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The valleys consequently receive, not only the direct rays, but also those reflected from the hills and mountains. If, therefore, the site of Darien is unhealthy, it is not the fault of the country but of the site itself chosen by the colony. The unwholesomeness of the place is further increased by the malodorous swamp surrounding it. To say the frank truth, the town is nothing but a swamp.

"Then felt I like some watcher of the skies, When a new planet swims into his ken; Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes He stared at the Pacific, and all his men Looked at each other with a wild surmise, Silent, upon a peak in Darien."

One of them, William Blackwood, was of a family that had been very active in the Darien affair. Captain Green had no better chance with these men than James Stewart of the Glens in face of a jury of Campbells.

They, also, built a guard-house, a store, and a chapel, for they brought a pastor with them; and soon put up several huts for temporary accommodation, till they could prepare and erect commodious dwellings. The location, at their desire, was called "Darien;" which name the District still bears, and the town they called "New Inverness," a name no longer retained.

Chiefly on account of his intimacy with Fonseca he was some years later given a governorship in the neighbourhood of the Gulf of Darien; Juan de la Cosa accompanying him as unofficial partner.

The Admiral-Viceroy and the other government officials of Hispaniola admitted that they had thus far taken little thought for the colonists at Darien, because they supposed the judge, Enciso, had already sailed with a well-freighted ship. They assured the colonists that for the future they would have care for their needs.

The colony founded on the shores of Darien is situated in a deep valley, completely surrounded by lofty hills, in such wise that the direct rays of the sun beat upon it at midday, while as the sun goes down its rays are reflected from the mountains, in front, behind, and all around, rendering the place insupportable.

He had, in short, the good qualities and the defects incident to an honest nature, not improved by the discipline of early education or self-control. The other member of the confederacy was Hernando de Luque, a Spanish ecclesiastic, who exercised the functions of vicar at Panama, and had formerly filled the office of schoolmaster in the Cathedral of Darien.

Let us repeat here the closing lines of Keats’s famous sonnet to Homer, in which a great poet has admirably depicted the scene, though, by a strange error, giving the credit to Cortez instead of Balboa: "Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken; Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes He stared at the Pacificand all his men Looked at each other with a wild surmiseSilent, upon a peak in Darien."

On the fourth and last voyage of Columbus, he reached Honduras and thence sailed eastward and southward to the Gulf of Darien, having not the least idea that the shore line which he called Veragua was in fact the border of the famous Isthmus of Panama.