e of gems and
spices. In 1509 their ships first reached Malacca; two years later
that "golden Chersonese" was taken by Albuquerque; and in 1512 D'Abreu
returned with the first cargo of cloves from Amboina and Banda, the
very "isles where the spices grow." To find a passage through the
_Mondo Novo_, which Columbus had discovered, became therefore the aim
of future Spanish exploration--inspiring the second voyage of Pinzon
in 1508, the expedition of Balboa across the Isthmus in 1513, the
fatal last cruise of Solis to the mouth of the Plate River, and the
final triumphant venture of Ferdinand Magellan.

For the world was not so large but that the spice islands, three
thousand miles east of Calicut, must be in Spanish waters. Firm in this
belief, the Portuguese Fernam Magalhaes, who had been with Albuquerque
at Malacca, offered to King Charles of Spain his services in search of
the western passage. It was in 1519 that this man, "small in stature,
who did not appear in himself to be much," yet withal a "man of courage
and valiant in his thoughts," set out in five worn-out ships, manned by
Spanish officers and a treacherous crew, to achieve the greatest feat of
navigation ever recorded in the world's annals. Undaunted by an almost
fatal mutiny or the terrors of an Antarctic winter, he pushed on through
the dangerous straits which bear his name, north and west over that sea
which, pacific as it was found to be, he would scarcely have attempted
had he known its vast extent. Sailing on month after month, the crew
depleted by sickness and death, living at last on rats and biscuit worms
and roasted soaked leather thongs, the little expedition finally reached
the Philippine Islands. Here the heroic commander lost his life; and but
few of those who left Spain ever returned. One ship only out of five,
the Victoria, crossed the Indian Ocean and at last, September 7, 1522,
three years out from Spain, sailed with eighteen survivors into the port
of St. Lucar.

[Illustration: SCHOeNER'S GLOBE with Magellan's Route and Demarcation Line
DRAWN 1523. From Bourne's _Spain in America_, p. 117. Harper and Brothers.]

For the first time a single ship had circled the round earth. And
through all the vicissitudes of that notable voyage, the object which
during fifty years had inspired so many fruitless ventures was not
forgotten. The little Victoria had shipped at Moluccas, and now
deposited at St. Lucar, twenty-six tons of cloves. Yet few ships