MAGELLAN.
Fac-simile of the engraving in Herrera, i. 293.
MAGELLAN.
Fac-simile of the engraving in Ogilby’s America (p. 79),—the same used in Montanus’s Nieuwe Wereldt.
On the 20th of September the fleet had cleared the River Guadalquivir, and was fairly at sea. Six days afterward it touched at Teneriffe for supplies; and here was the first quarrel between Magellan and his watchman, Juan de Carthagena. Up to this point entire secrecy had been maintained by Magellan as to the route to be pursued. Juan de Carthagena claimed the right to be informed of all things regarding it. Magellan refused, probably with considerable scorn. When off Sierra Leone, a few days after, a similar quarrel broke out; Magellan arrested Carthagena with his own hand, and put him in the stocks. Of course this was an insult the most keen, and was meant to be. The other captains begged Magellan to release the prisoner, and he did so; but still he kept him under the arrest of one of their number.
From Sierra Leone they ran across to Brazil and anchored again for supplies in the magnificent Bay of Rio de Janeiro. By their narrative, indeed, on the return of the first vessel, was this great estuary made widely known to the world. It is now known that Magellan was not the first discoverer. Pero Lopez had explored the bay five years before; and as early as 1511 a trader named John of Braga, probably a Portuguese, was established on one of its fertile islands. Indeed, it is said that the hardy seamen of Dieppe had been there as early as the beginning of the century. Its first name was the Bay of Cabo-Frio.
The meridian of Alexander’s Bull had been meant to leave all the American discoveries in the possession of the King of Spain. But, unfortunately for him, Brazil runs so far out to the east that a meridian three hundred and seventy leagues west of the Azores gives Portugal a considerable part of it; and in point of fact the western boundary of Brazil has been accommodated quite nearly to the imaginary line of the Pope. To Magellan and his company it made no difference whether they were on Portuguese or Spanish soil. They found the Brazilians friendly. “Though they are not Christians, they are not idolaters, for they adore nothing. Natural instinct is their only law.”