But some of the cavaliers are clad in mail from head to foot, saving only that they have permitted themselves the luxury of exchanging their plumed helmets, which hang at their saddle-bows, for wide-brimmed hats of plaited straw. To many men such a garb in such a place would be intolerable, for there is not a cloud in the sky, and the sun-rays beating down on the parched earth and heated rocks are cast up again as if from a reflector. There is no breath of wind coming in from the sea twenty leagues away, and in all the wide plain there is not a scrap of shadow save what is cast by the slowly-moving men and horses, and so every bit of steel and iron that the rays catch is hot, so hot that the bare hand can scarcely be laid upon it. But these men are iron all through, hammered into hardness on the anvil of a fate that none but the sternest and strongest could have endured and yet lived. And good need, too, have they to be stern and strong, for this little army is marching into the heart of an unknown land, fenced in by mighty mountain bulwarks such as no white man has ever crossed before, to confront the master of millions in one of his strong places surrounded by his victorious hosts, and to pluck him from his throne as though he had been but the chief of a petty tribe. Some of them you have seen before--down on their knees by the water’s edge on the beach at Gallo, grubbing for sea-worms and shellfish to stay the torments of their famine. That was five years ago, and many and great things have happened since then. Yonder cavalier riding alone a little ahead of the troop, armed from head to foot in plate and mounted on a strong black charger, is he who drew that line with his sword-point on the sand and made that famous speech which will be remembered to his honour as long as the history of brave deeds continues to be written. Then he was but a nameless, base-born adventurer, reckless even to madness in the pursuit of that phantom-land of El-Dorado, whose glittering shores ever receded as the barques of those who sought them struggled against wind and storm and current over the treacherous waters of the unknown sea. But now El-Dorado is a fact, for the treasures of the golden city of Tumbez have been laid at the foot of his Catholic Majesty’s throne, and Francisco Pizarro is a hidalgo of Spain, a military knight of the Empire who might hang from his shoulders the habit of Sant’ Iago, whose arms are quartered with those of the Crown of Castile, and whose titles are Governor and Captain-General of New Castile, as El-Dorado has been already named though yet unconquered, and Adelantado and Alguacil Mayor, or chief magistrate, of the new land which his sword is to win for his imperial master. Once more in the history of heroic things the dreamer has confounded the practical men of affairs who had derided and obstructed his schemes till the visions had become realities, and who were now hiding their envy under the mask of eager service.