Page:Oregon, her history, her great men, her literature.djvu/25

22 nounced their purpose to discover a passageway from the Atlantic waters into the western Ocean. The British parliament in 1745 offered £20,000 to any Englishman sailing through a passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Furthermore various navigators sought the Columbia River with the belief that it would prove to be the Strait of Anian. It is, therefore, to be inferred that from the time of Columbus to the discovery of the Columbia various explorers were influenced by Cortereal's account of the Strait of Anian.

Columbus and Balboa Endeavor to Sail Through the Isthmus. In an effort to find a western passage-way from Europe to India, so that Spanish ships might compete with the ships of the Portuguese, Columbus in 1502 touched upon the shores of the Isthmus of Darien. Being unable to proceed, he returned to Spain. It so happened in 1513, that Balboa, like Columbus, found his westward progress obstructed by the Isthmus of Darien. His ships were hemmed in by land on three sides. There were the rich mines of South America to his left, the equally rich mines in Mexico to his right, and the silver mines of the Isthmus just ahead. Had Balboa dreamed of the possibility of loading his ships with silver and of returning to Spain to live in princely splendor, he might have been tempted to proceed no further on his journey of exploration. It was well, therefore, that his dream of life was mystic. He continued the explorations begun by Columbus; but finding no strait by which his ship could sail through the narrow neck of land, he crossed the mountain by a southward route and discovered a vast body of water which he called the South Sea, but which we call the Pacific Ocean. Upon arriving at the newly discovered sea, (1513), he dramatically waded into its waters, and with drawn sword claimed all its shores as part of the future Spanish Empire. These were the beginnings of the explorations which gradually approached the mouth of the Columbia.