such abundance of spices that they came straight back to Malacca without visiting Ternate, as had been intended.
Magellan returned to Portugal in 1512. On the 14th of July of that year he was raised to the rank of fidalgo escudeiro; and in 1513 he accompanied a Portuguese expedition against Azamor in Morocco. The city was taken on the 28th-29th of August 1513; but Magellan was subsequently wounded, and lamed for life, in a sortie; he was also accused of trading with the Moors. The accusation was subsequently dropped, but Magellan fell into disfavour with King Manuel, who let him understand that he would have no further employment in his country’s service (after the 15th of May 1514). Magellan formally renounced his nationality, and went to offer his services to the court of Spain. He reached Seville on the 20th of October 1517, and thence went to Valladolid to see Charles V. With the help of Juan de Aranda, one of the three chief officials of the India House at Seville, and of other friends, especially Diogo Barbosa, a Portuguese like himself, naturalized as a Spaniard, who had acquired great influence in Seville, and whose daughter he now married, he gained the ear of Charles and of the powerful minister, Juan Rodriguez de Fonseca, bishop of Burgos, the persistent enemy of Columbus, the steady supporter of his great successor. Magellan proposed to reach the Spice Islands of the East Indies by the west; for that purpose he hoped to discover a strait at the extreme south of South America, and is said to have declared himself ready to sail southwards to 75° to realize his project. Ruy Faleiro the astronomer, another Portuguese exile, aided him in the working out of his plan, and he found an invaluable financial ally in Christopher de Haro, a member of a great Antwerp firm, who owed a grudge to the king of Portugal. On the 22nd of March 1518, Magellan and Faleiro, as joint captains-general, signed an agreement with Charles V., by which one-twentieth of the clear profits were to fall to them; further, the government of any lands discovered was vested in them and their heirs, with the title of Adelantados. On the 10th of August 1519, the fleet of five vessels, under Magellan’s command, left Seville and dropped down the Guadalquivir to S. Lucar de Barrameda, at the mouth of the river, where they remained more than five weeks. On the 20th of September the armada put to sea. Of the vessels which composed it, the “Trinidad” was the flagship, and the “Vittoria” the only one which accomplished the circumnavigation. The crew, officers, volunteers, &c., numbered about 270–280, of whom the names of 268 are preserved; 237 of these received pay; at least 37 were Portuguese, 30 or more Italians (mostly Genoese), 19 French, 1 English, 1 German. Only 31 returned in the “Vittoria”; 4 survivors of the crew of the “Trinidad” reappeared later. Antonio Pigafetta of Vicenza, an Italian gentleman who has left the best history of the voyage, went as a volunteer in Magellan’s suite. Faleiro stayed behind, having cast his horoscope and found that the venture would be fatal to him. The fleet was well armed, and the total cost of equipment was 8,751,000 maravedis, or £5032 (equal to over £50,000 in present value). Three-quarters were defrayed by the Spanish Crown, one-quarter by Christopher Haro and his friends. Before starting, Magellan made his will and addressed a memorandum to Charles V., assigning geographical positions connected with the controversy he was intending to settle: viz., the proper drawing of a demarcation-line between the spheres of Spain and Portugal in the East Indies, and the inclusion of the Moluccas within the Spanish sphere.
Steering south-west and calling at Teneriffe (Sept. 26–Oct. 3), Magellan sighted South America at Cape St Augustine, near Pernambuco on the 29th of November; thence he followed the east coast of the New World down to the La Plata estuary, which he examined in the hope of finding a passage at this point (Jan. 11–Feb. 6, 1520). On the 31st of March following, he arrived at Port St Julian (in 49° 20′ S.) where he wintered. Here he crushed a formidable mutiny (April 1-2), and made acquaintance with the natives, whom he called Patagonians (“Big Feet”), whose great size and lofty stature are magnified by Pigafetta to gigantic proportions. Leaving Port St Julian on the 24th of August 1520, he discovered on the 21st of October the cape of the Eleven Thousand Virgins, the eastern entrance of the long-sought passage. Through this strait, 360 m. long, often narrow and very tortuous, fringed by snow-clad mountains, he guided his armada for thirty-eight days, weakened by the desertion of one vessel (the “S. Antonio”). On the 21st of November a council of pilots and captains was held to consider the continuation of the voyage, and on the 28th of November the fleet rounded Cabo Deseado, the “desired” western terminus of the strait, variously called by the first discoverers, “Victoria Strait,” “Strait of the Patagonians,” “of all Saints,” “of the Eleven Thousand Virgins,” or “of Magellan,” now only known by the last of these names. To the south of the passage lay the forbidding land “stark with eternal cold,” which from the many fires here observed Magellan named “Tierra del Fuego.” The expedition now entered the “Great South Sea,” first sighted by Vasco Nuñez de Balboa (q.v.), which, from the steady and gentle winds that drove the fleet across the immeasurable expanse, was by Magellan called “Pacific.” For ninety-eight days Magellan crossed this sea, almost beyond the grasp of man’s mind for vastness (as Maximilian of Transylvania puts it), from Cabo Deseado to the Ladrones. On the whole transit he discovered only two islands, sterile and uninhabited, which he called “St Paul’s” (Jan. 24, 1521) and “Shark Island” (Feb. 3). The first of these has been identified with Puka Puka in the Tuamotu Archipelago, the second with Flint Island in the Manihiki group; neither identification seems convincing. For most of these ninety-eight days the explorers had no fresh provisions, little water (and that bad), and putrid biscuit; the ravages of scurvy became terrible. The worst anticipations of Magellan (“he would push on, if they had to eat the leather of the rigging”) were realized; ox-hides, sawdust, and rats became coveted food. At last, on the 6th of March 1521, the Ladrones (so named by Magellan from the thievish habits of the natives) came in sight, Guam being probably the first port of call. Here the fleet rested, watered, revictualled and refitted; on the 9th of March they started again westward; and on the 16th of March sighted the southern point of Samar Island in the archipelago, since 1542 called the Philippines, but named by Magellan, its first discoverer, after St Lazarus. On the 7th of April the squadron arrived at Cebu, south-west of Samar, in the heart of the Philippines; here Magellan contracted a close friendship and alliance with the treacherous native sovereign, who professed Christianity the better to please and utilize his Catholic friends. Undertaking an expedition to conquer, for the Catholic faith and the king of Cebu, the neighbouring island of Mactan, Magellan was killed there in a fight with the islanders (April 27, 1521). The king of Cebu after this got into his power several of the leading personages of the squadron, including Juan Serrano, one of the two admirals elected to replace Magellan, and murdered them. The survivors, burning one of the three remaining vessels, left the Philippines, and made their way to the Moluccas (Nov. 6), visiting Borneo on the way (July 9-Sept. 27, 1521). At Tidor a heavy cargo of cloves was taken in; the “Trinidad,” becoming leaky, stayed behind with her crew; and the “Vittoria,” under Juan Sebastian del Cano, proceeded to Europe alone (Dec. 21, 1521). To double the Cape of Good Hope the “Vittoria” reached between 40° and 41° S. (April 7-16, 1522) and suffered from contrary winds, heavy seas, scurvy and starvation. In the Cape Verde Islands (July 9-15, 1522) thirteen of the crew were detained prisoners by the Portuguese. Only thirty-one men returned with del Cano to Seville in the first vessel that had ever made the tour of the earth. Though Magellan had not quite reached the Spice Islands when he fell at Mactan, his task had then been accomplished. He had already reached and passed the longitude of the Moluccas, where he had already been; the way home from the Philippines by the Indian Ocean and the Cape of Good Hope was perfectly known to the Portuguese, himself included. Magellan’s name has never received its due recognition in
