pizarro would find every step toward either capital bitterly disputed. Hundreds of thousands of Peruvians pouring up from the numberless provinces of the empire would be thrown in a never ceasing succession of armies against the little band of Spaniards and the latter would infallibly be driven back to the coast by starvation and fatigue, if not by defeat in the field.

"Apparently foolhardy, in fact Pizarro's plan offered the only chance of success. Never dreaming that such a step was in contemplation, Atahualpa took no precautions. Leaving fifty-five men at the little port of San Miguel in the Paita valley to secure his retreat, Pizarro marched south with one hundred and two foot soldiers, sixty-two horses, and two small cannon, two hundred miles along the coast plain to a point opposite Cajamarca, and ascended along an Inca military road, meeting a friendly reception from the wondering natives, and supplied with provisions by Atahualpa's orders. On the 15th of September, 1532, he entered Cajamarca. He found an open square in the middle of the town, surrounded by walls and solid stone buildings, which he received permission to occupy as quarters. From his camp outside Atahualpa sent word that on the following day he would enter the town in state and receive the Spaniards.

"Marvelous good fortune favored Pizarro's designs. The Indians had furnished a trap all ready made, and now Atahualpa deliberately walked into it. On the morning of the 16th the Indian army broke camp and marched to Cajamarca, followed by the Emperor, who was borne in a litter and surrounded by his personal attendants, the great chiefs and the nobles belonging to his own lineage." "At sunset he entered the square, accompanied only by these unarmed attendants and found Pizarro and a few Spaniards awaiting him. The rest were hidden in the houses around the square with their horses saddled, their breastplates on, and musketry and cannon ready charged. From among the group that surrounded Pizarro, stepped forward Friar Valverde and approached the Inca monarch, who, reclining in a litter raised high above the crowd on the shoulders of his attendants, waited with dignity to hear what these strangers had to say.

"The priest advanced with a cross in one hand and a Bible in the other and began a harangue which, clumsily translated by an Indian boy, the Inca hardly understood. But in a few moments he realized that this uncouth jargon was meant to convey an arrogant demand that he acknowledge himself a vassal of Charles V and submit to baptism. With haughty surprise, he threw down the book Valverde tried to force into his hand. The priest shouted: 'Fall on, Castilians--I absolve you!' and into the helpless crowd burst a murderous fire from the doors of the houses all around. Aghast and bewildered by this display of powers which to them seemed necromantic, the survivors nevertheless stood manfully to the attack of the mail-clad horsemen who rode into the huddled masses, ferociously slashing and slaughtering. The Indians strove desperately to drag the Spaniards from the horses with their naked hands and interposed a living wall of human flesh between the murderers and their beloved sovereign. At length Pizarro's own hands snatched Atahualpa from the litter. The Indian soldiers outside, hearing the firearms and the noise of the struggle, tried to force their way into the square, but the Spanish musketry and cannon mowed them down by hundreds and they fled before the charges of the cavalry, dispersing in the twilight."

Atahualpa was then confined in a small stone house adjoining the palace of the Virgins of the Sun , and every precaution possible under the circumstances was taken to prevent his rescue. Pizarro's next move in the conquest was to murder him. But, in the meanwhile, he had suggested in conversations with his prisoner that Huascar's followers would probably take advantage of the opportunity afforded by his capture to reorganize their scattered forces and make an effort to regain the throne; he had hinted, too, at the advisability of arbitration, and Atahualpa had taken alarm and secretly ordered Huascar's execution; whereupon Pizarro had feigned the greatest indignation and had contrived to frighten his victim into offering his famous ransom. "I will fill this room with gold," he said, "as high as I can reach, if only you will liberate me." Pizarro accepted, a truce was agreed upon, Atahualpa ordered all preparations for war on the Spaniards to be suspended, and arranged for the collection of the gold. When the amount stipulated for was at last assembled, it was found to have a value equivalent to more than seventeen millions of dollars in our currency. Some historians say much more. Dawson, for instance, says it was more than twenty-two millions. One-fifth was sent to the royal treasury in Spain and the rest was divided among the adventurers. The share of the private soldiers even was large enough to make each of them rich for life.

Nevertheless, Pizarro had not performed his part of the agreement by setting his prisoner at liberty. Whether or not he had ever intended to can only be conjectured. It is clear only that, even if he did enter into the agreement in bad faith, as was charged by the chroniclers, he was afterward confronted by a problem which, in the opinion of recent writers, justified his perfidious behavior. Quizquiz, the general whose ability had enabled Atahualpa so often to defeat his late rival, was known to have taken the field with a large body of troops. Could a man such as Atahualpa had proven himself to be, released and at the head of a great army once more, be expected to permit these foreigners, who had so treacherously captured him and slain his attendants while on a friendly visit, to depart in peace with their loot? It did not seem likely. On the other hand, retreat through a then hostile country with the prisoner still in custody was out of the question, and, if he should continue to hold him in Cajamarca, Quizquiz, who had only been awaiting the word, would no longer hesitate to attack.

Some weeks before this, Almagro had joined the Conquistadores at Cajamarca with reinforcements that brought the Spanish force up to about five hundred. As soon as Atahualpa had been disposed of, the commander, with all his men, began his advance, by forced marches, on Cuzco, an advantageous position near which he was fortunate enough to secure without having encountered Quizquiz, though some of the cavalry under De Soto were engaged by a detachment on the way; all efforts to interpose the main body of the Indian army were frustrated by their speed. However, though "the true heir to the crown was a second son of Huayna Capac, named Manco, a legitimate brother of the unfortunate Huascar," says Prescott, "Pizarro had too little knowledge of the disposition of this prince and he made no scruple to prefer Toparca, a young brother of Atahualpa and to present him to the Indian nobles as their future Inca." So, to make assurance doubly sure, he did not, before he set out, announce his purpose of driving off the enemies of the rightful heir, but took the boy with him, "attended by a numerous retinue of vassals and moving in as much state and ceremony as if in possession of regal power." Before they reached Cuzco, much to Pizarro's chagrin, the boy fell sick and died.

But the misfortune was soon repaired, for, sure enough, when the adventurers went into camp outside the walls of the capital, no less a personage than Manco Capac II himself called on the commander in person and proposed the hoped-for alliance; and, just a year from the day he had taken Cajamarca, he entered Cuzco as the protector of the real Inca, whose coronation he permitted to be celebrated with all the splendor of the ancient rites. The Indians of central Peru hailed him as their deliverer from the tyranny of the usurper. Manco Capac, for his part, soon assembled a great army, and, with the help of some of the Spaniards, decisively defeated Quizquiz and drove him back to Ecuador.

But there was a sad awakening in store for the Inca on his return from that victorious campaign. He had permitted these allies of his--rapacious, recklessly daring as they were, and unscrupulous, cruel, and fanatical in their attitude toward infidels--to obtain a foothold in the very capital of the empire. And what manner of man was it of whom the great body of his subjects was made up? He was brave, yes--physically; he could fight, and conquer, too, when ably led, but also he was morally utterly irresponsible, "a slave," as Mozans puts it, "utterly devoid of energy and individual initiative," accustomed to look to the ruling class for guidance, to regard the Inca "with superstitious awe, as a being of a superior order." Centuries of despotic government, rigid religious ritual, communal ownership of property, and labor, not for himself but for the commonwealth, had robbed him of all ambition and instilled into him the habit of accepting with patient resignation whatever fate might decree.

And now, after all these centuries of complaisance, what must have been his mental attitude at the end of such a succession of events? First, the late legitimate Inca Huascar, omnipotent as he was supposed to have been, directly descended from the Sun-God and Moon-Mother themselves, had been overthrown and put to death by an illegitimate rival. Then that rival, also of the Inca blood, had in his turn been captured in the very face of his army, and put to death despite another and much greater army, by a little band of mysterious strangers, against whose mail-clad bodies the battle-axes and spears of the Indians had been powerless--strangers who had made fierce, "fleet-footed monsters" subservient to their will and who carried terrible weapons that went off with a noise like thunder and vomited fire and smoke, and with which they killed their enemies before they could come near enough to get in a blow. Had not these invincible strangers, and apparently by supernatural means, overcome even the legitimate Inca's conqueror? Surely, then, they must be some still superior order of beings, sent by the Sun-God to accomplish some wonderful purpose. Therefore they must be obeyed. Pizarro himself could not have created a people more suited to the carrying out of his designs had he had the power.

Probably realizing this, he promptly abandoned all subterfuge. As a consideration for the help he had been given in the campaign against Quizquiz, the Inca had been induced by stress of circumstances to acknowledge the supremacy of the King of Spain. It was only as a matter of form, he had been led to believe, but Pizarro now exacted the fullest compliance. As Adelantado by appointment of the overlord, he established a municipal council to govern the city, transformed the great temple into a church, made use of certain of the public buildings as officers' quarters and barracks for the soldiers, seized all the treasure that was to be found--even the private dwellings and tombs were searched and stripped of it--and required the authorities to supply troops and carriers to accompany the exploring parties he sent out. "Pizarro, on entering Cuzco, had issued an order forbidding any soldier to offer violence to the dwellings of the inhabitants," says Prescott:

"But the palaces were numerous and the troops lost no time in plundering them of their contents as well as in despoiling the religious edifices. The interior decorations supplied them with considerable booty. They stripped off the jewels and rich ornaments that garnished the royal mummies in the temple of Coricancha. Indignant at the concealment of their treasures, they put the inhabitants, in some instances, to the torture and endeavored to extort from them a confession of their hiding places. They invaded the repose of the sepulchers, in which the Peruvians often deposited their valuable effects, and compelled the grave to give up its dead. No place was left unexplored by the rapacious conquerors, and they occasionally stumbled on a mine of wealth that rewarded their labors. In a cavern near the city they found a number of vases, richly embossed with figures of serpents, locusts, and other animals. Among the spoils were four golden llamas and ten or twelve statues of women, as large as life, some of gold, others of silver, 'which merely to see,' says one of the conquerors, with some na?vet?, 'was truly a great satisfaction.'... The magazines were stored with curious commodities--richly tinted robes of cotton and feather work, gold sandals and slippers of the same material, for the women, and dresses composed entirely of beads of gold.'... In one place, for example, they met with ten planks or bars of solid silver, each piece twenty feet in length, one foot in breadth, and two or three inches thick. They were intended to decorate the dwelling of an Inca noble.... The amount of booty is stated variously by those present at the division of it. According to some, it considerably exceeded the ransom of Atahualpa."

In the meanwhile his brother Hernando had gone to Spain with the King's fifth of the loot, and on the way had spread the news. Once more all was excitement on the Isthmus. It was not long before Pizarro's forces were augmented by three or four hundred soldiers that had been led into Ecuador by Pedro de Alvarado, Governor of Guatemala, who consented to abandon his expedition when persuaded by Almagro, who went at once to meet him, that he was trespassing on Pizarro's preserves, for which act of grace the Spanish King added the province of Honduras to Alvarado's jurisdiction, and Almagro gave him a large sum of money; and, when communication was established between Lima and Panama by sea, adventurers of every degree began to flock to the new city as they had before to Mexico and Central America.

This enabled Almagro, with an army of nearly six hundred Spaniards and fifteen thousand Indians, the latter under the command of one of the Inca's brothers, to make an excursion into Chile for purposes of exploration, for it had been agreed that he should have the southern half of the territory they might conquer and Pizarro the northern. Sebastian de Benalc?zar, another of Pizarro's lieutenants, went to Ecuador with a force of two hundred Spaniards and a large Indian contingent and completed the defeat of Atahualpa's adherents, took possession of Quito and founded the city of Guayaquil at the mouth of the Guayas River, which provided for that country, too, independent access from the sea.

Roused at last, the Inca took advantage of the opportunity afforded by the scattering of the Spanish force and made his escape from Cuzco, where Hernando Pizarro and his younger brothers Juan and Gonzalo were in command, and, finding his subjects ripe for revolt, had no difficulty in raising two large armies. One he sent against the Adelantado, who was in Lima; with the other he returned to Cuzco and took the great citadel of Sacsahuaman, overlooking the town, and began a siege that was to last more than six months, and during which Juan Pizarro was killed in an attempt to recapture the citadel. The army that went to the coast was ambushed and defeated by the Spaniards and their local adherents before ever it reached Lima. All that what was left of it could do was to prevent the sending of reinforcements to Cuzco despite the desperate straits to which the Spanish force there was reduced. Pizarro was himself compelled to send to the Isthmus for help. Just before it was too late, however, he managed to get away two hundred and fifty men to the relief of his brothers, and just at that juncture also, Almagro, on his way back from Chile, turned up with his followers, and, caught between Cuzco and these two new detachments of the enemy, the Inca was overwhelmed and concluded to retire into the wild region of Vilcabamba, where the Spaniards could not follow with any hope of success, and there held out for some years. But with his retreat all that remained of the Inca dominion came to an end. There were a few other attempts, but neither he nor his descendants ever succeeded in recovering the throne.

As for Almagro, he had had a frightful experience during his excursion into Chile and had met with nothing but disappointment and disaster. The route unwittingly chosen had been over the bleak Bolivian plateaux and across the mountains where the Cordillera reaches its highest, at a season when the passes are buried in snow and swept by furious storms, and his men had perished by thousands, some of the best of his Spaniards among the number. When he had at last made his way to the beautiful central valley between the Cordillera and the coast range and down to the river Maule, he had found nothing of the opulence of Peru, but only a poor but brave, warlike people who in a fierce battle had succeeded in checking his advance. And now, disgusted with this country of his to the south, he returned and made claim to Cuzco as being within his half of the conquered territory and demanded of the Pizarros its surrender. On their refusal, he promptly carried it by assault, made Hernando and Gonzalo his prisoners, and went out to meet the troops that had been sent to their relief by the Adelantado and defeated them.

And then, as Hawthorne puts it, "had he cut off the heads of both of these gentlemen on the spot, he would have saved himself years of struggle, with a death on the scaffold at the end of them. But he was not of the right fiber for the work that was laid upon him; he was not what the English would call 'thorough'"; he temporized and listened to his wily associate. "Civil disturbances went on for eleven years," continues Hawthorne, "'in the course of which,' as Professor Fiske remarks, 'all the principal actors were swept off the stage as in some cheap blood-and-thunder tragedy. It is not worth while to recount the petty incidents of the struggle--how Almagro was at one moment ready to submit to arbitration and the next refused to abide by the decision; how Hernando was set at liberty and Gonzalo escaped; how Almagro's able lieutenant, Rodrigo de Orgo?ez, won a victory over Pizarro's men at Abancay but was totally defeated by Hernando Pizarro at Las Salinas and perished on the field; how at last Hernando had Almagro tried for sedition and summarily executed. On which side was the more violence and treachery it would be hard to say. Indeed, as Sir Arthur Helps observes, "in this melancholy struggle it is difficult to find anybody whom the reader can sympathize much with."'"

In the meanwhile Almagro's adherents, helpless and impoverished, were burning with envy of their more fortunate comrades, who were, by favor of the successful rival, rapidly enriching themselves with Indian tribute and gold and silver taken from the mines. At last, unable to stand it, they sent the news of their leader's illegal execution to Spain, with a demand for justice against the Pizarros. The rest of the story is told by Dawson as follows:

"At noon, on Sunday, the 26th of June, 1541, Pizarro was sitting at dinner in his house with twenty gentlemen, among them his half-brother Francisco Alcantara, and several of the most illustrious knights who had taken part in the conquest. The great door into the public square was lying wide open. The conspirators, to the number of a score, had assembled in a house opposite. All of a sudden they rushed into the square fully armed and carrying their swords naked in their hands. A young page standing in front of the Governor's house saw them and ran back shouting: 'To arms! All the men of Chile are coming to kill the Marquis, our lord.' The guests rose in alarm from the table and all but half a dozen fled to the windows and dropped into the garden. Pizarro threw off his gown and snatched up a sword, while the valiant Francisco Chaves stepped forward through the ante-room to dispute the passage at the staircase. The ferocious crowd of murderers rushed up and laid him dead on the stairs. Alcantara checked them for a few moments with his single sword, but was soon forced back into the dining-room and fell pierced with many thrusts. The old lion shouted from the inside: 'What shameful thing is this! Why do you wish to kill me?' and, with a cloak wrapped round one arm and his sword grasped in the other hand, he rushed forward to meet his assassins and strike a blow to avenge his brother before he himself should fall. Only two faithful young pages remained at his side. Though over seventy years of age, his practiced sword laid two of the crowd dead before he was surrounded. The two boys were butchered, and, in the m?l?e, Pizarro received a mortal wound in his throat, and, falling to the floor, made the sign of the cross on the boards" "and kissed it. One of the ruffians had snatched up an earthen water jar and with this pounded out the old man's brains as he lay prostrate, disdaining to ask for mercy.

"Thus perished by the sword this great man of blood. The measure he had meted out to Atahualpa and Almagro was measured to him again. He who had shamelessly broken his oath times without number to gain his own high ends was slain by treacherous, cowardly assault. But his great vices should not blind us to his greater virtues. Courageous, indomitable, far-sighted, patriotic, large-minded, public-spirited, possessing a God-given instinct to see straight into the center of a problem and the energy to strike at the psychological moment, he was equally great as an explorer, a soldier, a general, a diplomatist, and an administrator. Even his shocking moral delinquencies lose something of their turpitude when we consider the greatness of his aims and the baseness of his origin.... But that his real nature was magnanimous, generous, and truthful is proven by the many instances in which he forgave his enemies and kept his word to his serious loss, and that his ambition was not too sordid is shown by his self-sacrificing devotion to the public good during the later years of his life. Formed in nature's grandest mold, circumstances and environment had much deformed his character, but the original lineaments are plain."

Pizarro thus disposed of, young Almagro assumed the governorship and transferred his headquarters to Cuzco, where his father's party was stronger than at Lima, and the Royal Commissioner, appointed Governor by the King, sailed from Panama, got together an army with the help of Pizarro's friends, and proceeded to Guamanga, to which point the usurper was advancing with his forces from Cuzco. The battle that ensued was more hotly contested than any that had theretofore been fought. Of the twelve hundred Spaniards engaged, less than five hundred escaped death or wounds. Almagro's troops were practically annihilated. Two days afterward those of the Adelantado's murderers who had survived were executed in the public square and young Almagro himself, who had succeeded in making his escape, was recaptured and put to death. Then for the time being Vaca de Castro administered the office without further opposition.

To the Spaniards this seemed an outrageous violation of the natural order of things. The whole fabric of their fortunes was based on enforced Indian labor. Without it how could they work their mines and estates or transport their goods? In the general dismay, armed resistance was decided on, and Gonzalo Pizarro was called from his estate in southern Bolivia and induced to take the lead. He seized the artillery and stores at Cuzco and was soon at the head of some four hundred desperate men, well armed and provided. "The Viceroy retreated north beyond Quito to Popayan," says Dawson--

This man, says Hawthorne, was--

With his execution, Spain's conquest of Peru was complete.

Heredia had found that the hills south of Cartagena contained profitable gold washings and had learned from the Indians of a region called Zenufana back in the mountains of the interior where the deposits were more valuable still, and this story, having proven true, had brought about the conquest of the rich valley of the Cauca and the development of mines that have yielded hundreds of millions in gold. The shares, even of Heredia's men in the first outcroppings, are declared by the chroniclers to have been greater than those of the followers of Pizarro in the ransom of the Inca. And, at about the same time, Pizarro's enterprising lieutenant, Sebastian de Benalc?zar, the conqueror of Quito, had continued north and fought his way through the warlike, semi-civilized tribes that inhabited the high plateaux around Pasto to the lower country now known as Popayan, where the Cauca gathers its headwaters, and, in rapid succession, had overcome the tribes that opposed his progress until he had met the expedition from Cartagena, after which he had gone back to Peru.

His purpose was to return and undertake the conquest of the region of the upper Magdalena and the rich Indian communities on the broad table-land on top of the eastern Cordillera; but, before he could set out, an expedition from Santa Marta, under the command of the gallant young Gonzalo Jiminez de Quesada--ranked by many as the greatest of the Conquistadores after Cort?s and Pizarro--had forestalled him. Quesada too had heard the stories of El Dorado and had been directed to a lake called Guatavita, two miles high in the mountains, that was supposed to be in the country over which El Dorado ruled, and also the dwelling place of a powerful goddess to whom the people offered jewels and gold by throwing them in the water. "They had a legend," says Hawthorne--

"To the effect that the Goddess of the Lake had been the wife of a former chief who had thrown herself into the lake to escape a whipping, and, like the maidens of Greek mythology, had been made one of the immortals. Pilgrims came from afar to add their offerings of gold and emeralds to the divinity. At every installation of a chief there was an imposing ceremony. First marched a squad of naked men painted with red ocher, as mourners, then men adorned with gold and emeralds, with feather headdresses, then warriors in jaguar skins. These shouted and made an uproar on horns, pipes, and conch shells. Black-robed priests accompanied the procession, with white crosses on their breasts, and in the rear came the nobles, bearing the new chief on a barrow hung with gold disks. He was naked, his body rendered sticky with resinous gums and then smeared over with gold dust. Having reached the shore of the lake, he got on a barge and was rowed to the center, where he dived into the water and washed off his gold, while the assemblage on the shore shouted with joy and flung their offerings into the transparent abode of the Goddess."

This, it seems, had once been true, but, although the Indians of the lowlands may not have known it, the custom had ceased to exist long before the coming of the Spaniards. Many of the bravest were lured to their death in the vain quest, not only in the Colombian Andes but in the valleys of the Orinoco and Amazon, and even south along the Paraguay and Paran?, before the discovery was made that the custom was a thing of the past.

In the belief that it still existed, therefore, Quesada and his company of nearly eight hundred men had left Santa Marta sometime in 1536, and, harassed by bands of savages, forced their way, with almost inconceivable difficulty, through the wild forests and undergrowth, along the foothills bordering the Magdalena and up the steep side of the Cordillera to the delightful series of plateaux which were then, as they are yet, the populous heart of the country and the principal seat of her wealth and culture. In the continual fights with the Indians and from starvation and fatigue, three-fourths of the company had died, but here the survivors found themselves at last in a beautiful, fertile region, where the climate is perfect and all the products of the temperate zone grow luxuriantly, and where the inhabitants, the Chibchas, had reached a state of civilization not much inferior to that of the Aztecs of Mexico and the Caras of Ecuador. Quesada, after having subdued them, had founded Bogot? near the site of the Chibcha capital, on the 7th of August, 1538.

What was to be done? Undoubtedly Quesada had the right to possession by virtue of his prior discovery and conquest, but the other two made claim on plausible grounds, and he had not been commissioned by the King. With his depleted force he could not hope to defeat their forces combined. Besides, as all realized, if they should fight, there would probably not be enough of the men left to hold the country against the natives, who would only be emboldened by such a dissension. So when it was found that Quesada had already gathered in all the spoils in sight--which consisted of several thousand emeralds and gold vases and ornaments that made a pile so high that a man on horseback could be concealed behind it--Benalc?zar and Federmann allowed themselves to be persuaded to accept shares in the loot and submit to the King's arbitration their respective claims to the country. Soon afterward the three captains set out for Spain in the same ship, leaving Quesada's brother in command. None of them ever returned. Federmann and Benalc?zar were censured for exceeding the authority given them by their superiors and undertaking conquests on their own account, and, instead of appointing Quesada Adelantado, the King sent over another governor with considerable reinforcements, after which the process of assimilation and settlement went on about as it was going on in Peru.

Very different was the experience of Pedro de Valdivia in Chile. Unlike these other adventurers, when he set out it was not in the expectation of finding any great store of gold, since Almagro had reported that the inhabitants were poor, but with the intention of conquering the country and converting it into a province of Peru. In accomplishing only a part of this purpose, he was to have a far more difficult task, had he but known it, and many more Spanish lives were to be sacrificed, than in all the other conquests put together. It had already been discovered by Almagro, however, that as far south as he had gone, the natives were subjects of the Inca and that their civilization and system of irrigation and agriculture had been brought to almost as high a standard. He had advanced down the great central valley as far as the river Maule, finding everywhere a population as dense, probably, as that which exists to-day, and had met with little resistance, probably because of the presence in his party of the brother of the Inca, until he reached the boundary of the empire and encountered the independent tribes beyond, and there met his reverse.

As a consequence, misled by this favorable experience with the northern tribes and his own with the easily conquered natives of Peru, Valdivia took with him, besides his Indian auxiliaries, only about two hundred Spaniards and a number of women belonging to their families. He soon found that, since they had learned of the execution of Huascar and Atahualpa and that the new Inca, Manco Capac, was little more than a mere puppet of Pizarro's, the disposition even of these northern tribes had changed; that they now regarded themselves as released from their vassalage. He found also that, although they all spoke the same language and appeared to belong to the same race, they still maintained their tribal organizations, each with its own Cacique and entirely distinct from the others; that the Inca socialistic system had not been adopted, and that individually they were democratic, resentful of encroachments on their liberty, and self-reliant. Hardly had he entered their country when his troubles began. To this second invasion, these people, who had only looked askance at Almagro, now promptly showed their hostility. Their lack of efficient military organization and concert of action made it easy, however, to overcome what resistance they could offer on the spur of the moment, and Valdivia succeeded in pushing on for several hundred miles until he came to the section of the valley through which flows the river Mapocho.

There, fascinated doubtless by the gorgeousness of the environment, he selected a site at the river side, at the base of an isolated hill , in the midst of the broad plain that lies between the two great mountain ranges, two thousand feet above the level of the sea, and founded the city of Santiago, which has ever since remained the capital. Following Pizarro's example, among the first buildings he caused to be erected were the Cathedral and Bishop's house, and afterward, and only just in time to save the colony from annihilation, he fortified Santa Lucia, for the town itself was soon attacked by an overwhelming force of Indians and half the houses burned to the ground before they could be driven off with the help of an exploring party that opportunely returned. This was only one of many such vicissitudes, in the course of which, so beset were the invaders and so reduced did their number and the health of the survivors become by privations and fighting, that all but Valdivia were for abandoning the conquest and making a dash for Peru.

Mutiny was only prevented by the discovery of gold in the mountains near by and the arrival of reinforcements from Lima. After that he was enabled to found the town of Coquimbo on the coast about two hundred and fifty miles north of the capital, and visit Peru to arrange for the sending of more colonists and supplies. While there he assisted in the suppression of Gonzalo Pizarro's revolt, and had no difficulty in inducing a large body of adventurers to go back with him, for Lima now was swarmed with men who were eager enough to win lands and slaves or take their chance of making their fortunes in the mines. "With their help," says Dawson, "the conquest and settlement of all Chile as far south as the Maule was effectually completed. The land was apportioned among the cavaliers, each becoming a sort of feudal baron, and in effect creating a landed aristocracy which has continued to rule the country to the present day."

In 1544, Valdivia founded Valparaiso, the seaport of the capital, and rebuilt Coquimbo, which had been taken and burned by the neighboring Indians during his absence in Peru. He then devoted several years to making good his conquest and firmly establishing the colony, and in 1550 turned his attention to the country south of the Maule. Between the Maule and the Bio-bio were the Promaucians and their kindred tribes, and south of the Bio-bio was a confederacy composed of tribes, also related by blood and language, which inhabited the forests and mountains and lake region for a stretch of two hundred miles. Chief among these were the Araucanians--the one unconquered aboriginal race in the new world, the one aboriginal race in America, North or South, that never was conquered by Europeans, the one race that checked the victorious march of the Spaniards and compelled them, after more than a hundred years of almost incessant warfare, to acknowledge their independence and accept the Bio-bio as the southern boundary of the Spanish possessions--not warfare of the usual desultory, treacherous Indian sort, but warfare abounding in formal campaigns and sieges and pitched battles, in which large armies were engaged, in numbers often evenly matched.

Inferiorly armed with clubs, spears, and bows and arrows, their bodies protected only by leather cuirasses, they met the Spaniards and their native auxiliaries in open field and charged and fought them hand to hand, and defeated them too in many a Homeric fray in spite of the steel armor and swords of the Conquistadores and their cavalry, artillery, and firearms. Inspired by admiration, a chivalrous Castilian, the soldier-poet Alonso de Ercilla, who was himself in some of the fights, has told the first part of the story in his historical epic in thirty-seven cantos--the story of how their lion-hearted chief, Caupolican, undismayed by defeat in the first encounter, persisted until he had destroyed an army of the invaders and driven the survivors back to Santiago; how, when wounded and helpless, he was captured at last and underwent torture and death with the stoicism of a Mohawk; how his wife, indignant at his having permitted himself to be taken alive, ran to the scaffold and threw their baby at his feet, crying out that she would no longer be the mother of the child of a coward; how the brilliant young Lautero took three Spanish strongholds, invaded the country north of the Bio-bio, defeated every army that was sent against him, and laid siege to Santiago itself; how the fiery Tucapel, while besieging a Spanish fort, scaled the wall alone, ran the gantlet of the garrison, killed four mail-clad Spaniards in fighting his way through, and escaped by leaping from a cliff; how another of their chiefs, moved to pity by the straits to which he had reduced a town he was besieging, gallantly challenged the Spanish commander to single combat, on condition that if he should defeat him the town must be surrendered, but that if he were himself defeated the siege would be raised, and how, when he was killed, the Indians kept the compact and withdrew--and many other such stories, some of them rivaling those told of the Scottish chiefs.

Footnote 1:

The story of the Araucanian wars is told in full in Hancock's "History of Chile."

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