Magellan and his crew believed these fires had been set by Indians who lurked in the shadows, waiting to pounce—one more reason for the sailors to stay aboard ship, especially at night, even though their provisions were running low. This was a reasonable precaution, but the fires were most likely of natural origin, the result of lightning. In any event, Magellan called this region Tierra del Fuego, Land of Fire. Today, we know that Tierra del Fuego is actually an enormous triangular island buffeted by winds from both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, and constantly beset by storms and rapidly changing weather. The Land of Fire is actually the land of storms. Tierra del Fuego covers more than 28,000 square miles of glaciers, lakes, and moraines. Magellan’s crew looked on the lowlying areas, where the hills rarely reach six hundred feet; to the south and west, the southern extension of the Andes mountain range pierces the clouds, reaching heights of over seven thousand feet.
Now that they were in the strait, the pilots found that the sky was rarely clear by day or night, which made it nearly impossible to take accurate measurements either by the stars or by the sun. Gloomy, ragged, low-hanging clouds scudded over the mountains hugging the fjords through which the ships expectantly glided. Occasionally, the leaden mists parted to allow sunlight, gleaming with painful brilliance, to stream down on the impenetrable land and the surging water.
The sunlight, when it managed to break through, could be pitiless at this low latitude and appeared to illuminate the landscape with a gray, polarized radiance. Striations of light played over the stony beaches and the glaciers frosting the mountaintops. Although Magellan traversed the strait at the warmest time of year, when the wind, for all its bite, was at its lightest, and snows had receded, the enormous glaciers were plentiful and awe-inspiring. Snow nearly always fell atop the glaciers—they were endlessly renewing themselves— and at lower altitudes the ice melted into narrow waterfalls cascading over the granite outcroppings into the fjords. Invisible to the sailors, the glaciers extended across the landscape, running through thirty miles of mountains before sheering off at the water’s edge.
As they continued to sail through the strait, Magellan’s crew observed a solid wall of ice rising majestically before them—two hundred feet, five hundred feet, and more. They were ancient edifices, these glaciers, some of them ten thousand years old, and they looked it, with their grimy faces deeply pockmarked and weathered.
Consisting of packed snow and ice, the glaciers never rested; they cracked, they groaned, they roared, and they threatened to decompose and tumble onto the beaches and water below. Their crystalline towers leaned out over the water in irregular columns, like rotting teeth in a decaying jaw. They inclined ever more precariously over the placid water until one column after another, warmed by the sun and buffeted by the wind, calved and collapsed amid a cloud of icy dust with a shattering report followed by a drumlike roll of thunder, low and resonant, announcing destruction. To everyone’s surprise, the glaciers were neither white nor gray, but a light, almost iridescent blue that in the crevasses and seams darkened to a deep azure. The countless chunks of ice broken off from the glaciers, some as large as a whale, others as small as a penguin, had the same enigmatic bluish cast as they bobbed past the ships: an armada of sculptured ice drifting toward a mysterious location.
Groping for a plausible explanation for the glaciers’ appearance, Magellan theorized that the glaciers’ distinctive color had to do with their extreme age. In fact, the bluish cast was determined by the distinctive properties of snow and ice. The surface of snow and ice reflects all light, without preference for any particular color of the spectrum, but the interior handles light differently. Snow acts as a light filter, and treats the spectrum preferentially, scattering red light more strongly than blue. Photons emerging from snow and ice generally have more blue rays than red. The deeper the snow and ice, the farther the light must travel, and the darker blue it becomes, just as water appears a deeper blue as it increases in depth. For this reason, the deep crevasses in the glaciers possess an unearthly azure hue.
Every visitor to the strait has been awed by the majestic, moody spectacle it presents. It is reminiscent of Norway, or Scotland, or Nova Scotia, but ultimately it is unlike any other place on earth. In 1578, Sir Francis Drake, the English explorer and pirate, led the first expedition since Magellan’s through the strait. One of his officers, Francis Pretty, was amazed by the spectacle passing before his eyes. “The land on both sides is very huge and mountainous; the lower mountains whereof, although they be monstrous and wonderful to look upon for their height, yet there are others which in height exceed them in a strange manner, reaching themselves above their fellows so high, that between them did appear three regions of clouds,” Pretty marveled. “This Strait is extreme cold, with frost and snow continually; the trees seem to stoop with the burden of the weather, and yet are green continually, and many good and sweet herbs do very plentifully grow and increase under them.” And when the naval historian Samuel Eliot Morison visited the strait in February 1972, he, too, fell under its spell. “One seems to be entering a completely new and strange world, a veritable Never-Never Land,” he remarked. “The Strait never freezes except along its edges, and the evergreen Antarctic beech, with its tiny matted leaves, grows thickly along the lower mountain slopes. The middle slopes support a coarse grass which turns bronze in the setting sun; and above, the high peaks are snow-covered the year round; when it rains in the Strait, it snows at 6000 feet.”
Although the sky was generally overcast, especially at night, it cleared at brief intervals to reveal a dazzling array of constellations competing for attention, with an unnaturally brilliant Milky Way. The familiar—Orion’s belt, the Big Dipper—mingled with the unfamiliar constellations of the Southern Hemisphere, especially the Southern Cross, whose presence reinforced Magellan’s conviction that the Almighty was looking over the entire venture, even here, at the end of the world.
Once the armada had negotiated the first two narrows within the strait, Magellan became increasingly cautious about the hazards ahead and decided to scout the strait’s uncharted waters. “The Captain General sent his cousin Álvaro de Mesquita to go in his vessel San Antonio through that mouth in order to find out what was inside while he and the other ships remained anchored in the wide part of the entrance until they knew what was what,” Vasquito Gallego noted. Actually, Magellan dispatched two ships (the other was Concepción), but San Antonio took most of the risks. “Álvaro de Mesquita went for fifty leagues up the strait, and in some parts he found it so narrow that between one shore and the other there was no more distance than one Lombard shot, and the strait turned toward the west whence the sea currents came in full force, so strong that they could not go on, except with difficulty,” Gallego remembered. “Mesquita turned back, saying that he thought that the great water came out of a big gulf and his advice was to go in search of its end and see the mystery, because not without reason came that water with such force from that direction.”
All the while, Victoria and Trinidad remained tied up in Lomas Bay, on the southern shore of the strait. Here the water was shallow enough to permit the ships to drop anchor, and they seemed to be safe, but at night a “great storm,” as Pigafetta called it, blew up and lasted well into the next day, battering the ships. Magellan was forced to raise anchor and let the two ships ride out the storm in the protected reaches of the bay.
The gales in this region were especially violent and seemingly appeared out of nowhere. The “great storm” of which Pigafetta spoke is called a “williwaw,” and it is peculiar to the strait. A williwaw occurs when air, chilled by the glaciers surrounding the strait, becomes unstable and suddenly races down the mountains with ever-increasing velocity. By the time it reaches the fjords, it creates a squall so powerful that it never fails to terrify and disorient any sailor unlucky enough to be caught in its grip.
San Antonio and Concepción had an even more difficult time riding out the williwaw than the ships that stayed behind.
The sailors aboard those ships had experienced terrifying storms, but nothing equal to this. The fierce winds prevented them from rounding the cape, and when they tried to rejoin the fleet, they nearly ran aground. In the darkness, the two ships became disoriented, and their pilots, without maps and unable to see the stars, feared they were lost. They hunted for a way out for the next day, and the next after that, until they finally approached a narrow channel leading to a continuation of the strait. Once they noted the exact location of the strait’s extension, they sailed back through relatively calm waters to find their Captain General.
A dramatic reunion occurred, as Pigafetta explained: “We thought that they had been wrecked, first, by reason of the violent storm, and second, because two days had passed and they had not appeared, and also because of certain smoke [signals] made by two of their men who had been sent ashore to advise us. And so, while in suspense, we saw the two ships with sails full and banners flying to the wind, coming toward us. When they neared us in this manner, they suddenly discharged a number of mortars, and burst into cheers. Then all together thanking God and the Virgin Mary, we went to seek [the strait] further on.” The rejoicing, the triumph over weather and geography, and the feeling of being blessed by divine authority were new to Magellan’s men. For the better part of two years, they had been deeply mistrustful of their Captain General, divided from one another by language and culture, and prone to mutiny. After passing through these ordeals, they had become united and saw in each other not subversion or menace but the possibility of ultimate triumph.
Despite the euphoria Magellan felt on discovering the strait, he still faced serious obstacles. Influenced by the maps he had seen in Portugal, Magellan mistakenly conceived of the strait as a single channel running through the huge landmass blocking the route to the Indies, when in fact there was no single strait; instead, he faced a complex array of tidal estuaries snaking through the mountains at the southern limit of the Andes. Instead of a simple shortcut to the Pacific, Magellan had led his fleet into a uncharted maze that would put his navigational abilities to the ultimate test.
The waterways he explored were wide enough—never less than six hundred feet across, and generally more than several miles in width—but still treacherous. The strait largely consisted of a network of fjords, geologic evidence of deep glaciers that still held the surroundings in their icy embrace. At low levels, the glaciers melted into narrow, glistening waterfalls that cascaded across the granite face of the mountains until they emptied into the frigid water. If any of Magellan’s men fell overboard, they would survive in these conditions for ten minutes at the most.
Here and there, along stony gray beaches, lolled families of sea elephants, easily distinguished by their length, about ten feet, their two flippers close to their torpedolike heads, and a broad stabilizing tail lazily patting the sand. Sea elephants could barely get around on land, so they lay at the water’s edge, yawning and stretching. Other indigenous wildlife in the strait included arctic foxes and penguins crowding beaches of their own. Giant black-and-white condors wheeled overhead, their wingspan extending to ten feet. They kept close to the mountain ridges, where they circled in the rising currents of warm air known as thermals. Occasionally, they nested in pairs, patrolling their eyries, appearing at rest more like the vultures they actually were.
Despite the snow cover lasting for eight months a year, the waterfall-fed vegetation in the strait was suffocatingly lush. Within several feet of the shoreline lurked a dense forest with dozens of types of ferns; windblown, stunted trees; silky moss; and a layer of spongy tundra. There were also brightly colored clumps of tiny, hardy berries; they were bitter on the outside, sweet on the inside, their delicate fruit covered with miniature air cushions to protect them from snow. (The crew had to be careful about eating them; although the berries were not toxic, they had a severe laxative effect.) There were even small white orchids blooming in the mud. Little light penetrated the thick canopy of leaves to dispel the fertile, peaceful shade within. “So thick was the wood, that it was necessary to have constant recourse to the compass,” wrote the young Charles Darwin when he visited the strait aboard HMS Beagle in 1834. “In the deep ravines, the death-like scene of desolation exceeded all description; outside it was blowing a gale, but in these hollows, not even a breath of wind stirred the leaves of the tallest trees. So gloomy, cold and wet was every part, that not even the fungi, mosses, or ferns, could flourish.” When he at last worked his way out of the enchanted forest to a summit, Darwin described a view familiar to Magellan’s crew: “irregular chains of hills, mottled with patches of snow, deep yellowish-green valleys, and arms of the sea intersecting the land in many directions. The strong wind was piercingly cold, and the atmosphere rather hazy, so that we did not stay long on top of the mountain.”
The strait’s thick vegetation gave the air an intoxicating fragrance and buoyancy. The breezes were scented with a damp mossy odor lightened by the scent of wildflowers, freshened by the cool glaciers, and faintly tangy with the salt from the sea. Like everything else in this region, the very air was alive with mystery and promise. The strait seemed to be a giant natural monastery in which the crew sought refuge, a place of quiet contemplation of the paradoxes of nature on a scale capable of inducing profound humility.
Since leaving Port Saint Julian, Magellan had seen no indigenous peoples, but his men remained alert, both for self-protection and the opportunity to barter for provisions. He dispatched a skiff crowded with ten men under orders to comb the landscape for signs of human life, but they found only a primitive structure sheltering two hundred gravesites. Apparently, a tribe of Fuegian Indians had used the place to bury their dead in warm weather, and then vanished into the perfumed interior. It is believed that these Indians came from Asia thousands of years earlier, and had been on the losing side of battles for land ever since, displaced again and again until they were nearly at the end of the continent, occupying territory no other tribes wanted.
Though disappointed, Magellan’s scouting party was probably better off avoiding the locals. Three hundred years later, Charles Darwin encountered a canoe bearing tribal members, whose lot had scarcely changed over the intervening centuries. Indeed, Darwin felt that he was peering through eons to the dawn of human society. He judged them “the most abject and miserable creatures I have any where beheld. . . . These Fuegians in the canoe were quite
naked, and even one full-grown woman was absolutely so. It was raining heavily, and the fresh water, together with the spray, trickled down her body. In another harbour not far distant, a woman, who was suckling a recently-born child, came one day alongside the vessel, and remained there whilst the sleet fell and thawed on her naked bosom, and on the skin of her naked child. These poor wretches were stunted in their growth, their hideous faces bedaubed with white paint, their skins filthy and greasy, their hair entangled, their voices discordant, their gestures violent and without dignity. Viewing such men, one can hardly make oneself believe they are fellow-creatures, and inhabitants of the same world.” Clinching his disgust for the Fuegians, Darwin observed, “Nor are they exempt from famine, and, as a consequence, cannibalism accompanied by parricide.” They were, he judged, “the miserable lord of this miserable land.”
As the ships of the fleet glided along the fjords, they experienced only three hours of night, and the extended days allowed them to make up for the time lost in Port Saint Julian. The prospect of successfully negotiating the strait appeared increasingly likely, at least to Magellan. But the conviction was not unanimous, as he discovered when he summoned an officers’ council to discuss the fleet’s future course. He was delighted to hear that they had sufficient provisions to last three months, more than enough, he calculated, to carry them through the strait and to the Moluccas. Encouraged, the captains and pilots indicated they were strongly in favor of pushing on—all but one, that is.
Estêvão Gomes, reassigned as the pilot of San Antonio, strongly dissented. Now that they had f
ound the strait, he argued, they should sail back to Spain to assemble a better-equipped fleet. He reminded Magellan that they still had to cross the Pacific, and while no one knew how large it was, Gomes assumed it was a large gulf in which they might encounter disastrous storms. The Captain General insisted they would continue at all costs, even if they were reduced to eating the leather wrapping their masts, but not everyone shared Magellan’s passionate determination. With his widely acknowledged piloting skills, Gomes had his own supporters among the crew, a situation that infuriated the Captain General. The council was not intended as an exercise in collective decision-making; rather, it was a forum for Magellan to rally his men behind and to prepare them for the challenges that lay ahead—challenges that God alone could help them meet.
Gomes’s opposition set the stage for another mutiny, but unlike the previous uprisings, this was not a violent confrontation with flashing swords. It began more insidiously, as a grim debate at the end of the world between two respected rivals.
Gomes was Portuguese, so this time the dispute was not a matter of Spanish-Portuguese rivalry. In fact, Gomes had defected from Portugal with Magellan in 1517. He seemed to be an integral member of Magellan’s tightly knit group of trusted mariners, but Gomes harbored ambitions of his own, and he skillfully leveraged his relationship with Magellan to further his ends. Within a few months of arriving in Seville, he received a pilot’s commission, and immediately afterward began promoting his own Armada de Molucca. He nearly achieved his goal, but then Magellan, with his superior experience and connections, including his advantageous marriage to Beatriz Barbosa, appeared before the king, who promptly forgot all about Gomes. On April 19, 1519, Gomes settled for a commission as Magellan’s pilot major; the appointment only served to whet his appetite for still more power and to encourage his bitterness toward the Captain General under whom he served. The enmity between the two was no secret; even Pigafetta, normally circumspect, was aware of the bitter history: “Gomes . . . hated the Captain General exceedingly, because before the fleet was fitted out, the emperor [King Charles] had ordered that he [Gomes] be given some caravels with which to discover lands, but his Majesty did not give them to him because of the coming of the Captain General.”
Over the Edge of the World: Magellen's Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe Page 19
