Ferdinand Magellan Classic Reprint PDF Download

Excerpt from Ferdinand Magellan But an idea occurred to Magellan, and since, on his return from India, King Manuel of Portugal had no further use for his services, even as his predecessor, King John II, had no use for a certain Italian called Columbus, Magellan, like Columbus, took himself and his idea to Spain. And this idea was so prodigious, and the accomplishment of it so unparalleled in the history of exploration, that by virtue of it his deeds and his days generally seemed worth a little ferreting out and a trifle of study, in order to see whether this man, who is known to most people as a name, Spanish or Portuguese, rather than a human being, after whom, vaguely, an obsolete strait in the most remote part of South America was called, could not be shaped into a living personality. History, as a mere series of events, as a collected chronicle, is as dead as the bones in the vision-valley of Ezekiel (and, behold, they were very dry unless it is animated by some human interest attaching to those who made it. But if it can be breathed upon by the spirit of the living folk who caused these things to happen so, it becomes winged with the romance that belongs to the great deeds of men. Magellan's feat, in itself, was a supreme achievement he was the first person in the world who demonstrated not by theory, but in terms of ships actually sailing on the sea, that this world is round (or thereabouts), and that by sailing out beyond the known ultimate of the West, a voyager will arrive at the known ultimate of the East. To us that is a commonplace, but it must be remembered that when Magellan was born no ship of the two great maritime Powers, Spain and Portugal, had ever sailed beyond the Atlantic. The Atlantic washed the shores of the known world, and not yet had Columbus found its further coast, nor had Bartholomew Diaz rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and though it was certain that there were lands and seas to the East of Africa, and islands fragrant with the spices brought to Europe by Moorish traders, no European eye had ever beheld them. For hundreds of years no substantial additions had been made to men's knowledge of the surface of the world it was indeed probably larger in the days of Alexander the Great than in a.d. 1480. Then suddenly, in the space of thirty-five years, the world was unrolled like some wondrous manuscript, and (out of the three explorers who spread it out) the last and longest section, stretching from the coasts of Brazil westwards to the Spice Islands of the East, was smoothed straight and pinned down by Magellan. Not for sixty years, so sown with peril and difficulty was the route, did any ship pass through his Strait again and traverse the Pacific. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.