288 



INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL. 



under the trees. ' Neither Romaldi nor my guide could 

 be prevailed upon to remain and waXch them ; they said 

 it V70uld be death to sleep there. The river is the out- 

 let of the Lake of Amatitan, and is said to be navigable 

 from the Falls of San Pedro Martyr, seventy miles from 

 its mouth ; but there are no boats upon it, and its banks 

 ^re in the v^ildness of primeval nature. The crossing- 

 place v^as at the old mouth of the river. The sandbar 

 extends about a mile farther, and has been formed since 

 the conquest. Landing, I v^alked across the sand to 

 the house or hut of the captain of the port, and a few- 

 steps beyond saw the object of my journey, the bound- 

 less waters of the Pacific. When Nunez de Balboa, 

 after crossing swamps and rivers, mountains and woods, 

 which had never been passed but by straggling Indians, 

 came down upon the shores of this newly-discovered 

 sea, he rushed up to the middle in the waves with his 

 buckler and sword, and took possession of it in the 

 name of the king his master, vowing to defend it in 

 arms against all his enemies. But Nunez had the as- 

 surance that beyond that sea " he would find immense 

 stores of gold, out of which people did eat and drink." 

 I had only to go back again. I had ridden nearly sixty 

 miles ; the sun was intensely hot, the sand burning, and 

 very soon I entered the hut and threw myself into a 

 hammock. The hut was built of poles set up in the 

 sand, thatched with the branches of trees; furnished 

 with a wooden table, a bench, and some boxes of mer- 

 chandise, and swarming with moschetoes. The captain 

 of the port, as he brushed them away, complained of 

 the desolation and dreariness of the place, its isolation 

 and separation from the world, its unhealthiness, and 

 the misery of a man doomed to live there ; and yet he 



