Many of the troopers were frozen
stiff in their saddles. The Indians, still more sensible to the
cold, perished by hundreds. As the Spaniards huddled round their
wretched bivouacs, with such scanty fuel as they could glean, and
almost without food, they waited in gloomy silence the approach
of morning. Yet the morning light, which gleamed coldly on the
cheerless waste, brought no joy to them. It only revealed more
clearly the extent of their wretchedness. Still struggling on
through the winding Puertos Nevados, or Snowy Passes, their track
was dismally marked by fragments of dress, broken harness, golden
ornaments, and other valuables plundered on their march, - by the
dead bodies of men, or by those less fortunate, who were left to
die alone in the wilderness. As for the horses, their carcasses
were not suffered long to cumber the ground, as they were quickly
seized and devoured half raw by the starving soldiers, who, like
the famished condors, now hovering in troops above their heads,
greedily banqueted on the most offensive offal to satisfy the
gnawings of hunger.
Alvarado, anxious to secure the booty which had fallen into his
hands at an earlier part of his march, encouraged every man to
take what gold he wanted from the common heap, reserving only the
royal fifth. But they only answered, with a ghastly smile of
derision, "that food was the only gold for them." Yet in this
extremity, which might seem to have dissolved the very ties of
nature, there are some affecting instances recorded of
self-devotion; of comrades who lost their lives in assisting
others, and of parents and husbands (for some of the cavaliers
were accompanied by their wives) who, instead of seeking their
own safety, chose to remain and perish in the snows with the
objects of their love.
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