Pizarro Alleged That The King Had Refused To
Give Any Office To Almagro, Though Solicited By Him For That Purpose:
But
engaged his word to renounce the office of president in his behalf, and to
supplicate the king to bestow that appointment upon him.
Almagro was
appeased by this concession; and they proceeded to make every preparation
in concert that might be conducive to the success of the undertaking. But,
before entering upon the narrative of their actions, it seems proper to
give some account of the situation of Peru, of the most remarkable things
which it contains, and of the manners and customs of the inhabitants.
The country of Peru, of which this history is intended to treat, commences
at the equator, and extends south towards the antarctic pole[12]. The
people who inhabit in the neighbourhood of the equator have swarthy
complexions; their language is extremely guttural; and they are addicted
to unnatural vices, for which reason they care little for their women and
use them ill[13], The women wear their hair very short, and their whole
clothing consists of a short petticoat, covering only from the waist to
about the knees. By the women only is the grain cultivated, and by them it
is bruised or ground to meal, and baked. This grain, called maize in the
West-Indian Islands, is called _Zara_ in the language of Peru[14]. The men
wear a kind of shirts or jackets without sleeves, which only reach to the
navel, and do not cover the parts of shame. They wear their hair short,
having a kind of tonsure on their crowns, almost like monks. They have no
other dress or covering, yet pride themselves on certain ornaments of gold
hanging from their ears and nostrils, and are particularly fond of
pendants made of emeralds, which are chiefly found in those parts of the
country bordering on the equator. The natives have always concealed the
places where these precious stones are procured, but the Spaniards have
been in use to find some emeralds in that part of the country, mixed among
pebbles and gravel, on which account it is supposed that the natives
procured them from thence. The men also are fond of wearing a kind of
bracelets, or strings of beads, of gold and silver, mixed with small
turquoise stones and white shells, or of various colours; and the women
are not permitted to wear any of those ornaments.
The country is exceedingly hot and unwholesome, and the inhabitants are
particularly subject to certain malignant warts or carbuncles of a
dangerous nature on the face and other parts of the body, having very deep
roots, which are more dangerous than the small-pox, and almost equally
destructive as the carbuncles of the plague. The natives have many temples,
of which the doors always front the east, and are closed only by cotton
curtains. In each temple there are two idols or figures in relief
resembling black goats, before which they continually burn certain
sweet-smelling woods. From this wood a certain liquor exudes, when the
bark is stripped off, which has a strong and disagreeable flavour, by
means of which dead bodies are preserved free from corruption. In their
temples, they have also representations of large serpents, to which they
give adoration; besides which every nation, district, tribe or house, had
its particular god or idol. In some temples, particularly in those of
certain villages which were called _Pafao_, the walls and pillars were
hung round with dried bodies of men women and children, _in the form of
crosses_, which were all so thoroughly embalmed by means of the liquor
already mentioned, that they were entirely devoid of bad smell. In these
places also they had many human heads hung up; which by means of certain
drugs with which they were anointed, were so much shrunk or dried up as to
be no bigger than a mans fist[15].
This country is extremely dry, as it very seldom has any rain, and its
rivulets are few and scanty; so that the people are reduced to the
necessity of digging pit-wells, or of procuring water from certain pools
or reservoirs. Their houses are built of large canes or reeds. It
possesses gold, but of a very low quantity; and has very few fruits. The
inhabitants use small canoes hollowed out of the trunks of trees, and a
sort of rafts which are very flat. The whole coast abounds in fish, and
whales are sometimes seen in these seas. On the doors of the temples in
that district which is called _Caraque_, the figures of men are sometimes
seen, which have dresses somewhat resembling those of our deacons.
Near the last mentioned province, at Cape St Helena in the province of
Guayaquil, there are certain springs or mineral veins which give out a
species of bitumen resembling pitch or tar, and which is applied to the
same purposes. The Indians of that country pretend that in ancient times
it was inhabited by giants, who were four times the height of ordinary
men[16]. The Spaniards saw two representations of these giants at _Puerto
viejo_, one of a man and the other of a woman, and the inhabitants related
a traditionary tale of the descent of a young man from heaven, whose
countenance and body shone like the sun, who fought against the giants and
destroyed them with flames of fire. In the year 1543, Captain Juan de
Holmos, lieutenant-governor of Puerto viejo, caused a certain valley to be
carefully examined, in which these giants were were said to have been
destroyed, and in which ribs and other bones of prodigious size were dug
up, which fully confirmed the traditions of the Indians[17]. The natives
of this country have no knowledge whatever of writing, nor had they even
any use of that method of painting employed by the Mexicans for preserving
the memory of ancient events, which were handed down from father to son
merely by traditionary stories.
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