The Chiriquians, like many of their neighbors in the tropical portions of the American continent, were skilled in the working of metals. Gold, silver, copper, and tin--the last in alloys with copper forming bronze--are found in the graves. Gold is the most important, and is associated with all the others in alloys or as a surface coating. The inhabitants of the isthmus at the time of the discovery were rich in objects, chiefly ornaments, of this metal, and expeditions sent out under Balboa, Pizarro, and others plundered the natives without mercy. When the Indian village of Darien was captured by Balboa (1510) he obtained “plates of gold, such as they hang on their breasts and other parts, and other things, all of them amounting to ten thousand pesos of fine gold.”[14] From an expedition to Nicaragua the same adventurers brought back to Panama the value of “112,524 pieces of eight in low gold, and 145 in pearls.”[15] Early Spanish-American history abounds in stories of this kind. Among others we read that Columbus found the natives along the Atlantic coast of Chiriqui and Veragua so rich in objects of gold that he named the district _Castillo del Oro_. It is said that the illusory stories of an _El Dorado_ somewhere within the continent of South America arose from the lavish use of gold ornaments by the natives whom the Spaniards encountered, and that Costa Rica gets its name from the same circumstance. It is also recorded that the natives of various parts of Central and South America at the date of the conquest were in the habit of opening ancient graves for the purpose of securing mortuary trinkets. The whites have followed their example with the greatest eagerness. As far back as 1642 the Spaniards passed a law claiming all the gold found in the burial places of Spanish America,[16] the whole matter being treated merely as a means of revenue.