Arizona sentinel and Yuma weekly examiner., 1913-09-25
BALBCA'S LIFE WAS
 FULL OF ADVENTURE

Fresh interest has been thrown on Vasco Nunez de Balboa by the POT 1 tola Festival, to be held in San Fran cisco October P to 25. This fpte will commemorate the 400 anniversary ot Balboa's discovery of the Pacific ocean. Historians have turned anew to the life story of the valiant con uueror and soldier of fortune; and, while they have found the raw mate rial for score of romances ready to hand in authenticated documents, the singular fact has been discovered that this man, one of the wonder charac' ters of history, has received scam attention from biographers.
 The only full life of him is that of Manuel Jose de Quintana, published as part of a series of Spanish blog- raphies betwen 1907 and 1884.
 No career of fighter, explorer or early American governor has more purple patches than has Balboa's. He is more than swashbuckler hero, too, for his claim to fame is his discovery of the Western Sea. The first brigan- tines that ever sailed upon it were those he built.
 The earliest stages of his career are linked with Columbus. In hlS youth Balboa was dependant ot Don Pedro Puertocarrero, lord of Moguer, the town near Palos closely identified with Columbus and the discovery of America.
 Balboa was, indeed, one of a party of shipwrecked treasure seekers i'm prisoned upon their arrival, famished and worn, at Santo Domingo by Don Francisco de Bobadilla, the governor who sent Columbus and his brothers home in chains.
 Balboa had his share and more of tragedy and drama from the first time he drew his sword till his exc cution in 1517, at the age of AZ, on charge of treason which masked the enmity of Pedro Arias de Aviia. Av- fla had given Balboa his daughter hand, but Balboa had succeeded him as governor of Darien.
 There is comedy as well as tragedy, however, in this brilliant career. One of the strange tales that have come down through the centuries-a side light which brings Balboa from the realm of legend and makes him hu, man through and through-is the story of how he escaped to sea in a cask, to avoid creditors. The man whom the world will honor at San Francisco next October was hero in truth, but not a Sunday school hero
 Balboa, not yet thirty, was, at any rate nominally, the owner of plan tation on the coast of Domingo. En cisco, a friend of the governor, called under escort to load his ship with provisions.
 Behind Balboa were creditors. Be fore him was the sea, and the supply ship. On the beach were casks and boxes, being loaded into the vessel
 When the vessel had put to sea and the coast had dropped below the hori- zon, there strode from the hold a hungry and cramped man, his armor clinking as he carried it.
 With him was his dog, Leoncisco- a beast as daring as it's master.
 What Encisco said could not be printed in this finical age, even were an exact transcription at hand. But Balboa had a retort: 'The island has lost a bad citizen and you have gained a good soldier"
 That was beyond denial. u wa: not till he was on deck that Balboa discovered the nature of the expedi ton in which he had surreptitiously enlisted. It was one for the relic of Alonso de Ojeda, who, with Diego de Nicuesa, had some months before left to found a colony on the coas of Terra Firma. The crew and fight ing men had enlisted for the voyage and year of service on land besides and every day of that period brough them adventure.
 It was that expedition which gave Balboa his first opportunity. He siez ed it, and his career was begun il earnest.
 Yet one of the first poets of the English language has, unconsciously robbed him of his glory. It is strange that Keats, in his sonnet "On Firs Looking into Chapman's Homer"-on' best poets iii the tongue-gives Cor tez the credit for discovering the Pa cific, which he never saw. These ar' the lines that need correction, if Bal boa is to get his due:
 Then I felt like some watcher O
 the skies,
 When a new planet swims into hi
 ken,