306 TRAVELS IN THE EAST INDIAN ARCHIPELAGO. 



ing soutliwarcl along the shores of Brazil, he found 

 the strait which still continues to bear his name. This 

 he passed through with three shi^^s, one having been 

 ■wrecked, and one having turned bach. For one 

 hundred and sixteen days he continued sailing in a 

 northwest direction, over (as it seemed to them) an 

 endless ocean. Their food became exhausted, but 

 they yet kept on the same course until at last their 

 eyes were blessed with the sight of land. Pigafetta, a 

 member of this expedition, thus pictures their suffer- 

 ings : " On Wednesday, the 28th day of November, 

 1520, we issued from the strait, engulfing ourselves 

 in the ocean, in which, without comfort or consola- 

 tion of any kind, we sailed for three months and 

 twenty days. We ate biscuit which was biscuit no 

 longer, but a wormy powder, for the worms had 

 eaten the substance, what remained being fetid with 

 the urine of rats and mice. The dearth was such 

 that we were compelled to eat the leathers with 

 which the yards of the ships were protected from 

 the friction of the ropes. This leather, too, ha^dng 

 been long exposed to the sun, rain, and wind, had 

 become so hard that it was necessary to soften it by 

 immersion in the sea for four or live days, after which 

 it was broiled on the embers and eaten. We had to 

 sustain ourselves by eating sawdust, and a rat was 

 in such request that one was sold for half a ducat." 



The first islands Magellan saw were those he 

 named the Ladrones or " Islands of Thieves." * From 

 those he came to the Philippines, and on one of these 

 (Mactan, near Zebu) he was mui'dered by the na- 



* Vide Pigafetta in Crawfurd's " Diet. India Islands." 



