“‘Long live the high and mighty monarchs, Don Ferdinand and Doña Juana, Sovereigns of Castile, of Leon and of Aragon, in whose name and for the royal crown of Castile, I take real and corporal and actual possession of these seas and lands and coasts and ports and islands of the south, and all thereunto annexed, and of the kingdoms and provinces which do or may appertain to them, in whatever manner or by whatever right or title, ancient or modern, in times past, present or to come, without any contradiction; and if other prince or captain, Christian or infidel, or of any law, sect or condition whatsoever, shall pretend any right to these islands and seas, I am ready and prepared to maintain and defend them in the name of the Castilian Sovereigns, present and future, whose is the empire and dominion over these Indias, islands and _terra firma_, northern and southern, with all their seas, both at the arctic and antarctic poles, on either side of the equinoctial line, whether within or without the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, both now and at all times so long as the world shall endure and until the final judgment of all mankind.’ And then the Notary, who always accompanied such expeditions, was ordered to make on the spot an exact record of what had been said and done, which was duly signed and authenticated by all present.” It was to the Portuguese navigator Fernão de Magalhães (Ferdinand Magellan in the English rendering of the name) that the honor finally fell of being the first, not alone to find the passage through the new continent that was being so eagerly sought, but to cross by the western route to the East Indies and thereby blaze the way to making geography an exact science. He had already been to the Moluccas by the African route, and, disgusted by the failure of his King suitably to reward his services, had transferred his allegiance to Spain and managed to secure from the Emperor Charles V a commission and five ships, the largest of but 120 tons’ burden. On the 20th of September, 1419, he sailed from the Guadalquivir, with a crew numbering 280, all told, and, having entered the Plata River and satisfied himself that it was not a strait, ran down the Patagonian coast through many storms until he found shelter in the harbor of St. Julian, where, on Easter Sunday, a mutiny broke out that only a man of such remarkable courage and resourcefulness as Magellan possessed could have suppressed. It had been a hard voyage, the chances of finding the strait seemed slim, there was only the prospect that there they must remain throughout the antarctic winter in idleness and discomfort; it is small wonder that they wanted to desert.