CASTILIA DEL ORO, 1597 (after Wytfliet).
This second unprofitable voyage of Ojeda seems to have dampened the ardor of the navigators and their friends at home; and although Navarrete regards it as certain that Juan de la Cosa sailed to Urabá as chief in command in 1504-1506, and that Ojeda made a voyage in the direction of Tierra Firme in the beginning of 1505, it was not until after the successful voyage of La Cosa in 1507-1508, that the work of colonization was again taken up with vigor.[620] Two men offered themselves as leaders in this enterprise; and, as it was impossible to decide between them, they were both commissioned to settle and govern for four years the mainland from the Cabo de la Vela to the Cabo Gracias á Dios, while the Gulf of Urabá (Darien) was to be the boundary between their respective governments. To Alonso de Ojeda was given the eastern province, or Nueva Andaluçia, while Diego de Nicuesa was the destined governor of the western province, then for the first time named Castilla del Oro. The fertile Island of Jamaica was intended to serve as a granary to the two governors; and to them were also granted many other privileges,—as, for instance, freedom from taxation, and, more important still, the right for each to take from Española four hundred settlers and two hundred miners.
Nicuesa and Ojeda met at Santo Domingo, whither they had gone to complete their preparations, and became involved in a boundary dispute. Each claimed the province of Darien[621] as within his jurisdiction. It was finally agreed, however, that the river of Darien should be the boundary line. With regard to Jamaica, the new admiral, Diego Columbus, prevented all disputes by sending Juan de Esquivel to hold it for him. Diego further contributed to the failure of the enterprise by preventing the governors from taking the colonists from Española, to which they were entitled by their licenses. At last, however, on Nov. 12, 1509, Ojeda, with Juan de la Cosa and three hundred men, left Santo Domingo; and five days later entered the harbor of Cartagena, where he landed, and had a disastrous engagement with the natives. These used their poisoned arrows to such good purpose that sixty-nine Spaniards, Juan de la Cosa among them, were killed. Nicuesa arrived in the harbor soon after; and the two commanders, joining forces, drove the natives back, and recovered the body of La Cosa, which they found swollen and disfigured by poison, and suspended from a tree. The two fleets then separated; Nicuesa standing over to the shore of Castilla del Oro, while Ojeda coasted the western shore of the Gulf of Urabá, and settled at a place to which he gave the name of San Sebastian. Here they built a fort, and ravaged the surrounding country in search of gold, slaves, and food; but here again the natives, who used poisoned arrows, kept the Spaniards within their fort, where starvation soon stared them in the face. Ojeda despatched a ship to Española for provisions and recruits; and no help coming, went himself in a vessel which had been brought to San Sebastian by a certain piratical Talavera. Ojeda was wrecked on Cuba; but after terrible suffering reached Santo Domingo, only to find that his lieutenant, Enciso, had sailed some time before with all that was necessary for the relief of the colony. The future movements of Ojeda are not known. He testified in the trial of Talavera and his companions, who were hanged in 1511; and in 1513 and 1515 his depositions were taken in the suit brought by the King’s attorney against the heirs of Columbus. Broken in spirit and ruined in fortune, he never returned to his colony.
CARTAGENA.
[This view of the town of Cartagena at a somewhat later day is a fac-simile of a cut in Montanus, and has some of the doubt attached to all of his pictures.—Ed.]