y Conq. Ms. - Conq. i Pob. del
Piru, Ms - Herrera, Hist. General, dec. 5 lib. 4, cap. 10. -
Relacion de Primer. Descub., Ms.]
That active cavalier set forward at once, but found considerable
impediments to his progress. The traces of an enemy became more
frequent as he advanced. The villages were burnt, the bridges
destroyed, and heavy rocks and trees strewed in the path to
impede the march of the cavalry. As he drew near to Bilcas, once
an important place, though now effaced from the map, he had a
sharp encounter with the natives, in a mountain defile, which
cost him the lives of two or three troopers. The loss was light;
but any loss was felt by the Spaniards, so little accustomed, as
they had been of late, to resistance.
Still pressing forward, the Spanish captain crossed the river
Abancay, and the broad waters of the Apurimac; and, as he drew
near the sierra of Vilcaconga, he learned that a considerable
body of Indians lay in wait for him in the dangerous passes of
the mountains. The sierra was several leagues from Cuzco; and
the cavalier, desirous to reach the further side of it before
nightfall, incautiously pushed on his wearied horses. When he
was fairly entangled in its rocky defiles, a multitude of armed
warriors, springing, as it seemed, from every cavern and thicket
of the sierra, filled the air with their war-cries, and rushed
down, like one of their own mountain torrents, on the invaders,
as they were painfully tolling up the steeps.
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