In the following year Gaspar Morales and Francisco Pizarro crossed the isthmus with sixty men, and visited the island which Balboa had called Isla Rica. In 1516, Vasco Nuñez de Balboa, ambitious of obtaining greater fame, and having two hundred men and considerable money at his command, transported the timber, rigging, and other appendages of two brigantines across the isthmus, and after putting the vessels in sailing condition, launched them upon the recently discovered ocean. After a short cruise among the islands near Isla Rica, Balboa returned to the Spanish settlement at Acla, on the north coast, where he was arrested on some false charges and put in irons by Pedrarias Davila, “as a traitor and an usurper of the territories of the crown of Spain.” The enmity of Pedrarias was so bitter toward the innocent officer that the Spanish governor of Darien ordered Balboa to be executed. In 1517, at the age of forty-one years, in the _plaza_ of Acla, the discoverer of the South Sea was publicly beheaded.[309] To further explore the coast of Brazil, it is said that Juan Diaz de Solis sailed from Lepe, Spain, on the eighth of October, 1515. Descrying the continent at Cape San Roque, in five degrees south latitude, he steered southward along the coast to Rio de Janeiro, (River of January,) in twenty-three degrees south latitude. Thence he coasted farther southward and entered a large bay of fresh water, which he called Mar Dulce, that was afterward called Rio de la Plata. While exploring this stream, De Solis, with some of his crew, went on land, and while ashore was attacked by the natives, and falling into their hands he and his men were roasted and devoured. The vessel returned to Cape St. Augustine, and having loaded with Brazil-wood, sailed to Spain.[310]