Great quantities of virgin gold having been discovered in the mountain streams, he resolved to return, and found a settlement in that region, but the condition of his command at that time forced him to resume his homeward march without delay. Most of his men were now so exhausted that, like Balboa himself, who was ill of a fever, they had to be borne in hammocks on the Indians' shoulders. In this manner marching, and in such sorry state that by a concerted effort the caciques might have destroyed them utterly, the Spaniards approached the province of Comogre, where they found themselves among friends and on familiar ground. The old chief was dead, they were told, but in his place ruled the young cacique who had first informed Balboa of the South Sea and Peru. He received him hospitably, as before, and made him a present of all the gold he and his subjects had collected since they parted, in return for which Balboa gave him a shirt and a soldier's cloak. As he had embraced Christianity, young Comogre considered himself vastly superior to the pagans about him, and when clad in the garments of the Christians, he assumed the airs of a king and compelled his naked subjects to do him homage. At this, or a point previously reached on their journey, the Spaniards were rejoined by the wounded and invalids who had been left with Chiapes. Though but a handful of soldiers, they had travelled in safety through the forests and defiles of the mountains, such was the terror with which the deeds of Balboa had inspired the natives. One of the provinces they had passed through was governed by a minor cacique named Bonouvama, who not only detained, but entertained them most hospitably with everything his territory afforded. When they left his town he placed himself at their head, and on arriving in the presence of Balboa, said to him: "Lo, we are here! Receive, O valiant man, thy companions safe and uninjured, even as when they entered my bohio. May He who gives us the fruits of the earth, and who creates the thunder and the lightning, preserve thee and them, my lord!"