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
He also gave us for the King of Spain two most beautiful dead birds.
These birds are as large as thrushes; they have small heads, long
beaks, legs slender like a writing pen, and a span in length; they have
no wings, but instead of them long feathers of different colours, like
plumes: their tail is like that of the thrush. All the feathers, except
those of the wings, are of a dark colour; they never fly, except when
the wind blows. They told us that these birds come from the terrestrial
Paradise, and they call them “bolon dinata” that is divine birds.
The King of Bachian was a man of about seventy years of age. Not only
did the King of Bachian recognise the King of Spain as his Sovereign;
but every king of Maluco wrote to him that he desired always to be his
faithful subject.
One day the King of Tadore sent to tell our men, who dwelt in the
magazine for the merchandise, that they should take care not to go out
of the house by night, since there were certain men, natives of the
country, who by anointing themselves, walk by night in the shape of
men without heads: and if they meet anyone to whom they wish ill, they
touch his hand and anoint his palm, and that ointment causes him soon
to grow ill, and die at the end of three or four days. But if they meet
three or four persons together they do not touch them, but make them
giddy. He added that he had a watch kept to discover them, and he had
already had several executed.
When they build a new house, before going to inhabit it, they make a
fire round it, and give many feasts there. Then they fasten to the roof
of the house a pattern or sample of everything that is to be found in
the island, persuaded that by that means none of those things will be
ever wanting to whoever inhabits the house.
Wednesday morning everything was prepared for our departure from
Maluco. The Kings of Tadore, of Giailolo, and of Bachian, and a son of
the King of Tarenate had come to accompany us as far as the island of
Mare. The ship “Victoria” made sail and stood out a little, waiting
for the ship “Trinity”; but she had much difficulty in getting up the
anchor, and meanwhile the sailors perceived that she was leaking very
much in the hold. Then the “Victoria” returned to anchor in her former
position. They began to discharge the cargo of the “Trinity” to see if
the leak could be stopped, for it was perceived that the water came in
with force as through a pipe, but we were never able to find out at
what part it came in. All that day and the next we did nothing else but
work at the pumps, but without any advantage.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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