Balboa's eyes blazed.
"What! You--Spaniards--ran away from savages and left a comrade to die?
Go back and bring him in!"
Pizarro turned in silence, took his men back over the road just
traversed, and brought Hernan safely in.
This was one of the many incidents by which the colony learned the
mettle of the new captain-general. Under his direction exploration of
the neighboring provinces was undertaken. Balboa with eighty men made a
friendly visit to Comagre, a cacique who could put three thousand
fighting men in the field. Comagre and his seven sons entertained the
white men in a house larger and more like a palace of the Orient than
any they had before seen. It was one hundred and fifty paces long by
eighty paces broad, the lower part of the walls built of logs, the
floors and upper walls of beautiful and ingenious wood-work. The son of
this cacique presented to Balboa seventy slaves, captives taken by
himself, and golden ornaments weighing altogether four thousand ounces.
The gold was at once melted into ingots, or bars of uniform size, for
purposes of division. One-fifth of it was weighed out for the Crown, the
rest divided among the members of the expedition. The young cacique
stood by watching with scornful curiosity as the Spaniards argued and
squabbled over the allotment.
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