Progress of discovery.
In this universal excitement, the progress of dis-
covery was pushed forward with a success, inferior,
indeed, to what might have been effected in the
present state of nautical skill and science, but ex-
traordinary for the times. The winding depths of
the Gulf of Mexico were penetrated, as well as
the borders of the rich but rugged isthmus, which
connects the American continents. In 1512, Flo-
rida was discovered by a romantic old knight,
Ponce de Leon, who, instead of the magical foun-
tain of health, found his grave there.[1] Solis,
another navigator, who had charge of an expedition,
projected by Ferdinand,[2] to reach the South Sea
by the circumnavigation of the continent, ran down
the coast as far as the great Rio de la Plata, where
he also was cut off by the savages. In 1513, Vasco
Nunez de Balboa penetrated, with a handful of
men, across the narrow part of the Isthmus of Da-
rien, and from the summit of the Cordilleras, the
first of Europeans, was greeted with the long-
promised vision of the southern ocean.[3]
- ↑ Herrcra,Indias Occidentales, dec. 1, lib. 9, cap. 10.—Almost all the Spanish expeditions in the New World, whether on the northern or southern continent, have a tinge of romance, beyond what is found in those of other European nations. One of the most striking and least familiar of them is, that of Ferdinand de Soto, the ill-fated discoverer of the Mississippi, whose bones bleach beneath its waters. His adventures are told with Uncommon spirit by Mr. Bancroft, vol. i. chap. 2, of his history of the United States.
- ↑ Herrera, Indias Occidentals, dec. 2, lib. 1, cap. 7.
- ↑ The life of this daring cavalier forms one in the elegant series of national biographies by Quintana, " Vidas de Espa{{subst:n~}}oles C{{subst:e'}}lebres," (torn. ii. pp. 1-82,) and is familiar to the English reader in Irving's " Companions of Colum-
, che la citta resta mal popolata, e quasi in man di donne." (Navagiero, Viaggio, fol. 15.) Horace said, fifteen centuries before,
Per mare pauperiem fugiens, per saxa, per ignes."
Epist. i. 1.
