In a society like that of Panamá, where politics were so unjust and morality so diabolical, we could expect nothing else than that the worst men should prove the most successful. Among those who came early to Darien, and whom we have frequently encountered in the wars upon the natives, was one who now enters the arena as the conqueror of Peru. His origin was of the lowest. Born in bastardy, he was laid by his mother on the church steps, whence he was taken by a swine-herd to be suckled by a sow. Escaping this master he fled to Seville and lived no one knows how, until he took ship to Santo Domingo, no one knows when. Thenceforward to the day of his assassination, his merciless courage found congenial occupation; neither his ignorance nor his beastly instincts nor his infamous cruelty and treachery standing in the way of fame and fortune. He was now not far from fifty-three, having been born at Trujillo, in Estremadura, about 1471. After both had become famous a distant kinship was traced between Pizarro and Hernan Cortés. The development had been, in every respect, in keeping with the origin and environment. Except Pedrarias there was not a man in all the Indies more detestable. Innately he was the coarsest of all the conquerors. I have not seen of his a single noble sentiment expressed or a single noble action recorded. The Christianity which as a Spaniard he was obliged to wear had in it not the slightest tincture of piety or pity, and the civilization under which his genius grew developed in him only the savage cunning which he afterward displayed when in pursuit of human prey. Under this same influence Cortés and other captains of a generous, lordly nature might wade through horrors to a determined goal, while appalling tragedies and blood-reeking treacheries were not what their souls delighted in. But incarnate vulgarity was Francisco Pizarro, and a devouring sea of iniquity, beside whom beasts were heavenly beings; for when man sinks to his lowest, we must enter the domain of hideous fancy to find his prototype.