I
HISTORICAL SKETCH
I
A little more than four hundred years ago, when Europe was emerging from the darkness of the Middle Ages into the era of printed books, when the Field of the Cloth of Gold had impressed the official stamp of culture on her civilization, when gunpowder was changing the aspect of war—in an age that produced such intellects as those of Machiavelli, Copernicus, Lorenzo the Magnificent, Cardinal Wolsey, and John Werner—wise men were still groping blindly for knowledge about the world in which they lived that is regarded as elementary by the school children of our day. What was its shape? What lay beyond the western horizon of the Atlantic, the vast and stormy Mare Tenebrosum of fabled terror to mariners? What was south of the African countries bordering the Mediterranean? How far east did Asia extend? No one knew.
In the year 150 A.D., the learned Alexandrian Claudius Ptolemy had made a map of Europe and of those parts of Asia and Africa which were then known, or supposed to exist; and on that map, for the first time in history, the world was represented as a sphere—though a stationary one. Therefore, speculated those who thought about it at all, assuming Ptolemy’s theory to be correct, how could a mariner, even were he successful in navigating his vessel down the awful declivity on one side of the globe, hope to make it climb up again on the other? How could he cross the equator, which Aristotle and Pliny had declared was an uninhabitable zone, so torrid that the earth around was burnt up as with fire and only marine salamanders, if such monsters existed, could live in the super-heated waters? And, even if the equator were passable, how could the frightful abysses into which the ocean was supposed to discharge itself at the pole be escaped?
Some time in the sixth century a monk named Cosmas had attempted to answer these questions by means of a theory evolved from a study of the Bible and more consistent with its descriptions and metaphors. In the map he made, the world was represented as a level rectangle, its sides composed of blue walls, supporting a dome that separated the mortal domain from the Paradise where dwelt the Creator and his angels; and, fanciful as was this cosmos of Cosmas’ devising, his map was regarded as the standard of geographical knowledge down to the time of Columbus. Even after his time the famous astronomer Galileo was imprisoned as a heretic partly for reasserting the theory of Ptolemy. No one but a few scientists even imagined that the east could be reached by sailing west; no one, not even they, yet knew that Africa could be circumnavigated and the treasures of gorgeous Far Cathay (as China was then called) brought to Europe’s doors by water. Yet it was to accomplish that very object that the series of voyages was begun that led eventually to the discovery of America.
Venice and Genoa, grown rich and powerful through trade with India and the nearer countries of the Orient, had for a space enjoyed a prosperity and revival of culture that were felt throughout Christendom. Then had come the conquest of Spain and domination of the Mediterranean by the Moors, and, afterward, the wars of the Crusades, which had checked the Saracen advance but interrupted all other commerce with the infidels. Meanwhile, as though to compensate for this loss, the great Mongolian conqueror Genghis Khan had fulfilled his remarkable destiny and, instead of adopting measures to prevent it, invited western intercourse with the countries he had brought under his sway, and China, about which almost nothing was then generally known, was visited overland by traders, adventurers, and missionaries. Marco Polo, a Venetian, after spending more than twenty years in the far east, part of the time in the service of the Great Khan Kubilay, had returned by way of India and Persia, laden with jewels of enormous value, and had written a book descriptive of the countries he had seen and the wealth and customs of the people. In the fourteenth century, when the Mongolian dynasty was overthrown, the Asiatics had again turned hostile and the land route was closed.
But during this open season it had become known that Cathay was not the end of the world, as had been supposed—that there was an ocean beyond and the wonderful Island of Cipango (Japan) and other islands rich in spices and costly products; and Europe began to wonder, since the Tartars barred the route by land, whether these desirable places might not be accessible by water. “Between wondering and the attempt,” says Hawthorne, “there was a considerable interval, for the idea was too novel to be digested all at once. But it was an age of unbridled license of imagination and of desperate courage. The mere possibility of encountering perils never until then conceived of was allurement enough, as, even to-day, our young adventurers go forth to die on the ice fields of the north and south poles, or in the mysterious heart of savage Africa, or on the ghastly plateaux of Tibet. In addition, there were the fabulous rewards that success seemed to promise.”
At first, though, if the plan of sailing west was even thought of, it would seem to have been regarded as less feasible than that of rounding Africa. Prince Henry, a son of King John I of Portugal—for it was the Portuguese, not the Spanish, who were the pioneers in this series of discoveries—determined to devote his life to the work. Retiring from the splendors of the Lisbon court, he built an astronomical observatory on the promontory of Sagres (in southern Portugal), extended its hospitalities to all the wise men of the age and sent out expedition after expedition to the south. “Until then,” says Dawson, “nautical knowledge was very meager. The compass served only to indicate direction, not distance or position, and did not suffice for the systematic navigation of the open Atlantic. The Portuguese first made that possible by using astronomical observations and inventing the quadrant and astrolabe.”
This knowledge, once acquired, was promptly applied. Madeira was discovered in 1418, the Canaries in 1427, the Azores in 1432. To the west the Portuguese ventured no farther, but, continuing south, they reached Cape Blanco in 1441, Senegambia and Cape Verde in 1445, the Cape Verde Islands in 1460, and the Gulf of Guinea in 1469. In 1471 they were the first Europeans to cross the equator. The idea was then conceived that they had only to keep on and they could round the southern extremity of the continent and reach Abyssinia and India by sea—a hope that was realized in 1487 when Bartholomew Dias arrived at last at the Cape of Good Hope. A few miles beyond, however, he was compelled by the condition of his crew to return and it remained for his compatriot Vasco da Gama some years later to double the cape and complete the voyage up the eastern coast and across the Indian Ocean to Hindustan.
II
The significance of these early voyages of the Portuguese lies in the fact that thereby it was demonstrated that a shorter route was needed—that with the very small and badly equipped vessels of the period the trip around the Cape of Good Hope, at least for commercial purposes, was impracticable; also in the fact that with Dias had sailed the Genoese navigator Bartholomew Columbus, a brother of the discoverer of America.
Years before that first great achievement, Christopher Columbus—who had studied at the University of Pavia and had himself taken part in one or more of Prince Henry’s African expeditions, and even ventured to the northwest, probably as far as Iceland—had been converted to the theory that the world was round and that the oceans west of Europe and east of Cathay were the same. As a consequence, he had concluded, the East Indies (as India, China, Japan, and the other countries and islands east of the Indian Ocean were indiscriminately called) could be reached from Europe by sailing west. Eighteen years before he was finally enabled to put this theory to the test, he had written Toscanelli, one of the foremost astronomers of the time, asking his opinion as to this possibility. Toscanelli sent him a copy of a letter he had written shortly before to King Alfonso of Portugal on the same subject, in which he said:
“I have formerly spoken of a shorter route to the places of spices than you are pursuing by Guinea. Although I am well aware that this can be proved by the spherical shape of the earth, in order to make the point clearer I have decided to exhibit that route by means of a sailing chart, made by my own hands, whereon are laid down your coasts and the islands from which you must begin to shape your course steadily westward, the places at which you are bound to arrive and how far from the pole or equator you ought to keep away.” (Neither in the chart nor in the description was there indication of anything whatever resembling the continents of North and South America.) “From the city of Lisbon as far as the very great and splendid city of Quinsay” (Pekin), he continued, “are twenty-six spaces, each of 250 miles. This space is about a third of the whole sphere. But from the Island of Antilia, which you know, to the very splendid Island of Cipango” (Japan) “there are ten spaces. So, through the unknown parts of the route, the stretches of sea are not great.”
In his letter to Columbus he congratulates him on having undertaken an enterprise—
“Fraught with honor, as it must be, and inestimable gain and most lofty fame among all Christian peoples. It will be a voyage to powerful kingdoms” (he prophetically added, though he had never even dreamed of the empires of the Aztecs and the Incas) “and to cities and provinces most wealthy and noble. It will also be advantageous to those kings and princes who are eager to have dealings and make alliances with the Christians of other countries. For these and many other reasons, I do not wonder that you, who are of great courage, and the whole Portuguese nation, which has always had men distinguished in such enterprises, are now inflamed with a desire to make the voyage.”
Thus encouraged, Columbus began his efforts to secure patronage and money for the expedition. He tried in his birthplace, Genoa, and in Portugal and Spain, even in England, where he was accompanied by his brother Bartholomew after the latter’s return from the voyage to the Cape of Good Hope, and suffered many refusals. Toscanelli had been dead eight years before he at last succeeded; and then, had he known that the distance from Lisbon to the coast of Asia was in fact some 13,000 miles, or twice that which the astronomer had estimated, and that, even so, the route straight across was barred by the Isthmus of Panama—had he known that Cathay did not, as his mentor believed, extend some thousands of miles farther east than it does, even such a man as Columbus might have abandoned the project as chimerical when the cockleshells then available for ocean travel were taken into consideration. Nor, if she too had not been misled by the same “valuable pieces of ignorance,” is it likely that his plea would have prevailed on the practical Isabella of Castile, however elated and invincible she may have felt over the taking of the last of the Saracen strongholds at Granada and the expulsion of the Moors from Spain, for in that she was engaged when Columbus finally succeeded in securing her aid.
Fortunately, however, whatever might have happened if Toscanelli had not held the voyage to be practicable, Columbus was not only a man of indomitable spirit but possessed of a presence that inspired in others the confidence he felt in himself. A man of striking personality, he is said to have been about forty-five years of age at the time, tall, well formed, and dignified, with sharp gray eyes, alight with “that divine spark of enthusiasm which makes true genius,” and hair prematurely white. And so, in spite of his many disheartening failures, he did not abandon the project; so also was Queen Isabella sufficiently impressed by his learning and appearance to agree, in consideration of a fifth share in the profits, that he should have the rank of Admiral and govern, as Viceroy, all the lands that he might discover and bring under her dominion. With the great astronomer’s chart before him, therefore, and vowing to devote his share of the profits to the rescue of the Holy Sepulcher, he set out from Palos, Spain, on the 3d of August, 1492. His vessels, the Niña, Pinta (well named the “Pint Cup”), and Santa María, bore a company of but ninety, including the crews.
After a voyage of ten weeks, filled with difficulties and hardships, even threats of mutiny, that taxed his courage and diplomacy to the utmost, he came to land on an island (now known as Watling’s) on the outward bow of the Bahamas, to which he gave the name of San Salvador. The wild beauty of the foliage, the tropical luxuriance, the clear, fresh-water streams, the soft climate and perfume-laden breezes, more than ever delightful to men who had given themselves up for lost, and the natives themselves, bedecked with gold ornaments and dusky-skinned as those of Cathay were said to be—all seemed what might have been expected in the outlying spice islands of the east. So, supposing this to be one of those islands of which they were in quest, the adventurers cruised about for ten days more and finally arrived at Cuba, which they assumed to be Cipango.
In his infatuation, Columbus now saw his journey’s end. He had, he thought, but to sail a few courses farther to reach the mainland of Cathay, exchange compliments with the Great Khan at Quinsay, and return in triumph with the wealth he was to amass and herald the news of his wonderful achievement to a skeptical Europe. And all the while Cathay was ten thousand miles away—due west! Sailing across the strait to Hayti, he was directed south by the natives when questioned as to the source of their gold; but there, for the time being, his explorations were brought to an end. The flagship was wrecked on a sand bar and Pinzon, captain of one of the remaining two, stole treacherously away, to anticipate the Admiral in announcing the discoveries in Spain. Leaving a volunteer colony of about forty men to await his return with reinforcements, however, he at once set sail, overtook and captured the deserters, and, on the way back to Palos, was driven into the port of Lisbon by a gale.
“The news of his exploit set all Portugal afire,” says Hawthorne.
“The King was urged to have Columbus run through the body and to appropriate his discovery; but John II perceived that there was more peril than profit in such a scheme, and he invited him to court and made much of him instead. In due time he resumed his voyage and reached Palos on the 15th of March. This was Columbus’ apogee. He was called to Barcelona and welcomed in triumph; he was even allowed to sit down in the august presence of Ferdinand and Isabella. The half dozen Caribs he had brought with him were assumed to be East Indians and the Admiral’s interpretation of his discoveries was accepted without question. The little detail that nothing of oriental magnificence—no Great Khans, no mighty cities—had yet been revealed, was passed over. Land had been found and it could be nothing but Cipango and Cathay. The short route to the Indies had been discovered for Spain.”
This so completely overshadowed all that Portugal had accomplished that an intense rivalry sprang up between the two powers. The Pope, as the Vicar of Christ on earth, and accordingly the repository of the title to all lands still occupied by infidel peoples, was appealed to to confirm the discoveries to Spain. He issued a bull granting to His Most Catholic Majesty the lands then, and such as might thereafter be, discovered in the western sea, and to the Portuguese such as they might discover by way of the African route. This was supplemented by a second to the effect that only those lands lying west of a meridian of longitude a hundred miles west of the Azores and Cape Verde Islands should belong to the Spaniards. Dissatisfied even with that division, the Portuguese demanded a line still farther west, and, by a treaty signed at Tordesillas in June, 1494, Spain agreed that it should be advanced in that direction 370 leagues. This resulted eventually in giving Portugal title to the then yet undiscovered country of Brazil.
Meanwhile, on the 25th of September, 1493, Columbus set out on his second expedition—this time with seventeen ships and fifteen hundred men, among them his brothers Bartholomew and Diego and many adventurers of noble rank, for there was no lack either of men or money now. “Their dreams,” Professor Fiske tell us, “were of the marble palaces of Quinsay, of islands of spices and the treasures of the mythical Prester John. The sovereigns wept for joy as they thought that such untold riches were vouchsafed them as a reward for having overcome the Moor at Granada. Columbus shared these views and regarded himself as a special instrument for executing the divine decrees. He renewed his vow to rescue the Holy Sepulcher, promising within seven years to equip, at his own expense, a crusading army of fifty thousand foot and four thousand horse.” When the fleet arrived at Hayti and the company landed at the place where the little colony had been left, it was found that it had been annihilated. Not a whit dismayed by that, however, Columbus ordered a town to be built and the island, which he named Española (Little Spain), became the base of hundreds of exploring expeditions undertaken by the hordes of adventurers that followed in his wake and soon overran the neighboring islands.
Columbus himself made two other voyages, in the course of which he discovered Jamaica and the Island of Trinidad at the mouth of the Orinoco, reached the southern shores of Cuba, and, having heard rumors of another ocean to the west, coasted along the Central American mainland in search of a passage through. There he found stone houses and towns and what appeared to be a semi-civilized people, who wore clothes and knew how to weave cotton, embalm their dead, and carve ornaments on their tombs, and who had plenty of gold; and all this only confirmed his conviction that he was drawing nearer the countries of his quest. During this period, however, his fame was in turn overshadowed by that of Vasco da Gama, who had at last succeeded in discovering the African route to the Orient and had actually seen some of those spice islands and mighty cities that Columbus was still only searching for on the other side of the world so many thousands of miles away.
In 1506, soon after his return from his fourth expedition, he died at Valladolid, discredited and defrauded of his viceregal powers, a victim of treachery, jealousy, and intrigue, yet still believing that he had found the western route to the Indies. Even then “nobody had the faintest idea of what he had accomplished,” says Professor Fiske. “Nothing like it was ever done before and nothing like it can ever be done again. No worlds are left for future Columbuses to conquer. The era of which this great Italian was the most illustrious representative had closed forever.”
III
Having, in the interval between the second Columbian expedition and the discovery of the African route by Vasco da Gama, induced Spain to agree to the extension of the Papal meridian 370 leagues farther west, the Portuguese continued their activities with renewed ardor. In March, 1500, on his way to the Cape of Good Hope, Pedro Alvarez Cabral, a Portuguese nobleman in command of an expedition intended to resume the work begun by Da Gama, was blown across the Atlantic to the coasts of Brazil, where he touched at a point in the southern part of what is now the State of Bahia. Under the impression that it was an island, and assuming that it lay east of the Tordesillas treaty line, he landed and took possession in the name of his King. The news having reached Portugal in the Fall of the same year, no time was lost in asserting title and sending out a small fleet to ascertain the extent and resources of the region, also in the hope that a wealthy and civilized people like that of Hindustan would be found.
This expedition was placed under the command of Amerigo Vespucci, a Florentine astronomer and navigator, who had already made two voyages for Spain and skirted the coast of Yucatan and the northern continent, around Florida, as far north as the Chesapeake. Setting sail now to the south, he made a systematic examination of the Brazilian coast for two thousand miles. All he found that seemed to have any immediate commercial value were immense quantities of a dyewood known in Europe as “brazil” (the color of fire); it was from this, of course, that the country took its name. The Portuguese, being by that time, however, too engrossed in their African mines and sugar plantations and East Indian trade to think it worth while to found colonies in such a region, did nothing to develop it until thirty years had passed by and it became necessary for them to protect their rights, particularly from the French, who had been tempted by the great demand for the dyewood to engage in coastwise poaching on a large scale.
For this reason, to his contemporaries, the most interesting feature of Vespucci’s report was the conviction he expressed that this country south of the equator was neither Asia nor an island, but a new continent, or, as he himself called it, a “new world”—“for it transcends the ideas of the ancients,” he said in a letter to his friend Soderini, “since most of them declare that, beyond the equator to the south, there is no continent but only the sea which they call the Atlantic; but this last voyage of mine has proved that this opinion of theirs is erroneous, because in these southern regions I have found a continent more thickly inhabited by peoples and animals than our Europe or Asia or Africa, and, moreover, a climate more temperate and agreeable than any known to us.” In 1504 this letter was published under the title “Mundus Novus.” The term “new world” caught the popular fancy, and although, in 1497, Columbus first of all, and later Vespucci himself with Alonso de Ojeda, had cruised along and touched at points on its Caribbean coast, by virtue of his Brazilian explorations Vespucci was acclaimed the discoverer.
And therein was the source of the confusion that gave to South America, and eventually to the northern continent as well, the name they bear rather than one commemorative of Columbus. No one suspected that there were two oceans instead of only the Atlantic between Europe and Asia; that the land Amerigo Vespucci had explored south of the equator was of a piece with that discovered by Columbus to the north. It was conceived to be entirely detached from and to the south of Cathay, which Columbus was still supposed to have reached, and to lie in a position somewhat similar to that which Australia was afterward found to occupy. Consequently, when in 1507 Mathias Ringmann published his “Introductio Cosmographie,” he proposed that this (as he estimated it) “fourth part of the globe” be called “Amerigo.” The following year Martinus Waldseemüller published his map, whereon for the first time the name “America” appeared. Investigation has made it clear that there was no attempt, as Vespucci’s maligners charged, to immortalize his name at the expense of Columbus. The southern continent was not named for Columbus simply because it was thought to be distinct from his discoveries; the northern, because it was thought already to have been named Cathay.
At last, when the existence across the Atlantic of a continuous stretch of land had been comprehended, and when, in the light of the Portuguese discoveries by way of the African route, it was realized that these strange coasts did not in the least coincide with the ideas formed of them by those who had assumed them to be Asiatic, the conviction grew that the fabulous treasure lands of the Orient had not been reached by this western route at all. The whole stretch must be embraced in the new world, it was concluded; there must be another ocean than the Atlantic beyond. “Rumors of it had been heard, or glimpses caught, perhaps, at one time or another,” says Hawthorne, “before the actual fact was understood. Meanwhile Spain was very anxious to get through or around this singular barrier of islands, or whatever it was that was keeping her from sharing the profits that Da Gama had brought to Portugal from Hindustan, and she sent out expeditions to accomplish it.” In 1505 Amerigo Vespucci (who had returned to the Spanish flag), with La Cosa, explored the Gulf of Darien and penetrated two hundred miles up the Atrato, thinking it might prove a strait leading to the Asiatic waters. Juan de Solis was trying to find it when he explored the Rio de la Plata and met his death at the hands of the natives. Jacques Cartier was seeking it when he explored the St. Lawrence, D’Ayllon when he tried the Chesapeake and James, and Hendrik Hudson when he ascended the river that bears his name.
In 1513, Vasco Nuñez de Balboa, Governor of Darien, a valiant adventurer who had been prominent in the conquest and colonization of the Isthmus, undertook by means of an expedition by land to ascertain whether such an ocean did really exist. Starting with a company of about a hundred and ninety Spaniards and a few Indians, he skirted the coast of Panama to a point near Cape Tiburon, and there disembarked and headed inland. For twenty days his party persevered over forest-clad swamps, valleys, and mountains, fought a pitched battle with the natives, and finally cut its way through the dense undergrowth to the heights overlooking what is now known as the Gulf of San Miguel, on the Pacific side, and thus resolved all doubt into certainty and completed an event which, declares Dawson, “was second in its far-reaching consequences only to Columbus’ first voyage.” Balboa dubbed it the Southern Sea, little thinking that it was a body of water more vast than the Atlantic that he had found to bar the way to Cathay. “So elated was he over his epoch-making discovery,” says Mozans, quoting from an early chronicler, that—
“With no lesse manlye courage than Hannibal of Carthage shewed his souldiers Italye and the promontories of the Alps, he exhorted his men to lyft up theyre hartes and to behoulde the land even now under theyre feete and the sea before theyre eyes, which shoulde bee unto them a full and juste reward of theyre great laboures and trauayles now ouerpassed. When he had sayde these woordes, he commanded them to raise certeine heapes of stones in the steede of altars for a token of possession. Then, descendynge from the toppes of the mountaynes, lest such as might come after hym shoulde argu hym of lyinge and falshod, he wrote the Kyng of Castelles his name here and there on the barkes of the trees, both on the ryght hande and on the lefte, and raysed heapes of stones all the way that he went untyll he came to the region of the nexte Kynge towarde the south, whose name was Chiapes.”
“The act of taking possession was so typical of similar formalities of the Conquistadores,” continues Mozans, “that I transcribe from Oviedo his account of the manner in which Balboa and his companions claimed for his sovereign the Sea of the South, all islands in it and all lands bordering on it, in what part of the world soever. Armed with his sword and bearing aloft a banner on which were painted an image of the Blessed Virgin and the Divine Child and the arms of Castile and Leon, Balboa, followed by his associates, entered the water until it rose above his knees, when in a loud voice he said:
“‘Long live the high and mighty monarchs, Don Ferdinand and Doña Juana, Sovereigns of Castile, of Leon and of Aragon, in whose name and for the royal crown of Castile, I take real and corporal and actual possession of these seas and lands and coasts and ports and islands of the south, and all thereunto annexed, and of the kingdoms and provinces which do or may appertain to them, in whatever manner or by whatever right or title, ancient or modern, in times past, present or to come, without any contradiction; and if other prince or captain, Christian or infidel, or of any law, sect or condition whatsoever, shall pretend any right to these islands and seas, I am ready and prepared to maintain and defend them in the name of the Castilian Sovereigns, present and future, whose is the empire and dominion over these Indias, islands and terra firma, northern and southern, with all their seas, both at the arctic and antarctic poles, on either side of the equinoctial line, whether within or without the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, both now and at all times so long as the world shall endure and until the final judgment of all mankind.’ And then the Notary, who always accompanied such expeditions, was ordered to make on the spot an exact record of what had been said and done, which was duly signed and authenticated by all present.”
It was to the Portuguese navigator Fernão de Magalhães (Ferdinand Magellan in the English rendering of the name) that the honor finally fell of being the first, not alone to find the passage through the new continent that was being so eagerly sought, but to cross by the western route to the East Indies and thereby blaze the way to making geography an exact science. He had already been to the Moluccas by the African route, and, disgusted by the failure of his King suitably to reward his services, had transferred his allegiance to Spain and managed to secure from the Emperor Charles V a commission and five ships, the largest of but 120 tons’ burden. On the 20th of September, 1419, he sailed from the Guadalquivir, with a crew numbering 280, all told, and, having entered the Plata River and satisfied himself that it was not a strait, ran down the Patagonian coast through many storms until he found shelter in the harbor of St. Julian, where, on Easter Sunday, a mutiny broke out that only a man of such remarkable courage and resourcefulness as Magellan possessed could have suppressed. It had been a hard voyage, the chances of finding the strait seemed slim, there was only the prospect that there they must remain throughout the antarctic winter in idleness and discomfort; it is small wonder that they wanted to desert.
However, during the last week in August spring began (the seasons are reversed south of the equator, it must be remembered) and the fleet, without the Santiago, which had been wrecked, proceeded to the south. After experiencing much more bad weather, they made Cape Virgins on the 21st of October and entered a large bay, which was flanked by lofty mountains, crowned with glaciers and snow. This at last was the entrance to the passage, but at that very point one of the vessels, the San Antonio, seized an opportunity to make its escape and return to Spain. “For five weeks,” as Hawthorne relates, “the remaining three ships wound along through the tortuous channel. Provisions were running short, yet Magellan would not turn back ‘even if he had to eat the leather off the ships’ yards.’ At length his persistence was rewarded by a sight of the open sea. ‘When,’ to quote Richard Eden, ‘the Capitayne was past the strayght and saw the way open to the mayne sea, he was so gladde thereof that for joy the teares fell from his eyes and he named the poynte of the lande from whense he first saw that sea Cape Desiderato.’ And the broad ocean which lay before him was so calm, after his many stormful days, that he called it the Pacific.”
“But months of a voyage as trying as any they had encountered still lay before them,” Hawthorne goes on. “Could the planet be so vast? Until December they kept a northerly course, then struck out boldly across the unknown waste. They ran across one or two islands, but erelong were swallowed up in the seemingly endless immensity of ocean. They were reduced to the utmost extremities for food and water; scurvy broke out; nineteen men died and thirty were too ill to work. Finally, on the 6th of March, they reached the Ladrone Islands, so named because of the thievishness of the natives. Here they got fruit and other food, and the worst was over. Ten days later the Philippines were sighted and Magellan knew the extent of his achievement. He had sailed round the world. Happier than Columbus, he did not survive this mightiest exploit of his time; in a fight with the natives the great sailor was killed.”
Only one of the little vessels ever got back to Spain. Returning by way of Africa, she arrived at the Guadalquivir in September, a year after she had set out, and with but eighteen survivors of the expedition. “What a picture!” the historian exclaims—“those eighteen seaworn mariners in their battered craft, survivors of the greatest feat of navigation that has ever been performed. What a poem is their story, what an event in the history of mankind! What reward did Magellan have? None that mortal could bestow. He was dead and his wife and son had also died. Del Cano, the captain of the ship, was given a crest, with the legend, on a terrestrial globe, ‘Primus circumdedisti me,’ together with a pension of five hundred ducats, and Espinosa was likewise pensioned and ennobled. But every mariner who sails the seas knows Magellan and the story of his exploit, and mankind accords him the honor that Spain could not bestow. Of all the great explorers, he is perhaps the one whose character and deeds we can contemplate with the most unalloyed satisfaction.”
IV
Until the great Dutch navigator, Willim Cornelis Schouten, found the way around Cape Horn nearly a hundred years later, however, no practical advantage over her rival resulted to Spain from Magellan’s discoveries—so far as trade with the East Indies was concerned, that is. The passage through the Strait was too perilous for sailing vessels, the distance across the Pacific too great. Yet only a year before Magellan set out on his famous voyage an era began in her new possessions that was to pour into her coffers a stream of gold in comparison with which the profits Portugal was deriving from her trade with the Orient seemed trivial. For in that year Hernando Cortés, the greatest soldier and statesman Spain ever sent to the new world, began his conquest of Mexico.
Except for the spirit of emulation it inspired, except for the knowledge it brought of the existence in the newly discovered countries of a people less barbarous than the aborigines of the Antilles, of mines that were worth while and of enormous hoards of treasure, the story of that conquest has no place in the history of South America, and, therefore, will not be gone into here. It is related somewhere as an interesting commentary that in an obscure little house in the City of Mexico still lives a modest, well-educated gentleman who is directly descended from the Emperor of the Aztecs. Señor Montezuma entertains no hope of a restoration, it is said, but quietly accepts the meager pension allowed him by the present government, while the heirs of Cortés receive immense revenues from their Mexican estates and the Marquis del Valle, as the present-day Cortés is called, lives in luxury and is a man of influence and power in the land.
In 1526, Sebastian Cabot was commissioned by the King of Spain to locate the Papal meridian in America and then to follow in Magellan’s track and determine the corresponding longitude on the Asiatic side; but, when he put in at the mouth of the Rio de la Plata, he heard rumors of a great and wealthy people who dwelt near the headwaters of the river—rumors like those Grijalva had heard respecting the Aztecs and which had led to the Mexican conquest by Cortés; only these wonderful accounts were of a South American empire. In proof of what they said, the Indians of the Plata exhibited silver ornaments that had passed from hand to hand from the highlands of Bolivia and Peru, along the river to the Atlantic; and, too strongly tempted to resist, and trusting that the discovery of the rich mines from which this silver came would excuse their disobedience, Cabot and his company abandoned their survey and spent three years exploring and prospecting along the Uruguay and Paraná as far north as the present site of the city of Asunción. As their forces and provisions were inadequate to enable them to penetrate farther, the search was in vain; and so, having found, on their return to a fort they had established, that it had been taken by the Indians and the garrison massacred, Cabot abandoned the effort and went back to Spain to make what explanation he could.
The news of this supposed encroachment, added to the ever increasing poaching of the French, proved what was needed to stimulate the Portuguese at last to make a serious attempt at colonization in Brazil. One Christovão Jaques and a few settlers had already established a small sugar factory in the neighborhood of the present site of Pernambuco, and it had been found that much of the land in the northern part of the country was admirably adapted to the cultivation of that staple, the demand for which in Europe was constantly increasing. Five vessels were sent out, therefore, under the command of Martim Affonso da Souza. Early in 1531 he drew near Cape St. Roque, captured three French ships laden with brazil wood, sent part of his own fleet north to explore the coast beyond, and with the other ships sailed south and dropped anchor near the site of what is now the great coffee port of Santos. There he established São Vicente, the first permanent colony in Brazil.
There also they came across one João Ramalho, a former sailor who had been put ashore for mutiny years before by a ship on its way to India and was living among the natives of the neighborhood with his half-breed children. Glad enough to welcome his countrymen, he disposed the Indians to peace and showed the Portuguese the way up the mountains to the vast plateau that begins only a few miles from the sea. There, near the present site of São Paulo, was founded another settlement, from whence they could stretch out in all directions over what was destined to become the greatest coffee-producing country in the world.
A year or two afterward, encouraged by Da Souza’s success, Duarte Coelho set out with a carefully selected and more numerous company and founded the colony of Pernambuco. Here, as in the south, the country back of the coast was fertile and easily accessible and there was little trouble with the Indians. Sugar planting proved wonderfully profitable, Coelho turned out to be a good manager, and so politic was he in the relations with the mother country that within a few years the colony had become self-supporting and, like the other, possessed of all the elements of permanence and prosperity. Soon afterward São Salvador da Bahia was established. With such a beginning, it was not long before the Portuguese began flocking to Brazil as the Spaniards had to the Caribbean.
V
In the meanwhile in this region of the Caribbean much progress had been made. Towns had been built, not only in Española, but in Cuba, Jamaica, Porto Rico and in Darien and other places on the Isthmus, landed estates (repartimientos) had been apportioned, as rewards for services, among such as desired to cultivate them, mining rights had been allotted. These plantations and the mines were being worked by natives impressed into slavery, some of the communities had become large and thriving, in Spain a Council of the Indies and in the islands local governmental tribunals (Real Audiencias) had been created.
Whole fleets of ships plied back and forth across the Atlantic, those setting out from Spain laden with implements of agriculture and war, clothes, and fresh companies of adventurers, coming over as colonists, or to continue the work of conquest and the search for treasure; those returning, laden with the products of the tropics and with gold and precious stones. Emeralds had been found near the coast of Colombia, and Balboa had discovered in the Gulf of San Miguel—that famous group of islands where, as Mozans tells us, “pearls were so common that the natives used them for adorning the paddles of their canoes”—pearls “as large as filberts and of exceeding beauty of form and luster,” many of which, “found in the same fisheries a short time subsequently, at once took place among the largest and most perfect of the world’s gems.”
Nevertheless, neither there nor anywhere else in the Caribbean region, had any vast wealth and civilization comparable to that of the Mexicans been discovered. Balboa, however, had married, according to the Indian custom, the daughter of a cacique (native chief), and, being in the confidence of the Indians of his province, had heard rumors, even before the conquest of Mexico, of a rich and powerful empire to the south (the same that were afterward heard by Cabot); and, after he had been succeeded as Governor by his jealous rival, the notorious Pedrarias Davila, was commissioned to take charge of an expedition to go in search of it. Already he had accomplished the unheard-of task of taking four ships to pieces on the Caribbean shore, transporting them across the Isthmus and reconstructing them on the shore of San Miguel, and, when about to sail, had been arrested by order of Pedrarias, tried on a charge of treason, and executed before he could appeal to Spain. Some years later, having forestalled his great rival in that summary way, Pedrarias entrusted the venture to one Francisco Pizarro, an opportunist, without money, rank, or credit, and then nearly fifty years old, yet one who startled the world by an achievement equaled only by Cortés’ own.
Francisco Pizarro had been but a swineherd in his boyhood, but later had served under Gonzolo de Cordova (El Gran Capitan) in that splendid body of infantrymen which fought its way to the foremost rank in Europe, and was a son, too, though an illegitimate one, of a Spanish officer of noble blood. For such a man, as Dawson says, “an admirable soldier, conscious that he possessed powers of the highest order yet hopelessly handicapped in old Europe by his base birth and illiteracy, the discovery of the new world opened up a field for his talents” that led him “eagerly to embrace the opportunity to embark with Alonso de Ojeda in 1509 for the Darien gold mines.” His first appearance in history is as a member of the party that went with Balboa to search for the Pacific; afterward he was among the first of “the adventurers that flocked to the new city of Panama, looking over the mysterious sea, like a pack of wolves eager for a share in the spoils of its unknown shores;” later he happened to be the officer chosen by Pedrarias for Balboa’s arrest.
As he had no funds of his own, and since it was the custom of the times for the Conquistadores who undertook such expeditions to do so at their own expense, he associated with him a priest named Hernando de Luque, who had some capital, and Diego de Almagro, a soldier of still more advanced age but of ability and good reputation. It was agreed that the Padre de Luque should contribute the funds, that Almagro should attend to the collecting and forwarding of troops and supplies, and that Pizarro himself should have the active command. Whereupon they bought one of the ships that had been carried across the Isthmus by Balboa and set out on their first expedition in 1524. As so frequently occurred in such cases, however, inadequacy of provisions caused the venture to fail.
FRANCISCO PIZARRO.
Eighteen months later they sailed again, with a much larger stock of supplies and this time with 160 men. For hundreds of miles they found nothing but the same swampy, forest-clad wastes along the Colombian shore, inhabited only by naked tribes of savages. Pizarro’s disheartened companions, too ready to believe that the country they were seeking was but a myth, would have had him return; but one day the pilot, who had been sent on ahead, suddenly reappeared with the news that he had penetrated south of the equator and had there met a large trading raft on its way north, bearing cloth, silver work, vases, and other things pertaining to civilization and manned by a crew that wore clothes. These men, the pilot reported, had told him that they came from a town called Tumbez, which lay in a fertile valley behind a penetrable coast—that the whole interior of the country was inhabited by a civilized people, subjects of an emperor whose capital was a great city, high up in the mountains still farther south. On this confirmation of their hopes, the commander succeeded in inducing his men to push on until they had reached nearly as far as the northern boundary of Ecuador, where he landed most of the company on an island called Gallo and sent Almagro back to Panama for more provisions and supplies.
At Gallo the climate proved unhealthful; fevers soon decimated the party; even their clothes were rotted by the almost incessant rains and steamy heat, and, as though that were not enough, when the Governor learned from members of the crew who had returned that the men were being held there against their will, he flew into a rage, instead of sending supplies and reinforcements, and despatched a ship to bring back all who wished to desert. Only emboldened by these misfortunes, Pizarro “drew his sword and traced a line with it on the sand from east to west,” says Montesino in his Anales del Perú. “Then, turning toward the south, ‘Friends and comrades,’ he said, ‘on that side are toil, hunger, nakedness, the drenching storm, desertion, and death; on this side, ease and pleasure. There lies Peru with its riches; here Panama and its poverty. Choose, each man, what best becomes a brave Castilian. For my part, I go to the south,’ and, so saying, he stepped across the line.” He was followed by the pilot Ruiz, a Greek cavalier named de Candia, and only eleven others. There is, indeed, as Prescott comments—
“Something striking to the imagination in the spectacle of those few brave spirits consecrating themselves to a daring enterprise that seemed as far above their strength as any recorded in the fabulous annals of knight-errantry. A handful of men, without food, without clothing, almost without arms, without knowledge of the land to which they were bound, without even a vessel to transport them, were left there on a rock in the ocean with the avowed purpose of carrying on a crusade against a powerful empire, staking their lives on its success. What is there in the legends of chivalry that surpasses it?”
For weary months they awaited the return of Almagro with the provisions, and the moment they arrived set sail for the Gulf of Guayaquil. Landing at Tumbez, says Dawson, “with their own eyes they saw confirmation of what the Indians of the raft had told them. Irrigated fields, green with beautiful crops, lined the river bank; eighty thousand people, all comfortably housed, lived in the valley; commerce was flourishing; large temples, profusely ornamented with gold and silver, testified to their wealth and culture; the government was well ordered and stable, and the people received the visitors with open-handed hospitality.” It is easy enough to imagine with what longing eyes these forlorn adventurers who had risked and endured so much must have gazed on such a scene as this!
Yet, concluding that his force was too small even for a raid, and thinking it wiser, anyway, after what had happened, to be invested with independent powers before making any attempt at a conquest, Pizarro made his way back to Spain and related his experiences to the King, who was so greatly impressed both with the story and the petitioner’s noble and commanding presence that he did more than merely commission him to undertake a new expedition: he legitimized him and created him marquis, appointed him Adelantado (governor) of such countries as he might conquer, created Almagro marshal, and made the thirteen who had so gallantly stood by them gentlemen of coat armor.
On Pizarro’s return to Panama, he brought with him a few kindred spirits selected from among the very flower of the fighting men of the Peninsula, including his brothers Hernando, Juan, and Gonzalo and his half-brother, Francisco Alcantara, his equals in valor if not in audacity and intellect. And then, as he believed from what he had seen of the fighting on the Isthmus, that a few scores of good men, mail-clad and well provided with artillery and horses—for these, unknown in the new world before the advent of the Spaniards, had never failed to strike terror to the natives—would be as effective as thousands in overcoming undisciplined masses of Indians, armed in their inferior fashion, instead of attempting to assemble an army he got together only a small company composed of men of whose courage and experience he was well assured. Having arranged with Almagro to follow with what reinforcements he could recruit from among the unemployed adventurers in Nicaragua, he set out once more.
This time he happened to land first among the less civilized tribes in Ecuador, where he had the good fortune to find a rich store of emeralds and gold, which he sent back to Almagro to encourage him in his work. Then, marching down the coast to Guayaquil, he crossed to the island of Puna to await the reinforcements, conquered the fierce inhabitants of the place, and was afterward joined by a detachment sent out by his associate under the command of Hernando de Soto, an adventurer who had served with Cortés in Mexico and was later to attain still greater fame as the discoverer of the Mississippi. Even with those De Soto brought, the whole force numbered less than two hundred and fifty.
Though they had not the faintest idea of it then, the empire they were destined to bring under the Spanish sway covered a territory along the plateaux and eastern and Pacific slopes of the Andes extending from Quito in Ecuador to the river Maule in Chile, a distance of nearly three thousand miles, inhabited by hardy and warlike races, that numbered, according to the estimate of the early historians, somewhere near twenty millions of people.
VI
So great was the empire of the Incas. But from whom were these remarkable rulers descended who brought their people to a state of civilization relatively so superior to that of the savages east of the Andes? To what race did they belong? From whence did they originally come—Europe or Asia?—and, if so, how did they get to South America? How did they acquire the knowledge of the arts and sciences that they possessed? “Students of archæology have essayed in vain to answer these questions,” says Mozans. “All is still shrouded in mystery—in mystery even darker than that which veils the advent of the Toltecs and Aztecs to the valley of Anahuac, more profound than that which obscures the first beginnings of the civilizations on the elevated Pamirs and in the valleys of the Nile and Euphrates. In all this uncertainty and mystery, however,” he adds,
“One fact seems to remain incontrovertible, and that is that Manco Capac and Mama Oello” (the founders of the dynasty) “first appeared on the shores of Lake Titicaca” (a body of water nearly as large as Lake Erie, lying between the two main Cordillera of the Andes in southeastern Peru, two miles and a half up above the level of the sea). “On this point tradition and the concurrent testimony of the earlier historians are practically at one.... Another fact, too, is unquestioned. Whether Manco Capac, the Minos of Peru, was of foreign or of native birth, it is certain that he was able, in the space of thirty years, to lay the foundation of that vast empire which, under the Inca Yupanqui, extended its conquests to the Maule in Chile, and, under Huayna Capac, planted its victorious banners above the fortresses of the Shiri” (the Cacique of the Caras), “in the extended territory of Quito, and which gave its laws and religion and language to hundreds of conquered tribes.”
“What is one to do with no historical records to study over?” asks Hawthorne.
“The Aztecs did have some sort of writing, and, though we have not yet learned how to read it, we may solace ourselves with the hope that enlightenment may sometime come; but the people of the Andes did not even use hieroglyphics. Their sole documents were knotted strings. These strings, which they called quipus, were of course merely aids to memory—in the same way that a knot in a handkerchief enables a husband to remember the instructions his wife gives him when he sets out for the city, and which could not be written down in many pages.... Nevertheless, we have traditions in plenty.... Starting with the reasonable assumption that there must have been a very considerable past before the Spaniards appeared, we may construct various more or less plausible surmises, based on the Cyclopean architectural ruins which are distributed about the country. Marvelous works they are, though their form, and the carvings with which they are decorated, are less impressive than their mere size and weight.... It has been very generally thought that they were the handiwork of the prehistoric Piruas; yet, since the Piruas are prehistoric, it is not to be expected that much historic information concerning them is obtainable.... The ruins had been abandoned long before the Spaniards came and the Indians knew nothing of their origin.”
“Still, it is indisputable,” he goes on to say,
“that in Peru the grade of culture found in Mexico at the time of the conquest must have been reached and passed many ages earlier. In proof of this we have the fact that the Peruvians alone had succeeded in domesticating animals. Only the dog had been adapted to man’s service in other parts of America. Here the domestic llama, for instance, was derived from the wild huanacu and the alpaca from the vicuna. Many centuries would be required in order to bring about these results. Several varieties of maize were also produced under cultivation, and the Peruvian species of cotton plant is known to exist only as it appears under cultivation. Wild tubers were found in Peru from which the potato was educed. Now, it has been proven by experiment that wild potatoes require a very long time to put on a civilized complexion. It was in Peru that the potato, as we know it, was first discovered. It was not cultivated north of Darien. Raleigh brought the first specimens to Ireland in 1568, but it was not until the end of the eighteenth century that they came into general use in Europe. The Peruvians practiced irrigation and manured their crops with guano.”
And he continues:
“The materials for this nation were provided by the four tribes—Incas, Quichuas, Canas, and Cauchis—scattered over the northwest of South America. They were all mountaineers, short but strong and active, with soft, brown skins, black hair, and arched noses. At first the tribes were composed of clans, but the Incas settled in the lofty valley of Cuzco and from that coign of vantage gradually subdued the other tribes. Unlike the Aztecs, they confirmed their conquests, not by exacting tribute, but by military occupation of the subject territory. The town of Cuzco was built about the end of the twelfth century and the work of internal organization was begun. It is at this point that solid historical information first comes to hand. A succession of head chiefs or kings had already been instituted. These monarchs were called Incas par excellence—the Inca of all minor Incas. To this general name, nicknames were added, by way of distinguishing them. Finally, the eighth of the line was called Viracocha, which means Sun-God, and indicated that by that epoch the Incas had acquired something of the divinity that doth hedge a king.
“Viracocha annexed the land of the Aymaras” (in Bolivia), “who are suspected of descent from the builders of Tiahuanucu” (where are some of the most interesting of the ruins). “In the next reign the strong tribe of the Chancas, living close to the equator, resisted the march of conquest, but were finally defeated under the walls of Cuzco and their country afterward annexed. The Chimus, who gave its name to Chimborazo, were the next victims of the Incas, who now ruled the region from Lake Titicaca to the equator and from the Andes to the sea. It was under the Inca Yupanqui that this conquest took place, and he is regarded as the great hero of Peruvian history. To him was applied the name Pachacutec, Changer of the World. The successor of this champion extended the dominion of his people so much farther that it became necessary to found the city of Quito to keep watch over the northern portion of the empire. He brought in the valley of Pachacamac, where there was an ancient and desirable temple, and also penetrated far into Chile....
“The Inca language was spoken throughout the empire. Garrisons were distributed at strategic points and were connected by the famous roads which have been the wonder and admiration of the world.... There was a central highway from Quito to Cuzco, and thence southward, which is thus described by the historian Cieza” (de Leon): “‘I believe that since the history of man has been recorded there has been no account of such grandeur as is to be seen on this road, which passes over deep valleys and lofty mountains, by snowy heights, over falls of water, through the living rocks and along the edges of furious torrents. In all these places it is level and paved, along mountain slopes well excavated, through the living rock cut, along the river banks supported by walls, in the snowy heights with steps and resting places, in all parts clean-swept, clear of stones, with posts and storehouses and temples of the sun at intervals. Oh, what greater thing could be said of Alexander, or of any of the powerful kings that have ruled in the world, than that they had made such a road as this and conceived the works that were required for it! The roads constructed by the Romans in Spain are not to be compared with it.’ The post houses were some four or five miles apart and in each were two Indians who carried messages to and from the next house in line, whereby the government was kept constantly informed of what was going on in all parts of its dominions. In this way messages could travel at the rate of nearly a hundred and fifty miles a day.”
The Inca deities were the Sun and Moon. The Sun they regarded as God the Father and the Moon (believed to be the Sun-God’s sister and wife) as the Goddess-Mother. The people called themselves Children of the Sun. The reigning Inca was at once the Chief Priest and absolute temporal ruler. Following their conception of the divine relationship, he could marry only his sister of the full blood and only their eldest son could inherit the throne. If no son was born of this first incestuous marriage, or if he died and no other was born, the Inca married the next sister, and so on until there was one capable of inheriting. But there were morganatic marriages, as a result of which each of the reigning Incas left numerous sons and daughters, whose descendants constituted a privileged class, and in the course of ages the throne came to be surrounded by thousands of men of the royal blood who were devoted from their birth to warfare, learning, and state-craft. A subject, however, could have more than one wife only by favor of the Inca. The government, though exercised in a kindly spirit, as we are told by the ancient chroniclers, was in form a military despotism.
There was no money or other medium of exchange; gold and silver were used only for purposes of adornment; such trade as there was, was by barter. Every man was obliged to work for the common good at some form of industry or occupation suitable to his strength and age and, if able, to take his turn at the maintenance and extension of the irrigation systems, which in that way were brought to such a state of perfection that modern Peru still lives on the half-ruined fragments of their canals and conduits and reservoirs. Hardly a spot of arable soil was left uncultivated. Whole mountains were terraced for thousands of feet up their sides.
Private ownership in land did not exist; it belonged to the communes. The custom was to divide it into tracts, each large enough to support a family, and parcel it out; for every child born there was an additional allotment, and, at intervals, a general revision and redistribution. The produce was divided into three parts: one for the Inca and his establishment, one for the priesthood, and one for the commune. When one section of the country was impoverished by war or some other casualty, its needs were supplied by assessments levied on the others. The occupations of the women, both in town and country, were essentially domestic. Some were brought up from childhood and specially educated to serve in the religious rites and in the household of the reigning Inca. These were known as Virgins of the Sun.
The capital, Cuzco, was located in a valley about two hundred miles northwest of Lake Titicaca and at a lower elevation, yet still more than two miles up above the level of the sea. A colossal, massive-walled citadel loomed over it from the heights of Sacsahuaman above the town. Strong walls and towers inclosed it on every side. In its midst was a great square, from which started the remarkable roads leading to the four corners of the empire, referred to by Hawthorne. One whole side was occupied by the temple, and near by were the dwellings of the priests and the palaces of the Inca and the Virgins of the Sun. This sacred space was a citadel in itself, protected by five heavy walls.
Describing the temple, the historian of the conquest, Garcilaso de la Vega (and there was no one better qualified to write on the subject, for he was himself, on the maternal side, a grandson of one of the last of the Inca kings), says that “All the four walls were covered from roof to floor with plates and slabs of gold. In the side, where we should place the altar, they placed a figure of the Sun, made of a plate of gold of a thickness double that of the other plates which covered the walls. The figure was made with a circular face and rays of fire issuing from it, all of one piece, just as the sun is represented by painters. It was so large as to occupy one side of the temple from one wall to the other.” Even the doorposts were of gold. One door, encased in silver, led to a hall dedicated to the Moon-Goddess, where the images and furnishings were all of silver, as were also the decorations of the mummies of the Incas’ wives.
“The walls of their palaces,” Markham says, “were built of stone, of a dark slate color, with recesses and doors at certain intervals, the sides of the doors approaching each other” (narrowing toward the top) “and supporting huge stone lintels. The side walls were pierced with small square windows, as in the ruins of Manco Capac’s palace, and the roofs were thatched with the ycha, or long grass of the Andes. The interior consisted of several spacious halls, with smaller rooms opening into them, and the interior walls were adorned with golden animals and flowers, executed with much skill and taste. Mirrors of a hard stone, highly polished, hung on stone pegs, while in the numerous recesses were utensils and conopas (household gods) of gold and silver, fantastically designed. The couches were of vicuna cloth of the softest and finest texture.”
Of the palaces of the Incas, Francisco Lopez de Gomara tells us that “all the service of their house, table and kitchen, was of gold and silver, or at least of silver and copper. The Inca had in his chamber hollow statues of gold, which appeared like giants, and others naturally imitated from animals, birds, and trees, from plants produced by the land and from such fish as are yielded by the waters of the kingdom. He also had ropes, baskets and hampers of gold and silver and piles of golden sticks to imitate fuel prepared for burning. In short, there was nothing that his territory produced that he had not got imitated in gold.”
Cieza de Leon says of the magnificence of the harvest festivals celebrated in the great plaza of the temple: “We hold it to be very certain that neither in Jerusalem, nor in Rome, nor in Persia, nor in any other part of the world, was such wealth of gold and silver and precious stones collected together.” In his later years, while living in Spain, Garcilaso de la Vega, who had been just as enthusiastic in his description, and seemed to fear that he might be suspected of romancing, took occasion to write that “this is not hard for those to believe who have since seen so much gold and silver arrive here from that land. In the year 1595 alone, within the space of eight months, thirty-five millions of gold and silver crossed the bar of San Lucar in three cargoes.”
“Many generations of culture and Inca rule had produced men of a very different physical type,” Markham tells us, “from the Peruvian Indian of to-day. We see the Incas in the pictures at the church of Santa Ana at Cuzco,” he continues.
“The color of the skin was many shades lighter than that of the downtrodden descendants of their subjects. The forehead was high, the nose slightly aquiline, the chin and mouth firm, the whole face majestic, refined, and intellectual. The hair was gracefully arranged, and around the head was the llantu, the sign of sovereignty. The llantu appears to have been a short piece of red fringe on the forehead, fastened around the head by two bands. It was habitually worn, but, when praying, the Inca took it off and put it on the ground beside him. The ceremonial headdress was the mascapaycha, a golden semicircular miter on the forehead, to which the llantu was fastened. Bright colored feathers were fixed on the sides and the plume” (of black and white falcon feathers, he says in another place) “rose over the summit. Long golden eardrops came down to the shoulders. The tunic and mantel varied in color and were made of the finest vicuna wool. On the breast the Incas wore a golden semicircular breastplate, representing the sun, with a border of signs for the months.
“The later Incas wore a very rich kind of brocade, in bands sewn together, forming a wide belt. The bands were in squares, each with an ornament. The material was called tocapu. Some of the Incas had the whole tunic of tocapu. The breeches were black and in loose plaits at the knees. The usutas, or sandals, were of white wool. The Inca clad for war had a large square shield of wood or leather. There was a loop of leather at the back to pass the arm through. In one hand was a wooden staff, about two feet long, with a bronze star, of six or eight points, fastened at one end—a most formidable warclub. In the other hand was a long staff with a battle axe fixed at one end. The Ccoya, or Queen, wore the lliclla or mantle fastened across the chest by a very large golden topu or pin, with head elaborately carved with ornaments and figures. The lliclla or mantle and acsu or skirt varied as regards color. The head was adorned with golden circlets and flowers.... The nobles wore headdresses of egret feathers and gold breastplates over their tunics. The princesses wore long mantles of various colors, and the Virgins of the Sun long white mantles, secured across the bosom by large gold pins.”