as made, most of the money being
supplied by De Luque, Pizarro taking command of the expedition, and
Almagro undertaking the equipment of the ships. Only about a hundred men
could be persuaded to join the explorers, and those but the idle
hangers-on in the colony, who were eager to do anything to mend their
fortunes. Everything being ready, Pizarro set sail with these in the
larger of the two ships, in the month of November 1524, leaving Almagro
to follow as soon as the second vessel could be fitted out. With such
slender means did Pizarro begin his attack on a great people, and invade
the mysterious empire of the Children of the Sun.

THE EMPIRE OF THE INCAS

At this time the Peruvian Empire stretched along the Pacific from about
the second degree north to the thirty-seventh degree of south latitude;
its breadth varied, but was nowhere very great. The country was most
remarkable, and seemed peculiarly unfitted for cultivation. The great
range of mountains ran parallel to the coast, sometimes in a single
line, sometimes in two or three, either side by side or running
obliquely to each other, broken here and there by the towering peaks of
huge volcanoes, white with perpetual snows, and descending towards the
coast in jagged cliffs and awful precipices. Between the rocks and the
sea lay a narrow strip of sandy soil, where no rain ever fell, and which
was insufficiently watered by the few scanty streams that flow down the
western side of the Cordilleras. Nevertheless, by the patient industry
of the Peruvians, these difficulties had all been overcome; by means of
canals and subterranean aqueducts the waste places of the coast were
watered and made fertile, the mountain sides were terraced and
cultivated, every form of vegetation finding the climate suited to it
at a different height, while over the snowy wastes above wandered the
herds of llamas, or Peruvian sheep, under the care of their herdsmen.
The Valley of Cuzco, the central region of Peru, was the cradle of their
civilisation. According to tradition among the Peruvians, there had been
a time, long past, when the land was held by many tribes, all plunged in
barbarism, who worshipped every object in nature, made war as a pastime,
and feasted upon the flesh of their slaughtered captives. The Sun, the
great parent of mankind, pitying their degraded condition, sent two of
his children, Manco Capac and Mama Ocllo Huaco, to govern and teach
them. They bore with them as t