of Plato is conclusive that the New World which has been discovered in our time, is the same Continent or Firm Land mentioned by that philosopher; and his True Sea must be that which we name the South Sea, or Pacific Ocean; for the whole Mediterranean, and all that was before known of the Ocean, which we call the North Sea, can only be considered as rivers or lakes in comparison with the vast extent of that other sea.  After these explanations, it is not difficult to conceive how mankind in ancient times may have passed from the great island of Atlantis and the other neighbouring isles, to what we now call the Tierra Firma, or Firm Land, and thence by land, or by the South Sea, into Peru:  As we must believe that the inhabitants of these islands practised navigation, which they must have learned by intercourse with the great island, in which Plato expressly says there were many ships, and carefully constructed harbours.  These, in my opinion, are the most probable conjectures which can be formed on this obscure subject of antiquity; more especially as we can derive no lights from the Peruvians, who have no writing by which to preserve the memory of ancient times.  In New Spain, indeed, they had certain pictures, which answered in some measure instead of books and writings; but in Peru, they only used certain strings of different colours with several knots, by means of which and the distances between them, they were able to express some things in a very confused and uncertain manner, as shall be explained in the course of this history.

So much of the following history as relates to the discovery of the country, has been derived from the information of Rodrigo Lozan, an inhabitant of Truxillo in Peru, and from others who were witnesses of and actors in the transactions which I have detailed.

[1] Even the orthography of the name of Pizarro is handed down to us with
    some variety.  In the work of Garcilasso de la Vega it is always spelt
    Picarro:  Besides which, the Inca Garcilasso, in his almost perpetual
    quotations of our author Zarate, always gives the name Carate; the c,
    or cerilla c, being equivalent in Spanish to the z in the other
    languages of Europe.—­E.

SECTION I.

Of the discovery of Peru, with some account of the country and its inhabitants.

The city of Panama is a port on the South Sea, in that province of the continent of America which is called Golden Castille.  In the year 1524, three inhabitants of that city entered into an association for the purpose of discovering the western coast of the continent by the South Sea, in that direction which has been since named Peru.  These were Don Francisco Pizarro of Truxillo, Don Diego de Almagro of Malagon, and Hernando de Luque, an ecclesiastic.  No one knew the family or origin of Almagro, though