Yet, concluding that his force was too small even for a raid, and thinking it wiser, anyway, after what had happened, to be invested with independent powers before making any attempt at a conquest, Pizarro made his way back to Spain and related his experiences to the King, who was so greatly impressed both with the story and the petitioner’s noble and commanding presence that he did more than merely commission him to undertake a new expedition: he legitimized him and created him marquis, appointed him _Adelantado_ (governor) of such countries as he might conquer, created Almagro marshal, and made the thirteen who had so gallantly stood by them gentlemen of coat armor. On Pizarro’s return to Panama, he brought with him a few kindred spirits selected from among the very flower of the fighting men of the Peninsula, including his brothers Hernando, Juan, and Gonzalo and his half-brother, Francisco Alcantara, his equals in valor if not in audacity and intellect. And then, as he believed from what he had seen of the fighting on the Isthmus, that a few scores of good men, mail-clad and well provided with artillery and horses—for these, unknown in the new world before the advent of the Spaniards, had never failed to strike terror to the natives—would be as effective as thousands in overcoming undisciplined masses of Indians, armed in their inferior fashion, instead of attempting to assemble an army he got together only a small company composed of men of whose courage and experience he was well assured. Having arranged with Almagro to follow with what reinforcements he could recruit from among the unemployed adventurers in Nicaragua, he set out once more. This time he happened to land first among the less civilized tribes in Ecuador, where he had the good fortune to find a rich store of emeralds and gold, which he sent back to Almagro to encourage him in his work. Then, marching down the coast to Guayaquil, he crossed to the island of Puna to await the reinforcements, conquered the fierce inhabitants of the place, and was afterward joined by a detachment sent out by his associate under the command of Hernando de Soto, an adventurer who had served with Cortés in Mexico and was later to attain still greater fame as the discoverer of the Mississippi. Even with those De Soto brought, the whole force numbered less than two hundred and fifty. Though they had not the faintest idea of it then, the empire they were destined to bring under the Spanish sway covered a territory along the plateaux and eastern and Pacific slopes of the Andes extending from Quito in Ecuador to the river Maule in Chile, a distance of nearly three thousand miles, inhabited by hardy and warlike races, that numbered, according to the estimate of the early historians, somewhere near twenty millions of people. VI