“No, I have no doubt they were quite satisfied with themselves, my dear, and not without reason, for they had taught themselves many useful things; but at last they found out that there were people in the world who were cleverer than they were as you shall hear.  There was a Spanish soldier, named Pizarro, who happened to hear that there was a great deal of gold and silver to be found in Peru; so he thought he would go there, and try if he could not make himself rich.  Pizarro was a fierce, cruel man, but he had been brought up in total ignorance; for his mother was a very poor woman, and could not afford to send him to school, therefore he had never learned to read or write.  However he could fight, and so he took a number of other soldiers with him, and went to Peru, where the people were so surprised at the sight of him and his men, who were not like any men they had seen before, that they were afraid; therefore the Spaniards very easily conquered them, and robbed them of their gold, and at last took the Inca prisoner, and kept him confined in a small room, where he would have been very unhappy; but that he was very much amused, by observing how many things the Spaniards knew that he had never before heard of.

“He was astonished to see that they could tell the hour of the day by their watches, and thought the Europeans must be very wonderful people indeed, to make such clever things; but what pleased him more than all, was the art of writing.  He could not imagine how one person could know what another meant by looking at a few black marks, and he thought that men who could do this, must be far superior to the Peruvians, and therefore felt a respect even for the common soldiers who guarded him; for he saw that they had more knowledge than he had, although a king.

“Now Pizarro was the general of the soldiers, and of course the greatest man among them; and he had also become very rich by conquering the Peruvians, and plundering their towns, that is, taking away all the gold and silver he found:  and Atabalipa supposed that, as he was the chief of the Spaniards, he must be the cleverest of them too; but one day he happened to find out by accident, that Pizarro could neither read nor write, and this discovery made him think so meanly of his conqueror, that from that moment he treated him with great contempt, saying that Pizarro, though a general, could not be a person of any consequence in his own country; since his common soldiers were better taught than himself.”

“Thank you, papa,” said Charles, “that is just such a story as I like, and I see that it is of no use to be rich and great, if we are not wise also.”

[Illustration:  The African Torn from his home by white-man.]

CHAP.  II.

BLACK SLAVES.

Charles used to go every fine day after his lessons were finished, to play in the square gardens; and as all the other boys whose parents lived in the square went there too, he had several friends, and amongst them one a little older than himself, named Peter Ross, whom he liked better than any of the rest.