A GREAT ADVERSARY.

Hokitika Guardian, 8 January 1921, Page 1

A GREAT ADVERSARY.

In the late summer of 1519 a somewhat miscellaneous expedition set out from Seville on a voyage which was to prove perhaps the most momentous in the history of geographical discovery. Its leader was one Gerdifaand It fagel It aens, a Portuguese adventurer, ’.vlio dissatisfied at his treatment by cue Kilig of Portugal, had taken service with his rival in exploration, the F.mperoc of Spain. His five ships were manned by a polyglot collection ol Portuguese, Spaniards, French, Basques, Neapolitans, Genoese, Germans, Flemings, Greeks. Levantines, and negroes, with a single Englishman, Master Andrew of Bristol, who, no doubt was very disdainful of the company iu which he found himself. Mngelliaens (or Magellan’s) object was to discover a strait which, he believed, >cd through the new continent in the nest and offered it route to the wealth of the East Indies. The expedition had 'l? full share of ill luck. The different races quarrelled among themselves scurvy broke out ; one ship was lost and another deserted; there was dis (affection and mutiny which Ala go 1lan suppressed with a firm handi The great Estuary ol La Plata promised t > he the strait they were seeking, hut , their hopes were disappointed. They continued their journey down the South of perpetual storms and perilous seas American coast and at last in a region come upon that passage which ~nll bears Magellan’s name. For thirtyeight days he heat his way against contrary winds through the twisting channel and at last on 2H(h November four hundred years ago European ships rode for the first time on the broad expanse of the Pacific. European eyes had seen it before. Seven years previously thousands of miles northward Vasco Nunez de Balboa bad

Stared at the Pacific—and all his men Look'd at each other with a wild surmise—

Silent, upon a peak in Darien. Ear, far to the west, beyond the setting sun, Portuguese navigators had rounded the Cape of Storms, crossed the Indian Ocean, and reached the Spice Islands. But the Pacific itself wa> still unknown, and Magellan was the man who found the key to its mysteries, lie was still many uncharted leagues from his goal. He sailed a north-west-erly course, and made a landfall at the Ladroiies. Thence he went to the Philippines, where he was killed in a native war in which lie supported one of the local chieftains. After many hardships and adventures eighteen survivors out of the original two hundred and seventy one who had set out three years before, returned to Seville, the first men to o'icunmavigate the globe.

As Magellan fared across the ocean he had discovered he was struck by its calmness, “wherefore he called it the Pacific.’’ Those who have experienced some of its moods may think the title a misnomer, but if the description “Is not literally true it lias bad a symbolic truth. The Pacific lias been a remarkably placid ocean. Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, British, and French have come and gone, and there has been room for all. Sometimes they have come into collision, hut these occasions have been mere episodes in its history. Vast and remote from the clashes of empires it lias felt (heir reverberations but faintly and indirectly. The greater world issues have been settled far away; its surface lias been scarcely ruffled by the tremors of the distant earthquakes. World power and world rivalines were focussed in Europe; the Atlantic and the Mediterranean witnessed the struggles lor mastery. In the Pacific, apart from those of the strangers I rum the west, there were no interests that might conflict. The dwellers on tin Pacific littoral were separated by immeasurable miles and did not look be yond their immediate horizon. Eastern Asia still slept; Western America was still uninhabited, save lor natives and a handful of Spaniards. Australia was scarcely more than a name. The Pacific dreamed through the centuries, little guessing what the future held in store. Ihit a span of hardly more than titty vears has witnessed an extraordinary change in the political and st ategical position in the Pacific. America ha. grown wealthy and powerful, and from her western frontier ge/'.es intently eastward; Japan has emerged from her seclusion and become a world powet . in the south the sturdy democracies of Australia and Now Zealand have risen to the stature of nationhood. No longer is the Pacific a hack water of the world, immense and undisturbed by events without. The roar of the guns at the Valu River and Chemulpo, and at Manila Ray, awakened her from her impose. No longer were the battles fought in her waters mere punitive expeditions ; they were pitched trials of strength in which Pacific Powers have taken part, The process by which the Pacific lias come into the foreground ol the international stage has been hastened by the Great War. That eliminated the factor which had of recent years determined European strategy and oft the European victors exhausted. Rut meanwhile America and Japan became both relatively and absolutely stronger, richer and more conscious ol their destiny. Once the Mediterranean, biter still the North Sea, was the key to the world situation; now, we are told ,it is the Pacific. Statesmen ami sailors Mike have assured us that the political and strategical centre of gravity has shifted to the ocean which washes our shores Schemes of Imperial naval defence recognise this; the empty ocean which stout Magellan entered has in the true world perspective become the most important of the Seven Seas. And we in Australia, whether we hke it oi not, must he involved in its fortunes. More than ever our fate is hound up with that of the British Empire ; more than ever our very existence depends . 0 n the maintenance of the Imperial connection, and the fourth centenary of