Spanish and Portuguese South America During the Colonial Period

by Robert Grant Watson

Overview

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free.
This is an OCR edition with typos.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781023294409
Publisher:	Anson Street Press
Publication date:	03/28/2025
Pages:	234
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.56(d)

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER III. THE COLONY OF DARIEN; FATE OF VASCO NUfiEZ. 1514-1517. Btii-v. Once more at Darien, Vasco Nunez lost no time in drawing up for the king a report of his expedition across the mountains to the Southern Sea, in which report he states that during the expedition he had nob- lost a single man in battle. But, by a singular mischance, the vessel which bore his friend and messenger, Arbolanche, who had himself taken part in the toils and dangers which he was to describe, did not sail from Darien until the beginning of March. This delay ruined the rising fortunes of Vasco Nunez. The Bachelor Enciso, as has been already said, had carried his complaints against Nunez to the foot of the throne; and when, in May 1513, he was followed by Cayzedo and Colmenares with their glowing account of the province of Zenu, with its mountain streams that flowed over golden sands, their news served but to hasten the appointment of a governor over this favoured region. The royal choice fell, on the recommendation of Fonseca the Bishop of Burgos, upon Don Pedro Arias Davila, commonly called Pedrarias, who, on July 27th of the same year, was appointed ruler over Darien. The new governor was an elderly gentleman of rank, who had been brought up in the royal household and had afterwards distinguished himself as a soldier; but he has been well called, as his subsequent actions proved him to be, "a suspicious, fiery, arbitrary old man." Helps. The envoys of Nunez had asked King Ferdinand for a thousand men, wherewith to enable their master to make the discovery of the Southern Sea. Ferdinand fully appreciated the importance of the enterprise; and, although he did not intend it for Nunez, he assignedtwelve hundred men to Pedrarias for its accomplishment. It so happened that at this time ...