Part 65 (1/2)
[Ill.u.s.tration: MAGELLAN.]
[Sidenote: 1519. Magellan.]
A few years later (1516) the Spanish King sent Juan Diaz de Solis to search anew for a pa.s.sage. He found the La Plata, and for a while hoped he had discovered the looked-for strait. Magellan, who had taken some umbrage during his Portuguese service, came finally to the Spanish King, and, on the plea that the Moluccas fell within the Spanish range under the line of demarcation, suggested an expedition to occupy them. He professed to be able to reach them by a strait which he could find somewhere to the south of the La Plata. It has long been a question if Magellan's antic.i.p.ation was based simply on a conjecture that, as Africa had been found to end in a southern point, America would likewise be discovered to have a similar southern cape. It has also been a question if Magellan actually had any tidings from earlier voyages to afford a ground for believing in such a geographical fact. It is possible that other early discoverers had been less careful than Solis, and had been misled by the broad estuary of the La Plata to think that it was really an interoceanic pa.s.sage. Some such intelligence would seem to have instigated the conditions portrayed in one early map, but the general notion of cartographers at the time terminates the known coast at Cape Frio, near Rio de Janeiro, as is seen to be the case in the Ptolemy map of 1513. There is a story, originating with Pigafetta, his historian, that Magellan had seen a map of Martin Behaim, showing a southern cape; but if this map existed, it revealed probably nothing more than a conjectural termination, as shown in the Lenox and earliest Schoner globes of 1515 and 1520. Still, Wieser and Nordenskiold are far from being confident that some definite knowledge of such a cape had not been attained, probably, as it is thought, from private commercial voyage of which we may have a record in the _Newe Zeitung_ and in the _Luculentissima Descriptio_. It is to be feared that the fact, whatever it may have been, must remain shadowy.
Magellan's fleet was ready in August, 1519. His preparation had been watched with jealousy by Portugal, and it was even hinted that if the expedition sailed a matrimonial alliance of Spain and Portugal which was contemplated must be broken off. Magellan was appealed to by the Portuguese amba.s.sador to abandon his purpose, as one likely to embroil the two countries. The stubborn navigator was not to be persuaded, and the Spanish King made him governor of all countries he might discover on the ”back side” of the New World.
In the late days of 1519, Magellan touched the coast at Rio de Janeiro, where, remaining awhile, he enjoyed the fruits of its equable climate.
Then, pa.s.sing on, he crossed the mouth of the La Plata, and soon found that he had reached a colder climate and was sailing along a different coast. The verdure which had followed the warm currents from the equatorial north gave way to the concomitants of an icy flow from the Antarctic regions which made the landscape sterile. So on he went along this inhospitable region, seeking the expected strait. His search in every inlet was so faithful that he neared the southern goal but slowly.
The sternness of winter caught his little barks in a harbor near 50 south lat.i.tude, and his Spanish crews, restless under the command of a Portuguese, revolted. The rebels were soon more numerous than the faithful. The position was more threatening than any Columbus had encountered, but the Portuguese had a hardy courage and majesty of command that the Genoese never could summon. Magellan confronted the rebels so boldly that they soon quailed. He was in unquestioned command of his own vessels from that time forward. The fate of the conquered rioters, Juan de Carthagena and Sanchez de la Reina, cast on the inhospitable sh.o.r.e of Patagonia in expiation of their offense, is in strong contrast to the easy victory which Columbus too often yielded, to those who questioned his authority. The story of Magellan's pus.h.i.+ng his fleet southward and through the strait with a reluctant crew is that of one of the royally courageous acts of the age of discovery.
[Sidenote: 1520. October. Magellan enters the strait.]
On October 21, 1520, the s.h.i.+ps entered the longed-for strait, and on the 28th of November they sailed into the new sea; then stretching their course nearly north, keeping well in sight of the coast till the Chiloe Archipelago was pa.s.sed, the s.h.i.+ps steered west of Juan Fernandez without seeing it, and subsequently gradually turned their prows towards the west.
[Ill.u.s.tration: MAGELLAN'S STRAITS BY PIZAFETTA.
[The north is at the bottom.]]
[Sidenote: The western way discovered.]
It is not necessary for our present purpose to follow the incidents of the rest of this wondrous voyage,--the reaching the Ladrones and the Asiatic islands, Magellan's own life sacrificed, all his s.h.i.+ps but one abandoned or lost, the pa.s.sing of the Cape of Good Hope by the ”Victoria,” and her arrival on September 6, 1522, under Del Cano, at the Spanish harbor from which the fleet had sailed. The Emperor bestowed on this lucky first of circ.u.mnavigators the proud motto, inscribed on a globe, ”Primus circ.u.mdedisti me.” The Spaniards' western way to the Moluccas was now disclosed.
[Ill.u.s.tration: MAGELLAN'S STRAIT.]
[Sidenote: Pacific Ocean.]
The South Sea of Balboa, as soon as Magellan had established its extension farther south, took from Magellan's company the name Pacific, though the original name which Balboa had applied to it did not entirely go out of vogue for a long time in those portions contiguous to the waters bounding the isthmus and its adjacent lands.
[Sidenote: North America and Asia held to be one.]
For a long time after it was known that South America was severed, as Magellan proved, from Asia, the belief was still commonly held that North America and Asia were one and continuous. While no one ventures to suspect that Columbus had any prescience of these later developments, there are those like Varnhagen who claim a distinct insight for Vespucius; but it is by no means clear, in the pa.s.sages which are cited, that Vespucius thought the continental ma.s.s of South America more distinct from Asia than Columbus did, when the volume of water poured out by the Orinoco convinced the Admiral that he was skirting a continent, and not an island. That Columbus thought to place there the region of the Biblical paradise shows that its continental features did not dissociate it from Asia. The New World of Vespucius was established by his own testimony as hardly more than a new part of Asia.
[Sidenote: 1525. Loyasa.]
[Sidenote: De Hoces discovers Cape Horn.]
In 1525 Loyasa was sent to make further examination of Magellan's Strait. It was at this time that one of his s.h.i.+ps, commanded by Francisco de Hoces, was driven south in February, 1526, and discovered Cape Horn, rendering the insular character of Tierra del Fuego all but certain. The fact was kept secret, and the map makers were not generally made aware of this terminal cape till Drake saw it, fifty-two years later. It was not till 1615-17 that Schouten and Lemaire made clear the eastern limits of Tierra del Fuego when they discovered the pa.s.sage between that island and Staten Island, and during the same interval Schouten doubled Cape Horn for the first time. It was in 1618-19 that the observations of Nodal first gave the easterly bend to the southern extremity of the continent.
[Sidenote: 1535. Chili.]
The last stretch of the main coast of South America to be made out was that on the Pacific side from the point where Magellan turned away from it up to the bounds of Peru, where Pizarro and his followers had mapped it. This trend of the coast began to be understood about 1535; but it was some years before its details got into maps. The final definition of it came from Camargo's voyage in 1540, and was first embodied with something like accuracy in Juan Freire's map of 1546, and was later helped by explorations from the north. But this proximate precision gave way in 1569 to a protuberant angle of the Chili coast, as drawn by Mercator, which in turn lingered on the chart till the next century.
[Sidenote: Cartographical views.]
We need now to turn from these records of the voyagers to see what impression their discoveries had been making upon the cartographers and geographers of Europe.
[Sidenote: Sylva.n.u.s's Ptolemy. 1511.]