Gilded Man gave to the world the geography of all
South America above the equator.

FOOTNOTES:

[17] Pronounced Wow-pess.

[18] Pronounced Pah-_ree_-may.

III.

THE GREATEST CONQUEST.

PIZARRO AND PERU.

I.

THE SWINEHERD OF TRUXILLO.

Somewhere between the years 1471 and 1478, (we are not sure of the exact
date), an unfortunate boy was born in the city of Truxillo,[19] province
of Estremadura, Spain. He was an illegitimate son of Colonel Gonzalo
Pizarro,[20] who had won distinction in the wars in Italy and Navarre.
But his parentage was no help to him. The disgraced baby never had a
home,--it is even said that he was left as a foundling at the door of a
church. He grew up to young manhood in ignorance and abject poverty,
without schools or care or helping hands, thrown entirely upon his own
resources to keep from starving. Only the most menial occupations were
open to him; but he seems to have done his best with them. How the
neighbor-boys would have laughed and hooted if one had said to them:
"That dirty, ragged youngster who drives his pigs through the oak-groves
of Estremadura will one day be the greatest man in a new world which no
one has yet seen, and will be a more famous soldier than our Great
Captain,[21] and will divide more gold than the king has!" And we could
not have blamed them for their sneers. The wisest man in Europe then
would have believed as little as they such a wild prophecy; for truly it
was the most improbable thing in the world.

But the boy who could herd swine faithfully when there was no better
work to do, could turn his hand to greater things when greater offered,
and do them as well. Luckily the New World came just in time for him. If
it had not been for Columbus, he might have lived and died a swineherd,
and history would have lost one of its most gallant figures, as well as
many more of those to whom the adventurous Genoese opened the door of
fame. To thousands of men as undivined by themselves as by others, there
was then nothing to see in life but abject obscurity in crowded,
ignorant, poverty-stricken Europe. When Spain suddenly found the new
land beyond the seas, it caused such a wakening of mankind as was never
before nor ever has been since. There was, almost literally, a new
world; and it made almost a new people. Not merely the brilliant and the
great profited by this wonderful change; there was none so poor and
ignorant that he might not now spring u