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Updated: June 5, 2025
It turned out that the ancient village of Cruces was a mere two-mile stroll from the canal, a thatch-roofed native town of some thirty dwellings on the rocky shore of an inner curve of the Chagres, where travelers from Balboa to the last "Forty-niner" disembarked from their thirty-six mile ride up the river and struck on along the ten-mile road through the jungle to Panama the famous Cruces trail.
This was on September 26th, 1513. Not content with seeing the ocean, Balboa determined to visit it. Arriving, after much toil, at one of the bays on the coast, he called it St. Michael's Bay. Coming to a beach a mile or two long, "If this is a sea," said he, "it will soon be covered with water; let us wait and see if there be a tide."
"Oh, there was no element of romance lacking, for he brought with him a young and beautiful bride and it was for her that the Castle was built. He must have learned from Columbus, Balboa, Pizarro and the other early explorers that the worm sometimes turns and that it was wise for him to make his position safe against any revolt of the Indians. So the house which you are about to visit was put up.
Little by little, therefore, the enthusiasm had cooled, and the wonderful narratives of Balboa were mentioned only to be turned into ridicule.
The act of treachery was consummated and the chief captured. All that, of course, was very bad, but the difference between Balboa and the men of his time is seen in his after conduct. Instead of putting the unfortunate chieftain to death and taking his people for slaves, Balboa released him.
A person standing without could easily take a purse from under the pillow, or even strangle a sleeper as he lay abed. M'Naughten and his comrade stared at each other like Balboa and his men, "with a wild surmise"; and then the latter, catching up the lamp, ran to the other frame and roughly raised the curtain.
Pending the arrival of Nicuesa they elected Balboa and one Zamudio, a Biscayan, to take charge of affairs. The time passed in hunting and gathering treasure, not unprofitably and, as they had plenty to eat, not unpleasantly. V. The Desperate Straits of Nicuesa Now let us return to Nicuesa.
Da Gama, Vespucci, Balboa, Magellan, theirs were indeed names and deeds to set the heart of youth leaping, between its cradle and its twenty-fifth year. Holbein was twelve when Augsburg heard that England had a young king, whom it crowned as Henry VIII. He was setting out from his home, such as it was, to fight his own boyish battle of Life, when the news spread of Flodden's Field.
That was the name of the robber who succeeded Balboa as governor of New Granada, the pirate who stood Balboa up against a wall and shot him. Pedro, as I call him for short, declares that he is a direct descendant of that old stiff. He says the Spanish blood in his veins is pure. Great Scott! if I had such a pirate for an ancestor, I'd keep mighty still about it."
At the Bay of Panama Balboa heard more of Peru, and went down the coast to find it, but did not go south much beyond the eighth degree of north latitude. In his company of adventurers at this time was Francisco Pizarro, by whom Peru was found, subjugated, robbed, and ruined, some fifteen or twenty years later.
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