Balbo'a, Vasco Nunez

Vasco Nunez (1745-1517), a Spanish adventurer. Little is known of his youth, save that he was well born and poor. In 1510 he was a debt-burdened planter in Haiti. In order to escape his creditors and join an expedition in which he was not wanted, he had himself concealed in a cask supposed to contain provisions, and was thus conveyed aboard a vessel about to sail for the American mainland. After various adventures, we find this soldier of fortune setting out from the Caribbean coast with a force of 190 men, 1,000 natives, and a pack of bloodhounds, in search of a great sea and a land of gold of which the Indians told him. September 25, 1513, he gained the summit of the mountains, and the Pacific Ocean was seen for the first time by white men. Five days later he reached the coast and, wading out into the water, he held aloft the flag of his country and took possession of these "seas and lands in the name of the king and queen of Castile." Balboa found the sea of which he was in search, but the discovery of Peru, the land of gold, was reserved for another. Shortly after his return to the Spanish settlement he was thrown into prison by a jealous rival and was beheaded on a charge of treason. Balboa's passage of the isthmus occupied twenty-nine days. The trip now requires but a few hours.