Descub.
Ms. - Herrera, Hist. General, dec. 5, lib. 3, cap. 1.]
Almagro reached Caxamalca about the middle of February, 1533.
The soldiers of Pizarro came out to welcome their countrymen, and
the two captains embraced each other with every mark of cordial
satisfaction. All past differences were buried in oblivion, and
they seemed only prepared to aid one another in following up the
brilliant career now opened to them in the conquest of an empire.
There was one person in Caxamalca on whom this arrival of the
Spaniards produced a very different impression from that made on
their own countrymen. This was the Inca Atahuallpa. He saw in
the new-comers only a new swarm of locusts to devour his unhappy
country; and he felt, that, with his enemies thus multiplying
around him, the chances were diminished of recovering his
freedom, or of maintaining it, if recovered. A little
circumstance, insignificant in itself, but magnified by
superstition into something formidable, occurred at this time to
cast an additional gloom over his situation.
A remarkable appearance, somewhat of the nature of a meteor, or
it may have been a comet, was seen in the heavens by some
soldiers and pointed out to Atahuallpa. He gazed on it with
fixed attention for some minutes, and then exclaimed, with a
dejected air, that "a similar sign had been seen in the skies a
short time before the death of his father Huayna Capac." *23 From
this day a sadness seemed to take possession of him, as he looked
with doubt and undefined dread to the future.
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