EXTRACT OF A LETTER FROM THE INDIES
After I had written the above to your lordship, Yñigo Lopez arrived on the eighteenth from Malaca with the news that the Castilians were in Maluco; that three vessels had left Castilla under command of Fernando Magallaes. They had been sighted off the cape of San Agustin, from which point they had run about two hundred or three hundred leagues along the coast of Brasil. There they anchored in a river[1] which flows across the whole of Brasil, and was of fresh water. They sailed for six or seven days on this river until they came to the other part of the south, whence they started in quest of Maluco, sailing for five months in a wide expanse of waters without ever seeing land or finding islands, and with a steady stern wind. In this region one of the ships fled from Magallanes and started to return, but nothing more has been heard of it. At this time a great uneasiness became manifest among the Castilians, and it was rumored that Magallanes was going to deliver them over to the Portuguese; and they resolved to mutiny and seize the ships. Magallanes upon obtaining information of this was sorely grieved. He summoned the guilty ones before him
- ↑ This must have been the Strait of Magellan.
