9 Balboa and Magellan

9. Balboa and Magellan ,1513,1520

 Balboa was a Spaniard who came to San Domingo to seek his fortune . He became a pauper and fled away from those to whom he owed money . After long wanderings he found himself on a high mountain in the center of the Isthmus of Panama . To the southward sparkled the waters of a new sea . He called it the South Sea . Wading into it waist deep , he waved his Sword in the air and took possession of it for his royal master , the King of Spain . This was in 1513. Seven years later , in 1520, Magellan , a Portuguese seaman in the service of the Spanish king , sailed through the Straits of Magellan and entered the same great ocean , which he called the Pacific . Thence northward and westward he sailed day after day , week after week , and month after month , until he reached the Philippine Islands . The natives killed Magellan . But one of his vessels found her way back to Spain around the Cape of Good Hope .