Balboa then decided to find out if this story were true,
and on September i, 15 13, he started. It took him eleven
days to cut his way through the thick forest to the top
of the mountains, and then on the 25th of September,
15 13. he saw a great sea to the south, which he called the
South Sea, but which we call the Pacific Ocean. Four
days later he climbed down the south slope, and with sword
in hand rushed into the waters up to his waist, and claimed
the great sea and all it contained for the King of Spain.
The Isthmus of Panama is not large. The neck of an
hourglass is not so narrow in comparison with the globes
above and below it as this little neck of land with the
continents of North and South America which it joins.
I8



ISTHMUS OF PANAMA.
At its narrowest part, if it were level, we could walk across
it in a day, while to cross North America from New York
to San Francisco requires six day's and nights on a fast
railroad train, and in South America to make our way
from the Atlantic up the Amazon as far as we could go,
and thence to the Pacific by land, would take more than
two months.
