THE AUDIENCIA OF PANAMÁ.
In 1533[II‑15] the audiencia real y chancillería of the city of Panamá was established, the personnel of which included a president, four oidores, a fiscal, a relator, two secretaries, and for local government two alcaldes and three ministers of justice. The territory under the jurisdiction of the audiencia originally included Peru with the exception of the port of Buenaventura, but was afterward bounded by Costa Rica, Cartagena, and the two oceans, and was divided into the three provinces of Castilla del Oro, Darien, and Veragua, all of which were included under the one name of Tierra Firme. During the administration of Pedrarias, as we have seen, an interdict was passed forbidding lawyers and magistrates to reside in Castilla del Oro, and the minions of the governor decided civil cases always in favor of the party who paid the heaviest bribe. There was no appeal but to the governor himself except in cases where the amount exceeded five hundred pesos. A transcript of proceedings might in such cases be sent to the audiencia of Española, which at that time held jurisdiction over the inferior courts of Castilla del Oro. Some few years after the demise of Pedrarias the prohibition was removed, when there fell upon the fated land an avalanche of lawyers. "A magistrate," writes Oviedo to the emperor, "is worse than a pestilence, for if the latter took your life it at least left your estate intact." After the establishment of the audiencia of Panamá certain changes were made, but they were of little benefit to the community, for in 1537 we find the alcalde mayor holding the threefold office of presiding judge and attorney both for plaintiff and defendant, "passing sentence," as Oviedo says, "on him whom he least favored."[II‑16] The government of the three provinces was in fact little else than a legalized despotism. Complaint was sometimes made to the emperor, but the colonists soon found that the complainant was only made to suffer the more for his presumption. "Only that an ocean lay between Charles and his downtrodden subjects," exclaims Vazquez, "nineteen out of twenty would have thrown themselves at his feet to pray for justice."
The corruption extended to the municipal officers, and the provinces became rapidly impoverished. To make matters worse, multitudes of vagrants, the scum of the Spanish population, had for years been swarming into the New World settlements. At one time the hospitals and churches of Panamá were insufficient to shelter the hordes of poverty-stricken and houseless vagabonds that crowded the city. As they would not work, many were near starving.
Charles knew little of all this, if indeed he cared. As an instance of his ignorance as to the true condition of affairs in Tierra Firme, it may be mentioned that on the appointment of Fray Vicente de Peraza as the second bishop of Castilla del Oro, he was enjoined by the monarch to render aid to the faithful Pedrarias Dávila in securing the conversion and proper treatment of the natives. It is probable that the good bishop worked a little too conscientiously in the cause of the savage to suit the taste of Pedrarias, for as it has already been stated, he died of poison supposed to have been administered by that worthy ruler.
BISHOP BERLANGA'S BOX.
Of Fray Tomás de Berlanga, who filled the episcopal chair a few years after Peraza's decease,[II‑17] it is stated that during his return voyage to Spain, in 1537, being overtaken by a heavy storm, he arrayed himself in his pontifical robes, and kneeling with the rest of the company chanted a litany to the virgin. In response there appeared on the waves what seemed at first a small boat, but proved to be a box containing, as was supposed, merchandise. The gale moderated and the captain readily assented to the bishop's proposition that if the box contained a saint's image or other sacred thing, it should become the property of the prelate, but if it held anything of monetary value it should be claimed by the former. Soon the sea was calm; the box was opened, and there, sure enough, was the image of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception. On his arrival in Spain Berlanga placed the image in the convent of Medina de Rioseco, where he afterward founded a similar institution, chanting his first mass there on the 19th of January 1543.[II‑18]
CASTELLANOS, SIMON, PIEDRAHITA.
With the trio of travellers and observers, Benzoni, Acosta, and Thevet, may be classed Juan de Castellanos, whose Elegías de Varones Ilustres de Indias recount not only the glories of the military, ecclesiastic, and civil conquerors who figured in the early annals of the region extending over the Antilles, the Isthmus, and the northern part of South America, but give special histories of the New Granada provinces. Himself one of the horde which came over from Spain for glory and plunder, he had as cavalry soldier taken active part in a number of the expeditions so graphically described. With the acquisition of a fortune came a sense of the injustice exercised in its accumulation, and remorse perhaps for ill-treatment of the Indians, mingled largely with discontent at the poor recognition of his services, caused him to join the church. He received the appointment of canónigo tesorero at Cartagena, but resigned it after a brief tenure for the curacy of Tunja, erroneously assumed by some writers to be his birthplace. Here he found ample time to seek solace by unlocking the gates of a natural eloquence, and letting forth the remembrances of glorious deeds and events. The gown is forgotten, and the old soldier dons again in fancy the rusty armor, though he modestly, too modestly, refrains from intruding himself. It is in prose that he first relates his story, but finding this too quiet for his theme of heroes and battles, he transposes the whole into verse, a work of ten years.
His is not the artificial refinement of the epic writer, whose form he follows from a love of rhythm, but merely versified narrative, with a generally honest adherence to fact, though form and metre suffer:
Iré con pasos algo presurosos,