covering that imaginary strait, and making his way into this Southern Ocean. The illustrious navigator, however, was doomed to die, as it were, upon the threshold of his discoveries. It was reserved for one of his followers, Vasco Nuñez de Balboa, to obtain the first view of the promised ocean, from the lofty mountains of Darien, some years after the eyes of the venerable Admiral had been closed in death. The expeditions here narrated, therefore, may be considered as springing immediately out of the voyages of Columbus, and fulfilling some of his grand designs. They may be compared to the attempts of adventurous knights-errant to achieve the enterprise left unfinished by some illustrious predecessor. Neither is this comparison entirely fanciful; on the contrary, it is a curious fact, well worthy of notice, that the spirit of chivalry entered largely into the early expeditions of the Spanish discoverers, giving them a character wholly distinct from similar enterprises, undertaken by other nations. It will not, perhaps, be considered far-sought, if we trace the cause of this peculiarity to the domestic history of the Spaniards during the middle ages.

Eight centuries of incessant warfare with the Moorish usurpers of the Peninsula, produced a deep and lasting effect upon Spanish character and manners. The war being ever close at home, mingled itself with the domestic habits and concerns of the Spaniard. He was born a soldier. The wild and predatory nature of the war alsc made him a kind of chivalrous marauder. His horse and

weapon were always ready for the field. His delight was in roving incursions and extravagant exploits; and no gain was so glorious in his eyes as the cavalgada of spoils and captives driven home in triumph from a plundered province. Religion, which has ever held great empire over the Spanish mind, lent its aid to sanctify these roving and ravaging propensities, and the Castilian cavalier, as he sacked the towns, and laid waste the fields of his Moslem neighbor, piously believed he was doing God service.

The conquest of Granada put an end to the peninsular wars between Christian and Infidel: the spirit of Spanish chivalry was thus suddenly deprived of its wonted sphere of action; but it had been too long fostered and excited, to be as suddenly appeased. The youth of the nation, bred up to daring adventure and heroic achievement, could not brook the tranquil and regular pursuits of common life, but panted for some new field of romantic enterprise.

It was at this juncture that the grand project of Columbus was carried into effect. His treaty with the sovereigns. was, in a manner, signed with the same pen that had subscribed the capitulation of the Moorish capital; and his first expedition may almost be said to have departed from beneath the walls of Granada. Many of the youthful cavaliers, who had fleshed their swords in that memorable war, crowded the ships of the discoverers, thinking a new career of arms was to be opened to them-a kind of crusade into splendid and unknown regions of infidels. The very weapons and armor that had been used against the

Moors, were drawn from the arsenal to equip the heroes of these remoter adventures; and some of the most noted commanders in the New World, will be found to have made their first essay in arms, under the banner of Ferdinand and Isabella, in their romantic campaigns among the mountains of Andalusia.

To these circumstances may, in a great measure, be ascribed that swelling chivalrous spirit which will be found continually mingling, or rather warring, with the technical habits of the seaman and the sordid schemes of the mercenary adventurer, in these early Spanish discoveries. Chivalry had left the land and launched upon the deep. The Spanish cavalier had embarked in the caravel of the discoverer. He carried among the trackless wildernesses of the New World the same contempt of danger and fortitude under suffering; the same restless, roaming spirit; the same passion for inroad and ravage and vainglorious exploit; and the same fervent, and often bigoted, zeal for the propagation of his faith, that had distinguished him during his warfare with the Moors. Instances in point will be found in the extravagant career of the daring Ojeda, particularly in his adventures along the coast of Terra Firma and the wild shores of Cuba;-in the sad story of the "unfortunate Nicuesa," graced as it is with occasional touches of high-bred courtesy ;-in the singular cruise of that brave but credulous old cavalier, Juan Ponce de Leon, who fell upon the flowery coast of Florida in his search after an imaginary fountain of youth;—and above all, in the

checkered fortunes of Vasco Nuñez de Balboa, whose discovery of the Pacific Ocean forms one of the most beautiful and striking incidents in the history of the New World, and whose fate might furnish a theme of wonderful interest for a poem or a drama.

The extraordinary actions and adventures of these men, while they rival the exploits recorded in chivalric romance, have the additional interest of verity. They leave us in admiration of the bold and heroic qualities inherent in the Spanish character, which led that nation to so high a pitch of power and glory; and which are still discernible in the great mass of that gallant people, by those who have an opportunity of judging of them rightly.

Before concluding these prefatory remarks, the Author would acknowledge how much he has been indebted to the third volume of the invaluable Historical Collection of Don Martin Fernandez de Navarrete, wherein that author has exhibited his usual industry, accuracy, and critical acumen. He has likewise profited greatly by the second volume of Oviedo's General History, which only exists in manuscript, and a copy of which he found in the Columbian Library of the Cathedral of Seville.

He has had some assistance also from the documents of the law case between Don Diego Columbus and the crown, which exist in the Archives of the Indies, and for an inspection of which he is much indebted to the permission of the government and the kind attentions of Don Jozef de la Higuera y Lara, the intelligent keeper of the

Archives. These, with the historical works of Herrera, Las Casas, Gomara, and Peter Martyr, have been his authorities for the facts contained in the following work, though he has not thought proper to refer to them continually at the bottom of his page.

While his work was going through the press, he received a volume of Spanish Biography, written with great elegance and accuracy, by Don Manuel Josef Quintana, and containing a life of Vasco Nuñez de Balboa. He was gratified to find that his own arrangement of facts was generally corroborated by this work; though he was enabled to correct his dates in several instances, and to make a few other emendations from the volume of Señor Quintana, whose position in Spain gave him the means of attaining superior exactness on these points.