miasma of the marsh brooded
everywhere, an intangible but merciless foe. Clouds of venomous insects
hung upon them. To think of flies as a danger to life is strange to
those who know only the temperate zones; but in some parts of the
tropics the insects are more dreadful than wolves. From the swamps the
exhausted Spaniards struggled through to a range of hills, whose sharp
rocks (lava, very likely) cut their feet to the bone. And there was
nothing to cheer them; all was the same hopeless wilderness. They toiled
back to their rude brigantine, fainting under the tropic heat, and
re-embarked. Taking on wood and water, they pursued their course south.
Then came savage storms, which lasted ten days. Hurled about on the
waves, their crazy little vessel barely missed falling asunder. Water
ran short; and as for food, they had to live on two ears of corn apiece
daily. As soon as the weather would permit they put to a landing, but
found themselves again in a trackless and impenetrable forest. These
strange, vast forests of the tropics (forests as big as the whole of
Europe) are Nature's most forbidding side; the pathless sea and the
desert plains are not so lonely or so deadly. Gigantic trees, sometimes
much more than a hundred feet in circumference, grow thick and tall,
their bases buried in eternal gloom, their giant columns interwoven with
mighty vines, so that it is no longer a forest but a wall. Every step
must be won by the axe. Huge and hideous snakes and great saurians are
there; and in the hot, damp air lurks a foe deadlier than python or
alligator or viper,--the tropic pestilence.

The men were no weaklings, but in this dreadful wilderness they soon
lost hope. They began to curse Pizarro for leading them only to a
miserable death, and clamored to sail back to Panama. But this only
served to show the difference between men who were only brave physically
and those of moral courage like Pizarro's. He had no thought of giving
up; yet as his men were ripe for mutiny, something must be done; and he
did a very bright thing,--one of the small first flashes of that genius
which danger and extremity finally developed so conspicuously. He
cheered his followers even while he was circumventing their mutiny.
Montenegro, one of the officers, was sent back with the brigantine and
half the little army to the Isle of Pearls for supplies. That kept the
expedition from being given up. Pizarro and his fifty men could not
return to Panama,