the colonists; and it may seem astonishing that an expedition in that direction should have been so long deferred. But the exact position and distance of this fairy realm were matter of conjecture. The long tract of intervening country was occupied by rude and warlike races; and the little experience which the Spanish navigators had already had of the neighboring coast and its inhabitants, and, still more, the tempestuous character of the seas,-for their expeditions had taken place at the most unpropitious seasons of the year,enhanced the apparent difficulties of the undertaking and made even their stout hearts shrink from it.

Such was the state of feeling in the little community of Panamá for several years after its foundation. Meanwhile, the dazzling conquest of Mexico gave a new impulse to the ardor of discovery, and in 1524 three men were found in the colony in whom the spirit of adventure triumphed over every consideration of difficulty and danger that obstructed the prosecution of the enterprise. One among them was selected as fitted by his character to conduct it to a successful issue. That man was Francisco Pizarro; and, as he held the same conspicuous post in the Conquest of Peru that was occupied by Cortés in that of Mexico, it will be neces sary to take a brief review of his early history.

CHAPTER II.

FRANCISCO PIZARRO.-HIS EARLY HISTORY.-FIRST EX. PEDITION TO THE SOUTH.-DISTRESSES OF THE VOY. AGERS.-SHARP ENCOUNTERS.-RETURN TO PANAMA.— ALMAGRO'S EXPEDITION.

1524-1525.

FRANCISCO PIZARRO was born at Truxillo, a city of Estremadura, in Spain. The period of his birth is uncertain; but probably it was not far from 1471.' He was an illegitimate child, and that his parents should not have taken pains to perpetuate the date of his birth is not surprising. Few care to make a particular record

The few writers who venture to assign the date of Pizarro's birth do it in so vague and contradictory a manner as to inspire us with but little confidence in their accounts. Herrera, it is true, says positively that he was sixty-three years old at the time of his death, in 1541. (Hist. general, dec. 6, lib. 10, cap. 6.) This would carry back the date of his birth only to 1478. But Garcilasso de la Vega affirms that he was more than fifty years old in 1525. (Com. Real., Parte 2, lib. 1, cap. 1.) This would place his birth before 1475. Pizarro y Orellana, who, as a kinsman of the Conqueror, may be supposed to have had better means of information, says he was fifty-four years of age at the same date of 1525. (Varones ilustres del Nuevo-Mundo (Madrid, 1639), p. 128.) But at the period of his death he calls him nearly eighty years old! (p. 185.) Taking this latter as a round exaggeration for effect in the particular connection in which it is used. and admitting the accuracy of the former statement, the epoch of his birth will conform to that given in the text. This makes him some. what late in life to set about the conquest of an empire. But Colum bus, when he entered on his career, was still older.

of their transgressions. His father, Gonzalo Pizarro, was a colonel of infantry, and served with some distinction in the Italian campaigns under the Great Captain, and afterwards in the wars of Navarre. His mother, named Francisca Gonzales, was a person of humble condition in the town of Truxillo."

But little is told of Francisco's early years, and that little not always deserving of credit. According to some, he was deserted by both his parents, and left as a foundling at the door of one of the principal churches of the city. It is even said that he would have perished, had he not been nursed by a sow.3 This is a more discreditable fountain of supply than that assigned to the infant Romulus. The early history of men who have made their names famous by deeds in after-life, like the early history of nations, affords a fruitful field for invention.

It seems certain that the young Pizarro received little care from either of his parents, and was suffered to grow up as nature dictated. He was neither taught to read nor write, and his principal occupation was that of a swineherd. But this torpid way of life did not suit the stirring spirit of Pizarro, as he grew older, and listened to the tales, widely circulated and so captivating to a youthful fancy, of the New World. He shared in the popular enthusiasm, and availed himself of a favorable moment to abandon his ignoble charge and escape to Seville, the port where the Spanish ad

* Xerez, Conquista del Peru, ap. Barcia, tom. iii. p. 179.—Zarate, Conq. del Peru, lib. 1, cap. 1.—Pizarro y Orellana, Varones ilustres, p. 128.

3 "Nació en Truxillo, i echaronlo à la puerta de la Iglesia, mamd una Puerca ciertos Dias, no se hallando quien le quisiese dàr leche.' Gomara, Hist. de las Ind., cap. 144.

venturers embarked to seek their fortunes in the West. Few of them could have turned their backs on their native land with less cause for regret than Pizarro.'

In what year this important change in his destiny took place we are not informed. The first we hear of him in the New World is at the island of Hispaniola, in 1510, where he took part in the expedition to Uraba in Terra Firma, under Alonzo de Ojeda, a cavalier whose character and achievements find no parallel but in the pages of Cervantes. Hernando Cortés, whose mother was a Pizarro, and related, it is said, to the father of Francis, was then in St. Domingo, and prepared to accompany Ojeda's expedition, but was prevented by a temporary lameness. Had he gone, the fall of the Aztec empire might have been postponed for some time longer, and the sceptre of Montezuma have descended in peace to his posterity. Pizarro shared in the disastrous fortunes of Ojeda's colony, and by his discretion obtained so far the confidence of his commander as to be left in charge of the settlement when the latter returned for supplies to the islands. The lieutenant continued at his perilous post for nearly two months, waiting deliberately until death should have thinned off the colony sufficiently to allow the miserable remnant to be embarked in the single small vessel that remained to it.5

4 According to the Comendador Pizarro y Orellana, Francis Pizarro served, while quite a stripling, with his father, in the Italian wars, and afterwards, under Columbus and other illustrious discoverers, in the New World, whose successes the author modestly attributes to his kinsman's valor as a principal cause! Varones ilustres, p. 187.

5 Pizarro y Orellana, Varones ilustres, pp. 121-128.-Herrera, Hist. gen., dec. 1, lib. 7, cap. 14.-Montesinos, Annales, MS., año 1510.

After this, we find him associated with Balboa, the discoverer of the Pacific, and co-operating with him in establishing the settlement at Darien. He had the glory of accompanying this gallant cavalier in his terrible march across the mountains, and of being among the first Europeans, therefore, whose eyes were greeted with the long-promised vision of the Southern Ocean.

After the untimely death of his commander, Pizarro attached himself to the fortunes of Pedrarias, and was employed by that governor in several military expeditions, which, if they afforded nothing else, gave him the requisite training for the perils and privations that lay in the path of the future Conqueror of Peru.

In 1515 he was selected, with another cavalier, named Morales, to cross the Isthmus and traffic with the natives on the shores of the Pacific. And there, while engaged in collecting his booty of gold and pearls from the neighboring islands, as his eye ranged along the shadowy line of coast till it faded in the distance, his imagination may have been first fired with the idea of, one day, attempting the conquest of the mysterious regions beyond the mountai s. On the removal of the seat of government across the Isthmus to Panamá, Pizarro accompanied Pedrarias, and his name became conspicuous among the cavaliers who extended the line of conquest to the north over the martial tribes of Veragua. But all these expeditions, whatever glory they may have brought him, were productive of very little gold, and at the age of fifty the captain Pizarro found himself in possession only of a tract of unhealthy land in the neighborhood of the capital, and of such repartimientos of the natives as