As for that commander, in Richard Eden’s words, “when the capitayne Magalianes was past the strayght and sawe the way open to the other mayne sea, he was so gladde thereof that for joy the teares fell from his eyes, and named the point of the lande from whense he fyrst sawe that sea Capo Desiderato.  Supposing that the shyp which stole away had byn loste, they erected a crosse uppon the top of a hyghe hyll to direct their course in the straight yf it were theyr chaunce to coome that way.”  The broad expanse of waters before him seemed so pleasant to Magellan, after the heavy storms through which he had passed, that he called it by the name it still bears, Pacific.  But the worst hardships were still before him.  Once more a sea of darkness must be crossed by brave hearts sickening with hope deferred.  If the mid-Atlantic waters had been strange to Columbus and his men, here before Magellan’s people all was thrice unknown.

    “They were the first that ever burst
    Into that silent sea”;

and as they sailed month after month over the waste of waters, the huge size of our planet began to make itself felt.  Until after the middle of December they kept a northward course, near the coast of the continent, running away from the antarctic cold.  Then northwesterly and westerly courses were taken, and on the 24th of January, 1521, a small wooded islet was found in water where the longest plummet-lines failed to reach bottom.  Already the voyage since issuing from the strait was nearly twice as long as that of Columbus in 1492 from the Canaries to Guanahani.  From the useless island, which they called San Pablo, a further run of eleven days brought them to another uninhabited rock, which they called Tiburones, from the quantity of sharks observed in the neighborhood.  There was neither food, nor water to be had there, and a voyage of unknown duration, in reality not less than 5,000 English miles, was yet to be accomplished before a trace of land was again to greet their yearning gaze.  Their sufferings may best be told in the quaint and touching words in which Shakespeare read them: 

“And hauynge in this tyme consumed all theyr bysket and other vyttayles, they fell into such necessitie that they were inforced to eate the pouder that remayned therof beinge now full of woormes....  Theyre freshe water was also putrifyed and become yelow.  They dyd eate skynnes and pieces of lether which were foulded abowt certeyne great ropes of the shyps.  But these skynnes being made verye harde by reason of the soonne, rayne, and wynde, they hunge them by a corde in the sea for the space of foure or fiue dayse to mollifie them, and sodde them, and eate them.  By reason of this famen and vnclene feedynge, summe of theyr gummes grewe so ouer theyr teethe [a symptom of scurvy], that they dyed miserably for hunger.  And by this occasion dyed xix. men, and ... besyde these that dyed, xxv. or xxx. were so sicke that they were not able to doo any seruice with theyr handes