Page:Narrative of the Proceedings of Pedrarias Davila (Haklyut, 34).djvu/108

60 was there, in the end of the year 1537, and a grant of this same government was made to me, from the point of San Juan to the gulf of San Miguel. I started from Toledo in the year 1538, and embarked at San Lucar in the beginning of 1539, taking sixty men with me from Spain. I arrived at Nombre de Dios on the day of San Juan, and began to prepare my expedition at Panama, having collected two hundred men. I was thus engaged until the 15th of February, having made three ships and two brigantines. I left Panama on the 15th of February, and doubling Cape Corrientes, sailed along the coast as far as the island of Palmas, where I disembarked all the men and horses. I found here five Indian huts, with some maize. I then sent the brigantines to seek the inhabited parts; but the land is so thick with trees, and overgrown with rushes which enter the sea, that there were no inhabitants found, except those of the five huts, and these came from the banks of a river to this island to fish. Eight leagues from this island, the port of Buenaventura was discovered, and a road descended through a very dense forest to the sea, by which the Indians came to get salt. The Indians came down by these forest-covered mountains, which are the highest and most rugged that have been seen in the Indies. Leaving fifty men with the ships, I entered this road with all the rest of the men and horses, which I conveyed to a distance of nine leagues from the sea with great labour; but from that point onwards the country was and is so rugged that many dogs, not being able to go on with the men, returned to the sea. At a distance of fourteen leagues from the sea