8 AUSTRALASIA. 



on the long route to tlie Ladrones Archipelago met only a single island of insig- 

 nificant size. One of the ships, driven by a storm to the coast of Mexico, was the 

 first to circumnavigate South America. 



Many generations passed before the Pacific was traversed in the opposite 

 direction, so as to achieve the circumnavigation of the globe in the reverse way, 

 from west to east. Navigators had in vain attempted to beat up against the trade 

 winds which set regularly in the Pacific, although their efforts were attended by 

 numerous discoveries of islands and archipelagoes, such as New Guinea, the 

 Carolines, the Marshall, Pelew, and Benin groups. But after struggling for 

 weeks and months against the marine and aerial currents, the explorers one after 

 the other confessed themselves bafiled, and put back to the Philippines or the 

 Moluccas. At last the Augustinian friar, Andres de Urdaneta, found, or rather 

 guessed, the eastward route across the Pacific. Reasoning by analogy, he con- 

 cluded that the atmospheric laws must be the same in the Atlantic and Pacific 

 basins ; consequently, that the south-west winds of West Europe must be balanced 

 by currents setting in the same direction in the temperate latitudes comprised 

 between Japan and California. The meteorological anticipation was completely 

 justified in 1565, when Urdaneta himself, nearly half a century after Magellan's 

 voyage, sailed from the Philippines and Ladrones northwards as far as the forty- 

 third degree of latitude in the Japanese waters, then turning to the south-east, at 

 last gained the Mexican port of Acapulco. The voyage lasted altogether one 

 hundred and twenty-five days. 



Henceforth, regular c(jmmunication was established across the Pacific between 

 Mexico and the Philippines. The route was carefully determined by pilots, and 

 for two hundred years was strictly followed by the Spanish galleons. After 

 leaving Acapulco, skippers were able to spread sail and run before the wind 

 without tacking all the way to the Philipjiines. But on the return voyage they 

 first made for the Japanese waters about 35''' north latitude, keeping under this 

 parallel till within sight of the California coast, and then following the seaboard 

 to the starting-point. So closely was this beaten track adhered to, that scarely 

 any discoveries were made to the right or the left. Nevertheless, indications of 

 land are figured on the Spanish charts in the region occupied by the Sandwich 

 Islands. 



The very stillness of the atmosphere, combined with the infrequency of storms, 

 may perhaps have been one of the causes of the long-prevailing ignorance 

 regarding the oceanic lands of the northern hemisphere. The great ocean well 

 deserves the name of " Pacific " given to it by Magellan. The expression " South 

 Sea," applied in a more general way to all the waters comprised between Asia and 

 America, was at first restricted to the regions lying to the south-west of Mexico 

 and Central America. In this sense it was used by way of contrast with the 

 " North Sea," whence the Spanish explorers had penetrated southwards. The 

 now forgotten term, " Sea of Our Lady of Loretto," was adopted by the Franciscan 

 missionaries, in the belief that the vast ocean bathed lands which were all destined 

 one day to be peopled only by Christian neophytes. 



