Magellan was fortunate enough to chance upon the Isle of Guam, where plentiful supplies were obtained. He called the group of small islands, of which Guam is one, the Ladrones. This was his word for robbers, used because the natives were such robbers. The expedition discovered a group of islands afterwards called the Philippines. There Magellan fell in with traders from the Indies and knew that the remainder of the voyage would be through well-known seas and over a route frequently followed. Poor Magellan did not live to complete his remarkable voyage. He was killed in the Philippine Islands in a battle with the natives. [Illustration: AN OLD MAP OF THE NEW WORLD--1523 After Magellan's voyage, but before the exploration of North America had gone far] Only one of the five ships found its way through the Spice Islands, across the Indian Ocean, around the Cape of Good Hope, and so back to Spain; but this one carried home twenty-six tons of cloves, worth more than enough to pay the whole cost of the expedition. Such was the value of the trade Europe was so eagerly seeking. WHAT MAGELLAN HAD SHOWN THE PEOPLE OF EUROPE. Magellan's voyage had, however, been a great event. Historians are agreed that it was the greatest voyage in the history of mankind. It had shown in a practical way that the earth is a globe, just as Columbus and other wise men had long taught, for a ship had sailed completely around it. But Magellan had also proved some things that they had not dreamed. He had shown that two great oceans instead of one lay between Europe and Asia; he had made clear that the Indies which the Spanish explorers had found, and which other people were beginning to call the Americas, were really a new world entirely separate from Asia, and not a part of Asia as Columbus had thought. QUESTIONS 1. Why were the early American explorers disappointed at finding two continents between Europe and Asia? 2. What land did John Cabot discover? Where did he think this land was? Why did the English people take little interest in this voyage? 3. Why was our country named America? Do you think that Americus Vespucius deserved so great an honor? By what name did the Spaniards continue to call the new region? Why did the Spaniards have one name and the other Europeans another name for a long time? 4. How did Balboa come to find the Pacific Ocean? Why did men search for a passage between the Atlantic and the Pacific more vigorously after Balboa's expedition? 5. Why has Magellan's voyage been called the greatest one in history? What three things had Magellan shown the European world? EXERCISES 1. Make out a list of the explorers mentioned in this chapter who helped in the discovery of the New World, and place opposite the name of each the name of the land he discovered.