Darién Province

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Darién is a province in eastern Panama. It is hot, humid, heavily forested, and sparsely populated.

Europeans first discovered the region in 1501, and Christopher Columbus sighted it on his fourth voyage in 1503. The Spanish established the first European colony in South America, Santa María la Antigua del Darién, in Darién in 1510. The settlement did not prosper, however, and was soon abandoned. From this town Vasco Núñez de Balboa made his march to the Pacific in 1513. Some of the refugees from Santa María went on to found Panama City in 1519.

In 1698, the Scots launched another attempt to colonize Darién: the Darién scheme. It too ended in failure and led to the Acts of Union 1707 which joined Scotland and England in the United Kingdom.

Today the chief town in Darién is La Palma, located where the Tuira River empties into the Bay of San Miguel.

The province was formed in 1922 from Panamá province.

Darien appears in Keats' poem "On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer"; in the poem, "stout Cortez" is in Darien when he first sees the Pacific Ocean. (In fact it was Balboa, not Cortez, who was involved in this historical event.)