Nueva España by the early 1530s was settling down. The areas of high Indian civilisation and dense population were under control, and Aztec Tenochtitlan was being transformed into the great city of Mexico. But Indian stocks of gold had been ransacked, placer gold was falling off, and there was no Spanish market for cotton cloth, cacao (as yet), or maize. Many rank and file conquistadores had not done well in the scramble for grants of Indian lands or Indian labourers; the authorities, fearing a drain of manpower, forbade emigration and the export of arms or horses. But to many a veteran the sanction of losing his encomienda, if he had one, meant little, and it was impossible to police the ban. Some went north, still in search of gold and Indians, into New Galicia and its arid marches, beyond which might lie the golden cities of Cibola and Quivira; but probably more filtered south towards Realejo in Nicaragua, whence the first ‘export trade’ of New Spain was in soldiers and their gear, her first ‘market’ the new conquista beyond the Equator.^[33] Later, as in the Californian and Australian gold rushes, those with some capital might find provisioning the rush a less arduous and much safer road to fortune.

In 1522, when Davila and Niño set out west and north from Panama, Pedrarias sent Pascual de Andagoya in the opposite direction. He did not get very far, but far enough to bring back fairly definite news of ‘Biru’, a strange and wealthy realm to the south. If, as some state, he reached the Rio San Juan in the south- 68 -

- 69 -of modern Colombia, he would be at about the northern limit of a lively balsa-raft traffic from Tumbes, which had been for some forty or fifty years a part of the Inca Empire. The trade was a luxury one: gold, pearls, conch-shells, emeralds, cacao.^[34]

Exploitation fell into the hands of Francisco Pizarro and Diego de Almagro, both of them illegitimate and illiterate, with the financial backing of the priest Fernando de Luque, an associate of Pedrarias, who gave permission but no more—naturally against a share of the profits. The two ships which sailed under Pizarro in November 1524 and Almagro a little later included ‘one of Balboa's brigantines which had miraculously escaped destruction by rot or shipwreck’, and the crews included ‘the vagabonds of Panama’; Pizarro lost a quarter of his men and ended at Puerto de la Hambre, ‘Port Famine’.^[35] Somehow Luque scraped together funds for a second venture, two ships and 160 men, in early 1526. On this expedition the pilot Bartolomé Ruiz became the first European to sail southwards across the Equator in the Pacific; he met a large balsa-raft sailing north from Tumbes and into the speculations of a modern Viking over four centuries later.^[36] Of more immediate importance was its revelation of luxury and civilisation: a cargo of finely worked silver and gold, emeralds and chalcedony, richly coloured and embroidered fabrics. Almagro returned to Panama for new and better recruits, and then with combined forces they went on to modern Ecuador: a country well worth the conquest, but needing more men for the task, since the Indians were numerous and hostile. Once more Almagro went back, after a quarrel with Pizarro, who naturally resented being left on the outposts while Almagro shuttled back and forth to the comforts, and the useful contacts, of Panama.

Pizarro waited it out on the desolate but secure Isla del Gallo, about 2°N; discontents naturally arose, and he sent back his remaining ship, perhaps in emulation of Cortes, more likely to get rid of dissidents. Shocked by the appearance of Almagro's men and the smuggled accounts from some who had stayed, the new Governor of Panama, Pedro de los Rios, sent two ships to bring back the foolhardy adventurers; but they also carried counsels of persistence from Almagro and Luque. At this point took place the famous incident of the thirteen who dared accept Pizarro's challenge to cross a line on the sand and stand by his fortunes; an episode much inflated, perhaps all but invented, by the chroniclers.^[37] The fourteen moved to the larger and less depressing island of Gorgona, further north. Here, after seven months, they were rejoined by Almagro, bringing no reinforcements beyond his crew: de los Rios would not allow any more wastage of men, had any been willing to volunteer. With new heart, they set out again, through the Gulf of Guayaquil to Tumbes; and here at last they were actually within the Inca realm: a sizeable town, an active coasting trade, paved roads, admirable irrigation, a civil people—and gold in the temples. Relations were friendly—this was only a reconnaissance, and not in force, and Acts of Possession were not understood. After reaching the Rio Santa, in 9°S,- 70 -the expedition returned to Panama eighteen months after its departure. The contrast between the horrors of the beginning and the amenity and promise of the ending was doubtless well displayed in official relations and in tavern tales.

So much was prologue to the great enterprise. Pizarro went to Spain, reaching the Court at Toledo in mid-1528; he returned in 1530 with full powers as Governor and Captain-General and with three half-brothers; volunteers came especially from the tough and poor minor gentry of backward Extremadura, Pizarro's own country and that of Cortes, who was helpfully in Spain at the time. Almagro was allotted only the commandancy of Tumbes—perhaps because the Court foresaw friction if both men were promoted too high. But he was naturally furious, and only pacified by the promise of an independent conquista beyond Peru; whence the conquest of Chile, but also the first of the civil wars which within ten years were to provide a dreary preview of the history of Peru and Bolivia in the nineteenth century, a rehearsal for the plague of caudillismo, the turbulence and tyranny of local magnates and war-lords.

Pizarro sailed from Panama at the end of 1530, with three ships and about 180 men. After two weeks he landed in the north of Ecuador, which had taken nearly two years to reach in the preliminary reconnaissances; thence he advanced slowly, partly by land and partly by sea, exploring the country, receiving reinforcements, fighting local resistance, pillaging towns and villages. Tumbes was in ruins, the first evidence of the civil war which perhaps made the conquest possible. Over a year was spent on this approach: Pizarro was building a base before risking an entry into the great wall of mountains always visible to the east. In mid-1532 he founded San Miguel de Piura, the first Spanish town on the Pacific coast of South America. After leaving sixty men there, he had sixty-two horses and 106 infantry for his field force. The stage was set for the assault on the Inca realm, which was much more of an Empire than that of the Aztecs. It was fortunate for the Spaniards that it had recently been ravaged by a great epidemic spreading from the north, and was riven by a wide and bitter civil war.