Guadalquivir, with eighteen gaunt and haggard survivors to tell the
proud story of the first circumnavigation of the earth.

The voyage thus ended was doubtless the greatest feat of navigation
that has ever been performed, and nothing can be imagined that would
surpass it except a journey to some other planet. It has not the
unique historic position of the first voyage of Columbus, which
brought together two streams of human life that had been disjoined
since the glacial period. But as an achievement in ocean navigation
that voyage of Columbus sinks into insignificance by the side of it;
and when the earth was a second time encompassed by the greatest
English sailor of his age,[2] the advance in knowledge, as well as the
different route chosen, had much reduced the difficulty of the
performance. When we consider the frailness of the ships, the
immeasurable, extent of the unknown, the mutinies that were prevented
or quelled, and the hardships that were endured, we can have no
hesitation in speaking of Magellan as the prince of navigators. Nor
can we ever fail to admire the simplicity and purity of that devoted
life, in which there is nothing that seeks to be hidden or explained
away.

[1] From Fiske's "Discovery of America." Copyright, 1892, by John
Fiske. Reprinted by arrangement with the publishers, Houghton,
Mifflin Co. Ferdinand Magellan was born at Saborosa in Portugal,
about 1480, and died in the Philippines in 1521. Before discovering
the strait that bears his name he had served with the Portuguese
in the East Indies and in Morocco. Becoming dissatisfied he had
gone to Spain, where he proposed to find a western passage to the
Moluccas, a proposal which Charles V accepted, fitting out for him
a government squadron of five ships and 265 men. Magellan sailed