Note 674 — BOOK X.

To match thy deeds shall Magalhaens aspire.—Camoëns, though he boasts of the actions of Magalhaens as an honour to Portugal, yet condemns his defection to the King of Spain, and calls him—

"In deeds truly a Portuguese, but not in loyalty." And others have bestowed upon him the name of traitor, but perhaps undeservedly. Justice to the name of this great man requires an examination of the charge. Ere he entered into the service of the King of Spain by a solemn act, he unnaturalized himself. Osorius is very severe against this unavailing rite, and argues that no injury which a prince may possibly give, can authorize a subject to act the part of a traitor against his native country. This is certainly true, but it is not strictly applicable to the case of Magalhaens. Many eminent services performed in Africa and India entitled him to a certain allowance, which, though inconsiderable in itself, was esteemed as the reward of distinguished merit, and therefore highly valued. For this Magalhaens petitioned in vain. He found, says Faria, that the malicious accusations of some men had more weight with his sovereign than all his services. After this unworthy repulse, what patronage at the Court of Lisbon could he hope? And though no injury can vindicate the man who draws his sword against his native country, yet no moral duty requires that he who has some important discovery in meditation should stifle his design, if uncountenanced by his native prince. It has been alleged, that he embroiled his country in disputes with Spain. But neither is this strictly applicable to the neglected Magalhaens. The courts of Spain and Portugal had solemnly settled the limits within which they were to make discoveries and settlements, and within these did Magalhaens and the court of Spain propose that his discoveries should terminate. And allowing that his calculations might mislead him beyond the bounds prescribed to the Spaniards, still his apology is clear, for it would have been injurious to each court, had he supposed that the faith of the boundary treaty would be trampled upon by either power. If it is said that he aggrandized the enemies of his country, the Spaniards, and introduced them to a dangerous rivalship with the Portuguese settlements; let the sentence of Faria on this subject be remembered: "Let princes beware," says he, "how by neglect or injustice they force into desperate actions the men who have merited rewards."

In the end of the 15th and beginning of the 16th centuries, the spirit of discovery broke forth in its greatest vigour. The East and the West had been visited by Gama and Columbus; and the bold idea of sailing to the East by the West was revived by Magalhaens. Revived, for misled by Strabo and Pliny, who place India near to the west of Spain, Columbus expecting to find the India of the ancients when he landed on Hispaniola, thought he had discovered the Ophir of Solomon. And hence the name of Indies was given to that and the neighbouring islands. Though America and the Moluccas were now found to be at a great distance, the genius of Magalhaens still suggested the possibility of a western passage. And accordingly, possessed of his great design, and neglected with contempt at home, he offered his service to the court of Spain, and was accepted. With five ships and 250 men he sailed from Spain in September, 1519, and after many difficulties, occasioned by mutiny and the extreme cold, he entered the great Pacific Ocean or South Seas by those straits which bear his Spanish name Magellan. From these straits, in the 52½ degree of southern latitude, he traversed that great ocean, till in the 10th degree of north latitude he landed on the island of Subo or Marten. The king of this country was then at war with a neighbouring prince, and Magalhaens, on condition of his conversion to Christianity, became his auxiliary. In two battles the Spaniards were victorious, but in the third, Magalhaens, together with one Martinho, a judicial astrologer, whom he usually consulted, was unfortunately killed. Chagrined with the disappointment of promised victory, the new baptised king of Subo made peace with his enemies, and having invited to an entertainment the Spaniards on shore, he treacherously poisoned them all. The wretched remains of the fleet arrived at the Portuguese settlements in the isles of Banda and Ternate, where they were received, says Faria, as friends, and not as intruding strangers; a proof that the boundary treaty was esteemed sufficiently sacred. Several of the adventurers were sent to India, and from thence to Spain, in Portuguese ships, one ship only being in a condition to return to Europe by the Cape of Good Hope. This vessel, named the Victoria, however, had the honour to be the first which ever surrounded the globe; an honour by some ignorantly attributed to the ship of Sir Francis Drake. Thus unhappily ended, says Osorius, the expedition of Magalhaens. But the good bishop was mistaken, for a few years after he wrote, and somewhat upwards of fifty after the return of the Victoria, Philip II. of Spain availed himself of the discoveries of Magalhaens. And the navigation of the South Seas between Spanish America and the Asian Archipelago, at this day forms the basis of the power of Spain: a basis, however, which is at the mercy of Great Britain, while her ministers are wise enough to preserve her great naval superiority. A Gibraltar in the South Seas is only wanting. But when this is mentioned, who can withhold his eyes from the isthmus of Darien—the rendezvous appointed by nature for the fleets which may one day give law to the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans: a settlement which to-day might have owned subjection to Great Britain, if justice and honour had always presided in the cabinet of William the Third?