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 is never visible to anybody; and if he wishes to see his people, he
is carried about the palace on a peacock most skilfully manufactured,
and very richly adorned, with six ladies dressed exactly like himself,
so that he cannot be distinguished from them. He afterwards passes into
a richly-adorned figure of a serpent called Naga, which has a large
glass in the breast, through which he and the ladies are seen, but
it is not possible to distinguish which is the king. He marries his
sisters in order that his blood should not mix with that of others.
His palace has seven walls round it, and in each circle there are
daily ten thousand men on guard, who are changed every twelve hours
at the sound of a bell. Each wall has its gate, with a guard at each
gate. At the first stands a man with a great scourge in his hand,
named Satuhoran[410] with Satubagan; at the second a dog called
Satuhain;[411] at the third, a man with an iron mace, called Satuhoran
with pocumbecin;[412] at the fourth, a man with a bow in his hand,
called Satuhoran with anatpanan;[413] at the fifth, a man with a
lance, called Satuhoran, with tumach;[414] at the sixth, a lion called
Satuhorimau;[415] at the seventh, two white elephants called Gagiapute.
The palace contains seventy-nine halls, in which dwell only the ladies
destined to serve the king; there are always torches burning there. It
is not possible to go round the palace in less than a day. In the upper
part of it are four halls where the ministers go to speak to the king:
one is ornamented with metal, both the pavement and the walls; another
is all of silver, another all of gold, and the other is set with pearls
and precious stones. The gold and other valuable things which are
brought as tribute to the king are placed in these rooms; and when they
are there deposited, they say, Let this be for the honour and glory
of our Santoa Raja. All these things and many others relating to this
king, were narrated to us by a Moor, who said that he had seen them.
The Chinese are white, and are clothed; they eat on tables like us.
They have crosses, but it is not known why they have them.
It is from China that musk comes; the animal which produces it is a
kind of cat, like the civet cat; it eats nothing but a certain soft
wood, slender as a finger, named chamaru. To extract the musk from
this animal they attach a leech to it, and leave it till it is full
of blood, and when they see that it is well filled, they crush it,
and collect the blood in a plate, and put it in the sun for four or
five days, moistening it every day with urine. In this way it becomes
perfect musk. Whoever keeps one of these cats pays a tribute to the
king. The grains of musk which come to Europe as musk, are only small
pieces of kid’s flesh soaked in real musk, and not the blood, since
though it can be made into grains, it easily evaporates. The cat which
produces musk is called castor, and the leech is called Linta.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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