THE MAN WHO WOULD NOT GIVE UP.

With so inadequate a force, yet much stronger than before, Pizarro and Almagro sailed again on their dangerous mission. The pilot was Bartolome Ruiz, a brave and loyal Andalusian and a good sailor. The weather was better now, and the adventurers pushed on hopefully. After a few days’ sail they reached the Rio San Juan, which was as far as any European had ever sailed down that coast: it will be remembered that this was where Almagro had got discouraged and turned back. Here were more Indian settlements, and a little gold; but here too the vastness and savagery of the wilderness became more apparent. It is hard for us to conceive at all, in these easy days, how lost these explorers were. Then there was not a white man in all the world who knew what lay beyond them; and the knowledge of something somewhere ahead is the most necessary prop to courage. We can understand their situation only by supposing a band of schoolboys brave boys but unlearned carried blindfold a thousand miles, and set down in a trackless wilderness they had never heard of.

Pizarro halted here with part of his men, and sent Almagro back to Panama with one vessel for recruits, and Pilot Ruiz south with the other to explore the coast. Ruiz coasted southward as far as Punta de Pasado, and was the first white man who ever crossed the equator on the Pacific, no small honor. He found a rather more promising country, and encountered a large raft with cotton sails, on which were several Indians. They had mirrors (probably of volcanic glass, as was common to the southern aborigines) set in silver, and ornaments of silver and gold, besides remarkable cloths, on which were woven figures of beasts, birds, and fishes. The cruise lasted several weeks; and Ruiz got back to the San Juan barely in time. Pizarro and his men had suffered awful hardships. They had made a gallant effort to get inland, but could not escape the dreadful tropical forest, “whose trees grew to the sky.” The dense growth was not so lonely as their earlier forests. There were troops of chattering monkeys and brilliant parrots; around the huge trees coiled lazy boas, and alligators dozed by the sluggish lagoons. Many of the Spaniards perished by these grim, strange foes; some were crushed to pulp in the mighty coils of the snakes, and some were crunched between the teeth of the scaly saurians. Many more fell victims to lurking savages; in a single swoop fourteen of the dwindling band were slain by Indians, who surrounded their stranded canoe. Food gave out too, and the survivors were starving when Ruiz got back with a scant relief but cheering news. Very soon too Almagro arrived, with supplies and a reinforcement of eighty men.

The whole expedition set sail again for the south. But at once there rose persistent storms. After great suffering the explorers got back to the Isle of Gallo, where they stayed two weeks to repair their disabled vessels and as badly shattered bodies. Then they sailed on again down the unknown seas. The country was gradually improving. The malarial tropic forests no longer extended into the very sea. Amid the groves of ebony and mahogany were occasional clearings, with rudely cultivated fields, and also Indian settlements of considerable size. In this region were gold-washings and emerald-mines, and the natives had some valuable ornaments. The Spaniards landed, but were set upon by a vastly superior number of savages, and escaped destruction only in a very curious way. In the uneven battle the Spaniards were sorely pressed, when one of their number fell from his horse; and this trivial incident put the swarming savages to flight. Some historians have ridiculed the idea that such a trifle could have had such an effect; but that is merely because of ignorance of the facts. You must remember that these Indians had never before seen a horse. The Spanish rider and his steed they took for one huge animal, strange and fearful enough at best, a parallel to the old Greek myth of the Centaurs, and a token of the manner in which that myth began. But when this great unknown beast divided itself into two parts, which were able to act independently of each other, it was too much for the superstitious Indians, and they fled in terror. The Spaniards escaped to their vessels, and gave thanks for their strange deliverance.

But this narrow escape had shown more clearly how inadequate their handful of men was to cope with the wild hordes. They must again have reinforcements; and back they sailed to the Isle of Gallo, where Pizarro was to wait while Almagro went to Panama for help. You see Pizarro always took the heaviest and hardest burden for himself, and gave the easiest to his associate. It was always Almagro who was sent back to the comforts of civilization, while his lion-hearted leader bore the waiting and danger and suffering. The greatest obstacle all along now was in the soldiers themselves, and I say this with a full realization of the deadly perils and enormous hardships. But perils and hardships without are to be borne more easily than treachery and discontent within. At every step Pizarro had to carry his men, morally. They were constantly discouraged (for which they surely had enough reason); and when discouraged they were ready for any desperate act, except going ahead. So Pizarro had constantly to be will and courage not only for himself, who suffered as cruelly as the meanest, but for all. It was like the stout soul we sometimes see holding up a half-dead body, a body that would long ago have broken loose from a less intrepid spirit.

The men were now mutinous again; and despite Pizarro’s gallant example and efforts, they came very near wrecking the whole enterprise. They sent by Almagro to the governor’s wife a ball of cotton as a sample of the products of the country; but in this apparently harmless present the cowards had hidden a letter, in which they declared that Pizarro was leading them only to death, and warned others not to follow. A doggerel verse at the end set forth that Pizarro was a butcher waiting for more meat, and that Almagro went to Panama to gather sheep to be slaughtered.

The letter reached Governor de los Rios, and made him very indignant. He sent the Cordovan Tafur with two vessels to the Isle of Gallo to bring back every Spaniard there, and thus stop an expedition the importance of which his mind could not grasp. Pizarro and his men were suffering terribly, always drenched by the storms, and nearly starving. When Tafur arrived, all but Pizarro hailed him as a deliverer, and wanted to go home at once. But the captain was not daunted. With his dagger he drew a line upon the sands, and looking his men in the face, said: “Comrades and friends, on that side are death, hardship, starvation, nakedness, storms; on this side is comfort. From this side you go to Panama to be poor; from that side to Peru to be rich. Choose, each who is a brave Castilian, that which he thinks best.”

As he spoke he stepped across the line to the south. Ruiz, the brave Andalusian pilot, stepped after him; and so did Pedro de Candia, the Greek, and one after another eleven more heroes, whose names deserve to be remembered by all who love loyalty and courage. They were Cristoval de Peralta, Domingo de Soria Luce, Nicolas de Ribera, Francisco de Cuellar, Alonso de Molina, Pedro Alcon, Garcia de Jerez, Anton de Carrion, Alonso Briceno, Martin de Paz, and Juan de la Torre.

The narrow Tafur could see in this heroism only disobedience to the governor, and would not leave them one of his vessels. It was with difficulty that he was prevailed upon to give them a few provisions, even to keep them from immediate starvation; and with his cowardly passengers he sailed back to Panama, leaving the fourteen alone upon their little island in the unknown Pacific.

Did you ever know of a more remarkable heroism? Alone, imprisoned by the great sea, with very little food, no boat, no clothing, almost no weapons, here were fourteen men still bent on conquering a savage country as big as Europe! Even the prejudiced Prescott admits that in all the annals of chivalry there is nothing to surpass this.

The Isle of Gallo became uninhabitable, and Pizarro and his men made a frail raft and sailed north seventy-five miles to the Isle of Gorgona. This was higher land, and had some timber, and the explorers made rude huts for shelter from the storms. Their sufferings were great from hunger, exposure, and venomous creatures which tortured them relentlessly. Pizarro kept up daily religious services, and every day they thanked God for their preservation, and prayed for his continued protection. Pizarro was always a devout man, and never thought of acting without invoking divine help, nor of neglecting thanks for his successes. It was so to the last, and even with his last gasp his dying fingers traced the cross he revered.

For seven indescribable months the fourteen deserted men waited and suffered on their lonely reef. Tafur had reached Panama safely, and reported their refusal to return. Governor de los Rios grew angrier yet, and refused to help the obstinate castaways. But De Luque, reminding him that his orders from the Crown commanded assistance to Pizarro, at last induced the niggard governor to allow a vessel to be sent with barely enough sailors to man it, and a small stock of provisions. But with it went strict orders to Pizarro to return, and report at the end of six months, no matter what happened. The rescuers found the brave fourteen on the Isle of Gorgona; and Pizarro was at last enabled to resume his voyage, with a few sailors and an army of eleven. Two of the fourteen were so sick that they had to be left on the island in the care of friendly Indians, and with heavy hearts their comrades bade them farewell.

Pizarro sailed on south. Soon they passed the farthest point a European had ever reached, Punta de Pasado, which was the limit of Ruiz’s explorations, and were again in unknown seas. After twenty days’ sail they entered the Gulf of Guayaquil, in Ecuador, and anchored in the Bay of Tumbez. Before them they saw a large Indian town with permanent houses. The blue bay was dotted with Indian sail-rafts; and far in the background loomed the giant peaks of the Andes. We may imagine how the Spaniards were impressed by their first sight of mountains that rose more than twenty thousand feet above them.

The Indians came out on their balsas (rafts) to look at these marvellous strangers, and being treated with the utmost kindness and consideration, soon lost their fears. The Spaniards were given presents of chickens, swine, and trinkets, and had brought to them bananas, corn, sweet potatoes, pineapples, cocoanuts, game, and fish. You may be sure these dainties were more than welcome to the gaunt explorers after so many starving months. The Indians also brought aboard several llamas, the characteristic and most valuable quadruped of South America. The fascinating but misled historian who has done more than any other one man in the United States to spread an interesting but absolutely false idea of Peru, calls the llama the Peruvian sheep; but it is no more a sheep than a giraffe is. The llama is the South American camel (a true camel, though a small one), the beast of burden whose slow, sure feet and patient back have made it possible for man to subdue a country so mountainous in parts as to make horses useless. Besides being a carrier it is a producer of clothing; it supplies the camel’s hair which is woven into the woollen garments of the people. There were three other kinds of camel, the vicuna, the guanaco, and the alpaca, all small, and all variously prized for their hair, which still surpasses the wool of the best sheep for making fine fabrics. The Peruvians domesticated the llama in large flocks, and it was their most important helper. They were the only aborigines in the two Americas who had a beast of burden before the Europeans came, except the Apaches of the Plains and the Eskimos, both of whom had the dog and the sledge.

At Tumbez, Alonso de Molina was sent ashore to look at the town. He came back with such gorgeous reports of gilded temples and great forts that Pizarro distrusted him, and sent Pedro de Candia. This Greek, a native of the Isle of Candia, was a man of importance in the little Spanish force. The Greeks everywhere were then regarded as a people adept in the still mysterious weapons; and all Europe had a respect for those who had invented that wonderful agent “Greek fire,” which would burn under water, and which no man now-a-days knows how to make. The Greeks were generally known as “fire-workers,” and were in great demand as masters of artillery.

De Candia went ashore with his armor and arquebuse, both of which astounded the natives; and when he set up a plank and shivered it with a ball, they were overwhelmed at the strange noise and its result. Candia brought back as glowing reports as Molina had done; and the tattered Spaniards began to feel that at last their golden dreams were coming true, and took heart again. Pizarro gently declined the gifts of gold and silver and pearls which the awe-struck natives offered, and turned his face again to the south, sailing as far as about the ninth degree of south latitude. Then, feeling that he had seen enough to warrant going back for reinforcements, he stood about for Panama. Alonso de Molina and one companion were left in Tumbez at their own request, being much in love with the country. Pizarro took back in their places two Indian youth, to learn the Spanish language. One of them, who was given the name of Felipillo (little Philip) afterward cut an important and discreditable figure. The voyagers stopped at the Isle of Gorgona for their two countrymen who had been left there sick. One was dead, but the other gladly rejoined his compassionate comrades. And so, with his dozen men, Pizarro came back to Panama after an absence of eighteen months, into which had been crowded the sufferings and horrors of a lifetime.