The Conquistadors (28 page)

Home politics now intervened. At this stage in the development of the New World the appointment of governors was a somewhat haphazard affair, expediency going hand-in-hand with both home and colonial politics. Pedro Arias de Ávila – usually referred to as Pedrarias – obtained the governorship of Tierra Firme as a result of court connections. This hasty, evil-tempered man, whose actions seem to have been largely motivated by concern for his personal position, was placed in command of one of the best equipped expeditions King Ferdinand ever dispatched to the Indies – 15 ships with 1,200 troops and no less than 1,500 gentlemen-adventurers. It was only after Pedrarias had arrived at Santa María de la Antigua and had taken up his position as governor that news of Balboa's discovery of the Pacific reached Spain. It created a sensation, for it gave fresh impetus to Columbus's old dream of a sea route to the Moluccas. As a belated reward Balboa was made
adelantado
of the South Sea itself and also of the small settlements he had established at Panama and Coiba. Pedrarias met the situation by betrothing him to his daughter, who was still in Spain. In 1517 he moved the seat of his government across the isthmus to Panama.

This is not the present Panama, but the old city whose ruins include the tower of its great cathedral on a small hill, the shell of the church of San José, the pack mule arch called the King's Bridge because it was the start of the three gold routes across the isthmus, and the dungeons where prisoners were left to be drowned by the incoming tide. These extensive stone ruins lie four miles to the east of the present town on a small promontory backed by swamp. There is a good berthing creek and a sand foreshore with shelter for shallow-draft boats behind rocks and a long line of submerged reefs. Pelicans fish here and the north wind barely ruffles the water. The site was a good one, the afternoon breeze keeping the temperature down to about 80°; it was only abandoned after Henry Morgan sacked it in 1671, malaria by then having become a serious menace.

Pedrarias's move to Panama was political, his object being to press the search for a strait connecting the Atlantic and the South Sea. The immediate effect, however, was a clash of personalities between himself and Balboa. Hot tempers, the heat, the isolation – it was the Cortés-Velázquez situation all over again, the little frontier port too small to hold them both. Within months of his arrival in Panama, Pedrarias had arrested Balboa on a charge of conspiracy. Some accounts name Pizarro as the officer who actually made the arrest, and this is not too
improbable since Pizarro was at all times an opportunist, prepared to sacrifice old comrades to the needs of the moment. The wretched Balboa was executed, and the irony of it was that he was then on the point of setting out on a second voyage of discovery to the south; but for the jealous nature of his father-in-law he might have been the discoverer of Peru as well as the Pacific.

The urge for pure exploration seems to have died with Balboa. The expeditions of Pedrarias were all to the northwards. Spurred by orders from home to find the strait that would lead to the Spice Islands, and later by envy of the great empire Cortés was opening up, the governor occupied Veragua, Costa Rica, Nicaragua; finally, in Honduras, he clashed with Cortés himself. Five years passed before anyone attempted again to sail south from Panama, and then, like Balboa, Pascual de Andagoya left at the wrong time of the year. He reached Punta Pinas, the bold, wooded headland where adverse winds and currents had stopped his more intrepid predecessor. He almost certainly anchored in the bay of the same name, which has a white sand beach and is protected from the southerly swell by high rocky headlands and off-lying islands, but he got little further.

To understand the problem that faced the Spanish adventurers exploring south to Peru it is necessary to appreciate the meteorological conditions of the area. The prevailing wind in the gulf of Panama is northerly, so that at the outset the discoverer had a favourable breeze at almost any time of the year. But once clear of the gulf his primarily square-rigged vessel was faced with the great movement of air set up by the high pressure area of the South Pacific. This, revolving in the southern hemisphere in an anti-clockwise direction, produces a south-westerly airstream along the whole of the South American littoral northwards of about 40°S. In addition, the Humboldt current flows north throughout the year. The problem is emphasized by the directions given in the British Admiralty Pilot for sailing vessels proceeding south from Panama.
These passages are all slow and difficult on account of the contrary currents and persistently light southerly winds.
… And the Pilot goes on to give detailed instructions on how to avoid the calms, the tropical storms and the disturbed seas that arise where currents meet, all of which entail keeping a minimum of two hundred miles off-shore. The unfortunate Spaniards, however, had no such sailing directions. They were the first, and they had to learn as they sailed, by trial and error and bitter experience.

Whilst anchored at Biru on the Colombian coast, Andagoya had talked with Indians who were trading far to the south. His expedition thus achieved something, since it brought back the first specific information about the empire of the Incas. But to the adventurers gathering like birds of prey in the torrid little colonial capital of Panama it must have appeared as yet another of the many tall stories they were constantly hearing. And though Cortés' achievements in Mexico had revived the hopes of every hard-bitten soldier of fortune, offering them concrete evidence of the dazzling rewards that still awaited men of courage and determination, few of them were sailors, and the land to the north and west offered safer prospects than the unknown perils of the great South Sea that stretched in limitless vastness beyond the southern horizon.

Francisco Pizarro, however, had sailed with Balboa. After thirteen years in the Indies he knew that the biggest prizes went to the boldest and to those who got there first. He had led at least one expedition northward, but all he had got out of his years of hardship and fighting was a tract of poor land and a
repartiraiento
of Indians. He was already about fifty years old. Time was running out for him, as it was for his friend, Diego de Almagro, another tough soldier of fortune, who was probably older. The two of them approached a priest of Darién cathedral, Hernando de Luque, who was also schoolmaster and treasurer of the community's funds, and with his financial backing and the consent of the governor they began fitting out two small vessels for a voyage of discovery to Peru. Pizarro sailed as soon as the first of the ships was ready, leaving Almagro to follow later in the other vessel. The date of departure, according to his secretary, Francisco Xeres, was November 14, 1524, and he had with him 112 Spaniards and some Indian servants.

After clearing the headland of Punta Pinas, he put into what was then called the Biru river – it is possible that the name Peru may be a bastard form of Biru, since it was here that Andagoya had obtained his information about that country. Having no idea of the colossal ranges of mountains that stood between him and his objective, Pizarro made an abortive attempt to locate the Indian overland trade route, but the upper reaches of the river were a swamp fringed with dense jungle and backed by savage hills. The going was impossible, and after re-embarking and trying again a little further down the coast, he decided that the ocean was the lesser of two evils. He pushed seaward, attempting to find a more favourable wind off-shore, but his vessel got caught up in the calms and tropical storms typical of this area. After ten days, shortage of food and water forced him back to the coast, where the swamps, the dense jungle growth and the humidity completed the sea's demoralization. Faced with imminent famine, he did the only thing he could if he were not to yield to the wishes of most of his men and abandon the expedition; he sent the trouble-makers back under one of his captains, a man called Montenegro, with orders to re-victual the ship. The distance was short enough in sea miles, but it was over six weeks before Montenegro returned, and long before then Pizarro and his men were reduced to eating the shell-fish and sea-weed on the shore and the berries and roots of the forest.

Whilst they had been marooned in the humid swamps of what he called Puerto de la Hambre (Port of Famine) they had achieved limited contact with the natives, had got their first sight of crude gold ornaments, and had obtained vague accounts, probably in sign language, of a powerful, organized kingdom to the south that had been invaded by an even richer and more powerful state. Full bellies and the prospects of gold did much to restore their morale. They embarked
and headed south again, determined to push their luck to the very edge of disaster, their mood one of near-desperation. No word yet of Almagro, and those who had sailed back with Montenegro to the Pearl Islands for fresh provisions were still full of the headwinds and storms they had encountered in their voyage down the coast. Like most early discoverers Pizarro hugged the coast. He had to, for the coast was his only guide to what lay beyond. It was low and swampy, the rain almost incessant, with poor visibility. They made one landing, finding a village that had recently been deserted, which yielded a little food, mostly maize, and some crude gold ornaments. There were also clear indications of cannibalism. South again, into the thick of a violent storm. Finally, their ship badly strained, they rounded a headland to anchor against a shore fringed with mangrove swamps. Here they found a larger Indian settlement, but again it was deserted, so that it yielded no contact with the natives, only food and some more of the same primitive gold ornaments. Montenegro was dispatched inland, but was attacked in the foothills of the Cordilleras. It was a savage engagement in which Pizarro, coming to his rescue, was singled out for special attention as the leader – he received a total of seven minor wounds before the Indians were repulsed. Seventeen Spaniards were wounded and five killed in this brief battle.

Thus ended the first attempt to reach the fabled land of gold. The ship put her stern to the south, and with wind and current behind her, fled back to the Pearl Island archipelago in the gulf of Panama. Meantime, Almagro had sailed in the second ship. Following the coast, and locating by agreed marks the three places where Pizarro had landed, he penetrated as far south as the low, rain-clouded headland of Punta Charambira (4°16'N) before turning back. Apart from a brush with the Indians at Quemado, where Pizarro had been attacked, and the loss of an eye as a result of a javelin wound, his voyage seems to have been remarkably uneventful. This was to be the general pattern of discovery in South America, each initial thrust to the south being made slowly and with great difficulty, whilst subsequent voyages seemed relatively easy. Almagro, returning to the Pearl Islands, found his partner ashore at Chicama, a little place along the coast to the west of Panama.

Pizarro seems to have suffered from an inferiority complex in his dealings with the administration, probably because of his lack of education – he could neither read nor write. As a result, he had sent his treasurer, Nicolas de Rivera, with all the gold, to Panama to plead his case for a second and larger expedition. Almagro, who had brought back more gold, also departed for Panama. Though little better educated than Pizarro, he seems to have had no doubts about his ability to persuade the governor. But circumstances had changed. One of Pedrarias's captains was in revolt in Nicaragua and the governor needed every man he could muster for a punitive expedition. Besides, if Xeres is correct, the two partners had lost a hundred and thirty men on their abortive expeditions, a very high proportion indeed.

It was Fray Hernando de Luque, rather than Almagro or Rivera, who finally persuaded Pedrarias, though Oviedo, in his
Historia general de las Indias,
gives a highly imaginative account of a violent exchange between Pedrarias and Almagro, in which the governor is finally haggling over the amount he should get as compensation for withdrawing from the venture. Despite the gold they had looted, the first expedition showed a considerable financial loss. Nevertheless, Almagro agreed to buy Pedrarias out for 1,000 gold pesos, a sum he frankly admitted he did not possess. He managed to borrow it, however, and the luckless governor traded his share of the Inca gold for a small immediate gain. But in reluctantly agreeing to the second expedition, he sowed the seeds of later enmity, for he named Almagro as joint leader with Pizarro.

Pizarro had no alternative but to accept the situation, and the three partners – Pizarro and Almagro, now joint leaders of the expedition, and Luque, who had invested 20,000 pesos in it – entered into a most solemn contract, splitting the proceeds of the voyage and all territories conquered three ways. This contract, which was dated March 10, 1526, was signed by Luque and witnessed by three citizens of Panama, one of whom signed for Pizarro and another for Almagro. Both the leaders were required to swear on oath to keep it, and to clinch the matter, Luque then administered the sacrament. There is some doubt, however, as to Luque's position. Twenty thousand gold pesos was a great deal of money in a place like Panama, and the suggestion is that he was acting for a third party.

With Pedrarias preparing to march on Nicaragua, the resources of the small settlement were already stretched, so that it was with difficulty that the two commanders mustered about a hundred and sixty men, a few horses and a reasonable quantity of arms, ammunition, and supplies. They sailed in two vessels, piloted this time by a first-rate navigator, Bartholomew Ruiz. Like the pilots who had blazed the trail across the Atlantic with Columbus, he was from the little port of Paios de la Frontera near Moguer in Andalusia, and he was already one of the most experienced navigators in the seas off Panama. Indeed, the discovery and conquest of Peru is very largely due to the pioneering seamanship of this one man. Instead of following the coast, he stood out to sea, and as a result had a fast passage to latitude 4°N and the delta of the San Juan river, a great fifteen-mile span of jungle and mud flats that includes Punta Charambira.