260 COSMOS. 



tained the absurd opinion that the fluid lava in the crater 

 was liquid gold, and associated himself with an equally avari- 

 cious Flemish Franciscan, Fray Juan de Gandavo. The 

 pair availing themselves of the credulity of the Spanish 

 settlers, established a joint-stock company to obtain the 

 metal at the common cost. They themselves, Oviedo adds 

 satirically, declared that as ecclesiastics they were free 

 from any pecuniary contributions. The report upon the 

 execution of this bold undertaking, which was sent to the 

 Bishop of Castilla del Oro, Thomas de Verlenga, by Fray 

 Bias del Castillo (the same person who is denominated Fray 

 Bias de Tnesta in the writings of Gomara, Benzoni, and 

 Herrera), was only made known (in 1840) by the discovery 

 of Oviedo's work upon ^Nicaragua. Fray Bias, who had pre- 

 viously served on board ship as a sailor, proposed to imitate 

 the method of hanging upon ropes over the sea, by which 

 the natives of the Canary Islands collect the colouring mat- 

 ter of the Orchil {Lichen Roccella), on precipitous rocks. 

 For months together all sorts of preparations were made, in 

 order to let down a beam of more than 30 feet in length, by 

 means of a windlass and crane, so that it might project over 

 the deep abyss. The Dominican, his head covered with an 

 iron helmet and a crucifix in his hand, was let down with 

 three other members of the association ; they remained for 

 a whole night in this part of the solid crater bottom, from 

 which they made vain attempts to dip out the supposed 

 liquid gold with earthen vessels, placed in an iron pot. 

 Not to frighten the shareholders they agreed 6 * that, 



54 The three companions agreed to say that they had found great 

 riches ; and Fray Bias, whom I had known as an ambitious man, gives, 

 in his relation, the oath which he and his associates took upon the 

 Gospel, to persist for ever in their opinion that the volcano contained 

 gold and silver in a state of fusion!" Oviedo, Descr. de Nicaragua, cap. x, 

 pp. 186 and 196). The Cronista de las Indias is, however, very indig- 

 nant (cap. 5) that Fray Bias narrated that " Oviedo had begged the Hell 

 of Masaja from the Emperor as his armorial bearings." Such a geog- 

 nostic memento would certainly not have been in opposition to the 

 heraldic customs of the period, for the courageous Diego de Ordaz, who 

 boasted of having reached the crater of the Popocatepetl when Cortez 

 first penetrated into the valley of Mexico, bore this volcano as an 

 heraldic distinction, as did Oviedo the constellation of the Southern 

 Cross, and earliest of all Columbus (Exam. crit. t. iv, pp. 235 240), a 

 fragment of a map of the Antilles. 



