Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
On 24 August, when the worst of the winter was past, the four
remaining vessels resumed their voyage. Day after day the lookouts
scanned the coastline for the entrance to a strait that their leader
insisted, seemingly against all the evidence, was there. Not until 21
October, St Ursula's day, was a significant cape of grey-brown cliffs
observed with a channel beyond. Magellan marked it on the chart
and gave it the name 'Cape Virgins' (St Ursula was supposed to
have been martyred along with eleven thousand maidenly compan-
ions). He took his ships into the channel and seems to have been fa-
voured with unusually calm weather. Thousands of sailing vessels
later found great difficulty beating into the strait against the contra-
currents set up by ocean swell and the tidal race around the cape, of-
ten made worse by offshore gales:
I had only a moment to douse sail and lash all solid when it struck
like a shot from a cannon, and for the first half hour it was something
to be remembered by way of a gale. For thirty hours it kept on blowing
hard. The sloop could carry no more than a three-reefed mainsail and
forestaysail; with these she held on stoutly and was not blown out of
the strait
.
6
Magellan set two ships to explore the channel and after five
days they returned with the triumphant news that the waterway
broadened out and continued unchecked to westward. For the Por-
tuguese commander this was the high point of the voyage. As the
Concepcion
and the
San Antonio
sailed back into view, cannon blaz-
ing and flags flying, he knew that he was vindicated.
But if Magellan was delighted that the new route to the Indies
lay open, others were not. The seaway before them was bordered by
desolate lands. Along the shore rows of corpses could be seen im-
paled on poles. Beyond them the night sky was lit by the glow of a
thousand fires (hence the name Magellan gave this place - Tierra del
