Page:The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 (Volume 01).djvu/325

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1493–1529]
DE MOLVCCIS INSULIS
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as they occasionally heard on that side the reverberation and roar of the sea at a more distant part of the coast. Magellan saw that the main land extended due north, and therefore gave orders to turn away from that great continent, leaving it on the right hand, and to sail over that vast and extensive ocean, which had probably never been traversed by our ships or by those of any other nation, in a northwesterly direction, so that they might arrive at last at the Eastern Ocean, coming at it from the west, and again enter the torrid zone, for he was satisfied that the Moluccas were in the extreme east, and could not be far off the equator. They continued in this course, never deviating from it, except when compelled to do so now and then by the force of the wind; and when they had sailed on this course for forty days across the ocean with a strong wind, mostly favourable, and had seen nothing all around them but sea, and had now almost reached again the Tropic of Capricorn, they came in sight of two islands,[1] small and barren, and on directing their course to them found that they were uninhabited; but they stayed there two days for repose and refreshment, as plenty of fish was to be caught there. However they unanimously agreed to call these islands the Unfortunate Islands. Then they set sail again, and continued on the same course as before. After sailing for three months and twenty days with good fortune over this ocean, and having traversed a distance almost too long to estimate, having had a strong wind aft almost the whole of the time, and having again crossed the equator, they saw an island, which they afterwards learnt from the neigh-

  1. San Pablo and Tiburones. Cf. Droysen and Andree's Historischer Hand Atlas, 1884, Karte 83; also Admiralty Chart, Sec. xv, 767.—Stevens.