PIZARRO. 469 



cumnavigation 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 nebulae which so beautifully 

 stud the firmament of the southern hemisphere. 



After Magellan, Pizarro, the conqueror of Peru, shines as a 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 to 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 colony 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 

 cold-land. Pizarro and Almagro were soldiers, Luque was a priest 

 They formed an association approved of by the governor, each 

 agreeing to devote all his energies to the common interest 



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