To the
right ran a broad and level road, with its border of friendly shades, and
wide enough for two carriages to pass abreast. It was one of the great
routes leading to Cuzco, and seemed by its pleasant and easy access to
invite the wayworn soldier to choose it in preference to the dangerous
mountain defiles. Many were accordingly of opinion that the army
should take this course, and abandon the original destination to
Caxamalca. But such was not the decision of Pizarro.
The Spaniards had everywhere proclaimed their purpose, he said, to visit
the Inca in his camp. This purpose had been communicated to the Inca
himself. To take an opposite direction now would only be to draw on
them the imputation of cowardice, and to incur Atahuallpa's contempt.
No alternative remained but to march straight across the sierra to his
quarters "Let every one of you," said the bold cavalier, "take heart and
go forward like a good soldier, nothing daunted by the smallness of your
numbers. For in the greatest extremity God ever fights for his own; and
doubt not he will humble the pride of the heathen, and bring him to the
knowledge of the true faith, the great end and object of the Conquest."
22
Pizarro, like Cortes, possessed a good share of that frank and manly
eloquence which touches the heart of the soldier more than the parade of
rhetoric or the finest flow of elocution.
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