EARLY flOLD-WASUINGS. 215 



The gold-washings of the Eio Sinu, heretofore so import- 

 ant, above all, between its source and the village of San 

 Geronimo, have almost entirely ceased, as well as those of 

 Cienega de Tolu, Uraba, and all the rivers descending from 

 the mountains of Abibe. "The Darien and the Zenu," 

 says the bachelor Enciso, in his geographical work, published 

 at the beginning of the sixteenth century, " is a country so 

 rich iu gold pepites, that, in the running waters, that metal 

 can be fished with nets." Excited by these narratives, the 

 governor Pedrarias sent his lieutenant, Francisco Becerra, 

 in 1515, to the Kio Sinu. This expedition was most unfor- 

 tunate, for Becerra and his troop were massacred by the 

 natives, of whom the Spaniards, according to the custom of 

 the time, had carried away great numbers to be sold as 

 slaves in the West Indies. The province of Aiitioquia now 

 furnishes, in its auriferous veins, a vast field for mining 

 speculations ; but it might be well worth while to relinquish 

 gold-washings for the cultivation of colonial productions, in 

 the fertile lands of Sinu, the Eio Damaquiel, the Uraba, and 

 the Darien del Norte ; above all, that of cacao, which is of a 

 superior quality. The proximity of the port of Carthagena 

 would also render the neglected cultivation of cinchona an 

 object of great importance to European trade. That pre- 

 cious tree vegetates at the source of the Kio Sinu, as in the 

 mountains of Abibe and Maria. The real febrifuge cinchona, 

 with a hairy corolla, is nowhere else found so near the 

 coast, if we except the Sierra Nevada of Santa Marta. 



The Eio Sinu and the Gulf of Darien were not visited by 

 Columbus. The most eastern point at which that great man 

 touched land, on the 26th November, 1503, is the Puerto de 

 Ketreto, now called Punta de Escribanos, near the Punta of 

 San Bias, in the isthmus of Panama. Two years previously, 

 Kodrigo de Bastidas and Alanso de Ojeda, accompanied by 

 Amerigo Vespucci, had discovered the whole coast of the 

 main land, from the Gulf of Maracaybo as far as the Puerto 

 de Eetreto. Having often had occasion in the preceding 

 volumes to speak of New Andalusia, I may here mention 

 that I found that denomination, for the first time, in the 

 convention made by Alonso de Ojeda with the Conquistador 

 ;o de Sicuessa, a powerful man, say the historians of 

 hid time, " because lie was a flattering courtier and a wit." 



