THE
C O M P A N I O N S OF COLUMBUS.
brought as the first fruits of the discovery.
199
King Ferdinand
listened with charmed attention to this tale of unknown seas and wealthy realms added to his empire.
It filled, in fact, the imagi足
nations of the most sage and learned with golden dreams, and anticipations of unbounded riches.
Old Peter Martyr, who re足
ceived letters from his friends in Darien, and communicated by word of mouth with those who came from thence, writes to Leo the Tenth in exulting terms of this event.
" Spain," says he,
" will hereafter be able to satisfy with pearls the greedy appetite of such as in wanton pleasures are like unto Cleopatra and iEsopus ; so that henceforth we shall neither envy nor reverence the nice fruitfulness of Trapoban or the Red Sea.
The Spaniards
will not need hereafter to mine and dig far into the earth, nor to cut asunder mountains in quest of gold, but will find it plentifully, in a manner, on the upper crust of the earth, or in the sands of rivers dried up by the heats of summer.
Certainly the reverend
antiquity obtained not so great a benefit of nature, nor even aspired to the knowledge thereof, since never man before, from the known world, penetrated to these unknown regions."* The tidings of this discovery made all Spain resound with the praises of Vasco Nunez ; and, from being considered a lawless and desperate adventurer, he was lauded to the skies as a worthy successor to Columbus.
The king repented of the harshness of
his late measures towards him, and ordered the Bishop Fonseca to devise some mode of rewarding his transcendent services. * P. Martyr, decad. 3, chap. iii.
Lok'a translation.