up the price of English razors and the Savon de Vindsor. Ten o'clock.-The Prince de Joinville has joined the insurgents. The entire fleet is with him. The army is also on the side of the Moustachionistes. All the barbers have fled from Paris. The complexion of affairs is getting blacker every day. Queen Christina has sent in word to the Council of the League that she gives her entire countenance to the cause. Bou Maza has done the same. The excitement spreads every hour; there is no knowing where it will stop. It is reported that the Prince de Joinville has been arrested and shaved in a most barefaced manner, à la pointe de la baionette, as an example to others. The prince has not been seen, but his friends say he is too much cut up to show his face. which hitherto has been carried on without the DISSOLVING PORTRAITS.-The motto for the photographic portraits should be "Light come, light go," for as they are taken by the means of light, so they disappear, similia similibus, by the same agency. A correspondent assures us, that Twelve o'clock.-Two ministers have thrown up of his portrait, which was only taken " a little their portefeuilles sooner than resign their mous- month" ago, there is not a single feature left, extaches. Marshal Soult has been closeted with a cepting half a whisker, and that is gradually meltsoap-brush for these three days. The last time ing away into thin hair. We are sorry for our corthe servant looked at him through the key-hole the respondent's whiskers, and recommend him to try old veteran was observed to be in tears. He evi- a new portrait. We have been told that nothing dently could not nerve his hand-that brave hand can take the curl out of Beard's.-Punch. which has never trembled before-for the fatal blow. The marshal's moustache is supposed to be in its fiftieth summer. Three o'clock. The public offices are all closed. All those holding government appointments and moustaches have resigned, and as every person in France who has an appointment has also a moustache, there is not a person left to carry on the government. All the ministries are deserted. It is expected that the navy will next resign, and then the army, in which case Louis Philippe must abdicate, or else rescind the unpopular order. In the mean time he has thrown himself upon the fortifications of Paris. May they be a soft cushion to receive him in his fall! We shall publish the progress of this revolution, NEW BOOKS AND REPRINTS. republication of the Pictorial History of England, MESSRS. GOULD, KENDALL & LINCOLN have MR. C. S. FRANCIS proceeds with the publication of the new edition of the Arabian Nights. POETRY.-Complaynte of William Caxton, 249. SCRAPS.-Image of Isis, 249—Mr. Cobden and Free Trade; Father Mathew, 267.. The LIVING AGE is published every Saturday, by E. LITTELL & Co., at No. 165 Tremont St., BOSTON. Price 12 cents a number, or six dollars a year in advance. Remittances for any period will be thankfully received and promptly attended to. To insure regularity in mailing the work, remittances and orders should be addressed to the office of publication as above. Twenty dollars will pay for 4 copies for a year. COMPLETE SETS to the end of 1846, making eleven large volumes, are for sale, neatly bound in cloth, for twenty dollars, or two dollars each for separate volumes. AGENCIES.-The publishers are desirous of making LITTELL'S LIVING AGE.-No. 170.-14 AUGUST, 1847. From Blackwood's Magazine. PRESCOTT'S PERU.* many and distant countries, their collection appears to have occasioned him less trouble than their abundance. The comrades and contemporaries of Pizarro were afflicted with a scribbling mania. They have left masses of correspondence, of memoranda and personal diaries, contradictory of each other, often absurd in their exaggerations and childish in their triviality. From this farrago has Mr. Prescott had to cull-a labor of no trifling magnitude, whose result is most creditable to him. And to our admiration of his talents are added feelings of strong sympathy, when we read his manly and affecting account of the painful circumstances under which the work was done. Deprived by an accident of the sight of one eye, the other has for him for all purposes of reading and writing. At intervals he was able to read print several hours a day, but manuscript was far more trying to his impaired vision, and writing was only possible through those aids by which even the stone-blind may accomplish it. But when he could read, although only by daylight, he felt, he says, satisfied with being raised so nearly to a level with the rest of his species. Unfortunately the evil increases. "The sight of my eye has become gradually dimmed, whilst the sensibility of the nerve has been so far increased, that for several weeks of the last year I have not opened a volume, and through the whole time I have not had the use of it, on an average, for more than an hour a day." Sustained by love of letters, and assisted by readers and amanuenses, the student and scholar has triumphed over these cruel disadvantages, surmounted all obstacles, and produced three long and important historical works, conspicuous by their impartiality, research, and elegance; entitling him to an exceed THE world's history contains no chapter more striking and attractive than that comprising the narrative of Spanish conquest in the Americas. Teeming with interest to the historian and philosopher, to the lover of daring enterprise and marvellous adventure it is full of fascination. On the vast importance of the discovery of a western hemisphere, vying in size, as it one day, perhaps, may compete in civilization and power, with its eastern rival, it were idle to expatiate. But the manner of its conquest commands unceasing admiration. It needs the concurring testimony of a host of chroniclers and eye-witnesses to convince suc-years been so weak as at times to be useless to ceeding generations that the hardships endured, the perils surmounted, the victories obtained, by the old conquistadores of Mexico and Peru, were as real as their record is astounding. The subjugation of vast and populous empires by petty detachments of adventurers, often scantily provided and ignorantly led-the extraordinary daring with which they risked themselves, a few score strong, into the heart of unknown countries, and in the midst of hostile millions-require strong confirmation to obtain credence. Exploits so romantic go near to realize the feats of those fabulous paladins who, cased in impervious steel and wielding enchanted lance, overthrew armies as easily as a Quixote scattered merinos. Hardly, when the tale is put before us in the quaint and garrulous chronicle of an Oviedo, or a Zarate, can we bring ourselves to accept it as history, not as the wild invention of imaginative monks, beguiling conventual leisure by the composition of fantastical romance. And the man who undertakes, at the present day, to narrate in all their details the exploits and tri-ingly honorable position amongst writers in the umphs of a Cortés or a Pizarro, allots himself no slight task. A clear head and a sound judgment, great industry and a skilful pen, are needed to do justice to the subject; to extract and combine the scraps of truth buried under mountains of fiction and misrepresentation, to sift facts from the partial accounts of Spanish jurists and officials, and to correct the boastful misrepresentations of insolent conquerors. The necessary qualities have been found united in the person of an accomplished American author. Already favorably known by his histories of the eventful and chivalrous reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, and of the exploits of the Great Marquis and his iron followers, Mr. Prescott has added to his well-merited reputation by his narrative of the Conquest of Peru. In its compilation he has spared no pains. Private collections and public libraries, the archives of Madrid and the manuscripts of the Escurial, he has ransacked and collated. And he has been so scrupulously conscientious as to send to Lima for a copy of the portrait whose engraving faces his title-page. But although his materials had to be procured from English tongue, and to one of the very loftiest places in the as yet scantily filled gallery of American men of letters. The last of these works, of which Pizarro is the hero and Peru the scene, yields nothing in merit or interest to its predecessors. The discovery of America infected Europe with a fever of exploration. Scarce a country was there, possessing a sea frontier, whence expeditions did not proceed with a view to appropriate a share of the spoils and territory of the new-found El-Dorado. In these ventures Spain, fresh from her long and bloody struggle with the Moor, and abounding in fierce unsettled spirits, eager for action and adventure, took a prominent part. The conquests of Cortés followed hard upon the discoveries of Columbus: Dutch, English, and Portuguese pushed their investigations in all directions; and, in less than thirty years from its first discovery, the whole eastern coast of both Americas was explored from north to south. The vast empire of Mexico was added to the Spanish crown, and the mother country was glutted and intoxicated by the Pactolus that flowed from this new possession. But enterprise was not yet exhausted, or thirst of gold satiated, and Balboa's discovery of the Pacific gave fresh stimulus to both. Rumor had long spoken of lands, as yet untrodden by European the rivers." And expeditions were actually underfoot, where the precious metals were abundant and taken in search of a magical fountain of health, worthless as the sand upon the sea-beach. Years of golden sepulchres and temples. The Amazons elapsed before any well-directed attempt was made and the water of life are still to be discovered; but to reach these golden shores. With a view to dis-as to golden temples and jewelled sands, their covery and traffic in the Pacific, a settlement was equivalents, at least, were forthcoming-not for the made on the southern side of the Isthmus of Da- many, but for a chosen and lucky few. Of the rien, and the town of Panama was built. But the fortunes of these the record is preserved; of the armaments that were fitted out took a westerly di- misfortunes of those comparatively little is told us. rection, in hopes to realize a fixed idea of the We hear of the thousands of golden castellanos Spanish government relative to an imaginary strait that fell to the lot of men, who a moment previousintersecting the isthmus. At last an expedition ly, were without a maravedi in their tattered sailed southwards, but soon returned, owing to the pouches; we find no catalogue of the fever-stricken bad health of its commander. This was in 1522. victims who left their bones in the noxious districts The moment and the man had not yet arrived. of Panama and Castillo de Oro. And those who They came, two years later; Pizarro appeared, achieved riches, earned them hardly by peril and and Peru was discovered. privation, although, in the magnificence of the But the discovery was comparatively a trifling plunder, past sufferings were quickly forgotten. matter. There lay the long line of coast, stretch- Thrice did Pizarro and his daring companions sail ing south-eastwards from Panama; the navigator southward; countless were their hardships, bitter disposed to explore it, had but to spread his sails, their disappointments, before the sunshine of suckeep the land in sight, and take the risk of the hid-cess rewarded their toils, revealing to them treasures den shoals and reefs that might lie in his course. that must in some degree have appeased even their The seas to be crossed were often tempestuous; appetite for lucre. They came suddenly upon a the country intervening between St. Michael's town whose inhabitants, taken by surprise, fled in gulf and the southern empire, whose rumored consternation, abandoning their property to the inwealth and civilization wrought so potently upon vaders. It was the emerald region, and great Spanish imagination, was peopled by fierce and store of the gems fell into the hands of the Spanwarlike tribes. Shipwreck was to be dreaded, and iards. Pizarro had one as large as a pigeon's egg. a landing might for weeks or months be unsafe, if A quantity of crowns and other ornaments, clumnot impracticable. But what were such secondary sily fashioned, but of pure gold and silver, were dangers contrasted with the perils, doubly terrible more to the taste of the ignorant conquerors, who from their unknown and mysterious nature, in- were sceptical as to the value of the jewels. "Many curred by the sanguine Genoese and his bold com- of them," says Pedro Pizarro, whose rough, panions, when they turned their brigantine's prow straightforward account of the discovery and conwestward from Europe, and sailed-they knew not quest of Peru is frequently quoted by Mr. Prescott, whither? Here the path was comparatively plain," had emeralds of great value; some tried them and the goal ascertained; and although risks must be dared, reward was tolerably certain; for further tidings of the Peruvian empire had reached the ears of the Spaniards, less shadowy and incomplete than the vague hints received by Balboa from an Indian chief. Andagoya, the officer whom illness had compelled to abandon an expedition when it was scarcely commenced, had brought back intelligence far more explicit, obtained from Indian traders who had penetrated by land into the empire of the incas, as far (so he says in his own manuscript, comprised in Navarrete's collection) as its capital eity of Cuzco. They spoke of a pagan but civilized land, opulent and flourishing; they described the divisions of its provinces, the wealth of its cities, the manners and usages of its inhabitants. But had their description been far more minute and In these days, when the rumored existence of glowing, the imagination of those who received the a land previously unknown provokes expeditions accounts would still have outstripped reality and authorized and fitted out by half the maritime powpossibility. Those were the days of golden visions ers of Europe, and when great nations risk the and chimerical day-dreams. In the fancy of the peace of the world for the possession of a paltry greedy and credulous Spaniards, each corner of the Pacific islet, the small degree of vigor shown by New World contained treasures, compared to the Spanish crown in pushing its American discovwhich the golden trees and jewelled fruits of Alad-eries fills us with surprise. Take Peru as an indin's garden were paste and tinsel. The exagger- stance. The Isthmus of Darien was colonized by ated reports of those adventurers who returned Spaniards; Mexico was theirs, and the armaments wealth-laden to Spain, were swollen by repetition sent by Pedrarias from Panama to explore in a to dimensions which enchantment only could have north-westerly direction, had met at Honduras the realized. No marvels were too monstrous and conquerors of the Aztecs, the brave and fortunate unwieldy for the craving gullet of popular credulity. companions of Hernan Cortés. One empire had "They listened with attentive ears to tales of received the Spanish yoke; at Panama the foot of Amazons, which seemed to revive the classic the European was on the threshold of another; but legend of antiquity, to stories of Patagonian giants, there it paused, desirous, yet fearing, to proceed. to flaming pictures of an El-Dorado, where the No aid or encouragement to enterprise was afforded sands sparkled with gems, and golden pebbles as from Spain; it was left to private capital and indilarge as birds' eggs were dragged in nets out ofvidual daring further to extend colonies already so upon anvils, striking them with hammers, saying, that if they were genuine, they would not break; others despised them, and affirmed that they were glass." A cunning monk, one of the missionaries whom Pizarro had been ordered by the Spanish government to take out in his ships, encouraged this opinion, in order to buy up the emeralds as their market value declined. The specie, however, was of immense amount, if the authority just quoted may be depended upon. He talks of two hundred thousand castellanos, the commercial value of which was equivalent to more than half a million sterling. This from one village, of no great size or importance. It was a handsome earnest of future spoils, and of the mountain of gold which, as an inca's ransom, awaited the Spaniards at Cuzco. vast. A priest found the money; two veteran soldiers, of low extraction, desperate fortunes, and brave spirit, undertook the risk. The most remarkable of the three men who thus formed a partnership for the conquest of kingdoms, could neither read nor write, was illegitimate, and a foundling. He was born in Truxillo," says Gomara, in his Historia de las Indias; "was left at the door of a church, and for a certain number of days he sucked a sow, none being willing to give him milk." Young Pizarro subsequently requited this porcine nourishment by taking care of his foster-mother's relatives. The chief occupation of his youth was that of a swineherd. Gomara's account of his birth, however, is only one of many, various and contradictory in their details. The fact is that very little is known of the early years of Francisco Pizarro. His valor and soldierly qualities he doubtless inherited from his father, a Spanish colonel of infantry, who served with distinction in Italy and Navarre. Neither from him nor from his! mother, a person of low condition, did he receive much parental attention. Even the date of his birth is a matter of doubt, and has been differently stated by different chroniclers. He cannot, however, have been far from fifty when he started on his Peruvian expedition. During the fourteen previous years he had followed the fortunes of Ojeda, Balboa, and other Spanish American adventurers, until at last the opportunity offered for himself to assume a command to which he proved in every way competent. His rank was that of a captain, and the number of men under his orders made but a slender company, when, in the month of November, 1524, he left the port of Panama, on board a small vessel, indifferently provided, and of no great seaworthiness. About a hundred adventurers, (some accounts say eighty, others a hundred and twenty,) stalwart, stout-hearted fellows, for the most part of no very reputable description, composed the powerful army destined to invade a populous empire. They started under many disadvantages. Almagro, Pizarro's partner in the undertaking, who was to follow in another ship, as soon as it could be got ready, had had the victualling of that on which his colleague embarked, and he had performed the duty in a slovenly manner, reckoning that, upon a coasting voyage, supplies might be obtained from shore. Landing for this purpose, a few leagues south of the river Biru, Pizarro could procure nothing besides wood and water. A tremendous storm came on; for ten days the ship was in imminent danger, tossed by the furious waves; rations ran short, and two ears of Indian corn were each man's daily allowance. Thus poorly nourished, and in a crazy ship, they struggled with desperate energy against the fury of the tropical tempest. Only a miracle, as it seemed, could saye them, and yet they escaped. The vessel bore Pizarro and his fortunes. This first expedition, however, resulted in nothing, except much suffering and discontent. On landing, after the storm, the voyagers found themselves in a desolate and unproductive country, covered with tangled forests, untenanted even by beasts or birds. No living creatures were visible, except noxious insects-no food was obtainable, save herbs and berries, unpalatable, and often poisonous. The men desponded, and would fain have returned to Panama; but Pizarro, with much difficulty, appeased their murmurs, and sending back the ship to the Isle of Pearls for provisions, attempted to explore the country. On all sides stretched a gloomy forest, matted with creepers, and penetrable only with axe in hand; habitations there were none; the bitter buds of the palm, and an occasional stranded shell-fish, were the best entertainment offered by that inhospitable region to the weary and disheartened wanderers, some of whom actually perished by famine. At last, after many weeks' misery, an Indian village was discovered. The Spaniards rushed upon it like starving wolves upon a sheep-fold, and got a small supply of food, chiefly maize and cocoa-nuts. Here, also, they received further tidings of the golden southern realm that had lured them on this luckless voyage. "Ten days' journey across the mountains," the Indians told Pizarro, "there dwelt a mighty monarch, whose dominions had been invaded by one still more powerful-the Child of the Sun." They referred to the kingdom of Quito, which the warlike inca, Huayna Capac, had added, some thirty years previously, to the empire of Peru. Six long weeks of hunger and misery had elapsed, when the ship returned with good store of provisions. Revived by the seasonable supply, the adventurers were now as eager to prosecute their voyage as they shortly before had been to abandon it; and leaving Famine Port, the name given by Pizarro to the scene of their sufferings, they again sailed southwards. When next they landed, it was to plunder an Indian village of its provisions and gold. Here they found traces of cannibalism. In the pots for the dinner, which stood upon the fire," says Herrera, in his Historia General de las Indias, " amongst the flesh which they took out, were feet and hands of men, whence they knew that those Indians were Caribs"-the Caribs being the only cannibals as yet known in that part of the New World. This discovery drove the horrified Spaniards to their ships, from which they again landed at Punto Quemado, the limit of this first expedition. The sturdy resistance they there met from some warlike savages, in a skirmish with whom they had two men killed and many wounded, (Pizarro himself receiving seven wounds,) made them reflect on the temerity of proceeding further with such a scanty force. Their ship, too, was in a crippled state, and in a council of war it was decided to return to Panama, and seek the countenance and assistance of the governor for the further prosecution of the enterprise. Without attempting to follow Mr. Prescott through his detailed and interesting account of Pizarro's difficulties, struggles, and adventures, during the six years that intervened between his first departure from Panama and his commencement of the conquest of Peru, we will glance at the character and deeds of a few of his comrades. The principal of these was Diego de Almagro, a brave and honorable soldier, who placed a confidence in his leader which the sequel shows was scarcely merited. A foundling like Pizarro, like him he was uneducated, and unable to sign his name to the singular covenant by which the two, in concert with Father Luque, (the Spanish ecclesiastic, who found the funds for the expedition,) agreed, upon oath, and in the name of God and the Holy Evangelists, to divide amongst them in equal shares, all the lands, treasures, gold, silver, precious stones, and other property, that might accrue as the result of their enterprise. For in such terms "three obscure individuals coolly carved out, and partitioned amongst themselves, an empire of whose extent, power, and resources, of whose situation, of whose existence even, they had no sure and precise knowl edge." Contented at first with the post of second according to their report, was scarcely more plentiin command, it does not appear whether it was on his own solicitation that Almagro was named by the governor of Panama Pizarro's equal in the second expedition. This domination greatly mortified Pizarro, who suspected Almagro of having sought it, and did not neglect, when the opportunity offered, on his visit to the court of Charles the Fifth, to repay him in kind. As far as can be gathered from the mass of conflicting evidence, Almagro was frank in disposition and straightforward in his dealings, but hasty in temper, and of ungovernable passions. When he had despatched Pizarro on the first voyage, he lost the least possible time in following him, tracing his progress by the concerted signal of notches on the trees. In this manner he descended the coast to Punto Quemado, and in his turn had a fight with the natives, whose village he burned, and drove them into the woods. In this affair he lost an eye by a javelin wound. Passing Pizarro's vessel without observing it, he pushed on to the mouth of the river San Juan, whence he returned to Panama, having gone further, suffered less, and collected more gold than his friend. At this time, however, great amity and mutual reliance existed between them; although not long afterwards we find them quarrelling fiercely, and only prevented by the interposition of their subordinates from settling their differences sabre in hand. Bartholomew Ruiz, an Andalusian pilot, a native of that village of Moguer which supplied Columbus with many seamen for his first voyages, also played an important part in the earlier researches of the discoverers of Peru. Upon the second voyage, when the two ships had reached the river of San Juan, he was detached in one of them to explore the coast, and soon made the little island of Gallo, in two degrees of north latitude. The hostile demonstrations of the natives prevented his landing, and he continued his course southwards, along a coast crowded with spectators. "They stood gazing on the vessel of the white man, as it glided smoothly into the crystal waters of the bay, fancying it, says an old writer, some mysterious being descended from the skies." The account of Ruiz's voyage, although it occupied but a few weeks, and was comparatively devoid of adventure, has a romantic and peculiar charm. The first European who, sailing in that direction on the Pacific, crossed the equinoctial line, he was also the first who obtained ocular proof of Peruvian civilization. He fell in with a balsa or native raft, consisting of beams lashed together, floored with reeds, guided by a rude rudder, and rigged with a cotton squaresail. On board this primitive craft-still in use on the rivers and coasts of South America-were several Indians, whose dresses and ornaments, showing great ingenuity and progress in manufacturing art, excited his surprise and admiration. "Mirrors mounted in silver," says a Spanish narrator of Ruiz's cruise," and cups, and other drinking vessels, blankets of cotton and wool, and shirts, and vests, and many other garments, embroidered for the most part with very rich embroideries of scarlet, and crimson, and blue, and yellow, and all other colors, in various designs and figures of birds and animals, and fishes and trees; and they had small scales, in the fashion of a steelyard, for weighing gold; and many other things." Right musical to the ears of the Spaniards were the tales these Indians told of the abundance of the precious metals in the palaces of their king. Wood, ful than silver and gold. And they enlarged upon Doubting not that the account they could now give of the riches of Peru would bring crowds of volunteers to their standard, Almagro and some of his companions again sailed for Panama, to seek the succors so greatly needed; Pizarro consenting, after some angry discussion, to await their return upon the island of Gallo. The men who were to remain with him were highly discontented at their |