CATHOLICISM IN THE MOLUCCAS. 307 



tives, as was also Barbosa, a gentleman of Lisbon, who 

 had previously visited and described India, and from 

 whose Avritings we have frequently had occasion to 

 quote. From Zebu, Magellan's companions sailed to 

 the northern part of Borneo and Tidore, Thence 

 they continued southward, touching at Bachian and 

 Timur, in 1522, and finally an^ived safely back 

 in Spain, having completed the first circumnaviga- 

 tion of our globe. This great voyage was accom- 

 plished nearly a century before the Pilgrims landed on 

 our New-England shores. Soon after the Portuguese 

 had established themselves at Ternate, they began to 

 teach the natives their Catholic creed, and in 1535 the 

 native king, who had accepted that religion and been 

 christened at Goa, returned to Ternate and began 

 his reign. Other native princes then proposed to 

 the Portuguese to l^ecome Catholics, if they would 

 take them under their protection, and thus Catholi- 

 cism began to spread rapidly, but the same year 

 all the native converts were destroyed by Moham- 

 medans, headed by Cantalino, who was styled " the 

 Moluccan Vesper." In 1546, Francis Xavier,* a 

 Catholic priest, visited Ternate. He afterward went 

 back to Malacca and proceeded to China and Japan, 

 and returning from the latter country died on an isl- 

 and ofl:' Macao, near Canton. The Dutch first came 

 to Ternate under Admiral Houtman, in 1578. In 

 1G05, under Stephen van der Hagen, they stormed 

 and took Ternate, and thus drove the Portuguese out 

 of the Moluccas, and the island, since that date, has 



* He has since been canonized, and is worthily considered by his 

 people a model of piety and devotion to the missionary cause. 



