march towards the country of Poncha, where he met four young men sent
from Darien to inform him that well-laden ships had just arrived from
Hispaniola; he had promised that, in returning from the South Sea, he
would march by some way through that country. Taking with him twenty
of his strongest companions he started by forced marches for Darien,
leaving behind the others who were to join him. Vasco has written that
he reached Darien the fourteenth day of the calends of February in the
year 1514, but his letter[2] is dated Darien, the fourth day of the
nones of March, as he was unable to send it sooner no ship being ready
to sail. He says that he has sent two ships to pick up the people he
left behind, and he boasts of having won a number of battles without
receiving a wound or losing one of his men in action.

[Note 2: Unfortunately neither this letter or any copy of it is
known to exist.]

There is hardly a page of this long letter which is not inscribed with
some act of thanksgiving for the great dangers and many hardships he
escaped. He never undertook anything or started on his march without
first invoking the heavenly powers, and principally the Virgin Mother
of God. Our Vasco Balboa is seen to have changed from a ferocious
Goliath into an Elias. He was an Antaeus; he has been transformed into
Hercules the conqueror of monsters. From being foolhardy, he has
become obedient and entirely worthy of royal honours and favour. Such
are the events made known to us by letters from him and the colonists
of Darien, and by verbal reports of people who have returned from
those regions.

Perhaps you may desire, Most Holy Father, to know what my sentiments
are respecting these events. My opinion is a simple one. It is evident
from the military style in which Vasco and his men report their deeds
that their statements must be true. Spain need no longer plough up the
ground to the depth of the infernal regions or open great roads or
pierce mountains at the cost of labour and the risk of a thousand
dangers, in order to draw wealth from the earth. She will find riches
on the surface, in shallow diggings; she will find them in the
sun-dried banks of rivers; it will suffice to merely sift the earth.
Pearls will be gathered with little effort. Cosmographers unanimously
recognise that venerable antiquity received no such benefit from
nature, because never before did man, starting from the known world,
penetrate to those unknown region