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Show ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 449 (18 ) p. 435.-" Of the expedition of Vasco Nunez de Balboa." I ha""e already rem1uked elsewhere (Examen critique de l'histoire de la Geographie du Nouveau Continent, et des progres del' Astronomie nautique aux 15eme et 16eme siecles, t. i. p. 349) that Columbus knew, fully ten years before Balboa':; expedition, the existence of the outh ea and its great proximity to the east coast of V eragua. He was conducted to this knowledge, not by theoretical speculations respecting the configuration of Eastern Asia, but by the local and positive reports of the natives, which he collected on his fourth voyage (May 11, 1502, to November 7, 1504). On this fourth voyage the Admiral went from the coast of Honduras to the Puerto de ~fosquitos, the western end of the Isthmus of Panama. The reports of the natives, and the comments of Columbus on those reports in the "Carta rarissima" of the 7th of July, 1503, were to the effect that, "not far from the Rio de Belen, the other sea (the South Sea) turns (boxa) to the mouths of the Ganges, so that the countries of the Aurea (i. e. the countries of the Chersonesus aurea of Ptolemy) are situated, in relation to the eastern coasts of Veragua, as Tortosa (at the mouth of the Ebro) is to Fuentarrabia (on the Bidassoa) in Biscay, or as Venice in relation to Pisa." Although Balboa first saw the South Sea from the heights of the Sierra de Quarequa on the 25th of September (Petr. Martyr, Epist. dxl. p. 296), yet it was not until "Several days later that Alonso Martin de Don Benito, who found a way from the mountains of Quarequa to the Gulf of San Miguel, embarked on the South Sea in a canoe. (Joaquin Acosta, Compendia hist. del Descubrimiento de la Nueva Granada, p. 49.) As the taking possession of a considerable part of the west coast of the New Continent by the United States of North America, and the report of the abundance of gold in New California (now called Upper California), have rendered more urgent than ever the formation of a communication between the Atlantic States and the regions of the west through the Isthmus of Panama, I feel it my duty to call attention once again to the circumstance that the shortest way to the shores of the Pacific, which was shown by the natives to Alonso Martin de Don Benito, is in the eastern part of the Isthmus, 38* |
