The efforts of the Spanish crown to find a way to the golden East by way of the West which led to the discovery of the Strait of Magellan were but extensions of the hunt for Cathay that inspired the greedy fanatic Cristobal Colón. He died asseverating that he had found the coast of the Indies, and although the more level-headed navigators knew better the eyes of Spain continued to be fixed upon a route to the Spice Isles rather than upon the Americas per se. Reached from the west, Spain could lay an anti-Portuguese claim by virtue of the famous Bull of Pope Alexander VI of May 4, 1493, which, placing a line 100 miles west of the Azores, acknowledged all discoveries eastward as Portuguese and all westward as Spanish.
Fernão de Magalhães, as Captain-General, with Estevan Gomez as Chief Pilot, sailed in the Trinidad, of 110 tons, from San Lucar on September 12, 1519. Four other smaller vessels completed the expedition of discovery—the San Antonio, the Victoria, the Santiago, and the Concepción. The latter was commanded by Gaspar de Mendoza, with, as master, Sebastian del Cano, destined to be the first circumnavigator of the globe. Magellan, Portuguese-born, shipped a large number of his countrymen in defiance of the orders of the King of Spain; Sebastian del Cano, a Basque hidalgo, took eight other Basques in the Concepción. Quarrels quickly broke out, and an outbreak off the Patagonian coast resulted in the murder of Mendoza, the execution of Quesada, the marooning of another commander and a too-active priest. The Santiago had been lost at the entrance of the Santa Cruz River, and with the remaining personnel and vessels captained to his own liking, Magellan proceeded south.
On October 21 he sighted and named the Cape of Eleven Thousand Virgins, at the opening of the Strait. Here Estevan Gomez, now on board the San Antonio, overpowered the captain and persuaded other men equally disapproving of Magellan’s actions to turn back; they sought, vainly, the men marooned at San Julian, and sailed back to Spain. Meanwhile Magellan navigated the stormy waters of the Strait, emerged into the boisterous Pacific, made for the Philippines and there was killed in a native feud; the slaughter of thirty-nine others of the expedition made it necessary to get rid of another vessel, the Concepción, while the two remaining vessels made their way to the coveted Spice Islands. Here magnificent cargoes of spice were bartered from the Kings of Tidore and Gilolo, and, leaving the leaking Trinidad to be careened, Sebastian del Cano after building storehouses for spices at Tidore, sailed on westward in the little Victoria and reached San Lucar as the first circumnavigator of the globe.
Del Cano with thirty-five men were the chief survivors, for the Trinidad never returned, and only a few of her crew reached Spain years afterwards. It was to find her and rescue the members of the expedition left in Tidore that the second expedition to Magellan Straits was despatched. The great merits of Sebastian del Cano as organizer and navigator were, meanwhile, greatly applauded in Spain, and the coat of arms granted bore a globe as crest, with the motto Primus circumdedisti me.
Portugal was roused by the exciting story of the Victoria’s feat and her return laden with cinnamon, cloves, nutmegs, mace and sandalwood. To understand the feeling roused it is necessary to remember the extent to which mediæval Europe was dependent upon spices for rendering foods palatable. Sugar was not then in general use, and honey, scarce and expensive, was the chief sweetener. Meat was preserved with salt, and its untempting quality was redeemed by Eastern spices. Puddings were saturated with the same heavy aromatics; wearing apparel and beds were perfumed with them. It is a taste that has yielded before the skill of the distiller and the synthetic chemist, and the general development of a “sweet tooth,” but it was sufficiently enthusiastic during the Middle Ages to warrant international disputes.
Following Sebastian del Cano’s exploit, therefore, need for a decision as to the ownership of the Moluccas became acute: finally, the King of Portugal and Charles I of Spain arranged the Conference of Badajos to settle the matter, taking the evidence of the best navigators, cartographers and pilots. Meetings began in early 1524, continued for five years without result, and were ended when Charles V sold his claim in April, 1529, to the Portuguese for 350,000 ducats. This sale worked a hardship upon the plucky Spaniards engaged in trying to uphold the Spanish flag in the Islands, for meanwhile a new expedition under the Comendador Garcia de Loaysa, with Sebastian del Cano as second in command, was fitted out to follow the same course as Magellan’s to the Spice Isles and to rescue the survivors of the Trinidad. They set sail from Coruña in July, 1524, reached Cape Virgins in January, encountered the usual terrible gales off the Strait, lost a ship, and saw tall Patagonians, dressed in guanaco skins, with headdresses of ostrich (rhea) plumes. They noted the laurel-like leaves of Winter’s Bark, with its sweet scent. In bad condition, with the small boats destroyed, they went north to the Santa Cruz River; repaired them, returned to the Strait, and finally got out into the Pacific in May, 1526. Besides the wreck of the Santi Spiritus they had now been deserted by two other ships, so that only the flagship Victoria, the caravels Lesmes and Parrel and the pinnace Pataca reached the South Sea. Of these, the Pataca found her way to Mexico, and the Lesmes disappeared.
Broken down by hardships, Loaysa died at sea on July 30; and six days later the great navigator Sebastian del Cano also died. When the survivors reached the Moluccas at the end of the year they had buried 40 men in the Pacific since leaving the Strait, 105 remaining to carry on unsupported contest against the Portuguese in the islands. In 1532, when the abandonment of the Spanish claims was definitely known, the Spaniards surrendered to their rivals and a few survivors did eventually get back to Spain, including the able captain Andres de Urdaneta, whose careful report was made to the king.
The next expedition to the stormy Strait was that of Simon de Alcazaba, a Portuguese navigator in the service of Spain who asked for and obtained a grant of land in what is today South Chile. The territory of which he was nominally made Governor was to commence immediately south of the strip allotted to the Adelantado Diego de Almagro, Nueva Estramadura, and to extend 300 leagues. Alcazaba’s grant included the present Argentine Patagonia, and was called Nueva Leon; the narrative of the Veedor Alonso has been preserved and tells of the misfortune, crime and suffering that seemed to pursue every expedition to the troubled waterways.
With two ships, Alcazaba set sail from San Lucar in September, 1534, reaching the entrance of the Strait four months later; the weather was threatening, so after stocking up with 300 penguins they sailed north to parallel 45, and anchored in the Puerto de Leones, which Alcazaba considered as in the middle of his land grant, and from which he proposed to march overland. They started on March 9, marched some thirty-six miles in inhospitable country “desert and uninhabited, where we found neither roots nor herbs to use as food, nor fuel to make a fire, nor water to drink.” The Governor, stout and old, had to turn back with a captain, while the rest went on until having marched 300 miles in twenty-two days, with nothing but desert still in sight, they decided to return to the ships. They had lived on the roots of big thistles, wild celery and fish.
During the return journey two captains, Arias and Sotelo, mutinied, and the expedition straggled back in disorder, losing more than fifty men on the way. Arias and his friends reached the coast first, swam to the flagship, murdered the Governor and pilot, then seized the second ship and robbed both. Quarrels broke out between the two ringleaders, Arias wishing to turn the flagship into a roving privateer while Sotelo[[4]] preferred to go north and join, at the Plata, the expedition of the Governor Pedro de Mendoza; the loyalists were able to turn the tables on them, retake possession of the vessels, and to appoint new officials. The latter tried and sentenced the mutineers; some were hanged at the yardarm, others thrown overboard with weights round their necks, and others “banished on shore for ten years.” At last, with provisions exhausted, they set sail in July for Brazil, reached Bahia, where a ship was wrecked and eighty men killed by the natives, the survivors reaching Santo Domingo in September, 1535. So ended the first Spanish official attempt to colonise the extreme south of Chile.