Like Las Casas and San Martín, other persons questioned the pretended right of the Spaniards to rob and destroy the Inca kingdom, and when these views were expressed they naturally provoked a reply. Such a reply was undertaken by Benito Peñalosa Mondragón, a Benedictine monk, in a book entitled _Libro de las cinco excelencias del español_ (1629). One of his arguments consisted in showing that great riches were acquired by the Spaniards from the colonial possessions, from the mines of gold and silver and mercury, and from various other sources; but it is not conceived that men like Las Casas and San Martín would be greatly moved by Peñalosa’s views. IV [Sidenote: Pedro Pizarro’s book] Another account of the conquest of Peru is that by Pedro Pizarro, who went to America as a page to Francisco Pizarro in 1530, and remained with him until the governor’s assassination. He afterwards settled in Arequipa, and, in 1571, completed his _Relación del descubrimiento y conquista de los reinos del Perú_. This work has been characterized as “the narration of a rough half-educated soldier, and occupies much the same place in the history of the conquest of Peru as the work of Bernal Díaz does in that of Mexico.”[18] [Sidenote: Molina of Santiago] Cristóbal de Molina’s narrative of the conquest long remained in manuscript, and the writer was confounded with another author of the same name. They are now distinguished by calling this one Molina of Santiago and the other Molina of Cuzco. Molina of Santiago was born in Spain, travelled in that country, Italy, and Flanders, and went to America at the age of forty-one. The circumstances of his education and entry upon the religious life are unknown; but we are informed that he was in Santo Domingo in 1532 and at Panama in April of the following year. While at Panama he joined an expedition designed to take reinforcements to Pizarro, but by ill fortune the expedition was obliged to halt at the river San Juan, whence after a period of forty days the members returned to Panama. Molina went to Santo Domingo and later to Spain to carry news of Pizarro’s discoveries. He remained only a short time in the Peninsula, and in 1535 he was again in America, where, in July of that year, he joined Almagro at the battle of Salinas. Molina went from Cuzco to Lima, and from the latter city he wrote to the king, on the twelfth of June, 1539, setting forth the dangers he had encountered and the losses he had suffered in the royal service. Twelve years afterwards he took part in the Chilean campaigns of García Hurtado de Mendoza. Later he became attached to the cathedral at Charcas, lived in Lima, and finally returned to Chile, where he died as a priest in Santiago. [Sidenote: Molina’s _Conquista_]