Balboa Conquistador Author:Omar V. Garrison Garrison correctly places tragic emphasis on the nobility of Balboa who, unlike his compatriots, was a man who sought peace in an age of violence. — The three short years in which Balboa commanded the colony in Darien were the only peaceful and profitable ones the region would ever know. — By contrast, six months after the the arrival of Pedrarias... more » Davila, who took over Balboa's command and later beheaded the discoverer out of jealousy, there was not a friendly Indian left in the thirty provinces. The rapacious bands of conquistadores who preceded and followed Balboa to the New world...plundered the Indies and decimated the inhabitants with a terrible swiftness and cruelty unequaled in any other recorded period of history.« less