Vasco Nunez de Balboa

SOMETIME in the summer of the year 1501 there landed on the southern coast of Santo Domingo one of the strangest expeditions that ever visited its shores. It was commanded by one Rodrigo de Bastidas, a rich notary of Seville, in Old Spain, who had become imbued with a passion for adventure, and so set forth, with a company contained in two caravels, over the route followed by Christopher Columbus in his third voyage to America. As he was guided by the skilled pilot Juan de la Cosa, who had been with Columbus in the West Indies, his voyage was in every respect successful, save in its ending. It included the entire length of Terra Firma (as the north coast of South America was then called), from the Gulf of Maracaibo to the Isthmus of Darien, whence, after profitable bartering with the Indians, Bastidas set sail for Spain.