bathed itself in the bosoms of the rightful possessors of the soil, and where he founded an empire cemented in blood, perpetuated by superstition and arms; while his spirit swelled. with an unchristian thirst for the white and yellow ore, aggrandizement, and power.

The valley of the Rimac having been decided upon as the place where the capital of the new empire should be located, after several other spots had been successively designated, tried and abandoned as inconvenient and unsuitable, Pizarro here traced out the position for the palace and the cathedral; the palace to be located on the north, and the cathedral on the east side of the Plaza. Men can see but a short way into their destiny of earth. And it is hardly probable that Pizarro then dreamed, as he fixed the spot of these two buildings, and was carrying on his thoughts to the probable glory of "The City of Kings," (as the proud title which he gave to the newly located capital signifies,) that the one building should be the scene of his assassination, the other his mausoleum. Yet so the one was, so the other is. And his violent death has a better moral in it than many tragedies give us.

The palace occupies nearly a whole square. It has within its outer walls several courts, and a garden with corridors ranging around the different courts and garden. The building is low, and its spaciousness, if any thing about it can do so, constitutes its claim to distinction as a once viceregal, and now presidential residence. There are many other piles of buildings, however, in Lima, that have a better claim to magnificence than the palace of Pizarro. But here the conqueror of Peru was himself conquered; and the murderer of the rightful inheritor of the domain was himself murdered.

In the civil dissensions between Pizarro and one of his generals and co-adventurer, the two parties, adhering each

to its own leader, met at the south of Lima. The fortunes of Pizarro triumphed. Almagro was taken prisoner in Cuzco; and though petitioning for his life, on the plea that he had never sacrificed any of the friends of Pizarro, he yet was hung and beheaded, under the direction of the brother of the conqueror, and by the secret instructions of Pizarro. Almagro left a son by the name of Don Diego, whose mother was an Indian woman. He, with his adherents at Lima, plotted the death of Pizarro; and with Juan de Rada at their head, they entered the palace on Sunday, the 26th of June, 1541, at mid day, crying as they passed through the plaza, "Viva el rey—mueran tiranos;" Long live the king-perish tyrants! Pizarro was surrounded by a number of his friends at the time, who were aroused by the entrance of a servant, crying "Al arma, al arma, que todos los de Chile vienen á matar al Marqués mi Señor."-To arms, to arms, for all of those of Chile are coming to kill my lord the Marquis. The party with the Marquis hastened below, from the hall in which they were sitting, to the foot of the stairs, which commanded a view of the two front courts, which the assassins had already gained. Pizarro and his friends immediately retreated to the hall again. While he was arming himself in the inner room, several of his party escaped through the windows to his garden, leaving but a few faithful adherents to the Marquis. The hall door was carried by the insurgents, and the head of Francisco de Chaves, who was ordered to hold the door, was severed by the conspirators, as his body rolled down the steps. Pizarro and his maternal brother, Martinez de Alcantara, with two pages, defended themselves in an interior room, Pizarro wounding several of the conspirators; but at length receiving a thrust through the throat, he fell, calling upon the name of Jesus Christ, and signing with his fingers a cross upon the floor, he kissed it and expired.

It was with these associations I visited the palace; passed through the two courts, and ascended to the hall by the flight of steps, down which rolled the bloody body of de Chaves. A small passage leads from the sala to the inner rooms, where ended the ambitious breathings of the adventurous, and, if history be true, the vindictive and the cruel Pizarro!

THE CATHEDRAL AT LIMA-VAULT AND BONES OF PIZARRO.

I had several times passed through the cathedral. This morning, previous to my visit to the palace, I had been approached by a young padre, who politely offered to guide me through the edifice. Excusing myself from inspecting the altars at the moment, I expressed a desire to enter the vault said to contain the remains of Pizarro. He specified an hour when he would accompany me, after he should have obtained the keys of the vault. I had already exceeded the hour in my rambles through the palace, and on my reaching the cathedral at a later moment than I had intended, I found its doors closed. But a person soon met me, who had been directed by the young priest, in case I should present myself, to accompany me to the vault. For a moment we stood within the sombre shades and solitude and silence of the immense building, when the heavy door of the cathedral had closed on its brazen hinges. More than twenty altars lined the two sides of the building, which slept now in their own still deeper shades, thrown by the heavy bars that enclosed these altars in by themselves, at the side, from the aisles, presenting, as it were, so many separate and exclusive chapels, all within the main building, the extent of which is three hundred and twenty feet deep, by one hundred and eighty-six feet "in width. And in these shaded recesses, each containing its high altar, there stood in their sacred niches, one thousand im

ages, perhaps more; saints of every age, the Apostles, cherubs, angels, the Saviour, the holy family, and canonized santas; some arrayed in gaudy tinsel, some exhibiting the Saviour crowned with thorns and pierced with spear; but here they were, at this moment, in all their silence, and shade, and solemnity. The lightest step upon the tiled. pavement of the building, could be heard throughout the massive pile; and a single whisper echoed distinctly its low murmur, from the farthest corner of the walls and the highest curve of the ceiling.

We walked from the great altar down the central nave of the building. This central area is inwalled by the heavy balustrade, on either side of an elevated platform, at the head of which stands the main altar; at the foot, the spacious and cumbrous orchestra. Descending the steps from this platform to one of the side aisles, and turning to a door that opened beneath this terrace, on which high mass is celebrated, the guide placed his heavy key to the lock, and the vault door grated on its iron and rusty hinges, as it opened inward to the chamber which leads to the recess containing the relics of Pizarro. The rays of a lighted taper, which the guide bore in his hand, struggled to overcome the thick darkness, that seemed here so long to have reigned that the shades had condensed to a materiality of blackness, which could be felt as we entered among them. Slowly, we descended several steps, which brought us to the ground floor of a room, on one side of which there seemed to be closed vaults of comparatively modern construction, whose entrances were sealed with brick and mortar, evenly with the wall. From the opposite side of this dark room—which was filled with the rubbish of ages past, such as pieces of old columns, capitals, olden altars and their various ornaments and useless lumber-leads a low passage which ends in a yet inner room, lined on three sides with two tiers of

boxes, three high. The outer edges of some of these boxes had fallen in, discovering enclosed skeletons, crumbling slowly but to final decay. Having examined several of these on the right, the guide directed me to pass to the opposite side, pointing out several loose boards in the centre of the floor, which he cautioned me to avoid. I did not inquire the secret of the deep and dark well these loose boards covered, as I well knew that it was the charnel house for the bones of hundreds, for whose souls the masses-how many masses?—have been offered up from the altars which were above us, that their spirits might ascend from purgatory to a happier region. The guide now followed me, and holding low down his taper to a crumbling box, occupying the farther side of the wall, "Esto, Señor," he said, “esto es el cuerpo de Pizarro "-This, sir, is the body of Pizarro. The edges of the box were broken, the top gone, and within, were exposed the dusky and crumbling skeleton, said to be the remaining bones of the conqueror of Peru. The flesh had wasted quite, the skull was naked, and showing that it had once been inhabited by a spirit of some years' tarry upon earth, as only a few teeth remained in the jaw, while the alveola process, save in two or three spots, was absorbed. His skeleton hands lay crossed upon his breast, exhibiting the bones of a small hand; his feet corresponding in size. Quicklime covered parts of the body. It had hardened into white lumps and was dry. Such is the arid property of the atmosphere here, that all fluids are soon evaporated, and no moisture remains in the deepest cells. To this circumstance is to be attributed the long preservation of the relics of the departed. Now, it is three hundred years and a few over, since Pizarro fell. Part of a dingy linen shroud still wrapped portions of the relics, and a knotted button clasped a worked wristband with lace around the ulna bone of the skeleton. It was a dark place—that depository of the olden