218 THE HOAD OF ZAPOT1. 



Other countries, discovered later, attract the attention of 

 the colonists : such is the natural progress of things in 

 peopling a vast continent. It may be hoped that on several 

 points the people will return to the places that were first 

 chosen. It is difficult to conceive why the mouth of a great 

 river, descending from a country rich in gold and platina, 

 should have remained uninhabited. The Atrato, heretofore 

 called Eio del Darien, de San Juan, or Dabayba, has had 

 the same fate as the Orinoco. The Indians who wander 

 around the delta of those rivers continue in a savage state. 

 We weighed anchor in the road of Zapote, on the 27th 

 March, at sunrise. The sea was less stormy, and the 

 weather rather warmer, although the fury of the wind 

 was undiminished. "We saw on the north a succession of 

 small cones of extraordinary form, as far as the Morro de 

 Tigua ; they are known by the name of the Paps (tetas) of 



of 2000 Spaniards ; while the latter, the Ciudad de Uraba, remained 

 uninhabited, because Francisco Pizarro, since known as the conqueror of 

 Peru, was forced to abandon it, having vainly demanded succour from 

 St. Domingo. The historian Herrera, after having said that the founda- 

 tion of Antigua had preceded by one year that of Uraba or San Sebastian, 

 affirms the contrary in the following chapter, and in the Chronicle itself. 

 It was, according to the Chronicle, in 1501, that Ojeda, accompanied by 

 Vespucci, and penetrating for the first time the Gulf of Uraba or Darien, 

 "resolved to construct, with wood and unbaked bricks, a fort at the 

 entrance of Culata." It appears, however, that this enterprise was not 

 executed; for, in 1508, in the convention made by Ojeda and Nicuessa, 

 they each promised to build two fortresses on the limits of New Andalusia 

 and of Castillo del Oro. Herrera, in the 7th and 8th books of the first 

 Decade, fixes the foundation of San Sebastian de Uraba at the beginning 

 of 1510, and mentions it as the most ancient town of the continent of 

 America, after that of Ceragua, founded by Columbus in 1503, on the 

 Rio Belen. He relates how Francisco Pizarro abandoned that town, and 

 how the foundation of the Ciudad del Antigua by Entiso, towards the end 

 of the year 1510, was the consequence of that event. (Leo X. made 

 Antigua a bishopric, in 1514; and this was the first episcopal church of 

 the continent. In 1519, Pedrarius Davila persuaded the court of Madrid, 

 by false reports, that the site of the new town of Panama was more 

 healthful than that of Antigua, the inhabitants were compelled to abandon 

 the latter town, and the bishopric was transferred to Panama. The Gulf 

 of Uraba was deserted during thirteen years, till the founder of the town 

 of Carthagena, Pedro de Heredia, after having dug up the graves, or 

 huacas, of the Rio Sinu, to collect gold, sent his brother Alonzo, in 1532, 

 to repeople Uraba, and reconstruct on that spot a town under the nama 

 of San Sebastian de Buenavista ) 



