This Was Considered By
Many As Extremely Rash And Imprudent, To Trust Himself In The Hands Of A
Barbarous And Powerful Enemy.
He was successful however in the attempt, as
by various representations and promises, he prevailed on the Peruvian
general to dismiss his army, and to go along with him to Caxamarca to
wait upon his sovereign Atahualpa.
To shorten their journey, they took a
very difficult route through mountains covered with snow, where they were
in danger of perishing with cold.
On arriving at Caxamarca, before entering into the presence of Atahualpa,
Cilicuchima bared his feet and carried a present to his sovereign after
the custom of the country, and said to him weeping, that if he had been
along with him, the Spaniards should not have been allowed to make him a
prisoner. Atahualpa answered, that his captivity was a punishment from the
gods, whom he had not honoured and respected as he ought to have done; but
that his defeat and capture were chiefly owing to the cowardice and flight
of Ruminagui with his 5000 men, who ought to have succoured him when
attacked by the Spaniards.
While Don Francisco Pizarro was in the province of Poecho between Tumbez
and Payta, before he marched to Caxamarca, he received a letter without
any signature, which it was afterwards learnt had been sent to him by the
secretary of Don Diego de Almagro. He was informed by this letter, that
Almagro had fitted out a large ship and several smaller vessels with a
considerable number of soldiers, in which he proposed to sail beyond the
country of which Pizarro had taken possession, and to reduce the best
portion of Peru under his own authority, as beyond the government which
had been granted to Pizarro by his majesty, which only extended 200
leagues to the south of the equator[18]. The governor had never shewn his
patents to any person[19]; yet it was currently reported that Almagro
actually left Panama with the intention of carrying that design into
execution; but on arriving at Puertoviejo, and learning the amazing
successes of Pizarro, and the prodigious quantities of gold and silver he
had already acquired, the half of which he considered as belonging to him,
he changed his purpose, and marched with all his people to Caxamarca to
join Pizarro. On his arrival there, the greater part of the ransom of
Atahualpa was already brought, and Almagro and his followers were filled
with astonishment and admiration at the sight of the prodigious masses of
gold and silver which were there collected, more than they thought could
have been in any part of the world.
When all this gold and silver was melted down, weighed and essayed, it was
found to amount to the amazing sum of six hundred millions of _maravedies_,
or more than 4,500,000 livres. It is true that the proof or essay of this
gold was made hurriedly, and only by means of the touchstone, as they had
no _aqua fortis_ to conduct the process in a more exact manner.
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