nt force, augmented,
I suppose, by some Indian captives acting as pack-mules, Pizarro
started out to conquer an empire conservatively estimated to contain
from ten to twelve millions of people, supporting an army of
disciplined {74} soldiers whose numbers ran into the hundreds of
thousands.

The Spanish forces were well equipped and in good condition, but as
they left the sea-shore and advanced, without molestation, to be sure,
through the populous country, some idea of the magnitude of their
self-appointed task permeated the minds of the common soldiery, and
evidences of hesitation, reluctance and dissension speedily appeared.
The unwillingness of the men grew until Pizarro was forced to take
notice of it. Halting on the fifth day in a pleasant valley, he met
the emergency in his usual characteristic fashion. Parading the men,
he addressed to them another of those fiery speeches for which he was
famous, and the quality of which, from so illiterate a man, is
amazingly high.

He painted anew the dangers before them, and then adroitly lightened
the shadows of his picture by pointing to the rewards. He appealed to
all that was best in humanity by saying that he wanted none but the
bravest to go forward.[6]

He closed his address by offering to allow all who wished to do so to
return to San Miguel, whose feeble garrison, he said, he should be glad
to have reenforced. And, with a subtler stroke of policy, he promised
that those who went back should share in the rewards gained by their
more constant brethren. But four infantrymen and five horsemen
shamefacedly availed themselves of this permission. The rest
enthusiastically clamored to be led forward. Both mutiny and timidity
were silenced forever in that band.

{75}

On a similar occasion, Cortes had burnt his ships. It is hard to
decide which was the better expedient. Certainly Cortes was
incomparably a much abler man than Pizarro, but somehow Pizarro managed
to rise to the successive emergencies which confronted him, just the
same.

Greatly refreshed in spirits, the army, purged of the malcontents,
proceeded cautiously on its way south. They were much elated from time
to time at receiving envoys from Atahualpa, who coupled a superstitious
reverence for the invaders as Children of the Sun with demands as to
their purposes, and a request that they halt and wait the pleasure of
the Inca. Pizarro dissembled his intentions and received them with
fair words,