“Two days passed before the vessels returned that had been sent to examine the bottom of the bay. We began to conjecture that they had been engulfed during the tempest which had occurred, for seeing smoke on shore we imagined that those who had the good fortune to escape had kindled fires to inform us of their existence and distress. But while in this painful suspense we saw the ships coming toward us under full sail and with their flags flying.... When we learned from those on board that they had seen the prolongation of the bay, or, more correctly, of the strait, we sailed to them to continue our voyage on this course, if possible.
“When we had entered into the third bay, which I have already mentioned, we saw two openings, or channels, the one running to the southeast, the other to the southwest.... The captain-general sent the two vessels, the San Antonio and La Concepcion, to the southeast to examine whether or not this channel terminated in an open sea. The first set sail immediately under press of canvas, not choosing to wait for the second, which the pilot wished to leave behind, for he had intended to avail himself of the darkness of the night to retrace his course and return to Spain by the same way he had come.
“This pilot was Estevan Gomez, who hated Magalhaens, for the sole reason that when Magalhaens came to Spain to lay his project before the emperor of going to the Moluccas by a western route, Gomez himself had already requested, and was on the point of obtaining, some caravels for an expedition of which he would have had the command. This expedition had for its object new discoveries, but the arrival of Magalhaens prevented his request from being granted, and he only obtained the subaltern position of pilot. His disaffection was further increased by the thought of his serving under a Portugese. In the course of the night he conspired with the other Spaniards on board the ship. They put in irons and even wounded the captain, Alvaro de Meschita, the cousin-german of the captain-general, and carried him to Spain.”[351]
When the strait was explored to its termination, the cape where the strait ended was called, says Pigafetta, “Il Cabo Deseado” (The Desired Cape).
On Wednesday, the twenty-eighth of November, 1520, the three ships left the strait and entered the unexplored expanse of the Pacific. “In the course of three months and twenty days,” Pigafetta observes, “we traversed nearly four thousand leagues on the ocean called by us the Pacific, on account of our not having experienced during this period any tempestuous weather. In this long space of time we did not descry any land, except two desert islands. On these we saw nothing but birds and trees, therefore we named them, Isole Sfortunato[352] (The Unfortunate Islands).... The two islands are two hundred leagues apart. The first lies in fifteen degrees south latitude, the second in nine degrees. According to the measure which we made of the voyage with the chain at the poop, we ran daily about sixty to seventy leagues.[353] If God and the Holy Mother had not granted us a fortunate voyage we should all have perished from hunger on so vast a sea. I do not think that any one will hereafter venture on a similar voyage.[354]
“If we had continued on a western course on the same parallel after leaving the strait we should have circumnavigated the globe without seeing any land except that extending from the Cape of the Eleven Thousand Virgins, at the eastern head of the strait, in the Ocean Sea (Mar oceano), to Cabo Deseado, at the western end, in the Pacific Sea (Mar pacifico). The two capes are in fifty-two degrees south latitude.
“The antarctic pole has not as many stars as the arctic. At the former a large number of small stars cluster together which form two nebulæ. They are separated from each other and are somewhat dim. In these nebulæ are two large and brilliant stars which move very little. These indicate the antarctic pole. Although the needle declined somewhat from the arctic pole it still oscillated toward it, but not with the same force as when in the northern hemisphere. When the captain-general out at sea directed the course in which the pilots should steer, he asked them in what direction they steered. All of them replied that they bore in the direction in which he had ordered them. He then informed them that their course was wrong and directed them to correct the needle, because, as they were in the southern hemisphere, it had not the same power to designate the true north as in the northern hemisphere. When we got out in the open sea, we saw, in the west, a cross of five very bright stars.
“We steered northwest by west till we reached the equator in one hundred and twenty-two degrees of longitude, west of the line of demarkation.... After we crossed the equator we steered west by north. We then ran two hundred leagues toward the west, when, changing our course again, we ran west by south until we reached thirteen degrees of north latitude. We proposed by this course to reach Cape Catticara which geographers have placed in this latitude, but they are mistaken, for this cape lies twelve degrees more toward the north.”[355]