Page:Vol 3 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/584

564 failed. Two subsequent attempts, both equally unsuccessful were made to capture the golden temple, one by Vasco Nuñez and Luis Carrillo conjointly, and the other by the factor of Pedrarias, Juan de Tabira. A priest of the priory of Darien named Jacobo Alvarez Osorio spent many years searching for the golden temple, during which time he endured great hardships and experienced many dangers.

Tello de Guzman with one hundred men penetrated to the South Sea in 1515. He discovered the site of ancient Panamá, a country famous for its richness, but where he found only some fishermen's huts. From the province of Chagre he obtained gold to the value of 12,000 Castellanos, and from Chepo 12,000. He returned to Antigrua loaded with gold, but almost famished from hunger and thirst. Gonzalo de Padajoz, another captain of Pedrarias, crossed the Isthmus in 1515 from Nombre de Dios to the bay of Panamá with one hundred and thirty men. Upon the summit of the cordilleras Badajoz surprised a chief named Totonagua, from whom he obtained gold valued in all at 12,000 Castellanos. From a neighboring cacique he received in return for his friendship 8,000. They found this mountain region exceedingly rich in gold. "Wherever they digged," says Peter Martyr, "whether on the dry land or in the wot channels of the rivers, they found the sand which they cast forth mixed with gold." At the village of Natá, on the western border of the gulf of Panamá, the Spaniards found gold to the value of 10,000 Castellanos; south-west of Natá from a cacique named Escolia they obtained 9,000, and at other provinces from two to ten thousand Castellanos. Thus far Badajoz had secured gold to the value of 80,000 Castellanos, "which was worth more in those days," says Herrera, "than 500,000 after the discovery of Peru."

The whole country in the vicinity of the bay of Panamá, and for two hundred leagues above and below Darien, according to the last mentioned