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In his excursions throughout the Isthmus, Balboa had met a chief called Comagre. As everywhere, the first desire of the Spanish was gold. The metal had no commercial value to the Indians. They used it simply to make ornaments, and when it was not taken from them by force, they were cheerfully willing to exchange it for beads, trinkets, hawks' bells, and any other petty trifles.

The first 'palace' described by Herrera was discovered by Balboa somewhere in the present Costa Rica, and Comagre has gone into history as its proprietor.

Comagre was the father of a numerous family of stalwart sons. The oldest, observing the Spaniards brawling and fighting "brabbling," Peter Martyr calls it about the division of gold, with an astonishing degree of intrepidity knocked over the scales at last and dashed the stuff on the ground in contempt.

When Balboa and Pizarro had crossed the Isthmus six years before, the son of the Cacique Comagre, observing their avidity for gold, told them that it abounded in a mysterious land far toward the south, and the young Indian made a little clay image of a llama further to describe the country. To conquer that El Dorado had been Balboa's cherished dream.