For reasons best known to himself Atahuallpa, from whom Pizarro, with true state-craft, had carefully kept his own knowledge of Huascar’s death, not only consented to the dispatch of the embassy, but sent one of his own secretaries with it with authority to procure for it the same conduct over the royal roads and the same entertainment at the resting-places on the way as he would himself have exacted. It may be that he saw in this a means of hastening the collection of his own ransom, or it may have been that he had deeper designs, but the truth is that, like many other incomprehensible things that he did, he here again played completely into the hands of his enemies. So it came about that, some ten days after Hernando Pizarro had started to Pachacamac by way of the northern coast-road, de Soto and his three comrades departed with their retinue southward through the central valleys between the two great ranges of the Andes on their way to the City of the Sun. They had been told that a great part of the way was almost impossible for horses, and further that the bridges over the many rivers they would have to cross were made only for foot-passengers, and would break down under the weight of such heavy beasts. More than this, the journey with horses would be very long and tedious, as well as not a little dangerous, so after due deliberation it was decided that they should leave their chargers behind them and make use of the litters and relays of bearers which the Inca had provided for them; and on the morning of the thirteenth day after the death of Mama-Zula--whose body had been burnt the next morning in the plaza to satisfy the scruples of the Fray Valverde--they took their places in their strange vehicles and started for the South. For twelve leagues they were conveyed down the valley with what was to them incredible ease and swiftness. At every three leagues there was a rest-house, where the relays of bearers were changed. They did not know then that they were being borne by the same bearers who carried the royal litter, men who had been trained from generation to generation to the same work, and who knew that the penalty of even a stumble was death, and so they marvelled as much at the ease of their progress as they did at the splendour of their entertainment, the richness of the country, and the absolute order which everywhere prevailed. Of this last they had an example as they crossed the pass leading over a transverse range of mountains out of the valley of Cajamarca. At the narrowest and steepest part, where the hills rose up like walls on either side, and where ten resolute men might have held the road against a thousand, they found themselves suddenly surrounded, front and rear and all along the rocks on both sides, by a multitude of men armed with bows and arrows, slings and lances and swords and axes of polished, tempered copper.