od or
evil this was a stupendous achievement and one that must make his name
immortal.

[Signature of the author.]

FRANCISCO PIZARRO[18]

By J. T. TROWBRIDGE

(1471-1541)

[Footnote 18: Copyright, 1894, by Selmar Hess.]

[Illustration: Francisco Pizarro. [TN]]

The old Spanish province of Estremadura, though distant from the sea,
shut in by mountain-chains, furnished numerous adventurers for the
expeditions of discovery, conquest, and plunder that followed Columbus
to the New World; two of whom achieved astonishing renown. One was the
conqueror of Mexico; the other, the conqueror of Peru.

Of the early life of Francisco Pizarro not much is known with
certainty. He was born about the year 1471; but even that date is a
matter of conjecture, so little care was had of the coming into the
world of the actor who was to play so stirring a part in it. The
family from which he inherited his name must have been one of some
note in its day. His kinsman and great rival in fame, Cortes, was a
Pizarro on his mother's side.

Francisco was the second of four brothers, all of whom were men of
ability and valor, and all of whom fought in the Peruvian wars. Their
father was Colonel Gonzalo Pizarro, concerning whom little is known,
save that he was a soldier of Spain, and that he served creditably in
Italy and Navarre.

The mother of Francisco was Francisca Gonzales, a woman of low
condition, from whom he seems to have received hardly more parental
care than from his father, by whom he was utterly neglected. The story
told by Gomara, and quoted by Prescott, that, abandoned as a
foundling, he was nursed by a sow, though as mythical as that of
Romulus and the wolf, which probably suggested it, indicates
nevertheless the degradation of his childhood. He grew up in ignorance
and vagabondage. Of what the world calls education he had not the
first rudiments; to the day of his death he could neither read nor
write. The only occupation in which we hear of his being engaged in
his boyhood, was that of a swineherd.

At what age he escaped from this mean employment is not known. The
claim set up for him by his descendants, that he served with his
father in Italy, hardly deserves consideration. He was about
twenty-one years old when all Spain began to ring with the discoveries
of Columbus and his companions beyond the western seas. Pizarro left
his employer and his pigs, ran away to Seville, and embarked in one of
th