The emperor and his council considered that the plan proposed by Magellan and Haro, though holding out considerable advantages, was one of very considerable difficulty as to execution.  After some delay, Magellan offered to go out himself, but Haro undertook to fit out a squadron at the expense of himself and his friends, provided that they were allowed to sail under the authority and patronage of his majesty.  As each resolutely upheld his own scheme, the emperor himself fitted out a squadron of five ships, and appointed Magellan to the command.  It was ordered that they should sail southwards by the coast of Terra Firma, until they found either the end of that country or some strait, by which they might arrive at the spice-bearing Moluccas.

Accordingly on the tenth of August, 1519, Ferdinand Magellan with his five ships sailed from Seville.  In a few days they arrived at the Fortunate Islands, now called the Canaries.  Thence they sailed to the islands of the Hesperides [Cape Verde]; and thence sailed in a southwesterly direction towards that continent which I have already mentioned [Terra Firma or South America], and after a favorable voyage of a few days discovered a promontory, which they called St. Mary’s.  Here admiral John Ruy Dias Solis, while exploring the shores of this continent by command of King Ferdinand the Catholic, was, with some of his companions, eaten by the Anthropophagi, whom the Indians call Cannibals.  Hence they coasted along this continent, which extends far on southwards, and which I now think should be called the Southern Polar land, then gradually slopes off in a westerly direction, and so sailed several degrees south of the Tropic of Capricorn.  But it was not so easy for them to do it, as for me to relate it.  For not till the end of March in the following year, [1520] did they arrive at a bay, which they called St. Julian’s Bay.  Here the Antarctic polestar was forty-nine and one-third degrees above the horizon, this result being deduced from the sun’s declination and altitude, and this star is principally used by our navigators for observations.  They stated that the longitude was fifty-six degrees west of the Canaries. [224] For since the ancient geographers, and especially Ptolemy reckoned the distance easterly from the Fortunate Islands [Canaries] as far as Cattigara to be one hundred and eighty degrees, and our sailors have sailed as far as possible in a westerly direction, they reckoned the distance from the Canaries westward to Cattigara to be also one hundred and eighty degrees.  Yet even though our sailors in so long a voyage and in one so distant from the land lay down and mark certain signs and limits of the longitude; they appear to me rather to have made some error in their method of reckoning of the longitude than to have attained any trustworthy result.