Pedrarias, glad of the opportunity of clearing from his path a man of whom he was inordinately jealous, would listen to no entreaties from the many advocates of the claims of the prisoner to consideration, and the day following the verdict Balboa, with three of his principal officers, preceded by the public crier, walked in chains to meet his fate at the block erected in the Public Square; and for days afterwards his gory head, stuck on the end of a pole, met the gaze of the sorrowing inhabitants of the town of Acla.
Pedrarias soon found out the futility of attempting to maintain a prosperous colony at Santa Maria, for the implacable hostility of the Indians and the depredations in his ranks by sickness, combined with the disappointment of his expectations of finding the treasure he sought, drove him to shift his headquarters to a more advantageous spot.
Having got rid of the Governor of Panama, in the person of Balboa, he proceeded to establish himself within that territory, and fixing a site upon the bay in which are situated the Pearl Islands, he there founded a city to which he gave the name of Panama, and thither he transferred the seat of government, so that it became the capital of Terra Firma.
CHAPTER III
The Buccaneers
THE short-sighted policy of the Spaniards in exterminating the natives of the countries which they conquered, necessitated the importation of the negro from Africa, and led to the development of a huge traffic in slaves, in which England, France, and Portugal played an important part.
The men engaged in this trade were naturally a ruffianly set who soon became familiar with the operations in the newly acquired Spanish territories, and were quick to take advantage of the knowledge which they thus acquired.
Lucrative as the slave trade undoubtedly was, those engaged in it could not but be tempted by the untold wealth which they saw in the countries they visited and which passed them in the galleons crossing the sea; and the growing jealousy on the part of the other European nations of the power and opulence of Spain encouraged the more lawless and daring to organise attacks upon the wealth and treasure in course of transit.
Many of these hardy ruffians, the off-scourings of their own countries, conceived the idea of acquiring territory in the West Indian Islands, and were encouraged by their respective Governments.