The search for a "strait." Such dramatic formalities rarely have much effect upon the course of history, yet the discovery itself was a great triumph for the Spanish government. Since the time of Columbus, their navigators had been searching among the West Indies, and along the Atlantic Coast of South and Central America, in the blind hope of finding an open passage to the Orient. They failed because, as it was supposed, Nature had sown islands so thickly in this part of the ocean that it was very difficult, or impossible, for ships to pick their way among them. The numerous failures had discouraged many. But when Balboa reached the sea by marching overland a few miles from the Darien coast no one any longer doubted that a convenient westward route existed, if it could only be found. Generally, it was assumed that the passage would be found north of the Isthmus. Magellan soon afterward proved that there was a way around South America, but it was very difficult, and far out of the direct course from Europe to Eastern Asia. The necessity still remained, therefore, to find "the strait," and the discovery of the Pacific, with other contemporaneous events, stimulated the search in an extraordinary manner.
During the sixteenth century the nation most interested in the discovery of the strait joining the two great oceans was Spain. Portugal had been her great rival in the effort to find an all-water route to the Indies, and while Columbus was making heroic but fruitless efforts to break through the ocean barriers to
