DISCOVERY OF THE PACIFIC OCEAN.

[1513.] In September, 1513, Vasco Nuñez de Balboa set out from the settlement of Antigua on the gulf of Urabá, and crossing the narrow isthmus which joins the two Americas, discovered a vast ocean to the southward on the other side of the supposed Asia. The Isthmus here runs east and west, and on either side, to the north and to the south are great oceans, which for a long time were called the North Sea and the South Sea. After exploring the neighboring coasts he returned to Antigua in January, 1514, after an absence of four months. Galvano's Discov., pp. 123-5; Peter Martyr, dec. iii. cap. i.; Oviedo, Hist. Gen., tom. iii. pp. 9-17; Andagoya's Narrative, p. 7; Carta del Adelantado Vasco Nuñez de Balboa, in Pacheco and Cárdenas, Col. Doc. Inéd., tom. ii. p. 526.

The Ptolemy of 1513 has a map which is said to have been made by Hylacomylus as early as 1508, but concerning which there seems to be much uncertainty. I give a copy from the fac-simile of Stevens and Varnhagen.

The name Cuba does not appear, and in its place is Isabela. Many of the names given by other maps to points on the coast of Cuba are transferred to the main-land opposite. The compiler evidently was undecided whether Cuba was a part of the Asiatic main or not, and therefore represented it in both ways. The coast line must be regarded as imaginary or taken from the old charts, unless, as M. Varnhagen thinks, Vespucci actually sailed along the Florida coast in 1497. This map if made in 1508 may be regarded as the first to join the southern continent, or Mundus Novus, to the main-land of Asia. This southern land is called 'Terra Incognita,' with an inscription stating expressly that it was discovered by Columbus, notwithstanding the fact that its supposed author proposed the name America in honor of Vespucci only the year before. In fact the map is in many respects incoherent, and is mentioned by most writers but vaguely. Harrisse, Bib. Am. Vet., no. 74; Humboldt, Exam. Crit., tom. iv. pp. 109 et seq., and Preface to Ghillany; Kunstmann, Entdeckung Am., pp. 130-2; Kohl, Die beiden ältesten Karten von Am., p. 33; Varnhagen, Nouvelles Recherches, Vienna, 1869, p. 56; Stevens' Notes, pl. ii. no. i. pp. 13, 14, 51; Major's Prince Henry, pp. 385-6; Santarem, in Bulletin de la Soc. Géog., May, 1847, pp. 318-23.

Map from Ptolemy, 1513.

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The name America is thought by Major to occur first on a manuscript map by Leonardo da Vinci, in the queen's collection at Windsor, to which he ascribes the date of 1513 or 1514.

[1514.] Pedrarias Dávila, having been appointed governor of Castilla del Oro, by which name the region about the isthmus of Darien was now called, sailed from San Lúcar with an armada of fifteen vessels and over 2000 men, April 12, 1514. The special object of this expedition was to discover and settle the shores of the South Sea, whose existence had been reported in Spain, but whose discovery by Vasco Nuñez de Balboa was not known before the departure of Pedrarias. Herrera, dec. i. lib. x. cap. xiii.; Peter Martyr, dec. ii. cap. vii.; dec. iii. cap. v.; Galvano's Discov., p. 125; Quintana, Vidas de Españoles Célebres, 'Balboa,' p. 28; Robertson's Hist. Am., vol. i. p. 207. See [chapter x.] of this volume.