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In 1508 all the country from the Cabo de la Vela to the Gulf of Uraba, where the Castillo del Oro begins, was called New Andalusia, a name since restricted to the province of Cumana.
In the Dutch edition Nieuwe Caerte van het goudrycke landt Guiana, the Llanos of Caracas, between the mountains of Merida and the Rio Pao, bear the name of Caribana. I have visited those coasts in going from the Havannah to Porto Bello; and I there learned that the cape which bounds the gulf of Darien or Uraba on the east, still bears the name of Punta Caribana.
Some influential members of the council who had been friends of Nicuesa and could not endure the insolence of Vasco Nuñez thought they ought to scour the country in search of Nicuesa; for they had heard it reported that he had abandoned Uraba on account of the barrenness of the soil.
The comparison of these scenes, which have again relapsed into a savage state, confirms what I have elsewhere advanced relative to the strange and sometimes retrograde nature of civilization in America. On one side, the coast of Paria, the islands of Cubagua and Marguerita; on the other, the Gulf of Uraba and Darien, received the first Spanish colonists.
This population was computed, at the period when I travelled there, to be 3000. These people have not the ferocity of the Darien and Cunas Indians, on the left bank of the Atrato; who often attack the boats trading with the town of Quidbo in the Choco; they also make incursions on the territory of Uraba, in the months of June and November, to collect the fruit of the cacao-trees.
When the established time elapsed, finding themselves reduced by famine, they boarded the brigantines and abandoned Uraba.
They consisted of the grain for bread-making, which is called in Hispaniola maize, and in Uraba hobba. This maize is harvested twice yearly, for the cold of winter is unknown in this country, because of its proximity to the equator. Bread made of hobba or maize is preferable to wheaten bread for those who live in this region, because it is more easily digested.
Another adventurer, Nicuesa, came as his neighbour, holding the Governorship of the coast from the Gulf of Uraba to the Cape Gracias a Dios. These two conquistadores, although as jealous of each other as was usual with almost all these pioneer explorers, joined forces against the Indians, whom they attempted to subdue by means of an iron hand rather than by a silk glove.
He afterwards discovered the haven of Zamba, the Coradas, Carthagena, the islands of S. Bernard de Baru, the Islas de Arenas, Isla Fuerta, and the Point of Caribana, at the end of the Gulf of Uraba, where he had sight of the Farrallones, close by the river of Darien. From Cape de la Vela to this last place, which is in lat. 9° 40' N. is 200 leagues.
Vasco Nuñez embarked with about one hundred men on board a brigantine and in some native barques dug out of tree trunks, called by the islanders of Hispaniola canoes, and by the people of Uraba, uru. The river flows into the gulf at that place from the east and is ten times larger than the Darien.
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