Three years after our own continent was discovered, a Portuguese by the name of Ferdinand Magellan began an extraordinary career of exploration. His voyage accomplished what Columbus had planned, and perhaps no voyage in history is more dramatic and exciting. Powerful political interests were behind the exploration, and, as usual with political ventures, powerful financial interests were involved: the great banking houses of Augsburg, Venice, and Antwerp, the vast fortunes of the ambitious Bishop Fonseca. Portugal and Spain were in disagreement about their spheres of influence in the East. And Magellan hoped to settle the controversy by reaching the Spice Islands from the West, via a strait at the extreme south of South America. From his youth he had been trained to the sea. He was now an experienced navigator, for he had sailed to India and among the Indies via Africa. Renouncing his own nationality, he made a contract with Charles V of Spain which would give him one-twentieth of the clear profits, and in 1518 he set forth with high hopes. He and his crew of noble hidalgos, priests, workmen, and common sailors -- seekers of fortunes or of souls -- sailed across the Atlantic and down the east coast of South America to the La Plata estuary, exploring as they went. - Jacket flap.