11 



THE HAND OF THE GIANT 



tt*T^Hus far the explorations cover the httle finger of a 

 1 pigmy, since all that is known is the neighborhood 

 of Uraba. What will it be when the whole hand of the giant 

 is known and the Spaniards will have penetrated into all the 

 profound and mysterious parts of the continent?" — Peter 

 Martyr. 



The companion of Columbus was speaking of Balboa's 

 discovery of the Pacific. When shortly thereafter the civilized 

 nations of Mexico and Peru with their treasuries of loot were 

 revealed to the Spanish, and the news of rumored El Dorado 

 came back to European ears, the first great American gold 

 rush was on. Treaties, law, and respect for human life and 

 decency were largely ignored while nations of men fought 

 for the possession of life and treasure not their own. Adven- 

 turers from all ovei Europe were at first caught up in a current 

 of anarchy where the freebooter and the buccaneer usurped 

 authority. The forces of a wild frontier held sway in the early 

 sixteenth century. Landless men in a strange environment 

 greedy for wealth and property, hunters deprived of their 

 hunting grounds, lawbreakers themselves hunted — all banded 

 together, and were finally at the close of the century, forced to 

 form a kind of confederation called the Brethren of the Coast. 

 These men had at least a discipline and order amongst them- 



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