They reached it and passed through it into a broad, paved street, but here there were no welcoming throngs to greet them as at Caxas and Huamacucho. As they rode through the town, and street after street opened up, they looked in vain for some sign of life. In all the city there seemed neither man, woman, nor child left. Not a sound answered the blare of their trumpets, the jingling of their accoutrements, or the clang of the iron hoofs on the stones of the silent streets. Cajamarca was, for the time being, a city of the dead, and if any of them had possessed the gift of prophecy he might well have looked upon it as an emblem of the desolation which they were bringing into the land of the Children of the Sun. CHAPTER VI. IN THE CITY OF THE INCA No reception could well have been more different from the anticipations of the adventurers than that which awaited them in the first of the cities of the Incas that they had so far seen, for the towns that they had passed through on their road up the western slopes of the mountains they had looked upon only as the outposts of an entrenched camp, a camp which to them was El-Dorado, and whose trenches and circumvallations were the gorges and heights of the mighty Andes themselves. As has just been said, they entered the city in utter silence save for the blare of their own trumpets and the jingling of their own arms and accoutrements. They had already learnt from their guides that Cajamarca was the third city in importance in the whole Inca empire, standing as it did between Quito and Cuzco, and commanding the high-road running from north to south through the domains of Huayna-Capac. It was in vain that they asked the Curaca or his subordinates for some explanation of their strange reception. There was not even an animal or a fowl left in the city. Only the wild birds flying to and fro amongst the trees which lined the squares of the city gave evidence of life within its borders. Not a house was tenanted, and every street and square was deserted, and yet this but a few hours before had been the home of many thousands of human beings. What had become of them? To all inquiries the Curaca and his officers answered in the same words-- “It is the will of our Lord, and in this land there is no other will but his. That which the Son of the Sun says is already done. The city is the home of his guests. It is ours to do our Lord’s will; it is his only to know the reason. He is the brain; we are the hands.” And so, amidst an utter silence that at length even swallowed up the voices of their own trumpets, Pizarro and his men entered Cajamarca and took possession of the spacious quarters allotted to them by this mysterious master of men whose officers obeyed him with the unquestioning servility of dogs.