OCEANIC DISCOVERIES. 647 



somewhat to the south-west of the Archipelago of Mendana.** 

 Sebastian de Elcano completed the first circumnavigation of 

 the earth in the Victoria after Magellan's murder on the Island 

 of Zebu, and obtained as his armorial bearings a globe, with 

 the glorious inscription, Primus circumdedisti me. He en- 

 tered the harbour of San Lucar in the month of September, 

 1522, and scarcely had a year elapsed before the Emperor 

 Charles, stimulated by the suggestions of cosmographers, 

 urged, in a letter to Hernan Cortez, the discovery of a passage 

 "by which the distance to the spice lands would be shortened 

 by two-thirds." The expedition of Alvaro de Saavedra was 

 despatched to the Moluccas from a port of the province Zaca- 

 tula, on the western coast of Mexico. Hernan Cortez writes 

 in 1527 from the recently conquered Mexican capital, Te- 

 nochtitlan " to the Kings of Zebu and Tidor in the Asiatic 

 island world." So rapidly did the sphere of cosmical views 

 enlarge, and with it the animation of general intercourse ! 



Subsequently, the conqueror of New Spain himself entering 

 upon a course of discoveries in the Pacific, proceeded from 

 thence in search of a north-east passage. Men could not 

 habituate themselves to the idea that the continent extended 

 uninterruptedly from such high southern to such high northern 

 latitudes. When tidings arrived from the coast of California, 

 that the expedition of Cortez had perished, the wife of the 

 hero, Juana de Zuniga, the beauiful daughter of the Count 

 d'Aguilar, caused two ships to be fitted out and sent forth to 



* On the geographical position of the Desventuradas (San Pablo, 

 S. lat. 16|, long. 135| west of Paris; Isla de Tiburones, S. lat. 10^, 

 "W. long. 145,) see my Examen crit., t. i. p. 286 ; and Navarrete, t. iv. 

 p. lix. 52, 218 and 267. The great period of geographical discoveries 

 gave occasion to many illustrious heraldic bearings, similar to the one men- 

 tioned in the text as bestowed on Sebastian de Elcano and his descend- 

 ants, (the terrestrial globe, with the inscription, " Primus circumdedisti 

 me.") The arms which were given to Columbus as early as May, 1493, 

 to honour his person " para sublimarlo," with posterity, contain the 

 first map of America, a range of islands in front of a gulf, (Oviedo. 

 Hist, general de las Indias, ed. de 1547, lib. ii. cap. 7, fol. 10 a ; Navar- 

 rete, t. ii. p. 37 ; Examen crit., t. iv. p. 236). The Emperor Charles V. 

 gave to Diego de Ordaz, who boasted of having ascended the volcano of 

 Orizaba the drawing of that conical mountain ; and to the historian 

 Oviedo (who lived in tropical America uninterruptedly for thirty-four 

 years, from 1513 to 1547), the four beautiful stars of the southern cross, 

 as armorial bearings. (Oviedo, lib. ii. cap. 11, fol. 16, b.) 



