e. The
Spaniards were armour-clad, as usual, and heavily burdened. Their way
led through thick and overgrown and pathless jungles or across lofty
and broken mountain-ranges, which could be surmounted only after the
most exhausting labor. The distance as the crow flies, was short, less
than fifty miles, but nearly a month elapsed before they approached the
end of their journey.

Balboa's enthusiasm and courage had surmounted every obstacle. He made
friends with the chiefs {39} through whose territories he passed, if
they were willing to be friends. If they chose to be enemies, he
fought them, he conquered them and then made friends with them then.
Such a singular mixture of courage, adroitness and statesmanship was he
that everywhere he prevailed by one method or another. Finally, in the
territory of a chief named Quarequa, he reached the foot of the
mountain range from the summit of which his guides advised him that he
could see the object of his expedition.

There were but sixty-seven men capable of ascending that mountain. The
toil and hardship of the journey had incapacitated the others. Next to
Balboa, among the sixty-seven, was Francisco Pizarro. Early on the
morning of the 25th of September, 1513, the little company began the
ascent of the Sierra. It was still morning when they surmounted it and
reached the top. Before them rose a little cone, or crest, which hid
the view toward the south. "There," said the guides, "from the top of
yon rock, you can see the ocean." Bidding his men halt where they
were, Vasco Nunez went forward alone and surmounted the little
elevation.

A magnificent prospect was embraced in his view. The tree-clad
mountains sloped gently away from his feet, and on the far horizon
glittered a line of silver which attested the accuracy of the claim of
the Indians as to the existence of a great sea on the other side of
what he knew now to be an isthmus. Balboa named the body of water that
he could see far away, flashing in the sunlight of that bright morning,
"the Sea of the South," or "the South Sea." [2]

Drawing his sword, he took possession of it in the {40} name of Castile
and Leon. Then he summoned his soldiers. Pizarro in the lead they
were soon assembled at his side. In silent awe they gazed, as if they
were looking upon a vision. Finally some one broke into the words of a
chant, and on that peak in Darien those men sang the "Te Deum Laudamus."

[Illustration: "He To