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of great evil, and their intelligence the cause of great adventures.

It appears, moreover, that the young prince informed his attentive audience that a thousand men would be requisite for this undertaking; and that, when asked for the grounds of his information and for his advice, he made another speech, in which he told the Spaniards that his countrymen too had wars, and that he had learned these facts from one of his own men ("Behold him!" he exclaimed) who had been a captive in those countries he spoke of. He also offered to accompany the Spaniards; and he said that they might hang him on the next tree if his words should not prove true. The substance of his speeches, and, probably, some of the exact words, were conveyed to the Spanish court. This was the first notice of the Pacific, and also of Peru. It is likely that Pizarro was a by-stander. "Our captains," says PETER MARTYR, "marveling at the oration of the naked young `man, pondered in their minds and earnestly considered his sayings."

It seems that, for injuries done in former times to his nation, this youth wished to stir up the Spaniards against his neighbors, and that he suggested a joint invasion whenever the Christians should be re-enforced, offering to join them with his father's forces. "A prudent youth" this prince is called by both historians, PETER MARTYR and LAS CASAS; but it is not the description, I think, that would now be given of him; and one would say that it needed not the lights of history or the thoughtfulness of refined civilization to make all prudent people well aware of the latent danger of an over-powerful ally.

The Spaniards, having baptized Comogre and his

family, giving him the name of Don Carlos, took their leave and returned to Darien, joyful and thoughtful, in the feverish state of mind of persons seeing before them great enterprises for which they are not quite prepared. When they arrived, they found that Valdivia had come with a ship and some provisions, also with a gracious message from the authorities of Hispaniola; but, as LAS CASAS well says, "In the house of a gambler joy lasts but a short time."* Their provisions were consumed in a few days, and Famine, always dogging their steps, soon began to attack them again.

It was

not altogether their own fault on this occasion, for a great storm had destroyed what they had sown. They lived now, as some of the feudal barons in the Middle Ages, by predatory forays, robbing and devastating wherever they could.

It was about this time that Vasco Nuñez sent Valdivia to Hispaniola with the king's fifth of the gold. It amounted to fifteen thousand pesos; but neither he nor his gold ever reached their destination, for his vessel was wrecked in a perilous part of the sea near Jamaica, called the Vívoras, or Pedro Shoals, and he himself perished by the hands of the Indians.

Vasco Nuñez has been held to be a man who dealt very wisely, and, upon the whole, very mercifully with the Indians; but we are told that he was accustomed to put them to the torturet in order to make them discover those towns which had most gold and provisions, and then to attack these towns by night. He wrote to the admiral saying that he had hanged thirty ca* "En casa del tahur poco dura la alegría.”

+ This is confirmed incidentally by Vasco Nuñez himself, in his letter of the 20th of January, 1513: "Lo he sabido en muchas maneras y formas, dando á unos tormento y otros por amor y dando á otros

cosas de Castilla."-NAV., Col., tom. iii., p. 365.

ciques, and must hang as many as he should take, for the Spaniards, being few, had no other way until he should be supplied with more men.* He meant that terror was his only means of supplying the defect of force.

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Hearing of a temple full of gold in the country of a cacique called Dabaybe, toward the south of the Gulf

* "Escribió Vasco Nuñez al Almirante, que habia ahorcado treinta caciques, y habia de ahorcar cuantos prendiese, alegando que, porque eran pocos, no tenian otro remedio hasta que les enviase mucho socorro de gente."-LAS CASAS, Hist. de las Indias, MS., lib. iii., cap. 42.

of Urabá, the Spaniards made an incursion into his caciquedom, and, the Indians offering little or no resistance, Vasco Nuñez's men devastated the country. Meanwhile Colmenares had been sent to the east of the gulf, whither Vasco Nuñez, after his return from Dabaybe, went to join him, and, uniting their companies, they entered the territory of a cacique called Abenamache. This chief and his men made as stout a resistance as they could with their two-handed wooden swords, called macanas, rushing fiercely on the Spaniards, but to little purpose. After the battle, a common soldier, whom Abenamache had wounded, came up to him, and, with one blow of his sword, struck the cacique's arm off. From thence Vasco Nuñez, leaving Colmenares behind him, went up a river, and entered the territory of a cacique named Abibeyba, where the houses were in trees (as the ground was marshy) of such bigness that seven or eight men hand in hand were scarcely able to surround one of them; but these Indians, though living in this strange manner, do not seem to have been particularly barbarous or neglectful of the comforts of life, for it is mentioned that they had their cellars under ground for fear of the wine being spoiled by the motion of the trees when shaken by the wind. Abibeyba was summoned to descend from his tree fortress, and, when he refused, the Spaniards began to cut the tree, upon which he was obliged to come down.

They asked him for gold, in reply to which he said he had none of it himself, and did not care for it any more than for stones, but he promised to endeavor to get some, and was allowed to depart for that purpose. As he did not return, however, at the stated time, the Spaniards destroyed his settlement. This Abibeyba,

in his wanderings among the mountains, came upon Abenamache, the cacique who had lost his arm: bewailing their hard fate, they betook themselves to Abraibe, a neighboring chief, into whose country a foraging expedition, headed by a Spaniard named Raya, of the force left with Colmenares, had lately penetrated. The caciques compared their fears and their griefs.. "How long," they said, "shall we bear with the cruelty of these strangers; is it not better to die than to endure what they inflict upon us ?" Encouraging each other in this way, they resolved to make an attack with five or six hundred men upon the station of Colmenares; but, unfortunately, on the very evening preceding their attack, Colmenares had received a re-enforcement, and the Spaniards were able not only to repel their assailants, but to capture many of them. These were sent to Darien, to labor there.

Colmenares and Vasco Nuñez now returned to Darien, leaving in Abenamache's country a man named Hurtado in command of thirty Spaniards. These Spaniards making a foray and capturing some of the neighboring Indians, Hurtado sent a boat with the prisoners and with many of his men, who were ill, down the Rio Negro to Darien. On their way the boat was attacked by four large canoes, and all the Spaniards but two were drowned. These two, clinging to logs and concealing themselves in the bundles of drift-wood that were floating down the river, made their way to the shore, and thence back to Hurtado. He and the few who were with him, abandoning their post in terror, set out for Darien; and, being greatly alarmed by this attack on their boats, they made inquiry of their prisoners, and found that five caciques-Cemaco, the dispossessed of Darien, Abenamache, Abibeyba, Dabay be,

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