Equally explicit was the contract which Magellan entered into with King Charles: “Inasmuch as you bind yourself to discover in the dominions which belong to us and are ours in the Ocean Sea within the limits of our demarcation, islands and mainlands and rich spiceries, etc.” This is followed by an injunction “not to discover or do anything within the demarcation and limits of the most serene King of Portugal.” [11]
Las Casas, the historian of the Indies, was present in Valladolid when Magellan came thither to present his plan to the King. “Magellan,” he writes, “had a well painted globe in which the whole world was depicted, and on it he indicated the route he proposed to take, saving that the strait was left purposely blank so that no one should anticipate him. And on that day and at that hour I was in the office of the High Chancellor when the Bishop [of Burgos, Fonseca] brought it [i.e. the globe] and showed the High Chancellor the voyage which was proposed; and, speaking with Magellan, I asked him what way he planned to take, and he answered that he intended to go by Cape Saint Mary, which we call the Rio de la Plata and from thence to follow the coast up until he hit upon the strait. But suppose you do not find any strait by which you can go into the other sea. He replied that if he did not find any strait that he would go the way the Portuguese took.—This Fernando de Magalhaens must have been a man of courage and valiant in his thoughts and for undertaking great things, although he was not of imposing presence because he was small in stature and did not appear in himself to be much.” [12]