"Almagro found the sturdy, skin-clad tribesmen of the mountain slopes and elevated plains far different foemen from the soft, mild slaves of the Incas in the tropical north. Their very name of Chile came from the word meaning cold; and their temperate climate had hardened them and made them robust. Gold and silver, it is true, they had in plenty, and held them in no very high esteem, but they fought with a fierceness of which the Spaniards had had no experience in America in defence of their liberty and right to live. This, it was clear, was to be no easy conquest, and Almagro, learning that the Peruvians of the north had risen in a mass against the Spanish oppression, abandoned Chile, and marched back to Peru to fish in troubled waters, and in due time to meet a felon's death at the hands of vengeful Pizarro. "But the tales of the rich and fertile land of the south had whetted the greed of the victor, and when old Almagro was finally disposed of, Pizarro set about adding Chile to his own vast domain, held for Charles the Emperor and King of Spain, with the sanction of Holy Mother Church. The news of Almagro's formal annexation of Chile to the Spanish Crown, as usual in such cases, set the hungry courtiers of Madrid clamouring for a share of the spoil and glory, and an incompetent nonentity called Pedro Sanchez de la Hoz was sent out from Spain to complete the conquest of the new domain in the name of the Emperor. Pizarro knew well how to deal with such folk, and whilst appearing to respect the imperial orders, really stultified them. What he needed to do his work were iron soldiers, dour Estremenians, like himself; who knew neither ruth nor fear, and one he found after his own heart in Pedro de Valdivia, who in the five years since he had joined the chief in Peru, had proved that he possessed all the qualities for repeating in Chile the success of Pizarro in the empire of the Incas. Sanchez de la Hoz, nominally the leader, promptly became the cipher that nature had intended him to be, and Valdivia took the lead.