Balboa

Balboa, VASCO NUÑEZ DE, a Spanish conqueror, was born of a noble but reduced family at Xeres-de-los-Caballeros in 1475. After rather a dissolute youth, he gladly took part in the great mercantile expedition westward ho! of Rodrigo de Bastidas. He established himself in St Domingo, and began to cultivate the soil; but fortune proving adverse, in order to escape from his creditors, he had himself smuggled on board a ship, and joined the expedition to Darien in 1510, commanded by Francisco de Enciso. An insurrection which took place obtained for Balboa the supreme command in the new colony. Confused accounts which reached him of a great western ocean impelled him in 1513 to set out in quest of it. On the 25th of September of that year, he obtained the first sight of the Pacific Ocean from 'a peak in Darien.' The governorship of the territories conquered by Balboa was obtained in 1514 by Pedrarias Davila, by means of his intrigues at the Spanish court. Balboa resigned the command into the hands of the new governor, a narrow-minded and cruel man, and, in a subordinate situation, undertook many successful expeditions; but these and all his other merits only served to increase Davila's hatred towards him. Balboa married his enemy's daughter; but on the first occasion of dispute, he was induced by Davila to deliver himself up, was accused of a design to rebel, and in violation of all forms of justice, was beheaded at Santa Maria in 1517.