E MAN WHO WOULD NOT GIVE UP.

With so inadequate a force, yet much stronger than before, Pizarro and
Almagro sailed again on their dangerous mission. The pilot was Bartolome
Ruiz, a brave and loyal Andalusian and a good sailor. The weather was
better now, and the adventurers pushed on hopefully. After a few days'
sail they reached the Rio San Juan, which was as far as any European had
ever sailed down that coast: it will be remembered that this was where
Almagro had got discouraged and turned back. Here were more Indian
settlements, and a little gold; but here too the vastness and savagery
of the wilderness became more apparent. It is hard for us to conceive at
all, in these easy days, how _lost_ these explorers were. Then there was
not a white man in all the world who knew what lay beyond them; and the
knowledge of something somewhere ahead is the most necessary prop to
courage. We can understand their situation only by supposing a band of
schoolboys--brave boys but unlearned--carried blindfold a thousand
miles, and set down in a trackless wilderness they had never heard of.

Pizarro halted here with part of his men, and sent Almagro back to
Panama with one vessel for recruits, and Pilot Ruiz south with the
other to explore the coast. Ruiz coasted southward as far as Punta de
Pasado, and was the first white man who ever crossed the equator on the
Pacific,--no small honor. He found a rather more promising country, and
encountered a large raft with cotton sails, on which were several
Indians. They had mirrors (probably of volcanic glass, as was common to
the southern aborigines) set in silver, and ornaments of silver and
gold, besides remarkable cloths, on which were woven figures of beasts,
birds, and fishes. The cruise lasted several weeks; and Ruiz got back to
the San Juan barely in time. Pizarro and his men had suffered awful
hardships. They had made a gallant effort to get inland, but could not
escape the dreadful tropical forest, "whose trees grew to the sky." The
dense growth was not so lonely as their earlier forests. There were
troops of chattering monkeys and brilliant parrots; around the huge
trees coiled lazy boas, and alligators dozed by the sluggish lagoons.
Many of the Spaniards perished by these grim, strange foes; some were
crushed to pulp in the mighty coils of the snakes, and some were
crunched between the teeth of the scaly saurians. Many more fell victims
to lurking savages; in a single swoop fourt