Straits of Magellan

“ We hove her to under close reefed main-top-sail, for five days, when we wore ship, and stood in shore, the wind still continuing in the south. The Captain concluded to try the Straits the next day, rather than risk doubling the Cape with such a wind.
The Straits of Magellan lie in about 53° south latitude, and were discovered by Fernando Magellan, whose name they bear; they are about 350 miles long, and are at the Pacific entrance, 25 miles wide, and the eastern side about 20. In some parts they are not more than a league broad. ”

“ Admiring its placid {91} surface he courteously gave it the name it will ever bear, the "Pacific Ocean." Magellan was the first European to discover that when the nights are long in the northern hemisphere they are correspondingly short in the southern. When he passed through the straits the nights were only four hours long. At the same time in Spain they were nearly fifteen hours long. And now the great sailor having burst through the barrier of the great American continent steered for the north-west. For three months and fifteen days he sailed on and on, but saw no inhabited land. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Even more arduous was the sea-way found by Magellan: the whole side of the continent must be traversed. The dreadful terrors of the straits that separate South America from the Land of Fire must be essayed: and beyond that a voyage of thirteen thousand miles across the Pacific, during which the little caravels must slowly make their way northward again till the latitude of Cathay was reached, parallel to that of Spain itself. For any other sea-way to Asia the known coast-line of America offered an impassable barrier. ”

“ But it is a dull and dusty journey through a monotonous landscape, at first mostly desert, then mostly pasture, at last mostly wheat fields, but always flat as a table, possibly the267 widest perfectly level plain in the whole world. And we had the stronger reason for not taking this route that it had been a main object of our journey to see the Straits of Magellan, that great sea highway from ocean to ocean, the finding and traversing of which was an achievement second only to the voyage of Columbus. ”

“ Our path now lay along the Straits of Magellan. The water almost washed our horses' feet as we rode along the narrow path, for the mainland falls almost vertically down to the waters edge, and is covered with a dense, impenetrable mass of trees and bushes—the latter chiefly of the magnolia species—and one is forced to keep on the meagre strip of stony beach, which in some places is hardly three feet broad. ”

“ Again resuming the voyage, they proceeded along the eastern shore of Patagonia to the latitude of 52° S. when the entrance into the famous straits still known under the name of Magellan were discovered, through which the squadron continued its voyage, finding these straits about 110 leagues in length, from east to west, with varying breadths, in some places very wide, and in others not more than half a league across; the land on both sides being high, rugged, and uneven, and the mountains covered with snow. ”

“ The Straits of Magellan offer no passage to the handler of square canvas, and the furious, whirling{39} current of the Le Maire is usually avoided, as when navigated it only saves a few miles of westing. The floating ice is always a dreaded menace, for with the spume-drift flying before a freezing gale and surrounded by the gloom of the high latitude in winter, it is difficult to distinguish an object fifty fathoms ahead of a ship’s cut-water. ”

“ The voyages of early navigators into the South Seas, and especially the Balboa, commander of the petty port of Darien, from whence he had taken formal possession of all the South Seas, and all lands and kingdoms therein, in behalf of his masters, the King of Castile and Leon, were noticed by the lecturer.
“Magellan was the man who, after the first hazardous and tortuous passage through the straits which now bear his name, gave the peaceful ocean to which he came out the name of ‘Pacific.’ It was California, said the lecturer, which first made the Pacific shores the home of the Anglo-Saxons. ”

“ This became the solution of the fabled straits of Anian, an inheritance from the very earliest days of northern exploration, which, after the [Pg 621] middle of the sixteenth century, was revived in the maps of Martines, Zaltière, Mercator, Porcacchi, Furlani, and Wytfliet, prefiguring the channel which Bering passed. Much in the same way as the southern apex of South America was a vision in men's minds long before Magellan found his way to the Pacific. ”

“ The command of the straits, however, promised a near realization of so many years of labor, and, as soon as practicable, in December 1511, Albuquerque despatched Antonio d'Abreu in search of the precious islands. A Spanish historian of the next century affirms that Magellan accompanied d'Abreu in command of one of the ships, but this can hardly be true. [7] Francisco Serrão, however, one of the Portuguese captains, was a friend of Magellan's and during his sojourn of several years in the Moluccas wrote to him of a world larger and richer than that discovered by Vasco da Gama. ”

“ Be we never so dreary, the great ship speeds on its course, heeding us not; its busy motor, like heart-beats, throbs with undisturbed uniformity, forcing the vessel onward despite the joy or sorrow of those it carries within its capacious hull.
The Strait of Magellan, which divides South America from the mysterious island group which is known as Terra del Fuego, and connects the Atlantic with the Pacific Ocean by a most intricate water-way, is considerably less than four hundred miles in length, and of various widths. ”

“ Only thirty-one men returned with del Cano to Seville in the first vessel that had ever made the tour of the earth. Though Magellan had not quite reached the Spice Islands when he fell at Mactan, his task had then been accomplished. He had already reached and passed the longitude of the Moluccas, where he had already been; the way home from the Philippines by the Indian Ocean and the Cape of Good Hope was perfectly known to the Portuguese, himself included. Magellan’s name has never received its due recognition in general history. ”

“ Then Magellan, with the three ships which he had, entered the river, through which he ran for more than a hundred leagues, and came out on the other side into the open sea, where he had a stern wind from the east, with which they ran for more than five months without lowering 251their sails, and they fetched some uninhabited islands, in one of which they found some savages, who lived in huts underground. They went to another island where they gave them gold for its weight of iron, by which means they collected much gold: the people also were of a good disposition, and had a king. ”

“ South of the Strait of Magellan, there are large outlying masses of apparently the same great tableland, extending at intervals along the eastern coast of Tierra del Fuego: at two places here, 110 miles a part, this plain was found to be 950 and 970 feet in height.
From Coy Inlet, where the high summit-plain trends inland, a plain estimated at 350 feet in height, extends for forty miles to the river Gallegos. From this point to the Strait of Magellan, and on each side of that Strait, the country has been much denuded and is less level. ”

“ The Magellan route, as compared with that by the Horn, is not only a short road from the Atlantic to the Pacific, cutting off the islands to the south of the continent, but ensures calm waters, instead of the stupendous seas of the Antarctic Ocean. For a sailing ship, however, the difficulties are great; the prevailing wind is from the west, and there is no space for a large vessel to beat up against it, nor does she gain the advantage that can be derived from any slight shift of wind; outside the gale may vary a point or two, but within the channel it always blows straight down as in a gully. ”

“ Magellan proposed to reach the Spice Islands of the East Indies by the west; for that purpose he hoped to discover a strait at the extreme south of South America, and is said to have declared himself ready to sail southwards to 75° to realize his project. Ruy Faleiro the astronomer, another Portuguese exile, aided him in the working out of his plan, and he found an invaluable financial ally in Christopher de Haro, a member of a great Antwerp firm, who owed a grudge to the king of Portugal. ”

“ The broad expanse of waters before him seemed so pleasant to Magellan, after the heavy storms through which he had passed, that he called it by the name it still bears, Pacific. But the worst hardships were still before him. Once more a sea of darkness must be crossed by brave hearts sickening with hope deferred. If the mid-Atlantic waters had been strange to Columbus and his men, here before Magellan's people all was thrice unknown. ”

“ These intrigues appear to have been partially successful, and to have caused delay. A final order for the departure of Magellan was given in Barcelona, April 19th, 1519. The original of this document is preserved in the Lisbon archives, and it was probably carried out with the fleet, and fell into the possession of the Portuguese in the Moluccas after Magellan’s death ”

“ When Magellan passed through the strait that bears his name, and his ship completed the first circumnavigation of the globe, men began first to see that America was no part of Asia. In further proof they sought to find a passage into the Pacific from the north, as a complement to Magellan's passage from the south. Such an attempt was first made by the Spaniards under Vasquez d'Ayllon, four years after the voyage of Magellan ”

“ 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. ”

“ It beareth the Name from Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese, who first discover’d that narrow Sea, so famously known by the Name of Magellans Straights. It is a large Countrey, and suppos’d not to be altogether barren of Metals; but as yet no great Discovery hath been made of it, partly by reason of the excessive Cold to which ’tis thought to be subject, and partly perhaps by reason of the difficulty of the Enterprize, it being so far remote, and very hardly passable in many places, by reason of the huge Mountains the Andes, which bar it as it were against all Adventurers ”

“ The Portuguese realization of the wide ocean which lay to the east of Malaysia, combined with the news that Central America had on the western side of it an ocean at least as vast as the Atlantic, decided Magellan to propose to the new ruler of Spain, the Emperor Charles V, the great project of finding a way round—or a strait through—South America, and the complete fulfilment of the original plan of Columbus—the reaching of the Indies by a western route across the Atlantic. ”

“ Howsomdever, old ship’—I added on to what I was saying, seeing that the fellows laughed and cheered up a bit at Magellan’s comical way—‘if we ever hopes to get there we must trudge on now. Our course is all downhill, thank goodness, and perhaps we’ll meet with a river at last—as soon as we get down to the gully.’
“‘That’s your sort,’ shouted out Magellan heartily; ‘rouse up, my hearties, and let us push on. There’s no good our remaining here, and the sooner we start, why, the sooner we’ll get to Majunga. Yo, heave ho! Up anchor, men, and make sail! ”

“ It required super-human courage and perseverance to continue the expedition, but Magellan did so. He touched at the Ladrone Islands, but unfortunately he was killed shortly after his vessels reached the Spice Islands, it is presumed by the natives, though perhaps by his own men, who dreaded his intensity of purpose to circumnavigate the globe and feared that it would carry them once more through similar awful sufferings to those which they had experienced in the voyage through the Pacific Ocean. ”

“ The vessel returned, announcing that the strait indeed terminated at this cape and that beyond lay [232] the open sea. "We wept for joy," says Pigafetta: "the cape was denominated Cabo Deseado,—Wished-for Cape,—for in good truth we had long wished to see it." The sight gave Magellan the most unbounded joy, for he was now able practically to demonstrate the truth of the theory he had advanced,—that it was possible to sail to the East Indies by way of the west. ”

“ The natives appeared a confiding and credulous race, and readily bartered provisions for the merest trifles; “half a dozen fowls were exchanged for a king of spades” (card) . Putting again to sea, Magellan sailed southward, touching at various points till he came to anchor in a harbour which he named San Julian, and where he made a stay of five months. Here discontent, and at length open mutiny, broke out, the ringleaders being certain Spanish officers who felt mortified at serving under a Portuguese commander. Magellan was not a man to stand any nonsense, and was utterly unscrupulous. ”