*25
[Footnote 25: Conq. i Pob. del Piru, Ms. - Montesinos, Annales,
Ms., ano 1528. - Naharro, Relacion Sumaria, Ms. - Pedro Pizarro,
Descub. y Conq., Ms. - Herrera, Hist. General, dec. 4, lib. 2,
cap. 6, 7. - Relacion del Primer. Descub. Ms.]
The sensation caused by their arrival was great, as might have
been expected. For there were few, even among the most sanguine
of their friends, who did not imagine that they had long since
paid for their temerity, and fallen victims to the climate or the
natives, or miserably perished in a watery grave. Their joy was
proportionably great, therefore, as they saw the wanderers now
returned, not only in health and safety, but with certain tidings
of the fair countries which had so long eluded their grasp. It
was a moment of proud satisfaction to the three associates, who,
in spite of obloquy, derision, and every impediment which the
distrust of friends or the coldness of government could throw in
their way, had persevered in their great enterprise until they
had established the truth of what had been so generally denounced
as a chimera. It is the misfortune of those daring spirits who
conceive an idea too vast for their own generation to comprehend,
or, at least, to attempt to carry out, that they pass for
visionary dreamers. Such had been the fate of Luque and his
associates. The existence of a rich Indian empire at the south,
which, in their minds, dwelling long on the same idea and alive
to all the arguments in its favor, had risen to the certainty of
conviction, had been derided by the rest of their countrymen as a
mere mirage of the fancy, which, on nearer approach, would melt
into air; while the projectors, who staked their fortunes on the
adventure, were denounced as madmen.
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