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threw themselves on the earth panting with fatigue and abandoned to despair.
A savage wilderness, filled with still more savage
foes, was on one side, on the other the roaring sea.
How were
they to extricate themselves from these surrounding perils ? While reflecting on their desperate situation, they heard the voices of Indians.
On looking cautiously round, they beheld four
canoes entering a neighboring creek.
A party was immediately
dispatched who came upon the savages by surprise, drove them into the woods, and seized upon the canoes.
In these frail barks
the Spaniards escaped from their perilous neighborhood, and, traversing the Gulf of St. Michael, landed in a less hostile part, whence they set out a second time across the mountains. It is needless to recount the other hardships they endured, and their further conflicts with the Indians ; suffice it to say, after a series of almost incredible sufferings and disasters, they at length arrived in a battered and emaciated condition at Darien. Throughout all their toils and troubles, however, they had man足 aged to preserve a part of the treasure gained in the islands ; especially the pearls given them by the cacique of Isla Rica. These were objects of universal admiration.
One of them was
put up at auction, and bought by Pedrarias, and was afterwards presented by his wife Dona Isabella de Bobadilla to the empress, who, in return, gave her four thousand ducats.* Such was the cupidity of the colonists, that the sight of these pearls and the reputed wealth of the islands of the Southern Sea, and the kingdoms on its borders, made far greater impression on the public mind, than the tale told by the adventurers of the hor足 rors they had past ; and every one was eager to seek these wealthy regions beyond the mountains. * Herrera, Hist. Ind., decad. ii. lib. i. cap. 4.
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