Magellan : The Famous Explorer

Ferdinand Magellan was the famous explorer best known for having planned and led the Spanish expedition which achieved the first circumnavigation of Earth in history. "Magellan is one of those who, as Robert Browning says, are "named and known by that moment's feat, " and though that feat took three years in the doing, he is still a man of one achievement. Unlike some great general who has half a dozen victorious campaigns to justify his title to immortality, unlike some great painter who has a score of deathless canvases to his credit, unlike Newton who accomplished years of epoch-making work before he made his great discovery, unlike (in his own line) the English admiral, Francis Drake, who not only circumnavigated the world, but defeated the Spanish Armada, and carried through a dozen amazing adventures to the sore undoing of Spain, Magellan's claim to immortality is based on one feat alone, but that was of a unique splendour, and carried out in the face of stupendous difficulties."