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Carbajal, who had been sent against him from Quito, after repairing to Lima, had passed at once to Cuzco, and there, strengthening his forces, had descended by rapid marches on the refractory district. Centeno did not trust himself in the field against this formidable champion. He retreated with his troops into the fastnesses of the sierra.
But I remember having said, during my stay at Caracas, that the eastern extremity of Terra Firma appeared, since the great earthquake of Quito, in a state of agitation, which warranted apprehension that the province of Venezuela would gradually be exposed to violent commotions.
His restless spirit, however, excited some alarm at the court of Cuzco, and Huascar, at length, sent an envoy to Atahuallpa, to remonstrate with him on his ambitious enterprises, and to require him to render him homage for his kingdom of Quito. This is one statement.
In the republics to the northward struggles between clericals and radicals caused sharp, abrupt alternations in government. In Ecuador the hostility between clericals and radicals was all the more bitter because of the rivalry of the two chief towns, Guayaquil the seaport and Quito the capital, each of which sheltered a faction.
The dangers of the expedition were pictured to him in glowing colors, but spurning prophecies of dire disaster, he engaged some native Indians and a canoe and started on his explorations, reaching Quito in eighty-seven days, after a thorough search of the country on both sides of the Napo River.
Cuzco had the recommendation of having been the residence of the incas; but this town, situated more than 400 miles from the sea, was very distant from Quito, of which the importance seemed to Pizarro to be extreme. Before long he was struck with the beauty and fertility of a great valley, watered by a stream called the Rimac, and there in 1536, he established the seat of his dominion.
The railroad had filled every place, and it was well known that the striking shopmen not only would never get their old jobs back but were blacklisted in every railroad in the United States. Already they were beginning to scatter. A number had gone to Panama, and four were talking of going to Ecuador to work in the shops of the railroad that ran over the Andes to Quito.
Sucre had been placed by Bolivar in command of the army of the South, with instructions to go to Guayaquil, a section which was not covered by the armistice, in order to negotiate its incorporation with Colombia. San Martin desired to have the province of Quito form part of Peru, and there is no ground for believing that he did so without sound and patriotic reasons.
We had the hope of examining afterwards a great number of mountains covered with perpetual snow, at Quito, Peru, and Mexico; and it appeared to me still more prudent to relinquish our project of visiting the mountains of Merida, since by so doing we might miss the real object of our journey, that of ascertaining by astronomical observations the point of communication between the Orinoco, the Rio Negro, and the river Amazon.
But, while thus occupied, he received tidings of the arrival of one of Pizarro's captains on the coast, with a force superior to his own. Their number was exaggerated; but Blasco Nunez, without waiting to ascertain the truth, abandoned his position at Tumbez, and, with as much expedition as he could make across a wild and mountainous country half- buried in snow, he marched to Quito.
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