PORTUGUESE NAVIGATORS. 4735 
the favourable west wind, which carried him to the New World 
across the wide bosom of the Pacific. The discovery of this 
new ocean route was of considerable importance to the Spaniards, 
and, to perpetuate the memory of Urdaneta’s nautical ability, 
they continued to call the passage by his name. 
About the same time another Spanish pilot, Juan Fernandez, 
discovered the proper sea route from Callao to Chili, by first 
sailing far out to sea, and thus avoiding the coast-currents from 
the south. He also discovered the island which still bears his 
name, and has become so celebrated by the adventures of Alex- 
ander Selkirk, and the immortal tale of Daniel Defoe. 
In the year 1567 an expedition sailed from Callao under 
Alvaro Mendana, which discovered the Solomon Islands; and in 
1595 the group of the Marquesas de Mendoza was first brought 
to light by the same navigator. Before the last expedition of 
Mendana, Drake, the first cireumnavigator of the globe (1577— 
1580) after Magellan and El Cano, penetrated into the Pacific, 
by rounding Cape Horn, and subsequently discovered the coasts 
of New Albion as far as 48° N. lat. 
After having thus rapidly followed the course of the discoveries 
which during the sixteenth century made Europe acquainted 
with the whole western coast of America, from Cape Pillares in 
Tierra del Fuego to the mouth of the Columbia River, I return 
to the Indian Ocean, where in the beginning of the century we 
left the Portuguese in the full bloom of their power, and, to 
judge by the progress already made, likely to add largely to the 
stock of geographical knowledge. But whether the masters of 
the Indian Ocean had no desire to extend still farther the circle 
of their conquests, or the fiery spirit of enterprise which had 
animated Vasco de Gama and Diaz was prematurely extinguished, 
the discoveries of the Portuguese in the Pacific by no means 
corresponded to the gigantic flight which in less than a quarter 
of a century had led them from Cape de Verde to the extremity 
of the Malayan Archipelago. .New Guinea was indeed discovered 
by Don Jorge de Menezes (1526) and Alvaro de Saavedra 
(1528), and some old maps prove that before 1542 a part of 
the coast of New Holland was known to the Portuguese, who had 
penetrated to the north as far as Formosa and Japan, yet at 
the end of the sixteenth century the western boundaries of 
the Pacific were only known from 40° N. lat. to 10° S. iat, and 
