He was then scarcely forty-two years of age, in the prime of life, seven long years of which had been passed in the wilderness of Darien. He had labored, he had fought, he had committed crimes against humanity--all that his sovereign might acquire a realm beyond the sea--and this was his reward: to perish as a felon, to die as a traitor, "in the full career of his glory, one of the most deserving of the Spanish discoverers--a victim to the basest and most perfidious envy." He had, indeed, deserved well of his king, for of all the Spaniards who explored the regions of America, he was one of the greatest, the most persistent in carrying the flag of his country into unknown lands, in compelling the inhabitants to accept his religion and acknowledge the sovereignty of Spain. He was not the first of the Spanish explorers and conquistadores to experience that king's ingratitude, nor the last to meet a violent death. Columbus and Cortés died in their beds, but they were victims of their sovereign's neglect. De Soto, worn out by his toils, perished on the bank of the Mississippi, which became his grave. Ponce de Leon, returning to Florida, the land he had discovered, received his death-wound from an Indian arrow. Pizarro was assassinated, by men he had reduced to poverty and exasperated by his taunts. The reward, then, of exploration and discovery mainly inheres in the accomplishment itself, for few of the world's great explorers have lived to receive the fruits of their labors, as witness Magellan and Hudson and Cook. Of them all, however, perhaps there was none who was so basely requited as Vasco Nuñez de Balboa. Were it not for the fact that there was in Darien, at the time Pedrarias wreaked his vengeance upon Balboa, a veracious chronicler of events, whose name has survived as author of a great history, we should be loath to accept as true this story of revenge, ingratitude, and crime. But we have it from Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo, a contemporary of the chief characters in this tragedy, who was sent out by King Ferdinand as inspector of mines, and who subsequently, as historiographer of the Indies, wrote a great work, which first appeared in 1526. He was intimate with both Pedrarias and Balboa, and after the death of the latter had access to his private papers, from the perusal of which, and from his knowledge of our hero, he drew conclusions as to his merits, which were long since sanctioned by the voice of posterity.