Page:The gilded man (El Dorado) and other pictures of the Spanish occupancy of America.djvu/51

Rh his surprise he was received at Cumaná with cannon-shots, and was informed that his men were on the island of Cubagua, and that the post belonged to that jurisdiction. Greatly astonished at this unexpected communication and at his hostile reception, he crossed over to Cubagua, where most unpleasant information was imparted to him.

During the period of nearly two years which Ordaz had spent on the Orinoco Sedeño had been informed of the occupation of the post he had established at Paria. He at once appealed to Spain against what he styled a violent attack on his rights. He cited the terms of Ordaz's concession, which, indeed, confirmed to him the coast from the Marañon to the limits of Welser's leasehold, but defined the length of the coast-line as two hundred leagues from the mouth of the Maranon. Sedeño insisted that under the latter clause Paria was outside of that concession, and therefore contested the right of Ordaz to occupy the post there. The contention was in many respects characteristic of the times. It especially illustrates the vagueness of the geographical ideas of the period, which estimated the distance from the easternmost point of the German concession in Venezuela to the mouth of the Amazon as only two hundred leagues. The Crown decided in favor of Sedeño so far as to order Ordaz to restore to him the property he had seized, and to satisfy himself with the prescribed two hundred leagues of coast, which he could choose either "from the Cape of La Vela toward the Marañon, or from the Marañon toward the Cape of La Vela," as he might prefer. Ordaz was