Needless to say, he employed the
opportunity to obtain the royal sanction to advance still further his
official position--somewhat at the expense of Almagro, of course. Almost
directly after his return he founded the city of Lima, intending this to
supersede Cuzco as the future capital of the country.
All this while the breach between Pizarro and Almagro had widened. In
1535 the latter, realizing that even the Empire of the Incas was not
sufficiently large to hold the pair of Spanish leaders, determined to
make for the South. The expedition was a tragic one. Almagro, though his
spirit was undaunted, was now aged in years, and the barren country of
the Atacama Desert and the attacks of the hostile Indians rendered the
enterprise a failure from a monetary point of view. Almagro had invested
all his fortune in this, and his affairs now became desperate.
[Illustration: PIZARRO AND ATAHUALPA.
_From a seventeenth-century engraving._]
In the meantime the crafty Pizarro had been permitted to enjoy very
little peace and tranquillity in Peru. Manco Capac had bided his time,
and his Indian subjects, fervently loyal to the sacred dynasty, had
crowded about him in their thousands. The Peruvians now assumed the
aggressive.
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