Descending to the shore and wading deep into the waters, Balboa drew his sword, and waving it thereover took possession of that ocean and whatsoever shores it might wash for the King of Spain, naming it the "South Seas," for, from the curvature of the isthmus, he was looking towards the south, having crossed from the north.
Thus was the great Pacific Ocean first beheld by the white man, as far as history records.
We have already seen that Balboa's exploit preceded the Conquest of Mexico. The land of the Aztecs, like that of Peru, was undreamed of, but the discovery of both followed, as did the passage of the Magellan Strait by the explorer whose name it bears, and who first crossed the Pacific, and from its gentle and favouring gales gave it its name.
The discoverer of the isthmus and the great ocean was a hidalgo, and had been Governor of a province, but to escape his creditors in Hispaniola—according to one account—he concealed himself in a barrel on board ship, and so began his voyage. Balboa, pressing into his service a train of Indians, many of whom, it is said, died under the lash in the task, caused the timbers of two vessels to be dragged across the rugged neck of land and launched upon the South Sea, bent upon the discovery of Peru, which, later, Andagoya attempted, but which, however, the fates had reserved for Pizarro. Balboa was afterwards treacherously done to death by Pedrarias Davila, one of the most ruthless of the Spanish adventurers of that time.
Thus did the inhabitants of this region we are now to traverse have their foretaste of the white man's overlordship—a foretaste of the dreadful lot which fate had in store for them, the simple folk of Central America, who, with their ancient culture and beautiful arts, akin in some respects to those of the Aztec and the Inca, were almost stamped out under Pedro de Alvarado, who invaded Guatemala in 1522, and his successors of the early Colonial period.
Seven different States or entities to-day comprise this zone of territory of Central America, washed on the one hand by the Caribbean and on the other by the Pacific, whose people dwell in one of the most beautiful and interesting part of the earth's surface—Guatemala, with its coffee plantations and lavish fruits, Honduras of the rugged surface, and British Honduras, Nicaragua with its great lake, Costa Rica, the one-time "Rich Coast," Salvador, most populous and advanced of all, Panama, the land of the famous Canal.
We may be permitted a brief glance at the ancient inhabitants of this portion of America, prior to the advent of the Spaniards.
As in the case of North America, in Mexico: and South America, in Peru and Colombia, so in Central America was there a ruling caste or culture. Here it was that of the Quiches, a people of Maya stock.
These people were most numerous in Western Guatemala, and at the time of the Conquest the most powerful inhabitants of Central America. The sacred book of the Quiches, known as the Popol Vuh, embodies a mythological cosmogony, in which is a Creation story and an account of a Flood, after the manner of that of the Old Testament. (The Quiches are not to be confounded with the Quechuas of Peru.) Their capital was Utatlan, near where stands the modern Santa Cruz Quiche, and the place was cleverly fortified. Their system of government was an elaborate one, as was their religion. Indeed, the student remarks with surprise how far these early peoples had gone in the development of social polity and economic order. The Quiches, like the Aztecs, kept historical records in picture-writing. The Incas, we may remark in passing, of Peru, kept their histories by means of the quipos, a mnemonic system of knotted and coloured cords.