ite of the town of Rosario he built the fort of Sancti Spiritus.
Seeing, however, that his appeals to Spain for assistance remained
unanswered, he eventually abandoned his attempt. There seems little
doubt that he withdrew practically all his forces from the River Plate;
but there are legends of some survivors who remained in the district
after the main expedition had left. Some old historians allege that
these underwent strange experiences and hardships, but the veracity of
such narratives is more than doubtful.

[Illustration: ATAHUALPA.

The last Chief of the Peruvians.]

It was in 1535, the year when Valdivia marched southward from Peru to
conquer Chile, that the conquest and actual colonization of the River
Plate was first seriously undertaken. Pedro de Mendoza, a soldier of
fortune, ventured on the attempt. Mendoza's career as a mercenary
soldier had proved quite unusually profitable even for those days, and
he had acquired a large fortune at the sack of Rome alone. His purse
provided a really formidable expedition.

The voyage to the mouth of the River Plate on this occasion was more
productive of incident than was usual, even in those days of adventurous
pioneers. The halts at Teneriffe and at Rio de Janeiro had resulted in
some dissensions among Mendoza's men, and the execution by the orders of
the Chief of one of his most popular leaders had all but caused open
mutiny at the latter place. Nevertheless, when his forces landed at the
site of the present town of Buenos Aires, they constituted a formidable
company of men, admirably equipped with everything that the science of
the age could devise for the purpose of conquest and colonization,
particularly the former.

Having founded his settlement, Mendoza set himself to deal with the
Indians and to bring them into subjection. In a very short while he
found out that it was a very different tribe of aborigines with which he
had to deal to the peace-loving inhabitants of Peru and the north-west.
The agile, hardy, and fierce Pampa Indians, having once fallen foul of
the invaders, allowed them no respite. Attacked by day and night,
deprived of all supplies of food, Mendoza's troops began to suffer from
exhaustion and hunger, to say nothing of the wounds inflicted by their
enemies.

In the end, the leaders had to admit to themselves that the place was no
longer tenable. Nevertheless, neither Mendoza nor his men had any
intention of abandoning permanently these fe