The capture of the Inca, although so important and beneficial in its results, occasioned Pizarro some embarrassment. He was anxious to march upon the capital, but feared to risk himself on the roads and mountains with the Inca in his keeping; and as he could not spare a sufficient guard to leave behind with him, he was compelled to wait patiently for reinforcements. Atahuallpa, who did not want for penetration, but in the words of an old manuscript, “was very wise and discreet, a friend of knowledge, and subtle of understanding,” soon found out that the Spaniards were at least as eager to accumulate gold as to disseminate their religion. He offered to buy his liberty, and a room full of gold was the prodigious ransom he proposed. The length of the apartment he engaged to fill is variously stated. The most moderate account makes it twenty-two feet. Hernando Pizarro says it was thirty-five. The width was seventeen feet, and the gold was to be piled up as high as the Inca could reach, which was about nine feet from the ground. A smaller room was to be filled twice with silver. Pizarro having accepted, or allowed his prisoner to infer that he accepted, this very handsome price for his liberty, the captive sovereign took measures to collect the stipulated treasure. Palaces and temples were stripped of their ornaments, and from distant parts of Peru gold was sent to complete the Inca’s ransom. The agreement was that it should not be melted, but piled up in the room in whatever form it arrived, which gave Atahuallpa some advantage. Goblets, salvers, vases, and curious imitations of plants and animals, were amongst the heterogeneous contributions that soon began to rise high upon the floor of the Inca’s prison. “Among the plants, the most beautiful was the Indian corn, in which the golden ear was sheathed in its broad leaves of silver, from which hung a rich tassel of threads of the same precious metal. A fountain was also much admired, which sent up a sparkling jet of gold, while birds and animals of the same metal played in the waters at the base.” But the greedy conquerors grew impatient, and thought the gold came too slowly, although on some days a value of fifty or sixty thousand _castellanos_ was added to the store. Rumours of a rising of the Peruvians were spread abroad, and Atahuallpa was accused of conspiring against the Spaniards. These, and especially a strong reinforcement that had arrived under Almagro’s orders, became clamorous for the Inca’s death. They had already divided all that had arrived of his ransom, equivalent to the enormous sum of three millions and a half sterling, besides fifty thousand marks of silver. At last the Inca was brought to trial on the most absurd charges, “having reference to national usages, or to his personal relations, over which the Spanish conquerors had no jurisdiction.” Thus, he was accused of idolatry and adultery, and of _squandering the public revenues, since the conquest of