ods on account of the yells and shouts of the Indians, who were
celebrating their triumph. At last, however, they commenced a search,
and found their captain in a mangrove swamp, lying on a tangle of roots,
speechless and dying of hunger, yet still clutching his naked sword and
bearing his buckler. Notwithstanding all this, he ultimately recovered,
to go on as eagerly as ever in making fresh conquests.

Later, the proclamation to the Indians was interpreted to them,
sometimes eliciting replies very much to the point. When the Bachelor
Enciso went in search of the country of Zenu, where gold was so
plentiful that it could be collected in the rainy season in nets
stretched across the river, he was opposed by two Caciques, to whom the
paper was read. They listened courteously, and, when it had been
expounded, said they were quite willing to admit that there was one God,
the ruler of heaven and earth, whose creatures they were. But as to the
Pope's regency and his donation of _their_ country to the king of Spain,
that was another thing altogether. The Pope must have been drunk when he
gave away what was not his, and the king could only have been mad to ask
him for the territory of others. They, the Caciques, were the rulers of
these territories, and needed no other sovereign: if their king came to
take possession they would cut off his head and stick it on a pole, as
they did the heads of their other enemies, at the same time pointing to
a row of grisly skulls impaled close by. Their arguments, however, were
useless, for Enciso attacked, routed them, and took one of the Caciques
prisoner.

The accounts of the early voyagers are full of such examples of audacity
as well as of endurance of suffering. The perils of the sea were as
great as those of the land, but few voyages were as disastrous as that
of Valdivia, who in 1512 sailed from Darien for Hispaniola. When in
sight of Jamaica, his vessel was caught in a hurricane and driven upon
some shoals called the Vipers, where it was dashed to pieces. He and his
twenty men barely escaped with their lives in a boat without sails,
oars, water, or provisions. For thirteen days they drifted about, until
seven were dead and the remainder helpless. Then the boat stranded on
the coast of Yucatan, and the poor wretches were captured by Indians, to
be taken before their Cacique. They were now put into a kind of pen to
fatten for the cannibal festival. Valdivia and four others were taken
f