With these practised warricns to guide him, the young moa^
tf ch put himself at the head of this martial array and directed
bis march toward the south. He had not advanced farther
thsm Ambato, about sixty miles distant from his capital, when
he fall in with a numerous host which had been sent against
him by his brother, under the command of a distinguished chiefs
tain, of the Inca family. A bloody battle followed, which
lasted the greater part of the day ; and the theatre of combat
was the skirts of the mighty Chimborazo.^

The battle ended fiavorably for Atahuallpa, and the Peru*
▼ians ware routed with great slaughter and the loss of their
commander. Hie prince of Quito availed himself of his ad-
vantage to push forward his march until he arrived before the
gates of Tumebamba, which city, as well as the whole district
oi Cafiaris, though an ancient dependency of Quito, had sided
with his rival in the contest. Entering the captive city like a
conqueror, he put the inhabitants to the sword, and razed it
with all its stately edifices, some of which had been reared by
his own father, to the ground. He carried on the same war
of extermination as he marched through the offending district
of Cafiaris. In some places, it is said, bands of children, as
wdl as of older persons, were sent out, in melancholy proces-
sion, with green branches in their hands, to deprecate his
wrath ; but the vindictive conqueror, deaf to their entreaties,

* GarcflasBo denies that anytking but inngmficant skinntdies took place before die <!••
cisive action fought on the plains of Cuzco. But Sarmiento, who gathered his accounts al
these events, as he tells us, from the actors in them, walked over the field of battle at Am-
bato, when the ground was still covered with the bones of the slain : *' Yo h^ pasado
pot este Pueblo y h^ visto el Lugar donde dicen que esta Batalla se di6, y cierto seguB
hay la osamenia deviezon aun de morir mas gente de la que cuentan.'*~Relacion, MS.,



«»»&] CONTEST Jmr TffB EMPIRE. %^^

Ud the ooQBtry waste with &« and swcndi s^^artng r^ man
capable of bearing anns who fell into his hands. 