with his sword at his breast, demanding
that he should ask for his life. The proud duellist, thus for the
first time in his life discomfited, was chagrined beyond endurance. In
sullen silence, he refused to cry for mercy. De Soto magnanimously
returned his sword to its scabbard, saying: "The life that is not
worth asking for, is not worth taking."

He then gracefully bowed to the numerous spectators and retired from
the field, greeted with the enthusiastic acclaim of all who were
present. This achievement gave the youthful victor prominence above
any other man in the army. Perez was so humiliated by his defeat, that
he threw up his commission and returned to Spain. Thus the New World
was rid of one of the vilest of the adventurers who had cursed it.

The region of the peninsula, and the adjoining territory of South
America, were at that time quite densely populated. The inhabitants
seem to have been a happy people, not fond of war, and yet by no means
deficient in bravery. The Spanish colonists were but a handful among
them. But the war horse, bloodhounds, steel coats of mail and
gunpowder, gave them an immense, almost resistless superiority.

There was at this time, about the year 1521, an Indian chief by the
name of Uracca, who reigned over quite a populous nation, occupying
one of the northern provinces of the isthmus. He was a man of unusual
intelligence and ability. The outrages which the Spaniards were
perpetrating roused all his energies of resentment, and he resolved to
adopt desperate measures for their extermination. He gathered an army
of twenty thousand men. In that warm climate, in accordance with
immemorial usage, they went but half clothed. Their weapons were
mainly bows, with poisoned arrows; though they had also javelins and
clumsy swords made of a hard kind of wood.

The tidings of the approach of this army excited the greatest
consternation at Darien. A shower of poisoned arrows from the strong
arms of twenty thousand native warriors, driven forward by the
energies of despair, even these steel-clad adventurers could not
contemplate without dread. The Spaniards had taught the natives
cruelty. They had hunted them down with bloodhounds; they had cut off
their hands with the sword; they had fed their dogs with their
infants; had tortured them at slow fires and cast their children into
the flames. They could not expect that the natives could be more
merciful than the Spaniards had been.

Don Pedro,