Here surely was a new archipelago which had found no place on a map. March 16, 1521, was to be a notable date of the world.
He had discovered the Philippine Islands, though they were not then known by that name. They were the door to China from the West—this he could hardly have known.
The islands as now known consist of Luzon, fifty-one thousand three hundred square miles in extent; and Mendanao, more than twenty-five thousand miles in extent. The islands lying between Luzon and Mendanao are called the Bissayas, of which Samar has an area of thirteen thousand and twenty miles. Magellan visited Mendanao and then sailed for Zebu, a small island where the first Spanish settlement was made, before Manila, which was founded in 1581.
This archipelago was a new world of wonder. The small islands are now computed to number fourteen hundred. Magellan never knew the extent of his discovery.
Here he was to find the happiest days of his life, after the serene but famishing voyage.
The people here were to receive him with open arms; to feast him; to raise his expectations and to bow down before the Cross. We must describe in detail—thanks to the Italian who was true to the heart of the Admiral—this golden age of the troubled life of Magellan.
After all the struggle for so many years against many overwhelming oppositions, Magellan now rose into the vantage ground of success, and fulfilled the vision which had illumined his soul in his darkest hours.
Every man has a right to his record, and whatever might happen now, his record no power could destroy; he had discovered the Pacific Ocean, and a new way around the world. Whatever might be his fate, the world must follow his lantern.
On the 18th of March, 1521, after dinner on shore, the Admiral saw a boat coming out from a near island toward his ship. There were men in it.
"Let no one move or speak," said Magellan.