Note XV-4 — Chapter XV · SPANISH DEPREDATIONS ROUND PANAMÁ BAY. 1521-1526.

As a discoverer, his talents were unequal to the attempt. As a writer, Andagoya figured with Oviedo, Enciso, and other noted men in the retinue of the unscrupulous Pedrarias. Born in Alava province, he came to the Isthmus in 1514, and took an active part in the various expeditions for its subjugation and settlement. Through the favor of Pedrarias, whose wife's maid he married, he rose to encomendero, to regidor of Panamá, and, in 1522, to inspector-general of the Isthmus Indians. The present expedition, which brought back wonderful reports of the Inca empire, might have gained him the glories of that conquest, or at least he might have shared them with Pizarro, had his health not broken down. As it was, he merely acquired wealth as agent for the Peruvian hero, and although he rose afterward to adelantado and governor of New Castile, his integrity and comparative want of audacity prevented him from reaping the benefits within reach of less scrupulous rivals. The original of his well-written narrative, relating the history of the Isthmus and adjoining region in connection with his career, was found by Navarrete in the Seville Archives, and published in his Col. de Viages, iii. 393-459, from which source Markham made the translation issued in 1865 by the Hakluyt Society. Oviedo's account of Andagoya's career, from a different source, iv. 126-32, confirms the general exactness of his narrative, although Acosta, Comp. Hist. Nueva Granada, 383, declares it colored with a view to advocate his claim to the governorship of New Castile. Helps' Span. Conq., iii. 426, and March y Labores, Marina Española, ii. 121, give Andagoya's voyage.