第43节
ate. In the year 1498, Vasco da Gama
had been able to reach the coast of Malabar and return safely
to Lisbon with a cargo of spice. In the year 1502 he had
repeated the visit. But along the western route, the work of
exploration had been most disappointing. In 1497 and 1498
John and Sebastian Cabot had tried to find a passage to Japan
but they had seen nothing but the snowbound coasts and the
rocks of Newfoundland, which had first been sighted by the
Northmen, five centuries before. Amerigo Vespucci, a Florentine
who became the Pilot Major of Spain, and who gave his
name to our continent, had explored the coast of Brazil, but
had found not a trace of the Indies.
In the year 1513, seven years after the death of Columbus,
the truth at last began to dawn upon the geographers of
Europe. Vasco Nunez de Balboa had crossed the Isthmus of
Panama, had climbed the famous peak in Darien, and had
looked down upon a vast expanse of water which seemed to
suggest the existence of another ocean.
Finally in the year 1519 a fleet of five small Spanish ships
under command of the Portuguese navigator, Ferdinand de
Magellan, sailed westward (and not eastward since that route,
was absolutely in the hands of 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 had established the fact that the earth
was round and that the new lands discovered by Columbus were
not a part of the Indies but a separate continent. From that
time on, Spain and Portugal devoted all their energies to the
development of their Indian and American trade. To prevent
an armed conflict between the rivals, Pope Alexander VI (the
only avowed heathen who was ever elected to this most holy