Santa María la Antigua del Darién Panama

Vasco Nunez de Balboa, a member of Bastidas's crew, had settled in Hispaniola (the island encompassing present-day Dominican Republic and Haiti) but stowed away on a voyage to Panama in 1510 to escape his creditors.

At this time, about eight hundred Spaniards live on the isthmus, but soon the many jungle perils, doubtless including malaria and yellow fever, kill all but sixty of them.

The settlers at Antigua del Darien (Antigua), the first city to be duly constituted by the Spanish crown, finally depose the crown's representative and elect Balboa and Martin Zamudio co-mayors.

Balboa proves to be a good administrator.

He insists that the settlers plant crops rather than depend solely on supply ships, and Antigua becomes a prosperous community.

Balboa leads raids on native settlements like other conquistadors, but unlike most, he proceeds to befriend the conquered tribes. 

He takes the daughter of a chief as his lifelong mistress.

Balboa sets out on September 1, 1513, with one hundred and ninety Spaniards—among them Francisco Pizarro, who will later conquer the Inca Empire in Peru—a pack of dogs, and a thousand enslaved natives.

After twenty-five days of hacking their way through the jungle, the party gazes on the vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean.

Balboa, clad in full armor, wades into the water and claims the sea and all the shores on which it washes for his God and his king.

Balboa returns to Antigua in January 1514 with all one hundred and ninety soldiers and with cotton cloth, pearls, and forty thousand pesos in gold.

His enemies have meanwhile denounced him in the Spanish court, and King Ferdinand appoints a new governor for the colony, at this time known as Castilla del Oro.