nish did not obliterate _any_ aboriginal
nation,--as our ancestors obliterated scores,--but followed the first
necessarily bloody lesson with humane education and care. Indeed, the
actual Indian population of the Spanish possessions in America is larger
to-day than it was at the time of the conquest; and in that astounding
contrast of conditions, and its lesson as to contrast of methods, is
sufficient answer to the distorters of history.

Before we come to the great conquerors, however, we must outline the
eventful career and tragic end of the discoverer of the Pacific Ocean,
Vasco Nunez de Balboa. In one of the noblest poems in the English
language we read,--

"Like stout Cortes, when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific, and all his men
Looked at each other with a wild surmise,
Silent upon a peak in Darien."

But Keats was mistaken. It was not Cortez who first saw the Pacific, but
Balboa,--five years before Cortez came to the mainland of America at
all.

Balboa was born in the province of Estremadura, Spain, in 1475. In 1501
he sailed with Bastidas for the New World, and then saw Darien, but
settled on the island of Espanola. Nine years later he sailed to Darien
with Enciso, and there remained. Life in the New World then was a
troublous affair, and the first years of Balboa's life there were
eventful enough, though we must pass them over. Quarrels presently arose
in the colony of Darien. Enciso was deposed and shipped back to Spain a
prisoner, and Balboa took command. Enciso, upon his arrival in Spain,
laid all the blame upon Balboa, and got him condemned by the king for
high treason. Learning of this, Balboa determined upon a master-stroke
whose brilliancy should restore him to the royal favor. From the natives
he had heard of the other ocean and of Peru,--neither yet seen by
European eyes,--and made up his mind to find them. In September, 1513,
he sailed to Coyba with one hundred and ninety men, and from that point,
with only ninety followers, tramped across the Isthmus to the
Pacific,--for its length one of the most frightful journeys imaginable.
It was on the 26th of September, 1513, that from the summit of the
divide the tattered, bleeding heroes looked down upon the blue infinity
of the South Sea,--for it was not called the Pacific until long after.
They descended to the coast; and Balboa, wading out knee-deep into the
new ocean, holding aloft in his right hand his slender sword, and