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.”