And now the great sailor, having burst through the barrier of the American continent, steered for the northwest, 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.” [This was scurvy, the dread of all mariners in those times and long afterward.] He estimated that he sailed over this unfathomable sea not less than 12,000 miles. In the whole history of human undertakings [declares Dr. John W. Draper, from whose striking sketch of this achievement in his “Intellectual Development of Europe” I am quoting]—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 its purpose by any motive or any suffering.... This unparalleled resolution met its reward at last. Magellan reached a group of islands north of the equator—the Ladrones. In a few days more he became aware that his labors had been successful. He met with adventurers from Sumatra. But, though he had thus grandly accomplished his object, it was not given to him to complete the circumnavigation of the globe. At an island called Zebu, or Mutan, he was killed, either, as has been variously related, in a mutiny of his men, or, as they declared, in a conflict with the savages, or insidiously by poison.... Hardly was he gone when his crew learned that they were actually in the vicinity of the Moluccas [having previously wandered too far north, and discovered the Philippines], and that the object of their voyage was accomplished.... And now they prepared to bring the news of their success back to Spain. Magellan’s lieutenant, Sebastian d’Elanco, directed his course for the Cape of Good Hope, again encountering the most fearful hardships. Out of his slender crew he lost 21 men. He doubled the Cape at last; and on September 7, 1522, in the port of St. Lucar, near Seville, under his orders, the good ship _Vittoria_ came safely to an anchor. She had accomplished the greatest achievement in the history of the human race. She had circumnavigated the earth.