Note X-31 — Chapter X · PEDRARIAS DÁVILA ASSUMES THE GOVERNMENT OF DARIEN. 1514-1515.

Some of the pearls were of extraordinary size and beauty. One, in particular, attained no small celebrity. It was pear-shaped, one inch in length, and nine lines in its largest diameter. Vasco Nuñez describes it as weighing 'ten tomines'—a tomin is about one third of a drachm—'very perfect, without a scratch or stain and of a very pretty color and lustre and make; which, in truth,' artlessly intimating what would be his course under the circumstances, 'is a jewel well worthy of presentation to your Majesty, more particularly as coming from these parts. It was put up at auction and sold for 1,200 pesos de oro to a merchant, and finally fell into the hands of the governor.' Oviedo, iii. 49, says it weighed 31 carats. Subsequently it was presented through Doña Isabel to the queen, and was valued in Spain at 4,000 ducats. Pedrarias is further charged with divers misdemeanors. Carta del Adelantado Vasco Nuñez de Balboa, October 16, 1515, in Pacheco and Cárdenas, Col. Doc., ii. 526, and Navarrete, Col. de Viages, iii. 375; Ovalle, Hist. Rel. Chile, in Pinkerton's Voy., xiv. 146-7.