Author Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1895. Excerpt:... He engaged in no aggressive movements whatever. The barbarism of the Spaniards even did not provoke him to retaliation. Although the Spaniards so mercilessly put to the sword or sold into slavery the wives of the natives, Uracca, when at one time a Spanish lady fell into his hands as prisoner, treated her with as much delicacy and tenderness as he would have shown his own daughter, and took her back, at the very first opportunity, to the Spanish camp. DE SOTO JOINS PIZARRO. Don Pedro's hatred of De Soto had in all this time been increasing. There is nothing so exasperates a bad man as the presence of a good man. De Soto had been of the greatest value in the war with Uracca, had been always brave, daring, and willing to put himself in the thickest of the fight. The soldiers loved and respected him, knowing how true and brave he was, and how much they owed him. Don Pedro, however, would gladly have put De Soto to death had he dared; often he planned his death but as often in one way or another De Soto escaped. Thus five years passed on--weary years they were to De Soto whose nature found no enjoyment in this cruel plundering; this slaughtering of the natives; this trampling down of villages, firing of houses, and massacring of women and little children. Don Pedro grew every day more clearly an enemy to be watched and dreaded. No word in all these years had come from the beautiful Isabella, no gold had been found, no fame acquired, and on the whole De Soto felt that such a life in such a place and among such people was hardly worth the living. When, therefore, Pizarro, who had meantime gone to Peru, and was now in starvation, sickness and danger miserably reaping the just harvest of his cruel treat ment of the natives there, sent to Don Pedro for aid, Dc Sot...