I. i. INTRODUCTION. 
The West Indies, Castilla del Oro, and New Spain, to 1535. 1 
Of the various islands of the West Indies discovered by Columbus in 
the course of his first and second voyages, 1492-1495, Española (Santo 
Domingo) was selected as the one on which to establish the first colony. 
Misfortune attended the first two efforts to found a settlement, and it 
was not until 1496 that the town of Santo Domingo—the first permanent 
European settlement in the new world—was founded. Thus it came 
about that the island of Española became the base from which coloniza¬ 
tion spread not only to the other large islands of the Indies, but also to 
the mainland. 
For more than a decade after the founding of Santo Domingo, how¬ 
ever, the energies of the Spaniards were directed almost exclusively to 
the exploration of the mainland coast—regarded then as a troublesome 
body of land preventing direct passage to India, and through which it 
was hoped would be found a navigable strait. By 1504 the entire main¬ 
land coast had been explored, and, in some places, re-explored many times, 
from Cape Gracias á Dios in Honduras to a point several degrees south 
of the equator in Brazil. Until 1513 all of this mainland which had been 
explored and was claimed by the Spaniards was called Tierra Firme. 
From Santo Domingo as a base the conquest of the mainland began in 
1509. In that year Alonso de Ojeda attempted to settle the province of 
Urabá, or that part of Tierra Firme lying east of the Atrato River. Fail¬ 
ure attending his efforts, Ojeda soon returned to Española; the survivors 
of his expedition finally crossed the Gulf of Urabá and founded the settle¬ 
ment of Santa Maria de la Antigua del Darién, where Vasco Núñez de 
Balboa soon became the dominant figure. At the same time that Ojeda 
undertook to settle Urabá, Diego de Nicuesa, with a colonizing expedition 
raised primarily in Española, attempted to settle the province of Veragua, 
or that part of Tierra Firme which extended from the Atrato River to 
Cape Gracias á Dios—then the northern limit of exploration. Misfortune 
attending his efforts, he and the survivors of his expedition finally joined 
Ojeda’s colonists at Santa Maria de la Antigua del Darién, which, in fact, 
had been located within the jurisdiction of Veragua. Since Ojeda did 
not return, and because Nicuesa was soon exiled, Balboa continued to 
exercise authority at Santa Maria; finally the king appointed him governor 
and captain-general ad interim of the so-called “ province of Darién.” 
In this capacity Balboa consolidated and strengthened the colony and 
carried on a series of explorations which culminated in the discovery of 
the South Sea (Pacific Ocean) in September, 1513. 
1 This section of the Introduction is based upon C. W. Hackett, “ The Delimitation of 
Political Jurisdictions in Spanish North America to 1535”, published in The Hispanic 
American Historical Review, I. 40-69 (Feb. 1918) and upon the references therein 
cited. 
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