Page 82 - The Interest of America in Sea Power Present and Future

The Isthmus and Sea Power. 63

he searched the entire coast-line as far as
Porto Bello, discovering and examining several
openings in the land which since have been
of historical importance, among others the
mouth of the San Juan River and the Chiriqui
Lagoon, one of whose principal divisions still
recalls his visit in its name, Almirante Bay,
the Bay of the Admiral. A little beyond, to
the eastward of Porto Bello, he came to a
point already known to the Spaniards, having
been reached from Trinidad. The explorer
thus acquired the certainty that, from the
latter island to Yucatan, there was no break
in the obdurate shore which barred his access
to Asia.
Every possible site for an interoceanic canal
lies within the strip of land thus visited by
Columbus shortly before his death in 1504.
How narrow the insurmountable obstacle, and
how tantalizing, in the apparent facilities for
piercing it extended by the formation of the
land, were not known until ten years later,
when Balboa, led on by the reports of the
natives, reached the eminence whence he. first
among Europeans, saw the South Sea, — a
name long and vaguely applied to the Pacific,