Empire: World History - 273. Panama’s Brutish Conquistador Who Found The Pacific and Lost His Head (Part 1)

Episode Date: July 16, 2025

Who was the first European to see the Pacific Ocean? Who was Balboa and why did he set his bloodhounds on Native people in Panama? Why do we remember Cortes over the brutish conquistador Balboa? Anita and William are joined by Mark Horton to discuss the conquistadors in Panama. Empire Club: Become a member of the Empire Club to receive early access to miniseries, ad-free listening, early access to live show tickets, bonus episodes, book discounts, our exclusive newsletter, and access to our members’ chatroom on Discord! Head to empirepoduk.com to sign up. For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to www.goalhanger.com. Email: [e-mail] Instagram: @empirepoduk Blue Sky: @empirepoduk X: @empirepoduk Assistant Producer: Becki Hills Producer: Anouska Lewis Executive Producer: Neil Fearn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community. Discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast, add free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.mparpoduk.com. Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnan. And me, William Duremberg. Now, inadvertently, Donald Trump has given us a theme for quite a few of these minnesota. series. How grateful we are. Yes, yes.

To our great leader. A podcast thanks him. But we decided that we would work down his shopping list. You know he's been expressing interest and buying all sorts of things. And, you know, we started with Greenland. We moved on to Canada and now we are heading south to Panama in Central

America. And we want to really try and understand why this former Spanish colony has made it onto his list. And we've got that brilliant man with us again. You love him. We love him. Brilliant maritime. I'm historical archaeologist Mark Horton, who has given us some absolute jaw-dropping scoops on this podcast, let me tell you. Do you know, the last time you were on, Mark, Willie and I just had to pinch ourselves because we thought we knew a story, and then you kept dropping new facts on us that basically left us shook.

Shook down to our little shoes, it did. So you will remember from Mark's wonderful appearance on the Roanoke episode that Mark has a habit of falling on major archaeological sites in rather nice parts of the world where he can go on holiday. You're making it sound like he trips over stuff in sunny climes. This man is meticulous and finds things that nobody else can find. As someone who's worked in the field with Mark, with my trowel, I know how Mark likes to. A lot of his work was centred around the lovely Kenyan beach resort of Lamu for a long time. Yeah, that's all right.

He's taking me to the Bahamas, aren't you, Mark? That was the agreement, Mark. That was the agreement. You and me and a trowel going to the Bahamas. Now, look, let's talk about this oldest Spanish colony in mainland America. How did you come to be digging around with your trowel over there? It ties into the Scots. So we were doing a big expedition looking for the abandoned Scottish colony,

the famous Darying colony. Exactly, which of course, Empire listeners who plugged into our Scottish Empire episode. last year we'll know all about. But just give us a quick, a quick sketch of that before we move on, Mark. The Scottish colony was an attempt to create a entrepaux on the Atlantic coast. Scotland was financially bankrupt and the idea, and this is the theme that's going to come through all this about crossing the isthmus. And a financier, brilliant economist, but practically useless man called William Patterson, managed to persuade most of Scotland to invest in a madcap colony on the coast of Darien.

And between 1698 and 1700, about 2,500,000 Scotsmen died, bankrupting Scotland, and some would say, forcing Scotland into a union with England is 1707. I think that's very much the case. But what we're talking about today, Mark,

is the earlier period. Take us before then. What's happening in the area where the Scots landed before they ever got there? And takes way back. Take us to the pre-colonial. New history. Yeah, I mean, it's really interesting because I can't say where the Spanish

alighted upon this bit of land sort of by mistake. This is the first area that the Spanish attempt to colonize on the mainland. This was a massive mistake on the Spanish. This is the first area of the mainland of the New World that the Spanish colonized. They previously set up settlements and towns on the islands, particularly in Hispaniolia, which is now Haiti and the Dominican Republic, but they hadn't ventured onto the mainland. And for some rather odd reason that has never really become clear, they're light upon the coast of Darien, which is about the most unpleasant place that you could possibly want to settle. It's the kind of armpit of the world. It rains stair rods for nine months of the year. It's infested with every form of

disease that you could possibly want. And to try and... But have that as your foothold for, as it were, colonisation of the new world was a very odd choice. Now, and when we're talking about Panama, we should sort of drop people on a map, kindly, gently, with love. So we're talking about a place that's between Costa Rica to the north, Colombia in the south. And actually, I just want to clarify one thing, is I was telling one of my sons that we were talking about this Isthmus, and he completely misheard me and thought I was talking about Christmas and Christmas Island. And it all got so confusing and pointless. But just for those, like my son listening, an Isthmus is a strip of land that lies between.

So it's like a little finger of fudge. It's a finger of land. And this particular isthmus lies between the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean. So in effect, you've got a bridge, a land bridge linking north and south America. And that is the bit that we're interested in. Can I just add a critical thing that we have to remember as a geography, that at this point, the Isthmus is not running north-south, but actually west-east. So the coastline that we're talking about is the north coast of Panama, which is the Caribbean side,

and the south coast, which faces the Pacific, is, of course, the South Seas. Good. Okay, we got it. It is a crossroads of land, but it is one, therefore, that is crucial for anyone wanting to make long journeys and avoid going the circuitous way that takes so many more days and possibly into hostile waters. Via Argentina and Chile and Terra del Fuego and all that sort of stuff. Absolutely, all via the Northwest Passage, which hadn't been discovered. The imperative was to try and get to the east. But that's a little bit further on.

I think that we should go to Columbus first and his fourth voyage. Take us there, Mark. So Columbus, to his dying day, thought there was a way through to reach China. And he believed that by coasting along the coast, this was the last throw of his dice. In 50 and 01, he sailed along the coast of Panama, looking for a gulf that he could sail into. And unfortunately, he didn't find it. He lost several ships. The whole thing was a massive disaster.

But he did encounter native populations. The really interesting thing is that in this area, we're not talking about great civilizations, a lot about Myers or Aztecs or Incas. We're talking about chieftain ships. So every five, ten miles as a separate political entity, probably defined by the rivers as a draining into the Caribbean Sea. These chieftains were heavily decorated with gold. They were clearly incredibly rich, but always fighting each other the whole time. Those sort of internecine battles between the two. It was possible, therefore, to get a foothold by aligning with one against another.

Exactly. So if you're a colonist, this is good news. A, they're covered in gold, which implies there's some gold mines. And B, they're all squabbling with each other, which means that in the old British manner, you can divide and rule and find a way in there. Not just the British manner, every colonisation. We talked about this when Cartier went to America. You know, when he went to Canada, what we now know is Canada, he was very happy to exploit the differences there. So, okay, so you've got littering jewelry and you've got sort of tribal interest. What does Columbus actually do? I mean, is this a case of taking beads and smallpox infested blankets and forging allies? How does he work this out? No, Columbus goes home, basically a disappointed man because he's never found the way to China. And that's all that he's interested in. And after Columbus's voyage, the Spanish sort of forget about this set of coastline for another five or six years. That's really interesting. Same thing happened in Canada as well. You know, they, you know, they didn't see any kind of interest in colonisation at the time. It was all about the passage and it was all about the belief that just beyond that waterfall is China. And they would write these sort of letters home saying, we are just inches away from China. But Mark, as I understand it, Columbus has this idea that there is a hidden strait. He's looking through every bay hoping to find the way through to China, that if only he could find this hidden. and straight that he could finally after three failed voyages, find what he's actually after, rather than an entirely new continent that he wasn't looking for in the first place. One of the most magnificent of these bays that he sailed into, which plays a part in the

second part of this story, is a place called Portobello, that he called Portobello, the most beautiful port, which is on the north coast of Panama. After he goes back, and this is still, so this is 1502, if my history's and memories, right, all that stuff with Cortez and the Aztecs isn't until the 1520s. Between Columbus going home and Cortez storming the pyramids of Mexico, we have two other conquistadors turning up. 509, is that right? That's correct. Tell us about these guys.

In 50808, 509, the Spanish decide to create a new colony, a deliberate attempt, a place called Terraferma is the title. The whole thing is a horrible internal conflict of different conquistadors fighting amongst themselves. They try initially to settle a colony of what's now the north coast of Colombia, but then abandon that and move into what's actually just on the Panamanian-Columbian border. It's actually in modern Colombia. And they found a town, upper river, called Santa Maria-Lantigua-Darion. and this is the first permanent settlement on the mainland of the New World. And Darian is one of these guys, isn't he? Darian is the Indian term for the location.

Oh, I see. It's an indigenous term. Yes. So it's a battle between two conquistadors. Vasco Nunez de Barboa, who will meet extensively, Martin Fernandez and Siso, who was a wealthy lawyer from Hispaniola. and these two people fight like dogs against each other. And the early story of colonisation is the battle between these two colourful historical figures. We love a pen portrait on this programme.

He said we'll talk about who and what they're like. Martin Fernandez Enceiso, what did people say about him at the time? What did they think about him at the time? And did he have a loyal following? Let's talk about those he gathered around him, thought of him. We actually know very little about him. I mean, history has recounted Balboa, but it was Inisco who was really the key figure in all this.

He was a lawyer, made a great deal of money settling disputes in Hispaniola and was really interested in seeing a new career on the main. He basically stopped the settlers stealing gold from the Indians, for example, and that created them a huge amount of resentment among the Spanish settlers that came to settle this new town. Balboa took the opportunity of then siding with these annoyed settlers. So the one we remember Balboa, the guy who were going to be talking about, is actually the rogue. That's interesting. He is completely the rogue.

And we know that he was particularly keen on looting and terrorising the local Indians. He had a pack of dogs that he set upon the Indians. Bloodhounds. Bloodhound, indeed. And there's a wonderful illustration a bit later of, These dogs destroying a killing and disemboweling 40 natives because Babur thought that they were associated with some force sodomy or homosexuality. It just sets his dogs onto them.

On to them. No, but then it's captured in portraiture, for God's sake. That was the holiday snap they decided to do. It's just, that's insane. And of course, the Indians that living here were known as the Quaver. So brutal was the Spanish intervention that none survived today. in other areas of the New World, we have descendants. We have descendants of the Maya.

Maya language is still spoken today. But in this era of Panama, the Quaver were exterminated in the course of 30 or 40 years. Just, I mean, you mentioned that gruesome portrait of the bloodhounds doing terrible things to indigenous people. But when you look at their portraits, I always like looking at portraits of people. The way that they prefer to be presented is also interesting. So, you know, you've got one of Barbeaux, who's dressing. pretty much in armour, you know, the warrior. He very much looks like a warrior.

And Ciso, he looks like a scholar. You know, he's got the felt hat and feather and the high collar. So the way they even project themselves, one is saying, I am learned, I am a poet, and the other one, you know, I'm going to set my dogs on you. Balboa was a pig farmer on Hispaniola, a failed pig farmer. And he arrived uninvited, stowed away on a ship with his dog. and then because by sheer force of personality became the de facto leader of Santa Maria. He has this idea quite early on of trying to cross the isthmus.

Isn't he one of the first that actually thinks that you can make some money and make your name by crossing to what the Indians have told him is the other ocean on the other side? So from his base at Santa Maria, he goes and travels up and down the coast, negotiating with the different Indian chieftains, siding with some, having battles with others, and getting to know the coastline as it extends to the west. Part of that travels, he learns about the South Seas. One of the Indians tells him there is a route across the isthmus that he can take. and in 1513 he takes that route and is the first person to, as it were, sight on a peak in Darien, the South Seas.

So Keats got it wrong. It was nothing to do with Stout Cortez, no. Indeed not. It was Vasco de Nes de Vapa, who basically climbed a tree and looked out and saw the South Sea, the southern ocean. And from that point, the whole notion of what the Spanish were doing in Panama, changed from, as it were, this god-forsaken tropical swamp to somewhere that one could exploit as a crossing point to reach the southern seas and eventually reach China and so forth. Mark, may I just circle back, though, to that awful massacre by Balboa, who, you know, by the second, I hope people are going to hate more and more. But what he described as sodomy, there is a cultural aspect to the tribe upon which he unleashed this hell that he did not understand. I think I understand

that, you know, they have assigned gender identities for males, but I'm not quite sure I get exactly what that means. Can you talk us through that? Yes. We have some contemporary accounts, particularly a friar called Orvieto, who actually leaves an extensive description of these Quaver people living on the north coast of Panama. And clearly, gender is a lot more fluid than Europeans at the time would have accepted. And though while he's a friar who doesn't describe sodomy as such, he clearly shows that they cross-dress in various ways and acquire female gender at times. So there was an ambiguity in these northern tribes, the Quaver, which Babur must. have misinterpreted. They were basically trans. Many native peoples are trans, and Babboa obviously

misinterpreted this as sodomy. How interesting. In India, we have the third sex. We have the Hidras. And even in colonial passports, who were offered Hidra as an option for sex, and there were always three boxes to tick. It's always far more plural than we think of things. Mark, before we come to the break and set off with Balboa on his expedition. Just one question. You described him letting off his dogs and being this brute. Is disease already breaking out among the Indians, or is that something that happens over 150 years? I mean, are we seeing Indians dying of smallpox and all these imported diseases immediately he arrives? As far as we can see, yes, everyone's dying on both sides. The mortality amongst the Spanish settlers is also extreme. So the life expectancy there was very

small, but they obviously introduced European diseases, many of which we don't know exactly what they were, because some of these 16th century diseases don't actually have proper medical counterparts today. The baccarus has died or developed. There's a huge debate actually how many Indians were here on this, was Panama. I mean, some would argue it might be one or two million. I think modern scholarship suggests it was about 200,000 or so. So the population collapse wasn't quite as extreme, but within 50 years, they'd all gone.

What's so interesting, though, is this picture you paint, Mark, of the floundering of these initial attempts. I'd always had the impression that, you know, just there's Columbus and then Cortez just walks in and conquers everything. There is this moment rather like the Scots later, where the Spanish just don't understand how to do it and a dying of disease and are fumbling around, making a mess of things. Yes, and I think it's worth pointing out that this is the training school for the most famous conquistadors. So Pizarro is there, Cortez is there, and they're learning how to do it from Balboa. That's amazing. Gosh, so he's kind of, you know, the teacher, the big daddy of all these conquistadors who are coming. So look, we're going to take a break.

But what we have here, we have a man in the shape of Balboa who is ruthless, who doesn't think much of the local population. It doesn't try or care to understand the ways of the local population, thinks nothing of slaughtering and massacring them. But he has his eye on gold, and nothing, particularly not the natives, are going to get in his way. Welcome back. So we last saw Balboa shining up a tree and spotting the ocean from the top of it. In 1512, he secures enough money and backing to launch an expedition. an exploratory probing inland through territory controlled by several chieftains.

One of these, Comagre, is subdued and baptized, but his son is reportedly so exasperated by the Spanish complaints of the lack of gold that he tells them to head further south, where they'd find not only the vast wealth but the other sea. So that's the moment that we're taking up. Mark, tell us what happens on this expedition. How many are they? How big an event is this? Is this just a few men stumbling through the jungle, or is this a sort of rather like my favorite film, Aguirre, Roth of God, with conquistadors hauling cannon up the sides of Machu Picchu and all the rest of it?

Well, at this point, no, it wasn't. It was a relatively small expedition. We don't know exactly how many people involved. And obviously they had their Indians, the ones that were on their side to guide them through. I mean, today, that landscape is primary rainforest, virtually impenetrable, incredibly difficult to move through. So crossing over was a massive achievement. However, we don't know whether in the 16th century it was so forested because the Indians there living and cultivating up the mountain sides. So it might have been much more savannah, open grassland than the forest that's covering the isthmus today. Which, of course, is easier for you and your conquistadors and your bloodhands to find your way through. Find your way through, that's right. So he then went all the way through and went down to the Chicananacui River and then took probably canoes down the Chicananacui and stood at the mouth of Chicanacui in the Gulf of some migrail and placed the standard in here for Spain.

I always, from movies like Aguirre have this picture of conquistadors on these expeditions covered in. sort of breastplates and helmets and thick leather breeches and boots up to their thighs. It's going to be really hot, isn't it? Aren't they going to get very hot? Are they clanking in all this stuff? Do they have a lightweight sort of camping kit which they get into when they go off? The summer wardrobe. He's asking about the summer wardrobe. I think they're clanking over. I mean, maybe not in full armour, but certainly breastplates and things because they're worried at any time they might be ambushed by unfriendly Indians. This is day. dangerous territory. And so indeed they're clanking through with armour and muskets. It must have been

incredibly horrible. And they've got slaves with them carrying their stuff. Is that right? Well, not at this stage, probably. They're probably, again, they're using the natives. Slaves come in a little bit later. So he comes and puts canoes in the river at the Chicanacui and takes it all to the entrance to the sea, the Pacific Ocean, the Gulf of San Riegel. And he literally puts the Spanish standard in the Pacific Ocean, the South Sea, because of course he's travelled from the north to the south and claims this great ocean for Spain. And this is 29 days after he sets off. So it's quite an expedition. It's a month of jungle clanking. Jungle clanking, where he loses a lot of men. I mean, are the heat stroke that is obviously

going to follow clanking through the jungle in intense heat with breastplates and leather stockings. But there he is, claiming an entire ocean for Spain. There is John Keats' poem, which I'll just read to you. It could be about him or someone like him on first looking into Chapman's Homer. And he writes, like Stout Cortez, when the eagle eyes, he stared at the Pacific, and all his men looked at each other with a wild surmise, silent upon a peak in Darien. I remember where I was when I read that poem for the first time. It's such a great, great line.

But of course, you know, Balboerd, doesn't rhyme like Cortez does. No. But I mean, would Keats have known, in all seriousness, would Keats have known about Balboa? I mean, Cortez is a name that clearly was legendary in the schoolrooms. I mean, what about Balboa's name? Not only does Keats know about Balboa, Sir Thomas Brown gets a copy of his diary. And so on the Norfolk, those of you who've read the Rings of Saturn, WG Seabult, will know all about Sir Thomas Brown sitting in somewhere in East Anglia. Well, who is he, for those who have not read that venerable tone?

So Thomas Brown is a wonderful sort of Elizabethan alchemist and thinker and geographer and botanist and sort of man of letters and learning who writes wonderful, complicated poems. He does write a journal about this that appears in England. So he is a known quantity. So then Keats is a screw-up rather than ignorance. I mean, you were saying, Mark, that actually not many people did know about Barbera. So I'm confused now. There are, sort of like a hand full of intelligentsia who write clever books who know about him. But Keats was one such. So how did he come to say it was Cortez rather than Balboa? I mean, do we know how that happened? Just a screw up.

A screw up, I think. Okay, even great men can screw up. There we are. I feel better about myself. Keats is about 18 when he writes it. He's not much older than your boys, Anita. So he's allowed to... Well, then screw ups are likely, let me say.

Okay, in that case. Okay, so he's discovered. the Pacific in 1513. Harry's back to Santa Maria with the news that all this is discovered. But meanwhile, a very nasty piece of work arrives as the new governor of Santa Maria, a man called Pedrarius Davila. And he has a royal warrant to dispose Baba as the governor. And what's more in Ciso is there in the ship with Davila.

and they together conspire to take revenge on Balboa, who had deposed a few years earlier. So this was a powder keg for internecine war between the two. And Balboa decides to get the hell out. And in 1514, 1515, he moves along the coast and found his own new city called Akla, the second city on the mainland of the new world. And this is a very, as a well, significant place. It's probably the first place that's actually laid out on the colonial grid system in the mainland.

And great, as it were, hope is made that this is going to be a really significant new settlement. Mark, just to put this in the wider history of colonialism, what other colonies are there of Europe at this time, other than the... crusader states, which have been and gone by this time, in the 15th century. Is this the first colonial grid plan ever built? Well, there's a possibility that they might have built them on Hispaniola. Some of the earliest, early towns there, Santo de Miningo, and they might be on the grid pattern. But certainly on the actual mainland of America, this is probably the first, as it were, a colonially planned city. I said this before, but we have this image of everything kicking off with

Cortez and Mexico. There's this whole history. I had never. no knowledge of. Archaeologically speaking, how much of the lost city, you know, can you find at all? Have you found any of it at all? So in 1979, I found ACLA. That's a very clever of you, Mark. Were you the first to find ACLA? Yeah.

People had speculated roughly where it was. But we found the ceramic evidence, the smoking gun evidence, that this was Barbaro City. So what did you find? Like, I mean, describe. So we found ceramic evidence. And I stumbled across a whole lot of pottery called Ila Polychrome, which is a type of pottery that goes out of use by around 1520. That was a really good bit of evidence. We found brick buildings, remains of various structures, but tower, possibly in the midst. We didn't have time to clear the site

and do extensive excavations, but we were pretty certain that this is the place. We could put it on the map. I have many questions because I'm just fascinated with you. completely besotted with you, yes, but also fascinated at the work that you do. So when you go to a place like that, is it completely overgrown, a place where you suspect there is a loss city? Or is there, you know, sort of some kind of urban life that's going along and you have to sort of wind in? What are you walking into? What is it that you see? And what is it that makes your heartbeat faster going, you know what?

I think here, this is where we put the trench. Oh, the problem is you go in and basically it's coconuts along the beach, probably, but you go in a few yards. in land and it's pretty impenetrable. Unless it's farmed by the Cooner, it's impenetrable forest. So you literally have to hack your way through with a machete and you very rapidly lose any sense of direction. And of course, back in 1979, GPS and then the thing else hasn't been invented. So actually plotting and mapping these sites is really hard to actually work out what you found in the middle of forest. Where the hell are you? The lost archaeologist after the lost city.

Never to be seen again. Right. Okay. But you did find a spot and something, a spidey sense or whatever it is that makes you tick, thought actually here, there'd be not gold, but there'd be something interesting right here. So what is it that made you stop, where you stopped? Yeah, were the walls overgrown with lianas and vines? What are we talking about?

Yes. No, there weren't walls. It's a scatter of bricks and things. Unfortunately, the Spanish had reformed. fortified it in the 18th century. So it was a massive wall that at first one thought, ah, that is actually the town wall of Ackler. Do you look it carefully, worked out that it was an 18th century Spanish fort on the top of the site. I suppose the other thing about it is that it was a native site. So a huge amount of native pottery in there alongside it. So, you know,

separated out the colonial from the Native American was really hard. So do we imagine horrible Baba with his bloodhounds again, sort of setting them off at a whole new tribe and master and clearing the natives out and then moving into their houses? Is that what we're talking? I suspect so initially. Indeed. Yes, absolutely. Clearing them out. And of course, because it was a native settlement, it was clear. They didn't have to clear the bush or anything in order to settle there. So it's easier for him just to kill the locals and move into their houses than it is to cut, cut down vines. It was a great spot, a nice big bear. with sort of barrier islands around the outside

and two rivers that come in so that the site was between these two rivers. So lots of fresh water was available. Good anchorage, well-settles. It was a perfect place to build a new colonial city. Did he ever write anything about his exploits? I know stuff was written about him, but was he a record keeper of any sorts?

And we don't know what his attitude. Well, we kind of guess what his attitude was towards the native, but nothing from his voice, nothing from his own hand. And the fact that he arrived as a stowaway, Mark, and that he's then replaced when the royal warrant arrives by someone. He's an outsider, is he, in Spanish society? He's not from some sort of grand Spanish family. He's of minor nobility, who basically went out to seek his fortune,

ended up a pig farmer, and realized that he wasn't going to make enough money, being a pig farmer. So that's why he made the decision. This new world is opening up and I'm going to be part of it. So here he is, you know, failed pig farmer but now successful murderer, who's come and he's, you know, sort of claimed not just the Pacific Ocean, but this, you know, Clement Bay where he's cleared out the indigenous population who may have lived there for centuries.

What does he do? I mean, is he satisfied with that or does his ambition continue to stretch to the horizon? Well, having, as it were, claim the Southern Ocean, the next stage is to build a navy there, to explore further along the coast. Of course, the route round the New World at this point had not been discovered. The Cape Horn hadn't been around it. Magellium was a few years hence. The Northwest Passage was impenetrable.

And so he decided to take ships apart at Ackler. There must be a great big shipyard. And then used his natives under probably some four duress to carry the ships, plank by plank, fitting by fitting over to the Pacific Ocean, where they were then reassembled to create a fleet that could then explore along the Pacific coast. Crikey, so he's only just discovered the sea, and already he's got a fleet bobbing the far side, about to go south presumably and discover the Inca's. Yes, he could do if his sad ends that we're going to come to hadn't happened.

All right. Oh, well, okay, well, you've teed herself. Tell us what happened. A sad end for Balboa. I don't think there's many weeping people out there listening to this. So what happens to Barbeau then? So Enceiso and Davila conspire between them to accuse Balboe of exceeding his royal authority by the establishment of Atler and his various activities. And so they set about arresting him. In fact, he's arrested on his way back to Darien, having made these great discoveries. and creating a fleet on the Pacific. And in fact, it's Pizarro himself who actually arrests Babur and brings him back to Ackler, where he is then summarily tried on accusation of high treason and then promptly along some of four of his acolytes beheaded in the town square of Ackler.

Wow. What's he done that's actually brought this about? Because people are exceeding their authority a great deal at this time, because they're months away from Spain and orders run clear and so on. Why has he managed to unite even the young Pizarro against him? It all sets back to Pedrarius Davila, who was a seasoned old warrior, but he was very ambitious. And these are presumably, just to get the timing,

these are people who in their youth were fighting the Moors in Spain. That's right. And the Italians, so they were seasoned, sold, And I think Petras Davila saw Balboa as a threat to his colonial ambitions. And so created these trumped-up charges to dispose of him. Yeah, I mean, just honestly, while you're not crying into your cornflakes over Balboa's fate, can I just tell you, I mean, Davila is arguably even worse, because his nickname is Davila the cruel, isn't it?

I mean, he's got a reputation for being quite the bastard. Absolutely. And so he had no truck with the natives. Extermination was widespread. But what Davila wanted to do was establish a foothold in the South Seas on the South Coast. And so he used Balboa's ships to sail along the coast to the west and finding this wonderful inlet, which then became the site of Panama, was a small native fishing village. It was then converted into this.

as it were, a new city facing in the south-east of the Pacific Ocean. What sort of day to be talking now, Mark? 1519. So it's almost immediately after the execution of Balboa. And immediately before Cortez goes off and attacks Mexico. That's right. Acklo is sort of semi-abandoned at that point, and he creates a second city at a place called Norma de Dios on the Atlantic coast,

and that is the much easier line to cross the isthmus, north to south, and of course it's that line that's then subsequently followed by the Panama Canal. Okay, but at the time when he's sort of got his midst on Panama, he's, you know, taken Balbo's ships, his life, the land, the city, all of it, and he's found Panama. Is there a stage where he says, aha, do you know what, a canal would be great here? Maybe I should write home about a canal, a Panama Canal, or is that just something that never occurs to them about that? They do think about it, but obviously the mountains are very high here. No one would ever have the capacity to do a canal. In fact, a roadway is probably as good as a canal at this date.

And I think Philip the second vetoes it and says, this is all mad. Oh, no, what he says is even better. He said, if God had wanted a canal there, he would have built one. That's right. Philip the second says, which is a, you know, complete abdication of any responsibility to do any kind of improvement to anything at all? In my notes here, the guy who comes up with the idea first, certainly in writing, is a Spanish priest called Francisco Lopez de Gomara, writing to the king in 1551, saying that it could be possible. This is something you could do.

And he says, if there are mountains, there are also hands to a king of Spain with the wealth of the Indies at his command, when the object to be attained is the spice trade, What is possible is easy. So like Columbus, they're still not happy with all the gold that they've discovered. They're still thinking about spices, China and the East Indies. So finish off. At this point, they see these natives wearing lots of gold and realize that this is the wealth of Panama.

They hunt for gold mines everywhere, most of which have been largely exploited. And the gold runs out. There's no more gold to be had. In fact, these gold items that are spousal, that the Indians are wearing, are stuff that's been handed down, been traded from South America. And so they run out of gold.

Right. When you say gold mines, are we talking sort of hacking at rock gold mines? Is that what they do? Or panning in rivers gold mines? Or where are they seeking to find it? Or they think it's gold mines, but it's placer mining.

That's most likely, which is panning for gold in these rivers. And these rivers, specifically on the Pacific coast and on the north coast in Rostombe Varagas area, it's full of gold in the rivers themselves. So you could pan for gold. You're not talking about driving adits into the hillside. You're not hacking land together.

So this is also interesting because had they not had such disdain for the local population and perhaps learned a bit of the language and perhaps treated them with respect, they might have said, this is my granny's necklace. This doesn't belong to me. We didn't find this. killing us because we have no more gold for you. Ironically, when I was exploring on the Pacific side a few years ago, there were gold miners still there working,

placer mines in the estuary, looking, going through the gravel of the river and finding tiny little bits of gold. Mark, we're heading towards the end of this episode now, but let's look ahead and set up what's coming next because at some point we're going to do a whole series on this is of course Pizarro and the conquest of the Inca's and the discovery of all the gold down in Peru. But looking ahead, this greatly increases the value of the Panama Isthmus

because after the conquest of the Inca's, this isthmus becomes the overland route for treasures pouring back to Europe. And its value is far greater than anything Balboa or his enemies could have guessed. And before long, you begin to get fleets, arriving at the Pacific terminus of the trail, unloading their bullions, which would then be transferred across the isthmus to the waiting ships at Nomre de Dios. And one account talks about 1,200 mule loads of precious metal leaving Panama City as early as 1550. So this world that we've seen set up in this expedition is now going to become one of these incredibly rich points of

transfer for the silver of the new world to head back to Europe, which completely changes not only the economy of Europe, but as far away as China and as India, there's this sudden flood of riches. And this is the point to which the dollar, the Spanish dollar, becomes the coin of value as far away as China. And when we're talking even in our opium war expeditions, the Chinese are still thinking in those terms. Take us now, Mark, to the picture of. of the silver centre that Panama becomes just before we get to what we're going to be dealing with next, which is the arrival of English pirates and Sir Francis Drake. Set it all up for us. After the conquest of the Inca's in particular, a huge amounts of gold is coming out of South America,

but it's always a finite quantity. It's all being melted down, and ultimately it's silver, which is the bullion that reflects Europe, as you intimated willie. And in particular, a particular mountain, what's now in Bolivia called the Potosi Mountain, is discovered as basically a mountain made of silver. And it's the silver coming out of here, which is the thing that totally reflates the European economy in the late 16th century onwards. And the key point is the Panama Isthmus is where that. that silver is being shipped across the Isthmus and into galle, galleons, to take it back to Spain.

And the other key point, presumably, is that the English at this period, being Protestants, are not only not accessing this, because they're at war with the Catholic, Portuguese and the Spanish, they're also seeing their enemies enriching themselves. Getting fatter and fatter on, you know, shiny silver. And so what we're going to see next in the next episode, and Mark is kindly coming back to tell us all about it, is the arrival on this coast of a whole bunch of near-do-well English pirates. And if you can't wait, because, you know, you don't have to, it is a little bit like discovering a mine of precious metal to join the Empire Club.

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