to execution. After some delay,
Magellan offered to go out himself, but Haro undertook to fit out
a squadron at the expense of himself and his friends, provided that
they were allowed to sail under the authority and patronage of his
majesty. As each resolutely upheld his own scheme, the emperor himself
fitted out a squadron of five ships, and appointed Magellan to the
command. It was ordered that they should sail southwards by the coast
of Terra Firma, until they found either the end of that country or
some strait, by which they might arrive at the spice-bearing Moluccas.

Accordingly on the tenth of August, 1519, Ferdinand Magellan with his
five ships sailed from Seville. In a few days they arrived at the
Fortunate Islands, now called the Canaries. Thence they sailed to
the islands of the Hesperides [Cape Verde]; and thence sailed in a
southwesterly direction towards that continent which I have already
mentioned [Terra Firma or South America], and after a favorable
voyage of a few days discovered a promontory, which they called
St. Mary's. Here admiral John Ruy Dias Solis, while exploring the
shores of this continent by command of King Ferdinand the Catholic,
was, with some of his companions, eaten by the Anthropophagi, whom the
Indians call Cannibals. Hence they coasted along this continent, which
extends far on southwards, and which I now think should be called the
Southern Polar land, then gradually slopes off in a westerly direction,
and so sailed several degrees south of the Tropic of Capricorn. But
it was not so easy for them to do it, as for me to relate it. For not
till the end of March in the following year, [1520] did they arrive at
a bay, which they called St. Julian's Bay. Here the Antarctic polestar
was forty-nine and one-third degrees above the horizon, this result
being deduced from the sun's declination and altitude, and this star
is principally used by our navigators for observations. They stated
that the longitude was fifty-six degrees west of the Canaries. [224]
For since the ancient geographers, and especially Ptolemy reckoned
the distance easterly from the Fortunate Islands [Canaries] as far
as Cattigara to be one hundred and eighty degrees, and our sailors
have sailed as far as possible in a westerly direction, they reckoned
the distance from the Canaries westward to Cattigara to be also one
hundred and eighty degrees. Yet even though our sailors in so long a
voyage and in one so distant from the