voyage of Columbus, which employed only thirty-three days out and twenty-eight homeward-bound, cannot be compared with that of Magellan, and if Columbus was as good a seaman and navigator as Magellan, yet a certain superiority must be allowed to the latter on account of his numerous military exploits in India and Africa.
I have not been able to ascertain who was Juan Serrano, who remained in the hands of the Sebu islanders after the massacre of Duarte Barbosa and his companions, and in Navarrete he is sometimes spoken of as an inhabitant of Seville and sometimes as a Portuguese. Pigafetta speaks of him as a Spaniard, but the despatch of Sebastian Alvarez leaves no doubt as to his being Portuguese, which otherwise might have been inferred from his being a compadre of Joan Carvalho. It is probable that he was a relation of Francisco Serrano, the friend and correspondent of Magellan, who died in Ternate about eight months before the arrival at Tidore of Magellan's ships: it is also probable that he was the same Juan Serrano whose voyage with Francisco Serrano in 1512 from Malacca to the Java Seas is related in the book of Duarte Barbosa on the coasts of East Africa and Malabar (Hakluyt Society).
Sebastian de Elcano, a native of Guetaria in Biscay, had the good fortune to be in command of the Victoria on her return to Seville, and though his name is not mentioned during the voyage in any of the narratives, he reaped the principal rewards of the expedition, and on his arrival at Court, received from
