LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

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They gazed on a strange valley and a wonderful city

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'Hold, lieutenant, would you kill your slave?"

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Side by side they floated down the narrow stream,

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"Behold your son !"

Map of the period,

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306

351

363

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ESTEVAN.

CHAPTER I.

AN INFANT WORLD.

THE evening of November 9, 1509, the little town of San Domingo was in a fever of excitement. It had been a busy day, and the confusion and hubbub continued until late in the night. Ships were lying in the harbor ready to sail with It was their object to explore and conquer the then unknown "Castilla del Oro," or what was supposed to be the "Aurea Chersonesus" of the ancients, whence King Solomon procured the gold used for building his temple.

the rising sun.

A question which but a short time before had threatened to plunge the colonies into a civil war had been amicably settled. Ojeda and Nicuesa, two

bold, enterprising cavaliers, claimed the governor ship of Jamaica and Darien. Juan de la Cosa induced the rival governors to allow the river Darien to be the boundary line between their respective jurisdictions at that point. Don Diego Columbus, son of Christopher Columbus, and hereditary admiral and viceroy-general, settled the dispute over Jamaica himself. He already felt aggrieved at the distribution of governments without his consent and even his knowledge, contrary to the privileges inherited from his father the discoverer. Jamaica lay almost at his own door, and he would not brook its being made a matter of dispute between these brawling governors; so, without awaiting the slow and uncertain course of remonstrating with the king, who had already shown little regard for his wishes and rights, he took the matter in his own hands, and offered the governorship of Jamaica to his stanck friend and brave officer Juan de Esquibel, who with seventy men took command of the island and held it subject to Don Diego Columbus, notwithstanding that the fiery Ojeda swore he would strike off his rival's head if he did so.

The above stirring incidents formed live topics for conversation among the inhabitants of San Domingo. Ojeda had become somewhat reconciled to the act of Diego Columbus, and was, on the next morning, to sail with his vessels to the conquest of

his possessions in Darien, which were rumored to contain fabulous wealth.

Long after the darkness of a tropical night had settled over the little town, people were busy either making arrangements for their departure, or, in knots and clusters, on the streets and in the houses, were discussing the wonders which the expedition was to unfold.

We invite the reader's attention to a group of four men assembled in one of the apartments of Hernando Estevan's house, a substantial dwelling, standing on an eminence in the suburbs of the town, with a fine view of the bay and ships riding at anchor. The best-known man of the group at this time was Hernando Estevan himself, who had come with Columbus on his first voyage, and was among the first to touch the soil of the infant world. Hernando loved the great admiral, whom he had served since boyhood, and who on more than one occasion had saved his life. When he became cognizant of the intrigues of Bovadilla to deprive Christopher Columbus of his rights, he was loud in his denunciation of the admiral's enemies, thereby bringing down upon his own head some of the thunderbolts which ruined Columbus.

The three companions of Estevan on this evening were Hernando Cortez, Vasco Nuñez de Balboa, and Francisco Pizarro, three men since known to