While Spain was actively engaged in exploration and annexation in the west, Portugal was equally busy in the east. Though the Cape of Good Hope had been doubled by Diaz in 1486, it was not until 1497, five years after the discovery of America, that Vasco da Gama proved the possibility of reaching India by that route. Rapid progress, for those days at any rate, was made from that time. The actual neighborhood of the Cape apparently offered no attractions; the advantages of its situation were left to be realized by the Dutch a century later; and it was not until Natal was reached on Christmas day, whence its name, that there were any thoughts of annexation or settlement. It was the East Coast of Africa which seemed to offer the greatest facilities for communication and trading with the opposite shores of India, and claimed attention accordingly; and as numerous pilots were to be found there, skilled in navigating vessels across the Indian Ocean, it was there colonies were first established, one of which at least, and the only important one remaining to Portugal, Lorenzo Marques, has been the object of envy, and the source of much contention in recent years.
From the Malabar coast in the south to Karachi in the north of India, Portuguese traders grew active, but, owing to the fierceness and determination of the natives, it was found impossible for some years to permanently occupy any territory, until Goa was established in 1510, as the center of Portuguese interests. A year earlier than this, Malacca had been subjugated, and the exploration of Sumatra undertaken; while three years later, Francisco Serrao discovered the Moluccas, the far-famed islands from which Venice and Genoa had so long drawn their stores of valuable spices by the overland route through India and Persia, or by the Red Sea and Isthmus of Suez. To divert this traffic round the Cape of Good Hope, expeditions were fitted out against Muscat and Ormuz in the Persian Gulf, and Aden at the entrance to the Red Sea. While, then, the Spanish colonists were searching for gold in sufficient quantities to make the enterprise pay, much less realize fortunes, the Portuguese tapped the source of wealth of the great mercantile communities of the Middle Ages; and, monopolizing it themselves, rendered their country for a time the richest in the world.
Of the numerous governors dispatched by Portugal to the east, the Duke of Albuquerque was the most active, and accomplished the greatest results. Serving under him in various capacities was Ferrao Magalhaes, or Maghallanes, a young nobleman who sought on every possible occasion to distinguish himself. Returning home, he did not receive the reward he considered his due; and though he continued to agitate at court, and to urge his claims, on the further ground that since his arrival from the east he had taken part in an African campaign, and been permanently lamed, he was either repulsed or put off with some trifling concession. This rankling in his mind, he determined to divest himself of his nationality, and offer his services to Spain, the patron of all foreign adventurers.
By the Papal Bull, Spain was debarred from undertaking any enterprise in the East. This was, of course, well known to Magalhaes, or Ferdinand Magellan, as he now chose to call himself, but he had carefully thought the matter out, and arrived at a conclusion of his own. He had heard much of the ideas which led to the discovery of America, and though other and more important matters then engaged the attention of Spain than the discovery of Japan and China by the western route, he still considered the plan feasible. He intimated to the Emperor Charles V., then king of Spain, his desire to be intrusted with an expedition, with which he would undertake to reach the Moluccas from the west, and so prove that they belonged by right to Spain.
News of this treachery reached Portugal, where it was heard with the greatest indignation, and an angry correspondence passed between the two courts. Charles’s ambitions, however, lay in European aggrandizement, for which the demands upon his exchequer were heavier than he well knew how to meet. His great possessions in the New World had hitherto been a drain upon his scanty resources, as they had been upon those of his grandfather before him; and although Ferdinand lived for a quarter of a century after the discovery of America, he left hardly sufficient money in his coffers to pay his funeral expenses. Charles, therefore, listened eagerly to the proposition by which he might acquire the teeming riches of the Spice Islands, and, notwithstanding protests and warnings alike, terms were finally agreed to in March, 1518, which placed five ships, and a full complement of men, at the disposal of Magellan. Failing any other means of putting an end to the enterprise, a plot was formed for the assassination of Magellan, but miscarried; and he weighed anchor on the 10th of August, 1519, though delayed in his actual departure until the 20th of September following.
Instructions were sent to the Brazils, already occupied by Portugal, to waylay Magellan, and at all costs prevent the continuance of his voyage; and in case he eluded the vigilance of the governor of that settlement, a strict watch was to be kept at the Moluccas, and no quarter given him if he ever reached there, as he was declared a traitor to the crown of Portugal. He arrived at the Rio de la Plata unmolested, and entered that river, of great width at its mouth and for some distance along its course, with the idea that it offered the long-sought passage to the West. The increasing freshness of the water convinced him that it was but a river, and he returned and moved his course southward. And now his real difficulties began. Winter was setting in with all its rigor, and the further south he proceeded the more severe became the weather. His crew was most cosmopolitan in character and nationality, and included a number of Portuguese, some of whom, it began to be suspected,—had been bribed to mutiny, if not indeed to murder their commander. Dissensions broke out among the captains of the different vessels on petty points of precedence and discipline; and only the most determined stand by Magellan himself, who did not hesitate to hang several of the crew as an example to the rest, prevented the total ruin of his hopes and plans.
To make matters worse, scarcity of provisions began to be experienced, and it was then decided to winter in the shelter of the river St. Julian. It was in October, 1520, before a fresh start could be made, and on the 21st of that month a channel was discovered, the careful navigation of which for thirty-eight days, amid shoals and innumerable islands, brought them, amid great rejoicing, once more into the open sea, proving the theory maintained by Columbus to his dying day to be so far, at any rate, correct.
But Magellan, like all his predecessors, sadly miscalculated the distance between the remote East and the far West, and after taking in such supplies of provisions as were obtainable, renewed his voyage with a light heart, and in full expectation of reaching land in a week or two at longest. Days grew into weeks, and the weeks passed into months, and still no break on the monotonous horizon. The sufferings of the crew were horrible, as food and water became gradually exhausted, and they had to subsist at last by gnawing anything into which they could get their teeth. To turn back was certain destruction, as they could not possibly last out the time necessary to cover the distance already traversed. To go forward, therefore, was their only chance of salvation; and after a passage of ninety-eight days land was sighted on March 18, and the most dreaded of their dangers passed. They had sailed into a group of islands, not the Moluccas as they had anticipated, but the Islas de las Pintados; so called from the custom of the natives of painting or tattooing their naked bodies, and subsequently re-christened the Philippines, in honor of the heir to the Spanish throne, who afterward reigned as Philip II.
Magellan was not destined to reap the fruits of his enterprise, nor to suffer the punishment subsequently inflicted on some of the survivors. He found the natives among whom he first landed friendly disposed, but rightly suspected them of treachery. Desirous, however, of conciliating them as far as possible, he entered into their quarrel with a tribe in a neighboring island, and, in the attack which he led against it, was slain.
Disputes arose as to who should succeed to the command; and what was left of the fleet, after many adventures and the loss of a considerable number of the crew, arrived at the island of Tidor in the Moluccas on the 8th of November, 1521. There it was decided that the “Victoria” should load a cargo of spices and make its way to Spain by the Cape of Good Hope, in direct defiance of the rights of the Portuguese, while the “Trinidad” should return the way she came. A valuable cargo, consisting of about twenty-six tons of cloves, with parcels of cinnamon, sandal wood, and nutmegs, was shipped, and after being nearly captured by the Portuguese off the African coast, and again at the Canaries, arrived in the harbor of San Lucar, as was supposed, on the 6th of September, 1522, having sailed round the world in three years all but a few days. Through all their troubles, a careful record of dates had been kept, and the officers were surprised to find that what they imagined to be the 6th was actually the 7th of September in Seville; and they were at a loss to know how the one day had been missed, being of course unaware that this is the invariable result of circumnavigating the world from East to West.