val without an effort. It listened to the
representations of one Ferdinand Magellan, that India and the Spice
Islands could be reached by sailing to the west, if only a strait or
passage through what had now been recognized as "the American Continent"
could be discovered; and, if this should be accomplished, Spain,
under the papal bull, would have as good a right to the India trade as
Portugal. Under the command of Magellan, an expedition of five ships,
carrying two hundred and thirty-seven men, was dispatched from Seville,
August 10, 1519.

Magellan at once struck boldly for the South American coast, hoping to
find some cleft or passage through the continent by which he might reach
the great South Sea. For seventy days he was becalmed on the line; his
sailors were appalled by the apprehension that they had drifted into a
region where the winds never blew, and that it was impossible for them
to escape. Calms, tempests, mutiny, desertion, could not shake his
resolution. After more than a year he discovered the strait which
now bears his name, and, as Pigafetti, an Italian, who was with him,
relates, he shed fears of joy when he found that it had pleased God at
length to bring him where he might grapple with the unknown dangers of
the South Sea, "the Great and Pacific Ocean."

Driven by famine to eat scraps of skin and leather with which his
rigging was here and there bound, to drink water that had gone putrid,
his crew dying of hunger and scurvy, this man, firm in his belief of the
globular figure of the earth, steered steadily to the northwest, and for
nearly four months never saw inhabited land. He estimated that he had
sailed over the Pacific not less than twelve thousand miles. He crossed
the equator, saw once more the pole-star, and at length made land--the
Ladrones. Here he met with adventurers from Sumatra. Among these islands
he was killed, either by the savages or by his own men. His lieutenant,
Sebastian d'Elcano, now took command of the ship, directing her course
for the Cape of Good Hope, and encountering frightful hardships. He
doubled the cape at last, and then for the fourth time crossed the
equator. On September 7, 1522, after a voyage of more than three years,
he brought his ship, the San Vittoria, to anchor in the port of St.
Lucar, near Seville. She had accomplished the greatest achievement in
the history of the human race. She had circumnavigated the earth.

The San Vittoria, sailing westward, had c