the 21st day of the same month, October, when they discovered a cape, to which they gave the name of Cape of the Virgins, because they sighted it on the day of the eleven thousand virgins; it is in fifty-two degrees, a little more or less, and from this cape a matter of two or three leagues distance, we found ourselves at the mouth of a strait.[1] We sailed along the said coast within that strait which they had reached the mouth of: they entered in it a little and anchored. Fernando de Magalhāes sent to discover what there was further in, and they found three channels, that is to say, two more in a southerly direction, and one traversing the country in the direction of Maluco, but at that time
- ↑ This is the famous strait which till this day is named the Strait of Magellan, for the eternal and glorious memory of the famous Portuguese who discovered it. Castanheda says that Magellan, on account of arriving there on the 1st of November, gave it the name of All Saints' bay, and in the answer which André de S. Martin gave to the inquiries made to him about that navigation, he also names the channel that of All Saints' (Barros, Dec. 3, liv. 5, cap. 9). The anonymous Portuguese, the companion of Duarte Barbosa, whom we have quoted above, and who sailed in the "Victoria," says that at first the navigators called it the Strait of the Victoria, because that ship was the first which sighted it. (Ramusio, 3rd edition, tom. i. page 370). Lisbon Ac. note.
there was, on the 11th of October, an eclipse of the Sun, "which (he says) the Portuguese and Spanish writers mention, and which is registered in the astronomical tables: and he judges it to be an error of Castanheda putting this phenomenon on the 17th of April, and his attributing to Magellan the calculation of longitude of which he speaks. Barros also mentions an eclipse of the sun in April. It is noteworthy that neither our pilot's narrative nor Pigafetta mentions a phenomenon which still in those times did not happen without causing some impression on men's minds, or at least without exciting public curiosity. Lisbon Ac. note.
I am indebted to the courtesy of the Astronomer Royal, Mr. G. B. Airy, for the following information, which confirms Castanheda and Barros: "1520, April 17. There was certainly (from our own calculations) a total solar eclipse about 1.20 P.M. Greenwich time. But in the Art de verifier les dates, in which the extreme Southern eclipses are not included, none is mentioned for April 17: consequently the eclipse was a Southern eclipse, crossing the South Atlantic."
