Shores of the Caribbean Sea.
Ojeda and Nicuessa.
Let us turn now to the southern shores of the Caribbean Sea. New efforts at colonizing here were undertaken in 1508-9. By this time the coast had been pretty carefully made out as far as Honduras, largely through the explorations of Ojeda and Juan de la Cosa. The scheme was a dual one, and introduces us to two new designations of the regions separated by that indentation of the coast known as the Gulf of Uraba. Here Ojeda and Nicuessa were sent to organize governments, and rule their respective provinces of Nueva Andalusia and Castilla del Oro for the period of four years. Mention has already been made of this in the preceding chapter. They delayed getting to their governments, quarreled for a while about their bounds on each other, fought the natives with desperation but not with much profit, lost La Cosa in one of the encounters, and were thwarted in their purpose of holding Jamaica as a granary and in getting settlers from Española by the alertness of Diego Colon, who preferred to be tributary to no one.
All this had driven Ojeda to great stress in the little colony of San Sebastian which he had founded. He attempted to return for aid to Española, and was wrecked on the voyage. This caused him to miss his lieutenant Enciso, who was on his way to him with recruits. So Ojeda passes out of history, except so far as he tells his story in the testimony he gave in the suit of the heirs of Columbus in 1513-15.
Pizarro.
New heroes were coming on. A certain Pizarro had been left in command by Ojeda,—not many years afterwards to be heard of. One Vasco Nuñez de Balboa, a poor and debt-burdened fugitive, was on board of Enciso's ship, and had wit enough to suggest that a region like San Sebastian, inhabited by tribes which used poisoned arrows, was not the place for a colony struggling for existence and dependent on foraging. So they removed the remnants of the colony, which Enciso had turned back as they were escaping, to the other side of the bay, and in this way the new settlement came within the jurisdiction of Nicuessa, whom a combination soon deposed and shipped to sea, never to be heard of. It was in these commotions that Vasco Nuñez de Balboa brought himself into a prominence that ended in his being commissioned by Diego Colon as governor of the new colony. He had, meanwhile, got more knowledge of a great sea at the westward than Columbus had acquired on the coast of Veragua in 1503. Balboa rightly divined that its discovery, if he could effect it, would serve him a good purpose in quieting any jealousies of his rule, of which he was beginning to observe symptoms.
BALBOA.
[From Barcia's Herrera.]