The Conquerors' Trail

. . . Like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes

He star'd at the Pacific--and all his men Look'd at each other with a wild

surmise--Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

Thus did John Keats, with a poet's fine contempt for quibbling research,* immortalize the moment in 1513 when Vasco Nunez de Balboa became the first recorded European to gaze upon the Pacific Ocean. Balboa's discovery led to the conquest of Peru, and by 1535 the Spaniards were feverishly carting the gold and silver loot of the luckless Incas over Panama's Camino Real (Royal Road) to the tall treasure galleons that sailed for Spain. Last week a 28-year-old U.S. Army lieutenant, who has already retraced Balboa's path, was completing his rediscovery of Panama's historic routes with a rugged crossing of the old treasure trail.

For Lieut. James W. McDonald, a West Pointer from Huntington, N.Y., tough jung'e training of combat teams from the Canal Zone's 33rd Infantry Regiment was the basic mission for both expeditions: choosing historical routes was an interest-arousing flourish. But playing the role of a conquistador caught McDonald's imagination: for Operation Balboa he briefed himself carefully under Balboa Expert Juan Rubio of the University of Panama. Then he followed the most authoritative route over the isthmus' north-coast range, down a remote river and across the densely jungled central plain. At length he faced three peaks, two about 8,000 ft. high and one only 2,200. With a professional soldier's cool surmise, McDonald decided that Balboa would have sensibly climbed the smaller hill for reconnaissance. McDonald and party scrambled up it and saw the silvery sea. He feels sure that he found the lost peak in Darien.

Like the retracing of Balboa's route, Operation Gold Road last week was proving much tougher going than the Spaniards found it. The conquistadors followed the trails of the then more numerous Indians, used Indian guides and bearers, rarely wore their heavy steel cuirasses. McDonald's men, by contrast, lugged 75-lb. packs and had to cut their their own way through the jungle with machetes. But the 1955 expedition was safer; radios could quickly summon help in the form of rescue helicopters. In an emergency, the roar of a whirly-bird's engine might well sound more beautiful than the clinking of all the gold that once went over the jungle-crowded Camino Real.

*Hernando Cortez. conqueror of Mexico, never visited Panama.

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