30 September: Boreham on Vasco de Balboa

The Era of the Pacific
The end of September marks the birth of Pacific adventure. It was on this date, if the records of the time are to be trusted, that Vasco Nunez de Balboa,—

". . . . . . . . . . . . With eagle eye,
First stared at the Pacific—and all
his men
Looked at each other with a wild surmise
Silent upon a peak in
Darien."

Man has an unconquerable genius for ascertaining what is on the other side of things. If there is a hill, he wants to know what is on the other side of the hill; if there is a sea, he wants to know what is on the other side of the sea; if there is a desert, he wants to know what is on the other side of the desert. Animals and birds show no such curiosity; they ignore the unknown; man is fascinated by it. In 1492 there was ample room in Europe for the population of Europe. But there rolled the Atlantic! What was on the other side of the Atlantic? Until that haunting riddle had been read, there could, for Columbus, be no rest by day and no sleep by night. And at length the great day dawned on which the redoubtable explorer, startled Europe by declaring that, on the other side of the Atlantic, there lay a new world! But, almost before Europe had recovered from the shock of surprise, men asked a further question: What is on the other side of that new world? And it was this question that Balboa answered.

It is not easy nowadays to recapture the spirit of that stirring time. In his "Ferdinand and Isabella," his "Conquest of Mexico" and his "Conquest of Peru," Prescott has painted the magnificent picture in glowing and lifelike colours. However much we may shudder at the scenes of rapine and carnage that disfigured the amazing record, it is impossible to deny our enthusiastic admiration to the men who dared a dozen deaths every day of their lives, and, changed the face of the world. As a result of their exploits, geography no longer turned on its old pivot.

Maritime Adventure Stages a Transformation
Taking into consideration the crazy little vessels that were then the last words in nautical science, it is really astounding that the intrepid spirits who became the masters and moulders of that epoch-making period were able to make history so swiftly. During the few years that intervened between the discoveries of Columbus and those of Balboa, a complete and revolutionary change overtook the minds of men. When Columbus appeared at the court of Ferdinand and Isabella, imploring their majesties to entrust him with ships in which he might sail the taunting and uncharted seas, the boys in the streets of Castile tapped their foreheads at the mention of his name in token of the general belief in the insanity of the would-be voyager. And when at length he obtained the grant for, which he had so passionately pleaded, convicts had to be drawn from the gaols of the Peninsula in order to make up the 90 men he needed for a crew.

Within a few years the crossing of the Atlantic became the cherished ambition of every Spanish cavalier. The waters of the Guadalquivir were seldom unadorned by the white sails of vessels setting out for the new world. When Ferdinand appealed for 1,200 volunteers for transatlantic service, more than 3,000 representatives of the noblest Spanish families begged to be permitted to occupy any position, however menial, in the splendid enterprise. And, before a single adventurer had crossed the American continent to be startled by the vision of the Pacific, the passion for emigration had become so intense and so widespread in Europe that responsible statesmen thought Spain in grave danger of depopulation.

The Greatest Of Three Oceanic Ages
It is an unpleasant comment on the temper of the time that the men who added so many glittering jewels to the crown of Spain received very little in the way of thanks. Columbus was sent home in chains; Cortes was treated at court with cold disdain; Balboa, the discoverer of the Pacific, achieved his triumph in the course of the comparatively brief interval that intervened between his imprisonment and his execution. Three years before his historic accomplishment, he was languishing in the dungeons of San Domingo; three years after his return from the western waters, he was hurried to the gallows.

Since the day on which the ill-starred Balboa first gazed upon its shining waters, history has been made in the Pacific at a fairly rapid rate. Following upon the resolve of Columbus to find out what lay beyond the Atlantic, and the resolve of Balboa to find out what lay beyond the new world that Columbus had unveiled, Magellan determined to ascertain what lay beyond the Pacific that Balboa had glimpsed. Before suffering a fate almost as tragic as that of Balboa, he sailed right across the new ocean for the first time. Then came the adventurous voyages of Drake, Tasman, Behring, Anson, Byron, Bougainville, Cook. Vancouver, La Perouse, and a score of others. And thus, incidentally, Australia and New Zealand came to be. Nor does the story end there. "Have you ever noticed," President Theodore Roosevelt—the uncle of the late President—once asked, "have you ever noticed that the history of the world divides itself into three distinct periods? The first—the Age of the Mediterranean—closed when Columbus discovered America. The second—the Age of the Atlantic—then dawned, growing in importance until our own time. We are now witnessing the advent of the third—the Age of the Pacific—and, mark my words, the Age of the Pacific is destined to be the greatest of them all!" Anybody who allows his mind to roam fancy-free over the history of the Mediterranean era, with its records of Egypt, Phoenician Greece, and Rome; and then over the history of the Atlantic era with its annals of a score of empires, will recognise that these two periods have set the third era—the era of the Pacific—something to eclipse. And yet, looking upon the Pacific today, he would be a bold man who would declare that Theodore Roosevelt was mistaken.

F W Boreham

Image: Vasco Nunez de Balboa