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 the troopers each eight thousand! But enormous as this seems, there is no doubt that it would have been vastly more had the natives been as confident in the faith of the Spaniards as they had reason to be of the reverse. The Inca, Garcillasso, and some of the Spanish historians, tell us that on the Spaniards displaying their greedy spirit of plunder, vast quantities of treasure vanished from public view, and never could be discovered again. Amongst these were the celebrated emerald of Manta, which was worshipped as a divinity; was as large as an ostrich egg, and had smaller emeralds offered to it as its children; and the chain of gold made by order of Huana Capac, to surround the square at Cuzco on days of solemn dancing, and was in length seven hundred feet, and of the thickness of a man's wrist.

The Inca having fulfilled, as far as the impatience of the Spaniards would permit him, his promises, now demanded his freedom. Poor man! his tyrants never intended to give him any other freedom than the freedom of death. They held him merely as a lure, by which to draw all the gold and the power of his kingdom into their hands. But as, after this transaction, they could not hope to play upon him much further, they resolved to dispatch him. The new adventurers who had arrived with Almagro were clamorous for his destruction, because they looked upon him as a puppet in the hands of Pizarro, by which he would draw away gold that might otherwise fall into their hands. The poor Inca too, by an unwitting act, drew this destruction more suddenly on his own head. Struck with admiration at the art of writing, he got a soldier to write the word Dios (God) on his thumb-nail, and