The Man Selected In 1539
For This Important Charge Was Christoval Vaca De Castro, A Judge In The
Court Of Royal Audience At Valladolid; And His Abilities, Integrity, And
Firmness, Justified The Choice.
His instructions, though ample, were not
such as to fetter him in his operations.
According to the different aspect
of affairs, he had power to take upon him different characters. If he
found the governor still alive, he was only to assume the title of judge,
to maintain the appearance of acting in concert with him, and to guard
against giving any just cause of offence to a man who had merited so
highly of his country. But, if Pizarro were dead, he was entrusted with a
commission that he might then produce, by which he was appointed his
successor in the government of Peru. This attention to Pizarro, however,
seems to have flowed rather from dread of his power, than from any
approbation of his measures; for at the very time that the court seemed so
solicitous not to irritate him, his brother Ferdinand was arrested at
Madrid, and confined to a prison where he remained above twenty years[7]."
"Vaca de Castro, who left Spain in 1540, was driven by stress of weather
in 1541, after a long and disastrous voyage, into a small harbour in the
province of Popayan; and proceeding from thence by land, after a journey
no less difficult than tedious, he reached Quito. In his way he received
accounts of Pizarro's death, and of the events which followed upon it, as
already mentioned.
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