With his two sons and seven other braves he was taken to Fort Monroe and there imprisoned for a short time; but when the country was once more quieted, the Government appointed a fresh chief in his place and he was set at liberty. He died among his own people six years later. CHAPTER IX PERUVIAN INDIANS The history of South America teems with accounts of arduous marches made by European explorers through its forests or deserts, across its mountains or along the banks of its rivers. Some of these are more widely celebrated than others because the results were greater; but many minor expeditions--some unsuccessful, others serving no practical end--are as worthy of remembrance because those who undertook them went coolly, and with their eyes open, into all manner of privations or dangers, for the sole purpose of advancing their country's interests. Among such secondary enterprises is the journey made by Lieutenant Smyth and Midshipman Lowe from Callao to the Amazon, in 1834, an enterprise which recalls some of the splendidly reckless achievements of the Spaniards in the first half of the sixteenth century, or of our own even bolder adventurers in the second half. While Captain Fitzroy was still surveying the southerly parts of the American continent, H.M.S. _Samarang_, under Captain Paget, was making a similar though more rapid cruise right round the peninsula from La Guayra to the Bay of Panama. As the ship lay at anchor for observations off the Peruvian coast, the question was raised as to the possibility of the Amazon being converted into a water-way between the Atlantic and the Pacific; and Captain Paget, more in jest than seriously, asked who would volunteer to go ashore, cross the Andes, and find the nearest approach to the main stream of the river. To his amazement, John Smyth, a junior lieutenant, at once offered, and so earnestly did he beg to be allowed to go that the Captain was forced to give way at last. Young Smyth had a good knowledge of Spanish, and was known to be courageous and level-headed; but the difficulty was that not a boat's crew, not a single seaman, in fact, could be spared to accompany him; but Smyth insisted that he required no protection, and only asked leave to take, as companion, his young cousin, a midshipman named Lowe.