It is not definitely known whether Pedro de Alvarado, one of the bravest and most gallant lieutenants of Cortes, carried Negroes with him into Guatemala in 1523, but it is certain that eleven years later, when his ambition and love of gain led him to fit out that ill-fated expedition to Quito, he saw fit to include in the company two hundred black slaves, most of whom perished while making their way through the blinding snows of the Andes.[4] It is certain, moreover, that several Negroes were along with the _Conquistadores_ of Peru and Chile. The contract of Francisco Pizarro permitted him to introduce fifty Negroes into Peru free of duty; and even before this, Negroes had accompanied those who had spied out the land. In 1525, when Diego de Almagro effected a landing near the port of Quemado, on the west coast of South America, and attempted to penetrate the adjacent country, he encountered rather severe opposition from the Indians of the section. During the resulting skirmish one of his eyes was crushed by a dart and he was saved from captivity and death only by the valiant succor of his Negro slave. A year later, the debarkation of a Spaniard and his slave at Tumbez resulted in an amusing occurrence which once more gave the Negro a few brief sentences in the _Decades_. Astonished at the color of his face, the natives of the region had him wash time after time in order to see if the black would disappear; and the Negro, true to his good nature and love of a joke, complied willingly while he grinned so as to display his pearly white teeth.[5] Several Negroes assisted the Yanaconas Indians in carrying the baggage of Diego de Almagro and Rodrigo Orgonez during their perilous journey along the frozen Andes from Cuzco to Chile; and many of them perished on the way.[6] Moreover, upon at least one occasion the forces of the great conqueror of Chile, Pedro Valdivia himself, would probably have been destroyed, had it not been for the cool-headed alertness of Captain Gonzalo de los Rios and a Negro who managed to procure the saddle-horses of the Spaniards as soon as they saw a band of Indians dart from their hiding places.[7] Numerous African slaves were along with the Spanish pioneers in Venezuela. Ortal, Sedeno, and Heredia each had permission to introduce one hundred Negroes to build fortresses and search for mines; and in 1537, when the licentiate Vadillo came to Cartagena to hold the residencia of Heredia, he brought down a large number who later accompanied him on the luckless excursions which he undertook apparently in the hope of finding the mines of Peru.[8]