Page:The Present State of Peru.djvu/358

308 time by the rugged tracks of the Cordillera, escorted by a few Indians, and with a small band of followers under his command, at length stopped at the valley which has still continued to bear his name, and which is the subject of the present details. Its peaceable inhabitants, who were strangers to the yoke of the domination of the Yncas, and unacquainted with the tragedies that were acting in the western part of this continent, received their guests with that awful respect with which the Indian of those times viewed the European, the superiority of whose powers excited his surprize and admiration. Francisco Tarija, charmed by the mildness of the climate, by the fertility of the soil, and still more by the docility of the happy natives, came to a resolution not to proceed further. He settled among them, and laid the foundation of a small colony, agreeably to the plan of those which had been established in other parts of subjugated America.

As those who accompanied him were too few in number to afford him an effectual support, and as he could not expect any succour from the sea-coast, on account both of the distance and of the disturbances which prevailed there, he did not undertake any expedition worthy of being transmitted to posterity. Nothing more is, at least, known respecting him; and even this short sketch of his arrival in the valley, was deposited, in a loose way, in various papers belonging to the archives of the chapter of San Bernardo de Tarija. These documents were taken possession of by different notaries who filled that employment, and distributed throughout the kingdom. Several of them are now in the possession of a virtuoso belonging to the city of Piuro, who has had the goodness to transmit us a copy of them. It