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
of bird which only lives on the droppings of the other birds, this is
a true thing, and they are named Cagaselo, for I have seen them follow
the other birds until they had done what nature ordered them to do;
and after it has eat this dirty diet it does not follow any other bird
until hunger returns to it; it always does the same thing.[155] There
are also fish which fly, and we saw a great quantity of them together,
so many that it seemed that it was an island in the sea.
After that we had passed the equinoctial line, towards the south, we
lost the star of the tramontana, and we navigated between the south
and Garbin, which is the collateral wind [or point] between south and
west; and we crossed as far as a country named Verzin, which is in
twenty-four degrees and a half of the antarctic sky. This country is
from the cape St. Augustine, which is in eight degrees in the antarctic
sky. At this place we had refreshments of victuals, like fowls and
meat of calves,[156] also a variety of fruits, called battate, pigne
(pine-apples), sweet, of singular goodness, and many other things,
which I have omitted mentioning, not to be too long. The people of the
said place gave, in order to have a knife, or a hook[157] for catching
fish, five or six fowls, and for a comb they gave two geese, and for a
small mirror, or a pair of scissors, they gave so much fish that ten
men could have eaten of it. And for a bell (or hawk’s-bell)[158] they
gave a full basket[159] of the fruit named battate; this has the taste
of a chestnut, and is of the length of a shuttle.[160] For a king of
cards, of that kind which they used to play with in Italy, they gave me
five fowls, and thought they had cheated me. We entered into this port
the day of Saint Lucy[161] [13th December], before Christmas, on which
day we had the sun on the zenith,[162] which is a term of astrology.
This zenith is a point in the sky, according to astrologers, and only
in imagination, and it answers to over our head in a straight line,
as may be seen by the treatise of the sphere,[163] and by Aristotle,
in the first book, _De Cælo et Mondo_. On the day that we had the sun
in the zenith we felt greater heat, as much as when we were on the
equinoctial line.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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