There are two modern gatherings of the most important documentary illustrations of this famous voyage,—the one made by Navarrete, and the other published by the Hakluyt Society. The former constitutes the fourth volume of Navarrete’s well-known Coleccion; and among the variety of its papers printed or cited largely from the public archives, illustrating the fitting out of the fleet, its voyage, and the reception of Del Cano on his return, a few of the more important may be mentioned. Such is a manuscript from the library of San Isadro el Real de Madrid, purporting to be by Magellan himself; but Navarrete does not admit this. He prints for the first time an original manuscript account in the Seville archives, usually cited as the Seville manuscript, which bears the title of Extracto de la habilitacion, etc. It gives an enumeration of the company which composed the force on the fleet. The Navarrete volume also contains the log-book of Francisco Albo, or Alvaro, printed, it is claimed by Stanley (who also includes it in the Hakluyt Society volume), from a copy in the British Museum, which was made from the original at Simancas. It follows the fortunes of the fleet after they sighted Cape St. Augustine. Muñoz had found in the Archives of Torre de Tombo a letter of Antonio Brito to the King of Portugal, and Navarrete gives this also.[1624] A letter of Jean Sebastian del Cano to Charles V., dated Sept. 5, 1527, describes the voyage, and is also to be found here.[1625]
The Hakluyt Society volume borrows largely from the lesser sources as given in Navarrete, and among other papers it contains the brief narrative which is found in Ramusio as that of an “anonymous Portuguese.” It also gives an English version of what is known as the account of the Genoese pilot, one Joan Bautista probably. This story exists in three Portuguese manuscripts: one belongs to the library of the monks of S. Bento da Sande; another is in the National Library at Paris; and from these two a text was formed which was printed in 1826 in the Noticias Ultramarinhas (vol. iv.) of the Lisbon Academy of History, as “Roteiro da viagem de Fernam de Magalhâes” (1519). A third manuscript is in the library of the Academy of History at Madrid. As edited by Luigi Hugues, it is printed in the fifteenth volume of the Atti della Società Ligure di Storia Patria.
The narrative in the preceding text has shown that the precise statements of latitude made by the Genoese pilot have wholly destroyed the value of all speculations as to the route of Magellan from the Straits to the Ladrones which were published before this “Roteiro” became known. The track laid down on the older globes is invariably wrong, and Magellan’s course was in reality that along which the currents would easily have propelled him, being that of the Antarctic stream of the Pacific, which Humboldt has explained.[1626] Stanley also points out that the narrative given in Gaspar Correa’s Lendas da India is the only authority we have for the warning given to Magellan at Teneriffe by Barbosa; and for the incident of a Portuguese ship speaking the “Victoria” as the latter was passing the Cape of Good Hope.
One Pedro Mexia had seen the fleet of Magellan sail, and had likewise witnessed the return of Del Cano. A collection of miscellanies, which he printed as early as 1526, under the title of Silva, and which passed through many editions, affords another contemporary reference.[1627] It is hardly worth while to enumerate the whole list of more general historical treatises of the sixteenth and even seventeenth centuries,[1628] which bring this famous voyage within their scope. It seems clear, however, that Oviedo had some sources which are not recognizable now, and some have contended that he had access to Magellan’s own papers. Herrera in the ninth book of his eleventh Decade in the same way apparently had information the sources of which are now lost to us. The story of Magellan necessarily made part of such books as Osorius’s De Rebus Emmanuelis gestis, published at Cologne in 1581, again in 1597, and in Dutch at Rotterdam in 1661-1663. Burton in his Hans Stade (p. lxxxvi) calls the Relacion y derrotero del Viaje y descubrimiento del estrecho de la Madre de Dios, antes llamado de Magallanes por Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa, published in 1580, an unworthy attempt to rob Magellan of his fame.
The modern studies of Magellan and his career have been in good hands. Navarrete when he made his most important contribution of material, accompanied it with a very careful Noticia biográfica of Magellan, in which he makes exact references to his sources.[1629]
A critical life of Magellan was prefixed by Lord Stanley to his Hakluyt Society volume in 1874. R. H. Major in his Prince Henry the Navigator included an admirable critical account, which was repeated in its results in his later volume, Discoveries of Prince Henry.
A paper on the search of Magellan and of Gomez for a western passage was read by Buckingham Smith before the New York Historical Society, a brief report of which is in the Historical Magazine, x. (1866) 229; and one may compare with it the essay by Langeron in the Revue Géographique in 1877.
A number of more distinctive monographs have also been printed, beginning with the Magellan, oder die Erste Reise um die Erde nach dem vorhanderen Quellen dargestellt of August Bürck, which was published in Leipsic in 1844.[1630] Dr. Kohl, who had given the subject much study, particularly in relation to the history of the straits which Magellan passed, published the results of his researches in the Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Erdkunde in Berlin in 1877,—a treatise which was immediately republished separately as Geschichte der Entdeckungsreisen und Schiffahrten zur Magellan’s Strasse. In 1881 Dr. Franz Wieser, a professor in the University at Innspruck, examined especially the question of any anterior exploration in this direction, in his Magalhâes-strasse und Austral Continent auf den globen des Johannes Schöner, which was published in that year at Innspruck.[1631] About the same time (1881) the Royal Academy at Lisbon printed a Vida e Viagens de Fernão de Magalhães, com um appendice original, which, as the work of Diego de Barros Arana, had already appeared in Spanish.
The bibliography of Magellan and his voyage is prepared with some care by Charton in his Voyageurs, p. 353; and scantily in St. Martin’s Histoire de la Géographie, p. 370.