While in Spain, Pizarro received a supply of money
from Cortes, under whom he had served in the early part of the
conquest of Mexico. - E.
[11] His commission from the crown of Spain, imposed the condition of
raising 250 men, and to supply the ships and warlike stores necessary
for the expedition; but his funds and credit were so low that he could
hardly complete half the number, and had to steal away from the port
of Seville to elude the examination of the officers as to the
fulfilment of his contract. - Robertsons America, II. 284.
[12] It is impossible to give any competent geographical account of this
extensive country in the compass of a note. Proper Peru begins at the
river Tumbez in the gulf of Guayaquil, in about lat. 3 deg. 20' S. and
extends S.S.E. along the Pacific Ocean to the desert of Atacama, which
divides it from Chili, in lat. 21 deg. 28 S. an extent of about 1200 miles;
consisting of two remarkably different tracts of country. A narrow
valley along the Pacific Ocean, seldom so much as 70 miles in breadth,
bounded on the east by the enormous main ridge of the Andes; beyond
which are many elevated vallies or table lands of various extent,
divided by collateral ridges and branches of the Andes, from each
other and from the prodigiously extensive plains of the vast Orinoco
Maranon and La Plata rivers. Quito, which had been annexed to the
kingdom of Peru, only a short time before the Spanish conquest, is
similarly situated, both as to maritime vale, and elevated table land,
immediately to the north of Peru proper, and seems to have reached
from lat. 3 deg. 20' S. to about lat, 1 deg. N. but is now included in the
viceroyalty of New Granada which reaches to the Carribbean sea, with
which it is connected by the river Magdalena. - E.
[13] The substance of this description appears to refer entirely to that
province of the kingdom of Quito which is named Esmeraldas or Tacamez,
on both sides of the equator. - E.
[14] Various reasons have been assigned for the origin of the word Peru,
as the name of the empire of the Incas, unknown to themselves, at
least in that sense. The most probable derivation is from the river
_Piura_, near its northern frontier, where it was first visited by
Pizarro. - E.
[15] This circumstance is unintelligible, as the bones could not shrink,
unless by supposing these _human heads_ to have been the heads of
small apes, resembling human faces. The expression of the text,
immediately before, of human carcasses hung up _in the form of
crosses_, ought perhaps to have been rendered _instead of_ crosses.
