immediately attacked the royalists, some of whom were asleep, while others were taking food.  Thus unexpectedly assailed, and believing that Carvajal was followed by his whole force, the royalists made a feeble resistance, and very soon took to flight, dispersing themselves in every direction.  Lope de Mendoza and Pedro de Heredia, with a good many others, were made prisoners and Carvajal immediately ordered these two chiefs, and six or seven other principal persons among the royalists to be beheaded.

On this occasion Carvajal recovered the whole of his own baggage, and got possession of all that had belonged to the enemy, with all of which and the prisoners he had made, he returned to Pocona, engaging to do no injury to those who had escaped from the soldiers in the late attack, and even restored their horses arms and baggage to his prisoners, most of whom he sent off to join Gonzalo Pizarro.  On leaving Pocona, he took Alfonso de Camargo and Luis Pardamo along with him, who had formerly fled along with Mendoza, and whose lives he now spared, as they gave him information respecting a considerable treasure which Centeno had concealed under ground near Paria, and where in fact he discovered above 50,000 crowns.  After this, he went with his troops to the city of La Plata, where he proposed to reside for some time.  At this place he appointed persons in whom he could confide to the offices of judges and magistrates, and dispatched intelligence of the success of his arms over the whole kingdom of Peru.  He remained for some time at La Plata, where he collected treasure from all the surrounding country, under pretence of supplying Gonzalo Pizarro, but in reality he retained much the larger share for himself.

Having thus succeeded, in all his enterprizes and established his authority in the south of Peru on such firm foundations that no opposition remained in the whole country, fortune seemed to determine to exalt him to the summit of his desires by the discovery of the richest mines which had ever been known.  Some Indians who belonged to Juan de Villareal, an inhabitant of La Plata, happening to pass over a very high isolated mountain in the middle of a plain, about eighteen leagues from that city, named Potosi, noticed by some indications that it contained mines of silver.  They accordingly took away some specimens of the ore for trial, from which they found that the mineral was exceedingly rich in pure silver; insomuch that the poorest of the ore produced eighty marks of pure silver from the quintal of native mineral[25], being a more abundant production than any that ever had been heard of before.  When this discovery became known in the city of La Plata, the magistrates went to the mountain of Potosi, which they divided among the inhabitants of their city, setting up boundary marks to distinguish the allotments or each person in those places which appeared eligible for workings.  So great was the resort to these new mines, that in a short time