Page:Panama-past-present-Bishop.djvu/88

68 friend that it might be wise for him to sail at once for Peru, "if this newcomer meant aught of ill to his lord Pedrarias." Now this false friend had been his rival for the love of the Indian girl, and revenged himself by denouncing Balboa to Pedrarias as a traitor. Francisco Pizarro was at once sent to arrest him, and, after a mockery of a trial, Vasco Nuñez de Balboa, Adelantado of the South Sea, and noblest of the conquistadores, died on the scaffold in the plaza of Acla.

Fearing the wrath of the new governor, Pedrarias crossed the Isthmus, and in 1519, founded a city on the site of a little fishing village called Panama. This name signifies, in the Indian language, "a place abounding in fish," and one reason the Spaniards settled here was to escape the famines they had suffered at Antigua. Both that town and Acla were soon abandoned to the Indians, who even now forbid white men to stay overnight in that region under penalty of death, so well do they still remember the cruelties of Pedrarias.

I wish I could add that vengeance overtook that wicked old man, but he lived to rule and do evil, both in Panama and in Nicaragua, until he was ninety years old. The new governor died suddenly, and several in authority that came after him, including one bishop of Panama, were poisoned by Pedrarias. As for the Indians he caused to be killed, the historian Oviedo declares them to have been more than two million.

The only consolation we have is the knowledge that Pedrarias, who was even fonder of gold than of bloodshed, was at first a partner of Pizarro's, when the man who had arrested Balboa sailed on his ships to the