[199] For an account of the office and duties of a Juez de Residencia, see a note at page [86] of my translated edition of “Alonzo Enriquez de Guzman,” printed for the Hakluyt Society in 1862.
[200] The Emys decussata of Bell. It is a land tortoise.
[201] Macaws.
[202] The Abibe mountains are a branch of the Andes, extending from the shores of the gulf of Darien to the village of the cacique Abibe, whence the range took its name. They are covered with dense forest, and the only paths are the tortuous beds of mountain torrents, flowing on one side to the Cauca river, and on the other to the gulf of Darien.
[203] In 1537 Don Pedro de Heredia sent his lieutenant, Don Francisco Cesar, in search of the wealth of the cacique Dobaybe, which had been famous ever since the days of Vasco Nuñez. He set out from San Sebastian de Uraba with a hundred men and some horses, and crossed the mountains of Abibe, a barrier which had proved insurmountable to all previous explorers during twenty years. After passing over these mountains he descended into a valley ruled by the cacique Nutibara, with a force reduced to sixty-three men. The cacique attacked him with an array of three thousand Indians, but eventually retreated on the death of his brother. Nutibara caused the body to be placed on his own litter, and he was seen by the Spaniards to run by the side on foot for many miles, mourning his brother’s loss, in the midst of the retreating host. Cesar found forty thousand ducats worth of gold in the tombs, in this valley.
During Cesar’s absence, the licentiate Pedro Vadillo, sent by the Audience of San Domingo to examine into the government of Carthagena, had arrived there and thrown Heredia into prison. On his return the faithful lieutenant went first to the prison of his unfortunate master, and supplied him with funds to conduct his defence, and then paid his respects to Vadillo. The harsh conduct of Vadillo was disapproved in Spain, and it was resolved that a lawyer should be sent out to sit in judgment upon him. The licentiate, who was a bold and audacious man, determined to attempt some new discovery in anticipation of the arrival of his judge, in hopes of performing a service the importance of which might wipe off all former delinquencies. He, therefore, organized a force of four hundred Spaniards at San Sebastian de Uraba, and, taking the gallant Cesar as his lieutenant, set out early in 1538. Cieza de Leon, then nineteen years of age, accompanied this expedition.
[204] A quintal is about a hundredweight.
[205] This word, as well as the word huaca, at the end of the last chapter, are Quichua: and Cieza de Leon must, I think, have confused them in his mind, in applying them to the language of the Indians of the Cauca valley.
[206] The wealth of the cacique Dabaybe is the theme of many old chroniclers. He seems to have ruled a country near the river Atrato, where gold ornaments are frequently found at the present day. Vasco Nuñez de Balboa went in search of the Dabaybe.
[207] The province of Antioquia, in New Granada, including the lower part of the course of the great river Cauca, is still the least known part of Spanish South America. Even now the account of this region given by Cieza de Leon in this and the following chapters, is the best that has been published. Humboldt was never there, nor is this country described in such modern books of travels as those of Captain Cochrane, Mollien, or Holton. Some of these travellers, as well as General Mosquera in his pamphlet, give accounts of Cartago, Cali, and other places in the upper part of the valley of the Cauca: but none of them visited or described the lower part of the course of that river nor the province of Antioquia. Besides that of Cieza de Leon, I only know of one account of this province, namely that written in 1809 by Don José Manuel Restrepo, the colleague of the illustrious Caldas, which was published in the “Semanario de la Nueva Granada,” pp. 194-228.