Note XIV-4 — Chapter XIV · GIL GONZALEZ IN COSTA RICA AND NICARAGUA. 1519-1523.

In the Expediente sobre el Cumplimiento de la Cédula—see Los Navíos de Vasco Nuñez, in Squier's MSS.—is given at wearisome length the ceremony and sayings at this delivery and the results. Briefly, on the 4th of February, 1520, Pedrarias humbled himself to the dust before the sacred cédula; February 5th, he talked much, saying that he had finished the ships begun by Vasco Nuñez; that they had cost more than 50,000 ducados, beside sweat and blood; that with them the great city of Panamá—'la cibdad de Panamá'—with its gold mines on one side and pearl fisheries on the other, had been founded and the country thereabout pacified, and that if the king knew all this he would not take the ships from those who had built them and give them to another; February 7th, Juan del Sauce declared that, unless the ships were surrendered, all the gold, pearls, or other property taken in them would belong, under the king's order, to the fleet of Gil Gonzalez; February 8th, Pedrarias replied that without the ships the city could neither be sustained nor labor be continued, and he called on the royal officers present, Puente, the treasurer, Marquez, the contador, and Juan de Rivas, factor, to say that these things were so; but the royal officers answered that Pedrarias must obey the king's command and give Gil Gonzalez the ships, keeping one, perhaps, with which to protect the city, and selling the others to Gil Gonzalez on such terms as he and the owners might arrange. In regard to withholding the ships Pedrarias was certainly in the right, though it was dangerous, and he claimed that he would obey and was obeying the king; but when, on February 9th, he demanded that Gil Gonzalez should appear in person and lay before him the instructions and plans of the expedition, he became most coolly impudent.