The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West Part 12

CHAPTER VIII

BALBOA AND THE ISTHMUS

In the Spanish conquest of America there are three great generals: Cortes, Balbao, and Pizarro. The third may to many readers seem immeasurably superior as explorer and conqueror to the second, but it must be remembered that Pizarro's scheme of discovering and invading Peru was precisely that which Balboa had already prepared. Pizarro could afford to say, "Others have labored, and I have merely entered into their labors."

What, then, was the work done by Balboa, and what prevented him from taking Peru? In 1510, the year before the conquest of Cuba, Balboa was glad to escape from Hispaniola, not to avoid the Spanish cruelties, like Hatuey, the luckless cazique, but to escape from his Spanish creditors.

So anxious was he to get on board that he concealed himself in a cask to avoid observation. Balboa, however, had administrative qualities, and after taking possession of the uncleared district of Darien in the name of the King of Spain, he was appointed governor of the new province. He built the town Santa Maria on the coast of the Darien Gulf; but so pestilential was the district (and still is) that the settlers were glad after a short time to remove to the other side of the isthmus.

It was by mere accident that Balboa first heard of a great ocean beyond the mountains of Darien, and of the enormous wealth of Peru, a country hitherto unknown to Spain or Europe. As several soldiers were one day disputing about the division of some gold-dust, an Indian cazique called out:

"Why quarrel about such a trifle? I can show you a region where the commonest pots and pans are made of that metal."

To the inquiries of Balboa and his companions, the cazique replied that by traveling six days to the south they should see another ocean, near which lay the wealthy kingdom.

Resolving to cross the isthmus, notwithstanding a thousand formidable obstructions, Balboa formed a party consisting of 190 veterans, accompanied by 1,000 Indians, and several fierce dogs trained to hunt the naked natives. Such were the difficulties that the "six days'

journey" occupied twenty-five before the ridge of the isthmus range was reached.

Balboa commanded his men to halt, and advanced alone to the summit, that he might be the first who should enjoy a spectacle which he had so long desired. As soon as he beheld the sea stretching in endless prospect below him he fell on his knees; ... his followers observing his transports of joy rushed forward to join in his wonder, exultation, and grat.i.tude.

That was the moment, September 25, 1513, immortalized in Keats's sonnet:

When with eagle eyes He stared at the Pacific, and all his men Looked at each other with a wild surmise, Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

Balboa hurried down the western slope of the isthmus range to take formal possession in the name of the Spanish monarch. He found a fishing village there which had been named Panama (i. e., "plenty fish") by the Indians, but had also a reputation for the pearls found in its bay.

In his letter to Spain, Balboa said, to ill.u.s.trate the difficulties of the expedition, that of all the 190 men in his party there were never more than eighty fit for service at one time. Notwithstanding the wonderful news of the discovery of the "great southern ocean," as the Pacific was then called, Ferdinand overlooked the great services of Balboa, and appointed a new Governor of Darien called Pedrarias, who inst.i.tuted a judicial inquiry into some previous transactions of Balboa, imposing a heavy fine as punishment. The new governor committed other acts of great imprudence, and at length Ferdinand felt that he had only superseded the most active and experienced officer he had in the New World. To make amends to Balboa, he was appointed "Lieutenant-Governor of the Countries upon the South Sea," with great privileges and authority. At the same time Pedrarias was commanded to "support Balboa in all his operations, and to consult with him concerning every measure which he himself pursued."

Balboa, in 1517, began his preparations for entering the South Sea and conveying troops to the country which he proposed to invade. With four small brigantines and 300 chosen soldiers (a force superior to that with which Pizarro afterward undertook the same expedition), he was on the point of sailing toward the coasts of which they had such expectations, when a message arrived from Pedrarias. Balboa being unconscious of crime, agreed to delay the expedition, and meet Pedrarias for conference. On entering the palace Balboa was arrested and immediately tried on the charge of disloyalty to the King and intention of revolt against the governor. He was speedily sentenced to death, although the accusation was so absurd that the judges who p.r.o.nounced the sentence "seconded by the whole colony, interceded warmly for his pardon." "The Spaniards beheld with astonishment and sorrow the public execution of a man whom they universally deemed more capable than any who had borne command in America, of forming and accomplishing great designs." This gross injustice amounting to a public scandal was accounted for by the malignant influence of the Bishop of Burgos, in Spain, who was the original cause of Balboa being superseded as Governor of Darien.

The expedition designed by Balboa was now relinquished; but the removal of the colony soon afterward to the Pacific side of the isthmus may be considered a step toward the realization of an exactly similar attempt by Pizzaro.

To some historical readers the word "Darien" only recalls the bitter prejudice entertained against William III, our "Dutch King,"

notwithstanding the special pleading of Lord Macaulay and others. Some Scottish merchants had adopted a scheme recommended by the most reliable authorities[23] of that age, viz., the settlement of a half-commercial, half-military colony on the Atlantic coast of the isthmus. Such a company, in the words of Paterson, would be masters of the "door of the seas," and the "key of the universe." The East India Companies both of England and Holland showed an envious jealousy of the Scottish merchants, and therefore no a.s.sistance was to be expected from the King, although he had given his royal sanction to the Scots Act of Parliament creating the company. The Scottish people, however, zealously continued the scheme. Some 1,200 men "set sail from Leith amid the blessings of many thousands of their a.s.sembled countrymen. They reached the Gulf of Darien in safety, and established themselves on the coast in localities to which they gave the names of New Caledonia and New St. Andrews." The Government of Spain (secretly instigated, it was believed, by the English King) resolved to attack the embryo colony. The shipwreck of the whole scheme soon followed, due undoubtedly more to the jealousy of the English merchants (who believed that any increase of trade in Scotland or Ireland was a positive loss to England) and the bad faith of our Dutch King, than to all other causes whatever. Of the colony, according to Dalrymple (ii, 103), not more than thirty ever saw their own country again.

[Footnote 23: E.g., Paterson, founder of the Bank of England, Fletcher of Saltoun, the Marquis of Tweeddale, then chief Minister of Scotland, Sir John Dalrymple, etc.]

In 1526 a company of English merchants was formed to trade with the West Indies and the "Spanish Main," and commanded great success. Other merchants did the same. Soon after the Spanish court inst.i.tuted a coast-guard to make war upon these traders; and as they had full power to capture and slay all who did not bear the King of Spain's commission, there were terrible tales told in Europe of mutilation, torture, and revenge. The Windward Islands having been gradually settled by French and English adventurers, Frederick of Toledo was sent with a large fleet to destroy those petty colonies. This harsh treatment rendered the planters desperate, and under the name of buccaneers,[24] they continued "a retaliation so horribly savage [_v._ Notes to Rokeby] that the perusal makes the reader shudder. From piracy at sea, they advanced to making predatory descents on the Spanish territories; in which they displayed the same furious and irresistible valor, the same thirst of spoil, and the same brutal inhumanity to their captives." The pride and presumption of Spain were partly resisted by the English monarchs, but not with real effect before the time of Cromwell, strongest of all the rulers of Britain. Under his government of the seas Spain was deprived of the island of Jamaica; and the buccaneers to their disgust found that the flag of the great Protector was a check against all piracy and injustice.

[Footnote 24: Named from _boucan_, a kind of preserved meat, used by those rovers. They had learned this peculiar art of preserving from the native Caribs.]

Under Charles II, however, the buccaneers resumed their conflict with the Spanish, and in 1670, Henry Morgan, with 1,500 English and French ruffians resolved to cross the isthmus like Balboa, to plunder the depositories of gold and silver which lay in the city of Panama and other places on the Pacific coast. Having stormed a strong fortress at the mouth of the Chagres River, they forced their way through the entangled forests for ten days, and after much hardship reached Panama, to find it defended by a regular army of twice their number. The Spaniards, however, were beaten, and Morgan thoroughly sacked and plundered the city, taking captive all the chief citizens in order to extort afterward large ransoms.

Ten years afterward the Isthmus of Darien was crossed by Dampier, another celebrated buccaneer, but his party was too small to attack Panama. They seized some Spanish vessels in the bay and plundered all the coast for some distance. The following description by the bold buccaneer is not without interest to those who consider the present importance of the place:

Near the riverside stands New Panama, a very handsome city, in a s.p.a.cious bay of the same name, into which disembogue many long and navigable rivers, some whereof are not without gold; besides that it is beautified by many pleasant isles, the country about it affording a delightful prospect to the sea.... The houses are chiefly of brick and pretty lofty, especially the president's, the churches, the monasteries, and other public structures, which make the best show I have seen in the West Indies.

The present prosperity of Panama is due to its large transit trade, which was recently estimated at 15,000,000 a year. The pearl-fisheries, famous at the time of Balboa's visit, have now little value. The narrowest breadth of the isthmus being only thirty miles, there have naturally been many engineering proposals to connect the Pacific and Atlantic oceans by a ca.n.a.l. M. de Lesseps founded a French company in 1881 for the construction of a ship-ca.n.a.l with eight locks, and over forty-six miles in length; but in 1889, the excavations stopped after some 48-1/2 millions of cubic meters of earth and rock had been removed.

Meanwhile a railway 47-1/2 miles long connects Colon on the Atlantic with Panama on the Pacific.

The Mexican Isthmus of Tehuantepec, only 140 miles across, separates the Bay of Campeachy from the Pacific, and failing the Panama Ca.n.a.l some engineers were in favor of a _ship-railway_ for conveying large vessels _bodily_ from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The scheme met with great favor in the United States, but has not yet been carried out.

The third proposal for connecting the two great oceans is probably the most feasible because it follows the most deeply marked depression of the isthmus. The Nicaraguan Ship-ca.n.a.l will, if the scheme be carried out, pa.s.s from Greytown on the Atlantic to Brito on the Pacific, about 170 miles apart, through the republic of Nicaragua, which lies north of Panama and south of Guatemala. One obvious advantage of this ship-ca.n.a.l is that the great lake is utilized, affording already about one-third of the waterway; only twenty-eight miles, in fact, being actual ca.n.a.l, and the rest river, lake, and lagoon navigation. In the latest specifications the engineers proposed to dam up the river (San Juan) by a stone wall seventy feet high and 1,900 feet long, thus raising the water to a level of 106 feet above the sea. Only three locks will be required to work the Nicaraguan Ship-ca.n.a.l.

CHAPTER IX

EXTINCT CIVILIZATION OF PERU

-- (A) _Peruvian Archeology_

As the extinct civilization of the Incas of Peru is the most important phase of development among all the American races, so also their prehistoric remains are extremely interesting to the archeologist.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Monolith Doorway. Near Lake t.i.ticaca. Fig. 1.]

1. _Architecture._--In the interior of the country we find many remarkable examples of stone building, such as walls of huge polygonal stones, four-sided or five-sided or six-sided, some six feet across, laid without mortar, and so finely polished and adjusted that the blade of a knife can not be inserted between them. The strength of the masonry is sometimes a.s.sisted by having the projecting parts of a stone fitting into corresponding hollows or recesses in the stone above or below it.

The stones being frequently extremely hard granite, or basalt, etc., antiquarian travelers have wondered how in early times the natives could have cut and polished them without any metal tools. The ordinary explanation is that the work was done by patiently rubbing one stone against another, with the aid of sharp sand, "time being no object" in the case of the laborers among savage and primitive races. It is believed by most antiquaries that long before the period of the Incas there was a powerful empire to which we must attribute such Cyclopean ruins; especially as the construction and style differ so greatly from what is found in the Inca period. The huge stones occur at Tiahuanacu (near Lake t.i.ticaca), Cuzco, Ollantay, and the altar of Concacha. Fig. 1 is a broken doorway at Tiahuanacu, composed of huge monoliths. Fig. 2 is an enlargement of an image over the doorway shown in Fig. 1. The doorway forms the entrance to a quadrangular area (400 yards by 350) surrounded by large stones standing on end. The gateway or doorway of Fig. 1 is one of the most marvelous stone monuments existing, being _one block of hard rock_, deeply sunk in the ground. The present height is over seven feet.

The whole of the inner side "from a line level with the upper lintel of the doorway to the top" is a ma.s.s of sculpture, "which speaks to us,"

says Sir C. R. Markham, "in difficult riddles of the customs and art culture, of the beliefs and traditions of an ancient" extinct civilization.

The figure in high relief above the doorway (Fig. 2) is a head surrounded by rays, "each terminating in a circle or the head of an animal." Six human heads hang from the girdle, and two more from the elbows. Each hand holds a scepter terminating at the lower end with the head of a condor--that huge American vulture familiar to the Peruvians.

That bird of prey was probably an emblem of royalty to the prehistoric dynasty now long forgotten.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Image over the doorway shown in Fig. 1.

Near Lake t.i.ticaca. Fig. 2.]

Some older historians speak of richly carved statues which formerly stood in this enclosure, and "many cylindrical pillars." Of the masonry of these ruins generally, Squier says: "The stone is faced with a precision that no skill can excel, its right angles turned with an accuracy that the most careful geometer could not surpa.s.s. I do not believe there exists a better piece of stone-cutting, the material considered, on this or the other continent."

The fortress above Cuzco, the capital of the Incas, is considered the grandest monument of extinct American civilization. "Like the Pyramids and the Coliseum, it is imperishable.... A fortified work, 600 yards in length, built of gigantic stones, in three lines, forming walls supporting terraces and parapets.... The stones are of blue limestone, of enormous size and irregular in shape, but fitted into each other with rare precision. One stone is twenty-seven feet high by fourteen; and others fifteen feet high by twelve are common throughout the work."

In all the architecture of the prehistoric Peruvians the true arch is not found, though there is an approach to the "Maya arch," formerly described, finishing the doorway overhead by overlapping stones.

The immense fortresses of Ollantay and Pisac are really hills which, by means of encircling walls, have been transformed into immense pyramids with many terraces rising above each other. All large buildings, such as temples and palaces, were laid out to agree with the "cardinal points,"

the princ.i.p.al entrance always facing the rising sun. The tomb construction of the ancient Peruvians has been already noticed (_v._ chap. iv).

To the south of Cuzco are the ruins of a temple, Cacha, which is considered to be of a date between the Cyclopean structures already described and the Inca architecture. The chief part is 110 yards long, built of wrought stones; and in the middle of the building from end to end runs a wall pierced by twelve high doorways. There were also two series of pillars which had formerly supported a floor.

Those traces of the Cyclopean builders point to an extremely early date, but several students of the Peruvian antiquities point confidently to distinct evidence of a still more primitive race--to be compared, perhaps, with those builders of "Druidic monuments" whom it is now the fashion to call "neolithic men." Some "cromlechs" or burial-places have been found in Bolivia and other parts of Peru; and in many respects they are parallel to the stone monuments found in Great Britain as well as Brittany and other parts of Europe. Some of those Peruvian cromlechs consist of four great slabs of slate, each about five feet high, four or five in width, and more than an inch thick. A fifth is placed over them.

Over the whole a pyramid of clay and rough stones is piled. Possibly that race of cromlech builders bore the same relation to the temple builders described above that the builders of Kits Coty House, between Rochester and Maidstone, bore to the temple builders of Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain. If they had to retreat, as the ice-sheet was driven farther from the torrid zone, then by the theory of the Glacial Period the Cromlech men in both cases would at last be simply Eskimos.

2. _Aqueducts._--The ancient Peruvians attained great skill in the distribution of water--especially for irrigation. Artificial lakes or reservoirs were formed, so that by damming up the streams in the rainy season a good supply was created for the dry season. Some great monuments still remain of their hydraulic engineering, such as extensive cisterns, solid dikes along the rivers to prevent overflow, tunnels to drain lakes during an oversupply, and, in some places, artificial cascades.

3. _Roads and Bridges._--The roads and highways of the Incas were so excellent that "in many places" they still offer by far the most convenient avenues of transit. They are from fifteen to twenty-five feet in width, bedded with small stones often laid in concrete. As the use of beasts of burden was almost unknown, the roads did not ascend a steep inclination by zigzags but by steps cut in the rock. At certain distances public shelters were erected for travelers, and some of these still offer the best lodging-houses to be found along the routes.

Bridges were of wood, of ropes made from maguey fiber, or of stone. Some of the latter are still in excellent condition, in spite of the violence of the mountain torrents which they have spanned for four centuries.