Out of the hundred and fifty men assigned to Ayora, fifty were chosen among the older colonists of Darien, they being persons of large experience who would take charge of the newcomers and serve them as guides.

When these measures were adopted, it was determined to report to the King, and at the same time to announce to him as a positive fact that there existed in the neighbourhood a cacique called Dobaiba, whose territory had rich gold deposits, which had till then been respected because he was very powerful.  His country extended along the great river which we have elsewhere mentioned.  According to common report, all the countries under his authority were rich in gold.  Fifty leagues divided Darien from the residence of Dobaiba.  The natives affirmed that gold would be found immediately the frontier was crossed.  We have elsewhere related that only three leagues from Darien the Spaniards already possessed quite important gold mines, which are being worked.  Moreover, in many places gold is found by breaking the soil, but it is believed to be more abundant in the territories of Dobaiba.  In the First Decade I addressed to Your Holiness, I had mentioned this Dobaiba, but the Spaniards were mistaken concerning him, for they thought they had met fishermen of Dobaiba and believed that Dobaiba was the swampy region where they had encountered these men.  Pedro Arias, therefore, decided to lead a selected troop into that country.  These men were to be chosen out of the entire company and should be in the flower of their age, abundantly furnished with darts and arms of every sort.  They were to march against the cacique, and if he refused their alliance, they were to attack and overthrow him.  Moreover, the Spaniards never weary of repeating, as a proof of the wealth they dream of, that by just scratching the earth almost anywhere, grains of gold are found.  I only repeat here what they have written.

The colonists likewise counselled the King to establish a colony at the port of Santa Marta in the district called by the natives Saturma.  This would serve as a place of refuge for people arriving from the island of Domingo.  From Domingo to this port of Saturma the journey could be made in about four or five days, and from Santa Marta to Darien in three days.  This holds good for the voyage thither, but the return is much more difficult because of the current we have mentioned, and which is so strong that the return voyage seems like climbing steep mountains.  Ships returning from Cuba or Hispaniola to Spain do not encounter the full force of this current; although they have to struggle against a turbulent ocean, still the breadth of the open sea is such that the waters have free course.  Along the coasts of Paria, on the contrary, the waters are cramped by the continental littoral and the shores of the numerous islands.  The same happens in the strait of Sicily where a current exists which Your Holiness well knows, formed by the rocks of Charybdis and Scylla, at a place, where the Ionian, Libyan, and Tyrrhenian seas come together within a narrow space.