It was the golden bait which lured the
Spanish adventurer to forsake his pleasant home for the trials of the
wilderness. From the Indians Pizarro gathered a confirmation of the
reports he had so often received of a rich country lying farther south; and
at the distance of ten days' journey across the mountains, they told him,
there dwelt a mighty monarch whose dominions had been invaded by
another still more powerful, the Child of the Sun.16 It may have been
the invasion of Quito that was meant, by the valiant Inca Huayna Capac,
which took place some years previous to Pizarro's expedition.
At length, after the expiration of more than six weeks, the Spaniards
beheld with delight the return of the wandering bark that had borne away
their comrades, and Montenegro sailed into port with an ample supply of
provisions for his famishing countrymen. Great was his horror at the
aspect presented by the latter, their wild and haggard countenances and
wasted frames,--so wasted by hunger and disease, that their old
companions found it difficult to recognize them. Montenegro accounted
for his delay by incessant head winds and bad weather; and he himself
had also a doleful tale to tell of the distress to which he and his crew had
been reduced by hunger, on their passage to the Isle of Pearls.
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