This journey was to be his undoing. At every point naked savages fought desperately against his mailed warriors. In one of these encounters he was attempting to rescue one of his comrades, when he was hit by an arrow in the thigh. The barb penetrated the protecting armor to the bone. He was rescued by his faithful followers and was carried to his ship, weak and fainting from the loss of blood. It is said by some, that, although the arrow was withdrawn, a part of the arrow-head, which was of flint, did not come wholly away. Suffering and delirious, the brave old navigator was borne to the harbor of Matanzas in Cuba, where was a settlement which he, himself, had founded. His adventurous companions lifted the pallet upon which he lay on the upper deck, where the cooling breezes might alleviate his fever, lowered it into a boat, and, when the shore was reached, carried him tenderly into an unfinished house, which he was having constructed. They brought his suit of mail, his banner, and his sword, placing them around him so that he might feel at home. Delirium now seized the care-worn explorer, and thus he lay for days, as, in fancy he saw himself a boy again, climbing the bold rocks of the Sierras after young eagles, contending in the courtyard with his brothers, or chasing the brown deer in the leafy forests. Then the camp and battle scenes passed before his eager vision; voyages over vast seas among beauteous islands; expeditions through palms and moss-grown mimosas; journeying to the villages of brown-skinned natives. One night, peace came to the old warrior, and there was weeping and sorrow among his staunch and battle-scarred companions. They carried the body of the good knight to the Isle of Porto Rico, where they first gave him a sepulchre within the castle, but eventually his ashes were deposited beneath the high altar of the Dominican church in San Juan de Puerto Rico, where they rested for more than three hundred years. When the American forces invaded the country in 1898, and took it away from the rule of Castile, his remains were placed beneath a monument, upon which was carved the trite but appropriate saying: “This narrow grave contains the remains of a man who was a lion by name, and much more so by nature.” VASCO NUÑEZ DE BALBOA: DISCOVERER OF THE PACIFIC OCEAN. (1475-1517)