History of the World/History of the World (Bureau Development, Inc.)(1992).BIN/dp/0116/01164.txt

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$Unique_ID{how01164}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Discovery Of America
Part XI}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Fiske, John}
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$Subject{vespucius
portuguese
first
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footnote
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$Date{1892}
$Log{}
Title:       Discovery Of America
Book:        Chapter VII: Mundus Novus
Author:      Fiske, John
Date:        1892

Part XI

     As for Coelho's expedition, starting from Lisbon June 10, 1503, its first
stop was at the Cape Verde islands, for a fresh supply of water and other
provisions.  From this point Vespucius wished to take a direct course for
Brazil, but Coelho insisted upon keeping on southerly to Sierra Leone, for no
earthly reason, says Americus rather tartly, "unless to exhibit himself as the
captain of six ships; ^2 but I suspect that while the scientific Italian would
have steered boldly across the trackless waste straight at his goal, the
Portuguese commander preferred the old-fashioned and more timid course of
following two sides of a triangle and was not going to take advice from any of
your confounded foreigners.  But as several of the captains and pilots
sustained Americus, the course actually followed, without much rhyme or
reason, looks like the resultant of a conflict of opinions.  Early in August,
after much rough weather, they discovered a small uninhabited island near the
Brazilian coast in latitude 3 degrees S., since known as the island of
Fernando Noronha; and there one of the ships, a carrack of 300 tons burthen,
in which were most of the stores, staved in her bows against a rock and
"nothing was saved but the crew." By the chief captain's orders Americus with
his own ship sought a harbour on this island and found an excellent one about
four leagues distant.  His boat had been retained for general service by
Coelho, who promised to send it after him with further instructions.  We are
not informed as to the weather, but it was probably bad, for after waiting a
week in the harbour, Americus descried one of the ships on her way to him.
She brought news that Coelho's ship had gone with him to the bottom and the
other two had disappeared.  So now the two ships of Vespucius and his consort,
with one boat between them, were left alone at this little island.  "It had
plenty of fresh water," says Americus, "and a dense growth of trees filled
with innumerable birds, which were so simple that they allowed us to catch
them with our hands.  We took so many that we loaded the boat with them. ^1
After thus providing against famine, they sailed to the Bay of All Saints,
which had been designed as a rendezvous in case of accidents, and there they
faithfully waited two months in the vain hope of being overtaken by their
comrades.  Then giving up this hope, they weighed anchor again and followed
the coast southward to Cape Frio, just under the tropic of Capricorn.  Finding
there a great quantity of brazilwood, they decided to establish a colony
there, and what follows we may let Vespucius tell in his own words: - "In this
port we staid five months, building a block-house and loading our ships with
dyewood.  We could go no farther, for want of men and equipments.  So after
finishing this work we decided to return to Portugal, leaving twenty-four men
in the fortress, with twelve pieces of cannon, a good outfit of small arms,
and provisions for six months. ^2 We made peace with all the natives in the
neighbourhood, whom I have not mentioned in this voyage, but not because we
did not see and have dealings with great numbers of them.  As many as thirty
of us went forty leagues inland, where we saw so many things that I omit to
relate them, reserving them for my book, the Four Journeys.... The bearer of
this letter, Benvenuto di Domenico Benvenuti, will tell your Magnificence of
... such things as have been omitted to avoid prolixity.... I have made the
letter as short as possible, and refrained from mentioning many things very
natural to be told, through fear of seeming tedious."

[Footnote 1: From the original edition of the letter to Soderini, Florence,
1505-06, photographed from Varnhagen's facsimile reproduction.]

[Footnote 2: "Et come elnostro capitano maggiore fusse huomo p, sumptuoso &
molto cauezuto [i.e. Portuguese cabecudo, "headstrong"], uolle andare a
riconoscere la Serra liona, ... senza tenere necessita alcuna, se no' p, farsi
uedere, ch'era capitano di sei naui," etc.  Lettera, etc., fol. c. iii.
verso.]

[Footnote 1: This is another of the little observations which keep impressing
us with the accuracy and fidelity of Vespucius in his descriptions.  Modern
naturalists are familiar with the fact that on desolate islands, where they
have lived for many generations unmolested, birds become so tame that they can
be caught by hand, and even the catching of a multitude of them will not
frighten the others.  For many instances of this, and the explanation, see
Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle, new ed., London, 1870, p. 398; Spencer's
Essays, 2d series, London, 1864, p. 134.]

[Footnote 2: This little colony or factory at Cape Frio was still kept up in
1511 and after.  See Varnhagen, Histoire generale du Bresil, tom. i. p. 427.]

     This passage, and especially the last sentence which I have italicized,
affords abundant explanation of that reticence of Vespucius about many things
which we should like to know; a reticence which the bats and moles of
historical criticism, with these plain words staring them in the face,
profess'to regard as unaccountable!

     When Americus arrived at Lisbon, June 18, 1504, the missing ships had not
yet arrived, and were given up for lost, but after some time they returned,
having extended their explorations perhaps as far as the mouth of the river La
Plata. ^1

[Footnote 1: This is the opinion of Varnhagen, who believes that Juan de Solis
was then in the Portuguese service and in this fleet, and on this occasion
made his first acquaintance with the river La Plata, which would almost surely
be mistaken for a strait.  If this opinion as to Solis be sustained, one can
see a common feature in the shifting of two such captains as Vespucius and
Solis from Spain to Portugal and back, coupled with the subsequent transfer of
Magellan from the Portuguese service.  The discovery of Brazil seemed to open
an avenue for Portuguese enterprise in western waters, and so began to draw
over navigators from Spain; but by 1504 it began to appear that the limit of
achievement under the Portuguese flag in that direction had been reached, and
so the tide of interest set back toward Spain.  If Solis saw La Plata in 1504
and believed it to be a strait, he must have known that it was on the Spanish
side of the line of demarcation.  Its meridian is more than 20 degrees west of
Cape San Roque.]

     For some reason unknown Vespucius left the service of Portugal by the end
of that year 1504, or somewhat earlier.  This step may have been connected
with his marriage, which seems to have occurred early in 1505; it may have
been because he had become sufficiently impressed with the southwesterly trend
of the Brazilian coast-line to realize that further discoveries in that
direction would best be conducted under the Spanish flag; or it may have been
simply because King Ferdinand outbid King Emanuel, whose policy was too often
pennywise.  At any rate, Americus made his way back to Spain.  In February,
1505, just before starting from Seville on his journey to court, he called on
his sick and harassed friend Columbus, to see what kind service he could
render him.  The letter which Vespucius carried from Columbus to his son Diego
is very interesting. ^1 The Admiral speaks of Vespucius in terms of high
respect, as a thoroughly good and honourable man, to whom Fortune had not
rendered such rewards as his labours deserved; a staunch friend who had always
done his best to serve him and was now going to court with the determination
to set his affairs right if possible.  There is something very pleasant in the
relations thus disclosed between the persecuted Discoverer, then almost on his
death-bed, and the younger navigator, to whom yet grosser injustice was to be
done by a stupid and heedless world. ^2

[Footnote 1: The original is preserved in the family archives of the Duke of
Veraguas, and a copy is printed in Navarrete, tom. i. p. 351.]

[Footnote 2: "If not among the greatest of the world's great men, he is among
the happiest of those on whom good fortune has bestowed renown." S. H. Gay,
apud Winsor, Narr. and Crit. Hist., ii. 152.  Is it, then, such a happy
fortune to be unjustly stigmatized as a liar by ten generations of men?]

     The transactions of Vespucius at court, and the nature of the maritime
enterprises that were set on foot or carried to completion during the next few
years, are to be gathered chiefly from old account-books, contracts, and other
business documents unearthed by the indefatigable Navarrete, and printed in
his great collection.  The four chief personages in the Spanish marine at that
time, the experts to whom all difficult questions were referred and all
arduous enterprises entrusted, were Vespucius and La Cosa, Pinzon and Solis.
Unfortunately account-books and legal documents, having been written for other
purposes than the gratification of the historian, are - like the "geological
record" - imperfect.  Too many links are missing to enable us to determine
with certainty just how the work was shared among these mariners, or just how
many voyages were undertaken.  But it is clear that the first enterprise
contemplated was a voyage by Pinzon, in company with either Solis or Vespucius
or both, in the direction of the river La Plata, for the purpose of finding an
end to the continent or a passage into the Indian ocean. What Vespucius had
failed to do in his last voyage for Portugal, he now proposed to do in a
voyage for Spain.  It was this expedition, planned for 1506, but never carried
out, that Herrera a century later mistook for that voyage of Pinzon and Solis
to Honduras and the gulf of Mexico which the contemporary Oviedo (supported by
Martyr and confirmed by Gomara) positively declares to have been made before
1499.  As I have already shown, Pinzon did not leave Spain for any long voyage
in 1506.  The remonstrances of Portugal put a stop to the enterprise, and the
ships were used for other purposes.

     Meanwhile the search for a passage west of the Pearl Coast was conducted
by La Cosa and Vespucius.  In this voyage, from May to December, 1505, they
visited the gulf of Darien and ascended the Atrato river for some 200 miles.
Of late years it has been proposed to make an interoceanic canal by connecting
this river with the San Juan, which flows into the Pacific.  To Vespucius and
La Cosa it turned out not to be the strait of which at first its general
aspect had given promise, but in its shallow upper stretches they found its
sandy bottom gleaming and glistening with particles of gold.  For three months
they explored the neighbouring country, and found plenty of gold in the wild
mountain streams.  On the way home they seemed to have stopped on the Pearl
Coast and gathered a goodly store of pearls.  The immediate profit of the
voyage was so great that it was repeated two years later.  During the year
1506 Vespucius was busy in Spain preparing the armament for Pinzon, and when,
in March, 1507, that expedition was abandoned, Vespucius and La Cosa started
at once for the gulf of Darien, and returned in November, heavily freighted
with gold.  This, of course, was purely a commercial voyage. But during the
summer the way for further discovery had been prepared, and in some way or
other the Portuguese difficulty had been surmounted, for soon after New
Year's, 1508, Americus told the Venetian ambassador at the court of Spain that
a way to the lands of spice was to be sought, and that the ships would start
in March without fail. ^1

[Footnote 1: My brief mention of the doings of Vespucius, Pinzon, Solis, and
La Cosa, between 1504 and 1509, is based upon the original documents relating
to these four navigators scattered through the third volume of Navarrete's
Coleccion, as illuminated by two precious bits of information sent to the
Venetian senate by its diplomatic agents in Spain.  The letter of Girolamo
Vianello from Burgos, December 23, 1505 (dated 1506, according to an old
Spanish usage which began the New Year at Christmas and sometimes even as
early as the first of December), establishes the fact of the fifth voyage of
Vespucius in 1505.  This letter was found in Venice by the great historian
Ranke, and a few lines of it copied by him for Humboldt, who published the
scrap in his Examen critique, tom. v. p. 157, but was puzzled by the date,
because Americus was indisputably in Spain through 1506 (and Humboldt supposed
through 1505 also, but a more attentive scrutiny of the documents shows him to
have been mistaken). Varnhagen, delving in the Biblioteca di San Marco at
Venice, again found the letter, and a copy of the whole is printed, with
valuable notes, in his Nouvelles recherches, pp. 12-17.  In 1867 Mr. Rawdon
Brown discovered in Venice the two brief letters of the ambassador Francesco
Cornaro, which have established the sixth voyage of Vespucius, in 1507.  They
are printed in Harrisse, Bibl. Amer. Vetust., Additions, Paris, 1872, p.
xxvii.]

     They did not start, however, until June 29.  In the interval La Cosa was
appointed alguazil mayor, or high constable of the province about to be
organized at the gulf of Darien, and afterwards called Golden Castile
(Castilla del Oro), so that, as we shall by and by see, these two voyages
which he made with Vespucius were the first links in the chain of events that
ended in the conquest of Peru.  In March Vespucius received his appointment as
pilot major, which kept him in Spain, and his place in the voyage with Pinzon
was taken by Solis, who had probably visited the mouth of La Plata with Coelho
in 1504.  Pinzon and Solis sailed June 29, followed the Brazilian coast,
passed the wide mouth of that river without finding it, and kept on, according
to Herrera, as far as the river Colorado, in latitude 40 degrees S.  There was
disagreement between the two captains, and they returned home, probably
somewhat peevish with disappointment, in October, 1509.  Nothing more was done
in this direction for six years.  After the death of Vespucius in 1513, he was
succeeded by Solis as pilot major of Spain.  Pinzon here disappears from our
narrative, except as a witness in the Probanzas.  He seems to have gone on no
more voyages.  He was ennobled in 1519. ^1 Solis started on another search for
the river La Plata in October, 1515.  He entered that "fresh-water sea" (mar
dulce) the following January, and while he was exploring its coast in a boat
with eight companions the Indians suddenly swarmed upon the scene. Solis and
his men were instantly captured, and their horrified comrades on shipboard,
unable to save them, could only look on while they were deliberately roasted
and devoured by the screaming and dancing demons. ^2

[Footnote 1: See the document in Navarrete, tom. iii. p. 145.]

[Footnote 2: The words of Peter Martyr in a different connection might well be
applied here: - "they came runninge owte of the wooddes with a terrible crye
and most horrible aspect, much lyke vnto the people cauled Picti Agathyrsi of
whom the poete virgile speaketh.... A man wold thinke them to bee deuylles
incarnate newly broke owte of hell, they are soo lyke vnto helhoundes." Eden's
translation, 1553, dec. i. bk. vii.]

     During these years events were gradually preparing the way for the
emergence of the idea of a separate New World, a western hemisphere forming no
part of the ancient CEcumene.  There is nothing to indicate that any such idea
was ever conceived by Vespucius.  Its emergence was so gradual and so
indefinite that it is not easy to trace it in literary documents or in maps.
A hypothetical indication of an ocean corresponding in position to what we
know as the Pacific may be seen upon the rude map of the Polish geographer Jan
Stobnicza, published at Cracow in 1512, in an Introduction to Ptolemy.  Like
the Tabula Terre Nove, it is derived from a common original with the Cantino
map.  At the north is shown the land discovered by the Cabots.  The name
Isabella is transferred from Cuba to Florida, and the legend above seems to
refer to the "C. de bonauentura" of the Tabula Terre Nove.  Cape San Roque in
Brazil is called "Caput S. Crucis." The rude indication of the gulf of Mexico
is repeated from the Tabula Terre Nove or its prototype.  But the new and
striking feature in this Stobnicza map is the combination of the northern and
southern continents with an ocean behind them open all the way from north to
south. As the existence of the Pacific was still unknown in 1512, this ocean
was purely hypothetical, and so was the western coast-line of America, if it
is proper to call coast-line this mere cut-off drawn in straight lines with a
ruler.  The interest of this crude map lies chiefly in its suggestion that in
the maker's mind the whole transatlantic coast already visited (except the
Cabot portion) was conceived not as part of Asia, but as a barrier in the way
of reaching Asia.  The vague adumbration of the truth appears in the position
of the great island Cipango (Zypangu insula) in the ocean behind Mexico and
some 600 miles distant.  Before Stobnicza such maps as Ruysch's, which took
full account of South America as a barrier, detached it from what little was
known of North America, which was still reckoned as Asia.  The peculiar
combinations of land and water in Stobnicza's map make it dimly prefigure the
result attained nearly thirty years afterward by Mercator.  The suggestion was
in advance of the knowledge of the time, and the map does not seem to have
exerted any commanding influence; but in the next year after it was published
an event occurred which, if correctly understood, would have seemed to justify
it. In 1513 the Terra Firma was crossed at its narrowest place, and Vasco
Nunez de Balboa, from the summit of a peak in Darien, gazed upon an expanse of
waters, which, as we have since learned, made part of the greatest ocean upon
the globe. ^1

[Footnote 1: Colonel Higginson will pardon me for calling attention to an
inadvertence of the kind which I have already so often characterized as
projecting our modern knowledge into the past: - "Columbus discovered what he
thought was India [i.e. Asia], but Balboa proved that half the width of the
globe still separated him from India." Larger History of the United States, p.
70.  If Balboa could prove this by standing on a mountain in Darien and
looking at the water before him, he must have had a truly marvellous pair of
eyes!  Surely he had no positive means of knowing that this water stretched
away for more than a hundred miles.  Mere vision scarcely carried his
discovery out into the open ocean beyond the gulf of Panama, though, in
accordance with information received from the Indians, he rightly interpreted
it as a "South Sea" upon which one might hug the coast to the "Golden
Kingdom," soon to be known as Peru.  The first discoverer who proved the width
of the Pacific was Magellan, who sailed across it. - Such little slips as the
one here criticised are easy to make, and one cannot feel sure that one does
not unwittingly do it oneself.  The old poets were flagrant sinners in this
respect.  Lope de Vega, in a famous drama, makes Columbus know of "the New
World" even before 1492.  Why is it, asks Christopher in a talk with his
brother Bartholomew, why is it that I, a poor pilot, a man with broken
fortunes, yearn to add to this world another, and such a remote one? -

     Un hombre pobre, y aun roto,
     Que ansi lo puedo decir,
     Y que vive de piloto,
     Quiere a este mundo anadir
     Otro mundo tan remoto!

     El Nuevo Mundo Descubierto, Jorn. i.]

     It was not so much, however, the brief glimpse of Balboa as the steady
eastward progress of the Portuguese that began to reveal to practical
navigators the character and extent of the waters west of Mundus Novus.  The
arrival of Portuguese traders in the Indian ocean was the signal for a
tremendous struggle for commercial supremacy.  In every seaport they found
Arabs, or, as they called them, "Moors," their hereditary enemies.  Arabs held
nearly all the points of entrance and exit in that ocean, and the Portuguese
at once perceived the necessity of seizing these points.  Blows were exchanged
from the start, and the ensuing warfare forms one of the most romantic
chapters in history.  It would not be easy to point out two commanders more
swift in intelligence, more fertile in resource, more unconquerable in action,
than Francisco de Almeida and Alfonso de Albuquerque.  The result of their
work was the downfall of Arab power in the Indies, and the founding of that
great commercial empire which remained in the hands of the Portuguese until it
was taken from them by the Dutch. ^1 On the African coast, from Sofala to the
strait of Bab-el-Mandeb, the Portuguese held all the important trading
stations.  They seized the island of Socotra, established themselves in force
along the coasts of Oman and Makran, and capturing the wealthy Hormuz they
gained secure control of the outlet to the valley of the Euphrates.  They held
the whole western coast of Hindustan from above Bombay down to Cape Comorin,
while on the Coromandel coast they had stations at Mylapur and Negapatam.  In
1506 Almeida first visited Ceylon, which was afterward annexed, to the
Portuguese empire.  In 1508 Sequeira advanced as far as Sumatra, and in 1511
the famous Malacca, the Gateway of the East, was conquered by Albuquerque.
The way to the "lands where the spices grow" was thus at last laid open, and
Albuquerque had no sooner riveted his clutch upon Malacca than he sent Antonio
d'Abreu and Francisco Serrano, with three galleons, to make a friendly visit
to the Spice Islands par excellence, the Moluccas.  Sailing down by Java, and
between Celebes and Flores, this little fleet visited Amboina and Banda, and
brought away as heavy a load of nutmegs and cloves as it was safe to carry. ^1
Six years afterward, in 1517, Fernam de Andrade conducted the first European
ship that ever sailed to China.  He reached Canton and entered into friendly
commercial relations with that city.

[Footnote 1: The story of the Portuguese empire in the East Indies is told by
Barros, Decadas da Asia, Lisbon, 1778-88, with the continuation by Couto, in
all 24 vols.; Bras Affonso de Albuquerque, Commentarios do grande Afonso
Dalboquerque, Lisbon, 1774, in 4 vols.  I give the dates of my own copies,
which are, I think, the best editions.  The great work of Barros began to be
published in 1552; that of Albuquerque, son of the conqueror, was published in
1557.  See also Faria y Sousa, Asia Portuguesa, Lisbon, 1666, in 3 vols.]

[Footnote 1: For some account of the Spice Islands and their further history,
see Argensola, Conquista de las islas Molucas, Madrid, 1609, folio.]

     Thus data were beginning to accumulate in evidence that the continent of
Asia did not extend nearly so far to the east as Toscanelli and Columbus had
supposed.  A comparison of longitudes, moreover, between the Moluccas and the
Brazilian coast could hardly fail to bring out the fact of a great distance
between them.  Still theory did not advance so surely and definitely as it
might seem to us with the modern map in our minds. The multitude of unfamiliar
facts was bewildering, and the breadth of the Pacific ocean was too much for
the mind to take in except by actual experience.  We have now, in concluding
this long chapter, to consider the heroic career of the man who finished what
Columbus had begun, and furnished proof - though even this was not immediately
understood - that the regions discovered by the Admiral belonged to a separate
world from Asia.

     Ferdinand Magellan, as we call him in English, ^1 was a Portuguese
nobleman of the fourth grade, but of family as old and blood as blue as any in
the peninsula.  He was born at Sabrosa, near Chaves, ^2 in one of the wildest
and gloomiest nooks of Tras-os-Montes, in or about the year 1480.  The people
of that province have always been distinguished for a rugged fidelity,
combined with unconquerable toughness of fibre, that reminds one of the
Scotch; and from those lonely mountains there never came forth a sturdier
character than Ferdinand Magellan.  Difficulty and danger fit to baffle the
keenest mind and daunt the strongest heart only incited this man to efforts
well-nigh superhuman.  In his portrait, as given in Navarrete, ^3 with the
great arching brows, the fiery black eyes, the firm-set lips, and mastiff jaw,
covered but not concealed by the shaggy beard, the strength is almost
appalling.  Yet in all this power there was nothing cruel.  Magellan was
kind-hearted and unselfish, and on more than one occasion we see him risking
his life in behalf of others with generosity worthy of a paladin.

[Footnote 1: The Portuguese name is Fernao da Magalhaes; in Spanish it becomes
Fernando de Magallanes, pronounced Mah-gah-lyah-nays.  In English one often,
perhaps commonly, hears it as Ma-jel'-lan.  One does not like to be pedantic
in such trifles, and I don't mind slaughtering a consonant or two when
necessary, but to shift the accent of a word seems to destroy its identity, so
that Ma-jel-lan, which we sometimes hear, seems preferable.

     The documentary sources of the life of Magellan are chiefly to be found
in the fourth volume of Navarrete's Coleccion de viages.  The early accounts
of his voyage have been collected and translated by the late Lord Stanley of
Alderley, The First Voyage Round the World, London, 1874 (Hakluyt Society).  A
good biography, almost the first in any language, has lately appeared in
English: Guillemard, The Life of Ferdinand Magellan and the First
Circumnavigation of the Globe, London, 1890.]

[Footnote 2: Various writers have given Lisbon, or Oporto, or some village in
Estremadura as his birthplace; but Sabrosa seems clearly established. See the
reference to his first will, in Guillemard, p. 23.]

[Footnote 3: Coleccion de viages, tom. iv. p. xxiv.; it is reproduced in Lord
Stanley's volume; in Winsor, Narr. and Crit. Hist., ii. 593; and elsewhere;
but one gets the effect most completely in Navarrete.]

     Nothing is known of his childhood and youth except that at an early age
he went to Lisbon and was brought up in the royal household.  In 1505 he
embarked as a volunteer in the armada which the brilliant and high-souled
Almeida, first Portuguese viceroy of India, was taking to the East. There
followed seven years of service under this commander and his successor
Albuquerque.  Seven years of anxious sailing over strange waters, checkered
with wild fights against Arabs and Malays, trained Magellan for the supreme
work that was to come.  He was in Sequeira's expedition to Malacca, in
1508-09, the first time that European ships had ventured east of Ceylon.
While they were preparing to take in a cargo of pepper and ginger, the astute
Malay king was plotting their destruction. His friendly overtures deceived the
frank and somewhat too unsuspicious Sequeira.  Malay sailors and traders were
allowed to come on board the four ships, and all but one of the boats were
sent to the beach, under command of Francisco Serrano, to hasten the bringing
of the cargo.  Upon the quarter-deck of his flagship Sequeira sat absorbed in
a game of chess, with half-a-dozen dark faces intently watching him, their
deadly purpose veiled with polite words and smiles.  Ashore the houses rose
terrace-like upon the hillside, while in the foreground the tall tower of the
citadel - square with pyramidal apex, like an Italian bell-tower - glistened
in the September sunshine.  The parties of Malays on the ships, and down on
the bustling beach, cast furtive glances at this summit, from which a puff of
smoke was presently to announce the fatal moment.  The captains and principal
officers on shipboard were at once to be stabbed and their vessels seized,
while the white men ashore were to be massacred.  But a Persian woman in love
with one of the officers had given tardy warning, so that just before the
firing of the signal the Portuguese sailors began chasing the squads of Malays
from their decks, while Magellan, in the only boat, rowed for the flagship,
and his stentorian shout of "Treason!" came just in time to save Sequeira.
Then in wild confusion, as wreaths of white smoke curled about the fatal
tower, Serrano and a few of his party sprang upon their boats and pushed out
to sea.  Most of their comrades, less fortunate, were surrounded and
slaughtered on the beach.  Nimble Malay skiffs pursued and engaged Serrano,
and while he was struggling against overwhelming odds, Magellan rowed up and
joined battle with such desperate fury that Serrano was saved.  No sooner were
all the surviving Portuguese brought together on shipboard than the Malays
attacked in full force, but European guns were too much for them, and after
several of their craft had been sent to the bottom they withdrew.

     This affair was the beginning of a devoted friendship between Magellan
and Serrano, sealed by many touching and romantic incidents, like the
friendship between Gerard and Denys in "The Cloister and the Hearth;" and it
was out of this friendship that in great measure grew the most wonderful
voyage recorded in history.  After Albuquerque had taken Malacca in 1511,
Serrano commanded one of the ships that made the first voyage to the Moluccas.
On its return course his vessel, loaded with spices, was wrecked upon a lonely
island which had long served as a lair for pirates. Fragments of wreckage
strewn upon the beach lured ashore a passing gang of such ruffians, and while
they were intent upon delving and searching, Serrano's men, who had hidden
among the rocks, crept forth and seized the pirate ship.  The nearest place of
retreat was the island of Amboina, and this accident led Serrano back to the
Moluccas, where he established himself as an ally or quasi-protector of the
king of Ternate, and remained for the rest of his short life.  Letters from
Serrano aroused in Magellan a strong desire to follow his friend to that "new
world" in the Indian waves, the goal so long dreamed of, so eagerly sought, by
Columbus and many another, but now for the first time actually reached and
grasped. But circumstances came in to modify most curiously this aim of
Magellan's. He had come to learn something about the great ocean intervening
between the Malay seas and Mundus Novus, but failed to form any conception of
its width at all approaching the reality.  It therefore seemed to him that the
line of demarcation antipodal to Borgia's meridian must fall to the west of
the Moluccas, and that his friend Serrano had ventured into a region which
must ultimately be resigned to Spain.  In this opinion he was wrong, for the
meridian which cuts through the site of Adelaide in Australia would have come
near the line that on that side of the globe marked the end of the Portuguese
half and the beginning of the Spanish half; but the mistake was easy to make
and hard to correct.