Panama, past and present/Chapter 3
CHAPTER III
HOW THE SPANIARDS SETTLED IN DARIEN
COLUMBUS having reported that there was gold in Veragna, the King of Spain decided to found a colony there, and another beyond the Gulf of Uraba, where Bastidas had found pearls and gold. Into this gulf flowed a river so great that it filled the bay with fresh water at low tide. This river, which is now called the Atrato, was then called the Darien, and it has given that name to all the South American end of the Isthmus.
Christopher Columbus died, a broken-hearted old man, in 1506, but his brother Bartholomew, the Adelantado, was alive and anxious to colonize the "Dukedom" of Veragua. But Queen Isabella, their patron, was also dead, and the greedy King Ferdinand was jealous of their family, and wanted these new gold-fields for the crown. So he appointed a court favorite, Diego de Nicuesa, to be governor of all the land between Cape Gracias à Dios, and the Gulf of Uraba. This was made the province of Castilla del Oro, or Golden Castille.
The poorer land east and south of the gulf was called Nueva Andalucia (New Andalusia) and given to Alonso de Ojeda, a bold explorer, the first to have followed Columbus to the New World. On that voyage, in 1499, Ojeda had had with him the Florentine merchant's clerk, Americus Vespucius, who has given his name to the whole New World.
Both the new governors were small men, well built and in the prime of life. Ojeda was a famous athlete, who had once, by way of showing his prowess before the Queen, gone out on a narrow piece of timber that projected twenty feet from the
Born at Florence, Italy, in 1452; entered commercial service in Spain; accompanied four expeditions to the New World, on the first of which, in 1497, he claimed to have reached the continent of America before the Cabots and Columbus; died at Seville in 1512.
top of the Giralda tower at Seville, "walked along it as fast as if it had been a brick floor, and at the end of the plank lifted one foot in the air, turned, and walked back as quickly. Then he went to the bottom of the tower, placed one foot against the wall, and threw an orange to the top, a height of two hundred and fifty feet."[1] He was a rough, reckless, bull-headed fighter. Nicuesa, on the contrary, was of noble descent and polished manners, a skilled musician and orator, and a great favorite at court. Both alike were lacking in the thing most essential in a leader, the power of managing men.
Both expeditions sailed from Santo Domingo. Ojeda got away first, on the tenth of November, 1509, with two ships, two brigantines, three hundred men and twelve mares. Nicuesa, the wealthier of the two, had spent all his money and more in equipping a larger fleet, and just as he was getting into his boat, he was arrested for debt. After ten days' delay a friend advanced the money, and Nicuesa set sail with two large ships, a caravel, and two brigantines, carrying a force of six hundred and fifty men.
Ojeda, in the meanwhile, had reached the harbor where the present city of Cartagena was founded in 1531. In spite of the warning of his second in command, old Juan de la Cosa, that the Indians hereabouts were hard fighters and used poisoned arrows, Ojeda landed with seventy men, and attacked one of their towns. The Indians fled, Ojeda allowed his men to scatter in pursuit, and the Indians, suddenly rallying, killed with their darts and poisoned arrows, every Spaniard of the party but Ojeda and one follower. Ojeda's great strength enabled him to break through, and his small size made it possible for him to hide well behind his shield. Indeed, when his other men found him, half dead with exhaustion but unwounded, there were the marks of three hundred arrows on it.
Nicuesa's fleet came sailing by, and he gladly lent his aid, particularly to avenge the death of Juan de la Cosa, who was one of the ambushed party and had been an old and beloved pilot of Columbus. The two governors fell on the Indians at night with four hundred men, and slaughtered a great number. Then Nicuesa sailed away to Veragua, and Ojeda entered the Gulf of Uraba and founded a town on his side of it, calling it San Sebastian.
But here there were only more poisoned arrows, and neither gold nor provisions. A ship load of food bought from a gang of pirates who had stolen it, kept the colony alive for a while. When this was gone, Ojeda sailed on the pirate craft to bring help from Santo Domingo. He left San Sebastian in charge of his lieutenant, Francisco Pizarro, of whom history had a great deal more to say. If Ojeda did not return at the end of fifty days, they were to take the two brigantines and go where they pleased.
When the fifty days were up, Ojeda and such of the pirates as were yet alive were struggling along, up to their armpits in mud, through mangrove swamps on the coast of Cuba, where they had been shipwrecked. When at last they were rescued by the Governor of Jamaica and brought to Santo Domingo (where the pirates were all hanged), Ojeda was a ruined and worn-out man. Like many another fighter of that brave, cruel age, he became a monk shortly before his death, "making," in the words of the historian Oviedo, "a more praiseworthy end than other captains in these parts have done."
Pizarro and his men waited the fifty days and a little longer, for the two brigantines would not hold them all. After enough had died of starvation and arrow-poison to make room for the rest, they sailed to Carthagena, losing one brigantine by the way. In the harbor they found reinforcements from Santo Domingo, commanded by a lawyer named Enciso, who held office under Governor Ojeda. He had with him one hundred and fifty men, with horses, arms, powder and provisions. But the most important part of his cargo was a barrel with a man in it.
This man was Vasco Nuñez de Balboa, who had made a failure of farming on Santo Domingo, and since debtors were not allowed to leave the island, had had a friend smuggle him aboard in this fashion.[2] When the cask had been opened, early in the voyage, the indignant Enciso was for setting him ashore on a desert island, but was persuaded not to do so. Now the pedantic lawyer turned on Pizarro's starving wretches, accused them of desertion, and insisted on their going back with him to San Sebastian. On the way, they were all shipwrecked again, and when they arrived at their destination they found the fort and settlement utterly destroyed, the Indians fiercer than ever, and no food. What was to be done?
Balboa showed the way. He had sailed this way before, with Bastidas, and across the gulf they had found both food and gold, on the shores of the river Darien. Most important of all, the Indians there used no poisoned arrows.
At once Enciso and Balboa, with a hundred men-at-arms, crossed to the western shore, where five hundred warriors were drawn up to meet them. Kneeling devoutly on the beach, the Spaniards vowed that if victorious they would dedicate both the spoils and their first settlement to the shrine, much reverenced in Seville, of Santa Maria de la Antigua. Then, rising, they rushed like starving wolves on the Indians. There was no poison in their arrows, and those that were not cut down in the first charge fled at once.
Provisions and gold were found in the Indian town, San Sebastian was abandoned, and Enciso founded the 
OLD SPANISH PORT AT PORTO BELLO
town of Santa Maria de la Antigua de Darien. But it was another thing to rule the rough men that lived there. They had had enough of Enciso's ways, which were better suited for a law court than a frontier, and Balboa
"NOMBRE DE DIOS"—STREET SCENE.
showed them how to get rid of him. They were now on the western side of the gulf, in Nicuesa's territory, and no one claiming authority under Ojeda had any power there. Balboa was a real leader of men, Enciso was not. The lawyer was deposed and Nicuesa invited to come and rule them.
But what had become of Nicuesa? His fleet had been wrecked on the shore of Veragua, and he and the other survivors had struggled down the coast, sometimes afloat, sometimes wading through the swamps, always suffering incredible hardships. At last they came to Porto Bello, where one who had sailed with the "old admiral," as the Spaniards of that time called Columbus, recognized the anchor of the Biscaina. But the Indians killed twenty of them, and the rest fled to another port further east. "In God's name" (or, in Spanish, en nombre de Dios), cried the first man who stepped ashore, "let us stay here." And for that reason "Nombre de Dios" has been the name of that port ever since.
Of the six hundred and fifty men who had left Santo Domingo with Nicuesa, only a hundred reached Nombre de Dios, thirty of these soon died, the rest were so weak with hunger they could scarcely lift their weapons, and there was not one left strong enough to act as sentinel. Imagine their joy when a caravel came from the east, bringing Nicuesa's lieutenant, Colmenares, with supplies. He found the once handsome and elegant Nicuesa "of all living men the most unfortunate, in a manner dried up with extreme hunger, filthy and horrible to behold"; informed him of the new settlement at Antigua, and that he had been elected its governor.
This sudden change of fortune was too much for the poor little courtier. Instead of showing any gratitude, he declared that these men of Ojeda's had no right to settle in his country and that he would take away all the gold they had collected there. This news got to Antigua before him, and he was met at the beach by an armed mob. Balboa tried his best to save him, but in vain. They thrust the unfortunate Nicuesa and the seventeen men still faithful to him into a wretched, leaky brigantine, and turned him adrift to perish. And perish he did, though whether by land or sea no man can say.
So both the royal governors were gone, and Balboa the stowaway ruled in Darien.