A DOCUMENTED NARRATIVE
Although he never realized its significance as a link between
the Atlantic and Pacif c Oceans, Christopher Columbus is generally given
credit for having discovered the Chagres River. It is now believed that
his fourth expedition to the New World spent several days at the mouth
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of the river during December 1502. Four participants of the fourth
The earliest historian of the Indies, Peter Martyr Anghiera., wrote that Columbus had discovered the Chagres. A later 16th century court historian of the Indies, Francisco L6pez de Gomara, whose inaccuracies concerning the conquest of Mexico prompted Bernal Diaz del Castillo to write The True History of the Conquest of New Spain. claimed that Lope de Olano discovered and named the Chagres in' 1510. Apparently those who regarded Gomara as a reliable historian did not question the assertion that Olano rather than Columbus had discovered the Chagres. For Gomarals ac=
count of the Olano expedition, see Francisco L6pez de Gomara, Historia General de las .....Indias (Madrid and Barcelona, ...1932), I: 122. In the 18th century the 6ften-inaccurate geographer, Antonio de Alcedo, probably used a source based on Gonara in stating that Olano had discovered the mouth of the Chagres. The river itself, according to Alcedo, was discovered and named R{o de Lagartes .by Hernando de la Serna in 1527... See Coronel Antonio de Aleedo, Diccionario Geogrifico-Hist6rico de las Indias Occidentales O Ame4rica: Es a Saber: De los Reynos del... Perd Nueva EspaBA, Tierra-Firme Chile y Nuevo Reyn de Granada (Madrid 17 7 I, 1 The.... 18th century natural scientists Juan and Ulloa, in describing the Chagres, wrote "Its mouth at the Caribbean Sea was discovered in 1510 by Lope de Olano .. See Jorge Juan y Antonio de Ulloa, Relacidn Histcrica del viage a la America Meridional Hecho de Orden de S. ag a Medir alunos rados de Meridian Terrestre. con otras varias observaciones astronmicas ptsicas (Madrid 178), I, 1 TRTa partial refutation of Gomara and de Alcedo, see Ernesto J. Castillero, nMonograffa Del Rfo Chagres," Loterfa, No 7h (Jlio, 1947), 21.
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