PIZARRO. 469 
eumnavigation of the globe; the performance of which now fell 
to the share of his companion, Sebastian El Cano, who returned 
to San Lucar in the “ Victoria” by the Cape of Good Hope, 
having sailed round the,globe in the space of three years and 
twenty-eight days. 
But although Magellan did not live fully to achieve his glorious 
undertaking, the astonishing perseverance and ability with which 
he performed the chief and most difficult part of his arduous task 
have secured him an immortal renown. Nor has posterity been 
unmindful of his services, having awarded his name an im- 
perishable place in the memory of man, both in the straits, the 
portal of his grand discovery, and in the “ Magellanic clouds,” 
those dense clusters of stars and nebulz which so beautifully 
stud the firmament of the southern hemisphere. 
After Magellan, Pizarro, the conqueror of Peru, shines asa dis- 
coverer in the South Sea. The history of his memorable feats 
by land does not belong to this narrative, but I may well accom- 
pany him on his adventurous navigation along the unknown 
coast of South America, and relate the hardships he had to en- 
dure before he was enabled to reap the rewards of victory. 
Soon after the execution, or rather the murder, of Balboa, 
Pedrarias Davila obtained permission tu transfer the colony of 
Darien to Panama, which, although equally unhealthy, yet from 
its situation on the Pacific afforded greater facilities for the 
prosecution of discovery on the south-west coast, to which now 
all the hopes and plans of the Spanish gold-seekers were directed. 
Several expeditions left the new coleny in rapid succession, but 
all proved unsuccessful. Their timorous leaders, none of whom 
had ventured beyond the dreary coasts of Tierra firme, gave 
such dismal accounts of their hardships and the wretched aspect 
of the countries they had seen, that the ardour for discovery was 
considerably damped, and the opinion began to gain ground that 
Balboa must have founded chimerical hopes on the idle tales: of 
an ignorant or deceitful savage. 
But there were three men in Panama, Francisco Pizarro, Diego 
de Almagro, and Hernando Luque, who, far from sharing the 
general opinion, remained fully determined to seek the unknown 
gold-land. Pizarro and Almagro were soldiers, Luquewas a priest. 
They formed an association approved of by the governor, each 
agreeing to devote all his energies to the common interest. 
Lee 
