United States or Peru ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
It had been visited also, four years before Magellan's arrival, by Pero Lopez, and seems to have been frequented since the commencement of the sixteenth century by mariners from Dieppe who, inheritors of the passion for adventurous navigation of their ancestors the North-men, roamed over the world, and founded small establishments or factories in all directions.
He gave the islands a name, but the name did not cling to them; and some time after, they were named Islas Filipinas or, as we say in English, Philippine Islands in honor of King Philip II., of Spain. But the savage tribes dwelling in the islands did not submit tamely to Magellan's conquest, and in a fight with them he was killed.
The very desperateness of it was all in Magellan's favor; for so far away had they come from the known world that retreat meant certain death. The only chance of escape lay in pressing forward. At last, on the 6th of March, they came upon islands inhabited by savages ignorant of the bow and arrow, but expert in handling their peculiar light boats.
Only one remained, a grizzly-bearded, rough-looking old gaucho, who firmly kept his seat at the stern, as if determined to see the last of "The Mount," as the pretty city near the foot of Magellan's Hill is called by the English people in this region.
They would keep it sublimated, aloft, out of vulgar reach or use altogether, intangible as Magellan's clouds.
Spaniards, however, had dreamed of a northwest passage before any of these. When Magellan passed through the strait that bears his name, and his ship completed the first circumnavigation of the globe, men began first to see that America was no part of Asia. In further proof they sought to find a passage into the Pacific from the north, as a complement to Magellan's passage from the south.
In order to realise the nature of the delays and difficulties to be encountered, nay, the disasters and sufferings to be endured and the determination required for the distant voyages of the period, we have but to recall the fate of Magellan's and Loaysa's expeditions.
Such was the history of this important expedition, which by means of Strait Lemaire opened up a shorter and less dangerous route than that by Magellan's Strait, an expedition signalized by several discoveries in Oceania, and by a more attentive exploration of points already seen by Spanish or Portuguese navigators.
"After the death of Magellan, Duarte Barbosa took the command and he and twenty of his men were treacherously killed by the Christian King, with whom they had allied themselves, one Juan Serrano was left alive amongst the natives. Magellan's 'Victory' was the first ship that circumnavigated the globe.
In the treaties of peace that the survivors of Magellan's expedition made with the chief of Paragua, when the servant-interpreter died they communicated with one another through a Moro who had been captured in the island of the King of Luzon and who understood some Spanish. In the Moluccas? In Malacca, with the Portuguese? Spaniards did not reach Luzon until 1571.
Word Of The Day