Montenegro accounted for his
delay by incessant head winds and bad weather; and he himself had
also a doleful tale to tell of the distress to which he and his
crew had been reduced by hunger, on their passage to the Isle of
Pearls. - It is minute incidents like these with which we have
been occupied, that enable one to comprehend the extremity of
suffering to which the Spanish adventurer was subjected in the
prosecution of his great work of discovery.
Revived by the substantial nourishment to which they had so long
been strangers, the Spanish cavaliers, with the buoyancy that
belongs to men of a hazardous and roving life, forgot their past
distresses in their eagerness to prosecute their enterprise.
Reembarking therefore on board his vessel, Pizarro bade adieu to
the scene of so much suffering, which he branded with the
appropriate name of Puerto de la Hambre, the Port of Famine, and
again opened his sails to a favorable breeze that bore him
onwards towards the south.
Had he struck boldly out into the deep, instead of hugging the
inhospitable shore, where he had hitherto found so little to
recompense him, he might have spared himself the repetition of
wearisome and unprofitable adventures, and reached by a shorter
route the point of his destination. But the Spanish mariner
groped his way along these unknown coasts, landing at every
convenient headland, as if fearful lest some fruitful region or
precious mine might be overlooked, should a single break occur in
the line of survey.
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