_While there were other arrangements that were sometimes used, this seems to have been much the most common. The slaves who operated the oars were chained in place, and in case of shipwreck or disaster were usually left to their fate._] So important was the work done by the _Santa Maria_ and the other caravels of her day that were sailed by Vasco da Gama around the Cape of Good Hope, by Americus Vespucius to the South American mainland, by the Cabots to Nova Scotia and New England, and by other great discoverers on other great voyages, that they warrant closer attention than has been given to other passing types. With a fleet of caravels Magellan sailed from Spain, crossed the Atlantic, skirted the South American coast, discovered the land we now call Argentina, where he found a people he named the “Patagonians” because they had big feet. In subsequent accounts by a member of his crew these people were said to be giants, although they are merely men of good height and strength. From Patagonia, Magellan sailed south and entered a channel on each side of which lay mighty mountains rising precipitately from the water. The land to the south he named Tierra del Fuego—the Land of Fire—either because of the glow of now extinct volcanic fires that he saw, or of distant camp-fires of the natives which he sighted as he made the passage, and this land for many years was supposed to be a great continent that stretched from the Strait of Magellan, as the passage Magellan found was later called, to the south polar regions. From the western end of the Strait, Magellan steered to the north and west, diagonally across the greatest expanse of water on the globe—an ocean discovered only a few years earlier by Balboa when he crossed the Isthmus of Panama, and named by him the Great South Sea, but renamed by Magellan, because of the gentle weather he encountered, the Pacific. In all the voyage across the Pacific he discovered but two islands, although he sailed through the section occupied by the numerous archipelagoes that we call the South Sea Islands. [Illustration: AN EARLY 16TH-CENTURY SHIP _This ship, while similar in many respects to Columbus’s_ Santa Maria, _has made some advances over that famous vessel. The foremast is fitted to carry a topsail in addition to the large foresail shown set in this picture. On ships somewhat later than this one a small spar was sometimes erected perpendicularly at the end of the bowsprit, and a sprit topsail was set above the spritsail which is shown below the bowsprit here._ ]