University of Virginia Library

1. CHAPTER I.
THE MEETING OF THE WARRIORS.

With the first beams of the morning sun, the Indian
warriors of Zemaco, a wild and motly armament, prepared
to descend from the mountains into the plain, or
rather valley, in which lay the Spanish settlement of Darien.
More than five thousand men, detachments from a
hundred tribes, which acknowledged the sovereignty of
Zemaco, were assembled under the lead of this vindictive
chief. They gathered at his summons from the province
of Zobayda, where the golden temple of their worship
stood, and which they esteemed to be the visible dwelling
of their God; Abibeyba, Zenu, and many other provinces,
the several cassiques of which, though not present with
the quotas which they provided, were yet required by
Zemaco to hold themselves in readiness to defend their
territories from the incursions of the Spaniards. The
hills that rose on three sides of the Spanish settlement
were darkened with savage warriors. Exulting in the
certainty of victory, they brandished their macanas of
palm wood, and shot their arrows upward in defiance,
while they sounded their war conchs for the general gathering.
Never, in his whole career of sway and conquest,
had the proud mountain chief at one time, assembled
so vast a host. Their numbers, their known valour,
the great strength of their bodies, and the admirable skill
with which they swung aloft the club or sent the arrow
to its mark, filled his bosom with a vain confidence in his
own superiority, which the better taught Caonabo earnestly

endeavoured to qualify and caution. But his counsels
fell upon unwilling ears, and it was soon apparent to
the latter that the prudence which he commended had the
effect of diminishing his own courage in the estimation of
his hearers. Once assured of this, the mortified Caonabo
sank back to his little command, patiently resolved to
await events, and remove any doubts on this head, of the
Cassique of Darien, by the actual proofs of his prowess,
which he was determined to display upon the field.

“When this noisy rabble, now so insolent, shall be
flying before the dogs of the Spaniards it will be for Caonabo
to strike.”

The pride of the fugitive chief, stung as it was, by the
little regard which had been given to his counsel, was yet
content with this single expression of mortification. He
led the warriors who were entrusted to his command
apart from the rest, and endeavoured to school them in a
portion of his policy. He taught them in few words a
knowledge of the kind of armour which protected the
Spaniard from his arrow—of the coverings for the breast
and arms made of iron, such as were worn by the captains,
and that inferior substitute, known as the escaupil,
a coat padded with cotton, which constituted the chief
defence of the common men. He counselled them to
shoot at the horse rather than the man who bestrode him
—disabused their minds of the belief that the steed and
rider were one—and satisfied them of the ease with
which they might despatch the fallen rider with their
clubs, when once they had wounded or slain the steed.
He showed them where the several pieces of armour were
usually joined together, and the parts most easily penetrable
by their arrows, at which he required them to aim.
The thigh, he counselled them to select as a preferable
mark to that of any other part of the body, as being seldom
protected; for though not a part where a fatal
wound might be often inflicted, yet, to disable a Spaniard
was, perhaps, sufficient, with their far superior numbers,
to render his death subsequently certain from the
use of the war-club.

Such were some of the counsels which the fugitive
chief gave to the little band which Zemaco had assigned
him; and had these counsels, in connection with his general
plan of conduct, been followed by the chieftain, it is
not probable that the Spaniards would have taken ready

foothold in the difficult passes of his country. The obstinacy
and pride of Zemaco, which rejected this wholesome
counsel, was shared among his followers; and it
was not without great difficulty that Caonabo succeeded
in making himself understood among his little band;—a
difficulty which was greatly increased when he required
their obedience. They beheld their brother warriors
brandishing their weapons and shouting defiance, as they
rushed down the heights in the open face of the enemy;
and they felt as if some dishonour attached to their more
covert movement along the edges of the hills, down by
the gullies and gorges which mountain storms had fretted
in their sides, and through bush and bog, on hands and
knees, making their approach to the enemy in secret,
which they had hitherto never made without songs of
blood and clamorous threats, as if victory depended no
less in alarming the foe by their cries and threatenings,
than in beating them down with their blows. Nothing,
indeed, but the express commands of their sovereign, in
deputing the charge of them to Caonabo, could possibly
have reconciled them to a course which was seemingly
full of cowardice and degradation; and ill-concealed indeed
were the looks of disquiet and hostility which they
shot from beneath their dark and shaggy eyebrows at the
strange warrior who compelled them to a departure from
their customs, for which they saw no necessity, and which
they obeyed without confidence or spirit. But the fugitive
chief, though he beheld, was prudent enough to take
no heed of their discontent. He cheered them with occasional
assurances of victory, encouraged them with the
hope of soon appearing before the enemy, and, with a
pains-taking interest that never once grew impatient, he
led them by circuitous paths, and without departing from
the route which he had contemplated the night before, so
that, upon the charge of the Spaniards, he must necessarily
find himself upon their flank.

Meanwhile the thousand warriors of Zemaco, by tens,
by twenties, and by fifties, after the manner of all savage
people, were in motion, rising from behind the heights
where they had so long been watching, and displaying
themselves in all their strength and barbaric pomp, in the
presence of the Spaniards. They rushed down the hillsides
to the sound of drums and conchs, shouting as
they ran, and brandishing their weapons with the exulting

consciousness of certain victory. They beheld their
foe reduced to a point, a mere speck on the bosom of the
valley, which their numbers could soon environ, and as
they fondly imagined overrun. Some of them made their
forward movement towards the enemy in a sort of festive
dance, in which they kept admirable time, though compelled
to descend the while an unequal and sometimes rapidly precipitous
plane. Their confidence, their numbers, their
long black hair, oily skins, and finely-formed persons, together
with their shouts and howlings, were not without
an effect upon the invaders; but repeated conflicts with
the savages, and a confidence in their leader which was
not unwisely bestowed, kept them from panic, and the Indians
were not without their own share of surprise when
they beheld the Spaniards awaiting their advance without
a single change in their position.

With the first signs of the morning, Vasco Nunez had
prepared for the attack which he had some reason to anticipate.
When he beheld the hills half encircling his entrenchments
covered with his foes, he drew forth his
men with the view to use his dogs and horses. A portion
of his cannon—a species of falconet, or grasshopper, then
much employed in the wars of the new world—he had
also drawn out of his fortress and concealed with select
bodies of men, under chosen leaders, each having his especial
instructions. The dogs were leashed and kept in
cages at convenient points, but also covered from sight
and harm until the proper moment of their use. His entire
force, consisting of two hundred and fifty men, were
drawn up in three columns, with just space enough between
the array of each to permit of the play of the artillery.
His little squadron of horse, but twelve in number,
equally divided, lay with their backs close to the entrenchments
of the settlement on the two flanks of his little army.
Thus prepared, he saw the approach of the enemy without
apprehension. He was himself mounted on an animal
equally remarkable for his strength and fleetness. His
favourite hound, Leonchico,—his only body-guard,—with
the composure of a veteran, and a knowledge of his place,
which veterans do not always know, kept close beside his
stirrup, ready at the bidding of his master, and not before,
to take part in the approaching conflict. Such had
been his experience in the wars with the Indians, and
such his docility, in consequence of the admirable training

to which he had been subjected, that the leash and cage
which alone secured others from evil, were esteemed unnecessary
for him. The arms of the Spaniards were of a
motley description, and consisted of arquebusses, crossbows,
swords and targets:—some few carried lances, or
javelins, of palm wood, with which they had provided them
selves from the hands of their Indian enemies. Thus prepared,
Vasco Nunez received the shock of the assailant at
the head of his little army. With a long wild shout, a
concerted signal, which found its echo from every hill
around them, the Caribbeans rushed on to the conflict. A
thousand arrows at one instant darkened the air, and rattled
among the little host of the Spaniards. Then, following
up their missiles, without waiting to witness their effects,
the savage tribes darted down upon their foes, with the
avidity of the hawk stooping upon the sparrow. Wielding
their clubs aloft with practised skill and muscular arms,
they struck at the heads and knees, making one movement
of the arm suffice for a single stroke at the two extremes
of the person.

The Spaniards meanwhile, were not idle. Their crossbows
returned the fire of the Indians, the archer firing at
groups only;—but when the keen eye of Vasco Nunez saw
that the great body of savages had descended from the
heights and were huddling together in confused bands,
each striving to be foremost in its attack upon the small
and condensed array which he led, he saw that the
hour for serious strife was at hand. He commanded his
ranks to open. This movement displayed the artillery,
which another movement disposed in such order as to
rake the entire valley. Yet still the signal was withheld.
The Spanish leader lingered until the solid masses
should reach that line along the plain which his artillery
commanded. It was not long ere the impatient valour of
the Caribbees brought them to the point, and then the
cannon belched forth its unexpected and appalling thunders.
The solid mass recoiled but did not fly. Its own
density was against its safety, and prevented escape.
Nor did flight, after the first moment of alarm, seem the
desire of this fearless people. Checked by their own
numbers from flight at the first essay, they did not think
of renewing it. Encouraged by their chiefs, they answered
the artillery with a second flight of arrows, and,

as before, followed up their missiles by a general rush.
As Vasco Nunez had anticipated, directing their fury
upon a point so narrow as that presented by his front,
their immense numbers were unavailing, and worse than
useless. The savages struggled with each other to reach
the foe, and in this condition could oppose only man to
man in the narrow valley into which they had unwittingly
descended. It was now, as they began to exhibit
a consciousness of their difficulties, and swayed to and
fro beneath the raking fire of the artillery, that Vasco
Nunez gave the signal for his little troop of cavalry to
move from the wings towards the centre, and increase,
with a new form of danger and terror, the confusion under
which the assailants struggled. A sudden and full
burst of martial music was the first ear-piercing intimation
which the Caribbeans received of an onset, of the
terror of which they could have formed no adequate idea.
Then came the thundering tread of the horse, followed
by his plunging form, his fire-breathing nostril, and the
keen edge of that sword which it was the boast of the
Spanish cavalier, could, with a single stroke of a good
arm, sever the naked savage in twain. The roar of the
cannon was succeeded by the ringing of the clattering
sabre digging deep into the defenceless skulls of the scattered
and flying crowd. Vainly the stubborn savages
threw up, with arms practised at defence, the massive war
club for their protection. The keen blade severed it like
a thread, and the same blow most usually struck down
the warrior to whom it yielded no protection. It was a
work of carnage simply and not of fight. Vasco Nunez
looked on with feelings of commiseration new to the
Spanish warrior. Still, the fearless savages continued the
struggle, however vain their opposition. Zemaco himself
cheered them with shouts and stimulated them by the bitterest
reproaches. Himself wounded, he yet strove where
the fight was thickest, being resolute to die rather than
retreat. He had seen how rapidly the work of death went
on where the horsemen ploughed their way among the
flying, the fighting and the dead; and with a desperate
valour, he turned his arms in the quarter where he
seemed most likely to encounter them. Already he had
advanced among the conflicting fugitives, though with
great difficulty, to a point which was threatened by the
cavalry. They were near at hand, and but one dense
mass of his people stood between him and certain death.
But this band was moved by no common sentiment of
valour. They beheld the station which had been taken
by their sovereign, and saw his danger. Though stricken
down by their enemies, they clung to the necks and to the
legs of the horses, and baffled, by their crowding bodies;
the advance of the assailant. Shortening their arrows
and spears, they stabbed the animals with their sharp
flint heads, though without often inflicting mortal wounds;
and these injuries, falling short of the designed effect, had
rather the effect of goading forward the beast, whom the
martial music, and the efforts of his rider, had already
wrought up to a pitch of fury not congenial to the nature
of so timid an animal. The fury of fear, the most intoxicating
of any form of madness, caused the steed, when
wounded, to overcome all obstacles; and the opposing
warriors were flung from their hold, and beaten down
beneath their flying hoofs. The devoted band who had
thrown themselves between their monarch and the death
which threatened him, were mangled and crushed. The
power of resistance was gone, and the seemingly concerted
scream, with which they warned the cassique to fly,
was the last effort of their expiring loyalty. But the brave
chieftain was not suffered to meet the foe and sink beneath
the fate which threatened him. The chosen warriors
of Zobayda—such as remained—and who claimed
always the personal command of the cassique threw themselves
between him and the horsemen. While one party
devoted themselves to a like fate with the band which had
perished, another seized with strong hands upon the person
of the struggling Zemaco, and bore him upward along
the heights. The flight of the chieftain was a sufficient
sign to his people that the battle was at an end; and the
fearless savages who would have continued the struggle,
however hopeless, so long as their sovereign remained
upon the field, now availed themselves of the tacit privilege
thus given them to fly from the conflict with no less
haste than they had employed in beginning it.

“Shall these rascals escape thus?” demanded the sanguinary
Pizarro, riding up to Vasco Nunez—his eye
glaring with the tiger's rage, while his hands were glued
to his sabre hilt by the blood which had dripped down

from its crimson edge. “Shall we not set the dogs upon
their heels?”

“Ay, let it be done Francisco,” was the reply, “though,
in truth, it is a cruel business. Let it be done.”

At a word, the cage doors were thrown open, and the
leash holders ran with the dogs to the nearest spot where
a blood puddle lay—then cutting the cords which fastened
them, they hallowed them after the fugitives, and the rank
smell of blood, freshly left by the flying enemy, soon
guided them up the hills in rapid pursuit. The horsemen
followed at full speed, and ere the warriors who bore the
still struggling Zemaco had reached the eminence for
which they toiled, the furious Pizarro, followed by Rodrigo,
Colmenares, and Bartolome Hurtado, was close upon
their footsteps. The danger was imminent, and the fearless
savage commanded that his people should desist from
flight, which they now considered hopeless, and make a
last, and no less hopeless, effort at resistance. They set
the wounded chieftain on his feet, and once more he grasped
his war-club in readiness, and prepared his javelin. His
face was grave, but not gloomy; and he rebuked his followers
for the downcast and dispirited expression of their
looks.

“The Carib had a song of rejoicing in his death, and
what says the priest who tends at the altar of the god, in
the golden temple of Zobayda? Shall there be sorrow at
the birth of the child, and sorrow too when he dies? Begin
thy song of rejoicing and of triumph, Bahechio—and
tell of the deeds of Zemaco. It will be good to say when
thou hast done, that he lifted his spear to the face of the
enemy, when death put an end to the battle.”

But the answer of his followers was unanimous.

“The song of death shall be our song, but not the song
of Zemaco. Zemaco shall live for his people. We will
stand before the Spaniards while Zemaco goes over the
hill.”

The deep bay of the hound, breaking suddenly as it
were from the ground beneath them, seemed to baffle
this precious plan of flight. With a faint smile upon his
lips, the cassique replied—

“Hark! the barking dog of the Spaniard says `no.' We
must fight—we must die.”

The dogs came rushing up the hill at this moment and

the troopers fast following them. Leonchico led the way,
but ere he approached the little group which environed
the monarch, one of his followers sped a shaft which entered
his side. But the wound failed to arrest the onward
motion of the fierce and powerful dog, and the savage
who had thus spent his last arrow in vain, with a noble
daring, and with a loyalty not often surpassed, flung himself
forward in the very face of the animal. Leonchico
paused for an instant, thrust his nose to the earth, his eye
all the while keenly fixed on that of the Indian. His ears
were flattened, the skin upon his neck rose into a ridge of
elaborated muscle, while the tawny red hair which covered
it, assumed a comblike appearance, like a crest, that
gradually continued to rise until it almost overhung his
brow. His hind feet were gathered up close behind the
fore, and in this attitude, he advanced two small paces
before he sprung. An instant motion in the air—so instantaneous
that the victim did not behold the moment of his
rise—and he was upon the shoulders of the savage—his
thick jaws clasped together upon his throat with a spasmodic
energy which defied his struggles and made them
short. The victim fell and writhed along the earth, but
the limbs of the dog seemed to follow all his contortions,
while his jaws relaxed their hold for no single instant
after they had once been fixed upon him. A silent horror
seized upon the limbs of the cassique as he looked on
this dreadful spectacle. Arrow after arrow had been discharged
at the inhuman assailant, but though all penetrated
the skin, and some of them inflicted severe wounds,
he seemed to give them no more regard than if they had
been utterly unfelt. His victim appeared lifeless beneath
him, and the jaws of the dog relaxed; but only to close
again with double tenacity as he perceived another motion
of his body, probably the last fleeting indication of life.
In another moment he leapt from the carcass, and snuffed
the air as if for new employment. Meanwhile a portion
of the troops had gained the level on the verge of which
stood the savage chieftain. But here their steps were
arrested. A new enemy seemed to rise from the earth
beneath them; and an ally sprang to the succour of Zemaco,
at the moment when hope seemed to be gone for
ever. This was the fugitive Caonabo. His men were
scattered along the table ledge of the hill, and each had
his instructions. The policy of this seeming dispersion
of his followers was instantly obvious; since the Spaniards,
few in number, were required to face a hundred foes, all
assailing in the same instant at every point of the compass.
The commands of Caonabo, closely followed by
the men he led, now docile as they saw the evident superiority
of his discipline, and more fresh for the conflict,
left the horsemen unharmed, but delivered their shafts
with united purpose and good aim, solely at the dogs and
horses. The first deed of Caonabo himself was to send
an arrow into the nostril of the famous Leonchico,
just at the moment when freeing his teeth from the
hold taken upon the savage he had slain, he was preparing
to advance upon the group of which Zemaco was the
centre. Unable to rid himself from the shaft, which had
penetrated a part without the free use of which his efforts
were unavailing, the fierce animal retired from the field
with the quiet instinct of the soldier, who employs his
strength in seeking a cover in the bushes, when he can
no longer engage in the conflict. A second shaft from
the hands of Caonabo went quivering through the bosom
of the horse bestrode by the unglutted Pizarro. The
Spaniard fell heavily to the ground half buried beneath
the wounded and struggling steed. The arrows of the
scattered Indians rained upon his armour, and all the
efforts of his companions were drawn to his extrication.
The fight thickened around his body, and this event effected
a successful diversion of the pursuit. When Vasco
Nunez advanced to the assistance of his lieutenant, the
cassique had disappeared, and no foe remained in sight but
the fearless Caonabo, sustained by some fifty of the savages.
These, as the re-enforcement came to the relief
of Pizarro, began to retire slowly from the field; but the
blood of Vasco Nunez was inflamed by this unlooked-for
resistance and interruption to his conquest. He was not
willing to suffer the escape of a warrior who had shown
himself so capable. Giving the command to charge, he
himself led the way against the retiring fugitive, and
vainly did the latter seek to check his advance by a
timely and skilful use of his shaft. Vasco Nunez wore a
complete suit of mail, which defied the adroitness of the
savage. His steed was also protected by a clothing of
mail and padded cotton which protected him in all vital
parts. He had not escaped without wounds, however, and
his vigour was diminished in consequence of fatigue and
loss of blood. But the rising anger of his rider drove him
forward in the pursuit, and the proud Caonabo beholding
with what tenacious hostility the pursuing Spaniard kept
only upon his track without seeming to heed the assaults
made upon him by his followers, conceived the idea of
giving him the battle which he desired. This was a resolution,
presumptuous in the last degree, if considered
by the ordinary standard of judgment in reference to the
issue between the savage and the Spaniards. But Caonabo
was no common man; and a reasonable conviction
of his own powers, skill, and experience of the sort of foe
with whom he had to deal, would scarce justify a charge
of conceit or presumption against him. Giving instructions
to a few of his warriors who happened to be most
near him in his flight, to annoy the steed of his foe from
behind while he encountered the rider in front, he boldly
turned upon the pursuer, and awaited his approach at a
little spot where some strewn and broken rocks promised
to baffle the free movements of the horse.

Behind these he entrenched himself, with the hope that
in any effort of the rider to leap his battlements, the steed
might come to the earth, in which event he calculated
that his foe must necessarily become the victim of his
rashness. Knowing well the impatient insolence of the
Spaniards in all their encounters with the Indians, in order
to provoke his enemy to that degree of rashness
which would make him attempt the rocks in front, he
boldly assailed him with words of insult as he approached,
delivered in imperfect Spanish. Surprised at such a salutation
and in his own language, but still more enraged at
its audacity, Vasco Nunez, pricking his reluctant steed
with his dagger, drove him forward as Caonabo had expected.
But the anticipations of the savage were not realized
in another and more important respect. The steed
of Vasco Nunez was one of a thousand, and carried him
over the rocks without stumble or impediment.

“Dog of a savage, from whence come you? Who are
you? Speak, slave, ere I hew thee to pieces.”

Such was the answer of the cavalier to the address of
the Indian. The answer of the latter as he slowly retired

backward among the rocks, was fearless and full of defiance.

“Dog thyself! I am a man—I hate thee, Spaniard,—I
spit upon thee, and will slay thee.”

“Ha! say'st thou—if thou art brave as insolent, it will
be some pleasure to cleave thee asunder at a stroke. St.
John of the Wilderness! let not this villain escape my
hands.”

The repeated goadings of the steel drove the beast forward
with such speed, that Caonabo was only able to
evade the onset of the cavalier by submitting his war-club
to the severing stroke which was intended for his own
head. Thrown upward in defence, the macana was cut in
twain at the blow; and flinging from him the worthless
fragment which filled his hands, Caonabo nimbly leaped
aside from the path of the Spaniard, and throwing himself
upon the ground at the edge of a steep declivity, he rolled
headlong down the descent through a gorge which had
been made by the continual passage of the mountain torrents.
Before Vasco Nunez could extricate himself from
among the rocks, the fugitive chief had disappeared from
sight, probably not without severe hurt, but through passages
where no horseman might pursue. His enemy, satisfied
that farther pursuit was idle, yet vexed with the
escape of one whose insolent language was no less strange
than offensive, gave over the search, and returned slowly
to his entrenchments, to count over the slain, attend the
wounded, and gather the spoils of the field, which promised—because
of the gold plates and pearls with which
the savages with barbarous pomp had bedecked their
persons,—to be no less profitable than it had been bloody.