Balboa
VASCO NUÑEZ DE, & Caballeros, in 1475. He accompanied Spanish explorer, born at Xeres de los Rodrigo de Bastidas in his expedition to the New World, and first settled in Haiti (or, as it was then termed, Hispaniola).
Though an adventurer in search of fortune, his great ambition seems to have been to discover another great ocean.
He proceeded to the American continent, and there founded a colony. Accompanied by a small band of followers, he began began to thread the almost impenetrable forests of the Isthmus of Darien. At length, after a toilsome and dangerous journey, Balboa and his companions approached, on Sept. 25, 1513, the summit of the mountain range, when Balboa mit of the mountain range, when Balboa, leaving his followers and advancing alone to the W. declivity, was the first to the W. declivity, was the to behold the vast unknown ocean, which he named the Pacific. Surrounded by his followers, he walked into it, carrying in his right hand a naked sword, and in his left the banner of Castile, and declared the sea of the South, and all the regions whose shores it bathed, to belong to the crown of Castile and Leon. During his absence, however, a new governor had been appointed to supersede Balboa in Haiti; where, on his return, jealousy and dissensions springing up between in Haiti; where, on his return, jealousy them, them, Balboa, accused of a design to rebel, was beheaded in 1517.