On September the seventh, 1522, twelve miserable-looking Spanish sailors landed at the port of St. Lucar, near Seville. They were ragged, bare-foot, and gaunt from hunger. Proceeding to the Cathedral, they sank to their knees and thanked God for their preservation, for, out of the two hundred and thirty-seven who had sailed gayly away from Seville more than three years before, these were all that remained to tell the tale.
And it was a pretty good tale they had to tell, for they had been the first white men to circumnavigate the globe. But the bones of their gallant leader lay among the wild and bloodthirsty natives of the Philippine Islands, with not even a stone to mark the last resting place of the brave and energetic Portuguese mariner.
GIOVANNI VERRAZANO:
FIRST NAVIGATOR TO EXPLORE THE
COAST OF NEW JERSEY AND
NEW YORK.
(1480-1527)