ember 20,
1519] Coasting down the east of South America, [October 21, 1519]
exploring the inlets and rivers, he entered the straits that bear his
name and covered their 360 miles in thirty-eight days. After following
the coast up some distance north, he struck across the Pacific, the
breadth of which he much underestimated. For ninety-eight days he was
driven by the east trade-wind without once sighting land save two
desert islands, while his crew endured extremities of hunger, thirst
and scurvy. At last he came to the islands he called, after the
thievish propensities of their inhabitants, the Ladrones, making his
first landing at Guam. Spending but three days here to refit and
provision, he sailed again on March 9, [Sidenote: 1521] and a week
later discovered the islands known, since 1542, as the Philippines.
{441} In an expedition against a savage chief the great leader met his
death on April 27, 1521. As other sailors and as he, too, had
previously been as far to the east as he now found himself, he had
practically completed the circumnavigation of the globe. The most
splendid triumph of the age of discovery coincided almost to a day with
the time that Luther was achieving the most glorious deed of the
Reformation at Worms.

[Sidenote: September 1522]

Magellan's ship, the Vittoria, proceeded under Sebastian del Cano, and
finally, with thirty-one men, of whom only eighteen had started out in
her, came back to Portugal. The men who had burst asunder one of the
bonds of the older world, were, nevertheless, deeply troubled by a
strange, medieval scruple. Having mysteriously lost a day by following
the sun in his westward course, they did penance for having celebrated
the fasts and feasts of the church on the wrong dates.

[Sidenote: Portuguese Exploration]

While Spain was extending her dominions westward, little Portugal was
building up an even greater empire in both hemispheres. In the
fifteenth century, this hardy people, confined to their coast and
without possibility of expanding inwards, had seen that their future
lay upon the water. To the possessor of sea power the ocean makes of
every land bordering on it a frontier, vulnerable to them and
impervious to the enemy. The first ventures of the Portuguese were
naturally in the lands near by, the North African coast and the islands
known as the Madeiras and the Azores. Feeling their way southward
along the African coast they reached the Cape of Goo