If you have ever seen the ocean, you will understand what a grand thing it is to look for the first time upon its mighty waters, stretching away into the distance, and losing themselves in the clouds and sky.  We know it is thousands of miles over to the other shore, but for all that we have a pretty good idea of that shore.  We know its name, and have read about the people who live there.

But when, in the beginning of the sixteenth century, Vasco Nunez de Balboa stood upon the shore of the Pacific, and gazed over its boundless waters, the sight to him was both grand and mysterious.  He saw that a vast sea lay beneath and before him—­but that was all he knew.  Europeans had not visited it before, and the Indians, who had acted as his guides, knew but little about it.  If he had desired to sail across those vast blue waters, Balboa would have had no idea upon what shores he would land or what wonderful countries and continents he would discover.

Now-a-days, any school-boy could tell that proud, brave soldier, what lay beyond those billows.  Supposing little Johnny Green (we all know him, don’t we?) had been there, how quickly he would have settled matters for the Spanish chieftain.

“Ah, Mr. Balboa,” Johnny would have said, “you want to know what lies off in that direction—­straight across?  Well, I can tell you, sir.  If you are standing, as I think you are, on a point of the Isthmus of Darien, where you can look directly westward, you may cast your eyes, as far as they will go, over a body of water, which, at this point, is about eleven thousand miles wide.  No wonder you jump, sir, but such is the fact.  If you were to sail directly west upon this ocean you would have a very long passage before you came upon any land at all, and the first place which you would reach, if you kept straight on your westward course, would be the Mulgrave Islands.  But you would have passed about seven or eight hundred miles to the southward of the Sandwich Islands, which are a very important group, where there is an enormous volcano, and where Captain Cook will be killed in about two hundred and fifty years.  If you then keep on, you will pass among the Caroline Islands, which your countrymen will claim some day; and if you are not eaten up by the natives, who will no doubt coax you to land on some of their islands and will then have you for supper, you will at last reach the Philippine Islands, and will probably land, for a time, at Mindanao, to get water and things.  Then, if you still keep on, you will pass to the north of a big island, which is Borneo, and will sail right up to the first land to the west, which will be part of a continent; or else you will go down around a peninsula, which lies directly in your course, and sail upon the other side of it, into a great gulf, and land anywhere you please.  Do you know where you will be then, Mr. Balboa?  Don’t, eh?  Well, sir, you would be just where Columbus hoped he would be, when he reached the end of his great voyage across the Atlantic—­in the Indies!  Yes, sir, all among the gold, and ivory, and spices, and elephants and other things!