ade them
farewell.

Pizarro sailed on south. Soon they passed the farthest point a European
had ever reached,--Punta de Pasado, which was the limit of Ruiz's
explorations,--and were again in unknown seas. After twenty days' sail
they entered the Gulf of Guayaquil, in Ecuador, and anchored in the Bay
of Tumbez. Before them they saw a large Indian town with permanent
houses. The blue bay was dotted with Indian sail-rafts; and far in the
background loomed the giant peaks of the Andes. We may imagine how the
Spaniards were impressed by their first sight of mountains that rose
more than twenty thousand feet above them.

The Indians came out on their _balsas_ (rafts) to look at these
marvellous strangers, and being treated with the utmost kindness and
consideration, soon lost their fears. The Spaniards were given presents
of chickens, swine, and trinkets, and had brought to them bananas, corn,
sweet potatoes, pineapples, cocoanuts, game, and fish. You may be sure
these dainties were more than welcome to the gaunt explorers after so
many starving months. The Indians also brought aboard several
llamas,--the characteristic and most valuable quadruped of South
America. The fascinating but misled historian who has done more than any
other one man in the United States to spread an interesting but
absolutely false idea of Peru, calls the llama the Peruvian sheep; but
it is no more a sheep than a giraffe is. The llama is the South American
camel (a true camel, though a small one), the beast of burden whose
slow, sure feet and patient back have made it possible for man to subdue
a country so mountainous in parts as to make horses useless. Besides
being a carrier it is a producer of clothing; it supplies the camel's
hair which is woven into the woollen garments of the people. There were
three other kinds of camel,--the vicuna, the guanaco, and the
alpaca,--all small, and all variously prized for their hair, which still
surpasses the wool of the best sheep for making fine fabrics. The
Peruvians domesticated the llama in large flocks, and it was their most
important helper. They were the only aborigines in the two Americas who
had a beast of burden before the Europeans came, except the Apaches of
the Plains and the Eskimos, both of whom had the dog and the sledge.

At Tumbez, Alonso de Molina was sent ashore to look at the town. He came
back with such gorgeous reports of gilded temples and great forts that
Pizarro distrusted him, and