The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume 33, 1519-1522: Explorations by early navigators, descriptions of the islands and their peoples, their history and records of the Catholic missions, as related in contemporaneous books and manuscripts, showing the political, economic, commercial and religious conditions of those islands from their earliest relations with European nations to the close of the nineteenth centuryPigafetta, Antonio
History
The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume 33, 1519-1522: Explorations by early navigators, descriptions of the islands and their peoples, their history and records of the Catholic missions, as related in contemporaneous books and manuscripts, showing the political, economic, commercial and religious conditions of those islands from their earliest relations with European nations to the close of the nineteenth century
Pigafetta, Antonio
Demarcation line of Alexander VI; Missions -- Philippines; Philippines -- Discovery and exploration; Philippines -- History -- Sources
By mutual consent, the three vessels proceed to Bohol, where the
“Concepcion” is burned, as there are too few men left to work all
three ships; although its supplies and all else possible are
transferred to the “Victoria” and “Trinidad.” Then, cruising
along, they put in at Mindanao where Pigafetta goes ashore alone, after
the king has made blood friendship at the ships. There they hear of
Luzón, where the Chinese trade annually. Departing from Mindanao, they
anchor at Cagayan Sulu, a penal settlement for Borneo, where the
blowpipe and poisoned arrows are used, and the daggers adorned with
gold. The next anchorage is at Paragua, although before reaching that
island, the men have been tempted to abandon the ships because of
hunger. There the rice is cooked under the fire in bamboos and is
better than that cooked in earthen pots. Those people raise fighting
cocks and bet on their favorite birds. Ten leagues from Paragua is the
great island of Borneo, whither the ships next go, and anchor at the
city of Brunei, which is built over the water, and contains twenty-five
thousand fires. Hospitably received by eight chiefs who visit the
ships, they enter into relations with the Borneans. Seven men go as
ambassadors to visit the king, and bear presents to him and the chief
men. Here some of the grandeurs of an oriental court are spread before
their eyes, which Pigafetta briefly describes. The strangers are
graciously given permission to take on fresh supplies of food, water,
and wood, and to trade at pleasure. Later actions of the Borneans cause
the men of the ships to fear treachery, and forestalling any action by
that people, they attack a number of junks near them, and capture four.
Among the captives is the son of the king of Luzón, who is the chief
captain in Borneo, and whom Carvalho allows to escape, without
consulting the others, for a large sum of gold. His action in so doing
reacts on himself, for the king refuses to allow two men who were
ashore and Carvalho’s own son (born of a native woman in Brazil) to
return to the ships, and they are left behind. The Borneans and their
junks are described. They use porcelain dishes which are made from a
fine white clay that is buried under ground for fifty years in order to
refine it, and inherited from father to son. Camphor is obtained there,
and the island is so large that it can be circumnavigated by a prau
only in three months’ time.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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