SLEEP AND AWAKENING 25 
south latitude so far reached with certainty, and by the 
side of the cape a channel opened deep, salt and with a 
strong current running through, the long-looked-for 
passage to the west. With the further labours of Magel- 
lan we have little to do. He crossed the wide Pacific in 
a voyage of three months' duration in which no land 
was sighted but two wide-separated barren islands. One 
ship of his squadron, the Victoria, after his untimely 
death, threaded the maze of the Malay archipelego and 
crossing the Indian Ocean returned to Spain by the 
Cape of Good Hope. The Victoria turned a furrow of 
blue water round the globe and taught Europe by that 
simple demonstration that the Earth was indeed a sphere, 
or at least that it was round, taught it also that the Old 
World and the New World alike were free to the south 
and that a third world, if such existed, must be looked for 
in the vast unknown area about the Antarctic pole. 
That a " third world ” did exist was a cherished belief, 
no doubt derived from the old Greek speculations and 
reasoning based on the law of symmetry. Magellan did 
much to confirm the idea, for when he passed through 
the strait that bears his name he saw to the south of him 
land as continuous and as continental in appearance as 
the territory of the Patagonians to the north. This 
southern land he named Tierra del Fuego, the land of 
fires, apparently from the fires carried by the natives in 
their canoes. 
While the question of the existence of an Antarctic 
region had been settled definitely by the acceptance of 
the sphericity of the Earth, and the mode of access to 
that region had been shown by Magellan to be by the sea 
alone, it still remained doubtful whether it was an 
antarctic sea or an antarctic land that lay inviting dis- 
