oa had
planned to make, was left by his death to be carried out by one of his
companions in the discovery of the South Sea, the renowned Francisco
Pizarro. It was an expedition full of romantic adventure, replete with
peril and suffering, crowded with bold ventures and daring deeds. But we
must pass over all the earlier of these and come at once to the climax of
the whole striking enterprise, the story of the seizure of the Inca of
Peru in the midst of his army and the tale of his incredible ransom.

Many and strange were the adventures of Pizarro, from the time when, with
one small vessel and about one hundred desperate followers, he sailed from
Panama in 1524, and ventured on the great unknown Pacific, to the time
when, in 1531, he sailed again with one hundred and eighty men and about
thirty horses and landed on the coast of Peru, which he designed to
conquer as Cortez had conquered Mexico. A faithless and cruel wretch was
this Francisco Pizarro, but he had the military merits of courage,
enterprise, daring and persistency, and these qualities carried him
through sufferings and adversities that would have discouraged almost any
man and brought him to magical success in the end. It was the beacon of
gold that lured him on through desperate enterprises and deadly perils and
led him to the El Dorado of the Spanish adventurers.

Landing and capturing a point on the coast of Peru, he marched with his
handful of bold followers, his horses and guns, eastward into the empire,
crossed the vast and difficult mountain wall of the Andes, and reached the
city of Caxamalca. Close by this city the Inca, Atahualpa, lay encamped
with an army, for a civil war between him and his brother Huascar had just
ended in the defeat and imprisonment of the latter.

Desperate was the situation of the small body of Spanish soldiers, when,
in the late afternoon of the 15th of November, 1532, they marched into
Caxamalca, which they found empty of inhabitants. About one hundred more
men, with arms and horses, had joined them, but in a military sense they
were but a handful still, and they had every reason to dread the
consequences of their rash enterprise.

All seemed threatening,--the desertion of the city by its people, the
presence of the Inca, with a powerful army, within a league's distance,
the probable hostility of the Indian emperor. All the Spaniards had to
rely on were their arms,--cannon, muskets and swords of steel,--new and
terrible