THE
COMPANIONS OF COLUMBUS.
123
very uncomfortable spectacle of a row of grisly heads impaled in the neighborhood. Nothing daunted either by the reply or the illustration, the Bachelor menaced them with war and slavery as the consequences of their refusal to believe and submit.
They replied by threat
ening to put his head upon a pole as a representative of his sov ereign.
The Bachelor, having furnished them with the law, now
proceeded to the commentary.
He attacked the Indians, routed
them, and took one of the caciques prisoner, but in the skirmish two of his men were slightly wounded with poisoned arrows, and died raving with torment.* It does not appear, however, that his crusade against the sepul chres was attended with any lucrative advantage.
Perhaps the
experience he had received of the hostility of the natives, and of the fatal effects of their poisoned arrows, prevented his pene trating into the land, with his scanty force.
Certain it is, the
reputed wealth of Zenu, and the tale of its fishery for gold with nets, remained unascertained and uncontradicted, and were the cause of subsequent and disastrous enterprises.
The Bachelor
* The above anecdote is related by the Bachelor Enciso himself, in a Geo graphical Work entitled Suma de Geographic/, in 1519.
which he published in Seville,
A s the reply of the poor savages contains something of natural
logic, we give a part of it as reported by the Bachelor.
" Respondieron me :
que en lo que dezia que no avia sino un dios, y que este governaba el cielo y la tierra, y que era senor de todo, que les parecia y que asi debia ser : pero que en lo que dezia que el papa era senor de todo el universo en lugar de dios, y que el avia fecho merced de aquella tierra al rey de Castilla ; dixeron que el papa debiera estarboracho quando lo hizo, pues daba lo que no era suyo, y que el rey que pedia y tomava tal merced debia ser algun loco pues pedia lo que era de otros, &c.