CHAPTER IX.
MAGELLAN’S DISCOVERY.
BY REV. EDWARD E. HALE, D.D.
FERNANDO DA MAGALHAENS, or Magalhâes, whom the French and English call Magellan, was a Portuguese gentleman of good family. He was educated, as well as his time knew how to educate men, for the business which he followed through his life,—that of a navigator and a discoverer. He was a child when Columbus first came home successful from the West Indies; and as a boy and young man he grew up, in the Court of King John the Second of Portugal, among people all alive to the exciting novelties of new adventure. As early as 1505 he went to the East Indies, where he served the Portuguese Government several years. He was in the expedition which first discovered the Spice Islands of Banda, Amboyna, Ternate, and Tidor. Well acquainted with the geography of the East as far as the Portuguese adventurers had gone, he returned to Portugal.
King Emmanuel was then upon the throne. Spain owes it to an unjust slight which Magellan received at the Portuguese Court, that, under her banner, this greatest of seamen sailed round the world and solved the problem of ages in reaching the east by way of the west. Magellan was in the service of the King in Morocco in a war which the Portuguese had on hand there. He received a slight wound in his knee, which made him lame for the rest of his life. Returning to Portugal, on some occasion when he was pressing a claim for an allowance customary to men of his rank, he was refused, and charged with pretending to an injury which was really cured. Enraged at this insult, he abandoned his country. He did this in the lordly style which seems in keeping with a Portuguese grandee of his time. He published a formal act of renunciation of Portugal. He went to Spain and took letters of naturalization there. In the most formal way he announced that he was a subject of the King of Spain, and should give service and life to that monarch, if he would use them.
Magellan had a companion in his exile; this was Ruy Faleiro, a gentleman of Lisbon, who had also fallen into disgrace at Court. Faleiro,[1590] like Magellan, was a thorough geographer; and the two had persuaded themselves that the shortest route to the Spice Islands of the East was to be found in crossing the Western Ocean. We know now, that in this conviction they were wrong. Any ordinary map of the eastern hemisphere includes the Spice Islands or Moluccas, as well as Portugal, because the distance in longitude east from Lisbon is less than that of the longitude measured west. It has been proved, also, that the continent of America extends farther south than that of Africa. This, Magellan and Faleiro did not know; but they were willing to take the risk of it. Spain has always held the Philippines,—the prize which she won as the reward of Magellan’s great discovery,—under the treaty of 1494, which gave to her half the world beyond the meridian of three hundred and seventy leagues west from Ferro. She has held it because Magellan sailed west, and so struck the Philippines; but, in fact, those islands lie within the half of the world which the same treaty gave to Portugal.
AUTOGRAPH OF MAGELLAN.
By mistake or by design, the Philippines, when they were discovered, were moved on the maps twenty-five degrees east of their true position on the globe. The Spaniards made the maps. The islands were thus brought within their half of the world; and this immense error was not corrected till the voyages of Dampier.[1591]
Charles V. was no fool. He recognized at once the value of such men as Magellan and Faleiro. He heard and accepted their plan for a western voyage to the spice regions. On the 22d of March, 1518, he bound himself to fit out an expedition at his own cost on their plans, under Magellan’s orders, on condition that the principal part of the profits should belong to the Throne. Through years of intrigue, public and private, in which the Spanish jealousy of Sevillian merchants and others tried to break up the expedition, Charles was, for once, faithful to a promise. We must not attempt here to follow the sad history of such intrigues. On the 10th of August, 1519, the expedition sailed under Magellan. Poor Faleiro, alas! had gone crazy in the mean time. What proved even a greater misfortune was that Juan of Carthagena was put on board the “San Antonio” as a sort of Japanese spy on Magellan. He was the marplot of the expedition, as the history will show. He was called a veedor, or inspector.
MAGELLAN.
[Fac-simile of an engraving in Navarrete’s Coleccion, vol. iv. It is also reproduced in Stanley’s First Voyage round the World by Magellan (Hakluyt Society, 1874); in Cladera’s Investigaciones históricas; in the Relacion del ultimo viage al estrecho de Magellanes de la fragata de S. M. Santa Maria de la Cabeza en los anos de 1785 y 1786 (Madrid, 1788); in the Allgemeine geographische Ephemeriden (November, 1804), p. 269; in August Bürck’s Magellan oder die erste Reise um die erde, Leipsic, 1844; in Rüge’s Geschichte des Zeitalters der Entdeckungen, p. 402; and in the Carter-Brown Catalogue, i. 81.
There are two portraits in De Bry,—one a full length in the corner of a map of America which accompanies the narrative of Benzoni in part vi., and of Herrera in part xii.; and the other on a map of the two hemispheres in part xi.; also repeated in Schouten’s Journal (1618). There are similar pictures in Hulsius, parts vi. and xvi. Cf. the Catalogue (no. 135) of the Gallery of the New York Historical Society.—Ed.]
There is something pathetic in contrasting the magnificent fleet with which Magellan sailed, under the patronage of an emperor, with the poor little expedition of Columbus. With the new wealth of the Indies at command, and with the resources now of a generation of successful discovery, the Emperor directed the dockyards of Seville to meet all Magellan’s wishes in the most thorough way. No man in the world, perhaps, knew better than Magellan what he needed. The expedition, therefore, sailed with as perfect a material equipment as the time knew how to furnish. It consisted of five ships,—the “Trinidad” and “San Antonio,” each of 120 Spanish toneles, the “Concepcion,” of 90, the “Victoria,” of 85,—long famous as the one vessel which made the whole voyage,—and the “Santiago,” of 75. For the convenience of the translators this Spanish word toneles is generally rendered by the French word tonneaux and the English word tons. But in point of fact the tonele of Seville was one fifth larger than the tonelada of the north of Spain, which nearly corresponds to our ton; and the vessels of Magellan and Columbus were, in fact, so much larger than the size which is generally assigned to them in the popular histories.[1592]
MAGELLAN.
Fac-simile of the engraving in Herrera, i. 293.
MAGELLAN.
Fac-simile of the engraving in Ogilby’s America (p. 79),—the same used in Montanus’s Nieuwe Wereldt.
On the 20th of September the fleet had cleared the River Guadalquivir, and was fairly at sea. Six days afterward it touched at Teneriffe for supplies; and here was the first quarrel between Magellan and his watchman, Juan de Carthagena. Up to this point entire secrecy had been maintained by Magellan as to the route to be pursued. Juan de Carthagena claimed the right to be informed of all things regarding it. Magellan refused, probably with considerable scorn. When off Sierra Leone, a few days after, a similar quarrel broke out; Magellan arrested Carthagena with his own hand, and put him in the stocks. Of course this was an insult the most keen, and was meant to be. The other captains begged Magellan to release the prisoner, and he did so; but still he kept him under the arrest of one of their number.
From Sierra Leone they ran across to Brazil and anchored again for supplies in the magnificent Bay of Rio de Janeiro. By their narrative, indeed, on the return of the first vessel, was this great estuary made widely known to the world. It is now known that Magellan was not the first discoverer. Pero Lopez had explored the bay five years before; and as early as 1511 a trader named John of Braga, probably a Portuguese, was established on one of its fertile islands. Indeed, it is said that the hardy seamen of Dieppe had been there as early as the beginning of the century. Its first name was the Bay of Cabo-Frio.
The meridian of Alexander’s Bull had been meant to leave all the American discoveries in the possession of the King of Spain. But, unfortunately for him, Brazil runs so far out to the east that a meridian three hundred and seventy leagues west of the Azores gives Portugal a considerable part of it; and in point of fact the western boundary of Brazil has been accommodated quite nearly to the imaginary line of the Pope. To Magellan and his company it made no difference whether they were on Portuguese or Spanish soil. They found the Brazilians friendly. “Though they are not Christians, they are not idolaters, for they adore nothing. Natural instinct is their only law.”
This is the phrase of Pigafetta, the young Italian gentleman to whose naïve book we owe our best and fullest account of the great voyage. It is clear enough that all the crews enjoyed their stay in the Bay of Santa Lucia, by which name they called our Bay of Rio de Janeiro. It was in the heart of the Brazilian summer, for they arrived on the 13th of December. They had been nearly three months at sea, and were well disposed to enjoy tropical luxuries; and here they stayed thirteen days. Pigafetta describes the Brazilian hammocks;[1593] and from his description Europe has taken that word. The same may perhaps be said of the mysterious word “canoe,” which appears in his narrative under the spelling “canots.”[1594]
It was Pigafetta’s first taste of the luxuries of the South American fields and forests, and he delighted in their cheapness and variety. “For a king of clubs I bought six chickens,” he writes; “and yet the Brazilian thought he had made the best bargain,”—as, indeed, in the condition of the fine arts at Santa Lucia, he had. A knife or a hook, however, bought no more; yet the natives had no tools of metal. Their large canoes, which would carry thirty or forty people, were painfully dug out by knives of stone from the great trees of which they were made. The Spaniards ate the pineapple for the first time. Pigafetta does not seem to have known the sugar-cane before; and he describes the sweet potato as a novelty. “It has almost the form of our turnip, and its taste resembles that of chestnuts.” Here, also, he gives the name “patata,” which has clung to this root, and has been transferred to the white potato also. For a ribbon, or a hawk’s bell, the natives sold a “basketful.” Their successors would doubtless do the same now.
INDIAN BEDS.
[This is Benzoni’s representation of the hammocks which are used by the natives of the northern shores of South America (edition of 1572, p. 56). See also the second volume, p. 11.—Ed.]
The Spaniards found the Brazilians perfectly willing to trade. They went wholly naked,—men and women. Their houses were long cabins.[1595] The people told stories, which the navigators believed, of the very great age of their old men, extending it even to one hundred and forty years. They owned that they were cannibals on occasion; but they seem to have eaten human flesh only as a symbol of triumph over conquered enemies. They painted their bodies, and wore their hair short. Pigafetta says it was woolly; but this must have been a mistake. Although he says they go naked, he describes a sort of vest made of paroquet’s feathers. Almost all the men had the lower lip pierced with three holes, and wore in them little cylinders of stone two inches long. They ate cassava bread, made in round white cakes from the root of the manioc.[1596] The voyagers also observed the pecari[1597] and those curious ducks “whose beak is like a spoon,” described by later travellers.[1598]
PART OF SOUTH AMERICA IN THE PTOLEMY OF 1522.
[A part of the “Tabula Terra Nova” in the Ptolemy of 1522, showing the acts of cannibals. Similar representations appeared on various other maps of South America. Cf. Münster’s map of 1540. Vespucius, in his letter to Lorenzo de’ Medici, was the first to describe the cannibalism of the Brazilians. Cf. Thevet, Singularitez de la France antarctique, chap. xl., on their cannibalism.—Ed.]
After a pleasant stay of thirteen days in this bay, Magellan took the squadron to the embouchure of the River La Plata, which had been discovered four years before by Juan Diaz de Solis, who lost his life there. The Spaniards believed the tribe of the Quérandis, before whose terrible bolas he had fallen, to be cannibals; and they were probably right in this supposition. Continuing the voyage southward, Magellan’s fleet observed the two islands now marked as the “Penguins” and “Lions.” The historian of the voyage notes the penguins and “sea-wolves” which were then observed there. Passing these islands, they opened a harbor, since known as Port Desire, where they spent the Southern winter. It is near the latitude of 50° south. Magellan supposed it to be in 49° 18´. Hardly had they arrived in this harbor, in itself sufficiently inhospitable, when the mutiny broke out which had been brewing, probably, since Magellan’s first insult to John of Carthagena. The announcement made by Magellan that they were to winter here gave the signal for the revolt. On Palm Sunday, which fell on the 1st of April that year, he invited the captains and pilots to meet on his vessel to attend Mass and to dine with him. Two of the captains, Mesquita and De Coca, accepted the invitation and came with their staffs. Mendoza and Quesada did not come. Juan de Carthagena, it will be remembered, was under arrest, and he, of course, was not invited. The same night Quesada, with De Carthagena and thirty men, crossed from the “Concepçion” to the “San Antonio,” and made an effort to take Mesquita prisoner. At first they succeeded; but the ship’s master, Eliorraga, defended him and his so bravely that, with succor from Magellan, he retained the command. The purpose of the conspirators seems to have been simply to return to Spain without wintering in so bleak a home. The three rebels sent to Magellan to say that they would recognize him as their commander, but they were sure that the King did not propose such an undertaking as this to which he was committing them. Of course, under the guise of respect, this was to exact submission from him. Magellan bade them come on board the flagship. They refused. Magellan kept the boat which they then sent him, and despatched six men, under Espinosa, to the “Victoria” to summon Mendoza. Mendoza answered with a sneer. Espinosa at once stabbed him in the neck, and a sailor struck him down with a cutlass. Magellan then sent another boat, with fifteen men, who took possession of the “Victoria.” In every case the crews seem to have taken his side against their own captains. The next day, the 3d of April, he obtained full possession of the “Santiago” and “Concepçion.”
On the 4th of that month he quartered the body of Mendoza and published his sentence as a traitor. On the 7th he beheaded Quesada, whose own servant, Molino, volunteered as executioner. When Drake arrived here, fifty-eight years after, he supposed he found the bones of Mendoza or Quesada under a gibbet which was still standing. Juan de Carthagena and the priest Pedro Sanchez de la Reina were convicted as partners in the mutiny, and sentenced to remain when the ships sailed. This sentence was afterwards executed. Magellan doubtless felt that these examples were sufficient, and he pardoned forty of the crew; but, as the reader will see, the spirit which prompted the mutiny was not yet extinguished.
They had lived here two months without seeing any of the natives, when one day, according to the narrative of Pigafetta, a giant appeared to them when they least expected to see any one. “He was singing and dancing on the sand, and throwing dust upon his head, almost naked. The captain sent one of our sailors on shore, with orders to make the same gestures as tokens of peace. This the man did; he was understood, and the giant permitted himself to be led to a little island where the captain had landed. I was there also, with many others. The giant expressed much astonishment at seeing us. He pointed to heaven, and undoubtedly meant to say that he thought we descended from heaven.
“This man,” continues Pigafetta, “was so tall that our heads hardly came up to his belt. He was well formed; his face was broad and colored with red, excepting that his eyes were surrounded with yellow, and he had two heart-shaped spots upon his cheeks. He had but little hair, and this was whitened with a sort of powder. His dress, or rather cloak, was made of furs well sewed,—taken from an animal well known in this region, as we afterwards found. He also wore shoes of the same skin.”
It seems desirable to copy this description in detail, because here begins in literature the vexed question as to the existence of giants in Patagonia. Whether there ever were any there is now doubted, though the name “Patagonian” is the synonyme of giant in every European language. While the narrative of Pigafetta is thus distinct in saying that one giant only appeared at first, another authority, with equal definiteness, says that six men appeared; and it afterwards appears that two of these, at least, were larger than the Spaniards.
The comparison of the details of this last narrative in Herrera with that of Pigafetta illustrates curiously the perplexity of all historical inquiry; for we are here distinctly told that there were six who appeared on the shore and seemed willing to come on board. A boat was sent for them, and they embarked on the flagship without fear. Once on deck, the Spaniards offered them a kettle full of biscuit,—which was enough, as they supposed, for twenty men; but, with the appetite of hungry Indians, the six devoured it all immediately. They wore mantles of furs, and carried bows and arrows. The bows were about half a fathom long; the arrows were barbed with sharp stones. All were shod with large shoes, like the giant.
On another day two Indians brought on board a tapir, and it proved that their dresses were made from the fur of this animal. Magellan gave them in exchange two red dresses, with which they were well satisfied. It is not till the next day that Herrera places the visit of the giant. That author says that the Indian expressed a wish to become a Christian, and that the Spaniards gave him the name of John. Seeing the crew throwing some mice overboard, he asked that they might be given to him to eat. For six days he took all the mice the ship could furnish, and was never afterward seen.
More than twenty days later, four Indians of the first party returned to the ships, and Magellan gave orders that two of them should be seized to carry home. The men were so large that the Spaniards could not make them prisoners without treachery. Loading the poor giants with more gifts than they could well carry, they finally asked each to accept an iron chain, fitted with manacles. The two Indians were eager enough to accept the fatal present, and were easily persuaded to have the chains fastened to their legs, that they might the more easily carry them away. They found, alas! as so many other men have found, that what they took for ornament was a cruel snare; but, thus crippled, they were overpowered. Their screams of rage were heard by their companions on shore. It was after this treachery that the natives first attacked the Spaniards. Seeing fires at night, Magellan landed a party for exploration. Seven Spaniards found the tracks of Indians and followed them ineffectually. As they returned, however, nine Indians followed, attacked them, and killed one Castilian. But for their shields, all the Spaniards would have been killed. The Spaniards closed upon them with their knives, and put them to flight, visited their camp, and feasted from the store of meat they found there. The next day Magellan sent a larger party on shore and buried the dead Castilian.
The reader is now in possession of all the statements from which we are to decide the much-disputed question whether, in the time of Magellan, Patagonia was a land of giants. He is to remember that Pigafetta, who was the friend and fellow-voyager of the giant Paul, one of the two captives, does not in other instances go out of his way to invent the marvellous, though he often does repeat marvellous stories which have been related by others. It is to be observed that none of the voyagers pretend to have seen any large number of Patagonians. The largest number seen at one time was nine; and even if these were different from the six who came to the ship, fifteen is the largest number of the native visitors to the squadron. Of these, according to one account, in which three at least of the authorities agree, two are of extraordinary height, so that the heads of the Spaniards reached only to their girdles. It is also said that the feet or shoes of all were large, “but not disproportionate to their stature.” For three hundred years, on this testimony, it was perhaps generally believed that the Patagonians were very large men. The statement was positively made that they were nine feet high. But as other voyagers, especially in this century, more and more often brought home accounts in which no such giants appeared, there was an increasing distrust of the original Spanish narrative.
Especially when navigators had to do with the wretched Kemenettes and Karaikes of the Straits, who are a tribe of really insignificant stature, was indignation liberally bestowed on the old traveller’s story; and when, in 1837, the original narrative of the Genoese pilot was brought to light by Navarrete,—a simple and unexaggerated story; when it proved that he made no allusion whatever to any persons of remarkable height,—the whole giant story was declared to be an invention of Pigafetta, and the gigantic size of the Patagonians was denounced as a mere traveller’s fable. Such criticism probably goes too far.
The simple facts may be taken, and the hasty inference may be disregarded. Every travelling showman will testify to the fact that there occasionally appear men, even under the restrictions of civilization, who are so tall that the Spaniards, not of a large race, would only come to their girdles.[1599] If Pigafetta is to be believed, two such men came to Magellan’s squadron. Tall men came to Cook’s squadron at Honolulu, a hundred years ago, who were quite above the average of his men.
GIANT’S SKELETON AT PORTO DESIRE.
[Fac-simile of a part of the cut of Porto Desire (no. 22) in Lemaire’s Speculum orientalis occidentalisque, etc., 1599.—Ed.]
Magellan supposed that these were typical men, that they were specimens of their race. Because he supposed so he captured them and tried to carry them to Spain. Magellan was mistaken. They were not specimens of their race; they were extraordinary exceptions to it. But the ready tribe of geographers, eager to accept marvels from the New World, at once formed the conclusion that because these two were so large, all Patagonians would prove to be so.
Pigafetta drew no such inference, nor is there any evidence that the Spaniards ever did. On the other hand, six Spaniards, with their knives, closed fearlessly on nine of these men, and routed them in a hand-to-hand fight. We may fairly conclude that the delusion which modern criticism has dispelled was not intentionally called into being by the navigators, but was rather the deduction drawn from too narrow premises by credulous Europe.[1600]
The next voyagers who saw these people were Drake’s party. Fletcher, writing in the World Encompassed, after fifty-eight years, says distinctly in his narrative of Drake’s arrival at this same Port Julian: “We had no sooner landed than two young giants repaired to them.” Again, speaking of the same interview, “he was visited by two of the inhabitants, whom Magellan named Patagous, or rather Pentagours, from their huge stature.” And afterward he resumes the matter in these words: “Magellane was not altogether deceived in naming them giants, for they generally differ from the common sort of men both in stature, bigness, and strength of body, as also in the hideousness of their voice. But yet they are nothing so monstrous or giant-like as they are reported, there being some Englishmen as tall as the highest of any we could see. But peradventure the Spaniards did not think that ever any Englishman would come thither to reprove them, and thereupon might presume the more boldly to lie,—the name Pentagones, five cubits, viz. seven foot and half, describing the full height (if not somewhat more) of the highest of them.”
QUONIAMBEC.
[Fac-simile of a copperplate engraving in the English version of Thevet’s Portraitures and Lives appended to North’s Plutarch (Cambridge, England) p. 86. Thevet in his text says of this “giant-like man,” “I have seen him and sufficiently observed him upon the River of Janaira. He had a great body, proportionably gross, exceeding strong. His portraiture I brought from that country, with two green stones in his cheeks and one on his chin.”—Ed.]
This last sneer is in Fletcher’s worst vein. The etymology of “Pentagones” is all his own. Magellan’s people say distinctly that they named the Patagonians from their large feet,—taking the phrase “large feet” from the large shoes which they wore to protect their feet from cold. The language is distinct: “Their shoes go four inches above the great toe, and the space is filled with straw to keep them from the cold.” These shoes, of this same form, are figured by modern artists, who have drawn for us the Tehuelches of to-day. It is quite possible that the false etymology which made “Patagonian” mean “Five-cubit man” was the real foundation for the general notion of the gigantic size of the race.
From these winter quarters Magellan despatched the “Sant Iago” to examine the coast. The vessel was unfortunately lost on the rocks, but all the crew were saved. Two sailors returned to the rest of the squadron with news of the disaster, and the commander sent back supplies. They were near a hundred miles away from him, but he kept them supplied with provisions; and they were able to rescue a part of the stores and equipage of their vessel. At the end of two months, in which they encamped upon the shore, they rejoined him. It is observed that with them the winter was so cold that for water for their daily use they were obliged to melt ice.
After taking possession of Patagonia in the name of the King of Spain, by planting a standard on a hill which they called Monte Cristo, Magellan sailed on the 24th of August from this inhospitable bay. He now carried out the cruel sentence of the Court on Juan de Carthagena and the priest Pedro Sanches. He landed them with a supply of biscuit and wine, and left them to their fate.
Two days after, following the coast, he entered the River of Santa Cruz and narrowly escaped shipwreck there. He was able to supply himself with wood, water, and fish. On the 11th of October he observed an eclipse of the sun.[1601]
Still keeping on, during the 21st of October, the day which the Church consecrated to the “Eleven thousand Virgins,” they discovered a strait, to which Magellan gave that name. It was the entry to the famous channel, four hundred and forty miles long, according to his estimate, which has for so many years borne his name. The depth of water near the shore, which has since been observed, attracted the attention of the Spaniards. The mountains which looked down upon it were high, and covered with snow.
PIGAFETTA’S MAP.
[This fac-simile is made from the cut, p. 40 of the French edition of Amoretti’s Premier voyage autour du monde par Pigafetta, Paris, l’an ix (1801). The reader will observe that the north is at the bottom of the map. There is a reversed sketch of it elsewhere.—Ed.]
The crew and the captains, even after the hard experience of the mutineers, did not hesitate to express their unwillingness to enter the blind and narrow channel before them. Magellan summoned the commanders and made to them a formal declaration, of which the substance has been preserved. He told them that their sovereign and his had sent them for this very purpose, to discover this strait and to pass through it. If they were faithless as to its issue, he declared that he had seen in the archives of the King of Portugal a map, drawn by Martin Behaim, in which the strait was indicated, and that it opened into the western ocean. The squadron should not turn back, he said; and he gave his order for the continuation of the voyage in this determination. If the vessels separated, the commander of each was to keep on until he had reached the latitude of 75° S. If then the strait had not been found, any commander might turn eastward; yet he was not to seek Spain, but to sail to the Moluccas, which were the objective of the voyage; and the proper sailing directions were given for reaching those islands by the route through the Indian Ocean.
The geographers have been at a loss to reconcile this statement,—that Martin Behaim had already drawn the strait upon a map or globe,—with Magellan’s claim to be its discoverer. But, as the reader knows, there was no lack of straits or of continents on the various maps before Magellan’s time which could be cited for any theory of any cosmographer. We know the history of navigation well enough to understand that, whatever drawings Magellan might have seen or cited, nothing can shake his reputation as the far-sighted discoverer of the channel to which, without any hesitation, the world has given his name.[1602]
His firmness had so much effect that the captains went back to their ships, pretending to accede to his wishes. With the “Trinidad” and “Victoria,” Magellan waited at the entrance of the channel while he despatched the “San Antonio” and “Concepçion” to complete the survey of it westward. Hardly had the squadron divided, when a terrible tempest broke upon both parts of it, lasting thirty-six hours. Magellan’s ships lost their anchors, and were at the mercy of the wind in the open bay. The other vessels seem to have run before the gale. At the moment when their people thought themselves lost, they opened the first “reach”—if it may so be called—of the strait; they pushed through it till they came to the bay now known as “Bouçault Bay.” Crossing this, with increasing confidence, they came into the second channel, which opens into a second bay larger than the first. After this success they returned to report their progress to their commander.
He and his officers, meanwhile, had begun to fear that their companions had been lost in the tempest. A column of smoke on shore was supposed to be a signal of the spot where they had taken refuge. But in the midst of such uncertainty their vessels reappeared, and soon fired shots from their guns in token of joy. They were as joyfully welcomed; and, as soon as they could tell their news, the reunited squadron gladly proceeded through the two channels which they had opened. When they arrived in the bay which had been the farthest discovery of the pioneer vessels, they found two channels opening from it. At the southeast is that marked “Supposé” on Bougainville’s map; and to this channel Magellan directed Mesquita in the “San Antonio,” and Juan Serrano in the “Concepçion.”
Unfortunately the sailing-master of the “San Antonio” was Stephen Gomez, who hated Magellan with a long-cherished hatred. When Magellan first arrived in Spain, Gomez was, or thought he was, on the eve of starting on an expedition of discovery under the patronage of the Crown. Magellan’s grand plan had broken up this lesser expedition; and instead of commanding it, Gomez had found himself placed in a subordinate post under his rival’s command. He now took his chance to revenge himself as soon as he was directed to survey the new channel. Before night fell he had escaped from the surveillance of the “Concepçion.” At night he caballed with the Spaniards of his own crew; they rose upon their captain Mesquita, a Portuguese, the loyal cousin of Magellan, and put him in irons. Without delay they then escaped from the squadron; and returning, through the channels they had traced, to the Atlantic, they sailed for home. Touching at the forlorn harbor where they had wintered, they picked up the two mutineers who had been left there. Indeed, it is fair to suppose that their whole plot dated back for its origin to the unsuccessful enterprise of the winter.[1603]
Magellan, on his part, waited for the “San Antonio,” which had been directed to return in three days. Though the channel which she was to explore passed between mountains covered with snow, we are told that the strait where Magellan awaited them lay between regions which were “the most beautiful in the world.” On the southern side they had, once and again, observed fires in the night, and they gave to that land the name of “Tierra del Fuego,” “the Land of Fire,” which it has ever since preserved. They did not see any of the natives on either coast. The sailors caught so many fish which resembled the sardines of their home, that the name of “River of Sardines” was given to a stream which makes its outlet there. Finding that the “San Antonio” had left him, and probably suspecting her treachery, Magellan went forward through the southwestern channel with the “Victoria” and the “Trinidad.”
It is at this point that we are to place a formal correspondence which has been preserved by a Portuguese historian[1604] as passing between Magellan and one of his captains on the question of advancing. These letters are dated the 22d of November, 1520. Martin Mendoza, in his reply to Magellan’s letter, agrees that until the 1st of January they should persevere while the days are long, but urges that the vessels should lie by in the darkness. He is as resolute in expressing the conviction that they should be out of the strait before the month of January is over,—that is, that they should turn about, if necessary, on January 1, if they had not then reached the Pacific, so as to be well in the Atlantic again by the first of February; that then they should give up the original object of the voyage and sail to Cadiz. The document seems genuine; but, as the reader will see, there was no occasion for using its counsels. Before the 1st of January they were free of the strait forever.
While his squadron loitered in hope of the “San Antonio’s” return, Magellan sent forward a boat to explore the channel. On the third day she returned to him with the joyful news that they had opened the western mouth of the strait.
The Pacific was found! The chroniclers say that the crews wept for joy; and they may well have done so. They gave to the Cape—which made the western end of Tierra del Fuego, on this channel—the name of the “Desired Cape,” “Cabo Deseado,” which it still retains.
The squadron did not at once follow. Magellan put back for the other vessels, and met the “Concepçion” alone. He sent back the “Victoria” this time to search for his faithless consort. If she were not found, his orders were that a standard should be planted on high ground, at the foot of which should be buried a letter, with an account of the destination of the squadron. Two similar signals were left,—one on the shore of the first bay, and one on the Isle of Lions, in the channel. But the “Victoria,” as the reader knows, did not find the “San Antonio;” she was far away. And with three vessels of his squadron only, Magellan passed out from the strait which had detained him so long, into the ocean. They fairly entered upon it on the 28th of November.
Pigafetta, in his joy at leaving this strait, which had been the scene of so much anxiety, describes its natural advantages in glowing colors. “In fine, I do not believe there is a better strait than this in the world,” he says. They gave to it the name of “Strait of the Patagonians;” but the world has long since known it by the name of its discoverer. “There may be found at any half-league a good harbor,”—such is the Italian historian’s statement,—“with excellent water, cedar-wood, sardine-fish, and an abundance of shellfish. There are also herbs on shore, some of which are bitter, but others are good to eat,—especially a sort of celery,[1605] which grows near the springs, of which we made excellent food.” Cook found celery of the same kind two centuries and a half later, as well as abundance of Cochlearia. So great are the advantages of such supplies for the health of crews in danger of scurvy, that he thought the passage into the Pacific by the Straits of Magellan preferable to that by Cape Horn.[1606] In later days his advice has always been followed by vessels having the aid of steam.
Thus ended the only glimpse which Spaniards had of Patagonia for many years. Magellan’s act of possession held, however; for the country has no attractions to make it a stake for wars or other controversy. Magellan looked his last upon it as his squadron gladly steered northward; and after leaving his Cape Victory,—for he gave that name to the southwestern point of America,—neither he nor his landed again on this continent.
The poor giants who had been so cruelly enslaved never reached Spain. One was on the “San Antonio” with Serrano, who deserted his commander in the strait. This one died before they had crossed the Atlantic. The other was on board the “Trinidad,” the flagship, with Magellan and Pigafetta, the historian of the expedition. He became fond of Pigafetta; and when he saw him produce his writing tablet and paper, he knew what was expected of him, and of his own accord began to give the names of different objects in the Patagonian language.[1607] One day when he saw Pigafetta kiss the cross, he told him by signs that Setebos would enter him and make him a coward. But when he was himself dying—of scurvy, most likely, which was decimating the crew—he asked for the cross himself, kissed it, and begged to be baptized. His captors baptized him, gave him the name of Paul, and he died.
It would have been natural for Magellan, now that he had attained the South Sea, to sail by a direct route to the Moluccas, of which he was in search. Till a very late period the geographers have supposed that he did; and his track will be found on most of the large globes, to a period comparatively recent, laid down on a course a little west of northwest,—as, indeed, Pigafetta says they ran.
It was not observed by these globe-makers, and in fact to many of them it was not known, that, if Magellan had taken such a course, he would have run directly into the teeth of those northwest winds which blow with great regularity in that part of the Pacific, and he would have met a steady current in the same direction. In such computations, also, it was forgotten that Magellan supposed the Pacific to be much narrower than it is, and that when he left the straits he did not anticipate so long a voyage as he had. But the fortunate discovery of the log-book of one of the “pilots” now gives us the declination of the sun and the computed latitude for every day of the Pacific voyage. It appears that Magellan held well to the north, not far from the coast of South America, till he had passed, on the west, the islands of Juan Fernandez and Masafuera without seeing them, and only then struck to the northwest, and afterwards to the west.[1608] He thus came out at the equator at a point which, by their mistaken computation of longitude, was 152° W. of the meridian of Ferro, 159° 46’ west of our first meridian of Greenwich.
The Pacific is now known to us as an ocean studded with islands, the inhabitants of which are well provided with food from their own land, and water.[1609]
It was, however, the remarkable fortune of Magellan in this voyage to sail more than ten thousand miles and see but two of these islands, both of which were barren and uninhabited. He found no bottom close to the shore. At the second of the two islands he stopped to fish for sharks, and gave it the name “Shark’s Island,” or “Tiburones.” The crew were so impressed by their dismal welcome that they called the two “Desventuradas,” the “Unfortunate Islands.” These two islands, the first-born to Europe of the multitudes of the Pacific Ocean, cannot now be identified.[1610]
THE LADRONES.
[This fac-simile is made from the Paris edition of Amoretti’s Pigafetta, p. 62, and shows the catamaran of the natives.—Ed.]
On the 6th of March the voyagers at last saw two more small islands. Soon a number of small sails appeared, the islanders coming out to meet the ships. Their little boats had large triangular-shaped sails of matting, and they seemed to fly over the water. The Spanish seamen saw for the first time the curious catamarans of the natives of these waters.
Magellan was tempted to land at a third and larger island. This was either the one since known as Guahan, or that known as Rota; Magellan called it Ivagana. So many of the natives swarmed upon his ship, and they were so rapacious in stealing whatever they could lay their hands on, that he found himself almost at their mercy. They begged him to land, but stole the boat attached to the stern of his ship. At last Magellan did land, in a rage. He burned some of their huts, several of their boats, got back his own, and killed seven men.
The squadron, after this encounter, continued its westward course, followed by a hundred canoes. The savages now showed fish, as if they wished to trade; but the women wept and tore their hair, probably “because we had killed their husbands.”
To this group the Spaniards gave the name of “Ladrones, the robbers,” which it has ever since retained. After three hundred leagues more of westward sailing, the tired navigators, half starved and dying of scurvy, made the discovery of Zamal, now called Samar, the first of the group since known as the Philippines,—a name they took from Philip the Second. Magellan called them the Archipelago of St. Lazarus, because he first found how large a group it was on St. Lazarus’ day, the fifth Sunday in Lent.
In these islands the navigators were, at first, most cordially received. By means of a Malayan interpreter they were able to communicate with the natives. Before six weeks were over, with rapidity which may well have seemed miraculous, they had converted the king and many of the princes and people to what they deemed Christianity. But, alas! the six weeks ended in the defeat of the Spanish men-at-arms in a battle with a rival prince, in the death of Magellan and the murder of Serrano, who had been chosen as one of those who should take his place. The surviving Spaniards withdrew as well as they could from their exasperated allies.
They were obliged to destroy one of their ships, which was leaking, and thus were left with only two. One of these, the “Trinidad,” they despatched eastward to the American coast; but she failed in this voyage, and returned to the Philippines. In the other vessel, the “Victoria,” Sebastian del Cano and his crew, after spending the rest of that year in the East Indies, sailed for Europe. They left the Island of Timor on the 11th of February. Though they had nothing but rice and water for their supplies, they dared not touch at the Portuguese establishment at Mozambique. After they doubled the Cape of Good Hope, on the 6th of May, they lost twenty-one men in two months. Their provisions had failed entirely when, on the 9th of July, they touched at Santa Argo, in the Cape de Verde Islands.
Even now they did not dare tell the Portuguese at that island who they were. They pretended they came from the coast of America. When they found that the day was Thursday, they were greatly astonished, for by their own journals it was Wednesday. Twice they sent their boat ashore for a load of rice, and it returned. The third time they saw that it was seized. One of the sailors had revealed their secret, and the jealous Portuguese would no longer befriend them.
The poor “Victoria,” with such supplies as she had received, was obliged to run direct for Spain. On the 6th of September she entered the bay of San Lucar again. By their own computation they had sailed 14,460 leagues. Of sixty men who sailed in her from the Moluccas there were but eighteen survivors of these almost all were sick. Of the other forty-two, some had deserted at Timor, some had been condemned to death for their crimes, and the others had died. This was all that was returned of two hundred and thirty-seven persons who had sailed three years before on this magnificent expedition.
Del Cano was received at Court with the greatest courtesy. The Emperor gave him a pension of five hundred ducats, and for armorial bearings a globe with the device—
“Primus circumdedisti Me.”
The “Victoria” was richly stored with cloves and other spices. Of these the sale was carefully managed, and the proceeds were enormous. The foresight of Magellan was completely justified, and the profits of the expedition alone immediately tempted the Emperor to fit out another. The “Victoria” afterward made two voyages to the West Indies, but never returned to Spain from the second, and her fate is not known. An ancient representation of her (from Hulsius) is the distinguishing sign on the cover of the volumes issued in our day by the Hakluyt Society.
[CRITICAL ESSAY ON THE SOURCES OF INFORMATION.]
By Edward E. Hale and the Editor.
PIGAFETTA, who was born in Vicenza not long after 1490, was accordingly from twenty-five to thirty years old when he accompanied Magellan.[1611] He kept a diary of the voyage, a copy of which he gave to the Emperor; and later, in Italy, he wrote out a more extended account, copies of which he gave to distinguished persons. Of this ampler narrative four separate texts, in as many manuscripts, are preserved to us.
No. 1 is in French, Navigation et descouvrement de la Indie superieure faicte par moi Antoine Pigafete, Vincentin; on paper, in the National Library at Paris. It gives the full vocabulary of the Giants’ language, which is also reprinted in Amoretti. Students engaged in the study of the geography of the East Indies should not be satisfied with the few copies given by Amoretti of the maps and representations of the islands there. In this copy, which is divided throughout into short chapters, there are many more of these maps than have been engraved. It is impossible to look at them without believing that they give some idea of the size and even the shape of the islands visited. Charton calls this paper manuscript the oldest of those in France. No one can decide such a question. The illustrations in the vellum manuscript certainly seem to be nearer the originals than those in this coarser paper one.
No. 2 is a richly illuminated vellum document, with a text somewhat softened in the coarse parts. This may have been the copy known to have been given to Louise of Savoy by Pigafetta. This manuscript is also in the Paris library. The writing is elegant, and the maps are very prettily done in body color. They are much more elegant than the maps in the paper manuscript, which are in rough water-color by some one of no great artistic skill. The representations given by Amoretti of a few of the designs are sufficiently good for all practical purposes. But the picture of the boat with outriggers, illustrating the customs of the Ladrone Islands, is much more artistic in the vellum manuscript than it is in Amoretti’s engraving.
No. 3, the most complete, was owned by M. Beaupré, at Nancy, in 1841, when Thomassy described it; was sold in the Potier sale in 1851 (no. 506), and passed into the Solar Collection, and in 1861 (Solar sale, no. 3,238) it was bought by a London dealer, and reached finally the collection of Sir Thomas Phillipps, who bought it at the Libri sale (no. 1,139) in 1862. It is a question with critics whether Pigafetta composed his work in French or in Italian; for there is also a manuscript (no. 4) in the later language, poorly conceived, however, and mixed with Spanish, preserved in the Ambrosian Library at Milan. This was the manuscript published by the Abbé C. Amoretti; it is written in the character known as cancelleresco, on paper folios, of which the handwriting is of the time of Pigafetta; and it was once owned by the Cardinal Frederic Borroméo. Raymond Thomassy[1612] gives several reasons for believing that the French text is the original, but we have not been satisfied that it was so.[1613]
In the earliest edition of Pigafetta which we have,—one without date, and in French, edited by Antoine Fabre,—the text is represented as being a translation from the Italian. It is possible that, being an abridgment, it might have followed some abstract which had been made in that language, possibly an account which in 1524 Pigafetta asked permission to print,[1614] of the Doge and Council of Venice. This original French edition is called Le Voyage et Navigation faict par les Espaignolz es isles de Mollucques; and is usually thought to have been printed in 1525. It is in Gothic type, except the last four leaves, which are in Roman, as are all the notes.[1615] Harrisse cites[1616] an Italian edition of Pigafetta with the letter of Maximilian, as published at Venice in 1534;[1617] but there is little reason to believe such an edition to exist.
The earliest undoubted Italian edition was printed, however, in 1536, and it was professedly a translation from Fabre’s French text, and there is reason to believe that Ramusio may have been instrumental in its publication.[1618] It has the name neither of author nor of printer, but is supposed to have been issued at Venice. It is called Il Viaggio fatto da gli Spagnivoli a torno a’l mondo.[1619]
Amoretti published the Ambrosian manuscript (no. 4, above) in 1800, at Milan, under the title of Primo viaggio intorno al globo terracqueo ossia ragguaglio della navigazione alle Indie orientali d Magaglianes, 1519-1522. Pubblicato per la prima volta da un codice manuscritto della Biblioteca Ambrosiana di Milano, e corredato di note da C. Amoretti con un transunto del Trattato di navigazione dello stesso autore. Milano, 1800.[1620]
About a month after the return of Del Cano in the “Victoria,” Maximilian Transylvanus (a son-in-law of Cristóbal de Haro, who had been a chief advocate of the voyage at the Spanish Court) wrote to the Cardinal Archbishop of Salzburg a brief account of the voyage, in a letter dated at Valladolid, Oct. 24, 1522;[1621] and when it was printed at Cologne in January, 1523, as De Moluccis insulis, and in the following November and again in February, 1524, at Rome, as De Hispanorum in orientem navigatione, its text constituted the earliest narrative of the voyage which was given in print.[1622] It was afterward printed in connection with the earliest Italian edition of Pigafetta; and the English reader will find it in the volume on Magellan published by the Hakluyt Society.
Ramusio also tells us that Peter Martyr wrote an account of Magellan’s voyage, gathered from the lips of the survivors, which he sent to Rome to be printed, but that in the sack of that city by the Constable de Bourbon it disappeared. We have but one point of this Martyr narrative preserved to us, and that is the loss of one day which the “Victory” had experienced in her westering voyage,—when arriving in Seville on the 6th of September, 1522, as her crew supposed, they found the Sevillians calling it the 7th.[1623]
There are two modern gatherings of the most important documentary illustrations of this famous voyage,—the one made by Navarrete, and the other published by the Hakluyt Society. The former constitutes the fourth volume of Navarrete’s well-known Coleccion; and among the variety of its papers printed or cited largely from the public archives, illustrating the fitting out of the fleet, its voyage, and the reception of Del Cano on his return, a few of the more important may be mentioned. Such is a manuscript from the library of San Isadro el Real de Madrid, purporting to be by Magellan himself; but Navarrete does not admit this. He prints for the first time an original manuscript account in the Seville archives, usually cited as the Seville manuscript, which bears the title of Extracto de la habilitacion, etc. It gives an enumeration of the company which composed the force on the fleet. The Navarrete volume also contains the log-book of Francisco Albo, or Alvaro, printed, it is claimed by Stanley (who also includes it in the Hakluyt Society volume), from a copy in the British Museum, which was made from the original at Simancas. It follows the fortunes of the fleet after they sighted Cape St. Augustine. Muñoz had found in the Archives of Torre de Tombo a letter of Antonio Brito to the King of Portugal, and Navarrete gives this also.[1624] A letter of Jean Sebastian del Cano to Charles V., dated Sept. 5, 1527, describes the voyage, and is also to be found here.[1625]
The Hakluyt Society volume borrows largely from the lesser sources as given in Navarrete, and among other papers it contains the brief narrative which is found in Ramusio as that of an “anonymous Portuguese.” It also gives an English version of what is known as the account of the Genoese pilot, one Joan Bautista probably. This story exists in three Portuguese manuscripts: one belongs to the library of the monks of S. Bento da Sande; another is in the National Library at Paris; and from these two a text was formed which was printed in 1826 in the Noticias Ultramarinhas (vol. iv.) of the Lisbon Academy of History, as “Roteiro da viagem de Fernam de Magalhâes” (1519). A third manuscript is in the library of the Academy of History at Madrid. As edited by Luigi Hugues, it is printed in the fifteenth volume of the Atti della Società Ligure di Storia Patria.
The narrative in the preceding text has shown that the precise statements of latitude made by the Genoese pilot have wholly destroyed the value of all speculations as to the route of Magellan from the Straits to the Ladrones which were published before this “Roteiro” became known. The track laid down on the older globes is invariably wrong, and Magellan’s course was in reality that along which the currents would easily have propelled him, being that of the Antarctic stream of the Pacific, which Humboldt has explained.[1626] Stanley also points out that the narrative given in Gaspar Correa’s Lendas da India is the only authority we have for the warning given to Magellan at Teneriffe by Barbosa; and for the incident of a Portuguese ship speaking the “Victoria” as the latter was passing the Cape of Good Hope.
One Pedro Mexia had seen the fleet of Magellan sail, and had likewise witnessed the return of Del Cano. A collection of miscellanies, which he printed as early as 1526, under the title of Silva, and which passed through many editions, affords another contemporary reference.[1627] It is hardly worth while to enumerate the whole list of more general historical treatises of the sixteenth and even seventeenth centuries,[1628] which bring this famous voyage within their scope. It seems clear, however, that Oviedo had some sources which are not recognizable now, and some have contended that he had access to Magellan’s own papers. Herrera in the ninth book of his eleventh Decade in the same way apparently had information the sources of which are now lost to us. The story of Magellan necessarily made part of such books as Osorius’s De Rebus Emmanuelis gestis, published at Cologne in 1581, again in 1597, and in Dutch at Rotterdam in 1661-1663. Burton in his Hans Stade (p. lxxxvi) calls the Relacion y derrotero del Viaje y descubrimiento del estrecho de la Madre de Dios, antes llamado de Magallanes por Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa, published in 1580, an unworthy attempt to rob Magellan of his fame.
The modern studies of Magellan and his career have been in good hands. Navarrete when he made his most important contribution of material, accompanied it with a very careful Noticia biográfica of Magellan, in which he makes exact references to his sources.[1629]
A critical life of Magellan was prefixed by Lord Stanley to his Hakluyt Society volume in 1874. R. H. Major in his Prince Henry the Navigator included an admirable critical account, which was repeated in its results in his later volume, Discoveries of Prince Henry.
A paper on the search of Magellan and of Gomez for a western passage was read by Buckingham Smith before the New York Historical Society, a brief report of which is in the Historical Magazine, x. (1866) 229; and one may compare with it the essay by Langeron in the Revue Géographique in 1877.
A number of more distinctive monographs have also been printed, beginning with the Magellan, oder die Erste Reise um die Erde nach dem vorhanderen Quellen dargestellt of August Bürck, which was published in Leipsic in 1844.[1630] Dr. Kohl, who had given the subject much study, particularly in relation to the history of the straits which Magellan passed, published the results of his researches in the Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Erdkunde in Berlin in 1877,—a treatise which was immediately republished separately as Geschichte der Entdeckungsreisen und Schiffahrten zur Magellan’s Strasse. In 1881 Dr. Franz Wieser, a professor in the University at Innspruck, examined especially the question of any anterior exploration in this direction, in his Magalhâes-strasse und Austral Continent auf den globen des Johannes Schöner, which was published in that year at Innspruck.[1631] About the same time (1881) the Royal Academy at Lisbon printed a Vida e Viagens de Fernão de Magalhães, com um appendice original, which, as the work of Diego de Barros Arana, had already appeared in Spanish.
The bibliography of Magellan and his voyage is prepared with some care by Charton in his Voyageurs, p. 353; and scantily in St. Martin’s Histoire de la Géographie, p. 370.
EDITORIAL NOTE.—A section on the “Historical Chorography of South America,” tracing the cartographical history of that continent, together with a note on the “Bibliography of Brazil,” is reserved for Vol. VIII.