Some sickened and sank down by the
way, for there was none to help them. Intense misery had made
them selfish; and many a poor wretch was abandoned to his fate,
to die alone in the wilderness, or, more probably, to be
devoured, while living, by the wild animals which roamed over it.
At length, in June, 1542, after somewhat more than a year
consumed in their homeward march, the way-worn company came on
the elevated plains in the neighbourhood of Quito. But how
different their aspect from that which they had exhibited on
issuing from the gates of the same capital, two years and a half
before, with high romantic hope and in all the pride of military
array! Their horses gone, their arms broken and rusted, the
skins of wild animals instead of clothes hanging loosely about
their limbs, their long and matted locks streaming wildly down
their shoulders, their faces burned and blackened by the tropical
sun, their bodies wasted by famine and sorely disfigured by
scars, - it seemed as if the charnel-house had given up its dead,
as, with uncertain step, they glided slowly onwards like a troop
of dismal spectres! More than half of the four thousand Indians
who had accompanied the expedition had perished, and of the
Spaniards only eighty, and many of these irretrievably broken in
constitution, returned to Quito. *15
[Footnote 15: Pedro Pizarro, Descub. y Conq., Ms. - Zarate, Conq.
del Peru, lib. 4, cap. 5. - Gomara, Hist. de las Ind., cap. 143.
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