Page:The gilded man (El Dorado) and other pictures of the Spanish occupancy of America.djvu/99

Rh. Oviedo had already placed it there at the time of the death of Philip von Hutten. Von Hutten's unhappy fa-te, the complete extinction of the settlement at Coro, the threatened depopulation of the Venezuelan peninsula, precluded any further thought of an expedition into the interior southward. The Brazilian coast, hardly touched at a few points by the Portuguese, was too far from the unknown interior, which was concealed in immense forests. The western coasts, particularly those of New Granada and of Peru, where the Amazon begins its course, not only lay geographically nearest to the region in question, but were also the seat of the strongest and richest settlements of the Spaniards in South America, the only ones from which any campaigns could now be undertaken.

But although the population had rapidly increased under the stimulus of the rich metallic; treasures found in the country, events occurred, especially in Peru, which made further expeditions impossible for many years. The civil disturbances in Peru provoked in the extreme south by the conflict between Pizarro and Almagro concerning the limits of their respective jurisdictions culminated in bloodshed at Las Salinas near Cuzco, on the 26th of April, 1538. Hardly three months afterward, Almagro was strangled by Pizarro's command. An unbroken succession of betrayals and crimes, to which nearly all the conquistadors of importance fell victims (thereby expiating their own offences), marked the progress of the insurrection, till it reached such a height as to overshadow the whole west coast, like a dark cloud, from Chili to Popayan. And when, in