they are poor. And now adieu, ancient
Tethys:

Jam valeant annosa Tethys, nymphaeque madentes,
Ipsius comites; veniat coronata superbe
Australis pelagi cultrix, re ac nomine dives.[4]

[Note 4: The following English translation for these lines has
been suggested:

Farewell, old Tethys, ocean goddess old;
Farewell thy company, the Nereid band;
And come thou, rich in name and pearls and gold
Crowned royally, Queen of the Southern strand.]

In the volume of letters I sent Your Holiness last year, by one of my
servants, and which Your Holiness has read in its entirety before the
Cardinals of the Apostolic See and your beloved sister, I related that
on the same day the Church celebrates the feast of St. Michael the
Archangel, Vasco Nunez de Balboa, the leader of the men who had
crossed the lofty mountain chain, had been told that an island
remarkable for the size of its pearls lay within sight of the coast
and that its king was rich and powerful and often made war against the
caciques whose states lay on the coast, especially Chiapes and Tumaco.
We have written that the Spaniards did not attack the island because
of the great storms which render that South Sea dangerous, during
three months of the year. This island has now been conquered and we
have tamed its proud cacique. May Your Holiness deign to accept him
and all his rich principalities, since he has now received the waters
of baptism. It will not be out of place to remember under whose orders
and by whom this conquest was effected. May Your Holiness attend with
serene brow and benignant ear to the account of this enterprise.

BOOK X

As soon as he landed, the governor, Pedro Arias, confided to a certain
Gaspar Morales an expedition to Isla Rica.[1] Morales first passed by
the country of Chiapes, called Chiapeios, and of Tumaco, those two
caciques along the South Sea who were friends of Vasco. He and his men
were received magnificently as friends, and a fleet was equipped for
attacking the island. This island is called Rica and not Margarita,
although many pearls are found there; for the name Margarita was first
bestowed upon another island near Paria and the region called Boca de
la Sierpe, where many pearls had likewise been found. Morales landed
upon the island with only sixty men, the dimensions of his boats,
called culches, not permitting him to take a larger number. The proud
and formidable king of the island, whose name I have not l