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It was in the Forbidden Country that William Paterson landed in 1698 with twelve hundred men, gentlemen of Scotland, clansmen, old soldiers, traders, and uncovered on Darien's shore the banner of St. Andrew blessed at Leith at parting. And they mounted fifty guns and called the fort New St. Andrew, and proceeded to organize a trade road through the jungle, a mere fifty miles to the other side, convinced that thereby the trade of the world would begin to pass through their hands.
The expedition failed disastrously. It seems the Scotsmen were greatly discouraged by King William the Third who loathed the Scots and ordered his Governors at Jamaica and elsewhere to refuse them supplies. They were strong enough to keep both Indians and Spanish off, but they lacked adequate food and were soon sorely stricken with fever. Their relief ship foundered off Cartagena. Paterson became temporarily deranged, for which in my opinion he was much to blame, having no right to go out of his mind whilst his responsibility was so great. Apathy (or was it despair?) seized the Scots, and without realizing a doit of their expectations they returned to Scotland. They had been eleven months on the Spanish Main—and some they left behind will lie there forever.
Though many died you will search in vain for Scottish graves. Only the imagination, going back once more, may yield a whisper of the pipes played on that desolate shore. They all sought gold; poet-discoverers, Conquistadores, heroic sailors, dastardly pirates, Scottish shareholders—El Dorado was their common goal. Even Balboa himself, raising human eyes on the Pacific, was accompanied by those who "look nowise but downward with a muck-rake in their hands."
Balboa had settled at Salvatierra in Haiti and sailed across to Santa Maria de la Antigua on a shore of the Gulf of Darien and was joined to a group of men whom he captained, making fantastic expeditions into the interior in quest of a massive gold idol—It, The Golden One, El Dorado—and they fought continuously the warlike Indian chiefs and their retainers, generally making the conquered their allies and seeking out another chief against whom the conquered Indians nursed some grievance.
The Indians wore ornaments of gold, as they still do to-day, but they placed no value on the metal itself until it had been fashioned to some end. But the jewelry of which the Spaniards ravaged the tribes led them to believe in some great source. Comagre gave Balboa four thousand ounces and told him that on the other side of the mountains was a great sea and cities and ships and wealth inexhaustible. And the explorer pondered the matter in his heart and he said, "God has revealed the secrets of this land to me only, and for this I shall never cease to thank Him." An astonishing idea, that God, the spiritual genius behind all creation, should be taking thought to reveal gold to thieves—and yet it was sincerely held.
It was not exactly humor that the Spaniards lacked. When the first jackass made his first hee-haw on American soil, appalling the Indians, who appealed to know what this strange animal was wanting—a Spaniard replied, "He is saying that we need more gold, still more gold; do you understand?"
Material desire and the fever of exploration drove Balboa on, and with a hundred and ninety followers in chain-mail he sailed from Antigua to the lands of the subject chief Careta, whose daughter he espoused. This was at the beginning of September, 1513. He traveled two days along the shore to the domains of Ponca and then after a fortnight they started inward to the heart of the jungle, cutting their way with their swords, sweating under their armor, and in four days of unbelievable difficulties they came to the foot of high, tree-clad slopes. There they encountered Porque and the Indians of Quarequa. Porque they slew; the Indians they dispersed; the gold they took. That was on the 24th September, and on the next morning early, Balboa set off to climb the mountain of the world, with his Spaniards behind him and Indian guides ahead. There was with him also a priest and a lawyer and a dog. The priest was for God, the lawyer for the King of Spain, and the dog for himself. Little Lion, the bloodhound, held military rank and drew rations, it is said. He was alleged to be worth any three men.
Where is Quarequa? No one knows. Perhaps it is even an invented name, and the fight put in by the narrators to give feature to the story. How many hours Balboa's party struggled from the Indian village to the top of the Sierra has not been calculated. Did Balboa look upon the Pacific at noon—or was it in the glamour of a later light. Possibly with his Indians to lead him it was still morning. And it was still morning in the soul—the morning of new life and light, the morning of discovery.
Balboa halted his party and then advanced alone and saw the sea.