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The people testified their regret by the unwonted honors paid to the memory of the deceased Inca. His heart was retained in Quito, and his body, embalmed after the fashion of the country, was transported to Cuzco, to take its place in the great temple of the Sun, by the side of the remains of his royal ancestors.

Huascar was of a gentle and peaceable disposition, but Atahuallpa was warlike, ambitious, and daring, and constantly endeavouring to enlarge his territory. His restless spirit at length excited alarm at Cuzco, and Huascar sent to remonstrate with him, and to require him to render homage for the kingdom of Quito. This at once provoked hostilities.

Soon after this, some of the principal people in the country even tried to carve for themselves kingdoms out of the empire of Peru. Such was Ruminagui, the commandant of Quito, who caused the brother and the children of Atahualpa to be massacred, and declared himself independent. Discord reigned in the Peruvian camp, and the Spaniards resolved to take advantage of it.

The country was soon in arms from the confines of the province of Quito as far as Chili, and a number of small detachments of Spaniards were surprised and destroyed.

After resting some days in the old capital of Quito, our travellers proceeded to the small port of Barbacoas, on the west coast of Equador; and thence took passage for Panama. Crossing the famous isthmus to Porto Bello, they shipped again for New Orleans, on the Mississippi.

He was afterwards made prisoner by Gonzalo, who was even on the point of putting him to death; but on setting out for Quito, Gonzalo took him into favour.

The environs of the lake are insalubrious only in times of great drought, when the waters in their retreat leave a muddy sediment exposed to the rays of the sun. How many plants of the straits of Magellan, of Chile, and the Cordilleras of Quito have formerly been confounded with the productions of the northern temperate zone, owing to their analogy in form and appearance.

The inhabitants are between two and three hundred in number; they are nearly all people of colour, who have been banished for political crimes from the Republic of the Equator, of which Quito is the capital. The settlement is placed about four and a half miles inland, and at a height probably of a thousand feet.

In pursuance of this authority, the viceroy ordered a new seal to be made, which he committed to the custody of Juan de Leon, alcalde or police judge of Lima, who had been nominated by the Marquis of Camarosa, grand-chancellor of the Indies, as his deputy or chancellor of the audience of Lima. De Leon had fled from Gonzalo Pizarro, and had joined the viceroy at Quito.

Before they had reached the plain of Quito, after horrible sufferings from hunger and thirst, without speaking of the burning cinders hurled from the crater of Chimborazo, a volcano near Quito, and the snow-storms which assailed them, the fifth part of the band of adventurers, and half the horses, had perished; the remainder were completely discouraged and quite unfit for fighting.