United States or Kiribati ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The Governor was so enraged at the number of lives which this unsuccessful expedition had cost the colony, that he utterly refused the applications of Almagro and De Luque for further help, and sent off two ships, under a cavalier named Tafur, to bring back every Spaniard from Gallo.
Incensed by the loss of life and the hardships of the two expeditions, with the lack of definite and tangible results, and disregarding the remonstrances of Almagro, he dispatched two ships under one Pedro Tafur to bring them back. Life on the island of Gallo had been a hideous experience.
Then occurred the famous episode that decided so dramatically the fortunes of Pizarro and the fate of Peru. Tafur had brought supplies of provisions to the famished and emaciated, but now jubilant soldiers; and all except Pizarro appeared eager to abandon their barren adventure and return in the ships. Pizarro alone refused obedience to the governor's agent.
Every speck in the distant horizon was carefully noticed, and the drifting timber or masses of sea-weed, heaving to and fro on the bosom of the waters, was converted by their imaginations into the promised vessel; till, sinking under successive disappointments, hope gradually gave way to doubt, and doubt settled into despair.8 Meanwhile the vessel of Tafur had reached the port of Panama.
They got themselves transferred to the Island of Gorgona where there were water and game and no inhabitants, and there they stayed while Tafur returned.
In the vessel that bore back Tafur and those who seceded from the expedition the pilot Ruiz was also permitted to return, in order to cooperate with Luque and Almagro in their application for further succour.
But the act excited no such admiration in the mind of Tafur, who looked on it as one of gross disobedience to the commands of the governor, and as little better than madness, involving the certain destruction of the parties engaged in it.
Therefore the arrival of Tafur with two well-provisioned ships was greeted with rapture, and the only thought of the soldiers was to embark as soon as possible, and leave for ever that dismal island.
Famine, disease and inclement weather had taken off many and had broken the spirit of the most of the rest of the band. Nothing could break that of Pizarro. When Tafur appeared, he refused to return. Drawing an east-and-west line upon the sand with his sword, he made a brief soldierly address to his men.
Once more Almagro returned to Panama for more men, while Pizarro and his followers remained to starve on the barren isle of Gallo. Instead of permitting any more of his people to depart on what seemed so foolhardy and fatal a business, Rios, the new governor of Panama, despatched to the island two vessels, under a commander named Tafur, with orders to bring away every Spaniard left alive there.
Word Of The Day