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58 night, devastated it, and carried off Careta and his family to Antigua. This was the ordinary way for Christians to repay Indian hospitality, both then and for a very long time afterwards. But what follows shows that Balboa was both kinder and shrewder than the average Spanish conqueror, who would undoubtedly have put Careta to death, now that he had seized his gold. Balboa, on the contrary, made peace with the chief and married his daughter. They agreed that Careta's people should supply Antigua with food, and the Spaniards help them against their enemies.

So, by matching tribe against tribe, Balboa conquered a great part of Darien. Comogre, the richest chief of all, received him peacefully, with a great present of gold. The Spaniards were weighing this out and squabbling over the division, when the chief's eldest son contemptuously threw the scales to the ground. If they cared for that sort of stuff, he exclaimed, they would find plenty of it to the south. There by a great sea on which they sailed in ships almost as large as those of the Spaniards were a people, who ate and drank out of vessels of gold. Thus the Spaniards heard for the first time of the Pacific and Peru.

Comogre's son offered to guide the white men to this sea and to let them hang him if they did not find it. But Balboa had heard of a wonderful golden temple of Dabaiba, somewhere up the Atrato River, and went up there to find it. He got no further than a country where the Indians lived in the tops of big trees, and dropped things on visitors. Having conquered this tribe, by cutting down the trees, and suppressed an attempted revolt