The other Indians were now pressed to act as guides, but they all swore, truly or falsely, that they did not know where the queen mother lived; that the young warrior alone knew the secret of her hiding place. The cavaliers pushed on as best they could without a guide, but the bad walking, the excessive heat and the weight of their armor wearied and disgusted them, and after two days they returned empty-handed to the camp.
Two days after his return an Indian came to Añasco and offered to conduct him down the river in a canoe to the home of the queen mother. He gladly accepted the proposition. Two large canoes with strong rowers were quickly made ready, and Añasco with twenty companions set out on this second expedition. But it was also doomed to failure. The queen mother heard of his approach and with a few attendants secretly fled to another retreat far away. After a fruitless search of six days, the canoes returned. De Soto never again attempted to get possession of the widow.
In the meantime, while Añasco was engaged in these unsuccessful expeditions, De Soto had been making anxious inquiries respecting the silver and gold he had been informed was to be found in the province. He began by summoning the princess before him and his officers and commanding her to bring all the yellow and white metals and pearls she possessed, like the finger rings and pieces of silver and pearls and stones set in the rings that the Spaniards showed her. The princess replied that both the white and yellow metals were to be found in great abundance in her territory. She immediately sent out Indians to bring him in specimens. They quickly returned laden with a yellow metal somewhat resembling gold in color, but which proved to be copper. The shining substance which he had supposed was silver was nothing but a worthless species of mica or quartz. The sight of these articles dissipated, in an instant, all the bright and chimerical hopes which had prompted the Spaniards to undertake this long and perilous expedition.
It would seem that the warm-hearted princess sympathized with the Spaniards in their great disappointment, or she may have feared they would vent their rage on her hapless people; certain it is, she informed them that while there were no precious stones in her realm, they did have great abundance of pearls. Pointing with her fingers to a temple that stood upon a neighboring mound, she said: "That is the burial place of the warriors of this village, there you will find our pearls. Take what you wish; and if you wish more not far from here there is a village which was the home of my forefather; its temple is far larger than this, you will find there so many pearls that even if you loaded all your horses with them and yourselves with as much as you could carry, you would not come to the end of them. Many years have my people been collecting and storing pearls. Take all, and if you still want more, we can get more, and even more still for you from the fishing places of my people."
This great news and the magnificently queenly manner in which it was told soon raised the drooping spirits of the Spaniards and consoled them for the bitter disappointments about the gold and silver.
The fact of her inviting the Spaniards to ransack the tombs of her forefathers for pearls, seems, as Goodrich says, "utterly inconsistent with all our notions of the reverence for ancestry which is so striking a characteristic of the Indians. We should have a strong doubt of the truth of the statement, were it not distinctly asserted in both the narratives of the expedition." To our mind there is only one of two explanations of it—either the two historians deliberately falsified their statements to cover up the impious sacrilege of De Soto and his cavaliers, or else the princess was intimidated until she pursued the peace-at-any-price policy, even to the profanation of her ancestors' tombs.
The Spaniards soon visited the temple which the princess had pointed out and took from it pearls amounting to fourteen bushels, according to one author, while others record a very much larger amount.
Two days later De Soto, with a large retinue of his own officers and of the household of the princess, started out to visit the large temple at Talomeco, as it was called, situated upon the high bank of the river about three miles distant.
The country through which they passed en route was very fertile and in places covered with fruit trees filled with ripe fruit which the Spaniards picked and ate with relish, while they congratulated themselves that the golden dawn of a realization of their dreams was brightening before them.