Spanish Discovery 11
flow was probably always on a lower plane of social and ma-
terial development than the regions to the north and south
where lie the ruined cities. In Spanish colonial times, how-
ever, it fell to its present condition through the cessation of
traffic and the submersion of all former existing conditions
in the new economic and colonial orientation of Spain, which
further lessened the population and helped the disintegra-
tion of the social and religious organization of the tribes.
Hereabout Bernal Diaz del Castillo, the future historian, was
sent on a foraging expedition by Cortes, and he must have
passed near the extensive ruins of Lubaantun in Southern
British Honduras.
 San Gil de Buenavista, the first European settlement in the
Bay of Honduras, was made in 1524 by Gil Gonzales de Avila,
the discoverer of Nicaragua, the same leader who had set out
a few years before from Panama with men and horses, sailed
northward on the Pacific coast, landed, and entered the fertile
country lying between the Nicaraguan lakes and the Pacific
which was then densely peopled. Here he was hospitably
received by the great chief Nicarao after whom the country
is named. This chief had been informed of the sharpness of
the Spanish swords and was of the same Nahua stock as the
Toltecs and Aztecs, with whose calendar he was familiar. He
presented the Spanish commander with much gold, equal to
25,000 pieces of eight, and garments and plumes and feathers.
Nine thousand Indians were baptised after overthrowing
their idols. Nicarao asked the Spaniards many shrewd ques-
tions about the great flood and the sun, moon, stars, about
their motion, their quality, their distance, and what was the
cause of night and day and the blowing of the winds. But he
also asked them to tell him what so few men as they were go-
ing to do with so much gold. In 1519 Gil Gonzales de Avila
had been given a license from the King of Spain to explore
for 3,000 miles along the Pacific west and north of Panama,
from where he had set out and where he incurred the jealousy
of Pedrarias Davila, governor of Darien, the same fellow who