O AND THE INCAS

When stout-hearted Balboa first reached the summit of the isthmus range
and looked south over the Bay of Panama, he might have seen the "Silver
Bell," which forms the summit of the mighty volcano Chimborazo. Still
farther south in the same direction lay the "land of gold," of which he
had heard.

Balboa was unjustly prevented from exploring that unknown country, but
among the Spanish soldiers in Panama there were two who determined to
carry out Balboa's scheme. The younger, Pizarro, was destined to rival
Cortes as explorer and conqueror; Almagro, his companion in the
expedition, was less crafty and cruel. Sailing from Panama, the Spanish
first landed on the coast below Quito, and found the natives wearing
gold and silver trinkets. On a second voyage, with more men, they
explored the coast of Peru and visited Tumbez, a town with a lofty
temple and a palace for the Incas.

They beheld a country fully peopled and cultivated; the natives
were decently clothed, and possessed of ingenuity so far surpassing
the other inhabitants of the New World as to have the use of tame
domestic animals. But what chiefly attracted the notice of the
visitors was such a show of gold and silver, not only in ornaments,
but in several vessels and utensils for common use, formed of those
precious metals as left no room to doubt that they abounded with
profusion in the country.

After his return Pizarro visited Spain and secured the patronage of
Charles V, who appointed him Governor and Captain-General of the newly
discovered country. In the next voyage from Panama, Pizarro set sail
with 180 soldiers in three small ships--"a contemptible force surely to
invade the great empire of Peru."

Pizarro was very fortunate in the time of his arrival, because two
brothers were fiercely contending in civil war to obtain the
sovereignty. Their father, Huana Capac, the twelfth Inca in succession
from Manco Capac, had recently died after annexing the kingdom of Quito,
and thus doubling the power of the empire. Pizarro made friends with
Atahualpa, who had become Inca by the defeat and death of his brother,
and a friendly meeting was arranged between them. The Peruvians are thus
described by a Spanish onlooker:

First of all there arrived 400 men in uniform; the Inca himself, on
a couch adorned with plumes, and almost covered with plates of gold
and silver, enriched with precious ston