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Updated: May 3, 2025
Invitations were sent by the captains of the guard of the respective Incas to the different nobles and officers of the court; and entertainments were provided in the names of their masters, which displayed all the profuse magnificence of their treasures, and "such a display," says an ancient chronicler, "was there in the great square of Cuzco, on this occasion, of gold and silver plate and jewels, as no other city in the world ever witnessed." 50 The banquet was served by the menials of the respective households, and the guests partook of the melancholy cheer in the presence of the royal phantom with the same attention to the forms of courtly etiquette as if the living monarch had presided! 51
And the honest chronicler is so struck with admiration of the virtuous beauty of the maids of honor that he cannot tell whether to award preeminence to their amiable countenances or to their costliness of attire, between which there is daily conflict and contention. The courtiers of both sexes have the use of sundry languages and an excellent vein of writing.
Now, of course, there is no doubt that what the chronicler meant to describe by the phrase, 'seeking the Lord, was largely the mere external acts of ritual worship, the superficial turning from idols to a purely external recognition of God as the God of Israel.
The heyday of the buffalo trade came later, with the development of overland transportation. At any rate the dependence of New France upon these furs was complete. "I would have you know," asserts one chronicler, "that Canada subsists only upon the trade of these skins and furs, three-fourths of which come from the people who live around the Great Lakes."
Conspicuous amongst this band of knights and adventurers was one who was himself no knight, but a priest and the self-appointed chronicler of the rest, Gerald de Barri better known as Gerald of Wales, or Giraldus Cambrensis, who was the grandson of Nesta, through her daughter Angareta. Giraldus is one of those writers whom, to tell the truth, we like a great deal better than they deserve.
Each man was clad in dark blue flannel shirt and blouse, the latter soon probably to be stored with the big, weighty boots in Truscott's saddle room at Beecher, with, probably too, many of the light blue riding breeches, saddle-pieced with canvas the uniform at the start destined, in the case of veteran troopers, at least, to be shed in favor of brown duck hunting trousers, or even, among certain extremists, fringed, beaded and embroidered buckskin, than which the present chronicler knows no more uncomfortable garb when soaked by pelting rains or immersion in some icy mountain stream.
"All the Court," says a quaint old chronicler, himself a member of the royal circle, "were aware that the King had a heart which could not long preserve its liberty without attaching itself to some new object, a knowledge which induced the flatterers at Court who had discovered his weakness for the other sex to leave nothing undone to urge him onward in this taste, and to make their fortunes by his defeat."
From first to last, comets and other heavenly bodies were much connected with his evolutions and arrangements. There was no mistaking the motives with which this luminary had presented itself. The Emperor knew very well, says a contemporary German chronicler, that it portended pestilence and war, together with the approaching death of mighty princes.
He only took a capacious quid of tobacco as the Commander gravely drew a settle before the fire, and in honor of his guest untied the black-silk handkerchief that bound his grizzled brows. What passed between Salvatierra and his guest that night it becomes me not, as a grave chronicler of the salient points of history, to relate.
"The King, who was the best of men," pursues the chronicler, "simply replied: 'I plainly see, Bassompierre, that you are angry, but I feel sure that you will not fail when you remember that it was my nephew, the first Prince of the Blood, by whom you were invited."
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