The daily morning journal and courier., 1903-02-11

tionable career of fame began. He was i gay young nobleman, and having quickly dissipated his fortune in Old
 Sastile, to escape imprisonment for debt he followed the tide of emigration to these shores, soon after Columbus fourth voyage. In his new home he
 rapidly succeeded in loading himself with other liabilities, and his creditors ! were on the point of arresting him when he hit upon the plan of escape with which every schoOl-bOy is famil- far As the story is neither long nor prOsy, and was really part of Couom-
 bias history, shall we briefly review it? 1 think it was in the year 151O that 1 Martin Francisco de Encisco came to i Carthagena and found it etven then a, l thriving town. In it's harbor was a
 brigantine, which contained the dis
 outraged remnants of a Spanish colony
 that had been driven by hostile Indians 1 from their settlements little farther down the coast. Its leader was no less a parsonage than Francisco Pizarro,
 who had not yet entered upon his ca { reer of bloodshed in Peru. Encisco 1 soon afterwards sailed for St. Sebastian i and took Pizarro and his brigantine
 with him. Just before the vessel was
 to leave port some men brought on l board an ordinary cask supposed to ! contain provisions, that was lowered
 into the hold with the rest of the car go; but hardly had the shore faded from sight when out popped .the head
 of the cask, followed by the figure of a l Spanish cavalier, high duffled and 1 gauntleted, in gold embroidered satin 1 waistcoat, velvet brooches and top
 boots-the spendthrift nobleman, Don | Balboa! At first Encisco was so angry at the deception practiced upon him 1 that he threatened to leave the titled l stoWaWay upon the first desert island;
 but he refented when Balboa swore
 eternal allegiance and promised to be a
 faithful soldier in the murderous expe-
 dition then on the tapis. On the way
 to St. Sebastian Encisco's ship ran upon
 the rocks and was lost with all it's car 1 go, but most of the crew escaped to Pi-
 zarro's brigantine. While in this sorry plight Balboa bethought himself of an | Indian village on the banks of a river
 called Darien, of which he had heard, 1 together with the tale that the natives
 possessed plenty of gold. He guided
 the adventurers thereto; they easily
 captured the town of Darien and com
 pelled the inhabitants to deliver up all l their golden ornaments, worth many l thousands of dollars. Encisco estab- | lished colony there and forbade any
 body but himself to traffic with the na- tives, under penalty of death. This too
 arbitrary order caused split in the | hitherto peaceful party, for Encisco's 1 followers were quite as covetous as 1 their leader. Headed by Balboa, they l revolted, and in due course Balboa was
 made governor of the colony, with ab-
 solute authority, while Encisco was re-
 called to Spain in disgrace. The new
 governor sent Pizarro to explore the
 neighboring provinces; and when that i worthy had beenz driven back by the
 Indians he headed a similar expedition 1 himself While cruising along the
 coasts of Colombia, Balboa picked up I two Spaniards dressed as Indians, who
 proved to be deserters from another
 Spanish colony, and had long been liv- 1 l protection of a great cacique named
 Careta. Though the latter had spared
 their worthless lives and treated them
 with unvarying kindness, they did not hesitate to betray him to the first Span- iaris they met, and to conduct Balboa
 and his band of adyeriuTers to the Indi-
 an village in quest of gold. Careta's
 capital lay about twenty miles up the Caledonia river, near the present town
 of Careto. The Cacique received them
 In good faith and entertained them
 freely with the best his Kingdom af-
 forded, as long as they chose to stay.
 Finally Balboa, who had only one, hun
 dred and fifty men, pretended to leave,
 having spied out the land to his satis-
 faction; but the same night he re-
 turned, surprised the city and made
 prisoners of the good chief, his family
 and his noblemen. Careta at length
 made peace by yielding up a large
 amount of treasure and giving his
 young and beautiful daughter in mar
 riage to Balboa, who had a wife al-
 ready in Spain, and goodness knows 1 how many others in the new world.
 The story of the next few years is full
 of interest, but we have not space to re-
 late it. The always cruel and greedy 1 Spaniards captured many rich villages
 and grew rich beyond computing.
 Meanwhile Encisco got into favor
 again with the king and returned to
 Carthagena. Balboa knew that the
 only way to save his precious head from his old enemy on the charge of
 treason would be to accomplish some
 great thing for the glory of Spain.
 From his Indian father-in-law he had
 heard tales of another great sea, be-
 yund the western mountains, on whose
 shores were the people so rich that they
 ate from plates of gold With all his
 followers and some Indian guides, he
 set out to find that sea on the first day | of September. 1513 They had terri
 ble march through morasses and trop- ical jung1es. harrassed at every step by
 hostile Indians and suffering from
 sickness and hunger. Finally the 1 handful that remained of them reached l the foot of the mountain from whose
 summit the guides assured them the
 ocean was visible. Determined to have the first glimpse of it himself, Balboa ordered halt and went into camp for the night. Next day at the first peep of dawn he descended the mountain uitb Sivt1y ot1ocaY7 fn11nu,o,.