The first voyage round the world, by Magellan : $b translated from the accounts of Pigafetta, and other contemporary writersPigafetta, Antonio
History
The first voyage round the world, by Magellan : $b translated from the accounts of Pigafetta, and other contemporary writers
Pigafetta, Antonio
Magalhães, Fernão de, -1521; Voyages around the world -- Early works to 1800
The king to whom we presented ourselves is a Moor, and is named Raja
Siripada: he is about forty years of age, and is rather corpulent.
No one serves him except ladies who are the daughters of the chiefs.
No one speaks to him except by means of the blow-pipe as has been
described above. He has ten scribes, who write down his affairs on thin
bark of trees, and are called _chiritoles_.[342] He never goes out of
his house except to go hunting.
On Monday, the 29th of July, we saw coming towards us more than a
hundred prahus, divided into three squadrons, and as many _tungulis_,
which are their smaller kind of boats. At this sight, and fearing
treachery, we hurriedly set sail, and left behind an anchor in the
sea. Our suspicions increased when we observed that behind us were
certain junks which had come the day before. Our first operation was
to free ourselves from the junks, against which we fired, capturing
four and killing many people: three or four other junks went aground in
escaping. In one of those which we captured was a son of the king of
the isle of Luzon, who was captain-general of the King of Burné, and
who was coming with the junks from the conquest of a great city named
Laoe, situated on a headland of this island opposite Java Major. He
had made this expedition and sacked that city because its inhabitants
wished rather to obey the King of Java than the Moorish King of Burné.
The Moorish king having heard of the ill-treatment by us of his junks,
hastened to send to say, by means of one of our men who was on shore to
traffic, that those vessels had not come to do any harm to us, but were
going to make war against the Gentiles, in proof of which they showed
us some of the heads of those they had slain.
Hearing this, we sent to tell the king that if it was so, that he
should allow two of our men who were still on shore, with a son of our
pilot, Juan Carvalho, to come to the ships: this son of Carvalho’s had
been born during his first residence in the country of Brazil: but the
king would not consent. Juan Carvalho was thus specially punished, for
without communicating the matter to us, in order to obtain a large sum
of gold, as we learned later, he had given his liberty to the captain
of the junks. If he had detained him, the King Siripada would have
given anything to get him back, that captain being exceedingly dreaded
by the Gentiles who are most hostile to the Moorish king.
And, with respect to that, it is well to know and understand that in
that same port where we were, beyond the city of the Moors of which I
have spoken, there is another inhabited by Gentiles, larger than this
one, and also built in the salt water. So great is the enmity between
the two nations that every day there occurs strife. The king of the
Gentiles is as powerful as the king of the Moors, but he is not so
proud; and it seems that it would not be so difficult to introduce the
Christian religion into his country.[343]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account