ining in the city and
clinging forlornly to their broken fortunes, while vainly hoping for a
reestablishment of the imperial regimen, as they pinned their fate to
this last desperate conflict. Among these, none had been prouder, none
more loyal to the Spanish Sovereign, and none more liberal in
dispensing its great wealth to bolster up a hopeless cause than the
ancient and aristocratic family at whose head stood Don Ignacio Jose
Marquez de Rincon, distinguished member of the _Cabildo_, and most
loyal subject of his imperial majesty, King Ferdinand VII. of Spain.

The house of Rincon traced its lineage back to the ferocious
adventurer, Juan de Rincon, favorite lieutenant of the renowned
_Conquistador_, Pedro de Heredia. When the latter, in the year 1533,
obtained from Charles V. the concession of New Andalusia, the whole
territory comprised between the mouths of the Magdalena and Atrato
rivers in what is now the Republic of Colombia, and undertook the
conquest of this enormously rich district, the fire-eating Juan, whom
the chroniclers of that romantic period quaintly described as "causing
the same effects as lightning and quicksilver," was his most
dependable support. Together they landed at the Indian village of
Calamari, and, after putting the pacific inhabitants to the sword--a
manner of disposal most satisfactory to the practical Juan--laid the
foundations of the present city of Cartagena, later destined to become
the "Queen of the Indies," the pride, as it was the despair, of the
haughty monarchs of Spain.

For his eminent services in this exploit Juan received a large tract
of land in the most fertile part of the Magdalena valley--which he
immediately staked and lost at the gaming-table. As a measure of
consolation, and doubtless with the view of checking Juan's gambling
propensities, Pedro de Heredia then bestowed upon him a strip of bleak
and unexplored mountain country adjacent to the river Atrato. Stung by
his sense of loss, as well as by the taunts of his boisterous
companions, and harassed by the practical conclusion that life's
brevity would not permit of wiping out their innumerable insults
singly by the sword, the raging Juan gathered together a few
blood-drinking companions of that ilk and set out to find diversion of
mind on his possessions.

Years passed. One day Juan again appeared on the streets of Cartagena,
and this time with gold enough to buy the city. The discovery of rich
auriferous sands o