ssed. We have
elsewhere related that only three leagues from Darien the Spaniards
already possessed quite important gold mines, which are being worked.
Moreover, in many places gold is found by breaking the soil, but it
is believed to be more abundant in the territories of Dobaiba. In
the First Decade I addressed to Your Holiness, I had mentioned this
Dobaiba, but the Spaniards were mistaken concerning him, for they
thought they had met fishermen of Dobaiba and believed that Dobaiba
was the swampy region where they had encountered these men. Pedro
Arias, therefore, decided to lead a selected troop into that country.
These men were to be chosen out of the entire company and should be in
the flower of their age, abundantly furnished with darts and arms of
every sort. They were to march against the cacique, and if he refused
their alliance, they were to attack and overthrow him. Moreover, the
Spaniards never weary of repeating, as a proof of the wealth they
dream of, that by just scratching the earth almost anywhere, grains of
gold are found. I only repeat here what they have written.

The colonists likewise counselled the King to establish a colony at
the port of Santa Marta in the district called by the natives Saturma.
This would serve as a place of refuge for people arriving from the
island of Domingo. From Domingo to this port of Saturma the journey
could be made in about four or five days, and from Santa Marta to
Darien in three days. This holds good for the voyage thither, but
the return is much more difficult because of the current we have
mentioned, and which is so strong that the return voyage seems like
climbing steep mountains. Ships returning from Cuba or Hispaniola to
Spain do not encounter the full force of this current; although they
have to struggle against a turbulent ocean, still the breadth of the
open sea is such that the waters have free course. Along the coasts
of Paria, on the contrary, the waters are cramped by the continental
littoral and the shores of the numerous islands. The same happens in
the strait of Sicily where a current exists which Your Holiness well
knows, formed by the rocks of Charybdis and Scylla, at a place, where
the Ionian, Libyan, and Tyrrhenian seas come together within a narrow
space.

In writing of the island of Guanassa and the provinces called Iaia,
Maia, and Cerabarono, Columbus, who first noted the fact, said that
while following these coasts and endeavouring to keep to