12 The Beginning of British Honduras
had hanged Vasco Nunez de Balboa the discoverer of the
Pacific Ocean.
 Gil Gonzales de Avila had come to the Bay with an expedi-
tion direct from Hispaniola six weeks before Olid. But he
himself was now no longer with his people. He had left,
skirted the Gulf coast, and entered the Olancho valley in
Honduras whereabout he met and routed Hernando de Soto
by a stratagem and took away from him 120,000 dollars in
gold. De Soto was later in the conquest of Peru with Pizarro,
and still later discovered the Mississippi River, but now he
had come overland from Nicaragua as he was connected with
Pedrarias Davila who was operating from Panama northward.
Soon after Cristobal de Olid began to enter the country from
where he had landed at Triunfo de la Cruz fourteen leagues
east of Puerto Caballos. Gil Gonzales, learning of this, liber-
ated De Soto and proceeded toward the coast to meet this new
enemy who had neither priority nor license. But it hap-
pened that both Gil Gonzales and Francisco de las Casas were
made prisoners by Olid who was of strong physique and al-
ways went about unarmed even amongst his enemies. -Las
Casas and Gil Gonzales ate at Olid's table, and one night in
a discussion he was wounded by his two prisoners and later
executed in the market place of Naco, then a populous Indian
centre near the present San Pedro Sula. Shortly afterwards
Las Casas made Gil Gonzales a prisoner, and sent him to
Mexico overland, thus losing his Honduras discoveries and
conquests as he lost his Nicaragua discoveries and conquest.
Soldier and mystic, Gil Gonazles de Avila was a friend of the
powerful Bishop Fonseca of Burgos, head of the Department
of the Indies in the Royal Audience. These extraordinary
meetings of bold and resourceful adventurers before Cortes
came show us the aggressive rivalry and intrigue amongst the
conquistadores. All of them had trouble with scarcity of food
on the Atlantic shores of Honduras, where only the interior
valleys were cultivated and thickly peopled with Indians who
died off quickly and so caused scarcity of labour to the sub-