HENRY C. TAYLOR. 161 
foundland to La Plata, in the hope of finding the strait 
which they confidently believed nature had provided as 
a means of communication between the oceans. 
‘‘Men,’’ said Humboldt, ‘‘ could not accustom them- 
_ selves to the idea that the continent extended uninter- 
ruptedly from such bigh northern to such high southern 
latitudes.’’ From the year (1513) when Nunez de Balboa 
first looked upon the wide sweep of the Pacific, a cen- 
tury was occupied in fruitless efforts of gallant and ca- 
pable men to discover that strait which nature should 
have placed there — but did not. 
The Cabots worked in the north. D’ Avila, undersecret. 
orders of the Spanish king, scrutinized eagerly the isth- 
muses and the Spanish main ; while DeSolis, under simi- 
lar instructions, explored the coast of Brazil, and while 
hopefully ascending the great estuary of La Plata, was 
killed by the natives of that region. Ponce de Leon 
sailed hundreds of miles northward from Panama on the 
same errand ; Cabrillo and other lieutenants of Cortez 
groped north and west from Tehuantepec, as far as the 
vicinity of the present Monterey and San Francisco ; and 
Cortez himself, under the urging of his royai master, 
King Charles V., of Spain, struggled against much ob- 
stacle and disaster to achieve the desired discovery. 
When, however, the gulf of California was found to 
have a head at the mouth of a great continental river, 
the intelligent Spanish explorers, already doubtful, 
could no longer believe in the existence of any com- 
munication between the seas, and the ‘‘secret of the 
strait’? faded away into the dreamland of legend and 
fable. Other nations than Spain still hoped. As lateas 
1607, we are told by Bancroft, Virginia colonists were 
ordered to seek communication with the South sea ‘‘by 
ascending some stream which flowed from the north- 
west,’ and that it was in ascending the Chickahominy 
with this end in view, that Captain John Smith was cap- 
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