[127] Of the river Santa Cruz and the stay there, Albo (Navarrete, iv, p. 215) says: “We left that place [i.e., Port San Julian] on the 24th of the said month [of August] and coasted along to the southwest by west. About 30 leguas farther on, we found a river named Santa Cruz, which we entered on the 26th of the same month. We stayed there until the day of San Lucas, the 18th of the month of October. We caught many fish there and got wood and water. That coast extends northeast by east and southwest by west, and is an excellent coast with good indentations.” The “Roteiro” (Stanley, p. 4) places the river Santa Cruz twenty leagues from San Julian and in about 50°. That narrative says that the four remaining boats continued to pick up the wreckage of the “Santiago” until September 18. The name Santa Cruz was said to have been given to the river because they entered it on September 14, the day of the exaltation of the holy cross (see Stanley, p. 4, note 4, and Mosto, p. 60, note 7), but Kohl (Mosto, ut supra) attributes the name to João Serrão who was near that river on May 3, 1520, the day on which the church celebrates the feast of the finding of the holy cross. Navarrete (iv, p. 41) cites Herrera as authority for an eclipse of the sun that happened while at this river on October 11, 1520. Guillemard (ut supra, pp. 187, 188) is disinclined to believe the report, although he mentions an annular eclipse of the sun on October 20, 1520, which was however not visible in Patagonia. Navarrete (ut supra) says that Magalhães gave instructions to his captains here “saying that he would follow those coasts until finding a strait or the end of that continent, even if he had to go to a latitude of 75°; that before abandoning that enterprise, the ships might be twice unrigged; and that after that he would go in search of Maluco toward the east and east northeast, by way of the cape of Buena Esperanza and the island of San Lorenzo.”
A new chapter begins at this point in MS. 5,650, being simply headed “chapter.”
[128] The anonymous Portuguese who accompanied Duarte Barbosa says 53° 30´; Barros, 52° 56´; Elcano, 54°; and Albo, 52° 30´. Mosto, p. 60, note 9.
[129] MS. 5.650 has the words in brackets.
[130] Eden (p. 252) says of the strait: “they founde the ſtraight nowe cauled the ſtraight of Magellanus, beinge in ſum place C.x. leagues in length: and in breadth ſumwhere very large and in other places lyttle more than halfe a league in bredth.” Stanley (p. 57) is uncertain of the French et quasi autant de largeur moins de demye lieue, which is (translated freely) simply “something like almost a half-league wide.” The “Roteiro” (Stanley, p. 7) says that the channel “at some places has a width of three leagues, and two, and one, and in some places half a league.” Transylvanus (Vol. I, p. 320) gives the width as two, three, five, or ten Italian miles; Gomara, two leagues or so; Barros, one league at the mouth, and the strait, from a musket or cannon shot to one and one and one-half leagues; Castanheda, at the mouth as wide as two ships close together, then opening up to one league; Peter Martyr, a sling-shot’s distance in places. (Mosto, p. 61, note 2.)
[131] Proise or Proi (proy, proic) is an ancient Catalonian word meaning the “bow moorings;” Cf. Jal, Glossaire nautìque (Mosto, p. 61, note 3). The old Spanish word is “proís,” which signifies both the thing to which the ship is moored ashore, and the rope by which it is moored to the shore.
[132] This passage is as follows in MS. 5,650: “The said strait was a circular place surrounded with mountains (as I have said), and the majority of the sailors thought that there was no exit from it into the said Pacific Sea. But the captain-general declared that there was another strait which led out, and that he knew that well, for he had seen it on a marine chart of the king of Portugal. That map had been made by a renowned sailor and pilot, named Martin de Boesme. The said captain sent two of his ships forward—one named the ‘Sainct Anthoine,’ and the other the ‘Conception’—in order that they might look for and discover the exit from the said strait, which was called the cape de la Baya.”
Martin de Behaim (Beham, Behem, Behemira, Behen, Bœhem), Bœhm) was born about 1459 (some say also in 1430 or 1436) of a family originally from Bohemia, in Nuremberg, Germany, and died at Lisbon, July 29, 1506. He was a draper in Flanders, 1477–1479, after which he went to Lisbon (1480) where he became acquainted with Columbus. In 1484 he was chosen geographer of Diego Cam’s expedition to Western Africa. On his return, he received the order of knighthood in the military order of Christ of Portugal; after which he went to the island of Fayal in the Azores where he became interested in colonization and agriculture, and married the daughter of the governor. In 1491 he returned to Germany, where he lived at Nuremberg until 1493, and where, at the request of his townsmen, he constructed an immense globe on the information of Ptolemy, Strabo, and others, which contains many errors (see facsimile in Guillemard), In 1493 he returned to Lisbon, and in 1494 to Fayal, where he remained until 1506, when he went to Lisbon. Many myths sprung up about him, such that he had visited America before Columbus and the straits of Magellan before Magalhães, the latter of whom he may have known at Lisbon. See Rose, New Biographical Dictionary (London, 1848); Grande Encyclopédie (Paris, Lamirault et Cie.); and Guillemard, pp. 73, 74.
See Guillemard (ut supra, pp. 189–198) for a discussion of knowledge regarding the existence of a strait to the south of the American continent, prior to Magalhães’s discovery and passage of it. Guillemard, after weighing the evidence for and against, decides that there may have been a “more or less inexact knowledge of the existence of some antarctic break “that would allow access to the eastern world.
[133] Possession Bay, according to Mosto, p. 61, note 5, but Guillemard (pp. 199, 200) thinks it may have been Lomas Bay.