Page:The Tourist's California by Wood, Ruth Kedzie.djvu/109

 CHRONOLOGY 83 and by other water-ways they doubtless passed to the great tract beyond the Mississippi. But though California was one of the first re- gions of this continent to be populated, it was unknown to the white man until half a century after Columbus, ignorant of the Norsemen's voy- ages, proclaimed himself discoverer of a new land. Just eight years had passed since his first voy- age from Palos when an expedition whose naviga- tor was none other than Columbus' own pilot, Juan de la Cosa, set out from Cadiz for the Carib- bean Sea. The commander was the autocrat Rodrigo Bastidas. In his crew was a young ad- venturer named Yasco de Balboa the same who, hearing later from the Indians of a great sea west of Darien, pushed his way through a baffling wilderness to the summit of a peak near what is now the Pacific gate of the Panama Canal. His blood-hound, Leoncico " so brave a helper that he was given the rank of Captain," was at his side as, " grasping the Spanish flag and draw- ing his sword ... he stood in full view of the wonderful ocean." He named the expanse the South Sea, and claimed it for Ferdinand, his King, husband of Catholic Isabella. It was Magellan who, seven years later, called it the Pacific, at the beginning of the explorations in Mexico and South America which definitely drew