estraints of law and
order are little felt, where the prospect of gain is unbounded, and
where immense wealth may cover the crimes by which it is acquired, that
we can find any parallel to the levity, the rapaciousness, the perfidy,
and corruption prevalent among the Spaniards in Peru."

SECTION I.

_Incidents in the History of Peru, from the departure of Gasca, to the
appointment of Don Antonio de Mendoza as Viceroy._

Among those who were dissatisfied with the distribution of the
repartimientos in Peru by the president, was Francisco Hernandez Giron,
to whom De la Gasca granted a commission to make a conquest of the
district called the Cunchos, to the north-east of Cuzco, and beyond one
of the great chains of the Andes, with the title and authority of
governor and captain-general of that country, which he engaged to
conquer at his own expence. Giron was much gratified by this employment,
as it afforded him a favourable opportunity for fomenting and exciting a
new rebellion against the royal authority, which he had long meditated,
and which he actually put in execution, as will be seen in the sequel.
Immediately after the departure of the president from Peru, he went from
Lima to Cuzco publishing the commission which he had received, and
appointed several captains to raise men for his intended expedition in
Guamanga, Arequipa, La Paz, and other places; while he personally beat
up for volunteers in Cuzco. Being a man of popular manners and much
beloved among the soldiers, he soon drew together above two hundred men.
So great a number of the most loose and dissolute inhabitants being
collected together at Cuzco and in arms, they took extreme liberty in
canvassing the late events, and to speak with much licentiousness
respecting the president and the officers he had left in the government
of the kingdom. Their discourse was so open and scandalous, that the
magistrates of the city deemed it necessary to interpose; and Juan de
Saavedra, who was then mayor or regidor of Cuzco, requested Giron to
depart upon his intended expedition without delay, that the peaceable
inhabitants might no longer be scandalized by the seditious discourses
of his soldiers, as most of them were quartered upon the citizens to
whom they behaved with much insolence.

I was then in Cuzco, though a boy, when Giron and his soldiers made
their first disturbance; and I was present also about three years
afterwards at their second mutiny; and, thoug