Indians, he set out from Quito and marched over the Andes past the
foot of Cotopaxi to the lowlands of the Napo River.

It was a reckless enterprise. The Indians were frozen to death in crowds
on the great heights. Instead of gold, nothing was found but wearisome
savannahs and swamps, and dismal forests soaked with two months' rain.
Instead of useful domestic animals, no creature was seen but the
thick-skinned tapir, which, with a long beak-like nose, crops plants and
leaves and frequents swampy tracts in the heart of the primeval forest.
The few natives were hostile.

When the troop reached the Napo River on New Year's Day, 1540, Pizarro
decided to send the bold seaman Orellana on in front down the river to
look for people and provisions, for famine with all its tortures
threatened them.

A camp was set up and a wharf constructed. A small brigantine for sails
and oars was hastily put together, and Orellana stepped on board with a
crew of fifty men, and the boat was borne down the strong current.

Dark and silent woods stood on both sides. No villages, no human beings
were seen. Tall trees stood on the bank like triumphal arches, and from
their boughs hung lianas serving as rope ladders and swings for sportive
monkeys with prehensile tails. Day after day the vessel glided farther
into this humid land never before seen by white men. The Spaniards
looked in vain for natives, and their eyes tried in vain to pierce the
green murkiness between the tree trunks. The men showed increasing
uneasiness; but Orellana sat quietly at the helm, gave his orders to the
rowers, and had the sail hoisted to catch the breeze that swept over the
water.

No camping-places on points of the bank, no huts roofed with palm leaves
or grass, no smoke indicated the vicinity of Indians. In a thicket by a
brook lay a boa constrictor, a snake allied to the python of the Old
World, in easy, elegant coils, digesting a small rodent somewhat like a
hare and called an agouti. At the margin of the bank some water-hogs
wallowed in the sodden earth full of roots, and under a vault of thorny
bushes lay their worst enemy, the jaguar, in ambush, his eyes glowing
like fire.

At length the country became more open. Frightened Indians appeared on
the bank, and their huts peeped through the forest avenues. Orellana
moored his boat and landed with his men. The savages were quiet, and
received the Spaniards trustingly, so the latter stayed for a time and
collect