[1] Quintand's account of this expedition is the best we have in
Spanish literature. It forms part of his "Lives of Celebrated
Spaniards" (1807-1833), a standard work of the encyclopedia class.
Vasco Nunez de Balboa was born at Xerxes, in Spain, in 1475, and
died in Panama about 1517. His first visit to America was made in
1500. Ten years later he went to Darien, where he became alcalde
of a new settlement. In 1512 he was made governor of San Domingo.

While Governor of San Domingo Balboa learned from the Indians that
there was a great sea lying to the south and west, and in
September, 1513, set out from Darien to discover it. After an
adventurous journey he reached, on September 25th, a mountain top
from which he first saw the Pacific. After building some ships for
use on the Pacific and transporting them with immense labor across
the Isthmus, launching two of them, Balboa was arrested by the
governor of the colony on a charge of contemplated revolt and
beheaded.

[2] Careta was an Indian chief whose friendship Balboa secured.

[3] The date of this view of the Pacific by Balboa was September
25, 1513. Readers of the poems of Keats are familiar with the
error in his sonnet "On First Looking Into Chapman's 'Homer,'"
where, by a curious error, never corrected, he makes Cortez,
instead of Balboa, the Spaniard who stood "silent upon a peak in
Darien."