Page:The gilded man (El Dorado) and other pictures of the Spanish occupancy of America.djvu/22

8 and at Panamá, the Spanish settlements in New Granada and Venezuela made little progress. Panamá grew vigorously; ships sailed thence southward to the Pearl Islands and to the west coast of New Granada. The whole western slope of the Andes, from the Rio Atrato southward, the provinces of Antioquia and Cauca, were very rich in gold. But they were inhabited by savage and warlike tribes addicted to a horrible cannibalism, whose villages were rarely situated upon the coast, while access to them by land from Panamá was attended with great difficulties. The Spaniards on the western side of South America were therefore involuntarily led into making coast voyages, which in the course of time took them to Peru.

The Spanish enterprises in Venezuela, after the pearl fisheries on the island of Margarita were organized, were limited to making single landings, the chief purpose of which was barter, and especially man-stealing. This practice depopulated the coast, and embittered the natives to such a degree that they became dangerous enemies to all attempts at permanent colonization. By them the well-intended effort of the famous lieutenant Las Casas to found a colony at Cumaná was defeated with bloodshed in the year 1521. Only in Coro, on the narrow, arid isthmus that connects the peninsula of Paraguana with the country around Lake Maracaybo, Juan de Ampues succeeded in 1527, with seventy men, in founding a colony and establishing friendly relations with the Coquetìos Indians around him.

The Spaniards had by their predatory expeditions excited the resentment of the Indians along the