Panama, past and present/Chapter 4
CHAPTER IV
HOW NUNEZ DE BALBOA FOUND THE SOUTH SEA
THE first thing Balboa did, after Nicuesa had been thrust forth to die, on March first, 1511, was to get rid both of Enciso and the leaders of the mob. He did this by sending the lawyer back to Spain, and then advising the others to follow and see that he did them no harm at court. He knew perfectly well that Enciso would complain to the King, and that the only excuses acceptable would be plenty of gold. As long as they sent him his royal share of that, his majesty cared but little what his loyal subjects did to each other in the far-off Indies. So Balboa looked for gold.
Luck favored him. As the rear-guard of Nicuesa's men were being brought from Nombre de Dios to Antigua they were met by two men, naked and painted like Indians, who addressed them in Spanish. They were sailors who had run away from one of Nicuesa's ships, a year and a half before, and had been kindly received by Careta, an Indian chief. One of them, Juan Alonso, had been made Careta's chief captain, and he basely offered to deliver to them with his own hands Careta, bound, and to betray his master's town to the Spaniards.
Balboa accepted the traitor's offer, marched to the town, and was hospitably received by Careta. After a pretended departure, he returned, rushed the town at night, devastated it, and carried off Careta and his family to Antigua. This was the ordinary way for Christians to repay Indian hospitality, both then and for a very long time afterwards. But what follows shows that Balboa was both kinder and shrewder than the average Spanish conqueror, who would undoubtedly have put Careta to death, now that he had seized his gold. Balboa, on the contrary, made peace with the chief and married his daughter. They agreed that Careta's people should supply Antigua with food, and the Spaniards help them against their enemies.
So, by matching tribe against tribe, Balboa conquered a great part of Darien. Comogre, the richest chief of all, received him peacefully, with a great present of gold. The Spaniards were weighing this out and squabbling over the division, when the chief's eldest son contemptuously threw the scales to the ground. If they cared for that sort of stuff, he exclaimed, they would find plenty of it to the south. There by a great sea on which they sailed in ships almost as large as those of the Spaniards were a people, who ate and drank out of vessels of gold. Thus the Spaniards heard for the first time of the Pacific and Peru.
Comogre's son offered to guide the white men to this sea and to let them hang him if they did not find it. But Balboa had heard of a wonderful golden temple of Dabaiba, somewhere up the Atrato River, and went up there to find it. He got no further than a country where the Indians lived in the tops of big trees, and dropped things on visitors. Having conquered this tribe, by cutting down the trees, and suppressed an attempted revolt 
ENTRANCE TO OLD SPANISH PORT AT PORTO BELLO.
of five chiefs, Balboa loaded a ship with all the gold he could get, and sent it to Spain, to win him favor with the King. Then, as he knew that Enciso and his other enemies at court would be very busy, he decided to overwhelm them with the great news of his discovery of a new ocean.
So on the sixth of September, 1513, he set out to cross the Isthmus. Comogre's son had warned him that a thousand men would be needed to fight their way through, but Balboa had faith in his hundred and ninety well-armed Spaniards. They had with them bloodhounds, even more dreaded than themselves by the Indians, a train of native porters, and guides that led them by the best and shortest way. After some easy fighting and hard marching, they reached a hill, from the top of which, the Indians said, "the other ocean" could be seen. Halting his men, Balboa ascended alone, and was the first European to see the Pacific. This was September twenty-third, and it was six days later, on St. Michael's Day, when they reached the nearest part of the Pacific, which is still called, for that reason, the Gulf of San Miguel.
Wading into the great unknown ocean, Balboa took eternal possession, in the name of the King of Spain, of all its waters, and every shore they touched. To-day, Spain does not own an inch of land on that ocean. No one can point out the hill from which Balboa first saw the Pacific, and the Isthmus of Darien is less known to white men than it was four hundred years ago.
After a few of the local chiefs had been beaten in battle, and one, a wicked tyrant named Pacra, had been torn to pieces by the Spanish dogs, the others hastened to make friends with Balboa. They brought him a great deal of gold, besides pearls from the islands in the Gulf of San Miguel, and promised to collect much more. Suffering slightly from a fever, but without having lost
BALBOA.
one of his men, Balboa returned in triumph to Antigua, after an absence of a little less than four months. But it would have been far better for him if his great exploit had been accomplished only a few weeks sooner, so that his messenger could have reached Spain before the new governor had sailed for Darien. For this new governor who was to succeed Balboa, was the man who is seldom spoken of by his full name, Don Pedro Arias de Avila, but usually by his fearful nickname of "Pedrarias the Cruel."