Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. III.djvu/500



In this universal excitement, the progress of dis- covery was pushed forward with a success, inferior, indeed, to what might have been effected in the present state of nautical skill and science, but ex- traordinary for the times. The winding depths of the Gulf of Mexico were penetrated, as well as the borders of the rich but rugged isthmus, which connects the American continents. In 1512, Flo- rida was discovered by a romantic old knight, Ponce de Leon, who, instead of the magical foun- tain of health, found his grave there. Solis, another navigator, who had charge of an expedition, projected by Ferdinand, to reach the South Sea by the circumnavigation of the continent, ran down the coast as far as the great Rio de la Plata, where he also was cut off by the savages. In 1513, Vasco Nunez de Balboa penetrated, with a handful of men, across the narrow part of the Isthmus of Da- rien, and from the summit of the Cordilleras, the first of Europeans, was greeted with the long- promised vision of the southern ocean.