A PEAK IN DARIEN

I quote:

"Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He star'd at the Pacific - and all his men
Looked at each other with a wild surmise -
Silent, upon a peak in Darien." – Keats


Don’t ask me why I add this here, but I just felt like doing so. Its one of the most beautiful bits of poetry I’ve ever read. And by the way, Keats was wrong here. It wasn’t Cortez – stout or otherwise – who had his crewmen looking at each other with a wild surmise. Balboa was the first to set sight on the Pacific. (But Balboa never got down to telling me whether he’d got his crewmen worried about his sanity when he stared at the Pacific. Its a moot point whether he ever stared at the Pacific at all.)