ABSTRACT

HAVING issued the despatches to the messengers who were to carry them, the Governor Vaca de Castro resorted to a precaution, by which he sought, privily and without the messengers who were engaged in the negociations knowing it, to send a spy. This spy was a certain Alonso García Camarilla, a great walker whom we mentioned in an earlier book, when he was sent by Hernando Pizarro, during the siege of Cuzco, to Yucay with Manco Inca. They then wanted to kill him, but he escaped from thence by his swiftness of foot, because his place of sepulture was destined to be at Vilcas. In all the land there was not a man ready and fitted to act the spy, unless it were this one, and Juan Diente who captured him, as we shall relate. Having removed his beard and casting off his Spanish clothes, he put on the garb of an Indian, rubbed his lips and back teeth with that precious herb which grows on the skirts of the Andes, and leaving the sword of which he was unworthy, he took a staff in his hand, and in a pouch or small wallet he put the letters which Vaca de Castro gave him for the camp of Don Diego. Having acquainted himself with the features of that camp and the method that was observed in it he was to return with all diligence and make his report. In such wise was Alonso García despatched, that anyone who saw him set forth from the camp would, of a certainty, have believed he was some Indian. Lope de Ididquez and the factor Mercado also took their leave of the Governor.