NATIVE THIEVES. 



245 



on board the Trinidada at Port Julian was attacked by the 

 disease. Pigafetta, seeing that he could not recover, showed 

 him the cross and reverently kissed it. The Patagonian besought 

 him by gestures to forbear, as the demon would certainly enter 

 his body and cause him to burst. When at death's door, how- 

 ever, he called for the cross, which he kissed : he then begged 

 to be baptized, and was received into the bosom of the Church 

 under the name of Paul. 



The vessels kept on and on, seeing no fish but sharks, and 

 finding no bottom along the shores of the stunted islands which 

 they passed. The needle was so irregular in its motion that it 

 required frequent passes of the loadstone to revive its energy. 

 No prominent star appeared to serve as an Antarctic Polar guide. 

 Two stars, however, were discovered, which, from the smallness 

 of the circle they described in their diurnal course, seemed to 

 be near the pole. "We traversed," says Pigafetta, "a space 

 of from sixty to seventy leagues a day ; and, if God and His 

 Holy Mother had not granted us a fortunate voyage, we should 

 all have perished of hunger in so vast a sea. I do not think 

 any one for the future will venture upon a similar voyage." It 

 was, indeed, nearly sixty years before Drake, the second 

 circumnavigator, entered the Pacific Ocean. 



Early in March, 1521, Magellan fell in with a cluster of 

 islands, where he and his men went ashore to refresh themselves 

 after the fatigues and privations of their voyage. The in- 

 habitants, however, were great thieves, penetrating into the 

 cabins of the vessels and taking every thing on which they could 

 lay their hands. Magellan, exasperated at length, landed with 

 forty men, burned a village and killed seven of the natives. 

 The latter, when pierced with arrows through and through, — a 

 weapon they had never seen before, — would draw them out by 

 either end and stare at them till they died. Magellan gave the 

 name of Ladrones to these islands, — a name which they retain 

 in modern geography, though, in the time of Philip IV. of 



