Panama and the canal in picture and prose .. . aneighboring hut, pulling apart the wattled canes ofwhich it was built that he might peer out whilehimself unseen Pedrarias gloated at the sight of theblood of the man whom he hated with the insanehatred of a base and malignant soul. There theheads of the four were stricken off, and with thestroke died Vasco Nunez de Balboa, the man whose of that day is so persistent that the white man hasnever been able to establish himself on the easternend of the Isthmus. Fate has dealt harshly with the memory of , in his best known and most quoted
Panama and the canal in picture and prose .. . aneighboring hut, pulling apart the wattled canes ofwhich it was built that he might peer out whilehimself unseen Pedrarias gloated at the sight of theblood of the man whom he hated with the insanehatred of a base and malignant soul. There theheads of the four were stricken off, and with thestroke died Vasco Nunez de Balboa, the man whose of that day is so persistent that the white man hasnever been able to establish himself on the easternend of the Isthmus. Fate has dealt harshly with the memory of , in his best known and most quoted sonnet,gives credit for his discovery to Cortez. Localtradition has bestowed his name on a hill he neversaw, and Panamanian financial legislation has givenhis name to a coin which is never coined—existing asa fictitious unit like our mill. He did not himselfrealize the vastness of his discovery, and gave themisleading name of the South Sea to what was thePacific Ocean. But time is making its amends. THE CHARACTER OF VASCO NUNEZ DE BALBOA 6i. COCOANUT GROVE ON THE CARIBBEAN COAST something of a glamoiar aboutthe person of the victim,so that unconsciously we tendto emphasize his merits whilewe touch lightly upon hisfaults. But after all, thiseffect is no more than thatwhich his personality wroughtupon the minds of contem-porary witnesses, who wereunanimous in their expressionsof esteem for Balboa, and ofcondemnation for the mannerof his taking off. And finally the United Statesgovernment has acted wiselyand justly when in decreeinga great port, lined with mas-History will accord with the verdict of John Fiske sive docks, the stopping place for all the argosieswho said of him: of trade entering or leaving the Canal at its Pacific Thus perished in the forty-second year of his end, they conferred upon it the name Balboa. Itage the man who, but for that trifle of iron and wUl stand a fitting monument to the great soldierpitch, would probably have been the conqueror of and explorer
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Keywords: ., bookauthorabbotwil, bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, bookyear1913
