BALBOA, Inl-biVtt, VASCO NI:EZ DE (1475 1517). A Spanish explorer, the first European to see the Pacific Ocean from American shores. He was born of a noble but reduced family at Xeres de los Caballeros. After leading a rather dissolute life in his youth, he took part in the great mercantile expedition of Rodrigo de Bastidas to the New World. Be established him self in Santo Domingo, and began to cultivate the soil; but fortune proved adverse, and in order to escape from his creditors, he had smug gled in a cask on board a ship, and joined the expedition to Darien in 1510, commanded by :Mar tin Fernandez de Enciso. An insurrection which took place obtained for Balboa the supreme com mand in the new colony. Confusedaccounts which reached him of a great Western ocean impelled him, in 1513, to set out in quest of it. On Sep tember 25 of that year he obtained the first sight of the Pacific Ocean from a mountain-top in the Isthmus of Panama. On the 29th he reached the water at the point which is still known by the name he gave to it, the Gulf of San Miguel, and took formal possession for Spain, naming the ocean the Mar del Nur. or South Sea, the coast at this point trending nearly east and west. His
natural enthusiasm at. this great discovery was shared by all the educated men of his time, and the descriptions of it by contemporary authors may still be read with much interest.
The governorship of the territories conquered by Balboa was obtained in 1514 by Pedrarias Davila, by means of his intrigues at the Spanish Court. Balboa resigned the command into the hands of the Governor, a narrow-minded and cruel man, and in a subordinate situation under took many successful expeditions; but these, and all his other merits, only served to increase the hatred of Pedrarias Davila toward him. The Government of the mother country sought in vain to mediate between them, and Balboa even arranged to marry the daughter of Pedrarias. But on the first occasion of dispute which arose, Balboa, having been induced by Pedrarias to deliver himself up, was accused of a design to rebel, and upon evidence furnished by Garabito, the supposed friend to whom Balboa had intrust ed his affairs, he was convicted and beheaded at Acla in 1517