cified the quarrel, helped by the generous
spirit of Pizarro. He agreed to make Almagro the adelantado, and to ask
the Crown to confirm the appointment. He also promised to provide for
him before he did for his own brothers.

Early in January, 1531, Francisco Pizarro sailed from Panama on his
third and last voyage to the south. He had in his three vessels one
hundred and eighty men and twenty-seven horses. That was not an imposing
army, truly, to explore and conquer a great country; but it was all he
could get, and Pizarro was bound to try. He made the real conquest of
Peru with a handful of rough heroes; indeed, he would certainly have
tried, and very possibly would have succeeded in the vast undertaking,
if he had had but fifty soldiers; for it was very much more the one man
who conquered Peru than his one hundred and eighty followers. Almagro
was again left behind at Panama to try to drum up recruits.

Pizarro intended to sail straight to Tumbez, and there effect his
landing; but storms beat back the weak ships, so that he was obliged to
change his plan. After thirteen days he landed in the Bay of San Mateo
(St. Matthew), and led his men by land, while the vessels coasted along
southward. It was an enormously difficult tramp on that inhospitable
shore, and the men could scarcely stagger on. But Pizarro acted as
guide, and cheered them up by words and example. It was the old story
with him. Everywhere he had fairly to _carry_ his company. Their legs
no doubt were as strong as his, though he must have had a very wonderful
constitution; but there is a mental muscle which is harder and more
enduring, and has held up many a tottering body,--the muscle of pluck.
And that pluck of Pizarro was never surpassed on earth. You might almost
say it had to carry his army pick-a-back.

Wild as the region was, it had some mineral wealth. Pizarro collected
(so Pedro Pizarro[25] says) two hundred thousand _castellanos_ (each
weighing a dollar) of gold. This he sent back to Panama by his vessels
to speak for him. _It_ was the kind of argument the rude adventurers on
the Isthmus could understand, and he trusted to its yellow logic to
bring him recruits. But while the vessels had gone on this important
errand, the little army, trudging down the coast, was suffering greatly.
The deep sands, the tropic heat, the weight of their arms and armor were
almost unendurable. A strange and horrible pestilence broke out, and
many perished. The coun