already arrived at Coro. This was the intrepid German known as "George
of Speyer," whose real name, Bandelier has discovered, was George
Hormuth. Reaching Coro in 1535, he heard not only of the Dorado, but
even of tame sheep to the southwest,--that is, in the direction of Peru.
Following these vague indications, he started southwest, but encountered
such enormous difficulties in trying to reach the mountain pass, which
the Indians told him led to the land of the Dorado, that he drifted into
the vast and fearful tropical forests of the upper Orinoco. Here he
heard of Meta, and, following that myth, penetrated to within one degree
of the equator. For twenty-seven months he and his Spanish followers
floundered in the tangled and swampy wastes between the Orinoco and the
Amazon. They met some very numerous and warlike tribes, most conspicuous
of which were the Uaupes.[17] They found no gold, but everywhere heard
the fable of a great lake associated with gold. Of the one hundred and
ninety men who started on this expedition only one hundred and thirty
came back, and but fifty of these had strength left to bear arms. The
whole of the indescribably awful trip lasted three years. The result of
its horrors was to deflect the attention of explorers from the real home
of the Dorado, and to lead them on a wild-goose chase after a related
but rather geographic myth to the forests of the Amazon. In other words,
it prepared for the exploration of northern Brazil.
Shortly after George of Speyer, and entirely unconnected with him,
Francisco Pizarro, the conqueror of Peru, had given an impulse to the
exploration of the Amazon from the Pacific side of the continent. In
1538, distrusting Belalcazar, he sent his brother, Gonzalo Pizarro, to
Quito to supersede his suspected lieutenant. The following year Gonzalo
heard that the cinnamon-tree abounded in the forests on the eastern
slope of the Andes, and that farther east dwelt powerful Indian tribes
rich in gold. That is, while the original and genuine myth of the Dorado
had reached to Quito from the north, the echo myth of Meta had got there
from the east. Since Belalcazar had gone to the real former home of the
Dorado, and had failed to find that gentleman at home, it was supposed
that the home must be somewhere else,--east, instead of north, from
Quito. Gonzalo made his disastrous expedition into the eastern forests
with two hundred and twenty men. In the two years of that ghastly
journey all the horses perished, and so did all the Indian companions;
and the few Spaniards who survived to get back to Peru in 1541 were
utterly broken down. The cinnamon-tree had been found, but not the
Gilded Man. One of Gonzalo's lieutenants, Francisco de Orellana, had
gone in advance on the upper Amazon with fifty men in a crazy boat. The
two companies were unable to come together again, and Orellana finally
drifted down the Amazon to its mouth with untold sufferings. Floating
out into the Atlantic, they finally reached the island of Cubagua, Sept.
11, 1541. This expedition was the first to bring the world reliable
information as to the size and nature of the greatest river on earth,
and also to give that river the name it bears to-day. They encountered
Indian tribes whose women fought side by side with the men, and for that
reason named it _Rio de las Amazones_,--River of the Amazons.
In 1543 Hernan Perez Quesada, a brother of the conqueror, penetrated the
regions which George of Speyer had visited. He went in from Bogota,
having heard the twisted myth of Meta, but only found misery, hunger,
disease, and hostile savages in the sixteen awful months he floundered
in the wilderness.
Meanwhile Spain had become satisfied that the leasing of Venezuela to
the German money-lenders was a failure. The Welser regime was doing
nothing but harm. Yet a last effort was determined upon, and Philip von
Hutten, a young and gallant German cavalier, left Coro in August, 1541,
in chase of the golden myth, which by this time had flitted as far south
as the Amazon. For eighteen months he wandered in a circle, and then,
hearing of a powerful and gold-rich tribe called the Omaguas, he dashed
on south across the equator with his force of forty men. He met the
Omaguas, was defeated by them and wounded, and finally struggled back to
Venezuela after suffering for more than three years in the most
impassable forests and swamps of the tropics. Upon his return he was
murdered; and that was the last of the German domination in Venezuela.
The fact that the Omaguas had been able to defeat a Spanish company in
open battle gave that tribe a great reputation. So strong in numbers
and in bravery, it was naturally supposed that they must also have
metallic wealth, though no evidence of that had been seen.
Driven from its home, the myth of the Gilded Man had become a wandering
ghost. Its original form had been lost sight of, and from the Dorado had
gradually been changed to a golden tribe. It had become a confusion and
combination of the Dorado and Meta, following the curious but
characteristic course of myths. First, a remarkable fact; then the story
of a fact that had ceased to be; then a far-off echo of that story,
entirely robbed of the fundamental facts; and at last a general tangle
and jumble of fact, story, and echo into a new and almost unrecognizable
myth.
This vagabond and changeling myth figured prominently in 1550 in the
province of Peru. In that year several hundred Indians from the middle
course of the Amazon--that is, from about the heart of northern
Brazil--took refuge in the eastern Spanish settlements in Peru. They had
been driven from their homes by the hostility of neighbor tribes, and
had reached Peru only after several years of toilsome wanderings.
They gave exaggerated accounts of the wealth and importance of the
Omaguas, and these tales were eagerly credited. Still, Peru was now in
no condition to undertake any new conquest, and it was not till ten
years after the arrival of these Indian refugees that any step was taken
in the matter. The first viceroy of Peru, the great and good Antonio de
Mendoza, who had been promoted from the vice-royalty of Mexico to this
higher dignity, saw in this report the chance for a stroke of wisdom. He
had cleared Mexico of a few hundred restless fellows who were a great
menace to good government, by sending them off to chase the golden
phantom of the Quivira--that remarkable expedition of Coronado which was
so important to the history of the United States. He now found in his
new province a similar but much worse danger; and it was to rid Peru of
its unruly and dangerous characters that Mendoza set on foot the famous
expedition of Pedro de Ursua. It was the most numerous body of men ever
assembled for such a purpose in Spanish America in the sixteenth
century, but was composed of the worst and most desperate elements that
the Spanish colonies ever contained. Ursua's force was concentrated on
the banks of the upper Amazon; July 1, 1560, the first brigantine
floated down the great river. The main body followed in other
brigantines on the 26th of September.
The country was one vast tropical forest, absolutely deserted. It soon
became apparent that their golden expectations could never be realized,
and discontent began to play a bloody role. The throng of desperadoes by
whose practical banishment the wise viceroy had purified Peru, could not
be expected to get along well together. No longer scattered among good
citizens who could restrain them, but in condensed rascality, they soon
began to suggest the fable of the Kilkenny cats. Their voyage was an
orgie entirely indescribable.
Among these scoundrels was one of peculiar character,--a physically
deformed but very ambitious fellow, who had every reason not to wish to
return to Peru. This was Lope de Aguirre. Seeing that the object of the
expedition must absolutely fail, he began to form a nefarious plot. If
they could not get gold in the way they had hoped, why not in another
way? In short, he conceived the audacious plan of turning traitor to
Spain and everything else, and founding a new empire. To achieve this he
felt it necessary to remove the leaders of the expedition, who might
have scruples against betraying their country. So, as the wretched
brigantines floated down the great river, they became the stage of a
series of atrocious tragedies. First, the commander Ursua was
assassinated, and in his place was put a young but dissolute nobleman,
Fernando de Guzman. He was at once elevated to the dignity of a
prince,--the first open step toward high treason.
Then Guzman was murdered, and also the infamous Ynez de Atienza, a woman
who bore a shameful part in the affair; and the misshapen Aguirre became
leader and "tyrant." His treason was now undisguised, and he commanded
the expedition thenceforth not as a Spanish officer, but as a rebel and
a pirate. As he steered toward the Atlantic, it was with plans of
appalling magnitude and daring. He intended to sail to the Gulf of
Mexico, land on the Isthmus, seize Panama, and thence sail to Peru,
where he would kill off all who opposed him, and establish an empire of
his own!
But a curious accident brought his plans to nought. Instead of reaching
the mouth of the Amazon, the flotilla drifted to the left, in that
wonderfully tangled river, and got into the Rio Negro. The sluggish
currents prevented their discovering their mistake, and they worked
ahead into the Cassiquiare, and thence into the Orinoco. On the 1st of
July, 1561 (a year to a day had been passed in navigating the labyrinth,
and the days had been marked with murder right and left), the
desperadoes reached the Atlantic Ocean; but through the mouth of the
Orinoco, and not, as they had expected, through the Amazon. Seventeen
days later they sighted the island of Margarita, where there was a
Spanish post. By treachery they seized the island, and then proclaimed
their independence of Spain.
This step gave Aguirre money and some ammunition, but he still lacked
vessels for a voyage by sea. He tried to seize a large vessel which was
conveying the provincial Monticinos, a Dominican missionary, to
Venezuela; but his treachery was frustrated, and the alarm was given on
the mainland. Infuriated by his failure, the little monster butchered
the royal officers of Margarita. His plan to reach Panama was balked;
but he succeeded at last in capturing a smaller vessel, by means of
which he landed on the coast of Venezuela in August, 1561. His career on
the mainland was one of crime and rapine. The people, taken by surprise,
and unable to make immediate resistance to the outlaw, fled at his
approach. The authorities sent as far as New Granada in their appeals
for help; and all northern South America was terrorized.
Aguirre proceeded without opposition as far as Barquecimeto. He found
that place deserted; but very soon there arrived the maestro de campo,
(Colonel) Diego de Paredes, with a hastily collected loyal force. At the
same time Quesada, the conqueror of New Granada, was hastening against
the traitor with what force he could muster. Aguirre found himself
blockaded in Barquecimeto, and his followers began to desert. Finally,
left almost alone, Aguirre slew his daughter (who had shared all those
awful wanderings) and surrendered himself. The Spanish commander did not
wish to execute the arch-traitor; but Aguirre's own followers insisted
upon his death, and secured it.
* * * * *
There were many subsequent attempts to discover the Gilded Man; but they
were of little importance, except the one undertaken by Sir Walter
Raleigh in 1595. He got only as far as the Salto Coroni,--that is,
failed to achieve anything like as great a feat as even Ordaz,--but
returned to England with glowing accounts of a great inland lake and
rich nations. He had mixed up the legend of the Dorado with reports of
the Incas of Peru,--which proves that the Spanish were not the only
people to swallow fables. Indeed, the English and other explorers were
fully as credulous and fully as anxious to get to the fabled gold.
The myth of the great lake, the lake of Parime,[18] gradually absorbed
the myth of the Gilded Man. The historic tradition became merged and
lost in the geographic fable. Only in the eastern forests of Peru did
the Dorado re-appear in the beginning of the last century, but as a
distorted and groundless tale. But Lake Parime remained on the maps and
in geographical descriptions. It is a curious coincidence that where the
golden tribes of Meta were once believed to exist, the gold fields of
Guiana (now a bone of contention between England and Venezuela) have
recently been discovered. It is certain that Meta was only a myth, but
even the myth was useful.
The fable of the lake of Parime--long believed in as a great lake with
whole ranges of mountains of silver behind it--was fully exploded by
Humboldt in the beginning of the present century. He showed that there
was neither a great lake nor were there mountains of silver. The broad
savannas of the Orinoco, when overflowed in the rainy season, had been
taken for a lake, and the silver background was simply the shimmer of
the sunlight on peaks of micaceous rock.
With Humboldt finally perished the most remarkable fairy tale in
history. No other myth or legend in either North or South America ever
exercised such a powerful influence on the course of geographical
discovery; none ever called out such surpassing human endeavor, and none
so well illustrated the matchless tenacity of purpose and the
self-sacrifice inherent in the Spanish character. It is a new lesson to
most of us, but a true and proved one, that this southern nation, more
impulsive and impetuous than those of the north, was also more patient
and more enduring.
The myth died, but it had not existed in vain. Before it had been
disproved, it had brought about the exploration of the Amazon, the
Orinoco, all Brazil north of the Amazon, all Venezuela, all New Granada,
and eastern Ecuador. If we look at the map a moment, we shall see what
this means,--that the Gilded Man gave to the world the geography of all
South America above the equator.
FOOTNOTES:
[17] Pronounced Wow-pess.
[18] Pronounced Pah-_ree_-may.
III.
THE GREATEST CONQUEST.
PIZARRO AND PERU.
I.
THE SWINEHERD OF TRUXILLO.
Somewhere between the years 1471 and 1478, (we are not sure of the exact
date), an unfortunate boy was born in the city of Truxillo,[19] province
of Estremadura, Spain. He was an illegitimate son of Colonel Gonzalo
Pizarro,[20] who had won distinction in the wars in Italy and Navarre.
But his parentage was no help to him. The disgraced baby never had a
home,--it is even said that he was left as a foundling at the door of a
church. He grew up to young manhood in ignorance and abject poverty,
without schools or care or helping hands, thrown entirely upon his own
resources to keep from starving. Only the most menial occupations were
open to him; but he seems to have done his best with them. How the
neighbor-boys would have laughed and hooted if one had said to them:
"That dirty, ragged youngster who drives his pigs through the oak-groves
of Estremadura will one day be the greatest man in a new world which no
one has yet seen, and will be a more famous soldier than our Great
Captain,[21] and will divide more gold than the king has!" And we could
not have blamed them for their sneers. The wisest man in Europe then
would have believed as little as they such a wild prophecy; for truly it
was the most improbable thing in the world.
But the boy who could herd swine faithfully when there was no better
work to do, could turn his hand to greater things when greater offered,
and do them as well. Luckily the New World came just in time for him. If
it had not been for Columbus, he might have lived and died a swineherd,
and history would have lost one of its most gallant figures, as well as
many more of those to whom the adventurous Genoese opened the door of
fame. To thousands of men as undivined by themselves as by others, there
was then nothing to see in life but abject obscurity in crowded,
ignorant, poverty-stricken Europe. When Spain suddenly found the new
land beyond the seas, it caused such a wakening of mankind as was never
before nor ever has been since. There was, almost literally, a new
world; and it made almost a new people. Not merely the brilliant and the
great profited by this wonderful change; there was none so poor and
ignorant that he might not now spring up to the full stature of the man
that was in him. It was, indeed, the greatest beginning of human
liberty, the first opening of the door of equality, the first seed of
free nations like our own. The Old World was the field of the rich and
favored; but America was already what it is so proud to be to-day,--the
poor man's chance. And it is a very striking fact that nearly all who
made great names in America were not of those who came great, but of the
obscure men who won here the admiration of a world which had never heard
of them before. Of all these and of all others, Pizarro was the greatest
pioneer. The rise of Napoleon himself was not a more startling triumph
of will and genius over every obstacle, nor as creditable morally.
[Illustration: ATAHUALPA'S HOUSE, CAXAMARCA.
_See page 260._]
We do not know the year in which Francisco Pizarro, the swineherd of
Truxillo, reached America; but his first importance here began in 1510.
In that year he was already in the island of Espanola, and accompanied
Ojeda[22] on the disastrous expedition to Uraba on the mainland. Here he
showed himself so brave and prudent that Ojeda left him in charge of the
ill-fated colony of San Sebastian, while he himself should return to
Espanola for help. This first honorable responsibility which fell to
Pizarro was full of danger and suffering; but he was equal to the
emergency, and in him began to grow that rare and patient heroism which
was later to bear him up through the most dreadful years that ever
conqueror had. For two months he waited in that deadly spot, until so
many had died that the survivors could at last crowd into their one
boat.
Then Pizarro joined Balboa, and shared that frightful march across the
Isthmus and that brilliant honor of the discovery of the Pacific. When
Balboa's gallant career came to a sudden and bloody ending, Pizarro was
thrown upon the hands of Pedro Arias Davila, who sent him on several
minor expeditions. In 1515 he crossed the Isthmus again, and probably
heard vaguely of Peru. But he had neither money nor influence to launch
out for himself. He accompanied Governor Davila when that official moved
to Panama, and won respect in several small expeditions. But at fifty
years of age he was still a poor man and an unknown one,--an humble
_ranchero_ near Panama. On that pestilent and wild Isthmus there had
been very little chance to make up for the disadvantages of his youth.
He had not learned to read or write,--indeed, he never did learn. But it
is evident that he had learned some more important lessons, and had
developed a manhood equal to any call the future might make upon it.
In 1522, Pascual de Andagoya made a short voyage from Panama down the
Pacific coast, but got no farther than Balboa had gone years before. His
failure, however, called new attention to the unknown countries to the
south; and Pizarro burned to explore them. The mind of the man who had
been a swineherd was the only one that grasped the importance of what
awaited discovery,--his courage, the only courage ready to face the
obstacles that lay between. At last, he found two men ready to listen to
his plans and to help him. These were Diego de Almagro[23] and Hernando
de Luque.[24] Almagro was a soldier of fortune, a foundling like
Pizarro, but better educated and somewhat older. He was a brave man
physically; but he lacked the high moral courage as well as the moral
power of Pizarro. He was in every way a lower grade of man,--more what
would have been expected from their common birth than was that
phenomenal character which was as much at home in courts and conquest as
it had been in herding beasts. Not only could Pizarro accommodate
himself to any range of fortune, but he was as unspoiled by power as by
poverty. He was a man of principle; a man of his word; inflexible,
heroic, yet prudent and humane, generous and just, and forever
loyal,--in all of which qualities Almagro fell far below him.
De Luque was a priest, vicar at Panama. He was a wise and good man, to
whom the two soldiers were greatly indebted. They had nothing but strong
arms and big courage for the expedition; and he had to furnish the
means. This he did with money he secured from the licentiate Espinosa, a
lawyer. The consent of the governor was necessary, as in all Spanish
provinces; and though Governor Davila did not seem to approve of the
expedition, his permission was secured by promising him a share of the
profits, while he was not called upon for any of the expenses. Pizarro
was given command, and sailed in November, 1524, with one hundred men.
Almagro was to follow as soon as possible, hoping to recruit more men in
the little colony.
After coasting a short distance to the south, Pizarro effected a
landing. It was an inhospitable spot. The explorers found themselves in
a vast, tropical swamp, where progress was made almost impossible by
the morasses and by the dense growth. The 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.