Ebook Chile

So, early in 1535, the fiery spirits came ?ocking from Panama and the north to join Almagro's standard, and to undertake another Of those heroic, daredevil marches into the unknown world, which faith and greed allied could alone inspire. Almagro's expedition of nearly 600 Europeans and Indians started from Cuzco in 1535, to find and occupy the promised land of Chile. To have descended to the coast and thence march by the lowlands would have been the easiest way, but it was the longer, and the adventurers were as impatient to reach their goal as the Pizarros were to see them gone: so Almagro marched straight along the Inca road, past Lake Titicaca, across part of Bolivia and what is now Argentina, and then over the Andes. Daring and difficult as some of the Spanish marches had been, none thitherto had had to encounter the hardships that faced Almagro on his Andean progress. Cold, famine, and toilsome ways killed his followers by thousands, and to the frost and snow of the mountain sides succeeded hundreds of miles Of arid deserts, where no living thing grew, and no drop Of water fell.