[1514.] Pedrarias Dávila, having been appointed governor of Castilla del Oro, by which name the region about the isthmus of Darien was now called, sailed from San Lúcar with an armada of fifteen vessels and over 2000 men, April 12, 1514. The special object of this expedition was to discover and settle the shores of the South Sea, whose existence had been reported in Spain, but whose discovery by Vasco Nuñez de Balboa was not known before the departure of Pedrarias. _Herrera_, dec. i. lib. x. cap. xiii.; _Peter Martyr_, dec. ii. cap. vii.; dec. iii. cap. v.; _Galvano's Discov._, p. 125; _Quintana_, _Vidas de Españoles Célebres_, 'Balboa,' p. 28; _Robertson's Hist. Am._, vol. i. p. 207. See chapter x. of this volume. [1515.] Juan Diaz de Solis sailed from Lepe October 8, 1515, with three vessels, and surveyed the eastern coast of South America from Cape San Roque to Rio Janeiro, where he was killed by the natives. _Navarrete_, _Col. de Viages_, tom. iii. pp. 48-50. Three vessels were fitted out at Seville, well manned and armed for a cruise against the Caribs, under command of Juan Ponce de Leon, but the Spaniards were defeated in their first encounter with the savages at Guadalupe, and the expedition was practically abandoned. [Sidenote: GRADUAL ENLARGEMENT OF THE TWO AMERICAS.] The adventures of Badajoz, Mercado, Morales, and others in 1515-16 and the following years, by which the geography of the Isthmus was more fully determined, are given elsewhere. _Schöner_, _Luculentissima quædã terræ totius descriptio_, Nuremberg, 1515, and another edition of the same work under the title _Orbis Typvs_, same place and date, have a chapter on America 'discovered by Vespucci in 1497.' In _Reisch_, _Margaritha Philosophica_, Strasburg, 1515, an encyclopedia frequently republished, is a map which is almost an exact copy of that in the _Ptolemy_ of 1513, except in its names. The main-land to the north-west of Cuba is called Zoana Mela, but the names of certain localities along the coast are omitted. Both Cuba and Española are called Isabela, and the southern continent is laid down as 'Paria seu Prisilia.' _Harrisse_, _Bib. Am. Vet._, nos. 80-2; _Kunstmann_, _Entdeckung Am._, pp. 130-1; _Kohl_, _Die beiden ältesten Karten von Am._, p. 33; _Stevens' Notes_, p. 52; fac-simile, pl. iv. no. 2. [1516.] After Ponce de Leon's voyage in 1512 or 1513, and probably before that time, trips were made by private adventurers northward from Española and Cuba to the Islands and to Florida. Among these is that of Diego de Miruelo in 1516, who probably visited the western or gulf coast of Florida, and brought back specimens of gold. No details are known of the expedition. _Garcilaso de la Vega_, _La Florida del Inca_, Madrid, 1723, p. 5.