130
VOYAGES
A N D D I S C O V E R I E S OF
CHAPTER XII. COLMENARES GOES IN QUEST OP NICUESA.
R O D R I G O D E COLMENARES proceeded along the coast to the westward, looking into every bay and harbor, but for a long time without success.
At length one day he discovered a brigantine
at a small island in the sea.
It was part of the armament of
Nicuesa, and had been sent out by him to forage for provisions. By this vessel he was piloted to the port of Nombre de Dios, the nominal capital of the unfortunate governor, but which was so surrounded and overshadowed by forests, that he might have passed by without noticing it. The arrival of Colmenares was welcomed with transports and tears of joy.
It was scarcely possible for him to recognize the
once buoyant and brilliant Nicuesa in the squalid and dejected man before him.
He was living in the most abject misery.
Of
all his once gallant and powerful band of followers, but sixty men remained, and those so feeble, yellow, emaciated, and wobegone, that it was piteous to behold them.* * The harbor of Nombre de Dios continued for a long time to present traces of the sufferings of the Spaniards.
W e are told by Herrera, that several
years after the time here mentioned, a band of eighty Spanish soldiers, com足 manded by Gonzalo de Badajos, arrived in the harbor with an intention of pen足 etrating into the interior.
They found there the ruined fort of Nicuesa, to足
gether with skulls and bones, and crosses erected on heaps of stones, dismal mementos of his followers who had perished of hunger ; the sight of which struck such horror and dismay into the hearts of the soldiers that they would have abandoned their enterprise, had not their intrepid captain immediately sent away the ships, and thus deprived them of the means of retreating. rera, decad. xi. lib. i.
Her足