What was to be done? Undoubtedly Quesada had the right to possession by virtue of his prior discovery and conquest, but the other two made claim on plausible grounds, and he had not been commissioned by the King. With his depleted force he could not hope to defeat their forces combined. Besides, as all realized, if they should fight, there would probably not be enough of the men left to hold the country against the natives, who would only be emboldened by such a dissension. So when it was found that Quesada had already gathered in all the spoils in sight—which consisted of several thousand emeralds and gold vases and ornaments that made a pile so high that a man on horseback could be concealed behind it—Benalcázar and Federmann allowed themselves to be persuaded to accept shares in the loot and submit to the King’s arbitration their respective claims to the country. Soon afterward the three captains set out for Spain in the same ship, leaving Quesada’s brother in command. None of them ever returned. Federmann and Benalcázar were censured for exceeding the authority given them by their superiors and undertaking conquests on their own account, and, instead of appointing Quesada Adelantado, the King sent over another governor with considerable reinforcements, after which the process of assimilation and settlement went on about as it was going on in Peru. X Very different was the experience of Pedro de Valdivia in Chile. Unlike these other adventurers, when he set out it was not in the expectation of finding any great store of gold, since Almagro had reported that the inhabitants were poor, but with the intention of conquering the country and converting it into a province of Peru. In accomplishing only a part of this purpose, he was to have a far more difficult task, had he but known it, and many more Spanish lives were to be sacrificed, than in all the other conquests put together. It had already been discovered by Almagro, however, that as far south as he had gone, the natives were subjects of the Inca and that their civilization and system of irrigation and agriculture had been brought to almost as high a standard. He had advanced down the great central valley as far as the river Maule, finding everywhere a population as dense, probably, as that which exists to-day, and had met with little resistance, probably because of the presence in his party of the brother of the Inca, until he reached the boundary of the empire and encountered the independent tribes beyond, and there met his reverse.