In 1511 Vasco Nunez da Balboa was told in Mexico of a fabulously rich land where "gold was as cheap as iron." Balboa in the search for it achieved the fine feat of crossing from Central America the mountain rampart of the isthmus. Reaching the Pacific, he rushed into its waters crying, "I claim this unknown sea with all it contains for the King of Castile, and I will make good this claim against all who dare to gainsay it." There Balboa got clearer news of Peru, and pushed on to within about twenty leagues of the Gulf of St Michael. But the achievement of Peru was reserved for another man. In 1524 Francisco Pizarro set out upon the conquest of Peru. Pizarro had all the motives for wild adventure. An illegitimate child--his father a colonel of infantry, his mother of humble condition,--he had reached middle age without winning a fortune, yet without abating his ambition. He was ready for any desperate enterprise. After two unsuccessful attempts to reach Peru, the Spanish freebooter finally succeeded, leading a tiny force across the Andes to Caxamalco, where he encountered the Inca, who received the strangers peaceably. But no kindness could stave off the lust for gold and slaughter of the Spaniards. Because the Inca refused at a moment's notice to accept the Christian God, as explained to him by a Spanish friar, a holy war was declared against the Peruvians. The wretched people understood as little the treachery and the resolute cruelty of the Spaniards as their gunpowder and their horses. Paralysed by their virtues, they fell easy victims, as sheep to wolves. A career of rapine and bloodshed led to the complete occupation of the country by the Spaniards, and the vassalage of the natives. Civil war amongst the conquerors, into which the natives were willy-nilly dragged, aggravated the horrors of this murder of a nation. The Spaniards looted and tortured the men, violated the women, and were so merciless as to carry on their war even against the natural resources of the country. They used to kill the llama or native sheep for the sake of its brains, which were considered a delicacy. Yet Pizarro, in his instructions from Spain, which secured to him the right of conquest and discovery in Peru, and various titles and privileges, was expressly enjoined "to observe all regulations for the good government and protection of the natives." The fact that the Spaniards condescended to racial mixture with the Indians did nothing to heal the scars of such suffering. The half-breeds grew up with a hatred of Spain, and they had borrowed from their fathers some of their savagery. The mild Peruvian would have bred victims for generation after generation. The Spanish-Peruvian cross bred avengers. Early in the nineteenth century Spain was driven out of South America and a series of Latin-American Republics instituted.