re ease and pleasure.
There lies Peru with its riches. Here, Panama with its poverty.
Choose each man as best becomes a cavalier of Castile. For my part, I
go to the south."

Such was the effect of his electrifying words, that, as he stepped over
the line, a number of his comrades, led by Ruiz, the pilot, and Pedro
de Candia, a Greek gunner, followed him. The number varies from
thirteen to sixteen according to different authorities. The weight of
evidence inclines me to the smaller number.[3]

Tafur raged and threatened, but Pizarro and his men persisted. They
got themselves transferred to the Island of Gorgona where there were
water and game and no inhabitants, and there they stayed while Tafur
returned.

{64}

Less than a score of men marooned on a desert island in an unknown sea,
opposite a desolate and forbidding coast, without a ship or any means
of leaving the island, not knowing whether Almagro and Luque would be
able to succor them; their position was indeed a desperate one. It
shows, as nothing else could, the iron determination of the indomitable
Spaniard. At that moment when Pizarro drew the line and stepped across
it after that fiery address, he touched at the same time the nadir of
his fortunes and the zenith of his fame. Surely it stands as one of
the great dramatic incidents of history. The conquest of Peru turned
upon that very instant, upon the determination of that moment; and upon
the conquest of Peru depended more things in the future history of the
earth than were dreamed of in the narrow philosophy of any Spaniard
there present, or of any other man in existence in that long-past day.

Peru has played a tremendously important part in the affairs of men.
It was the treasure of Peru that armed the soldiers of Alva and laid
the keels of the Armada. It was the treasure of Peru that relieved the
Spanish people of the necessity of wresting a national revenue out of a
soil by agriculture; which abrogated the auxiliary of agriculture,
manufactures; which precluded the possibility of the corollary of the
other two, commerce. It was the treasure of Peru that permitted the
Spanish people to indulge that passion for religious bigotry which was
stifling to liberty and throttling to development, and which put them
hopelessly out of touch with the onward and progressive movement of
humanity in one of the most vital periods and movements in history. It
was the treasure of Peru that kindled the fir