Rivers of Gold by Hugh Thomas

Author:Hugh Thomas [Thomas, Hugh]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-8041-5214-3
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2013-10-29T16:00:00+00:00

Book Five

BALBOA AND PEDRARIAS

How the Germans saw the New World. Woodcut, 1505.

(Illustration credit 5.1)

24

“They took possession of all that sea”

And in the presence of the natives they took possession of all that sea and the countries bordering on it in the names of Fernando and Juana.

Peter Martyr on Balboa’s vision of the Pacific, 1513

Vasco Núñez de Balboa was the acting governor in the first permanent mainland colony, of Darien. He unwisely sent home a report about his discoveries. It took the form of a most enthusiastic letter to the King, talking of rivers of gold three days’ march away in which there were also large pearls.1 At the same time, he sent Juan de Quevedo and Rodrigo de Colmenares as representatives to La Española to beg for reinforcements and also for a judge. Martyr says that these two procuradores were elected, but it is more likely that Balboa chose them himself.2 (He would apparently have liked to go, but his followers refused him their votes—perhaps because they thought he might not come back, perhaps because they needed his leadership.) Their journey was difficult, for they were wrecked off Cuba and there encountered the remains of Valdivia’s expedition. On January 20, 1513, Balboa wrote again to the King. It was a letter that would lead to his ruin. It owed a lot to his imagination, for he said:

In this province of Darien we have discovered many and very rich mines. There is gold in great quantity. We have discovered twenty rivers, and there are altogether thirty which have gold that stream out of a sierra two leagues from this villa.… There are in these sierras certain chiefs who have … gold that grows like maize in their huts, and they have it in baskets. They say that all the rivers in these sierras have gold and there are big nuggets on a large scale.3

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