The Indians came out on their _balsas_ (rafts) to look at these marvellous strangers, and being treated with the utmost kindness and consideration, soon lost their fears. The Spaniards were given presents of chickens, swine, and trinkets, and had brought to them bananas, corn, sweet potatoes, pineapples, cocoanuts, game, and fish. You may be sure these dainties were more than welcome to the gaunt explorers after so many starving months. The Indians also brought aboard several llamas,--the characteristic and most valuable quadruped of South America. The fascinating but misled historian who has done more than any other one man in the United States to spread an interesting but absolutely false idea of Peru, calls the llama the Peruvian sheep; but it is no more a sheep than a giraffe is. The llama is the South American camel (a true camel, though a small one), the beast of burden whose slow, sure feet and patient back have made it possible for man to subdue a country so mountainous in parts as to make horses useless. Besides being a carrier it is a producer of clothing; it supplies the camel's hair which is woven into the woollen garments of the people. There were three other kinds of camel,--the vicuna, the guanaco, and the alpaca,--all small, and all variously prized for their hair, which still surpasses the wool of the best sheep for making fine fabrics. The Peruvians domesticated the llama in large flocks, and it was their most important helper. They were the only aborigines in the two Americas who had a beast of burden before the Europeans came, except the Apaches of the Plains and the Eskimos, both of whom had the dog and the sledge. At Tumbez, Alonso de Molina was sent ashore to look at the town. He came back with such gorgeous reports of gilded temples and great forts that Pizarro distrusted him, and sent Pedro de Candia. This Greek, a native of the Isle of Candia, was a man of importance in the little Spanish force. The Greeks everywhere were then regarded as a people adept in the still mysterious weapons; and all Europe had a respect for those who had invented that wonderful agent "Greek fire," which would burn under water, and which no man now-a-days knows how to make. The Greeks were generally known as "fire-workers," and were in great demand as masters of artillery. [Illustration: Autograph of Pedro de Candia.]