Spain. His perseverance and resolution were at last rewarded by the
discovery of the strait named by him San Vittoria, in affectionate
honour of his ship, but which, with a worthy sentiment, other sailors
soon changed to "the Strait of Magellan." [Sidenote: Reaches the Pacific
Ocean.] On November 28, 1520, after a year and a quarter of struggling,
he issued forth from its western portals and entered the Great South
Sea, shedding tears of joy, as Pigafetti, an eye-witness, relates, when
he recognized its infinite expanse--tears of stern joy that it had
pleased God to bring him at length where he might grapple with its
unknown dangers. Admiring its illimitable but placid surface, and
exulting in the meditation of its secret perils soon to be tried, he
courteously imposed on it the name it is for ever to bear, "the Pacific
Ocean." While baffling for an entry into it, he observed with surprise
that in the month of October the nights are only four hours long, and
"considered, in this his navigation, that the pole antartike hath no
notable star like the pole artike, but that there be two clouds of
little stars somewhat dark in the middest, also a cross of fine clear
stars, but that here the needle becomes so sluggish that it needs must
be moved with a bit of loadstone before it will rightly point."

[Sidenote: The Pacific Ocean crossed.] And now the great sailor, having
burst through the barrier of the American continent, steered for the
north-west, attempting to regain the equator. For three months and
twenty days he sailed on the Pacific, and never saw inhabited land. He
was compelled by famine to strip off the pieces of skin and leather
wherewith his rigging was here and there bound, to soak them in the sea
and then soften them with warm water, so as to make a wretched food; to
eat the sweepings of the ship and other loathsome matter; to drink water
that had become putrid by keeping; and yet he resolutely held on his
course, though his men were dying daily. As is quaintly observed, "their
gums grew over their teeth, and so they could not eat." He estimated
that he sailed over this unfathomable sea not less than 12,000 miles.

In the whole history of human undertakings there is nothing that
exceeds, if indeed there is anything that equals, this voyage of
Magellan's. That of Columbus dwindles away in comparison. It is a
display of superhuman courage, superhuman perseverance--a display of
resolution not to be diverted from it