12 USEFUL PLANTS OF GUAM. 



HISTORICAL NOTICES. 

 DISCOVERY OF GUAM AND ITS EARLY HISTORY. 



MAGELLAN. 



The island of Guam was discovered on March 6, 1521, by Magellan, 

 after a passage of three months and twentj^ days from the strait which 

 bears his name. An account of the privations and suffering of his 

 crew, many of whom died on the way across the hitherto unexplored 

 ocean, is graphically given by Antonio Pigafetta, Magellan's historian. 

 He describes how the expedition arrived at Guam with the crews 

 suffering from scurvy and in a starving condition, having been com- 

 pelled on the passage to eat rats and even the leather from off the 

 standing rigging to keep soul and body together. In comparison 

 with Magellan's feat of crossing the vast Pacific the first voyage of 

 Columbus, from the Canary Islands to the West Indies, seems insig- 

 nificant. The natives of Guam came out to meet the Spaniards in 

 strange "flying praos" (canoes provided with outriggers and trian- 

 gular sails of mats). The Spaniards had dropped anchor, furled their 

 sails, and were about to land, when it was discovered that a small boat 

 which rode astern of the flagship was missing. Suspecting the natives 

 of having stolen it, Magellan himself went ashore at the head of a 

 landing party of 40 armed men, burned 40 or 50 houses and many 

 boats, and killed 7 or 8 natives, male and female. He then returned 

 to his ship with the missing boat and immediately set sail, continuing 

 his course to the westward. 



Before we went ashore [says Pigafetta] some of our people who were sick said to 

 us that if we should kill any of the natives, whether man or woman, that we should 

 bring on board their entrails, being persuaded that with the latter they would be 

 cured. 



When we wounded some of those . islanders with arrows, which entered their 

 bodies, they tried to draw forth the arrow now in one way and now in another, in 

 the meantime regarding it with great astonishment, and thus did they who were 

 wounded in the breast, and they died of it, which did not fail to cause us compassion. 



Seeing us take our departure then, they followed us with more than a hundred 

 boats for more than a league. They approached our ships, showing us fish and 

 feigning to wish to give them to us, but when we were near they cast stones at us and 

 fled. We passed under full sail among their boats, which, with greatest dexterity, 

 avoided us. "We saw among them some women who were weeping and tearing their 

 hair, surely for their husbands killed by us. 



The natives did not fare much better at the hands of later visitors. 

 Some of the early navigators- enticed them on board and made slaves 

 of them, so that they might man the pumps and keep the ships free 

 from water/' They were spoken of as "infidels," to slay whom was no 

 great sin; but if encounters took place between them and Europeans 

 and a white man was killed, he was declared to have been murdered, 



a See Narrative of the Loaisa Expedition, 1526, Burney, Chron. Hist., vol. 1, p. 217. 



