SUMMARY OF RESULTS. 
45 
Asia represented on the chart of Toscanelli . 1 The absence of all domestic animals among 
the natives, as well as of all the civilisation, wealth, and display of the fabulous East, 
must have forced this conclusion on the mind of Columbus, although he may have felt 
that to acknowledge this to the Spanish sovereigns would have proved fatal to further 
discovery in the West. We know he prevented some of his companions who held these 
views from returning to Spain, fearing the result should such opinions be made known 
at the Spanish court. Indeed, as early as the second year of the sixteenth century, the 
eastern coast lines of the American continent had been more or less carefully examined 
from Labrador to the mouth of the Rio de la Plata, and every endeavour was being 
made to find a strait leading towards the Indies. 
On the 25th September 1513, from the summit of the Sierra Quarequa, Vasco Nunez 
de Balbao beheld a boundless ocean extending towards the setting sun — the Pacific was Pacific 
discovered. During many years a passage into this further ocean was in vain sought 
for in all directions, towards the north as well as towards the south ; this was finally 
discovered by Magellan. 
Ferdinand Magellan, after a sojourn in the far east in the service of Portugal, Magellan. 
returned home and devoted himself to serious cosmographical studies. He b'ecame 
convinced that the Spice Islands lay so far to the east as to be situated in the hemi- 
sphere reserved for the Spaniards by the decision of the Pope.' 2 He consequently offered 
his services to the King of Spain, and proposed to reach these islands by a new and 
shorter route than that taken by the Portuguese. He embarked on the 20th Sep- 
tember 1519 ; in the following year, on the 21st October, he entered the mouth of a 
passage in 52° south latitude, henceforth to be known as the Strait of Magellan. On 
the 28th November, on leaving the Strait, he beheld the mighty ocean. For ninety- 
nine days the vessels of Magellan ploughed the Pacific; on the 6th March 1521 the 
Mariana Isles rose before them, and ten days later the flotilla was in sight of the archi- 
pelago which was to bear the name of Philippines. Here Magellan lost his life in 
a fight with the natives of Mactan, but one of his vessels, — the “ Victoria,” in command 
of Sebastian del Cano — ultimately reached Spain in 1522. 
A memorable fact connected with this great expedition is the attempt of Magellan First Attest 
to determine the depth of the ocean. At that period the sounding lines carried by g^iw.vG 
explorers measured from one to two hundred fathoms, and it was with the assistance of 
these that Magellan tried to sound the ocean in 1521 between the two coral islands, St 
Paul and Los Tiburones ; he was, of course, unable to reach the bottom, and somewhat 
naively concluded from this that he had reached the deepest part of the ocean. Great 
historical interest attaches to' this attempt, for it is the first authentic sounding ever 
1 Harrisse, The Discovery of North America, London and Paris, 1892, pp. 97, &c. 
2 This papal line was at first placed at 100 leagues to the west of the Cape Verdes, but by a later treaty at 370 
leagues to the west (see August Baum, Die Demarkationslinie Papst Alexanders VI. und ihre Folgen, p. 54, 1S90). 
