Had Magellan tarried among the Chamorros, he might have learned valuable lessons about navigating across the Pacific. Like other island tribes, the Chamorros had techniques for identifying distant landmasses. They were adept at reading the ocean swells to maintain a course; they could distinguish between distracting swells raised by winds in the area and the widely spaced, regular swells useful for orienting a ship. The swells contained other clues to the whereabouts of remote islands, because they tended to bounce off islands or even to curve around them. By studying the patterns of the
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