[X-26] Peter Martyr speaks of four attempts to gain the golden temple. The first attained a distance up the river of forty leagues, the second of fifty leagues, and the third of eighty leagues. Again they crossed the river and proceeded by land, 'but oh! wonderful mischance, the unarmed and naked people always overcame the armed and armored.' Jacobo Álvarez Osorio, a friar of the priory of Darien, spent many years in search of the province of Dabaiba.
[X-27] Balboa says eighty. Carta, in Pacheco and Cárdenas, Col. Doc., ii. 530.
[X-28] Gomara, Hist. Ind., 84, gives the island or the chieftain yet another name, 'y diose buena maña en la ysla de Terarequi a rescatar perlas.' Oviedo, iii. 16, calls the island Toe.
[X-29] Writing the king, Vasco Nuñez tells the tale somewhat differently. 'No sooner had they arrived at Isla Rica,' he says, 'than entering a village they captured all the Indians they could. The cacique prepared for war, but retired for several days, during which time the Christians burned half the houses with all the provisions. Afterward the cacique peaceably returned with fifteen or sixteen marks of pearls and four thousand pesos in gold. Then he took the Spaniards to the place where they obtained the pearls, and made his people gather them, and remain at peace. Notwithstanding all this the captain without conscience gave away as slaves all the men and all the women whom he brought away from the Rich Island.' The statement may be taken with allowance as from a man smarting under wrong; and it is not a little amusing to see how suddenly tender becomes the conscience of the ingenuous Vasco, who never stole anything from the natives, or burned their houses, or made them slaves!
[X-30] Erroneously supposed by some to be the origin of the word Peru.
[X-31] Some of the pearls were of extraordinary size and beauty. One, in particular, attained no small celebrity. It was pear-shaped, one inch in length, and nine lines in its largest diameter. Vasco Nuñez describes it as weighing 'ten tomines'—a tomin is about one third of a drachm—'very perfect, without a scratch or stain and of a very pretty color and lustre and make; which, in truth,' artlessly intimating what would be his course under the circumstances, 'is a jewel well worthy of presentation to your Majesty, more particularly as coming from these parts. It was put up at auction and sold for 1,200 pesos de oro to a merchant, and finally fell into the hands of the governor.' Oviedo, iii. 49, says it weighed 31 carats. Subsequently it was presented through Doña Isabel to the queen, and was valued in Spain at 4,000 ducats. Pedrarias is further charged with divers misdemeanors. Carta del Adelantado Vasco Nuñez de Balboa, October 16, 1515, in Pacheco and Cárdenas, Col. Doc., ii. 526, and Navarrete, Col. de Viages, iii. 375; Ovalle, Hist. Rel. Chile, in Pinkerton's Voy., xiv. 146-7.
[XI-1] Peter Martyr, dec. iii. cap. x., says he set out in May with 80 men, and was afterward joined by Mercado with 50 men.
[XI-2] On Mercator's atlas there is a town and river south-west from Panamá named Nata. Hondius, Dampier, Jefferys, and De Laet give Nata; West-Indische Spieghel, Nato; Kiepert, Nata de los Caballeros, and thence eastward, R. Aguablanca, and opposite this river, I Chiru.
[XI-3] Nearly all the gold found here was wrought into plates and various kinds of utensils.
[XI-4] It is groundless speculation on the part of Herrera to find in this word, as many do in others, the origin of the term Peru. 'Y prosiguiendo su descubrimiento hàzia el Ocidente, llegaron a la tierra del Cazique dicho Birùquete, de quien se dize que ha deriuado el nombre de Piru.' Hist. Ind., ii. i. xiv.