Page:Columbus and other heroes of American discovery; (IA columbusotherher00bell).pdf/49

 *ward formed part of one vast continent, one hardy Spanish mariner after another wasted his strength in seeking for some channel between the so-called islands hemming in his bark on this side and on that, until at last the mystery was solved by a freebooter named Vasco Nunez de Balboa, whose romantic story must be given here, forming as it does an era in the history of the whole of the New World.

Nothing could well have been more inauspicious than the commencement of the voyage of the first European who set eyes on the Pacific Ocean. One of the earliest settlers in San Domingo, Vasco Nunez de Balboa was so unsuccessful in his tilling of the soil that he soon found himself in absolute destitution, and, hoping to elude his creditors, he managed to hide himself in a vessel bound for the Caribbean Sea, at that time a favorite resort of pirates and adventurers of every description.

When out of sight of land, Balboa ventured forth from his cask, and, falling on his knees before the captain, Enciso by name, entreated him to protect him and let him share in the expedition. Enraged at so flagrant a defiance of his authority as the concealment of a man on board his ship, Enciso at first threatened to put our hero ashore on some desert island and abandon him to starve, but finally, softened by his eloquent pleadings, he consented that he should work out his passage. To this leniency Enciso soon afterward owed the safety of himself and all his people. His vessel was wrecked on the coast of the Isthmus of Darien, and Nunez, who had visited the district in his early wanderings, led the Spaniards to a friendly Indian village on the Darien.

Life was, however, all Balboa chose to accord to the man to whom he owed his own rescue from a miserable death. Arrived at the village, he accomplished the deposition of Enciso, and his own appointment to the supreme command. Then, having learned in various preliminary excursions that, six days' journey to the west, there lay another sea, he led his men in the direction indicated, and, after literally fighting his way, step by step, through tribes of hostile Indians, he came, on the 15th of September, 1513, to the foot of a high mountain, from which his guides assured him the sea could be seen.

Imbued, in spite of his rough freebooting nature, with something of the true spirit of an explorer, Balboa now ordered his followers to wait, while he made the ascent alone. Arrived on the brow of the hill, he looked down, and beheld beneath him the wide-stretching ocean, lighted up by the brilliant rays