Simultaneously Colmenares embarked sixty soldiers in the four uru and set out up the river to look for Zemaco.  The young woman’s brother served as guide.  Arriving at the village of Tichiri, where the provisions for the army had been collected, Vasco Nunez took possession of the place and captured the stores of different coloured wines, as we have already noted at Comogra, and different kinds of native stores.  The sacchos of Tichiri, who had acted in a manner as quartermaster of the army, was captured together with four of the principal officers, for they did not expect the arrival of the Spaniards.  The sacchos was hanged on a tree that he had himself planted, and shot through with arrows in full view of the natives, and the other officers were hanged by Colmenares on scaffolds, to serve as an example to the others.  This chastisement of the conspirators so terrified the entire province that there was not a person left to raise a finger against the torrent of Spanish wrath.  Peace was thus established, and their caciques bending their necks beneath the yoke were not punished.  The Spaniards enjoyed some days of abundance, thanks to the well-filled storehouse they had captured at Tichiri.[3]

[Note 3:  This pitiful story of native treachery is frequently repeated, and explains the enslavement, the downfall, and in parts, the extermination of the American tribes.  Everywhere they betrayed one another to the final undoing of all.]

BOOK VI

In the general assembly convoked shortly afterwards, the colonists unanimously decided to send an envoy to Hispaniola to ask for reinforcements and for the appointment of a judge.  The same envoy would go on to Spain where he would first explain to the Admiral and his officers and afterwards to the King, all that had happened, and would seek to persuade his Majesty to send the thousand soldiers the son of Comogre had declared would be necessary for the expedition across the mountains to the South Sea.  Vasco Nunez sought to be chosen for this mission, but his companions refused him their votes, and his adherents would not allow him to go; not only because they would have felt themselves abandoned, but because they suspected that once out of it, Vasco would not return to such a furnace of calamities, following the example of Valdivia and Zamudio, whom they had sent off in the month of January, and who, they thought, had no intention of returning.  In this latter they were wrong, as we shall show in the proper place, for those men were dead.

After several ballotings without result, the colonists finally chose a certain Juan Quevedo, a serious man of mature age, who was agent of the royal treasury in Darien.  They had full confidence that Quevedo would conduct this business successfully, and they counted on his return because he had brought his wife with him to the new world and was leaving her in the colony as a pledge.  As soon as Quevedo was elected,