editation should stifle his design, if uncountenanced by
his native prince. It has been alleged, that he embroiled his country in
disputes with Spain. But neither is this strictly applicable to the
neglected Magalhaens. The courts of Spain and Portugal had solemnly
settled the limits within which they were to make discoveries and
settlements, and within these did Magalhaens and the court of Spain
propose that his discoveries should terminate. And allowing that his
calculations might mislead him beyond the bounds prescribed to the
Spaniards, still his apology is clear, for it would have been injurious
to each court, had he supposed that the faith of the boundary treaty
would be trampled upon by either power. If it is said that he
aggrandized the enemies of his country, the Spaniards, and introduced
them to a dangerous rivalship with the Portuguese settlements; let the
sentence of Faria on this subject be remembered: "Let princes beware,"
says he, "how by neglect or injustice they force into desperate actions
the men who have merited rewards."

In the end of the 15th and beginning of the 16th centuries, the spirit
of discovery broke forth in its greatest vigour. The East and the West
had been visited by GAMA and Columbus; and the bold idea of sailing to
the East by the West was revived by Magalhaens. Revived, for misled by
Strabo and Pliny, who place India near to the west of Spain, Columbus
expecting to find the India of the ancients when he landed on
Hispaniola, thought he had discovered the Ophir of Solomon. And hence
the name of Indies was given to that and the neighbouring islands.
Though America and the Moluccas were now found to be at a great
distance, the genius of Magalhaens still suggested the possibility of a
western passage. And accordingly, possessed of his great design, and
neglected with contempt at home, he offered his service to the court of
Spain, and was accepted. With five ships and 250 men he sailed from
Spain in September, 1519, and after many difficulties, occasioned by
mutiny and the extreme cold, he entered the great Pacific Ocean or South
Seas by those straits which bear his Spanish name Magellan. From these
straits, in the 52-1/2 degree of southern latitude, he traversed that
great ocean, till in the 10th degree of north latitude he landed on the
island of Subo or Marten. The king of this country was then at war with
a neighbouring prince, and Magalhaens, on condition of his conversion to
Christ