THE MUTINY AT PORT JULIAN.—THE STRAITS.—1519
LUIS DE MENDOZA
"You are leading us to destruction," said the mutineers.
Days of mutiny came in the cold waters.
The spirit of disloyalty that had found expression in the inspector broke out anew at Port St. Julian. It spread through the officers and crews of three of the ships. These caused to be published the resolution that they would sail no farther.
"You are leading us to destruction," said the mutineers.
Luis de Mendoza, Captain of the Victoria, the treasurer of the expedition, was a leader of the mutiny. Another disturbing spirit was Gasper de Queixada, Captain of the Concepcion.
Magellan, of the kind heart, had, as we have seen, the resolution to meet emergencies. This expedition was his life. It must not be opposed, hindered, or thwarted. He lived in his purpose. He must stamp out the mutiny. He no more used gentle and courteous words. He thundered his wil
One day Ambrosia Fernandez, his constable, came to him, and said:
"Three crews are ready to mutiny, to force you to go back."
Magellan saw that he must make the leaders of these ships his prisoners, or that he would become theirs.
"Constable," he said, "pick out sixty trusty men and arm them well. Go with them on board the treasurer's ship, and arrest Mendoza and lay him dead on the deck."
The fleet was moored in line. It was flood tide, and Mendoza's ship rode astern of Magellan's, and the ship of Queixada, ahead.
Magellan prepared his own crew to face the consequences of a tragedy should one occur. He ordered his hawser to be attached to the cable, and called his crew to arms.
When the flood tide was at its height, Fernandez, the constable, prepared to execute his order.
He appeared before the ship of the mutinous Mendoza, and asked to be received on board.
"Back to your own ship," said the mutineer. "I command the Victoria."
"But we are few against many," said the constable, "and I have a message from the Admiral which I must deliver."
He was helped on board the Victoria.
His feet had no sooner touched the deck than he seized Mendoza.
"I arrest you in the name of the Emperor." The armed men that the constable had left on the boat rushed on board.
The crew of the Victoria, stood aghast. They saw the power of the Admiral's mind.
Magellan brought his ship alongside the Victoria.
He led his armed crew on board the Victoria, and halted before a terrible scene. Mendoza had been stabbed by the constable, and the crew of the Victoria plead for mercy, and promised to be loyal to the Admiral.
In this hour of tragedy and terror Magellan bore his ship around to Queixada's, and made the officers and crew of the Concepcion his prisoners. The leaders of the mutiny were executed. It was a necessity.
Magellan caused also the sentence he had imposed on the inspector and his accomplice to be carried out here.
Carthagena and Sanches were led from their prison to the shore
As the sails were being lifted to depart, they were marooned—left with some provisions, among which were some bottles of wine, on the desert shore.
There were hearts that pitied them as the ships sailed away. There was one who plotted to rescue them. It was Gormez.
They left them some biscuits with the bottles of wine.
"It is the last bread they will ever eat," said their companions.
"And the last wine that they will ever drink," said a loyal priest on board.
But there was one on board that shook his head.
If he could have his will the two would eat bread and drink wine again in the convents of beautiful Seville
The ships sailed away, and the marooned priests saw them disappear.
"They were cast aside for opposing a madman," reasoned Gormez. "Magellan is no fit leader of an expedition. If I had full command of the Antonio, I would rescue the inspector, if I were to find him alive."
But he could not take the Antonio back while Mesquita, Magellan's loyal cousin, was in command. Had he breathed a breath of disloyalty in the presence of this Portuguese, he might have himself been deposed from his position and marooned, as had been the inspector and the friar.
A dark plot began to form in the pilot's mind. If he could incite the crew against Mesquita in some [95] hour of peril, he might cause him to be imprisoned on his own ship, and then he could succeed to the command, and take the Antonio back to Spain.
And he would also endeavor to rescue the inspector and the friend of the inspector who had been marooned. If he could rescue them and take them back with him to Spain, they would be powerful witnesses for him against Magellan.
Gormez now waited his opportunity. A jealous man seeks for a principle of life to ease his conscience and justify evil deeds. Gormez had two principles to sustain him in his disloyalty. The one was that he could lead a better expedition, and the other the merciful rescue of his two companions who had been marooned for the same opinions that he had from the first carried in his heart. So calling treachery, loyalty and sympathy, he awaited an hour favorable to his plan
If he could return to Spain he would offer his services to Portugal or to Spain to lead an expedition to the Spice Islands that should be conducted in some more promising way than by the winter seas.
As the ships sailed on into the clouds and cold, the sailors were filled with apprehension. But the farol still shone at night like a star in the changing atmosphere. They had expected that the extremity of South America would point West, but this was not the case. Whither were they tending?
It was the middle of October. The water grew colder and the land became more desolate. Suddenly a bay appeared and the continent seemed to part. The sea poured its tides to the East amid towering mountains, and a strait appeared, which now bears the name of Magellan.
STRAIT OF MAGELLAN
The soul of the Admiral thrilled. It was the fulfillment of his visions. He called the opening to the swift channel Cape Virgins, as he discovered it on the day on which the Church commemorated the martyrdom of the "eleven thousand virgins."
His lone lantern entered the straits. The way was toward the East
ALVARO DE MESQUITA, cousin of Magellan
Magellan sent the ship Antonio, which was commanded by his cousin Alvaro de Mesquita, to explore the bay, of which ship Gormez still held the position of pilot. The mutineer's hour had come.
The pilot entered the bay, but presently a powerful tide carried the ship back, and beyond the sight of the flag and the lantern of Magellan.
The jealous Portuguese had seen enough to know that great perils were before the fleet or that a glory like to that of Columbus was now likely to fall to the lot of Magellan. He determined to be revenged upon the Admiral for supplanting him in accepting the favors of the King
TIERRA DEL FUEGO ISLANDS
As the fleet entered the straits, the hills at night blazed with fires. The explorers thought these fires were volcanoes. They were signal fires kindled by the natives. Magellan gave the place the name of "Tierra del Fuego"—the "Land of Fire," a name that it still bears.
The water ran icy cold. Peaks of crystal towered above the straits, and the sublimities of mountain desolations everywhere appeared. So amid awful chasms of the sea, now white with snows, now dark with shadows, the little fleet glided on, the farol in the air at night, and all eyes strained with wonder to see what new disclosure this strait would bring.
What must have been the reflection of Magellan as the mysteries of the new world lifted before his eyes?
Joy is the compensation of suffering, and if his happiness was as great as his trials had been, he must have indeed known thrilling moments. He had dared, and he had achieved.
He wondered at the fate of the Antonio, as the days went by. He indeed thought her lost, but yet hoped that she might appear.
"She has deserted us," ventured a loyal officer.
"No," reasoned the Admiral. "Mesquita would never desert me."
Grave as was the act of treachery that the jealousy of Gormez led him to commit, he was true to the two marooned priests who had opposed the daring schemes of Magellan.
"We must not leave them to perish," he said.
So with Mesquita in irons he steered his ship toward the lonely islands where the crew had passed the winter.
They found Carthagena and his brother monk still living, and never could two men have been more glad to escape from exile. To live among naked giants, whom they could not civilize, must have become a horror to them. But their lives had been spared, though their biscuits and wine, we fancy, were gone.
"The Admiral has gone mad," said the men who had come to rescue them. "He knows not the way to the Moluccas, nor to anywhere."
PACIFIC OCEAN
THE PACIFIC.—THE DEATH OF THE GIANTS.
The four ships glided along the wonderful straits which Magellan named the "Virgins," but which will always bear his own name. The scenery continued wild and fierce, and in some places overawing and sublime; they sailed amid domes of crystal and almost under the roofs of a broken world. They still moved slowly—the scenery growing more and more wonderful.
The air grew bright again. The ships were in the sea. They had entered a sea broad and glorious, but which Magellan could have hardly dreamed to be nearly ten thousand miles long, and more than that wide! Its waters were placid—an ocean plain. Columbus had heard of this vast sea, and Balboa had seen it from the peak of Darien.
All the joy that Magellan had anticipated in his visions of years now burst upon him.
"The Pacific!"
This was the name that came to him as he surveyed the new ocean world. He was the discoverer of the South Pacific, which was continuous with the ocean discovered by Balboa. What did it contain? Whither might he sail over the new serenity of waters?
WELCOME TO THE PHILIPPINES!
location: ten degrees north latitude, and a hundred and sixty-one degrees longitude from the line of demarcation
On Wednesday, March 6th, Magellan sighted islands. His lantern had crossed the Pacific Ocean. Here he hoped to find food. He approached the shores eagerly. So hungry were the crews that one of the sick men begged that if any of the natives were killed human flesh might be brought him.
But the natives here were not only wild men, they were robbers; they sought to kill the voyagers and to steal everything. Hence, Magellan called the islands the Ladrones (robbers)
On Saturday, March 16, 1521, a notable sight appeared in the dawn of the morning. It was a high bluff, some three hundred leagues distant from the Thieves' Islands. The island was named Zamal, now called Samar.
CALAGAN REGION OF MINDANAO NEAR LIMASAWA ISLAND
Magellan saw another island near. It was inhabited by a friendly people. He determined to land there for the sake of security, as he could there gather sea food and care for the sick. He planted his tents there, and provided the sick with fresh meat.
CARAGA PACIFIC SHORE OF MINDANAO
Here surely was a new archipelago which had found no place on a map. March 16, 1521, was to be a notable date of the world.
He had discovered the Philippine Islands, though they were not then known by that name. They were the door to China from the West—this he could hardly have known.
The islands as now known consist of Luzon, fifty-one thousand three hundred square miles in extent; and Mendanao, more than twenty-five thousand miles in extent. The islands lying between Luzon and Mendanao are called the Bissayas, of which Samar has an area of thirteen thousand and twenty miles. Magellan visited Mendanao and then sailed for Zebu, a small island where the first Spanish settlement was made, before Manila, which was founded in 1581.
This archipelago was a new world of wonder. The small islands are now computed to number fourteen hundred. Magellan never knew the extent of his discovery.
Here he was to find the happiest days of his life, after the serene but famishing voyage.
The people here were to receive him with open arms; to feast him; to raise his expectations and to bow down before the Cross. We must describe in detail—thanks to the Italian who was true to the heart of the Admiral—this golden age of the troubled life of Magellan.
After all the struggle for so many years against many overwhelming oppositions, Magellan now rose into the vantage ground of success, and fulfilled the vision which had illumined his soul in his darkest hours.
Every man has a right to his record, and whatever might happen now, his record no power could destroy; he had discovered the Pacific Ocean, and a new way around the world. Whatever might be his fate, the world must follow his lantern.
On the 18th of March, 1521, after dinner on shore, the Admiral saw a boat coming out from a near island toward his ship. There were men in it.
"Let no one move or speak," said Magellan.
The crews awaited the coming of the strangers in the blazing sunlight of the tropic sea. The Indians landed, led by a chief.
They were friends. They signified by signs their joy at seeing them. Magellan feasted the Indians and gave them presents.
When these people saw the good disposition of the Captain, they gave him palm wine and figs [111] "more than a foot long." On leaving they promised to return with fruits
Pigafetta, our Italian Chevalier, vividly describes the scenes that followed between Magellan and the friendly people of the newly-discovered islands, which we call the Philippines, but which were not so named at that time.
"That people became very familiar and friendly, and explained many things in their language, and told the names of some islands which they beheld. The island where they dwelt was called Zuluam, and it was not large. As they were sufficiently agreeable and conversible the crews had great pleasure with them. The Captain seeing that they were of this good spirit, conducted them to the ship and showed them specimens of all his goods—that he most desired—cloves, cinnamon, pepper, ginger, nutmeg, mace, and gold.
HUMUNU ISLAND TODAY IT IS called called Homonhon Island
The island where the ships had moored was named Humunu; but because the men found there two springs of very fresh water it was named the Watering Place of Good Signs. There was much white coral there, and large trees which bear fruit smaller than an almond, and which are like pines. There were also many palm trees both good and bad. In this place there were many circumjacent islands, on which account the archipelago was named St. Lazarus. This region and archipelago is in ten degrees north latitude, and a hundred and sixty-one degrees longitude from the line of demarcation
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