WHOLE VOL. THE WEST INDIES VAZQUEZ DE ESPINOSA 361 



out many pieces of jewelry and curiosities fashionable among them, 

 in gold, and the people round about trade food and other commodities 

 for them ; it is generally believed that there are very large settlements 

 of people of other tribes which are quite civilized, with rich clothing 

 of woolen and cotton cloth very skillfully woven ; all the buildings 

 in their cities and their homes are of stone and very attractive ; [and 

 reason makes this credible because the heart of this country has an 

 excellent climate and topography ; and it is certain] they have in 

 those great provinces a king to whom all pay obedience as was done 

 with the Incas in Peru and Motezuma in New Spain, [And since 

 I shall write about these regions when I come to describe the city 

 of Moyabamba in the Diocese of Trujillo when I tell of the expedi- 

 tion headed by Gen. Pedro de Ursua, let what I have written on 

 this subject suffice for the present.] 



Chapter VI 



Of the City of San Francisco del Quito, and of the Characteristic 

 Features within Its District. 



1092. [Traveling S. from Popayan] the city of San Francisco 

 del Quito is 80 leagues S. of Popayan, at o°2o' S., for the line 

 [or Torrid Zone] passes through Mira, 5 leagues from the city, 

 where King Atahualpa was born, son of Huayna Capac ; it will be 

 60 leagues from the Pacific. It was founded by Commander Don 

 Sebastian de Belalcazar in the year 1534 in the midst of the Cordillera 

 in prairie country on the slopes of the Sierra de Pichincha. There 

 the Emperor of those realms, Topa Inga, had built some famous 

 castles and a city modeled after his court city [of Cuzco] which was 

 later embellished and ennobled with sumptuous edifices by his son 

 Huayna Capac for his son Atahualpa, to whom he left that kingdom 

 [having ordered and commanded when he died that his son Huascar 

 Inca, the first-born and legitimate heir of this kingdom, should hand 

 the Kingdom of Quito over to his brother Atahualpa] and later the 

 two brothers went to war with each other, just when Francisco 

 Pizarro came in with his Spaniards ; he captured [this] Atahualpa 

 or Atabaliba at Cajamarca in December of the year 1531, and later, 

 for the reasons given by the historians, in March 1532 cut off his head. 



1093. The city has a cold [temperate] climate with clear and serene 

 sky, and it rains just as in Spain from October till March. It is 

 densely populated ; it will have more than 3,000 Spanish residents 

 with the mestizos, who are sons of Spaniards and Indian women, 

 not counting the [many] transients, for it is a region with a lively 



