was born in about 1476 in Trujillo, a small town near Caceres, Spain. The illegitimate son of a Spanish captain, he spent his childhood with his grandparents in one of Spain's poorest regions. He apparently never learned to read or write. The conquest of Peru by an obscure adventurer is one of the most dramatic episodes in the history of the New World. Until he was nearly 50 years old, , serving as a minor Spanish official on the Isthmus of Panama, had nothing to show for years of toil and peril but a small holding of land. Little more than ....