First Voyage Around the World by Antonio Pigafetta

By Anna Ettore758

First voyage around the world

Antonio Pigafetta was a key player of one of the most amazing world exploration trips.He was
born in Vicenza in 1492, and he was an Italian seafarer and geographer.

The relevance of his own venture, fundamentally lies in the fact that he took part to the first
globe circumnavigation, between 1519 and 1522, and he was able to accomplish it after the murder of
Ferdinand Magellan, leaving a detailed description of the journey in the Report of the first trip around
the world, a lost manuscript that was rescued later, in 1797, and today is considered one of the most
important documentary evidence relating the geographical discoveries of the Sixteenth Century.

Antonio Pigafetta, fascinating and fleeing personality, for scholars he still represents a partial
mystery. About him too little is known to define a satisfactory profile on the biographical side.
Documents and the testimony of contemporaneous are scarces, and his own character primarily
appears from what he wrote in his own report.

His own narration about the first world circumnavigation was one of the greatest achievements
in the history of navy exploration and discovery.

In this narration can be found descriptions of peoples, countries, goods and even the languages
that were spoken, of which the seafarer was trying to assemble some brief glossaries.

Pigafetta tells how, being in Barcelona in 1519, he heard about Magellan’s expedition, and being
wishful to learn about the world, he asked for and obtained the permission to join in the voyage.

Magellan’s fleet weighed anchor from Seville on August 10th of the same year with five smaller
vessels, heading towards Canary Islands and down along the African coast, and across the Equator. From
there they sailed towards Brazil coast , where they stayed for some time, making supplies and weaving
friendly contacts with the cannibalistic natives who dwelled there.

Moving on, then they arrived in Patagonia, where they spent winter months in a desolate
solitude. They met local people, who looked like giants in their eyes full of wonder, because of their
robust body types.

They survived the mutiny of one of the captains and some disgruntled sailors, and continued the
exploration of the coast. One of the vessels was drowned, but the whole crew managed to be saved.

They proceeded until the discovery of the strait, named after, Magellan himself, on October 21st
1520, and went through, although one of the ships deserted, sailing back to Spain.

Finally, they arrived in the Philippines, where they became acquainted with the natives who
proved hospitable and welcomed them as guests in the king’s palace. The indigenous people, affected
by the celebration of Mass and the crucifix planted in the island, promised to convert to Christianity

Quickly they developed commerce and trade, and the king, the queen and other notables of Cebu were
converted, until the entire population rapidly followed them in the new religion.
 Shortly after, happened the disastrous episode that changed the course of the expedition.
Magellan took part in a conflict between some local tribes and was killed. The rest of the expedition
managed to escape and retired, preparing to leave, but a trap set by Magellan’s interpreter and the king
of Cebu, led to another massacre of the Europeans.

The surviving ships continued toward Borneo and to the city of Brunei, where they managed to
stock up, then from there, traveling southbound, they came to the Moluccas, 27 months after the
departure from Spain, finding a warm welcome by an astrologer king who had predicted their arrival.

But at this point, despite the perspective of good business and the rich exchanges that would lie
ahead, their desire to return to Spain urged them and pushed them to a quick return.

Translation by Silvia Accorrà (edited by Davide Spagnoli)

First Voyage Around the World

by Antonio Pigafetta

That land of Verzin is wealthier and larger than Spagnia, Fransa, and Italia, put together, and
belongs to the king of Portugalo. The people of that land are not Christians, and have no manner of
worship.

They live according to the dictates of nature, and reach an age of one hundred and twenty-five
and one hundred and forty years. They go naked, both men and women. They live in certain long houses
which they call boii and sleep in cotton hammocks called amache, which are fastened in those houses by
each end to large beams. A fire is built on the ground under those hammocks. In each one of those boii,
there are one hundred men with their wives and children, and they make a great racket. They have
boats called canoes made of one single huge tree, hollowed out by the use of stone hatchets. Those
people employ stones as we do iron, as they have no iron. Thirty or forty men occupy one of those
boats. They paddle with blades like the shovels of a furnace, and thus, black, naked, and shaven, they
resemble, when paddling, the inhabitants of the Stygian marsh. Men and women are as well
proportioned as we. They eat the human flesh of their enemies, not because it is good, but because it is
a certain established custom.

That custom, which is mutual, was begun by an old woman, who had but one son who was killed
by his enemies. In return some days later, that old woman’s friends captured one of the company who
had killed her son, and brought him to the place of her abode. She seeing him, and remembering her
son, ran upon him like an infuriated bitch, and bit him on one shoulder. Shortly afterward he escaped to
his own people, whom he told that they had tried to eat him, showing them [in proof] the marks on his
shoulder. Whomever the latter captured afterward at any time from the former they ate, and the
former did the same to the latter, so that such a custom has sprung up in this way. They do not eat the
bodies all at once, but every one cuts off a piece, and carries it to his house, where he smokes it. Then
every week, he cuts off a small bit, which he eats thus smoked with his other food to remind him of his
enemies. The above was told me by the pilot, Johane Carnagio, who came with us, and who had lived in
that land for four years. Those people paint the whole body and the face in a wonderful manner with
fire in various fashions, as do the women also.

The men are [are: doublet in original manuscript] smooth shaven and have no beard, for they
pull it out. They clothe themselves in a dress made of parrot feathers, with large round arrangements at
their buttocks made from the largest feathers, and it is a ridiculous sight.

Almost all the people, except the women and children, have three holes pierced in the lower lip, where
they carry round stones, one finger or thereabouts in length and hanging down outside. Those people
are not entirely black, but of a dark brown color. They keep the privies uncovered, and the body is
without hair, while both men and women always go naked. Their king is called cacich [i.e., cacique].

They have an infinite number of parrots, and gave us 8 or 10 for one mirror: and little monkeys
that look like lions, only [they are] yellow, and very beautiful. They make round white [loaves of] bread
from the marrowy substance of trees, which is not very good, and is found between the wood and the
bark and resembles buttermilk curds.

They have swine which have their navels [lombelico] on their backs, and large birds with beaks
like spoons and no tongues.

The men gave us one or two of their young daughters as slaves for one hatchet or one large
knife, but they would not give us their wives in exchange for anything at all. The women will not shame
their husbands under any considerations whatever, and as was told us, refuse to consent to their
husbands by day, but only by night. The women cultivate the fields, and carry all their food from the
mountains in panniers or baskets on the head or fastened to the head. But they are always accompanied
by their husbands, who are armed only with a bow of brazil-wood or of black palm-wood, and a bundle
of cane arrows, doing this because they are jealous [of their wives]. The women carry their children
hanging in a cotton net from their necks. I omit other particulars, in order not to be tedious. Mass was
said twice on shore, during which those people remained on their knees with so great contrition and
with clasped hands raised aloft, that it was an exceeding great pleasure to behold them. They built us a
house as they thought that we were going to stay with them for some time, and at our departure they
cut a great quantity of brazil-wood [verzin] to give us. It had been about two months since it had rained
in that land, and when we reached that port, it happened to rain, whereupon they said that we came
from the sky and that we had brought the rain with us.

Those people could be converted easily to the faith of Jesus Christ.

At first those people thought that the small boats were the children of the ships, and that the
latter gave birth to them when they were lowered into the sea from the ships, and when they were lying
so alongside the ships (as is the custom), they believed that the ships were nursing them. One day a
beautiful young woman came to the flagship, where I was, for no other purpose than to seek what
chance might offer. While there and waiting, she cast her eyes upon the master’s room, and saw a nail
longer than one’s finger. Picking it up very delightedly and neatly, she thrust it through the lips of her
vagina [natura], and bending down low immediately departed, the captain-general and I having seen
that action.

Translation by James Alexander Robertson (Blaire & Robertson, 1906)