f the Portuguese who allowed no competition) in search of the Spice
Islands. Magellan crossed the Atlantic between Africa and Brazil and
sailed southward. He reached a narrow channel between the southernmost
point of Patagonia, the "land of the people with the big feet," and
the Fire Island (so named on account of a fire, the only sign of the
existence of natives, which the sailors watched one night). For almost
five weeks the ships of Magellan were at the mercy of the terrible
storms and blizzards which swept through the straits. A mutiny broke
out among the sailors. Magellan suppressed it with terrible severity
and sent two of his men on shore where they were left to repent of their
sins at leisure. At last the storms quieted down, the channel broadened,
and Magellan entered a new ocean. Its waves were quiet and placid. He
called it the Peaceful Sea, the Mare Pacifico. Then he continued in a
western direction. He sailed for ninety-eight days without seeing land.
His people almost perished from hunger and thirst and ate the rats that
infested the ships, and when these were all gone they chewed pieces of
sail to still their gnawing hunger.

In March of the year 1521 they saw land. Magellan called it the land of
the Ladrones (which means robbers) because the natives stole everything
they could lay hands on. Then further westward to the Spice Islands!

Again land was sighted. A group of lonely islands. Magellan called them
the Philippines, after Philip, the son of his master Charles V, the
Philip II of unpleasant historical memory. At first Magellan was well
received, but when he used the guns of his ships to make Christian
converts he was killed by the aborigines, together with a number of his
captains and sailors. The survivors burned one of the three remaining
ships and continued their voyage. They found the Moluccas, the famous
Spice Islands; they sighted Borneo and reached Tidor. There, one of
the two ships, too leaky to be of further use, remained behind with
her crew. The "Vittoria," under Sebastian del Cano, crossed the Indian
Ocean, missed seeing the northern coast of Australia (which was not
discovered until the first half of the seventeenth century when ships of
the Dutch East India Company explored this flat and inhospitable land),
and after great hardships reached Spain.

This was the most notable of all voyages. It had taken three years. It
had been accomplished at a great cost both of men and money. But it