Some of the Castilians had been struck by arrows, so they were now left behind. The rest pressed on, for they had reached the foot of the large mountain from the top of which the friendly chief had declared that one could view the vast expanse of water beyond. All were cheerful and sang songs from old Madrid in order to make the journey a more joyous one.
That night they camped near a spring of crystal water and in the morning emerged from the forest at the foot of an eminence from which their friends, the natives, told them that they could see the ocean.
Now note how Balboa did the same thing which another explorer was criticized for doing many years later. He left his party behind, in order that no one might share the honor of discovery, and climbed alone to the mountain top. Up, up, he clambered, and at last stood upon the summit. Hurrah! he had found what he had suffered great hardship and privation to find. There before his eager gaze lay another ocean.
The adventurous explorer sank upon the soil and feasted his eyes upon the scene. Beyond a wide, intervening belt of rocks and forest, and seen through the swaying branches of green savannah trees, was that vast, mysterious ocean of which Columbus had heard, but which no European had yet beheld. It lay there gleaming, glistening, rising and falling, beckoning to the adventurous to sail upon its surface and find danger,—and treasure.
Balboa reclined there for a long time, dreaming, speculating, and thanking his lucky star that he had at last seen this once fabled sheet of water, for now he could go before King Ferdinand and be sure of a cordial reception. Then he arose and climbed down the side of the mountain to where his followers lay drowsing.
“Come, men!” he cried. “I have found it, the Mal de Sur (Southern Ocean).”
The men scrambled to the summit in no time, and, when they, too, saw the gray, rolling billows, they set up a wild cheering. The Te Deum was chanted, a cross was erected, and, from this lofty eminence, Balboa cried out that he took possession of this sheet of water, with all of its islands and surrounding lands, in the name of his master, the King of Spain. Then again a hymn was sung and all clambered down to the lowland where they feasted right merrily. It had been an eventful hour for these hard-marching, hard-mannered swashbucklers from Darien.
This was the twenty-sixth day of September, 1513, a day to be long remembered by Balboa, for he felt a great weight lifted from his shoulders as he thought of that letter which Lamudio had sent all the way from Spain. His men had taken twenty days in crossing a strip of territory scarcely forty miles in width, so you can well imagine how tangled must have been this tropic underbrush. Yet, unmindful of their hardships, they now set forth to journey to the very sea-coast, and to there touch the water of this newly discovered Mal de Sur.
