e
fame-maker.

FOOTNOTES:

[4] This mutiny against Velasquez was the first hint of the unscrupulous
man who was finally to turn complete traitor to Spain.

[5] Tezozomoc, the Indian historian, graphically describes the wonder of
the natives.

[6] Another specific act of treason.

VI.

A GIRDLE ROUND THE WORLD.

Before Cortez had yet conquered Mexico, or Pizarro or Valdivia seen the
lands with which their names were to be linked for all time, other
Spaniards--less conquerors, but as great explorers--were rapidly shaping
the geography of the New World. France, too, had aroused somewhat; and
in 1500 her brave son Captain de Gonneville sailed to Brazil. But
between him and the next pioneer, who was a Florentine in French pay,
was a gap of twenty-four years; and in that time Spain had accomplished
four most important feats.

Fernao Magalhaes, whom we know as Ferdinand Magellan, was born in
Portugal in 1470; and on reaching manhood adopted the seafaring life, to
which his adventurous disposition prompted. The Old World was then
ringing with the New; and Magellan longed to explore the Americas. Being
very shabbily treated by the King of Portugal, he enlisted under the
banner of Spain, where his talents found recognition. He sailed from
Spain in command of a Spanish expedition, August 10, 1519; and steering
farther south than ever man had sailed before, he discovered Cape Horn,
and the Straits which bear his name. Fate did not spare him to carry his
discoveries farther, nor to reap the reward of those he had made; for
during this voyage (in 1521) he was butchered by the natives of one of
the islands of the Moluccas. His heroic lieutenant, Juan Sebastian de
Elcano, then took command, and continued the voyage until he had
circumnavigated the globe for the first time in its history. Upon his
return to Spain, the Crown rewarded his brilliant achievements, and gave
him, among other honors, a coat-of-arms emblazoned with a globe and the
motto, _Tu primum circumdedisti me_,--"Thou first didst go around me."

Juan Ponce de Leon, the discoverer of Florida,--the first State of our
Union that was seen by Europeans,--was as ill-fated an explorer as
Magellan; for he came to "the Flowery Land" (to which he had been lured
by the wild myth of a fountain of perennial youth) only to be slain by
its savages. De Leon was born in San Servas, Spain, in the latter part
of the fifteenth century. He was the conqueror of the island o