make for the South. The expedition was a tragic one. Almagro, though his
spirit was undaunted, was now aged in years, and the barren country of
the Atacama Desert and the attacks of the hostile Indians rendered the
enterprise a failure from a monetary point of view. Almagro had invested
all his fortune in this, and his affairs now became desperate.

[Illustration: PIZARRO AND ATAHUALPA.

_From a seventeenth-century engraving._]

In the meantime the crafty Pizarro had been permitted to enjoy very
little peace and tranquillity in Peru. Manco Capac had bided his time,
and his Indian subjects, fervently loyal to the sacred dynasty, had
crowded about him in their thousands. The Peruvians now assumed the
aggressive. Thousands of Inca troops scoured the country, and, falling
on remote and unprepared bands of Spaniards, obtained some modicum of
revenge in slaughtering all they found.

[Illustration: THE TEMPLE OF THE SUN. CUZCO.

_From "Histoire des Yncas," Amsterdam, 1737._]

Encouraged by such minor successes, the Inca army advanced against the
main bodies of the Spaniards. Some historians place the numbers of the
native troops at no fewer than 200,000. With astonishing suddenness the
situation became altered. Pizarro found himself besieged in Lima, while
his brothers, shut up in Cuzco, experienced an equal difficulty in
beating off the attacks of the serried native ranks. Had the Spanish
army in Peru been left to its own devices, there is no doubt but that
their doom would have been sealed. The irony of fate, however, chose