Columbus and Other Heroes of American Discovery

by N. D'Anvers

TO atone for the sudden check in the progress of discovery in the North, mentioned in our previous chapter, we find the Spanish vigorously prosecuting their explorations in the Gulf of Mexico, bent, like other nations, on finding a new passage to India, though convinced that it lay, not among the snow and ice of the Arctic regions, but in more southerly latitudes.

Ignorant of the important fact, that the land barring their progress westward formed part of one vast continent, one hardy Spanish mariner after another wasted his strength in seeking for some channel between the so-called islands hemming in his bark on this side and on that, until at last the mystery was solved by a freebooter named Vasco Nunez de Balboa, whose romantic story must be given here, forming as it does an era in the history of the whole of the New World.

Nothing could well have been more inauspicious than the commencement of the voyage of the first European who set eyes on the Pacific Ocean. One of the earliest settlers in San Domingo, Vasco Nunez de Balboa was so unsuccessful in his tilling of the soil that he soon found himself in absolute destitution, and, hoping to elude his creditors, he managed to hide himself in a vessel bound for the Caribbean Sea, at that time a favorite resort of pirates and adventurers of every description.

When out of sight of land, Balboa ventured forth from his cask, and, falling on his knees before the captain, Enciso by name, entreated him to protect him and let him share in the expedition. Enraged at so flagrant a defiance of his authority as the concealment of a man on board his ship, Enciso at first threatened to put our hero ashore on some desert island and abandon him to starve, but finally, softened by his eloquent pleadings, he consented that he should work out his passage. To this leniency Enciso soon afterward owed the safety of himself and all his people. His vessel was wrecked on the coast of the Isthmus of Darien, and Nunez, who had visited the district in his early wanderings, led the Spaniards to a friendly Indian village on the Darien.

Life was, however, all Balboa chose to accord to the man to whom he owed his own rescue from a miserable death. Arrived at the village, he accomplished the deposition of Enciso, and his own appointment to the supreme command. Then, having learned in various preliminary excursions that, six days’ journey to the west, there lay another sea, he led his men in the direction indicated, and, after literally fighting his way, step by step, through tribes of hostile Indians, he came, on the 15th of September, 1513, to the foot of a high mountain, from which his guides assured him the sea could be seen.

Imbued, in spite of his rough freebooting nature, with something of the true spirit of an explorer, Balboa now ordered his followers to wait, while he made the ascent alone. Arrived on the brow of the hill, he looked down, and beheld beneath him the wide-stretching ocean, lighted up by the brilliant rays of a tropical sun. Forgetting his lust of gain, and the crimes which had led him to his present position, he now thought only of the solution by his means of the problem which had so long baffled men of science of every nationality, and, falling on his knees, he gave thanks to God that it had pleased Him “to reserve unto that day the victory and praise of so great a thing unto him.”

This act of worship over, Nunez summoned his followers to gaze upon the wonderful sight and ordered them to pile up stones, as a token that he took possession of the land in the name of his sovereign, Ferdinand of Castile. His next step was to send twelve of his men—one of whom was the great Pizarro, future conqueror of Peru—to find the best route to the Pacific coast, himself following more leisurely with the body of his forces.

FRANCIS PIZARRO.

The twelve pioneers quickly came to the beach, and, finding a couple of native canoes floating inshore, two of them, named Alonzo Martin and Blazede Abienza, sprung into them, calling to their comrades to bear witness that they were the first Europeans to embark upon the southern sea. Thus, on September 29, 1513, was completed the first discovery of the great Pacific Ocean, of which Columbus had heard from the natives in his various voyages, though he had never been able to reach it, and which, first crossed by Magellan in 1521, has ever since been an inexhaustible field for the efforts of explorers, and is associated with the names of Cook, Anson, D’Entrecasteaux, Vancouver, Kotzebue, and many other great navigators of modern times.