When Malacca on the Malay peninsula had been conquered by the Portuguese, the great viceroy Albuquerque dispatched in the same year, 1511, one of his boldest captains—Antonio de Abreu—to search for the Molucca and the Banda Islands, whence the Malay ships brought cloves and nutmegs. De Abreu touched at Java and the Sunda Islands and reached first Amboina, a small island off the south-west coast of Ceram; then passed on northwards till he again anchored off Ternate, one of the smallest of the five small Spice Islands lying close to the west coast of the big island of Jilolo. Here he found the clove trees growing, and probably met Chinese junks trading in cloves: for the Chinese had for several previous centuries been accustomed to travel as far afield as Papuasia in their quest of spices and perfumes. In 1512 de Abreu discovered the little Banda archipelago, lying in the open sea to the south of Ceram, and consisting of twelve islets, all very small, and one of them containing a terrific volcano, Gunong Api—which occasionally becomes active and devastates the neighbourhood of its cone. Just as the original "Moluccas"[24] were five very small islands (Ternate, Tidore, Mare, Mutir, and Makian), off the coast of Jilolo, and were the only places, in those days (besides the not-far-distant island of Bachian), where the right kind of clove tree grew; so the Banda Islands—only 17 square miles in area altogether—were the only home of the proper nutmeg, though inferior nutmegs grew on some of the other islets off the coast of Ceram and the west end of New Guinea.
Cloves nowadays are cultivated on other equatorial islands far away from eastern Malaysia; but in the sixteenth century they were only to be obtained from the Moluccas. The clove tree is a member of the great Myrtle family, and belongs to the genus Eugenia. It grows in favourable places to a height of 40 feet, bears a rich evergreen foliage of large oval leaves, and clusters of long, slender crimson flowers growing at the extremity of the twigs. These flowers have their petals concealed in the centre of the calyx opening, but the sepals (false petals or petal-like leaves which often precede the real petals in flowers) stick out in four projections round the mouth of the calyx. These tubular flowers, with their four short sepals at the ends, are in fact the cloves of commerce. They are gathered when ripe, and are a bright crimson in colour, afterwards turning brown or black. The nutmeg (the name is a mixture of English and old French and means musk nut) is the fruit of a tree with the Latin name of Myristica, which has a natural order all to itself, Myristicaceæ. It is evergreen, grows to about 50 feet in height in the Banda Islands, and bears male and female flowers without petals, that are green in colour and inconspicuous. The female flowers produce a quince-like downy fruit, which when mature and dry splits and reveals inside a walnut-like nut surrounded by a network of crimson fibre. This fibre is as precious as the actual kernel or nut, for it is the spice known as mace, quite distinct in flavour and use from the actual nutmeg. This last is, of course, the kernel of the hard-shelled nut which is surrounded by the crimson fibre of the mace, and the outer husk of the pear-like fruit.
The Portuguese—to put it vulgarly—soon knew they had got hold of a good thing in these small islands of clove and nutmeg trees. They established themselves more or less as the rulers of the Moluccas, with their headquarters at Ternate. But they treated the Malay subjects badly, and these were soon on the lookout for the arrival of other foreigners whom they could play off against the Portuguese. Yet for some ten years the Portuguese had no rivals in Malaysia. Their conquests and discoveries spread far and wide. They entered into relations with Celebes, reached the Island of Mindanao (the southernmost of the Philippines), and even passed out into the open Pacific, and sighted the Caroline islands of Micronesia. They seem also to have been the first to discover the western promontories of New Guinea, the Island of Timor, and to have had news of a continental territory to the south—Australia—all of which information soon afterwards reached the Spaniards, who put it to practical use.
Among the Portuguese, who thus became acquainted with the Spice Islands of eastern Malaysia, was Fernão de Magalhaẽs—stupidly miscalled, in English literature, Magellan. His earlier story has already been told in a previous volume of this series.[25] Having been very badly treated by the King of Portugal, Magellan and several of his friends and relations passed over into the service of the united kingdoms of Castile and Aragon, which were about to become the great kingdom of Spain. It will be remembered by the reader that, in 1494, the King of Portugal and the King and Queen of Aragon-Castile, to avoid quarrelling about the marvellous discoveries their adventurers were making, had concluded the Treaty of Tordesillas under the auspices of the Pope, a treaty which practically divided between these kingdoms of the Iberian peninsula all the non-Christian world outside Europe and the Turkish Empire. Their boundaries were a meridian of longitude running from pole to pole, and cutting the globe into two divisions. The meridian was fixed at a distance of 1110 miles west of the Cape Verde Islands, and more or less coincident with the fiftieth degree of longitude west of Greenwich. Consequently, in the west it gave Portugal the Brazilian part of the South American continent; while on the other side of the globe the corresponding meridian (130° E. of Greenwich) cut off the Portuguese from entering into possession of all Australasia, and afforded Spain the pretext of attempting to reach Malaysia from the east (across the Pacific), and thus of laying claim to the Spice Islands which might be found to lie outside the Portuguese sphere. [As a matter of fact, when the longitude was correctly calculated, both Philippines and Moluccas lay in the Portuguese domain.] The great Spanish adventurer, Nuñez de Balboa, had in 1513, "from a peak in Darien" near the isthmus of Panama, sighted the Pacific Ocean, which the Spaniards at first called the Southern Sea. The Portuguese realization of the wide ocean which lay to the east of Malaysia, combined with the news that Central America had on the western side of it an ocean at least as vast as the Atlantic, decided Magellan to propose to the new ruler of Spain, the Emperor Charles V, the great project of finding a way round—or a strait through—South America, and the complete fulfilment of the original plan of Columbus—the reaching of the Indies by a western route across the Atlantic. His proposals were accepted, and he was given, in 1518, command over a little fleet of five ships,[26] the largest of which (the San Antonio) was only 120 tons in capacity and the smallest 75 tons. He left Spain on September 21, 1519, to search for this passage round or through South America to the Southern Sea. His expedition included 190 Spaniards, and a number of Portuguese, Genoese, and other Italians—including the famous Lombard geographer of those days, Antonio Pigafetta—several Frenchmen and Flemings, one Englishman (named Andres, a gunner from Bristol), and one or two German gunners or artillerymen. The first account given to the world of this first-recorded circumnavigation of the globe was written by the accomplished Antonio Pigafetta, who accompanied Magellan from mere love of knowledge, and was one of the few who actually returned to Spain after voyaging right round the world.
Magellan explored the east coast of South America for an opening which should lead into the other sea. At first he thought he had found it in the estuary of the Rio de la Plata, but as soon as he noticed the water was fresh he continued southward along the coast of Patagonia, spending five months in that region to rest ships and men, and quelling a dangerous mutiny, till at last he found a likely opening between the mountains of Patagonia and the snowclad peaks of Tierra del Fuego. He had already lost the smallest of his ships on the Patagonian coast, and in the Straits of Magellan the San Antonio deserted and sailed back to Spain; but the crews of the others remained faithful to Magellan after their captains had taken anxious counsel together. At length these three little vessels rounded "Cape Deseado"—the desired Cape—and found themselves within sight of a mighty ocean at the end of November, 1520; an ocean which seemed so calm after the stormy Atlantic that Magellan called it the "Pacific Sea".
After emerging into the Pacific Ocean, Magellan's three ships voyaged for ninety-six days without stopping at any land, and the crews went for no days (from the Straits of Magellan to the Ladrone Islands) without getting any kind of fresh food. "We ate", wrote Antonio Pigafetta, "biscuit which was no longer biscuit, but powder of biscuits swarming with worms and stinking terribly because it had been befouled by rats. We drank yellow water which had been putrid for many days. We also ate ox hides that covered the top of the mainyard to prevent the mast from chafing the shrouds, which had become exceedingly hard because of its exposure to sun, rain, and wind. These pieces of hide were soaked in sea water for four or five days and then placed for a few minutes on top of glowing charcoal and afterwards eaten." But in their hunger the men often ate sawdust, and as to the rats that were caught, they were sold at a high price. Scurvy soon broke out, and the gums of the men's jaws swelled so that some could not eat at all, and therefore died of starvation—nineteen in all, amongst them a giant Patagonian captured in South America to be carried back to Spain. And thus they sailed some 12,000 miles across the Pacific Ocean. "Truly it was very pacific," wrote Pigafetta, "for during that time we suffered no storm. We saw no land except two desert islands on which were found nothing but birds and trees." The water round them swarmed with sharks. But that they were favoured with such good weather, and sailed a steady 180 to 210 miles a day, they "would all have died of hunger in that exceeding vast sea". But Magellan held on with a tenacity which leaves Columbus behind in resolution, for Columbus reached land on his first voyage after only thirty-six days of anxious expectancy, whereas it was the ninety-seventh day of Magellan's long agony before a land was reached which was likely to be of use as a place of refreshment.
They noted that the skies in this Southern Hemisphere were not so full of stars as in the North, but they also observed the splendid Southern Cross with five bright stars pointing straight towards the west. They passed not far from the Marquezas Islands. Apparently the only land they sighted on their way across the Pacific, except the small islands frequented by birds, was St. Paul Island, of the Paumotu group, and perhaps Malden Island. Magellan's voyage, amongst other things, was remarkable for what he missed quite as much as for what he attained. It is wonderful to think that he sailed across the Pacific from the coast of Chili to Guam, which is well within the Asiatic region, and only sighted land four times, and then only in the form of small and desert islands. His chiefest desire, however, was to get out of stormy latitudes into the peaceful equatorial belt, and to reach as quickly as possible the comparative security of the known, not liking to trust the fate of his crews to unknown lands which might be without good supplies of fresh water and food, and be peopled by savages incapable of understanding them. For it must be remembered that his previous experience had given him a great deal of insight into the islands of Malaysia, and he had managed to obtain from Sumatra before he started on this great voyage an interpreter named Henrique, who spoke Malay as his native tongue.
On the 6th March, 1521, the Spaniards sighted three islands, of which one was higher and larger than the other two. Off this the next day they came to a stop. It was afterwards known as the Island of Guam. The inhabitants, without any fear, boarded the ships and stole whatever they could lay their hands on, even wrenching off and carrying away the small boat that was fastened to the poop of the flagship. Thereupon Magellan in great anger went ashore with forty armed men, burnt many houses and canoes, and killed seven of the natives. He recovered his small boat and the expedition immediately sailed away. Yet so terrible was the craving for fresh food on board that when the sick men, dying of scurvy, realized that the armed party were going on shore, they begged them to bring back the entrails of any man or woman they might kill, the eating of which these poor mad sailors believed would restore them to health!
It is noteworthy that the Spaniards when they landed fought with crossbows and arrows, which were in those days much more effective weapons than the guns of the period. The Micronesian people they met on the Island of Guam they described as going naked, many of the men being bearded and having black hair that reached to the waist. They wore small palm-leaf hats, were as tall as the Spaniards, well-built and of tawny skin, with teeth turned red and black by the chewing of betel. The women, who were good-looking, delicately formed, and much lighter in complexion than the men, had black hair which was worn loose and reached almost to the ground. The women did not work in the fields but stayed at home, weaving mats and baskets from palm leaves. The mats were beautifully made and used to decorate the walls and the floors of their houses. They slept on palm straw, which was soft and fine. Their houses were built of planks and thatched with banana fronds. The food of the people was chiefly coconuts, sweet potatoes, fowls, bananas (really long plantains 1 foot in length), sugar cane, and flying-fish. The chief amusement of both men and women was to plough the seas with their small boats, which were usually painted black, white, or red. Pigafetta describes the outriggers, and says the sails were made of palm leaves.[27] Having no fixed rudder, but only using a long paddle for such a purpose, and the boats being sharp at both ends, they could be sent backwards or forwards without turning round.[28]
At dawn on 16 March, 1521, the expedition sighted high land. This was the Island of Samar, on the eastern side of the Philippine archipelago.