ianity, became his auxiliary. In two battles the Spaniards were
victorious, but in the third, Magalhaens, together with one Martinho, a
judicial astrologer, whom he usually consulted, was unfortunately
killed. Chagrined with the disappointment of promised victory, the new
baptised king of Subo made peace with his enemies, and having invited to
an entertainment the Spaniards on shore, he treacherously poisoned them
all. The wretched remains of the fleet arrived at the Portuguese
settlements in the isles of Banda and Ternate, where they were received,
says Faria, as friends, and not as intruding strangers; a proof that the
boundary treaty was esteemed sufficiently sacred. Several of the
adventurers were sent to India, and from thence to Spain, in Portuguese
ships, one ship only being in a condition to return to Europe by the
Cape of Good Hope. This vessel, named the _Victoria_, however, had the
honour to be the first which ever surrounded the globe; an honour by
some ignorantly attributed to the ship of Sir Francis Drake. Thus
unhappily ended, says Osorius, the expedition of Magalhaens. But the
good bishop was mistaken, for a few years after he wrote, and somewhat
upwards of fifty after the return of the _Victoria_, Philip II. of Spain
availed himself of the discoveries of Magalhaens. And the navigation of
the South Seas between Spanish America and the Asian Archipelago, at
this day forms the basis of the power of Spain: a basis, however, which
is at the mercy of Great Britain, while her ministers are wise enough to
preserve her great naval superiority. A Gibraltar in the South Seas is
only wanting. But when this is mentioned, who can withhold his eyes from
the isthmus of Darien--the rendezvous appointed by nature for the fleets
which may one day give law to the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans: a
settlement which to-day might have owned subjection to Great Britain, if
justice and honour had always presided in the cabinet of William the
Third?

[675] _A land of giants._--The Patagonians. Various are the fables of
navigators concerning these people. The Spaniards who went with
Magalhaens affirmed they were about ten feet in height, since which
voyage they have risen and fallen in their stature, according to the
different humours of our sea wits.

[676] _The goddess spake._--We are now come to the conclusion of the
fiction of the island of Venus, a fiction which is divided into three
principal parts. In each of these the poetic