go on if he had to eat the leather from the
ships' yards. With three vessels--one had been shipwrecked in the
preceding winter and the other deserted in the straits--they set out
across the vast unknown expanse of the Pacific. "In three monethes
and xx dayes they sailed foure thousande leagues in one goulfe
by the sayde sea called Pacificum.... And havying in this tyme
consumed all their bysket and other vyttayles, they fell into such
necessitie that they were in forced to eate the pouder that remayned
thereof being now full of woormes.... Theyre freshe water was also
putryfyed and become yellow. They dyd eate skynnes and pieces of
lether which were foulded about certeyne great ropes of the shyps."
On March 6, 1521, they reached the Ladrones, and ten days later, the
Philippines, even these islands having never before been visited by
Europeans. Here the leader was killed in a conflict with the natives.
One ship was now abandoned, and another was later captured by the
Portuguese. Of the five ships that had left Spain with 280 men,
a single vessel, "with tackle worn and weather-beaten yards," and 18
gaunt survivors reached home. "It has not," writes the historian
John Fiske of this voyage, "the unique historic position of the
first voyage of Columbus, which brought together two streams of
human life that had been disjoined since the glacial period. But
as an achievement in ocean navigation that voyage of Columbus sinks
into insignificance beside it.... When we consider the frailness
of the ships, the immeasurable extent of the unknown, the mutinies
that were prevented or quelled, and the hardships that were endured,
we can have no hesitation in speaking of Magellan as the prince
of navigators."[1]

[Footnote 1: THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA, Vol. II, p. 210.]

2. SPAIN AND THE NEW WORLD

It is generally taken for granted that the great movement of the
Renaissance, which spread through western Europe in the 15th and
the 16th centuries, quickening men's interest in the world about
them rather than the world to come, and inspiring them with an
eagerness and a confident belief in their own power to explore
its hidden secrets, was among the forces which brought about the
great geographical discoveries of the period. Its influence in
this direction is evident enough in England and elsewhere later on;
but, judging by the difficulties of Columbus in securing support,
it was not in his time potent with those in control of government