News of this treachery reached Portugal, where it was heard with the greatest indignation, and an angry correspondence passed between the two courts. Charles’s ambitions, however, lay in European aggrandizement, for which the demands upon his exchequer were heavier than he well knew how to meet. His great possessions in the New World had hitherto been a drain upon his scanty resources, as they had been upon those of his grandfather before him; and although Ferdinand lived for a quarter of a century after the discovery of America, he left hardly sufficient money in his coffers to pay his funeral expenses. Charles, therefore, listened eagerly to the proposition by which he might acquire the teeming riches of the Spice Islands, and, notwithstanding protests and warnings alike, terms were finally agreed to in March, 1518, which placed five ships, and a full complement of men, at the disposal of Magellan. Failing any other means of putting an end to the enterprise, a plot was formed for the assassination of Magellan, but miscarried; and he weighed anchor on the 10th of August, 1519, though delayed in his actual departure until the 20th of September following. Instructions were sent to the Brazils, already occupied by Portugal, to waylay Magellan, and at all costs prevent the continuance of his voyage; and in case he eluded the vigilance of the governor of that settlement, a strict watch was to be kept at the Moluccas, and no quarter given him if he ever reached there, as he was declared a traitor to the crown of Portugal. He arrived at the Rio de la Plata unmolested, and entered that river, of great width at its mouth and for some distance along its course, with the idea that it offered the long-sought passage to the West. The increasing freshness of the water convinced him that it was but a river, and he returned and moved his course southward. And now his real difficulties began. Winter was setting in with all its rigor, and the further south he proceeded the more severe became the weather. His crew was most cosmopolitan in character and nationality, and included a number of Portuguese, some of whom, it began to be suspected,--had been bribed to mutiny, if not indeed to murder their commander. Dissensions broke out among the captains of the different vessels on petty points of precedence and discipline; and only the most determined stand by Magellan himself, who did not hesitate to hang several of the crew as an example to the rest, prevented the total ruin of his hopes and plans.