s was also precarious. They were starving
in their silks and satins.

Pedrarias, however, did not lack courage. He sent the survivors
hunting for treasures. Under different captains he dispatched them far
and wide through the Isthmus to gather gold, pearls, and food. They
turned its pleasant valleys and its noble hills into earthly hells.
Murder, outrage and rapine flourished unchecked, even encouraged and
rewarded. All the good work of Balboa in pacifying the natives and
laying the foundation for a wise and kindly rule was undone in a few
months.

Such cruelties had never before been practised in any part of the New
World settled by the Spaniards. I do not suppose the men under
Pedrarias were any worse than others. Indeed, they were better than
some of them, but they took their cue from their terrible commander.
Fiske calls him "a two-legged tiger." That he was an old man seems to
add to the horror which the story of his course inspires. The
recklessness of an unthinking young man may be better understood than
the cold, calculating fury and ferocity of threescore and ten. To his
previous appellations, a third was added. Men called him, "_Furor
Domini_"--"The Scourge of God." Not Attila himself, to whom the title
was originally applied, was more ruthless and more terrible.

Balboa remonstrated, but to no avail. He wrote letter after letter to
the king, depicting the results of Pedrarias' actions, and some tidings
of his successive communications, came trickling back to the {44}
governor, who had been especially cautioned by the King to deal
mercifully with the inhabitants and set them an example of Christian
kindness and gentleness that they might be won to the religion of Jesus
thereby! Pedrarias was furious against Balboa, and would have withheld
the King's dispatches acknowledging the discovery of the South Sea by
appointing him adelantado; but the Bishop of Darien, whose friendship
Balboa had gained, protested and the dispatches were finally delivered.
The good Bishop did more. He brought about a composition of the bitter
quarrel between Balboa and Pedrarias. A marriage was arranged between
the eldest daughter of Pedrarias and Balboa. Balboa still loved his
Indian wife; it is evident that he never intended to marry the daughter
of Pedrarias, and that he entered upon the engagement simply to quiet
the old man and secure his countenance and assistance for the
undertaking he projected to the mysteri