Hero Tales from History — Magellan, The Man of the Straits
MAGELLAN, THE MAN OF THE STRAITS
Among the lads in many lands who were thrilled by the stories of Columbus and his discoveries was twelve-year-old Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese boy.
Like thousands of youths all over Europe, he then made up his mind to sail the seas and seek his fortune.
Portugal, though a small country, was the home of many men of great energy and daring.
A Portuguese explorer, Vasco da Gama, had sailed around the Cape of Good Hope, at the southern point of Africa, and discovered that way to India and the Moluccas, or Spice Islands.
On these voyages the Portuguese had landed, traded, and taken possession of important parts of Africa.
Others had followed in the wake of Columbus, discovering and claiming vast regions in South America.
So young Magellan formed a partnership with another adventurer and started out on voyages of discovery.
For nearly ten years he journeyed to and fro between his little homeland and various points in East Africa, India, the Malay Peninsula, and the islands beyond.
Frequently he had to fight battles with savage native tribes.
In one battle he received a wound that made him lame for life.
[Illustration: FERDINAND MAGELLAN.
] When Magellan came home, he suggested to the king of Portugal that it would be a great thing for Portugal if a passage across or around America could be discovered, which would shorten the distance, time, and expense of going from Europe to the Spice Islands.
He hoped the king would equip a fleet for such a voyage of discovery; but the king refused, and he set out for Spain to get help for his great undertaking.
At this time he received a letter from a friend who had settled in the Spice Islands, saying that he had “discovered another new world, larger than that found by Vasco da Gama.
” Magellan wrote to this friend that he would soon be visiting those islands himself--“If not by way of Portugal, then by way of Spain.
” After a long wait, the Spanish king consented to furnish five ships with two hundred and thirty-four officers and sailors, and to stock them with provisions to last through a two-year voyage.
It was agreed also that Magellan and his partner should receive one-twentieth of the profits of their undertaking; and that they should be governors of the islands they discovered.
At last, after two long years of waiting, Magellan’s fleet was ready to sail.
Crossing the Atlantic seemed an easy matter then--twenty-seven years after the first voyage of Columbus.
The first land they reached was the mainland of South America.
The natives along the northern coast were friendly and ready to exchange enough fish for ten men for a looking-glass, a bushel of sweet potatoes for a bell, and several fowls (or even one of their own children) for a butcher-knife.
Those people lived in huts and went almost naked, except for aprons of parrots’ feathers.
There were many birds of bright plumage and plenty of monkeys in those regions.
Some of the natives were cannibals, cooking and eating the flesh of men they captured or killed in battle.
The little Spanish fleet coasted along toward the south.
The wide mouth of the La Plata deceived them so that they sailed in until they found that it was only a river.
As they drew nearer to the South Pole it grew intensely cold.
The men on the ships begged Magellan to turn round and go home.
Some of their number died of exposure and want, and the rest were afraid they could not live through such a winter.
Not only did they suffer from the bitter cold, but their ships had been damaged by storms on the way down the coast.
They stayed several weeks at a port in the country now called Patagonia without seeing a person.
But one day an Indian giant strode in upon them.
He was so tall that the white men’s heads barely came up to his waist.
His hair was dyed white, his face colored red, and he had painted wide yellow circles around his little, black eyes.
When they let him see himself in a big steel mirror he was so astonished that he jumped backward and knocked down four of the Spaniards standing around him.
When he understood that it was himself he saw in the looking-glass, he was pleased and they made him a present of a small metal mirror.
They found the Patagonians to be savages of a very low and brutal type, who ate raw meat, and even rats, like beasts of prey.
If they felt sick they stuck arrows down their throats, and gashed their foreheads with shell-knives when their heads ached.
Many of Magellan’s men now turned against him, planning to murder him and those who stood by him, and then to sail back to Spain.
Though they were the larger number the energetic ship master beat them at their own game.
He executed one ringleader, and sailed away leaving another rebel on the shore, where he was, no doubt, soon killed and eaten by the cannibals.
As July and August are the coldest months near the South Pole, the weather began to moderate in October, which is a spring month.
January and February are the hot season in that climate.
On the 21st of October, 1520, they “saw an opening like unto a bay,” and after sailing through its winding ways they found to their great joy, that it led out at the other end into a vast expanse of water.
At last they had discovered the only natural passage from sea to sea through the American continents.
Some of their ships had been lost and their provisions were eaten.
Most of the men begged to turn back, now that they could report that they had found a great ocean beyond South America.
“No one knows,” they said, “how wide this open sea is, and we may all starve before we reach the Moluccas.
” But Ferdinand Magellan would not turn back.
He accused them of having faint hearts, and said that even if they had to eat the leather on the ships’ yards he would still go on and discover what he had promised the King of Spain.
One dark night the commander of the largest ship deserted the others and went back to Spain with the greater part of their provisions.
The other ships were thirty-eight days winding their way through the straits to which the great leader’s name was afterward given, the Straits of Magellan.
They saw so many fires in the land away to the south of them that they named it Terra del Fuego--Land of Fire.
Brave Magellan’s threat had to be carried out.
All their provisions had either been eaten or were wholly unfit to eat.
So all they had to live on for a long time was the leather on the ships’ yards.
They hung it over the sides of the ship to soak several days in the salt water as they sailed along.
Then they cooked it over a coal fire.
The wide sea they were now crossing was so free from storms that Magellan named it the Pacific Ocean.
After three months of hunger and thirst, risking their lives in their devotion to leader and country, they discovered a group of islands now named the Marianne or Ladrone Islands.
Here they enjoyed the luscious fruits and reveled in plenty of fresh water to drink.
From the Ladrones they sailed on and discovered the Philippines, where the natives were friendly and brought them coconuts, oranges, bananas, fowls, and palm wine, which they gladly exchanged for metal looking-glasses, red caps, beads, and trinkets.
Besides his wish to sail round the globe and take possession of new islands for Spain, Magellan’s great desire was to make the savage people Christians.
He had the happiness of seeing thousands of dusky islanders kneeling before the crosses he had set up.
But in his zeal to show those heathen the power of the Christian’s God, he led the warriors of one island in a fight against some unconverted savages and lost his life.
In three years, lacking twelve days from the time they started out, the ship _Victoria_ returned to the Spanish port from which it had sailed, after making the first voyage around the world.
This vessel was loaded with spices from the Moluccas, as Magellan had planned.
A faithful lieutenant represented their departed leader at the court of King Charles of Spain, who rewarded the few survivors with high honors and liberal pensions.
