Vasco Nunez, the new commander, entered upon a career of conquest in the neighbourhood of Darien, which ended in the discovery of the Pacific Ocean on the 25th of September 1513.
It was long before another British ship entered the Pacific Ocean.
The latter view prevailed and was as a rule held by the Arab geographers of the middle ages, so that until the discovery of America and of the Pacific Ocean the belief was general that the land surface was greater than the water surface, or that at least the two were equal, as Mercator and Varenius held.
The south-western part of the Pacific Ocean has a very rich and diversified submarine relief, abounding in small basins separated by ridges and rises.
The leached guanos and phosphatized rocks, which are grouped with them for commercial purposes, have been obtained in great quantities in many islands of the Pacific Ocean (such as Baker, Howland, Jarvis and McKean Islands) between long.
