FERDINAND OF MAGELLAN. 467 
It was from the small mountain-chain of Quarequa, on the 25th 
of September, 1513, that the Spaniards first saw the sea-horizon, 
but they had still several days to march before they reached the 
Gulf of San Miguel. Here Alonzo Martin de Don Benito was 
the first white man that ever floated in a canoe on the Eastern 
Pacific, even before Balboa, armed with sword and shield, de- 
scended into the water to take possession of the newly discovered 
ocean in the name of the king his master. 
Although the subsequent fortunes of this great man are 
foreign to my subject, yet it may not be uninteresting to the 
reader to be informed how his important services were requited. 
Unfortunately the ingratitude of the Spanish court, which so 
scandalously embittered the declining years of Columbus and 
Cortez, reached its lowest depth in the case of Balboa. Those 
great men had at least in the beginning enjoyed some show of 
favour, but the discoverer of the Pacific was treated throughout 
with the basest indignity. The governorship of Darien, to which 
his splendid achievements had given him so undeniable a claim, 
was conferred upon a certain Pedrarias Davila, a wretch who, 
after having persecuted and thwarted the hero in every possible 
way, caused him at length to be beheaded, under a false accusa- 
tion of high treason. 
Six years after Balboa had first seen the Pacific, two years 
after his execution, Ferdinand of Magellan made his appearance 
in that great ocean. A Portuguese of noble birth, this eminent 
navigator had served with distinction under Albuquerque, the 
conqueror of Malacca. His plan of seeking a new road to India 
across the Atlantic being but coldly received in his native 
country, he transferred his services to Spain, where his dis- 
tinguished merit found better judges in Cardinal Ximenes, and 
his youthful master, Charles V. With five ships, the largest 
of which did not carry more than 120 tons, and with a crew of 
236 men, partly the sweepings of the jails, he sailed on the 20th 
of September, 1519, from the port of San Lucar, and spent 
the following summer (the winter of the southern hemisphere) 
on the dreary coast of Patagonia. In this uncomfortable station 
he lost one of his squadron; and the Spaniards suffered so much 
from the excessive rigour of the climate, that the crews of three 
of his ships, headed by their officers, rose in open mutiny, and 
insisted on relinquishing the visionary project of a desperate 
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