Spaniards, made his way through dense and tangled forests and from the
summit of a mountain looked down on the Pacific Ocean, which he called the
South Sea. Four days later, standing on the shore, he waited till the
rising tide came rolling in, and then rushing into the water, sword in
hand, he took possession of the ocean in the name of Spain. [7]

[Illustration: SPANISH HELMET AND SHIRT OF MAIL FOUND IN MEXICO.
Now in Essex Hall, Salem, Mass.]

THE PACIFIC CROSSED; THE PHILIPPINES DISCOVERED.--The Portuguese meantime,
by sailing around Africa, had reached the Spice Islands. So far beyond
India were these islands that the Portuguese sailor Ferdinand Magellan
took up the old idea of Columbus, and maintained that they could be most
easily reached by sailing west. To this proposition the king of Portugal
would not listen; so Magellan persuaded the king of Spain to let him try;
and in 1519 set sail with five small ships. He crossed the Atlantic to the
mouth of the Plata, and went south till storms and cold drove him into
winter quarters. [8] In August, 1520 (early spring in the southern
hemisphere), he went on his way and entered the strait which now bears his
name. One of the ships had been wrecked. In the strait another stole away
and went home. The three remaining vessels passed safely through, and out
into an ocean so quiet compared with the stormy Atlantic that Magellan
called it the Pacific. Across this the explorers sailed for five months
before they came to a group of islands which Magellan called the Ladrones
(Spanish for _robbers_) because the natives were so thievish. [9] Ten
days later they reached another group, afterward named the Philippines.
[10]

On one of these islands Magellan and many of his men were slain. [11] Two
of the ships then went southward to the Spice Islands, where they loaded