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Updated: May 21, 2025
Balboa being now in great credit with the colonists, and brooding revenge for the former threats of Enciso, secretly plotted to deprive him of the command, alleging that they were now beyond the limits of Hojedas government, who had no authority in this place.
There happened to be at that time in port a person well known in the history of Spanish adventure as the Bachelor Enciso. He had taken an active part in the colonization of Tierra Firme, and had a pecuniary claim against the early colonists of Darien, of whom Pizarro was one. Immediately on the landing of the latter, he was seized by Enciso's orders, and held in custody for the debt.
Even Columbus, who did not know of the existence of the Pacific, founded a short-lived settlement at Porto Bello, or Nombre de Dios, in 1502, and Martin de Enciso established another at Darien in 1502, but the combined effects of the deadly climate and of hostile Indians exterminated the settlers.
As a literary curiosity of its kind, we subjoin his list of what were then considered the best writers on the affairs of the New World Those in Italics have been already inserted into this work. Peter Martyr of Angleria. Diego de la Tobilla. Motolinea. Don Hernando Colon. Olonsa de Ojeda. Alonso de Mata. Enciso. Gonzalo Hernandez de Oviedo. Francisco Lopez de Gomara. Andres de San Martino.
The result was that a party rose against him, with Balboa at its head. Enciso was deprived of his authority, but when they tried to elect another in his place it did not prove easy.
Nothing having been heard of Ojeda and his new colony of San Sebastian, another expedition, commanded by Enciso, set sail in search of them. Among the ship's company was a man, by name Vasco Ninez de Balboa, who, although of a rich family, had, by his bad habits, not only become very poor, but also very much in debt.
There was more in them, indeed, than Enciso dreamed of, for when far from land there crept out of one of these casks a haggard, woe-begone, half-starved stowaway, who looked as if he had not many ounces of life left in him. It was Vasco Nuñez de Balboa, who had taken this way to join the expedition and escape from his creditors, since they would not have permitted him to go openly.
Enciso was informed that two soldiers had been seized by natives, but suspecting a trap he ordered his soldiers to carry their shields to protect themeselves from the poisoned arrows and, hastily forming them in order of battle, he led them towards those who held the prisoners.
He left orders with Enciso, a lawyer of the town of San Domingo, to fit out two more vessels and follow him with provisions for his new settlement. Enciso sailed in 1510, his vessels well laden with casks of bread and other food-stuffs.
"The Darien and the Zenu," says the bachelor Enciso in his geographical work published at the beginning of the sixteenth century, "is a country so rich in gold pepites that, in the running waters, that metal can be fished with nets." Excited by these narratives, the governor Pedrarias sent his lieutenant, Francisco Becerra, in 1515, to the Rio Sinu.
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