PIGAFETTA’S MAP.
[This fac-simile is made from the cut, p. 40 of the French edition of Amoretti’s Premier voyage autour du monde par Pigafetta, Paris, l’an ix (1801). The reader will observe that the north is at the bottom of the map. There is a reversed sketch of it elsewhere.—Ed.]
The crew and the captains, even after the hard experience of the mutineers, did not hesitate to express their unwillingness to enter the blind and narrow channel before them. Magellan summoned the commanders and made to them a formal declaration, of which the substance has been preserved. He told them that their sovereign and his had sent them for this very purpose, to discover this strait and to pass through it. If they were faithless as to its issue, he declared that he had seen in the archives of the King of Portugal a map, drawn by Martin Behaim, in which the strait was indicated, and that it opened into the western ocean. The squadron should not turn back, he said; and he gave his order for the continuation of the voyage in this determination. If the vessels separated, the commander of each was to keep on until he had reached the latitude of 75° S. If then the strait had not been found, any commander might turn eastward; yet he was not to seek Spain, but to sail to the Moluccas, which were the objective of the voyage; and the proper sailing directions were given for reaching those islands by the route through the Indian Ocean.
The geographers have been at a loss to reconcile this statement,—that Martin Behaim had already drawn the strait upon a map or globe,—with Magellan’s claim to be its discoverer. But, as the reader knows, there was no lack of straits or of continents on the various maps before Magellan’s time which could be cited for any theory of any cosmographer. We know the history of navigation well enough to understand that, whatever drawings Magellan might have seen or cited, nothing can shake his reputation as the far-sighted discoverer of the channel to which, without any hesitation, the world has given his name.[1602]
His firmness had so much effect that the captains went back to their ships, pretending to accede to his wishes. With the “Trinidad” and “Victoria,” Magellan waited at the entrance of the channel while he despatched the “San Antonio” and “Concepçion” to complete the survey of it westward. Hardly had the squadron divided, when a terrible tempest broke upon both parts of it, lasting thirty-six hours. Magellan’s ships lost their anchors, and were at the mercy of the wind in the open bay. The other vessels seem to have run before the gale. At the moment when their people thought themselves lost, they opened the first “reach”—if it may so be called—of the strait; they pushed through it till they came to the bay now known as “Bouçault Bay.” Crossing this, with increasing confidence, they came into the second channel, which opens into a second bay larger than the first. After this success they returned to report their progress to their commander.
He and his officers, meanwhile, had begun to fear that their companions had been lost in the tempest. A column of smoke on shore was supposed to be a signal of the spot where they had taken refuge. But in the midst of such uncertainty their vessels reappeared, and soon fired shots from their guns in token of joy. They were as joyfully welcomed; and, as soon as they could tell their news, the reunited squadron gladly proceeded through the two channels which they had opened. When they arrived in the bay which had been the farthest discovery of the pioneer vessels, they found two channels opening from it. At the southeast is that marked “Supposé” on Bougainville’s map; and to this channel Magellan directed Mesquita in the “San Antonio,” and Juan Serrano in the “Concepçion.”
Unfortunately the sailing-master of the “San Antonio” was Stephen Gomez, who hated Magellan with a long-cherished hatred. When Magellan first arrived in Spain, Gomez was, or thought he was, on the eve of starting on an expedition of discovery under the patronage of the Crown. Magellan’s grand plan had broken up this lesser expedition; and instead of commanding it, Gomez had found himself placed in a subordinate post under his rival’s command. He now took his chance to revenge himself as soon as he was directed to survey the new channel. Before night fell he had escaped from the surveillance of the “Concepçion.” At night he caballed with the Spaniards of his own crew; they rose upon their captain Mesquita, a Portuguese, the loyal cousin of Magellan, and put him in irons. Without delay they then escaped from the squadron; and returning, through the channels they had traced, to the Atlantic, they sailed for home. Touching at the forlorn harbor where they had wintered, they picked up the two mutineers who had been left there. Indeed, it is fair to suppose that their whole plot dated back for its origin to the unsuccessful enterprise of the winter.[1603]
Magellan, on his part, waited for the “San Antonio,” which had been directed to return in three days. Though the channel which she was to explore passed between mountains covered with snow, we are told that the strait where Magellan awaited them lay between regions which were “the most beautiful in the world.” On the southern side they had, once and again, observed fires in the night, and they gave to that land the name of “Tierra del Fuego,” “the Land of Fire,” which it has ever since preserved. They did not see any of the natives on either coast. The sailors caught so many fish which resembled the sardines of their home, that the name of “River of Sardines” was given to a stream which makes its outlet there. Finding that the “San Antonio” had left him, and probably suspecting her treachery, Magellan went forward through the southwestern channel with the “Victoria” and the “Trinidad.”
It is at this point that we are to place a formal correspondence which has been preserved by a Portuguese historian[1604] as passing between Magellan and one of his captains on the question of advancing. These letters are dated the 22d of November, 1520. Martin Mendoza, in his reply to Magellan’s letter, agrees that until the 1st of January they should persevere while the days are long, but urges that the vessels should lie by in the darkness. He is as resolute in expressing the conviction that they should be out of the strait before the month of January is over,—that is, that they should turn about, if necessary, on January 1, if they had not then reached the Pacific, so as to be well in the Atlantic again by the first of February; that then they should give up the original object of the voyage and sail to Cadiz. The document seems genuine; but, as the reader will see, there was no occasion for using its counsels. Before the 1st of January they were free of the strait forever.
While his squadron loitered in hope of the “San Antonio’s” return, Magellan sent forward a boat to explore the channel. On the third day she returned to him with the joyful news that they had opened the western mouth of the strait.