South American Fights and Fighters And Other Tales of Adventure   By: Cyrus Townsend Brady (1861-1920)

SOUTH AMERICAN FIGHTS AND FIGHTERS

And Other Tales of Adventure

by

CYRUS TOWNSEND BRADY, LL. D.

Illustrations by Seymour M. Stone, George Gibbs, W. J. Aylward and J. N. Marchand

Together with Reproductions from Old Prints and Portraits

[Frontispiece: "The Poor Little Governor . . . Distanced His Fierce Pursuers at Last"]

Garden City New York Doubleday, Page & Company MCMXIII All Rights Reserved, Including That of Translation into Foreign Languages, Including the Scandinavian

Copyright, 1910, by Doubleday, Page & Company Published, April, 1910

To

George William Beatty

Good Fellow, Good Citizen

Good Friend

PREFACE

The first part of this new volume of the American Fights and Fighters Series needs no special introduction. Partly to make this the same size as the other books, but more particularly because I especially desired to give a permanent place to some of the most dramatic and interesting episodes in our history especially as most of them related to the Pacific and the Far West the series of papers in part second was included.

"The Yarn of the Essex , Whaler" is abridged from a quaint account written by the Mate and published in an old volume which is long since out of print and very scarce. The papers on the Tonquin , John Paul Jones, and "The Great American Duellists" speak for themselves. The account of the battle of the Pitt River has never been published in book form heretofore. The last paper "On Being a Boy Out West" I inserted because I enjoy it myself, and because I have found that others young and old who have read it generally like it also.

Thanks are due and are hereby extended to the following magazines for permission to republish various articles which originally appeared in their pages: Harper's , Munseys , The Cosmopolitan , Sunset and The New Era .

I project another volume of the Series supplementing the two Indian volumes immediately preceding this one, but the information is hard to get, and the work amid many other demands upon my time, proceeds slowly.

CYRUS TOWNSEND BRADY.

ST. GEORGE'S RECTORY,

Kansas City, Mo., February, 1910.

CONTENTS

PART I

SOUTH AMERICAN FIGHTS AND FIGHTERS

PAGE

PANAMA AND THE KNIGHTS ERRANT OF COLONIZATION

I. THE SPANISH MAIN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 II. THE DON QUIXOTE OF DISCOVERERS AND HIS RIVAL . . . . 5 III. THE ADVENTURES OF OJEDA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 IV. ENTER ONE VASCO NUÑEZ DE BALBOA . . . . . . . . . . . 17 V. THE DESPERATE STRAITS OF NICUESA . . . . . . . . . . 20

PANAMA, BALBOA AND A FORGOTTEN ROMANCE

I. THE COMING OF THE DEVASTATOR . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 II. THE GREATEST EXPLOIT SINCE COLUMBUS'S VOYAGE . . . . 34 III. "FUROR DOMINI" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 IV. THE END OF BALBOA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44

PERU AND THE PIZARROS

I. THE CHIEF SCION OF A FAMOUS FAMILY . . . . . . . . . 53 II. THE TERRIBLE PERSISTENCE OF PIZARRO . . . . . . . . . 57 III. "A COMMUNISTIC DESPOTISM" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 IV. THE TREACHEROUS AND BLOODY MASSACRE OF CAXAMARCA . . 73 V. THE RANSOM AND MURDER OF THE INCA . . . . . . . . . . 85 VI. THE INCA AND THE PERUVIANS STRIKE VAINLY FOR FREEDOM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 VII. "THE MEN OF CHILI" AND THE CIVIL WARS . . . . . . . 102 VIII. THE MEAN END OF THE GREAT CONQUISTADOR . . . . . . 105 IX. THE LAST OF THE BRETHREN . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108

THE GREATEST ADVENTURE IN HISTORY