In like manner Nicuesa reproached everybody in arrogant terms, and within a few days he commanded that they should make ready to depart.  The colonists begged him not to decide hastily, and to wait at least until the crops that they had sown were harvested, as the harvesting season was now at hand.  Four months had now passed since they had sown.  Nicuesa refused to listen to anything, declaring they must leave such an unfortunate country as quickly as possible.  He therefore carried off everything that had been landed at the Gulf of Veragua, and ordered the ships to sail towards the east.  After sailing sixteen miles a young Genoese, called Gregorio, recognised the vicinity of a certain harbour, to prove which he declared that they would find buried in the sand an anchor which had been abandoned there, and under a tree near to the harbour, a spring of clear water.  Upon landing they found the anchor and the spring, and gave thanks for the excellent memory of Gregorio, who, alone amongst the numerous sailors who had sailed these seas together with Columbus, remembered anything about these particulars.  Columbus had named this place Porto Bello.

Hunger induced them to land at several places, and everywhere their reception by the natives was hostile.  The Spaniards were now reduced by famine to such a state of weakness that they could no longer fight against natives, even naked ones, who offered the least resistance.  Twenty of them died from wounds of poisoned arrows.  It was decided to leave one half of the company at Porto Bello, and with the other half Nicuesa continued his voyage eastwards.  Twenty-eight miles from Porto Bello and near a cape which Columbus had formerly called Marmor, he decided to found a fort, but the want of food had too much reduced the strength of his men to permit this labour.  Nicuesa nevertheless erected a small tower, sufficient to withstand the first attacks of the natives, which he called Nombre de Dios.  From the day he had left Veragua, not only during his march across the sandy plains but also because of the famine which prevailed while he was constructing the tower, he lost two hundred of the men who still survived.  Thus it was that, little by little, his numerous company of seven hundred and eighty-five men was reduced to about one hundred.

While Nicuesa, with a handful of wretched creatures, struggled in this manner against ill fortune, rivalry for the command broke out in Uraba.  A certain Vasco Nunez Balboa[3] who, in the opinion of most people, was a man of action rather than of judgment, stirred up his companions against the judge Enciso, declaring that the latter possessed no royal patents giving him judicial powers.  The fact of his being chosen by Hojeda to act as governor was not enough.  He succeeded in impeding Enciso in his functions, and the colonists of Uraba chose some of their own men to administer the colony; but dissension was not long in dividing them, especially when their leader